The Bluestocking Read online

  “Ya got nothing to say,” Stephen taunted. “And that is why you’ll never be Cleo or even Ophelia.” With that he stormed off. “You. Broderick. You’re both weak.”

  “Stephen,” she called after him, but he was already through the door and slamming it once more in his wake, so that only his name echoed around the room for company.

  Yes, because over the years, he’d been clear that his affections were reserved for only one of the Killoran girls, and it had always been Cleo. Nor had Gertrude given him, or any of the other Killorans, much reason to believe in her strength—at least in the ways that mattered. Relegated to the role of invisible child after she’d lost partial vision, she had been allowed to remain within the household only because of Broderick’s intervention and the care she’d provided for the boys and girls in the gang. Oh, the family had relied upon her to teach the children and staff. But, be it when they’d lived on the streets or in the Devil’s Den, none had ever come to her for guidance. She’d never danced with danger as her siblings had. As far as Stephen knew, she had done none of these things, because shortly after he’d come to them, she’d been relegated to the position of caretaker. She’d neither killed nor stabbed nor stolen to protect. Instead, she’d allowed her younger sisters to serve in that role of de facto protector.

  Her fingers gripped the shirt in her hands, and she glanced down at the threadbare garment.

  “He is right,” she whispered. Stephen was right.

  Gus trotted out from his place under the cabinet and bounded over. The fat tabby knocked into her lower legs, and his sturdy weight ruffled her skirts.

  She sank to the floor and distractedly scratched the beloved place where his tail met his back. He purred loudly and curved into her touch.

  With her two younger sisters recently married, Gertrude had taken on greater roles and responsibilities in the club’s running, but the role of protector had still escaped her. She’d had an obligation to care for her younger siblings . . . and she’d failed them all.

  Gertrude exploded to her feet so quickly Gus hissed and bounded off, rushing this time under the bed.

  Fueled by purpose, she stormed from the room.

  The wide halls were a bustling space of servants gathering up and carting off Stephen’s belongings. Young maids and footmen stepped out of her way, allowing her a path.

  A handful of minutes later, Gertrude reached a familiar paneled door. Not bothering with a knock, she tossed the door wide.

  From his place at the window, Broderick withdrew his gun and had himself positioned in front of his former assistant and now wife, Regina, with that pistol pointed at Gertrude’s chest.

  He swallowed a curse. “I could have killed you.”

  “I need to speak with you,” she said, ignoring that worry. Each of them had been trained as better shots than that. They didn’t fire or lunge first but rather assessed their opponent.

  “What is it?” he asked quietly.

  Reggie looked between brother and sister and then cleared her throat. “I’ll leave you both.”

  Gertrude let out a sound of protest. “You don’t have to do that.” Reggie was as much a member of the family as any of the Killorans, in a bond that went back further and deeper than her marriage and to the years she’d spent like another sister to the Killoran girls.

  “I should check on Stephen,” the other woman insisted in an indication of just how very much she knew each member of their clan.

  Gertrude smoothed her palms over the front of the apron covering her bronze skirts. “That . . . would probably be best.” Time and life had proven the perils of leaving a volatile Stephen alone and to his own devices.

  On the day he was to leave St. Giles and journey to the fancy end of Mayfair? Shivers dusted her spine. There was no telling what he might do.

  Regina offered a slight nod. She very well knew and shared Gertrude’s fears. Gathering Broderick’s hands, Regina gave them a slight squeeze. Nearly of a same height as her husband, she easily met his gaze.

  Some unspoken language passed between them, one where words were neither necessary nor used. Two people whose thoughts moved in a synchronic beat. Gertrude averted her stare, allowing them that shared moment. Theirs was a bond between a man and a woman, so foreign to Gertrude, who’d long ago accepted the fact that blind women were at best pitied and at worst treated with kid gloves. The last thing awaiting a cripple was romantic entanglement.

  A floorboard started to creak, and she glanced back.

  With a thankful smile, Gertrude waited until the other woman had gone before she spoke. “You aren’t going.”

