“It was my pleasure, believe me. We might speak of it at length later, if you like. But carry on with your tale.”
He took a deep breath. “Her neighbor slipped me a note at the funeral, something my governess had asked her to give me if something happened to her.”
“What did it say?” she asked gently. “I know you can still see it in your mind.”
He could. It was as fresh in his memory as if he were looking at it there in front of him.
“She told me that she was actually my father’s youngest sister.” He had to take a deep breath. “She had given up everything to buy a leaky, terrible council house next to the school so she could give me refuge.”
“She was a very good woman,” Mairead agreed. “And she loved you like a son.”
He nodded, because he suspected that was true.
“And what was her signal atop that rock wall, my love?”
“A green house slipper,” he said quietly. “She had to spend her tuppence on several pairs as the squirrels kept carrying them off.”
“Oh, Oliver.”
He managed some species of smile. “She finally took to wedging them under a rock in that decrepit wall that was barely standing between the sorry hovel she could scarce afford and my luxurious school that I loathed. Yet somehow she always had a lovely supper waiting for me whenever I managed to escapeto visit her.” He cleared his throat roughly. “I had planned to have a great deal of money some day and buy her a cozy cottage somewhere in gratitude for her care of me.”
“She knows.”
He didn’t want to know how Mairead knew that and he most definitely didn’t want to see anyone else out of the corner of his eye. He decided the best thing he could do for his sanity was to change the subject to something far less tender.
“The headmaster never threatened to hit me again after that.”
Mairead inclined her head. “I won’t take credit for that entirely, but I’ll admit that I can be very inspiring under the right circumstances. He is also a man whose terrible thoughts showed on his visage, so it wasn’t hard to distract him from them when they were so easily read.”
“He had many such thoughts to be distracted from—” He sat up and looked at her in genuine horror. “You didn’t watchmythoughts, did you?”
She laughed a little. “I left you your privacy, of course.”
“Thank heavens,” he said fervently. He considered, then looked at her. “You didn’t watch anything else, did you?”
“What sort of saucy maid do you take me for?”
He smiled because even though she was speaking modern English, she still sounded so much like herself that he would have forgotten their terrible situation if he didn’t remember it every time he was tempted to reach out and take her hand—
He blew out his breath and shook his head sharply, but that only set his head to pounding again. He looked around desperately for something to talk about that had nothing to do with what was before him, but all he could do was think about that horrible time in boarding school and how his memories of it had somehow…
He forced himself to think about how it had been. He had, regardless of his current memories, still been dropped off as achild and left to his own devices. It hadn’t taken him but a pair of years of misery to completely mentally divorce himself from his parents. They’d made that easier by always leaving him at school during holidays and over the summer, consigning him to an existence that had lain somewhere between the grimness of a Brontë novel and a genteelly austere piece of Dickensian squalor.
He’d quickly learned and then perfected his skills in being a ghost, extorting money from spoiled gits, and not talking about any of the bloody fistfights he’d engaged it. He’d never stolen anything, he’d never offered the first punch, and he’d never, ever walked away from a fight. He had spent all his time accumulating skills, knowledge, money, and nasty connections so he could one day walk up to his parents and send them into ignominity and despair.
Or he’d planned on that until he’d met Robert Cameron and his thoughts on many things had taken a much different turn. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but there had been something about being trusted to do the right thing and valued for using his skills for a nobler cause that had changed him.
He also realized suddenly that there was a sweetness layered over all of his life, a deep, soul-soothing sense of having someone good love him just because he drew breath. His governess who had turned out to be his aunt Maud had certainly filled that role in his childhood.
Only now, he realized that the other constant in his life, the other stable, loving, unfailing sense of someone loving him for himself had been that woman there.
The one he could scarce see for the tears standing in his eyes.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“It was an honor,” she said just as quietly.
He took a deep breath. “I’m not sure how to make this better.”
