Page 13 of Ravishing Camille
“I was five years old and had no idea why my mother couldn’t stay with us. I thought she had decided she didn’t love us anymore.”
Pierce glanced at his father who cast his gaze to his plate.
“So I ran down the back stairs and off to see Mrs. O’Dougherty. Across the streets filled with Union soldiers and across the railroad tracks to the hucksters’ tents. But she wasn’t there. She’d gone to mass and her husband tended the stall.”
Pierce focused on Ada with a compassionate smile. “Lily and I had tracked Ada and came upon her just as Mr. O’Dougherty picked Ada up by the neck of her dress.”
“He was tipsy.” Lily said with horror in her words.
“Tipsy?” asked Vivienne. “What’s that?”
“Drunk. He’d had too much whiskey,” said Pierce. “And he was about to throw Ada into the water.”
“No!” Nate said, full of indignation.
“He wanted my money,” Ada said. “But I had none. I’d gone to see Mrs. O’Dougherty expecting she’d give me a piece of taffy for free. But that day I learned that nothing is free.” She beamed at Pierce. “Except love. My brother who was a very tall, very skinny but a very scrappy thirteen-year-old launched himself at the very tall, very fat and very inebriated Mr. O’Dougherty and kicked him in the shins. The old man just crumbled.”
“Well,” said Pierce with humility, “that was because Lily joined in the fray and bit his arm.”
“I had good teeth,” Lily affirmed with a smug nod.
“And the tenacity of a barracuda!” Pierce snorted. “O’Dougherty bellowed.”
“And he dropped me in a shot. I was grateful, of course. But angry at Lily and Pierce that they’d found me. Plus I still had no taffy.”
“Did you send her to her room, Grandpapa?” Garrett had to know. “Or spank her?”
“No. That night when I got home and Pierce and Lily told me what had happened, I had a talk with your aunt Ada. I told her she must never go anywhere without company or without a coin or two.”
“Most of all,” Ada said with a kindly glance at her father, “he told me that those who love me must always know where I am and how I am.”
“And we always did,” Pierce said, ignoring the one time six years ago when she’d been abducted and her husband Victor, Julian and Pierce had saved her.
Ada smiled at him with gratitude that he didn’t bring up that fateful night. “And after that, we each got five cents each week to spend as we wished. On taffy or lemon drops. I gave up lemon drops and I saved my money for a new porcelain doll. It took me nearly two years to have enough.”
“And I,” Pierce said with pride, “was permitted to join my father’s stevedore gang on the docks on Saturdays.”
“You were punished for Aunt Ada running away?” Garrett was outraged.
Pierce laughed. “Far from it. Before Ada ran away, I’d often begged Grandpapa to let me work loading and unloading cargo.”
“When he attacked Mr. O’Dougherty,” his father said, “I realized he had not only muscles, but skills at defending himself and others. I knew time on the docks with the longshoremen would improve his chances of winning whatever he wanted.”
“And did it?” Camille asked him.
“I learned from the best how to prepare for what I want and to earn what I get.”
Down toward Liv’s end of the table, tonight’s guest and only non-family member Lord Hamilton Turnbowe acknowledged that with good humor along with the rest of them. Camille’s beau was a hale and hearty fellow, as tall as Pierce, but more massive. If Pierce were to compare him to anyone, he’d say he looked the part of a rough-and-tumble wrestler. He fit into his precisely cut dinner clothes with the mark of a man of wealth and an eye for the earthen colors that best matched his dark complexion. Handsome? Pierce left that decision to women. He appealed to Camille so he was clearly acceptable. He had a wide brow and hair the color of Irish peat. He was the second son of a viscount and earned his income in trade. What the man knew of sound management Pierce had not had any time during drinks to discern.
But he did know one thing from those hours in the man’s company with all others in the family. Turnbowe was taken with Camille.
That gave Pierce satisfaction.
Of course it did.
Of course.
Chapter 4
