Page 97
“What are you after?” She stared at him.
“I’m only trying to ascertain the facts.”
“I told you the facts.”
His ironic look wasn’t without sympathy, which made it worse. “You told me your brother rescued a baby hedgehog. And yet you can’t be sure that she needed rescuing.”
“You think he just snatched her, for no reason.” She wasn’t cold any longer. The heat gathering inside her was the sort that collected around a bee’s stinger, a smarting, poisonous fire.
“Probably not for no reason.”
“Why then?”
Alan held her gaze until hers wavered and dropped. A dreadful realization choked her.
She knew why.
“We’d been fighting.” The words grated in her throat. “He’d said we had to go back to London a day early, and I was miserable. We went to sketch in open air, and I dropped my sketchbook in a puddle and ruined it—on purpose, he said. I told him it was an accident, and when I knelt down to pick it up, he bumped me, and I fell into the puddle.”
The memory came back with the surprising force of that blow. She glanced up. Alan was considering her, brows level, face grave.
“He said that was an accident too. I threw mud in his face. He stormed off, and I hid in Mr. Middleton’s barn, to teach him a lesson. But I was too cold and hungry to last long. When I heard him calling, I came out. He had Nettie bundled in his coat. And the fight was over.” She shut her eyes briefly in case Alan’s face registered his triumph. When she opened them, she saw that his expression hadn’t changed. “We wore gardening gloves to touch her and wrapped her in old shawls with a hot-water bottle. The children on the train tried to feed her their hard-boiled eggs. We laughed the whole way home.”
Her mouth tilted up at the corners. Alan’s didn’t.
“It turned out all right,” she said. He looked as though he meant to object.
“For Nettie,” she added.
Alan rubbed his forehead and sighed. “He’s there now, in the village.”
Her whole body jerked.
“That’s why you won’t tell me the name.”
“I can’t . . .” She sucked in a breath.
“Don’t.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t a question. I promised I wouldn’t ask you.”
A lump rose in her throat. Alan cracked the happy memories she’d enshrined in amber, threatening the foundation of her world. But he held himself back when he could push his advantage and gain ground. He respected the boundaries they’d established. She was safe with him.
“Jack—he’s probably gone already.” Dammit. The lump kept rising. She sounded hoarse. “If he’s still with our aunts, it’s because he’s waiting for some word from me, waiting to hear whether or not I mean to join him. He should go, of course. He shouldn’t wait.” She balled her fingers, drilling her knuckles into her thighs. “You’re not the only one searching for him, and the others aren’t so mannerly. He owes some Whitechapel roughs some money.” She felt sick, saying it. Men who ran protection rackets and smashed up businesses would think nothing of smashing up Jack.
Where would he go? North, maybe. To fleece those industrialists. She might never see him again. He’d have left her at last. She realized her eyes were closed when Alan spoke.
“Nina.”
It took effort to force her lids apart. He was staring at her, no, reading her, the volumes of turmoil in her face.
“I’ll be the one who finds him.” His square jaw hardened. His smile looked like it could cut. “And he’ll receive fair treatment, under the law.” Slowly, he slid across the compartment, folding his large body into the space beside her on the seat.
“I’d like to throttle him myself.” He said it philosophically. “But it wouldn’t undo what he’s done.”
“The forgeries,” she began, not knowing where she was going.
“I don’t mean his forgeries. I mean his manipulation, or carelessness, or both. His filling your life with people to fear. The police. Whitechapel roughs.”
She glanced up at his profile. The set of his mouth was murderous.
