Page 32 of Lord Gabriel’s Undoing

Mama shrugged. “Who knows, but the baby was safe with the fine lady and her kind husband from all the ogres in France, and grew up into a handsome boy with hair like spun gold, loved by everyone who knew him.”

She turned over his hand to reveal his wrist. “And the baby had an angel’s kiss on his hand so the fine lady knew he was sent by God.”

Something about the way Mama was looking at him alerted Gabriel, and he considered this story with a frown. “I have an angel’s kiss, don’t I? Am I…am I that baby?”

She nodded. “You are, my lovely boy, my gift from God, my little prince. He put me there on that street so I could save you from the sort of place where you would have grown up hungry and in rags. The Frenchwoman, who gave you to me, saw that I would take you in and love you as my own. She was very wise, although it must have broken her heart to have to give you up, for I’m sure she loved you just as much as I do.”

This had taken some digesting for a seven-year-old, but Gabriel had lived a secure, much-loved childhood. “So she was my mama too? As well as you?”

Mama nodded. “She was, but she was very poor and she wanted better for you. She wanted to give you what she couldn’t. So she gave you to me, and I have loved you twice as hard—once for me, and once for your mother who loved you so much she gave you up to me.” She stroked his face. “But never forget, my little golden angel, that there are people who don’t live like us, people who are so poor they can’t feed their children and who have no shoes to wear when it’s cold.”

“Was my ragged mama so poor she had no shoes and food?”

Mama nodded. “She was very poor. If he’d found her, your papa would have given her a house to live in and paid for food and clothes for both you and her if we could no longer have kept you. We would never have let you return to being poor.”

The vision dissolved.

“Your mother was a very kind person,” Phoebe said.

Gabriel nodded. “She was. She died less than a month later. Before she went, she told my father what she’d shared with me, I suppose in case it affected my behavior. When she was gone, he took over her role. He’s been a more-than-kind father.”

“Then why don’t you go to him to ask for money for your orphanage?”

He shook his head. “Because I want to do it myself. I don’t want to do it off his back. I don’t want to do it using money I have no right to.”

Phoebe frowned. “I’m not sure stealing is quite doing it by yourself.”

“I only do it to people I’ve asked to donate to my orphanage and who’ve refused.”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“No, but I did ask your Aunt Fanny a long time ago, and when she heard it was for poor children from the streets of St Giles, she refused. Some people are of the opinion that the poor are only poor because they’re lazy and won’t work. That their situation is their own fault. They think it’s a crime to be poor and that people do it to themselves and should be able to get out of it without any help. But I’ve been into the St Giles Rookery, and I’ve seen what it’s like for myself. First hand. I’ve seen the filth, the squalid streets, the tumbledown houses you wouldn’t keep a pig in, the thieves, the prosti—the beggars. The nearly naked, starving children. You wouldn’t believe…” He stopped himself, aware that he was close to ranting, his voice rising. Also that Atkins might be able to overhear him.

But Phoebe was looking up at him as though hanging on his every word. “Don’t stop. Tell me more. You make your case very succinctly.” She then spoiled this by dropping her reticule and almost falling over as she attempted to reach for it.

Gabriel picked it up for her.

She smiled, more than a little red faced, as she took it back. “I do wish I was less inclined to drop things and trip. Please don’t let me stop you. I need to know more about this St Giles.” She gazed up into his eyes. “For a start—how is it you were able to walk the streets there without danger to yourself? Surely you would stand out, in your fine clothes, amongst these people?”

“I go in disguise.” He touched his bruised face. “And looking like this will only make it easier for me.”

Her eyes lit up. “You disguise yourself?”

No doubt she had some romantic notion that going about in disguise made life more exciting. He had half an idea to take her there and show her what it was like. She might not think it romantic once she’d seen it for herself.

Instead, he steered the subject back to the Frenchwoman. “When my father gave me the description of her—he’d written it down at the time for his hired man to see—I inquired everywhere for her. But it all came to nothing. I went into the heart of the St Giles rookery, on my own search, and what I saw there that made me want to help the children. I might have been one of them myself, but for my mother.”

She nodded. “I think I understand. But perhaps you weren’t working with good information. You never know. I think we should surmise that if the information your mother supplied your father with didn’t work back then, so close to when it happened, then it was perhaps not correct.”

“You think my mother might have lied to him?”

“It’s possible. She sounds as though she really wanted to keep you.” She gave a little, almost secretive smile. “I myself might lie if it meant I could keep something I really wanted.”

“Why, Lady Phoebe, you shock me.”

“Not quite so much as you shock me with your soubriquet and double life.”

“Touché.”