Forever a Lady. Delilah Marvelle

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СКАЧАТЬ I suggest you go put yourself in a few matches. London is big on boxing. As for me, I’m soliciting labor over at the docks come morning.”

      Coleman leveled him with a mocking stare. “The docks? Since when do you prance about soliciting honest work?”

      Matthew pointed, trying not to feel too insulted. “I’m not playing with the law here, Coleman. Unlike in New York, I’ve got no marshals here to protect my arse, and these Brits are crazy. They’ll hang you for anything. Especially if you’re unlucky and Irish. And as you damn well know, I’m both. Now, off with you.” Matthew settled back onto the mattress, snatching up his card. “I’d like to be alone with my card, if you please. I have a feeling it’ll give me a lot more respect than you just did.”

      “Christ. Don’t make me tear that bloody thing in half and shove it up your ass.”

      Matthew swiped up the pistol from the floor beside him with his other hand and pointed it at Coleman with a mocking tilt of his wrist. “Get the hell out of my room. I’m not paying four shillings a night to have you in here.”

      “We need twenty pounds each, Milton, if we’re ever going to get out of Town. Twenty. My boxing will only bring in a few pounds per match, unless I start dealing with aristos. And as good as I am, I can only take so many hits a week. As for you working over at the docks? You’ll only bring in about two pounds a week. At best. Count that on your fingers, man. You may have time on your hands, but I’m not staying in this piss of a city beyond two weeks.” He paused. “How much do you think you could get out of this aristo, given what you did for her? If you slather on that charm I know you’re good for?”

      Matthew sighed and set the pistol back onto the floor. “I don’t know. This whole idea of me calling on her for money merely for doing something ingrained in me feels dirty.”

      “No one does dirty better than you, Milton.”

      Matthew rolled his eyes. “I’m not that dirty and you know it.” He tapped the card against his chin before glancing down at it. “I still can’t get over the way she looked at me. I’m telling you. There was something there. I could see it and feel it. It was as if she and I were meant for bigger things.”

      “Bigger things?” Coleman snapped, angling toward him. “What the devil is wrong with you? We’re not talking about some tea dealer’s daughter here. We’re talking nobility. Do you know what that is, Milton? It’s better known as the trinity. Meaning, there’s them, there’s the King and then there’s God. Notice that I didn’t mention you at all. Why? Because you don’t exist. And you never will. They don’t touch people like us. Not unless it’s to their benefit.”

      “Stop saying ‘people like us.’ You yourself are of nobility, for God’s sake. You’re—” Matthew scrubbed his head in exasperation, knowing it. To think that the same man he’d been training with and aspiring to be more like since he was twenty had been an aristo in hiding all along. It was something the stupid bastard didn’t have the decency to tell him until they up and boarded the ship over to Liverpool. A part of him felt betrayed, though he understood Coleman hadn’t been given much of a choice but to abandon who and what he was.

      Matthew dropped his hand from his head. “You came here to straighten your mess of a life out and move on. That’s what you said. Only, you’re not doing shite. You’re up and drinking and playing cards like some fecking sharp with money you don’t have, making a bigger mess of not only your life, but mine. Why the hell aren’t you facing the reality you came to face? I know why I came here. Because it was better than being dead and it was your goddamn idea. And whilst the swipe is over, I’m not leaving until I hold you to your reality. Call on your parents, and that uncle and nephew of yours who dug you up through the papers back in New York. Because seething on and on about a past you can’t change isn’t helpful to anyone. Especially yourself.”

      Coleman’s features tightened as his blue eyes cooled to rigid ice. “I’ll see them when I’m ready to see them. And I’m not fucking ready. Isn’t that obvious?” Coleman stepped out and slammed the door, rattling the lantern.

      Matthew sighed and hoped the man didn’t do anything stupid. Holding up the card again, Matthew stared at the name Lady Burton and hoped he himself didn’t do anything stupid.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      All information printed pertaining to the struggles

      of others are not necessarily true.

      —The Truth Teller, a New York Newspaper for Gentlemen

      St. James’s Square, Thursday afternoon

      THE FOOTMAN GRACIOUSLY gestured toward the open doors of her father’s library. “’Tis a joy to have you back in London, my lady.”

      “Thank you, Stevens.” At least someone was happy regarding her return to London. Bernadette clasped her bare hands together and entered the cavernous library lined with all those endless books she used to gather from the shelves as a girl and stack up all around her. Not to read, mind you, but to build a full deck of a ship she would then climb on top of and teeter to sail across the expanse of the...library. The room still looked the same. It even smelled the same: mildew laced with cedar and dust.

      Her chest tightened. It had been years.

      Scanning the brightly lit room, she found her father and drifted toward where he sat, her verdant skirts rustling against the movements of her feet.

      Lord Westrop’s head was propped and resting against the side of his leather wing-tipped chair, that snowy white hair combed back with tonic. His eyes were closed and his usually rigid features were endearingly soft as the center of his Turkish robe rose and fell with each breath he took.

      Bernadette paused before him, quietly observing him. It was the most peaceful she had ever seen him. “Papa?”

      He opened his eyes and looked up at her. His astounded features gave way to him sitting up. “Bernadette.”

      “How are you, Papa?” She lowered herself to his booted feet and gathered his hands that had begun to show their age. She could see the veins.

      He grabbed hold of her hands and smiled, shaking them in his. “You came back for me. You came back. I knew you would.”

      He seemed so happy to see her. Imagine that. He still knew how to exhibit happiness. She’d forgotten how good of a man he was capable of being when the burden of losing everyone—a wife, two brothers and three sisters—didn’t eat at him.

      She smiled as best she could. “I’m not staying long. New York is my home now. You know that.”

      His hands stilled against hers as he searched her face with dark eyes. “Why do you always wish to make me suffer? You know I have no one but you.”

      A deep sadness came over her. The same one that always gripped her whilst in his presence. “I am merely living my life now, Papa. The one I never got to live. ’Tis something I have old William to thank for. He adored me more than I deserved.”

      “Damn right.” His aged features tightened. “Bloody deranged is what he turned out to be, leaving you with all that money and freedom. Look at you. Worth a million, yet living as some no-name Mrs. Shelton in New York City, cavorting with American ruffians like the Astors. I hear that you now entertain men on the hour.”

      “If СКАЧАТЬ