Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,62

wasn’t some bogeyman going about scaring women.

Tynan saw the shifting of a shadow before he heard the approach.

He turned and found Finn there, his hands jammed in his pockets, staring off in the direction Faye’s carriage had just taken.

“She’s gone,” the boy noted.

“Aye, she’s gone,” Tynan said needlessly. And something about her departure this time told him it was the end of Faye Poplar coming around. There’d been a finality that hadn’t been there before in her stricken eyes, a hurt from, ironically, the one betrayal he’d not been guilty of in his life. “And I am better for it.” Only, even as he uttered the words, he had a hard time convincing even himself of it. “I can focus on securing my next post.” His work as a warden, which children like Finn and the other boys and girls who’d once lived in that East London house, had relied upon.

The usually cynical boy’s eyes lit. “Do ye think so? Ye think ye can get back Newgate?” An eager excitement filled the boy’s voice.

Tynan started to answer in the affirmative to that very question. Of course he did. After all, when he’d been locked up in that cell, getting out and reclaiming his place in that prison had sustained him. Only… now, a different voice whispered around his brain.

Do you really believe with your criminal history of bribing the most powerful, you’ll be granted another post as warden?

That bold challenge Faye had thought nothing of putting to him.

The boy’s hopeful expression dipped. “Mr. Wylie?”

She didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. Tynan firmed his jaw. He’d given more credence to her doubts than were deserved. “Have you ever known me to fail?” he countered.

Finn’s grin returned, bright and slightly uneven. “No, sir.”

Unnerved by that show of confidence, Tynan nudged his head, urging Finn on, and they fell into step beside each other, heading for the residence they now shared.

It might not be Newgate that he landed, but there were any number of other prisons and he’d funds enough to buy a position and establish a whole new life and identity for himself.

As they walked, Finn spoke, interrupting Tynan’s musings. “That’s why I stayed in the house, you know.”

When the others left.

That unspoken thought lingered on the end of the boy’s sentence.

“And what of the other boys?” he asked evenly.

Finn snatched the cap from his head and twisted it in his fingers. “They… feel bad for having doubted ye and they…and they…wanted to make it up to ye.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What did they do exactly?”

Finn immediately went tight-lipped, and it was then that Tynan had his confirmation. “Jack and John? They were behind the attack on Faye?”

From the corner of his eye, he caught the tensing of Finn’s tiny frame as he hesitated. That loyal streak would prove the child’s downfall. It was the same one that had sent him running here to protect Faye and had had him living in an empty apartment for nearly five months in the hope of Tynan’s return.

“They were tryin’ to ’elp,” the boy said gruffly. “They ’eard you quarreling outside when ye came back, about not wanting her to go to Oswyn’s.”—Tynan’s stomach sank.—“And she wouldn’t listen to you, and so they thought to scare her…” Finn’s voice trailed off.

“By having Bragger assault the lady?” He briefly closed his eyes. God, she could have been killed.

Finn scowled. “Didn’t say I liked it.” He shrugged. “Just that they thought you, who’s been complaining about her being around, would appreciate… well… being free of ’er.” It was a different sort of loyalty from Jack and John. The manner where a person who wronged another paid a debt and did so by any means, even ones with the dangerous outcome that had nearly resulted this morn?

Unbidden, a memory came of the moment he’d come upon Bragger with his hands on a woman and realized that it had been Faye.

His insides knotted all over again.

“And you?” Tynan asked, rubbing his gloved hands together in an attempt to drive some warmth to the freezing cold digits.

“Did I ’ave any part?” Finn scrunched his nose up. “Nah. I came ’ere to help her. Didn’t much mind ’aving the miss about. Kinda loiked her, Oi did.” Horror wreathed the boy’s freckled features.

Aye, that was an altogether odd sentiment that Tynan knew all too well and couldn’t explain. Liking the minx.

Finn continued, apparently needing to sort through himself liking someone of Faye’s station. “She didn’t treat me like street