Chapter 13
There was something wonderful about being given a cup of tea by someone who loved you.
All his life, Peter had longed for that, longed for someone to give him something out of love, but he had not experienced it much as a child.
He could still remember his mother’s warm embrace, her soft hair, her gentle touch, her kind face, her patient expressions, and her love for him. When he closed his eyes, sometimes he could still hear her sing a lullaby and hum as she soothed all his childhood hurts away.
But she had died of an illness before he was five years old. Some said that was what had broken his father, but he did not think it was possible. His father had to have been broken to his core from the day he was born to be as cruel as he was.
Peter had made it through most of his life without love, without affection.
He had had friends, of course. He was a charming man. He’d made it his goal to be so. When one lived with a parent like his father, one had to be charming or disappear entirely.
He had not chosen to disappear. No, he had chosen to shine. But now, as he sat in his sister’s dressing room in the theater off Covent Garden after another performance, for he had now dared to come to more than one after their meeting with Ruby, he felt love.
Abby cared about him in the gentle way that family did.
He was so grateful to Abigail.
She was the first one to have written him, and he was the closest to her. He tried to be close to his younger siblings, seeing them several times a year, because they needed a father figure, and they didn’t have one.
They never had.
He never had. Not one that wasn’t vicious.
He didn’t know how to be a father, but he was doing his best. He took the delicately painted porcelain saucer and then carefully lifted the cup. He sipped at the richly brewed beverage.
“It’s not going to break, you know,” Abby said with a bemused laugh.
“I don’t know,” he said as he eyed the delicate little thing balanced in his hand. And he knew how hard she had worked for it. Though he gave her an allowance, Abby chose to use all her own money to purchase her things. “I think it’s important to savor the small things. To treat them with care.”
She tilted her head to the side. “That is amazing to hear, if I do say so.”
“Why?” he asked, blinking.
She eased back into her cushioned chair as the fire crackled. “Because you could break the cup on the floor and buy a thousand more.”
“Yes, I could,” he replied. He studied the carefully painted flower petals that some person had taken much pain with. And then he lifted his gaze to his sister. She was not unlike this cup. Women, in general, were not unlike the cup. Men could use and discard them.
Brothers, husbands, fathers, and even sons broke the women around them.
“You’re not like him,” she said swiftly.
“What?” he rasped. His instinct was to tighten his grip, but instead he forced himself to stay at ease.
“The man who fathered us.” She let out a harsh sigh. “You are nothing like him.”
How he wanted to believe it. “But everyone let him get away with it,” he hissed.
“That’s because society is a dung heap,” she said merrily.
“How can you jest about it?” he asked.
Her brow furrowed. “If I do not, I would wither away and not get up in the morning, and I refuse to let society take my life from me.”
“The ills of society—”
“Don’t be too hard on the ills of society,” she cut in. “I thrive off the ills of society. If the ills of society were gone, no one would come to the playhouse.”
He laughed.
“Eat a biscuit,” she commanded, thrusting a plate at him that was covered in delectable treats. “You need it. You’re too thin.”
“I am not too thin,” he countered. “I am just right.”
She tutted. “Well, I’m sure the ladies think that you’re just right, but your sister says that you need a biscuit. Eat it. Cook makes splendid ones stuffed with butter and sugar.”
At her order, he did indeed take one up and took a bite of the delicious morsel.
The sugar and butter coated his tongue, and he closed his eyes in ecstasy.
“It’s the cruelty that is the real ill of society. The lack of empathy. And that’s why you’re not and will never be like him,” she whispered. “Your curse is not cruelty, Peter. It’s that you care too much.”
He tried to speak but he couldn’t, for the biscuit was on the verge of turning to dust in his mouth.
“Have another,” she said as she thrust another at him. “You look distraught.”
“I am distraught,” he said, but he took another as ordered, this one covered in a candied fruit.
He ate it, suddenly feeling like a little boy in a cook’s kitchen with someone doting on him.
It was a fleeting but welcome feeling. One that made him dare to hope that all the ills of society could be combatted with moments of kindness.
“I like her, you know,” Abby said casually.
He let out a harumph around the cookie, opened his eyes, and then managed, “Who?”
She pursed her lips and said dramatically, “The silly one.”
“She’s not silly,” he sputtered, nearly choking on his bit of biscuit.
