Page 76 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
Chris shrugged. “Made some comment to which I took exception, most likely. Don’t recall the specifics.”
“Do you know,” Phoebe said as she gently tucked the watch chain back into the box, “I think you like my family. Just a little. Just enough for a small bit of sentimentality.”
Hell. He did, then. He didn’t know why. They were a loud lot, excessively affectionate with one another, and entirely too fertile. But helikedthem, for some damned fool reason. He liked picking at Laurence, or baiting his other brothers-in-law with innocently-delivered comments guaranteed to offend sensibilities more delicate than his own. He liked that howevermuch he exasperated them, still he had somehow become part of their family. Their monstrously large, irrepressible, overly enthusiastic family.
He liked that, more often than not, when he’d done or said something beyond the pale, Phoebe tittered behind her fingers, her eyes glowing with mirth. He liked that she sent him secretive little glances, as if they shared a delightful secret between them.
He’d been lonely. All these years, he’d been lonely, and he had not realized it. There had been a yawning, hungry void gnawing at his soul, and he hadn’t even known how severely it had consumed him. It had simply been all he had ever known; the way he had always felt. He’d been drawn to seek out Phoebe’s company because she vanquished that empty, greedy darkness that had been his constant companion before her.
He was beginning to suspect that he was falling just the tiniest bit in love with her. And he didn’t know how to stop it. Those things that he’d thought he’d wanted, thought he’d needed—respectability, social acceptance—were swiftly falling by the wayside. The invitations had continued to come, though of course the best of homes had closed their doors to him, and to Phoebe by extension.
But he didn’t care. It was the damnedest thing. He didn’tcare. On the occasions that Phoebe shared with him which invitations had arrived requesting their company for a ball or a musicale or some sort of soirée, he’d found himself grunting and shaking his head to each of them in turn. Stuffed into a ballroom with a hundred other people who resented his presence or viewed him as a curiosity held no appeal.
It wasn’t where he wanted to be, even if he had once thought it a necessary thing. Even if those invitations had come from those homes society determined to be the best of the best, still he would have declined—because they weren’t that at all. Not to him; not any longer. He’d rather be here at home with Phoebe.And between his family and hers, there were altogether too many social engagements already.
“And this?” Phoebe asked. Slowly, carefully, she extricated a chain from beneath the pile of his other liberated treasures, the silver tarnished from years spent without a proper cleaning. It had been tarnished when he’d stolen it, in fact.
The very first thing he’d ever stolen. “That,” he said, in a carefully neutral voice, “was my mother’s. The only gift my father gave to her.” Other than himself—but an illegitimate child was more curse than gift. The damned earl had been the beginning of the end for his mother; the toe over the precipice of disaster.
But Chris had been the one who had pushed her off of it. With his very existence, he had ruined her. Sent her careening down that slope to her inevitable death.
Phoebe settled the locket into the cup of her palm. “What was her name?” she asked. “Your mother, I mean.”
“Bridget,” he said. “Bridget Moore.” He couldn’t recall the last time he’d spoken it. Maybe he never had.
“Bridget. I like that,” she said. “I suppose she must have been very beautiful.”
“She was.” Though the image of her had faded in his mind—like a portrait left out in full sun, fading the paints from which it had been wrought—he remembered her as attractive. Soft cheeks, full mouth, willowy and delicate. A calm and gentle air about her. Soothing and comforting, most especially to a child who had been born with a great deal of anger within him.
“Do you—do you resemble her a great deal?” Phoebe inquired.
“Not at all. I’m the earl through and through.” Unfortunately. He picked the locket out of the cup of Phoebe’s palm and pried open the ancient hinges, revealing the miniature painted within. The portrait of his father, the earl. “You see?”
“It’s almost uncanny,” she said as she peered down at it. “Could I ask what happened between them?”
Chris heaved a sigh. “A tale as old as time, really,” he said. “Young lord makes promises he doesn’t intend to keep to a naïve young girl. She was a housemaid, taken in by sweet words and genteel charm. I suppose he could be charming, my father—when he wanted something he couldn’t get any other way.”
“He promised to marry her?”
“Promised all sorts of things,” he said. “And she was fool enough, innocent enough, to believe them. At least until she came up with child and he turned her out for it.” He tossed her a speaking look. “He’d begun courting Em’s mum by that point,” he said. “Couldn’t have my mum ruining a good match for him. So off she went, pregnant with a nameless child.”
“How cruel of him.”
“He was that, too,” Chris said. “Mostly, he was that. He denied me to his dying day, though any fool could see I’m the image of him. He never gave so much as a farthing to support me. Said if mum had gotten herself with child, then it was only her own fault. As if she could have done it alone.” He raked his fingers through his hair, catching upon a few knots. “This locket,” he said, “was the most valuable thing she owned. But she would never part with it, because she loved him too much. Loved him even though he’d betrayed her. Ruined her.”
Phoebe closed her hand around his. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “It must have been dreadful for you both.”
“I never knew any different,” he said. “But for Mum—yes, it was difficult. There’s not much work for an unmarried woman with a child. Leastwise, not much honest work. For a while she took in the washing and mending. Ruined her hands with it. But our landlord kept raising the rent, eking out every bit of coin he could. Eventually, the washing and the mending wasn’t enough to support us. So Mum turned to prostitution. She was pretty,”he said. “It wasn’t hard to find a bloke willing to spend a little coin on her.”
Phoebe winced. “Still, I can’t imagine it was a simple decision to make.”
“No,” he said, and the fingers of his free hand curled into a fist. “She hated it. Felt like she was betraying the love of her life, even if he didn’t want her any longer. But the coin was good, and she–she wouldn’t sell the damned locket even to avoid selling herself. So I stole it from her. Took it right off her neck when she was sleeping.” A ragged sort of laugh lurched from his throat. “She thought it must’ve been one of her clients that had pinched it,” he said. “I meant to sell it for us since she couldn’t bring herself to do it, but she was so devastated that she wept for days, and I—I couldn’t do it.”
“You gave it back to her?”
He shook his head. “Never had the chance,” he said. “She died a few days later. A client of hers liked to drink a little too much, and he had a foul enough temper sober. I slept in the kitchen while she entertained, tucked away in a corner. Or tried to, at least.” He scraped one hand across his jaw, rubbing away the tension that had settled in it. “I heard when he started beating her, burst into the room, and tried to pull him off of her. I don’t think he heard me, or even felt me yanking on him. I couldn’t—I wasn’t strong enough—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Phoebe said softly, in a soothing sort of tone. “You were only a boy.”
