The Leopard Prince (Princes #2)(49)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

“It’s just that he was so… good. He seemed to understand me in a way nobody has before, not even you or Aunt Clara. And I couldn’t figure him out.” She laughed under her breath. “Maybe that’s what attracted me to him. He was like a puzzle that I could have spent the rest of my life studying and never grow tired of.” They rumbled over a bridge. “I don’t think I’ll ever find that again.”

“I’m so sorry,” Tony said.

George laid her head back on the seat. “You’re awfully kind for a brother. Did you know that?”

“I’ve been most lucky in my allotment of sisters.” Tony smiled.

George tried to smile back but found she couldn’t. She went back to looking out the carriage window instead. They passed a field of drenched sheep, poor miserable creatures. Could sheep swim? Maybe they’d float if their pasture flooded, like tufts of down in a puddle.

They were already out of her lands, and in another day Yorkshire would be behind them altogether. By the end of the week she’d be in London, resuming her life as if this trip had never happened. Three or four months from now, Harry, acting as her land steward, might write to ask if she wanted him to present his report on her lands in person. And she, having just returned from a soiree, might turn the letter over in her hand and muse, Harry Pye. Why, I once lay in his arms. I looked up into his illuminated face as he joined his flesh with mine, and I was alive. She might toss the letter on her desk and think, But that was so long ago now and in a different place. Perhaps it was only a dream.

She might think that.

George closed her eyes. Somehow she knew that there would never come a day when Harry Pye was not her first memory when she woke and her last thought as she drifted into sleep. She would remember him all the days of her life.

Remember and regret.

“TOLD YOU NOT TO HAVE no truck with aristo ladies.” Dick Crumb sat down across from Harry without invitation late that afternoon.

Wonderful. Now he was getting romantic advice from Dick. Harry studied the Cock and Worm’s proprietor. Dick looked like he’d been sampling too much of his own brew. His face was creased with sleeplessness, and his hair was thinner, if that was possible.

“Aristos ain’t nothing but trouble. And here’s you, sticking your meat where it don’t belong.” Dick wiped his face.

Harry glanced at Will sitting beside him. He’d finally bought him new shoes this morning. The boy’s eyes had been fixed on his feet, swinging under the table, the entire time they’d been in the tavern. But now he was staring at Dick.

“Here.” Harry dug a few coppers out of his pocket. “Go see if the baker has any sweet buns left.”

Will’s attention was immediately caught by the coins. He grinned up at Harry, grabbed the money, and was out the door in a flash.

“That’s Will Pollard, ain’t it?” Dick asked.

“Aye,” Harry said. “His gran abandoned him.”

“So he’s living with you now?” Dick’s long forehead wrinkled in confusion, and he swiped his cloth over it. “How’s that?”

“I have room. I’ll have to find him a better home soon, but for now, why not?”

“I dunno. Don’t he get under foot when she comes calling?” The older man leaned forward and lowered his voice, but his whisper was loud enough to be heard clear across the room.

Harry sighed. “She’s gone back to London. It won’t come up.”

“Good.” Dick took a giant gulp from the mug he’d set down in front of him when he’d joined Harry. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s for the best. Common folk and gentry ain’t meant to mix. That’s the way God intended it. They stay in their marble halls with their servants to wipe their arses—”

“Dick—”

“And we do an honest day’s work and go home to a hot meal. If we’re lucky.” Dick slammed down his mug to make his point. “And that’s the way it’s meant to be.”

“Right.” Harry hoped to stem this sermon.

No such luck.

“And what would you do with the lady if she’d have you?” the older man plowed on. “She’d have your dangly bits hanging by her bed for a bellpull afore a week was out. You’d probably have to wear a pink wig and yellow hose, learn to do that tippy-toe dancing the gentry do and beg like a dog to have your own pin money. No”—he took another swallow of ale—“that ain’t no life for a man.”

“I agree.” Harry cast about for a change of subject. “Where’s your sister? I haven’t seen Janie lately.”

Out came the cloth. Dick polished the dome of his head. “Oh, you know Janie. She were born a bit off, and ever since Granville got done with her, she’s been even worse.”

Harry slowly set down his mug. “You didn’t tell me that Granville had abused Janie.”

“Didn’t I?”

“No. When did this happen?”

“Fifteen years ago. It wasn’t long after your mother caught that fever and died.” Dick wiped his face and neck almost frantically now. “Janie was five and twenty or thereabouts, a grown woman, except maybe in her head. Anyone but Granville would’ve respected that. Would’ve let her alone. But him.” Dick spat onto the flagstones at his feet. “He just saw her as easy pickings.”

“He raped her?”

“Maybe, at the beginning. I dunno.” Dick stared off. His hand was stopped on top of his head, still holding the cloth. “I didn’t know about it, see, not for a long time. She was living with me, like she does now, but Janie’s ten years the younger of me. Our da had passed years before, and Janie’s mum died when she were born.” The big man swallowed from his mug.

Harry didn’t say anything for fear of stopping the flow of the story.

“Janie’s more like a niece or a daughter to me than a sister,” Dick said. He took his hand away from his head and looked at the cloth blankly. “And by the time I noticed that she was sneaking out at night, it’d been going on a while.” He gave a bark of laughter. “When I found out and told her to stop, she said he was going to marry her.” He was silent a moment.

Harry took another drink to wash away the bile gathering in his throat. Poor, poor Janie.

“Can you see it?” Dick looked up, and Harry saw tears glittering in his eyes. “He was widowed, so she thought Lord Granville would marry her. Nothing I said could keep her from creeping out and meeting him at night. Went on for weeks and I thought I’d go mad. Then, of course, he dropped her. Like a dirty rag he’d wiped his spunk on.”