When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,103
looked at her, and she was shocked to see his black eyes dulled. “Eddie was hanged for theft. He was eleven.”
“But…” That couldn’t be, surely? She’d never heard of a child so young being hanged, let alone for theft. “I don’t understand.”
He sighed. “Eddie picked pockets. I didn’t like it—far too dangerous—but when we were hungry I looked the other way. And we were very hungry that winter when Eddie was eleven and I thirteen.”
She didn’t like this story—she already knew the ending, and it was horrific. But she couldn’t let him suffer alone. “What happened?”
Gideon’s face twisted and he bared his teeth. “It was an aristocrat, an old doddering man in St Giles looking for a whore most like. Why else would he be walking the streets there? Eddie took his watch—his gold watch, silly fool. The lord’s footman caught my brother. Eddie was hauled before the court, tried, and hanged.”
Messalina gasped, appalled. That a boy should be executed for a man’s crime was disgusting. She only vaguely knew the law, but this didn’t seem at all right.
She whispered, “I thought that the magistrates would commute the sentence if the condemned was so young?”
“Oh, they would in the normal way of things.” Gideon’s voice was low and hateful. Had she once thought he had no feelings? “I found that out later. But the lord—a man named Cross—insisted on the sentence. He said that it was an affront to his dignity as a peer for his watch to be stolen. That Eddie must pay the price of his crime. It was only proper.”
He snarled the last word, his expression transfigured into a sneering mask.
What could she say in the face of such injustice? Of Gideon’s rage and grief? “I’m—I’m sorry.” The words felt like a dainty handkerchief pressed to the bloody stump of a severed limb. Inadequate. Trite.
Useless.
Gideon didn’t seem to hear her anyway. “I never saw him while he was imprisoned. I hadn’t the coin to bribe the guards. He was in there alone and afraid, without food or blanket, and I could do nothing. Nothing.”
His hands clenched and then opened, empty.
The horror washed over her. She couldn’t comprehend. For a little boy…To be completely helpless…She shook her head, grasping for some light. Anything. “Your mother?”
The look he gave her was bleak. “Mam was soused much of the time by then. She was dead drunk, unable to form words even, when he was hanged.” He glanced at the window and murmured, almost as if to himself, “When he was hanged…”
She couldn’t ask. Didn’t want to know or imagine. But she couldn’t help running her hand from his shoulder down to his fingers. Taking his warm palm in hers and squeezing.
He inhaled, his hand tightening around hers. “I went, of course. I couldn’t do else. I didn’t want him to die—” He choked on the word and she knew he meant alone.
A child dying alone.
He closed his eyes. “I followed the procession. By the time we came to Tyburn there were too many for me to make my way to the front. I stood on a barrel to see my brother hanged.”
He stopped again and swallowed.
Messalina felt tears pricking her eyes. She couldn’t imagine. A boy watching his only brother hanged.
“I think he saw me. Maybe.” He shook his head. “I might’ve been wrong, he was so far away. But I could see him. His face was pale. So very white…”
Gideon looked at her, and she saw that his eyes were damp, though no tears had fallen. His face was harsh, his features drawn, the silver scar standing out on his cheek, and she realized that anyone who didn’t know him would mistake his grief for something else. Would think him remote and ruthless and awful when he wasn’t.
She would’ve thought that a week ago.
“Eddie was younger than me,” he said softly, his voice so low she could hardly make out the words. “It was my fault he was hanged. I should’ve protected my brother. I should’ve taught him not to steal.”
The carriage lurched into motion. The procession must’ve moved on.
But Messalina hardly noticed, she was so stunned. It was as if a blinding light had shone into her mind. She remembered Gideon shouting at a weeping Sam that first day of their marriage. What had seemed like barbaric savagery was now flipped over, the other side entirely different. Gideon had been making sure Sam—a young boy like his brother—would never steal again. Because it was a hanging offense.