“Ah.” I sat back in uncertainty.
While I agreed that Daniel was quite talented at his job, better than Scotland Yard gave him credit for, it was dangerous, and I’d hoped I was finished with worrying. Daniel would become a delivery driver for always, I’d decided, and I’d bake treats for him and enjoy surprising him with what I made.
“You don’t want this.” Daniel’s statement was simple, with no disappointment and no surprise.
“I don’t want you to be hurt, is all. Perhaps they’ll let you sit behind a desk and growl at constables, like Inspector McGregor does.”
Daniel chuckled. “I’d be terrible at sitting behind a desk.”
“I know. You like to move about London as you please, being in the thick of things.”
“If I hadn’t done that, I would never have met you.”
We studied each other. I blessed the day Daniel had happened into my kitchen, with his wide grin and blue eyes I’d not been able to forget. I continued to bless my luck every day that Daniel was there to walk alongside me and to catch me when I fell. He’d seen a part of me that I dared show no one else, and he knew me better than anyone but Grace.
“You are unwilling to keep me from my dreams,” I said slowly. “I should be unwilling to keep you from yours.”
“I admit that baking for a tea shop will be less dangerous than infiltrating anarchist gangs.”
I huffed a laugh. “You’ve not encountered ladies in tea shops who are displeased with what they have been served. It will not be as easy as you imagine.”
Daniel acknowledged this with a nod and smile as he tucked into his lemon cake once more.
I glanced into my cup, saw that it was empty, and refilled both it and his. “I suppose I can learn to be the wife of a policeman.”
“And I suppose I can be husband to a grand baker in a tea shop.”
I lifted my cup in toast to him.
We were both still uncertain, but something had been settled between us. We’d carry on, each of us not giving up ourentire lives for the other, but being there for each other whenever needed.
“There is another reason I want to wait,” Daniel announced.
I stiffened, but answered casually. “And what is that?”
“I want to investigate my own life. Find out where I came from, how I ended up on the streets, and what exactly happened to Carter. What my real name is.”
Because Daniel didn’t know. In his life, he’d never found the answer to any of these things.
It struck me, as I listened to him, that I’d always been secure in the knowledge of myself, no matter what had happened—losing my mother, entering a false marriage with a brutal man, fearing I’d have to give my child to strangers, working my fingers raw to keep her.
Through it all, I’d always been me, Kat Holloway of Bow Lane, daughter of a good-hearted woman and a man my mother had loved to her dying day, though she’d lost him soon after my birth.
Daniel had never possessed the sense that, no matter what, he was rooted in himself.
I reached for him, squeezing the broad hands that had held me up so many times. “So you should,” I said softly. “I will help you any way I can.”
“It might be dangerous,” Daniel warned.
I raised one of his hands to my lips and kissed the backs of his fingers. “If it involves you, of course it will be. But I am going to help. You can depend upon it.”
* * *
When Monday afternoon came, I left Tess baking scones for yet another of Mrs.Bywater’s infernal teas and sailed forth to enjoy my half day out.
Daniel met me at the end of Mount Street, and we traveled by hansom to Cheapside. We’d agreed to keep silent to our friends about our betrothal—how strange to be betrothed!—for a time, until we worked out our precise plans.
However, I would tell Grace. I’d not hide from my daughter an event that would change her life. She could be trusted to keep the secret. Besides, I wanted to celebrate with her.
