Page 69 of To Hunt the Hunter

“I always believed you so high in the instep,” Matilda said, shaking her head. “All the talk about the Barrington superiority, about breeding and power, but it never came from you, did it? You inherited it all.”

He shrugged. “I was raised to believe it.”

“Yet you don’t.”

“No more than you do,” he countered. “You treated all your friends with the same kindness, the same extraordinary loyalty, no matter who they were or the circumstances of their birth.”

“I had a good name once,” Matilda said, her tone thoughtful. “One the ton welcomed, and it disappeared in the blink of an eye. Yet, I had not changed in the least. It is all a fabrication, these rules we have made for ourselves that entrap all of us one way or another. We should do well to throw them all aside.”

“Would that I were that powerful. I would do it. I would change the world for you if I could,” he said, such longing in his voice her heart ached. So, she smiled, trying to lighten the mood.

“Yes, I believe you would. What an extraordinary fellow you are.”

Lucian chuckled, following her lead before their words led their emotions astray.

“Finally she realises,” he said with a sigh, followed by a quirk of his lips that gave her a tantalising glimpse of one of those elusive dimples.

She laughed, wishing she could make him smile more often, that it wasn’t such a fleeting pleasure, wishing she could chase away the loneliness and the burden of responsibility for good, not just for the matter of days that remained to them. His wretched aunt’s ball was no doubt being planned with military precision. The nineteenth, she had said. That left ten days before Lucian announced his betrothal. Matilda wondered if he had already made his choice, and bit her tongue against the desire to torture herself further by asking.

Phoebe ran back into the room, neat and pretty in a simple dark blue spencer that matched her uncle’s coat, and a plain bonnet with a blue ribbon.

“How handsome you both look together,” Matilda said, steadying a sudden quaver in her voice as she noted the resemblance between them. It was not only in the way they looked, though the high cheekbones and fair complexions were certainly cut from the same pattern book, but in the tilt of their heads, a careless gesture of their hands, a grace and elegance in the way they moved that was inherently natural and could not be learned.

“We should look a matching set if you were with us,” Phoebe observed, her smile falling as Matilda had to look away to blink back tears.

“Come, sweetheart,” Lucian said, his voice soft. “We’d best go. We shall see you this afternoon, Matilda.”

Matilda took a breath and composed herself, nodding and returning a smile that felt false and uncomfortable. “So you shall, and I expect to hear all about it.”

Phoebe ran to her and kissed her cheek before hurrying from the room. Lucian stared at Matilda for a long moment but did not come closer, and she knew he did not trust himself any more than she trusted herself not to cling to his lapels and not let him out of her sight ever again.

“Goodbye,” she said, hoping to make it easier for him.

He gave her a slight bow, the glimmer of a smile at his lips, and then he was gone.

***

Lucian suppressed a shiver as the carriage conveyed them closer to Liddon Mill. He did not believe in magic or ghosts, yet he felt the weight of all the wickedness done here as the mill came into view. Despite himself, he drew Phoebe closer and took her hand in his. She went willingly and he thought perhaps she sensed it too, though he had not told her the details of what had gone on here. Some truths were too vile for a child’s ears, and he would protect her where he could.

She would not know, as he knew, of the abominations that had taken place here. It seemed impossible to credit, as the tranquil beauty of their surroundings was breathtaking.

The delightfully named Water-Cum-Jolly Dale ought to have been a place where children would run and play and laugh, but that had never happened here, though Lucian was striving to change that. These children had been stolen from London, orphans every one, and abandoned to their fates here by the ‘Guardians of the Poor.’

Lucian’s stomach had turned as he’d learned the story, how with the promise of learning a trade, Mr Burton had taken children on as indentured apprentices. The workhouses he’d taken them from had been happy as he’d paid for the children, and the children believed they would be taught a useful trade and so signed away their lives, though they could neither read nor write. For this, Lucian had discovered they’d endured hazardous work, rising at five am and working for fifteen hours Monday to Friday, and sixteen on Saturday, when an hour would be spent cleaning the dangerous machinery. They were starving and exhausted, so mutilations and fatal accidents had become commonplace, with illness and epidemics rife. The bodies were then taken away under cover of darkness and buried in unmarked graves. He’d done what he could, creating a memorial for those vanished in the night but it was a pitiful compensation for too many lost lives. Those poor devils that had survived Burton’s barbaric regime had been turned off when they reached their late teens and returned to the tender mercies of the poorhouse. After all, there was a ready supply of little orphans, who were cheaper to feed and easier to control than their adult counterparts.

The corporal punishments for even the slightest misdemeanours were cruel and vicious, and had made Lucian sick when he had heard of them. It had been the hardest thing not to cut Mr Burton into tiny pieces when he’d had the chance, not to mete out his own justice, knowing whose hand had directed such treatment. If not for the risk of his uncle finding a way of using the crime against him, he would have.

Lucian took a deep breath as the carriage finally rocked to a halt and turned to look down at Phoebe. “Are you ready, sweetheart?”

Phoebe nodded, her little face solemn, and Lucian squeezed her hand.

“Then we’d best begin.”

***

Matilda set her book to one side as she heard the door swing open. Lucian came in, holding Phoebe’s hand, and one look at their faces told her everything she needed to know. She held her arms out to Phoebe and the little girl ran into them.

“Are you all right?” Matilda asked gently.