“And I want you to be abetterman than I.” His words echoed those that his father had once said to him, words he’d not fulfilled. “Now sit up at the table and eat your dinner.”
Janet had picked up the sausages and settled the children down to their meal. A hungry child didn’t waste food, even if it had been on the floor. Besides, in spite of the squalor around them, Janet’s floor was so clean a duchess could have eaten off of it and been satisfied.
“Here.” Fiona motioned him over to the table. “We’ve some cheese and a slice of that good bread you like so much. It tastes almost the way Mother used to bake it.” At the mention of the wordcheese, both children looked up longingly.
“Share it,” Ian told Janet as he tossed his hat on a nail in the wall. He took his shaving kit from his knapsack and dropped the bag on the floor by a table leg. After washing the dust of travel off his hands and face in a chipped washbasin, taking extra care with the soap to get his nails clean, he shaved. The shadow of hisbeard gave him a disreputable air, an air that embarrassed him, especially around the children.
Finishing the last stroke of his razor, he noticed there was one sausage left in the pan. “Where is Liam?” he asked, drying his hands on a rag. Liam was the son of Fiona and the man who had been his best friend in the world.
“Out,” Fiona said but there was a brightness in her eyes and a wariness in Janet’s Ian didn’t trust.
Something was not right, and it clearly had to do with the broken door.
Not touching the meager meal before him, he waited impatiently until the children were excused from the table to go play in the corner with their prized toys—a doll and lead soldiers he had brought back from France.
“What happened to the door?” he demanded in a low voice, once Maeve and Johnny were well occupied.
Janet shot an anxious look at Fiona. But her sister answered calmly, “Things have changed in the weeks since you’ve been gone. Liam is running with a bad crowd. I was out looking for him before you arrived.”
“He’s only nine,” Ian said. “He shouldn’t be running the streets.”
“Try and stop him,” Janet said, cleaning the table. “We have and naught has come of it.” She leaned close to Ian to say very softly, “And I worry about Johnny. Until you returned it was Liam he wanted to ape. Glad I am that you are back.”
Back to do what?Ian wanted to ask in frustration. For the past ten months, he’d been living by his wits to make money. Every time they seemed to get a bit ahead, some disaster struck, like the croup that had almost claimed Maeve’s life or a hike in the bloody rent.
Lately, he’d taken to traveling to village fairs looking for bare-fisted fights. The money was good and he hoped to make a name for himself and fight in London where the money was better. However, the giant in Birmingham had been a setback to his plans.
Still, he was determined to get his sisters and their children out of London. Their husbands had been soldiers like himself. They’d given their lives in England’s war against Napoleon, and their families had nothing to show for it save for widows and hungry children.
All he needed was one bit of luck, one opportunity to rise above all of this and free them from the nightmare of what their lives had become. He owed it to his sisters because he was responsible for where they were now. It had been his rash actions, his foolish defiance that had cost his family their land and their fortune.
“It’s not your fault,” Fiona said quietly, reading his mind.
“It isn’t?” he asked bitterly. “If I hadn’t been such a fool—”
Janet hushed him with a pointed gaze at the children. “It’s past. Done. If it hadn’t been you, then the Humphries and the English would have found another reason for stealing our land. Even Father said so.”
Ian had his doubts.
“Recriminations are a waste of time,” Janet said firmly.
He nodded. She was right. It was their future that should concern him. “What of the door?”
Johnny, whom they had thought wasn’t listening, was the one who answered, proving Janet’s concerns right. “A man came looking for Liam. A big, ugly man. Mama wouldn’t open the door and he broke it in. He woke me up. Maeve, too. She cried, but I didn’t.”
“You cried, too,” his sister answered. Janet crossed to her children.
Anger made Ian dangerous. “Did he find Liam?”
“Not that I know,” Fiona said. The tight clasp of her hands in her lap belied her external air of composure. “But, Ian, I can’t find him.”
“He didn’t come home at all?”
“No.” The word cut the air. Her jaw tightened as she said, “The landlord wants to charge the price of five doors for the damage.”
The money in the cloth purse now seemed a pittance. “I’ll take care of it,” Ian promised, his temper rising. He’d shake the bastard by his neck until he came to his senses.
Suddenly, there was the sound of footsteps running up the stairs, and a pale-faced Liam appeared in the doorway. In hisexpression, Ian recognized the signs of a boy being forced to grow up too fast.
