Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,70

He didn’t think of them, really, in any way. There were only two truths: the men he stole from were evil . . . and they deserved to lose everything.

Now, this unattended child . . . threw all that into question. This boy, not very much younger than little Rose, whom he and Temperance had taken in that night, had a father. A mother. And a reliance upon the items that filled this household, just as Rose and the children of the Rookeries did. All the families who were dependent upon work here, and who would be split up if there weren’t funds to retain them.

The babe tapped his fingers against the glass in a rhythmic little beat.

Dare matched those movements, though his were silent, in the staccato rhythm he tapped.

This was really the first time he’d been confronted with a new reality, one different from what he’d allowed himself before this. Until this moment, it had been all too easy to see the men he robbed not as victims but as sinners deserving of losing out.

He’d not thought of them having sons and daughters. Because to do so would have humanized them. It would have forced him to look at what he did in the same light that Temperance had through the years, as something shameful . . . and wrong.

“Where . . . issssssss he?” The cry came close to the room where the boy was, and Dare was jerked back to the moment—the danger in his being here, the risk of discovery. “Pauuuuul?”

The little boy looked toward that commotion, and then with Dare promptly forgotten, he went toddling off. “Ma-Ma-Ma.” The glass muffled the remainder of that call for his mother.

Springing into movement, Dare quit his spot at the Baron Bolingbroke’s household and, clinging to the shadows, found his way down the narrow alley and out toward . . . home.

Only it wasn’t really home.

He’d never truly had one.

Not since he’d gone off to live in the streets of East London . . . where he’d remained until now.

And there had never been a home again.

Dare quit Bolingbroke’s street and continued walking. Time melted away, and he continued on . . . until he found his way back to his townhouse. Spencer stood in wait, opening the door for him. The servant gave no outward reaction to Dare’s suspicious nighttime travels, dutiful servant that he was. Dare continued walking, climbing the stairs, and didn’t stop until he’d found his way outside a partially cracked open ivory door, resplendent in tulips and roses that had been etched into the panel, two small ponies frolicking at the very center of the beautifully crafted piece. So much loving mastery . . . of something as simple as a door. No detail had been forgotten. Intricate care had been taken for the entryway of this room.

Not so much as blinking, Dare stared at those carvings.

You got me a horse, Mama . . . a hooooorse!

His mother’s answering laugh filled Dare’s ears.

Why had he come here? This place where his memories were strongest.

He had turned to go when the faintest whisper of song froze him in his tracks.

Tom, he was a piper’s son

He learned to play when he was young

The only tune that he could play

Was over the hills and far away.

Dare moved closer, edging the panel open another fraction so he had an unhampered view of the owner of that voice.

Over the hills and a long way off

The wind shall blow my topknot off . . .

He felt drawn to that soft, lyrical melody, soothing and entrancing for its simplicity. Engrossed as she was in the child in her arms, Temperance gave no hint of awareness as Dare slipped in.

Dare had never entertained the idea of being a father. Lord knew he’d hated—and been hated by—his own enough that he’d never romanticized what that relationship was or could be. And then after he’d gone? Well, young boys in the streets didn’t think about fatherhood. But he knew the precise moment he’d realized he’d never have and didn’t want a child: he’d been unable to scrape by the funds to free seven-year-old Taylor Stephens from Newgate. In the end, he’d watched on, hopeless, just another face in the crowd, as young Taylor had swung from the gibbet for the crowd’s amusement, and for a crime of filching figs from a street vendor.

And that was when he knew . . . he’d nothing to offer a child. He’d nothing, really, to offer anyone.