“My point is, I don’t ever recall hearing Gentleman Jim’s name linked with another woman. It was only ever Jenny. Which would lead one to believe—”
“That it was some grand love affair?” St. Clare scoffed. “If that was the case, then why—” He stopped himself from giving voice to the questions that had plagued his unhappy childhood.
Why hadn’t Jenny loved him?
Why had she hit him and shouted at him and told him he’d ruined her life?
Maggie seemed to know what he was feeling, just as she always had. Her hand stroked the back of his neck in a soothing caress. “I think that, perhaps, she was disappointed by your father. Disappointed in life. It’s unfair that she took it out on you, but…I do believe she loved you in her way.”
“Oh, do you?” He gave a humorless laugh. “I’d wager she never lost any sleep over my disappearance.”
“You’re wrong,” Maggie said. “She spoke about you in the end.”
He flinched from her words as if they caused him physical pain. Jenny had often been cruel to him. And worse. She’d left him feeling as though he wasn’t worthy of a mother’s love. Even so, the thought of her dying—of speaking of him in her final moments—was almost too much to bear.
Maggie pressed on. “It was when I sat with her during the fever. Most of what she said in her final moments didn’t make any sense. But she mentioned your name, and she asked for a priest. Not Mr. Applewhite, but someone else. A man she called Father Tuck. I’d no idea she was religious.”
St. Clare hadn’t either. Jenny had never attended church services and had never encouraged him to do so. As far as he could remember, she’d been at odds with God. Bitter about her lot in life and the scorn she faced as an unwed mother. “I suppose death makes believers of us all.”
“Yes, well, regardless of religion, it was you she was thinking of at the last. That must mean something.”
“What it means, my dear, is precisely nothing. Less than nothing. It’s so much ancient history to me. Not worth discussing at all.”
“And that’s that, is it? You have no intention of talking about the past?”
“No,” he said frankly. “I don’t.”
“I’m a part of your past.”
“No, you’re not.” He looked at her in the darkness. “You’re a part of me.”
Her mouth wobbled.
“The very best part,” he said. “The only part that matters. I may have given up the hope of seeing you again, but not a day has passed that I haven’t thought of you. That I haven’t wished…”
“What?” she asked softly.
“That I could be with you again. Like this. As the man I am now.” He slid his arm around her waist and drew her close. “That I could finally make you mine.”
She touched his face, tracing the curve of his brow with her fingertips and stroking the hard line of his jaw. “My first love,” she murmured to him. “My only love. I am yours. I’ve always been yours.”
Something inside him—a tightly held coil of worry and tension—slowly eased. He leaned into her words. Drinking them up like a man too long deprived of water.
She’d always known what he needed, what it took to make him whole. And she gave it to him now unreservedly. Her love. Her friendship. The exquisite reassurance of her touch.
He turned his face into her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “What about Beasley Park?”
“I could ask you the same about your grandfather and your title. Unless… You don’t have a plan, do you?”
His expression turned rueful. “None of this has been planned. Not since the moment you walked into the library at Grosvenor Square. As for what comes next…I only know one thing.” He loomed over her on the bed, his words as solemn and weighty as a sacred vow. “Whatever happens with my grandfather, with Beasley Park and all the rest of it…I’m never letting you go again.”
St. Clare had to let her go, of course. Not an hour later, in the foggy, bronze-streaked minutes before dawn, he bundled her into a hackney and accompanied her back to Green Street.
It was for the best. The two of them had enough to worry about without tempting scandal in the bargain. If he and Maggie were to have any kind of future together, their courtship must proceed as properly—and as publicly—as possible.
He returned to Grillon’s alone, where he cleaned his wound and went back to