Page 26 of Captured By the Werewolf Highwaymen

She nodded in acknowledgment. “He worked himself very hard, to his detriment. Slept little, ate infrequently. Had he rested more, he wouldn’t have taken ill as he did. It led him to a final, fatal affliction. I sometimes think…”

Her words died out, and guilt assailed her. To feel a certain way was itself a small disloyalty, but to speak her heart might constitute a true betrayal.

“What do you think?” Desmond prompted.

Finally, she said, “Thomas Godwin was the Marquess of Alban’s third son, and felt the burden of his family’s wealth and privilege keenly. They weren’t…they’re not…good. Profiting off of others’ suffering.”

“Aristos, through and through,” Desmond said.

“Instead of going into law or the miliary,” she continued, “my father trained as a physician. To his family’s horror and dismay, he insisted on treating London’s poorest and most in need, rather than the patrician clientele they had expected. He almost never took a penny for his services, and only then when they seemed desperate to repay him in some fashion. But he always said the work he did wasn’t enough, that it would never be enough to undo the iniquities of his family.”

“And so,” Gideon said slowly, “you believe that he worked himself rigorously, too rigorously, as a kind of penance.”

She grimaced. “Soon after I was born, my mother died. It fell to me to look after him. I wish…I wish I had done a better job of it, or that he’d have let me take care of him.”

“He was driven by his own demons,” Desmond said softly. “There’s naught anybody can do when someone tries to outrun their demons.”

Her fingers moved over the tiny petals of chamomile, stroking them carefully so as not to bruise them. “It shamed me, just the same, that I wasn’t able to help him in the end, as he’d helped so many others.”

“Clara.” Desmond turned her to face him. His hands were large, covering her shoulders, yet they were gentle on her. “Disease has a will of its own. Even physicians with the best training can’t stave off death. You aren’t responsible. No one is.”

She stared into the depths of his dusk-blue eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“How is it that you are thieves?” The words burst from her, and she winced at her own bluntness. “You,” she said to Desmond, “and you,” she added, looking at Gideon, “and Hugh. Surely there had to be something else for you besides crime? Something that wouldn’t imperil your lives, or require you to hurt people.”

“We do what we can to minimize the hurt we cause,” Gideon said.

“The carriages we stop belong to the wealthy,” Desmond added, “those who can spare coin and trinkets.”

“As for imperiling ourselves…” Gideon sounded weary. “This whole world is dangerous. Especially for men like us.”

That was the second time one of them had said such a thing. Men like us.

“How?” she asked. “I cannot fathom how you became a highwayman.”

The men looked at each other.

She walked toward a ladder propped against the wall, but when she went to grab it, both Gideon and Desmond moved to take it. The two men stared at each other, until Desmond appeared to relent, and Gideon grabbed the ladder.

“Where do you need this?” he asked.

She pointed to a beam, from which hung a row of plants.

He carried the ladder to the beam and held it steady as she climbed. As she took cuttings from the plants, Gideon spoke.

“My father, Jean Beaufills, was a silk weaver in Spitalfields. He met my mother, Delilah McKay, a freedwoman who worked in a millinery shop. They opened a tavern, the Ribbon and Loom, and started a family. I had two older brothers, Kier and Robin. I was the youngest, the baby.”

She heard the smile in his voice, and Clara smiled too.

“It was a working neighborhood,” Gideon continued. “Most everyone had barely enough to survive, but we worked at the tavern and created a place where people could go and enjoy themselves after laboring all day. Yet we were happy. My mother always made sure I had books to read. She’d buy them secondhand and they fell apart even more the way I pored over them.”

Clara climbed down the ladder. “We have that in common.”

“What a treasure your library is,” he said, returning her smile. “Vast and rich. I’d never tire of that place.”

“You have unlimited use of it,” she said at once. “Even after you finish Longsword.”