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“Because I was naughty.”
“How naughty could you—could any child have been to deserve such treatment?”
He lifted a shoulder. “My father has a quick temper. He didn’t like the sight of me for many reasons. Sometimes if I simply breathed too loud, I would be sent to bed without supper and not allowed out until the following evening.” A shudder wracked his strong shoulders and Demeter wanted to wrap herself about him and absorb the pain etched into his forehead.
“So he starved you too?”
“Indeed.”
“What of your mother? Could she not protect you?”
“My mother was a stranger to me for most of my childhood.”
Demeter frowned. She did not know much of Mrs. Blake but from what she had seen, she appeared to care for Blake. “Did your father drive her off?”
Both shoulders lifted. “Most likely. I did not make the connection when I was younger but the few times I saw her, her face was bruised.”
Her skin chilled. “He beat you both?”
“But of course.” His lips twisted. “I have long made peace with the fact my father was not a pleasant man.”
“Yet it still haunts you.”
“Very well, perhaps I have not madecompletepeace.” He met her gaze with a half-smile. “Why is it I find myself confessing my every sin to you, sweeting? It makes it exceedingly difficult to charm you.”
She lifted her brows. “You wish to charm me?”
“All the time.”
Her throat tightened and she struggled for a response. Jacob Blake was known for so many things—scandals, debauchery, a manner of talking that could sway even the staunchest spinster into bed. Yet during their time together, he’d never been anything but honest and frank. She foundthatmore charming than anything else he could do.
She wasn’t certain who the man she fell in love with was. An impression of a man perhaps, or even a fantasy. Unfortunately for her heart, the real man was so much more than a rakish, charming, handsome man. He was one of depth, caring, with weakness. He was human and it made him far too easy to love.
“Do we need to go back in?”
Demeter smiled at the hint of boyish vulnerability. “I do not think so.”
***
Despite the air being thick with smoke, Blake forced himself to keep breathing deeply as they moved away from the building his cousin had lived in when he arrived in London. The tight alleyways and wretched poverty still made his skin crawl. Hungry children sat in doorways, too tired to move, accompanied by mothers with faces carved with hopelessness. Thin scraps of laundry hung from building to building creating banners of pale, tattered fabric overhead. He stopped to give a child a coin and she acknowledged it with a weak smile.
If this was how his cousin had grown up, he could almost excuse any lies he told. Almost.
“It makes no sense,” he murmured to Demeter.
“What doesn’t?”
He was going to tell her more. He couldn’t help himself around her, it seemed. Though even recalling his wretched boyhood years tugged at a part of him he’d buried under alcohol, fine living, and beautiful women, something about Demeter pulled it to the surface and begged him to set it free.
“Why would Foster live this way? Keeping him secret, I could understand. As much as my aunt was a modern woman, her reputation would never withstand a child out of wedlock.”
“To be certain. Few women could withstand the ordeal.” She sighed. “Unlike my father.”
“Eleanor?”
“I wonder what happened to Foster’s father that he did not claim him like my father did Eleanor. Of course, his rank helped in ensuring Eleanor was accepted as his natural daughter but I was old enough when Eleanor came into our family to witness the matter. No woman could do the same for their child, to be certain.”
“Despite my aunt’s inability to truly claim him, I could not see her abandoning him to poverty.” He shook his head and drew her close when they walked past a cluster of men, gathering in the corner of the small courtyard between houses. “She was a generous woman.”
