Page 85 of A Convenient Fiction

“You don’t wish to find out?”

“No.” He gave her a wry look. “We didn’t part on the best of terms.”

She frowned up at him. “Why do I have the feeling there’s more to this story?”

“That chapter of my life has been closed for a very long time. I’d rather not revisit it.”

She nodded slowly. “Very well. We don’t have to speak of it if you don’t wish to.”

“I don’t,” he said. “Not now. Not ever.”

Tom Finchley was alive.

Not only alive, but alive and well, and apparently thriving—in Fleet Street, of all places. Only a short railway journey and a hansom cab’s drive away.

As Alex stood at the window of the vicarage parlor, waiting for the housekeeper to summon the vicar, the reality of it ran over and over again in his mind. He worried at it like a child picking at a slowly healing wound. Drawn to the pain of it. Unable to leave it alone long enough to heal.

What were the chances that returning to England—to Lower Hawley, of all places—would have thrown him so swiftly into Tom’s path? Surrey was a long way away from London, and an even longer way from North Devon. It had seemed a safe destination. An inoffensive place in which to marry and set down roots.

It had been a miscalculation of epic proportions.

Better he had stayed in France. Better he had never come back to England at all. But then…

Then he’d never have met Laura.

He cast her a brooding glance. She was seated on the sofa, hands folded neatly in her lap. The ruby ring glinted against her skin.

It was bad enough that she’d insisted on coming with him to the vicarage. Now she knew something of his past as well. The part of his past he was most ashamed of. His betrayal of Tom Finchley.

A former friend, he’d told her.

He could have more accurately described Tom as a brother.

There was a part of Alex that thanked God Tom was alive. In the days before Alex had left North Devon, Tom had been articled to a London solicitor. Of all of the orphans, his future has seemed the brightest. It was only fair. Tom had always been smarter than the rest of them.

“Just compensation for being small,” he’d told Alex once. “You, Justin, and Neville can carve out your futures with brute strength. I shall have to use my wits.”

Alex vaguely remembered being jealous of his friend’s good fortune. Unlike Tom, Alex had been apprenticed to old Mr. Crenshaw, the cantankerous apothecarist in Abbot’s Holcombe. Crenshaw had been poorly suited to train up a willful boy of twelve, choosing to communicate more with a crack of his walking stick across his apprentice’s back than with his words.

And then there were Crenshaw’s friends.

One fellow in particular who had patronized the apothecary shop. Gilbert Morley. A man who had been all too interested in Crenshaw’s young apprentice.

Alex had spent years erasing the events from his memory, but it was the work of seconds to call them back again. The leering looks. The sly innuendo. The feelings of powerlessness, and revulsion.

“What a strapping lad you are,” Morley had said the first time he’d seen him. He’d come into the shop when Alex was alone. Had backed him into a corner. “Anyone ever told you that?”

Alex’s gaze had darted to the door, willing Crenshaw to return.

“And such a handsome face.” Morley’s eyes had raked over him from head to toe. “I like a comely boy, meself. A healthy young lad like you.”

It had never gone any further than a single, encroaching touch. Alex had run away before it could. But if he’d stayed…

The reality of what might have happened to him turned his stomach.

Had Mr. Fothergill, the grim-looking solicitor who took Tom from the orphanage, been as unforgiving as Crenshaw? As despicable as Morley? Or had Tom been brought along in his profession with patience and kindness?

It seemed that some of their little brotherhood were destined to do well in life. Tom was a successful solicitor, apparently. And Justin was now married to an earl’s daughter. An heiress, in fact. He’d even gained ownership of Greyfriar’s Abbey.