Page 27 of Barely a Woman (Bow Street Beaus #1)

Morgan lapsed into stunned silence. Steadman was truly a nobleman after all.

The heir to a barony. And he was clearly consumed with destroying not only his father, but the rest of his family with him.

Her chin fell as they walked. She wondered if she really knew him at all, and if all he had told her was, in some form, a lie.

***

Steadman immediately regretted divulging so much of the truth to Morgan.

Her face was the very picture of bewildered disappointment as she walked along the road in ruined silence.

He couldn’t help telling her, though, unmoored as he was.

When he had kissed her the night before, the unyielding mettle within him had moved, rocked by a gale of new awareness.

He had kissed many women in his life. Until that moment in the chapel, though, he had never plumbed the depths of what a kiss could mean.

He had always known the blending of lips, the feel of body to body.

Until Morgan, though, he had never experienced the blending of souls, the touch of presence to presence.

His confession was one of aspiration—the hope that she would understand his desire for justice and the need for retribution by his hand.

As the silence between them stretched, he chastised himself for breaking his most sacred rule of never allowing his yearning for a woman to divert him from his mission. But now, he had broken that rule by letting Morgan slip through his fortress walls and then falling in love with her.

He blinked at the thought. Had he truly fallen in love with her?

Yes. Soundly and simply.

But what did that mean? Was he doomed? Her ongoing hurt provided ample evidence of how his fatal mistake would wound them both.

Just when he began believing she might never speak to him again, she stopped in the road.

When he engaged her eyes, he found confusion and disappointment, but also something more proactive. Indignation.

“Do you mean to tell me…” she said, “That you are so intent on making your father suffer that you are perfectly willing to pass that suffering on to your mother? Your sister?”

He looked away, unable to endure the fiery furnace of her eyes. “As I said before. True justice sometimes requires great sacrifice.”

Morgan shook her head. “Surely, no person is so monstrous that any price is acceptable for their defeat.”

“No? No, you say? You don’t know what he did.”

“Then tell me.” Her words were a cry, but the next part came softer. “Tell me. Please.”

He looked at her again to find pleading eyes and discovered he could not resist them. He needed to tell someone. Why not his remarkable new friend?

“When I was eighteen, I fell in love with a tenant’s daughter.

Or so what I thought was love. My father raised me to believe that anything I desired I could own.

And I desired her.” He began walking again, this time back toward the inn, and Morgan followed.

“My father learned of my interest and took drastic action. He sent me away to distant kin as winter took hold. Upon my return four months later, I immediately went in search of my love, only to learn that my father had expelled them from his lands during the teeth of winter, leaning on the recently passed Enclosure Act as his legal right to do so.”

He paused, recalling what had happened next, unable to bring forth further explanation. Morgan waited for nearly a minute. “What became of your love?”

An expectation of disaster weighed down her question.

He breathed deeply to gather strength. “The winter proved particularly cruel. Food was scarce. The lodging the tenant family secured was poor. By St. Nicholas Day, every member of the family had fallen ill with fever. By Twelfth Night, all but one had died—including my love. My own father was the instrument of her death.”

He stopped speaking, certain he would cry out otherwise. Morgan again gave him a brief respite to gather his emotions.

“What did you do,” she asked finally, “When you learned of her passing?”

“I confronted my father and have not seen him since.”

She blinked tears, clearly overcome. “Can…can you tell me what happened?”

Steadman began to deny her request but abruptly found the need to tell her. Perhaps then she might better understand his necessary actions. Perhaps she might forgive his zeal for retribution. Perhaps she might even find a way to love him.

“I found him in the fields, casually depleting the local pheasant population…”

***

“Lord Atwood!”

Young Steadman shouted across the field at his father, who seemed blithely unaware of his crimes. The man turned with his Brown Bess musket cradled in an elbow. His brief smile flickered into memory as Steadman approached.

“You killed her! You killed the whole family!”

“What?” His eyebrows rose in surprise. “Killed who? What nonsense are you on about?”

“The Atkinsons. My Mary. You killed all but one.”

His father still appeared confused. “I did no such thing. They were hale and hearty when departing the estate. Whatever became of them afterwards is none of my concern nor responsibility.”

Before Steadman could restrain the surging anger, his hands were closing around his father’s throat. The gamekeeper and footman attending his father pulled him away. Initially bewildered, Lord Atwood’s expression melted into one of righteous wrath. He raised a trembling finger at Steadman.

“Heir or no, I will send you away! I will cut you off!”

“You need not bother,” Steadman shouted back. “For I am leaving willingly and now. I will forsake this cursed house and not darken its doors again until I return to make you pay for your heinous deed or bury your corpse.”

His father stood ramrod straight, clearly disbelieving his son’s threat. “How, boy? How will you make me pay? You are still a child with little sense and no purpose.”

Steadman clenched his jaw and matched his father’s posture. “You will learn, Lord Atwood. I am more capable than you believe. I will bring retribution on all of you.”

“All? All of whom?”

“Every pampered nobleman who seeks to use and discard common people. Every ingrate of high station who believes the suffering of those beneath him is his birthright. You will see. Soon, all of Britain will know my name and the justice for which I stand!”

A cold smile broke across his father’s features. “Is that so? I think not. You will be back here in a month groveling for forgiveness and a decent meal.”

The certitude that gripped Steadman congealed into stone, immutable and without regret. “I will not. I vow to become the man that you are not nor could ever be.”

He turned to walk away, satisfied only that his father appeared utterly stunned.

***

“Can you not see, Morgan? The necessity of my plan? Lord Atwood is a remorseless monster.”

She remained unspeaking for heartbeat upon heartbeat, before wading into the plaintive question. “I don’t know. Surely, there must be another way.”

Steadman set his chin with grim determination. “There is no other way. This is the way.”

When she failed to speak another word as they returned to the inn, regret nibbled at the edges of his confidence.

The glorious union of the kiss in the chapel seemed from another lifetime, and Morgan a wondrous ghost now fading into the mist. Have I ruined everything?

Probably. But he’d lived a life of risky decisions with sometimes regrettable consequences.

How could he stop now? He knew he was broken in that way, and quite beyond repair.