My Surrender by Connie Brockway Page B

yer likin’ on the road. Nah. Better ye go to St. Bride’s Abbey than take yer chances out here. Abbott come along here from town every other Wednesday. He’ll be along soon.”
    “I don’t want to go to an abbey.”
    The man nodded. “ ’Course ye don’t. But ye got nowhere else to go and the Father Abbot ain’t bad as men of God go, and there’s others like ye at the abbey, too. Orphans.”
    The boy didn’t say a word.
    “Ye know,” Trevor said thoughtfully. “Ye could tell me who ye are and I could maybe find some folks what might be lookin’ fer ye.”
    “I’ve told you,” the boy said with an elaborate sigh, “I’m a lost son of the House of Bourbon, but since your friends drowned everyone who knows my true identity and left me without a penny or a voucher to support my claim. I’m likely to stay lost for a good while yet.”
    “Cheeky bastard,” Trevor chortled. “That’s what saved ye, ye know. Ye made Black Sam laugh with yer tall tales of noblemen and palaces and he decided to spare ye. As fer who ye are—well, if ye thought there might be someone ye could make yer way to, I ’spect ye’d do it without me.”
    “You’ve been decent to me, Trevor,” the lad said. “Thank you for not killing me.”
    Trevor stared at him again and sighed. “Like me own son might have been. Clever hands and stubborn as a sinner with a prayer. Right good company, too.
    “Now, I ain’t sayin’ I’m a clever man. But I know a few things and I’m giving the gift of them to you, lad. Ye can take ’em or spit on ’em fer all I care after ye hear ’em, but hear ’em ye will. So here it be. It don’t matter who ye were before ye washed up on them rocks I found ye hid in. Whoever ye were in France died on that shore.”
    The boy nodded. If he felt any animosity toward the men—including Trevor—who had been responsible for the death of his once-illustrious future—as well as his companions—he kept it well hidden.
    “Don’t be a fool, lad. World has too many of ’em as is. Be smart. Ye can spend yer days cryin’ fer what ye want or ye take what ye can get. Ye have a bonny tongue in yer head and a winning way when ye’ve a mind. Make good use of those things what no sea can drown nor smuggler steal. Keep them skills I taught ye fresh. Ye—”
    The sound of a horse whinnying stopped Trevor mid-sentence. He crouched down behind the hedge, his hand hard on the boy’s shoulder. “That’s the abbot’s carriage. Go on. Get out into the road and wave him down.”
    “But—”
    “Fer the love of God, lad,” Trevor said in exasperation. “I done one good thing in me life when I took ye off that shore. Now, let me do two. Who knows, maybe it’ll be enough to let me slip through the gates come Judgment Day.”
    The boy grinned broadly. “Oh, I rather I doubt it,” then, without a backward glance, he scrambled into the dirt road and hailed the approaching carriage.
    Culholland Square, Mayfair
July 18, 1806
    “Don’t be absurd!” Dand declared, standing over Charlotte as she sat calmly embroidering violets on a new pillow sham.
    Her butler had shown him in to the little walled garden. True to her supposition, Dand had returned this morning with a note for Toussaint. True to her expectation, he had not been happy about what she had then told him about their change of plans.
    But she had not expected his reaction to be so strong nor to so alter his demeanor. Indeed, she hardly recognized in this stranger the cocksure and imperturbable rogue she’d thought she’d known. His normal ironically amused expression had turned into a forbidding one and his stance was wide-legged and combative.
    “I am not being absurd,” she replied evenly. “Stop acting like some overprotective big brother.”
    “Oh, I can assure you,” he said in a low velvety voice that was all the more unnerving for its softness, “my emotions right now are far from brotherly.”
    She swallowed, refusing to be intimidated.