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Megs nodded thoughtfully. “I think your Sir Stanley must have been a very clever man.”
“Oh, he was,” Godric said softly. He bent his head, seeming to be lost in a memory. He’d turned his hand in hers, and now his thumb was moving in circles on the back of her hand.
It was a rather nice sensation, actually.
“Godric,” Megs whispered carefully.
He glanced at her. “Hmm?”
She swallowed, loath to shatter this moment. But her curiosity had always been her downfall. “Clara died three years ago, didn’t she?”
He stiffened at the mention of his first wife’s name on her lips and dropped her hand. “Yes.”
She felt strangely bereft, but she soldiered on, asking the question. “Then why are you still the Ghost of St. Giles?”
WHY WAS HE still the Ghost of St. Giles?
Godric snorted under his breath as he edged close to the corner of a crumbling brick building. He peered around it, making sure the dark alley beyond was free of soldiers before darting quickly around it. It was often easier—and safer—to travel by rooftop, but the wound to his back made that impossible tonight. Thus he was forced to make his way by foot, keeping watch for Trevillion and his soldiers all the while.
He paused at the end of the alley, listening, and remembered the look in Megs’s eyes as she’d asked the question: puzzlement tinged with worry. Worry for him.
The memory made his lips quirk. When was the last time anyone had worried for him? Not since Clara had died, surely, and even before that it’d been him worrying for her, not the other way around. Clara had never known he was the Ghost, but even so, she’d trusted that he was strong enough, smart enough, man enough never to come to harm. He supposed that he should be insulted that Megs thought him so frail that she worried over him, but he couldn’t muster any outrage.
Actually, her concern was rather endearing. His wife had a soft heart—but a strong mind. She’d been shocked that he hadn’t agreed to quit his life as the Ghost. He’d known that he’d disappointed her, and there was a part of him that wished he could give her what she wanted.
Both things that she wanted.
Godric ran across the street, whirling into the shadows again as he heard approaching footfalls. Two men reeled into the moonlit street, half propping each other up, half pushing each other down. The taller of the two tripped over his own feet and sank to the cobblestones in the strangely boneless manner of the very drunk. His companion braced himself on his knees and howled with laughter, stopping only when Godric slipped from his hiding place and continued on his way. He glanced over his shoulder to see the upright drunkard gaping after him.
squo;d known his mother must be dead since Sarah’s mother was his stepmother, but she hadn’t realized how young he’d been when his mother died. Ten was such a delicate age. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t look up. “I was close to her and took her death rather hard. Then, three years later, my father remarried. I did not react well.”
His tone was dry, unemotional, but somehow she knew that he hadn’t been nearly so stoic as a young boy. He must’ve suffered horrible inner turmoil. “What happened?”
“My father sent me away to school,” he said, “and then at the vacation, Sir Stanley Gilpin offered to let me stay with him.”
Her brows knit. “You didn’t go home to see your family?”
“No.” His lips pursed very slightly, drawing her eye. The rest of him might be hard, but his mouth, particularly the lower lip, looked soft.
Was soft. She remembered suddenly his mouth on her breast, the tug of his teeth, the brush of his lips. His lips had been gentle on her breast, but those same soft lips had been unyielding on her mouth.
Megs swallowed, beating down the image. What was happening to her? She plucked at a thread on her skirts. “That … that must’ve been hard, to be separated from your father.”
“It was for the best,” he said. “We fought often and it was my fault. I was unreasonable, blaming him for my mother’s death, for his remarriage. I behaved atrociously to my stepmother.”
“You were only thirteen,” she said softly, her heart contracting. “I’m sure she understood your grief, your confusion.”
He frowned and shook his head, and she knew somehow that he didn’t believe her. “In any case, that became the pattern for the next several years. When I wasn’t at school, I lived with Sir Stanley. And while I lived with Sir Stanley, he taught me.”
She frowned, inadvertently tugging hard on the thread. “Taught you what?”
“How to be the Ghost of St. Giles, I suppose.” He spread his hands. “Although at the time I merely thought it was exercise. He had a kind of practice room set aside with sawdust dummies, targets, and the like. There he taught me tumbling, swordsmanship, and hand fighting.”
“Tumbling? Like an acrobat at a traveling fair?” She leaned forward in delight, imagining Godric turning somersaults.
“Yes, like a comic actor.” He glanced up at her, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “It sounds absurd, I know, but the movements are actually difficult to master, and for a boy with too much anger within himself …”