  Broderick exhaled a long sigh and, reaching inside his jacket, fished out a cheroot. “I cannot,” he said simply, fiddling with the small striker he kept in his pocket. He struck one, and the faint glow of the orange flame fizzled to life. “The marquess was clear.” Broderick lit the scrap of tobacco and took a long draw. With his other hand, he waved the match, wafting a puff of white smoke as the fire went out.

  Gertrude frowned. “You don’t accept ‘no’ from anyone.” More stubborn than Lucifer, he’d gone toe to toe with the Devil for control of the underworld and won.

  Broderick exhaled a small circle of smoke, his breath faintly shuddering, his hand faintly atremble. “He’ll see me hanged.”

  She opened her mouth and then closed it.

  With a sound of frustration, he stalked over to his desk. Grabbing the scrap of paper with a crimson seal broken down the middle, he tossed the page down in invitation.

  Her frown deepening, Gertrude joined him. Picking it up, she assessed the wax crest, the imprint of a shield divided into four quadrants, neatly severing the crisscrossed swords.

  Gertrude unfolded the note and read.

  Killoran,

  I owe you nothing. I’ve spared your life because my son is living. But the minute he returns to my fold, your contact with him is over. You will have no communication with him. You will not see him. You will not even set foot on my stoop to deliver him. Your time in his life will be at an end. Any failure to honor these demands will result in the hanging you deserve. Nor do I expect to see your guttersnipish sisters darkening my doorstep, or I’m fully prepared to see their gracious entrance into Polite Society made far less comfortable.

  The Marquess of Maddock

  Robbed of the ability to speak, Gertrude looked up from the page. He’d threatened not only Broderick but also all the Killorans.

  Broderick took another long, slow inhale of his cheroot. “And so, I cannot bring him . . . b-back.” He coughed into a fist in a failed bid to cover up the slight crack in his voice.

  “But it is the last time we’ll see him . . .”

  Her brother offered a sad smile. “We lost him long ago.”

  Gertrude rocked back on her heels. That he should be so accepting . . . so matter of fact? “Where is your outrage at being denied even a last goodbye?”

  “I don’t deserve a last goodbye,” Broderick said quietly as he tipped his cheroot ashes into a crystal tray.

  “It is not about what you deserve or don’t,” she gritted out through her teeth. “It is not about what any of us deserve.” It was only about Stephen. “It is about easing his way from the only life he remembers.”

  “And you think we’re the ones to do that?” he asked in achingly painful tones. “I’m the one who ordered him taken.”

  Her frown deepened. “Do not say that,” she snapped. Gertrude tossed the marquess’s threatening note atop her brother’s ledgers. “You are the one who tried to save an orphan in the streets.” She took a step toward him and jammed a fingertip into the surface of his desk. “It was Diggory’s sick fascination with the nobility that led to Stephen’s kidnapping. You merely sought to give an orphan boy a home. Walsh and Lucy were the ones who brought a child of the nobility as Diggory always craved.”

  Through a small circle of smoke, Broderick flashed a wistful smile. “You were the one always capable of forgiveness . . . of
seeing goodness where there wasn’t any.”

  Her fingers curled into the sides of her muslin dress. Broderick and her other siblings had always had an inflated sense of her goodness and depth of forgiveness. They had put her on a pedestal that separated her from her origins and sins.

  “Cleo needs to go,” she said, stating that deliverance as fact.

  “Thorne’s club would be ruined.”

  “She won’t care,” Gertrude shot back, stunned.

  “No. But Stephen does.”

  There it was, yet again. The evidence that the boy was in fact a man with a weight of responsibility upon his narrow shoulders. He’d sacrifice that last opportunity to see his siblings in order to protect them.

  “Look at me, Gert,” Broderick murmured. “Cleo is not accompanying him,” he said when she’d forced her gaze to his.

  The sting of tears blurred the whole of her vision. “It cannot be like this,” she whispered, blinking furiously to keep those drops from falling.

  A hand rested on her shoulder, jerking her attention upward.

