Page 38 of Lady Isla and the Lord of Rogue (Merry Spinsters, Charming Rogues #6)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Isla was tremendously busy.

When she wasn’t visiting charities, the Foundling Hospital, or Newgate Prison, she helped Mrs Fry plan meetings for an organisation named ‘The British Ladies’ Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners’.

It wasn’t quite established yet, and many meetings had to take place in the private home of Mrs Fry, or in Isla’s.

Isla had left the Wynthorpe mansion in St. James’s square, where she had lived with Algie, and, together with Aunt Agatha, moved into a smaller town house in Half Moon Street.

Her maid, Meggie, came along, as well as Aunt Agatha’s abigail, Esther.

She hired a cook, a housekeeper and a coachman, and their small household was complete.

She couldn’t have asked for more, she told herself, as she fell into bed night after night, exhausted from the day’s activities.

No longer did she visit balls, operas, theatres and the like. She was independent and dedicated her time solely to the good of society.

She hadn’t seen Algie in months and only kept up with his activities through the papers.

‘Lord Wynthorpe Addresses Parliament on Rising Concerns over Urban Crime,’ she read one morning.

And then, a few days later, ‘Home Secretary Wynthorpe Unveils Sweeping New Measures for Public Order.’ He was, clearly, the man of the hour and was lionised as a hero now as much as before.

She pulled a face and set the paper aside.

Of Teddy—of Jem—or whatever name he called himself now, she told herself she did not care a whit—there was no news at all. He’d disappeared into thin air.

That was just fine.

Positively fine.

She really couldn’t be bothered to think about him at all.

Really.

Who had time when she was oh so very busy?

She blinked rapidly and pressed a finger against her nose bridge. “Confounded dust makes my eyes tear up,” she remarked to herself and rang the bell for Meggie, to help her get ready for the day.

She had another meeting to organise and would be visiting Mrs Fry in Plashet House in East London. She paused before stepping into her carriage, then turned to her coachman.

“I’d like to make a stop at Kensington Gardens on the way,” she told him.

He stared. “On the way, m’lady? Kensington Gardens ain’t on the way—very well, m’lady.

We’ll make a detour, then.” Muttering under his breath something along the lines of how that small detour would turn into a day trip and that it would be an impossible feat to get her to Plashet House, which was on the other side of the city, in time for tea, he held the door open for her, and she climbed in.

Kensington Gardens was still bare in the winter. The gardens were dormant; the flowers cut back; the colours muted with the evergreen shrubs and brown grass, and a mist hovered over the muddy path leading to the pond.

There, near the Round Pond right by the path, stood a brass sundial on a stone pillar. It was a delicate, pretty sun dial.

And of course, exactly the kind of thing Teddy would have loved.

Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner?

Jem had loved clocks, too. He’d loved to collect pocket watches.

Mind you, Vanya had caught him and thrashed him for stealing them, and he’d had to promise her never to do so again.

It was still difficult for her to make the connection between the two, that Jem had grown into Teddy, and that both were the same.

She traced a finger around the brass measuring device.

How many hours she’d spent here, waiting for Jem. At first, she’d come with Lady Wynthorpe. Then with her maid…but never, never once had he come.

Nor would he, today.

With a sigh, she turned to leave and to make her way back the path she’d come.

“The Thomas Thompion sun dial in Hampton Court is older but not nearly as pretty,” a voice said behind her, making her jump.

“They were commissioned in pairs for the privy gardens. This one is an imitation of the Thompion sun dials. I think it’s done well enough.”

Isla spun around.

She did not know where he’d come from, maybe from behind the chestnut trees, or the bushes, but there he stood, larger than life.

“It was the first and only time we’d passed through London,” Teddy told her, studying the dial pensively.

“They were renovating parts of the garden and relocating the sun dial. Even though I was a scrawny brat back then, I helped and earned myself a few coins. Then we moved north and at that intersection in Yorkshire, witnessed a violent carriage accident.” He looked up into the distance, and a stray lock of chocolate brown hair fell into his forehead.

“Vanya pulled you out of the arms of the woman, who’d been badly hurt, and she made her promise that she’d take care of you. Shortly after, she died.”

