“Eight,” Jack replied airily.
“Eight?That’s two pounds!”
She gave him a puckish smirk. “Do you want the cats or not?”
He did, dammit. And she knew it. Money-grabbing little murderess that she was.
“How do you know Dr. Chadwick?” He followed Jack up the stairs, making sure to step around any random pile of books that appeared in neat stacks. The entire house was filled with them, as well as an assortment of medical equipment. There were various sized beakers, bandages, and glass jars filled with metal instruments stuffed in every corner and stacked on every shelf. While there was a chaotic order to everything, it was spilling out in every direction with hardly any room for personal belongings. A single glance in any room and it was evident that being a doctor wasn’t what Abigail did, it was who she was. And there was valor in that. Goodness in that. Determination in that. She’d chosen a life devoted to helping others.
But sweet, he thought as he picked up an abandoned cup still filled halfway with cold tea,who is helpingyou?
“The doctor is a friend of a friend.” Jack opened the door to a tiny linen closet, sniffed, then closed it again. “They’re probably in ’er bedroom. Come on.”
As she trotted down the hall on curiously silent feet, the irony of a random child with questionable moral character knowing where his wife’s bedroom was when he did not wasn’t lost on Stephen. While Abigail had given him directions—go to the top of the stairs and turn right, second door on the left—so that he could retrieve the cat carriers, he didn’t know it by heart. And that was the problem, wasn’t it?
Hearts.
His, bruised and battered but willing to try again.
Hers, cold and closed off to even the smallest possibility of love.
“There’s one,” Jack said suddenly.
Reacting instinctively, he snatched up a blur of gray fur before it could dash past him. The caught feline meowed loudly in protest as he carried it into Abigail’s room and nodded at Jack to open the door of the first carrier.
“These are nice.” Eyeing the carriers, Jack lifted an empty one to test its weight. “Wonder what they’d fetch,” she mused, more to herself than to him, but the space was small and his ears were quite keen.
“Is that what you do when you’re not cat-tending?” he asked, lifting a brow. “You’re a thief?”
“I wear a lot of hats. That’s Cleo.” She pointed at the cat they’d caught who was now laying on its side batting at its own tail and looking astonished when it moved. “Not the shiniest apple in the bushel. That leaves Ferdinand and—”
“Susan,” he cut in darkly. “We’ve met before. I can’t imagine her demeanor has improved.”
“How long have ye and Dr. Chadwick been married?” Kneeling, Jack lifted the quilt to look under the bed and then popped back up to her feet. “She never said she had a husband.”
“If I answer a question, you have to answer a question.”
Jack’s mouth moved from side to side as she mulled it over. “All right. Deal.”
“Dr. Chadwick—Abigail—and I have been married for eight years.” He peered behind the curtains. No cats. “The time we’ve actually spent together is considerably shorter.”
“How come? She doesn’t like ye?Iwouldn’t like a man tellin’ me what to do and where to go, that’s for certain. That’s why I’m never gettin’ married.”
Given his experience with holy matrimony thus far, Stephen couldn’t say her decision was a bad one. “I believe it’s your turn to answer a question. Where are your parents?”
“Dead,” she said dispassionately. “Well, my mum is. Dunno where my pa is. Never met him. He could still be alive, I guess. If he is, to ’ell with him.”
“Then who is taking care of you?”
She sniffed, as if insulted. “I’m takin’ care of myself, thank ye very much. Susan and Ferdinand aren’t in here. We should try the room down the hall, but don’t let ’em get downstairs. We’ll never catch ’em.”
After a thorough search of a second, smaller bedchamber whose primary use appeared to be the storage of books and boxes, they managed to find and secure both cats after discovering them huddled together on the windowsill. Stephen earned a bright red scratch on the back of his hand for his trouble, and Jack charged him another crown to help load the cats into the carriage. All in all, it was not an experience he cared to repeat anytime soon and a great deal more trouble than Abigail had implied it would be.
“Can I give you a ride back to wherever you came from?” he asked, and to his mild surprise, Jack said yes, whispering her address to his driver before she jumped into the carriage ahead of him and immediately made herself comfortable.
“Feet off the cushions, please.” Stretching into his own seat, he crossed his legs and turned his gaze to the window as he waited for his driver to take them to what he could only presume would be a less savory part of London given Jack’s clothes and demeanor. But he found himself surprised yet again when the town coach turned in the direction of Grosvenor Square instead, and brought them to a stately park-side manor instead. A manor, if he wasn’t mistaken, that belonged to the Marquess and Marchioness of Kentwood.
“Do you have more cats to feed?” he asked.