  Broderick held her gaze. “It is to be like this.” His throat muscles worked. With a grimace, he released her and took another pull from his cheroot. “Are his belongings packed?”

  That is what he’d ask after? But then, mayhap it was just simpler to speak of garments and impersonal artifacts than the loss of their sibling.

  Only they weren’t impersonal. They were items Stephen had groused about. Wrinkling his pert nose at the fine wool garments. Clinging to articles that bore rips and hints of faded blood from street fights he’d fought and won.

  Yes, it was very nearly done.

  A knock sounded at the door.

  “Enter,” Broderick called out.

  MacLeod, the head guard, ducked inside the room. His gaze briefly lingered on Gertrude, and then he doffed his hat. “Pardon the interruption. Mr. Killoran, there’s a question regarding the boy’s . . . weapons.”

  Emotion wadded in her throat. Weapons. They weren’t just weapons. A Western Great Lakes Pipe Tomahawk. An Indian Bank dagger sickle. The Turkish composite dagger. A jade-and-silver Mongolian eating knife. A Scottish targe.

  Aside from the jewel-studded dagger Broderick had insisted upon, the rest of Stephen’s collection had all been learning tools she’d used to motivate a child who’d chafed at the lessons Broderick had demanded Stephen be taught.

  She hugged her arms around her middle. Oh, God. “He’ll take them with him.”

  MacLeod went slack-jawed and looked questioningly at his employer.

  Yes, because she’d never been one to publicly challenge Broderick or interject her opinion in front of a crowd. Her cases had been pleaded quietly.

  A slight frown puckered between Broderick’s brows. “We’ll speak on it later, MacLeod.”

  “Sir. Miss Killoran,” the guard murmured and backed out, leaving them alone once more.

  Broderick tamped out his cheroot. “Everything is changing, Gertrude. It has to.” He paused, staring down at the ashes in the crystal tray. “For all of us.”

  Everything was changing.

  Her eyes slid closed.

  They were losing Stephen. And nothing could be done to stop it. Nothing.

  And before she broke down and revealed the expected weakness in front of her eldest brother, Gertrude stormed off.

  What were they going to do without him?

  Chapter 2

  Mayfair, England

  It had been decided long ago, given the mistakes and sins that belonged to him, that the eventual fate of Edwin Ludlow Phineas Shadrack Warwick, the Marquess of Maddock, was to be banished to the fiery pits of hell.

  That conflagration, in this instance, was a good deal preferable to the current state of his damned affairs.

  “Absolutely not.”

  And it certainly spoke to the depth of ugliness in his soul, the perverse pleasure he found in delivering that icy whisper.

  The silver-haired, regal pair seated opposite his desk shared a look. A long stretch of silence met Edwin’s pronouncement.

  “Wh-what do you mean, absolutely n-not?”

  It had never been a good day when his mother-in-law, the Duchess of Walford, sputtered.

  Her husband stretched a hand over, resting it on hers in a gesture that would have been mistaken as one of warmth and affection in most couples.

  The duchess smacked His Grace across his gloved fingers with her gilded ivory fan.

  He wisely withdrew his hand and, bringing back his broad shoulders, sat more upright in his seat. “What do you mean, absolutely not?” The duke jammed a fingertip toward the floor. “We demand to be here.”

  Husband and wife wore impressively matching glowers. In fairness, they’d always glowered; the duke and duchess commanded fear in the hearts of nearly all members of the ton. Edwin, however, had come to appreciate there were far greater demons and monsters to fear than a pair of overinflated members of the peerage.

  Furthermore, their disdain of Edwin went back to long ago, to the moment that he, a young rogue amongst the ton, had fallen in love with their late daughter and stated his intention to marry her—with or without their approval.

  Edwin spread his palms out. “I mean precisely that. You aren’t invited.”

  The couple launched into a furious tirade, abandoning all veneer of civility and descending into a firestorm of insults and outraged charges against his character.

  “We warned her. You were never to be trusted . . .”

  “You vile, vile monster,” the duchess spat, vitriol pulling that uninventive charge from her.