Isla listened as if she was hearing the story, her own story, for the first time.

“You were a small thing, with large eyes and hair the colour of fire. You didn’t speak much at all, and I believed you were mute.

” He uttered a sudden laugh. “Then we went to the village fair, where a group of boys bullied us. Imagine my surprise when you suddenly opened your mouth and uttered a range of swear words so violent, we were all taken aback. You wouldn’t stop chattering afterwards. ”

Isla remembered only too well. She’d attached herself to Jem like a leech, singing, chattering, always following in his shadow, and he’d allowed it, good-naturedly.

He studied her. “And now, it appears, you’re mute again.”

He took her hands in his.

“Isla. Won’t you look at me?” His voice was soft, coaxing.

She attempted to pull her hands away, but he tightened his grip.

“You are still angry.”

That was an understatement. She was so blisteringly furious; it was a miracle she didn’t combust on the spot. But beneath all that was another feeling entirely.

Sadness.

For the time lost, for the girl she used to be who’d believed him lost, who’d spent so much time and energy in finding him. For the boy he’d once been, forged, moulded and relentlessly hammered into the man he was now, by none other than her own brother.

And underneath all that, a flicker of endless relief that he wasn’t dead and buried in Potter’s Field. And then the devastating fear that she might lose him again.

The desire to throw herself into his arms and bawl her eyes out was overwhelming.

She swept the feeling away as resolutely as if it were cobwebs.

“You have every right to be,” Teddy continued.

“I would be as well if I were in your shoes. But I can’t say I regret any of my decisions, Isla.

That would be an untruth. If handed to me again, I would make the same choice.

Algie saved me.” He searched for words. “He gave me the chance for a new life, a new name. He is not only my superior, and the most brilliant man I have ever met, but also the father I never had. I owe him everything and my loyalty to him is absolute. But that doesn’t mean the path I chose was easy.

Not at all. Seeing you from afar, in all my various disguises.

Not being able to tell you who I was. I wanted to run to you every day. ” He entwined his fingers in hers.

“Various disguises? You mean to say that you were not only Lucian Night but also…”

“A costermonger. A chimney sweep. A footman in a duke’s household.

A suspicious-looking ruffian who appeared to attack you in St Giles.

We were in the middle of an operation, and I was trying to get you to leave when you tried to kill me with your umbrella.

You nearly succeeded.” He winced at the memory and rubbed the back of his head.

Isla blinked, confused. “But that man had a tattoo on his wrist…” Her eyes fell to Teddy’s hand.

He unbuttoned the cuff and pushed the sleeve up.

There it was. Isla stared at it with round eyes.

A smaller version of the tattoo that he wore on his back.

The man she’d thought she’d killed with her umbrella…

it truly had been Teddy. She reached out and traced the tattoo gently with one finger. “But you looked so different…”

“As I said, I was in disguise, undercover then, meeting one of the Mudlark Skulls men, when you crossed my path. Confound it, Isla, my heart nearly stopped when you ran into me just like that.”

“I ran into you. You jumped out into my path, and I had to defend myself with my umbrella. Oh! That means, of course, that you feigned it all. Stumbling and cracking your head on the stair, pretending to be dead.”

He smirked. “I believe you did manage to knock me out for a moment, and I lost my senses. But it will be forevermore a mystery to me why it occurred to none of you to check my pulse before declaring me dead.”

Isla sniffed. “I would never deign to touch a scoundrel from the rookery, dead or alive.”

“Entirely understandable.”

“This would explain why you were changing your clothes in the laundry room…” Isla muttered to herself.

Teddy leaned forward. “I did not quite catch what you just said. Do you care to repeat that?”

“Nothing.…” Isla avoided his gaze, then lifted her eyes again with a frown. “But how did you manage to be in two places at once at the gambling hell? You were clearly sitting in the gaming room when I left, and you were still there when I returned.”

He smirked. “Child’s play. I used a door that leads to a secret passage with a shortcut, of course.

Higgins had instructions to mislead you about the layout of the house, so you believed the room was farther away than it truly was.

Once you were gone, I slipped back into the gaming room through the same door.