“Drink some tea before you die. I cannot have a viscount expiring in my dressing room,” she said. “And don’t be ridiculous. Of course, she’s not silly. I just wanted to get your attention. Don’t play games with me. We’re beyond that,” she said. “You know exactly who I mean.”
He looked around the beautiful little dressing room that was appointed with paintings, and sculptures, costumes and candelabras, and dared to smile. Dared to hope that maybe happiness was within his grasp, though he had yet to feel it. “Yes, she’s something, isn’t she?”
“Don’t let her slip through your fingers. Someone else will take her quite quickly if you don’t.”
“I already asked her to marry me, and she said yes.”
“That’s not what I mean,” his sister retorted.
“What do you mean then?” he asked, placing the cup down on the table and brushing the crumbs from his fingers into a linen napkin.
He extended his leg and leaned back against the delicate settee. It wasn’t quite right for him, but it was perfect for his sister. She was small, and sometimes he feared that she’d been ill too much as a child and would be taken from him too soon.
The world didn’t deserve his sister.
He was so glad that he, at last, had gotten to be in her company. And he longed for more of it. Family. It was still a confusing thing to him.
“Well,” she began, “you can marry her, but not value her like you do that cup. You can have it, but not value it and break it.”
“Are you suggesting that I’m going to break her?” he rasped.
She hesitated. “Well, you could, couldn’t you? Because no one ever taught you how to have love. At least I had some of that.”
He winced. He hated that Abby saw him as more wounded than she, given all the privileges he’d had.
“I’ll be careful,” he said.
“Good. Now don’t go making any babies without being married. I can see the two of you have been at it.”
“What?” he gasped.
She nodded. “You know that I grew up in the East End. I can tell what’s what. We’re all animals in the end, you know, Peter.”
He groaned. “You are so blunt.”
“Yes, and you need it,” she said without hesitation.
“You need someone to be desperately blunt with you. Your friends are all well enough, but they are high-minded and won’t say what needs to be said.
They’ll dance about it and find delicate ways to put it.
You need to marry her, and you need to let yourself enjoy her.
I wish that I could come to the wedding,” she added.
“Of course you can come to the wedding.”
“I can’t,” she said, her mouth curving into a line of sorrow.
He let out a slow sigh. “I understand that you don’t want to be associated with Papa.”
“I don’t want people to know that I’m his by-blow,” she said tightly. “I don’t want people to know that his blood is running through my veins. Besides, they’d just look down on me. It’s far better to be who I am.”
“I love who you are, old thing,” he said gently. Sincerely. “You’ve made my life better. You changed everything, you know, with that letter asking me for help.”
Tears filled her eyes as memory slipped across her face. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t give it, and yet it was also so humiliating to ask,” she said, putting her own cup down. “But then I realized that I had no choice if I wanted to survive and have a life that was more than just in the mud.”
“Now look at you,” he praised. “You’re a star in the firmament.”
She smiled, reached across the little table between them, and took his hand. “All because of you?”
“No,” he said, “I only financed the star. You shined all on your own.”
“Oh, Peter,” she said, “you are good, and you do deserve love. I hope you accept it.”
Peter slipped out of his sister’s dressing room into the theater and headed down the hall, more grateful than he had been for a long time for such a lovely conversation with her. He did have them often, but not usually at the theater.
It had been so good to see her two days in a row.
“What are you doing here, old boy?” Lord Philip, the brother of the Duke of Westfort and fellow boxing companion, asked as he sauntered down the back hall. The two had become good friends over this Season, and he’d known Lord Philip from a distance for years.
“I could ask the same of you,” Peter said, feeling quite jovial.
“Well, I was thinking of paying a visit to our star here, Mrs. Abigail Simpson.”
He stopped dead in his tracks. “I beg your pardon?”
“Mrs. Simpson,” Philip said. “I thought I might…”
“Turn around,” Peter declared. “You don’t need to pay any attention to her.”
Lord Philip’s eyes narrowed.
He was a nice young man, but he did not need to be bothering his sister.
His sister needed to focus on her work. She did not need gentlemen pestering after her, though he knew that she could handle herself quite well.
“I say, are you going after her?” Lord Philip asked. His eyes were wide, and suddenly he looked very nervous. In fact, his voice had pitched up nearly an octave.
“No. Why would you ask such a thing?”