  Edwin settled back in his seat and rested his palms over the muscles of his flat stomach. In fairness, his in-laws had always despised him. The only crack in their otherwise icy disdain had come when he and Lavinia had made them grandparents. And even then, they’d visited but spared barely a word for the son-in-law who’d ultimately eloped with their cherished daughter.

  Their palpable loathing had been fully restored the day their daughter perished in a blaze along with their unborn grandchild.

  Yes, the family was justified in their hatred of him. And yet, their loathing had managed that which had been impossible while his wife lived—it had freed him from their visits and terse company.

  Until now.

  “You are likely being played for a fool,” the Duke of Walford clipped out. Raising the same monocle that had dangled about his neck when Edwin had first met him, the duke held it to his keen eye and passed his gaze over Edwin. “You’ve not proven yourself the most reliable with those in your employ or company.”

  On his lap, Edwin curled his palms tight as the insult slid through him, a well-placed arrow that found its mark and lanced him for the truth of it.

  And the duchess, who’d been previously enthusiastic in her diatribe, faltered. “You failed h-her,” Her Grace said in a watery echo of the regretful musings that would forever swirl around his tortured mind. A glimmer of tears filled his mother-in-law’s eyes, transforming her from one who’d long been his nemesis into a bereaved parent.

  It was a familiar suffering, one he knew too well, learned at the merciless hands of Satan’s helper.

  “I knew you would,” she said.

  “We knew you would,” the duke chimed in, resting his hand upon his wife’s once more, and this time she did not draw back.

  Edwin wanted to look away from her suffering, which he was responsible for, but instead, he forced himself to take ownership of what he’d done . . . and what he’d visited upon this couple.

  When he’d met and fallen in love with Lavinia, he’d done nothing to merit their enmity. As the son-in-law who’d failed to protect their beloved daughter, he could appreciate all the ways they were entitled to their hatred of him.

  “He will learn precisely the manner of man you are,” the duchess tossed at him.

  “But not the murderous marquess,” he gibed, curving his lips up in a taunting smile, leveling that charge they�
��d raised all over London in the immediate aftermath of his wife’s death.

  “Pfft,” his mother-in-law scoffed. “You killed her all the same.”

  Edwin went absolutely still, determined she’d not see this latest barb had pierced that organ he’d believed long dead. For he had killed her. The blame, and the responsibility, belonged to him as much as if he’d set the blaze himself.

  “He will see that you killed his mother and b-brother or sister. We will be sure of it.” She stifled that sob with a clenched fist.

  And this was why they’d arrived . . . on the very day he was set to return.

  Nay, not he.

  My son.

  It is my son who is at last returning, after seven years. Now a stranger. A boy who had dwelled in the bowels of hell and carried scars as deep as the ones Edwin himself bore.

  “I fear your plans of sowing the seeds of my son’s hatred will have to wait until he attends ton events, many years from now,” he said coolly as he shoved back his chair. “You’ll have no access to him.”

  The powerful peers opposite him, wholly unaccustomed to having their wishes gainsaid, collapsed back against the folds of his chairs.

  A knock sounded at the door before either of them could formulate a response.

  Edwin stood. His heart knocked at a jumbled rhythm against his rib cage.

  “Enter,” he barked.

  The door opened, and Quint Marlow, the man who’d served as butler, man-of-affairs, and the closest thing he’d had to a friend since Lavinia’s murder, entered. He took in the duke and duchess a moment.

  Edwin waved his hand. “Say what it is you’d say,” he said impatiently.

  “I’ve received word the carriages are scheduled to depart shortly, my lord.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the duchess clutch at her throat with one hand, and this time, she made a grab for her husband’s with the other.

  August is coming . . .

  At last. After what felt like a lifetime apart . . . a child who’d spent just four short years in Edwin’s life and almost double that with the most ruthless gang in East London, he was more a stranger than anything. “And has the boy yet been loaded into them?” Edwin spoke in measured, unaffected tones at odds with the jumbled rhythm of his heartbeat.