AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “What are you still doing here?” he growled. “I thought you’d finally decided to let me be.”
“I’m no good at this, Robbie. If I were your mother, I’d know what to say. I’d make you laugh and feel better, and you’d never have need to complain.”
“Sure,” he agreed bitterly.
“But I’m not. I don’t know how to be a mother. What role do you want me to play instead?”
Another shrug of his scrawny shoulders. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
His shoulders stiffened. But he didn’t look at her. After a few moments, he shrugged again. “I suppose,” he said.
Oh, that hurt. To have all her care, all her work, tossed aside in one insouciant shrug of his shoulders. Years of looking after him had culminated in this bored rejection.
“Best to get on with it,” Robbie said. But his voice broke on the last word, and his shoulders quivered. And that was when Miranda realized that he was crying—quietly, but crying nonetheless.
She stared at him, absolutely flummoxed. Surly, sullen, and…sad? What was she supposed to do?
She stood and walked down the steps to the window. “Hey, now,” she whispered. “It’s not so bad as that.”
He wiped furiously at his eyes. “Sure. Wait ’til you hear.”
“Hear what?”
“I was arrested today.”
“What? Oh, no. But…but you didn’t… Oh.” A knot in her belly tightened. “You did, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.” He hunched. “Maybe I just tried. I did it wrong, in any event.”
“And they brought you in.”
“Made me talk to some fellow, who was supposed to determine if…um, something. It wasn’t a trial. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Wasn’t really paying attention Miranda translated as too scared to ask questions.
“Was he a constable?” Miranda asked.
“I guess,” Robbie said. “He let me go. But he yelled at me afterward.”
“Yelled?” Miranda said. “What afterward?” Thank God the man he’d talked to had some compassion. It was a rare enough quality in the constables.
“He said, because I didn’t actually manage to steal the watch, he couldn’t prove what I meant to do, and he could treat it as…as something. I don’t remember.”
“What do you remember?” Miranda tried to ask the question as gently as she could.
“He said he could get me an apprenticeship at a shipwright.”
Miranda held her breath, hardly daring to believe what she was hearing. It was more than she could have given him—a good start at life, a chance for solid work doing something Robbie enjoyed. It also cost more than she could imagine. That kind of favor, held over her head by some unknown person... “And what did you say? Did you accept?”
He shrugged. “I suppose. I didn’t really have much choice. After this, you won’t want anything to do with me, anyway.”
His shoulders hunched even more, and Miranda stared at his back in puzzlement.
“Why wouldn’t I want anything to do with you?”
“You always told me that if I ever risked hanging, you would never speak to me again. I know you never wanted me. You tried to get rid of me.” His matter-of-fact tone broke her heart—as if he were recounting unalterable truths.
Maybe that’s the way it had seemed to him. After his mother had disappeared, Miranda had tried to get someone—anyone—to take the boy. Of course she had. She’d been a child herself.
She hadn’t wanted the responsibility. To Robbie, no doubt it had seemed that she hadn’t wanted him.
“Oh,” she breathed. She’d told a boy who’d been abandoned by his mother that she was going to leave him, too, unless he listened to her. He’d thought she’d meant it.
Slowly she set her hand on his shoulder.
He leaned away an inch and only gave one solitary half-hearted grunt in protest. It was practically encouragement. So she made a fist and rubbed his hair until it stood up on end.
“Stop that,” he muttered, but he didn’t pull away.
“Do you want to be a shipwright?”
Another shrug. “I guess.”
“It’s a good profession. And you’re good at arithmetic. You were always good working with the carpenter when you were little.” More practically, shipwrights could speak in two-word sentences and still get paid.
He slouched further. “You want me to go.”
“I’d still get to see you sometimes, wouldn’t I? On Sabbaths and holidays. I’d miss you the rest of the time, but I suppose I’d manage.”
“You’d miss me?”
Miranda sighed, and dropped her voice into a gravelly imitation of his. “I guess,” she intoned.
It took him a moment to realize she was mocking him, but he let out an exasperated sigh and punched her, lightly, on the arm. And then, leaving the rest unspoken, he pulled his legs in, slid off the sill, and started up the stairs.
Halfway to their garret, Robbie stopped. “Oh, I had a message for you. From the fellow who talked to me.”
“A message? For me?”
“He said to meet him…um…somewhere. By a castle. Or a church. Something like that. Tomorrow at six in the morning.”
“Why does a constable want to meet me at six in the morning? He doesn’t even know who I am.”
But as soon as she said the words, she knew the answer. Robbie turned to her, his eyes wide and innocent. “Didn’t I say? It was that man—the one I hit over the head.”
Chapter Ten
SMITE WAS NOT USED to indecision, but when the next morning dawned, he still had not determined whether he actually wanted to see Miss Darling again. He’d asked Robbie to convey the invitation on impulse—if one could call the product of long nights spent wanting an impulse. He crossed over to the green surrounding the old churchyard with Ghost tugging at the lead.
There was no question what he should do. He shouldn’t want her at all. It had been foolish to ask, and even more foolish to pursue the…could he call what he’d planned an acquaintance?
He came to the stone walls of St. Philip’s Church and slowly turned about. He was alone. She hadn’t come.
Damn. The mist twined about the walls, turning the dawn to grayness. Regret was bitter.
Smite didn’t believe in regret. He didn’t need her. He’d only wanted her.
He stared into the slowly dissipating fog and willed it to show her form. But there was nobody about.
Apparently, he was lacking in all good sense. He slipped the lead from around Ghost’s neck and gave him a pat. The animal darted off through the fog, in search of pigeons to chase.
The city was just coming to life. The brewery across the harbor had begun to belch smoke into the sky. Ghost came barreling back through the mist, a stick in his mouth. He tossed it on the ground before Smite and danced back, eagerly waiting.
“Very well, you wretched animal,” Smite said. He picked it up and hurled it as far as it would go.
He was watching his dog run in great bounding leaps, when he heard a delighted laugh beside him.
“He led me to you, you know.”
He turned.
Miranda Darling was standing behind him, one hand on the ruined stone wall. She was smiling at him.
“By Robbie’s message, I thought you meant us to meet more by the bridge. Whatever you intended to say came somewhat garbled from the messenger.” She gestured. “I was quite put out at having got up so early, only to be snubbed.”
It was too early for sun, but her hair under her bonnet was as brilliant as a summer sunrise. She probably wasn’t pretty, at least not in the classical sense of pristine English beauty. Her mouth was too wide; her nose too snub. And there was that profusion of freckles that covered her nose.
Classical English beauty could go hang, for all Smite cared. His mouth dried.
“And then I saw your dog bounding up out of the mist,” she continued.
