Page 160 of Pride: The Rogue
She would. Even if he had to spend the rest of his days convincing her of his worth. Steel infused his spine, and Latimer looked to Wakefield. “Thank—”
Wakefield’s snort cut across the rest of his expression of gratitude. “I’ve not told you this to help you, Latimer. You’re no friend, and I certainly don’t take you as worthy of so much as licking the scum from Miss Lovelace’s boots. Furthermore, you’re wasting your time,” Wakefield said, positively gleeful. “Maxwell isn’t like me. He won’t show you mercy. You won’t make it through the front door.”
“He won’t be able to stop me,” Latimer said, and, turning on his heel, he rushed from the room and continued his quest to find—and this time, win—Livian Lovelace.
Chapter 26
“This is sewer,” Livian’s nephew, James, explained, jabbing his broken charcoal pencil at the page he currently colored on.
Laying face down on her stomach across from the boy, Livian stopped shading her latest drawing and put all her attention on her nephew’s amorphous sketch.
“Ooh, I see that,” she said. “Tell me all about it.”
“This is Papa’s toffer stick.”
Tosherstick. Kidnapped as a child, Livian’s brother-in-law had survived not on the streets of London, but under them. He’d used a mighty staff to rummage through sewers in search of lost treasures and from them built a fortune for himself.
“And this?” Livian asked, pointing her pencil tip at the scribblings near the stick.
“That’s me,” he said, returning to his scribbling. “I get treasures with Papa and Mama.”
With Papa and Mama.
A fresh, never far, wave of grief sent her heart into a full convulsion.
Too many times, she’d dangerously allowed herself to imagine a different future for herself. In it, there’d been she and Latimer and a small babe of their own—a big, dark-haired little boy cut in his father’s image.
But there was no Latimer, and she’d learned several days ago there would be no babe. That fact should have left Livian with only profound relief, but instead, only emphasized how similar she was to her mother, for she’d been desperate for even that most special piece of him.
Tears filled her throat and she swallowed roughly.
Maybe that was just the power of love—the all-consuming, all-powerful emotion, stripped one of pride, logic, and left one desperate.
“What yours, Aunt Livvie?” her nephew’s question piped through her sorrowful musings.
Livian shook her head and attempted to clear it. “What’s that, dear heart?”
James paused and stabbed his rapidly dulling pencil at Livian’s rendering. “Is yours a stick, too.”
She followed that point to her page and stared blankly at her image.
Using his palms, her nephew pushed himself up into a seated position. “Abiiiiig stick,”he said, holding his small, chubby arms far apart.
A stick.
Livian stared at the enormous oak tree with its severed limb lying on the charcoal ground she’d drawn. “Yes,” she murmured softly, as much to herself. “A stick.”
“A toffer one?” he quizzed.
“Not atosherone like your da used in the sewers to find treasures,” she said, in whisperings suitable for a grand story. “Adifferentkind of stick.”
As intended, James’s eyes formed huge circles.
Livian touched the little specks she’d marked on the page. “You see here?”
He nodded.
“That is rain,” Livian explained. “And here…” She pointed to a jagged strip. “This is lightning.”