It even bought me enough time to be in the middle of a new game by the time you returned. ”

“The things you said in there, really! Outrageous.” Isla blushed as she recalled the words of his devilish ‘pact’.

“It was all designed to frighten you away. Alas, I seem to have accomplished the opposite.” He took a step closer and smiled down at her, fondly. “Instead of frightening you away, you got even more persistent.”

“I wish you had revealed yourself earlier.”

“It was all part of Algie’s plan. But it was meant to be temporary. There was another part of the agreement I did not tell you.”

He paused.

“When he first offered to take me in, I consented to his terms. I said I would stay away from you and do as he required. But I insisted on one thing. That when it was over, when the work was done, he would permit me to go to you. That, in the end, he would offer no objection. That I might remain by your side.”

Her eyes flashed. “Am I to be your prize, then?”

“It was never that.”

He was no longer speaking English. His voice dropped, quiet and full of feeling, and he spoke in the language of their childhood. The language of the Rom.

“All I have done, every decision I made, was for you. I swore I would protect you, did I not? Even if it meant giving you up to the gadje, so you might live safe. So you could have the life I could never give you. Even if it meant severing all connections, vanishing from your world, and breaking every promise. It was the only way to keep you from harm.”

He drew a breath.

“It was a sacrifice. But I made Algie swear on his life it would not be forever. That one day, when it was safe, my path would lead back to you. That it would end with you. And now it has. He has honoured his word. ”

He lifted her chin gently.

“Isla. Will you not look at me?”

But she turned her face away, her eyes still fixed on the ground.

“Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

She lowered her eyes and stared at the ground beneath her.

“Forgiveness isn’t something that just happens,” she finally mumbled.

“No, it is not. And I shan’t pressure you.

Take all the time you need. You can hate me and dislike me and curse me all you like for as long as you like.

For the rest of your life, if you need to.

I’ll bear it all patiently. Only let me be with you while you do so.

Let me hear it every day for the rest of our lives.

We’ve been apart too long, and I can’t bear to be separated from you anymore, not for a day, not even for a minute.

Not anymore. Isla, is that muddy ground really that much more interesting than me? ”

Finally, she lifted her eyes. “Yes. It is. At least the ground knows what it is and does what it’s meant to. It doesn’t change names, disappear, or come back from the dead. One knows what to expect. Not like some people.”

He exhaled slowly, his voice low and steady. “Do you remember what I used to tell you? What I always wanted most. For both of us?”

What he wanted most.

Isla closed her eyes. The voice of the boy she used to know echoed in her memory, full of yearning and defiance.

She remembered the way his eyes had burned with longing when he said it, as if the very dream of it kept him alive.

It had seemed so far away then, so impossible for a child who had known only the road and the cold.

“A home,” he whispered. He drew her close, his forehead nearly touching hers. “For you and me. Together.”

A haven. A place no one could take from them.

Oddly enough, her new town house, lovely though it was, had never felt like home. Not even with Aunt Agatha’s gentle presence beside her.

“I have dreamed of it all my life,” he said softly. “A real home. I bought the grand house on the hill near the orphanage. There is a workshop, a room full of clocks. I thought that would be enough. But it wasn’t. Do you know why?”

She could only shake her head.

“Because you were not in it. I walked through every room, and even though the clocks were ticking, all I heard was silence. I realised then that no house, no matter how fine, would ever feel like home without you. For someone like me, who grew up without walls or anchors, the word itself has always been elusive. But I wanted it. I wanted it with you.”

He looked down, a half-smile curving his mouth. “I even filled the dining room with clocks. I found a Tompion, by-the-by, a special edition made of?—”

“Oh, be quiet.” Her voice trembled, but her eyes were fierce. “When are you finally going to do it?”

He blinked. “Do what?”

“You know.”

He gave a faint, puzzled shake of his head. “I don’t have the faintest idea what you could mean.”

“Kiss me.” Her fingers curled into his lapel, pulling him down to her. “There has been far too much talking. All these words. From the moment I saw you again at the orphanage, all I’ve wanted is?—”

He took off his spectacles, slipped them into his coat pocket, and cupped her face in his hands.

Then he kissed her. Passionately. Deeply. Reverently.

Finally.