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Eliza was about to let him go. Releasing her grip a second later might have changed the course of her life, she thought that evening, and perhaps it would have been better if she had. Why repeat the trauma she’d already experienced?
But for now, she was acting on instinct, and instead of letting him go when it would have seemed natural, her grip on his wrist tightened while the air in her lungs disappeared, and she had to open and close her eyes three times before she was ready to believe what she saw.
“Gideon?” There seemed still no air to say his name. A great pressure was building in her head. Finally, she was able to gasp in a breath, forcing herself to resist the urge to draw him into her embrace and wail her joy.
How many other boys of seven years sported a tiny extra claw on their left hand? Or had been thrust into the cold, unloving world of the foundling home, she thought bitterly.
He stopped what he was doing to look at her uncomprehendingly, and she added faintly, “Though that’s not what they call you, of course.”
An amused look crossed his face, making him seem older and wiser than his seven years. Nearby, the weeping and wailing George was a puling infant. Smiling at her was a little man.
He pushed out his chest and said in a tone that was neither boastful nor self-pitying, “There’s some ‘at call me Devil’s Cub, or bastard, but at the manor here they call me Jack.”
Devil’s Cub? The sixth finger accounted for the nickname, of course.
“Miss Montrose?” In the distance, Lady Fenton was calling her. Eliza was suddenly shaking like one suffering the ague. “Jack,” she repeated in a whisper, still staring at him as she clenched her own fists. Was the child tormented by his deformity? Eliza couldn’t remember how many times she’d been told the sixth finger was God’s punishment upon her bastard babe, but he seemed unfazed.
“Miss Montrose! Come away! Susan is waiting in the house with a warm bath and blankets. You must be chille
d to the bone!”
Vaguely, she could hear the sounds of concern all around her, but all Eliza could focus on was the impish face before her—that of her lost child.
She tried to pull herself away from an unseemly and unhelpful display of emotion, but as the past rushed up to meet her, her knees seemed suddenly to have no substance, and she would have collapsed over the boy had not Mr Patmore, who appeared to have been watching her all this time, put his arm about her shoulders to steady her.
“You’re wet through; the ladies are calling you, and the sun has gone behind a cloud.” She must be more helpless than she’d thought for his arms tightened about her as he supported her weight. “Let me help you to the house.”
Eliza was barely conscious of him—other than that he offered her, in a general manner, a warmth and comfort she was unused to—as she stared at her child.
Then Katherine called out, and Jack sprang to attention in answer to his little friend’s imperious beckoning, an impish lad leaping over Young George, who still lay curled, foetus-like on the ground, while Nanny Brown tried unsuccessfully to soothe his hysterics.
“Please, Miss Montrose; you can lean on me. We must get you warm again.”
Eliza didn’t think to question why it should be Mr Patmore taking charge and not her betrothed, though Mr Bramley, it was true, wove about her pretending concern.
Yes, pretending to have her best interests at heart like he always did, and as he would after he married her. Pretending he was a good prospect and would be a good husband. Eliza had only accepted because there had been no other marriage offers during the past seven years and, yes, despite everything, she did still yearn for the one thing that could not be granted her outside of lawful wedlock—a child.
Her time at Quamby House was a world away from the privations she endured living with her aunt, but after this weekend, she’d thought to cry off. George Bramley seemed to grow less appealing a prospect the more she got to know him.
“Yes, warm,” she repeated, not knowing what she was saying, while before her eyes danced images of the infant who’d been with her long enough for her to remember every loving embrace, every babyish smile. The pain of what she’d been forced to give up had never lessened. Now she was face to face with the very being she’d shredded her soul to be reunited with. Her own Gideon. Only, he wasn’t Gideon. What did they call him?
“Come here and let’s clean you up, Jack.” Nanny Brown seized the boy’s arm and hauled him across her lap, roughly drying him while Katherine danced about the two of them. “Naughty Jack, it was your fault we all tumbled in, but it was fun, wasn’t it?”
“We’ll get the details in good time!” Nanny Brown grumbled, sending her mischievous charge a severe look. “Like as not it was you, Miss Katherine, behind it, only young Jack will take the blame like he willingly does, if only to get you out of a scrape and your just punishment.”
So, her boy was a true gentleman? Eliza experienced a little spurt of pride before Nanny Brown’s next words quashed her lifted spirits.
“We’ll have to find you a dry set of clothes before we send you back to the foundling home, eh Jack? And Cook will give you a nice bit of sausage as a treat, eh, considering the nasty fright you’ve had.”
Foundling home? They were going to send him back to the terrible place tonight? After all that had happened?
Guilt tore through her, and she had to resist the urge to step forward and claim him as her own.
But how could she, surrounded as she was by her betrothed and the society to which she needed to belong if she were to secure his future?
So, her Gideon still lived in that cold, cruel place to which she’d consigned him as an infant, without love and tenderness, knowing only the most rudimentary of both here? She thought she would cry. Her aunt had told her Gideon had been adopted by a loving family. A childless farmer and his wife. She’d even shown Eliza a letter to prove it.
But really, he was just where she’d left him. It was almost impossible to fathom. Yes, he was rewarded with regular visits to Quamby House to play with aristocratic children, but what compensation was it to get a taste for the good life if it only reinforced what he was missing out on?