Philip drew in a breath and eyed the door not far behind him. “Well, you did just come out of her dressing room and now you’re warning me off of her.”
It was a fair point.
Peter laughed. “I can see why you would think such a thing then, but no, I have no interest at all in Mrs. Simpson. In that way. She and I are merely…”
“What?” Philip asked with surprising intensity.
“Friends,” Peter rushed, suddenly feeling off foot by the direct line of questioning. “Acquaintances. People who happen to know each other.”
“That’s a lot of things to say if it’s something so simple,” Philip returned. “Are you sure you’re not about to make her your mistress?”
Peter gagged a little, then coughed, desperately trying to cover his lies.
Philip scowled. “Are you all right? You look ill.”
“It’s nothing,” he rushed. “Just need a bit of air.”
“Oh, well, shall we walk over to one of the taverns along Fleet Street?”
“Most definitely,” Peter said, though he would have far preferred to find a way to climb up to Ruby’s window and spend the night with her. But he’d do anything to get Lord Philip out of the theater and away from his sister.
He was a good enough fellow, but he didn’t think he would ask Abigail to marry him.
“You’re my friend, aren’t you?” Peter asked.
Philip cocked his head to the side. “What a deuced odd question. Of course we’re friends.”
“I’ve only almost drawn your cork as many times as you have mine.
We’ve raced and drank more pints together than there are years in my life,” Philip added as they headed down through the hall and out the back entrance of the theater into the wild streets of the West End, then out towards Covent Garden.
Peter sucked in a breath and rushed, “I’d like you to stay away from Mrs. Simpson.”
Philip blinked, stopped, Hessian boots sinking ever so slightly in the mud. “Why,” he asked, “if she’s not to be your mistress? Do you find me offensive? Are you trying to protect her from me in some way?”
“Oh no, you’re a perfectly good fellow,” he rushed, realizing this was damned difficult.
“Then why would you want to stop me?” Philip’s brow furrowed as if he was wrestling some sudden and internal crisis. “I don’t understand. I could take very good care of her. I’ve been looking for a mistress.”
The din of people on the street, people drunkenly shouting, street vendors selling their wares, and ladies of the night urging gents down dark alleys, barely covered his internalized groan.
Truthfully, his brotherly instinct, which was quite intense, made him want to sock Philip in the jaw, but he couldn’t. Because if he did, it would make things very complicated indeed.
And Philip was not a bad sort.
“Just stay away from her unless…you want to marry her.”
Philip blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Are you going to marry her?” Peter challenged.
Philip’s brow shot up, and he narrowly dodged the contents of a chamber pot being flung out from overhead before he yelped, “Are you her father?”
“No,” he retorted as the two of them began walking rather quickly again.
Philip blew out a breath. “You look too young to be her father, but you’re acting like her father.”
“Well,” Peter returned, tugging on his waistcoat, desperate to avoid the truth for Abby’s sake. “Someone needs to act like her father. Otherwise, she’s going to get taken advantage of. And we can’t have that, can we? She’s a perfectly nice young woman. No man should take advantage of her.”
Philip swung him a surprised look. “I have no intention of taking advantage of her. Do you think so little of me?”
“Of course not.”
“You’re acting most odd. She’s a free woman.”
“Yes, she is. But stay away all the same.”
Philip sighed. “Well, I suppose so, for you, but I do like actresses.”
“Do you?” Peter asked, needing that promised drink now, as he frantically searched for signs of a tavern.
“Yes. I think they’re significantly better than most people.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because they’re interested in the lives of others. They’re sympathetic and, they’re highly intelligent,” Philip enthused.
Peter turned and gaped at him. “You’re full of surprises, old boy. I thought you were going to say something else.”
“What? Rosy cheeks and big bosoms?” Philip offered.
Peter laughed. “Something like that. Yes.”
Philip snorted. “I can find that in the tavern, and tavern maids are perfectly lovely. But actresses fascinate me. They understand people, and they can be very useful indeed when trying to find out what’s going on in society.”
Philip stopped right under a swinging sign with a cat and a frog upon it, both drinking a pint of ale. The loud noises pouring out the door suggested the place was going to be quite an experience.
“And do you need to know what’s going on in society?” he asked.
Lord Philip winked. “Always, old boy. Always.”
And they headed in, both clearly in need of a drink.