Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,97

in the workhouse.”

Part of it.

She saw Tynan and his sister as young children, pressed against the wall and suffering. All the while, as he’d rightly accused, she’d been comfortably ensconced in her nursery. Her breathing hitched, the cold, coupled with the pain, making that reflexive intake agonizing.

She felt his questioning stare on her. “Faye?” he asked, worry laden in the lone syllable of her name.

It was too much.

Faye abruptly stopped and whipped about.

“It’s hard, Faye,” he called without inflection as she struggled with the clasp of her cloak. “And there is no shame in abandoning this…”

Faye wrestled free of the garment and came to a stop before that solitary woman against the dilapidated brick building. She eyed Faye’s approach, her hand hovering at her waist.

“Faye!” Tynan called out, reaching her side and stepping between her and the young woman who was older than the child she’d initially taken her for.

“Here,” Faye murmured, handing over the wool-lined article.

The young woman glanced at it for a moment and then back at Faye. “This some kind of trick,” she said in a hoarse voice, deeper and gruffer than expected for one so diminutive. There was also a surprising cleanness and crispness to her English, almost as fine as the King’s English.

“N-no tr-trick,” Faye stammered, her teeth knocking together from the cold even as the woman, near to her own age, didn’t so much as flinch or shiver in the unforgiving winter air. Faye shook the cloak slightly. “I’d like you to have it.”

The woman said nothing for a moment, and then her mouth tightened, a sneer forming on her lips. “Look at you, a fancy lady trying to make yourself feel better.” She wrenched the garment from Faye’s hands. “Now go,” she said, shaking the heavy muslin article at Faye. “Go back to your happy, comfortable life where you won’t even think about anything you’ve seen here again.” She spat, the spittle catching Faye’s hem.

Tynan stepped forward, but Faye placed a hand upon his sleeve and urged them on.

“She w-wasn’t wrong in her outrage,” she said, hugging her arms. “Sh-she—” Tynan’s cloak came down about her shoulders, enfolding her in the deepest, heaviest warmth she’d ever felt.

“Faye Poplar, there is no way in hell I’m allowing you to go about in this without a cloak.”

Because of his gruff thoughtfulness, she went warm from the inside out and suspected she’d never be cold again.

“What will happen to her?”

“If she’s not killed by a patron?”

A patron. He’d automatically assumed the young woman was a whore, but then, what options existed for women born to the streets? When so few existed for women of the nobility, there’d be even fewer chances at life for those like the lady behind them. “Then she’ll probably land in Newgate for thievery. Or die from the cold. And it’s likely that she won’t hold on to that cloak for very long.”

“I made her a target,” she whispered, struck by the depth of her own naïveté.

“She was already a target,” he said with more gentleness than she’d ever heard from him, even when he’d been with his sister. “You just made her warmer and more comfortable for the time being.”

Nothing. She’d done nothing. “Perhaps any funds I earn in the sale of any stories that are published might go toward improving the lives of those who are most in need of help.”

“You’d be wiser to keep that money for yourself and your future.”

“But where is the good in that?” she countered.

He stared at her for a long moment, and she tried to make sense of the emotion in his opaque gaze.

“Here we are,” he said gruffly, and Faye blinked at that abrupt shift and looked up.

At some point, they’d arrived.

As Tynan knocked, Faye assessed Mr. Oswyn’s residence.

With every other windowpane broken, there would be little warmth found within the brick structure. Just like Mr. Colb’s residence, these bricks had already begun to crumble, revealing their age and the battering they took by the elements and time.

The door opened, and the figure who stepped into the entryway did a quick once-over of Faye before settling his focus on Tynan. “Thought ye weren’t coming.”

This was Oswyn. Big, brawny, and burly, he was a mountain of a man.

“We were delayed,” Tynan said coolly. He’d gone to lengths to coordinate this meeting between her and the man before them. And to think she’d doubted Tynan and his motives and his willingness to help.

The older man gave Tynan a once over and then chuckled. “Nice garments.