Chapter 128

Her shoulders tightened. "That would be telling."
"Because that's what I'm doing my best to wonder, having come here. Why didn't you sell it? Avoid ending in a workhouse?"
"Oh, Your Grace, please don't lie. That's not what you're wondering at all."
"And what the hell's this about the Marshalsea?"
"The what?"
If she wasn't finished before, she was now. Look on the bright side. He hadn't walked around the front of her, although the leaves scrunched as he took a step towards her.
"Are you telling me that you're no stranger to places like this? Like that? Well?"
"Oh ... my dressmaking bills, Your Grace, have ... multiplied on occasion." Her throat tightened so she could hardly speak, the taste in her mouth was worse than chewing mouldy socks."Odd occasions when it seemed I could not control myself, as you so rightly pointed out on several."
"Now who's lying? Well?Who are you? Do you know the damned fortune I have just forked out to that bloody workhouse to have them go through their register, march the inmates up and down, matching a name to a person?"
"Your Grace, how could you do that-"
"And who is Zena Alice Ogsdon Watt? Your sister? Friend? What?"
"God rest her, she's dead, Your Grace, which I think is really quite obvious. She is the one who took your watch. She didn't mean to. She just couldn't help herself. She never could. And I beg your forgiveness for it."
"But you called her Topazin-"
A stupid move on her part. She swallowed. "What she liked to be called. It was her favorite color."
"Look, I know what Babs Langley did. Believe me, it is of as little consequence as you having my pocket watch, now I step back from it. I try anyway."
"Well, that is certainly magnanimous, especially when it's of every consequence. You know, I really had thought by now, you and she-"
"Are finished. Never were again, actually."
"Well, whether you are or not, you are, of course, assuming Babs Langley did something. That I'm not here of my own free-"
"Why the hell would you be? Stop lying, will you, for once in your life? Christ on a camel, it's hardly a spa town."
"And you, Your Grace, are hardly a nice person. Now, if you don't mind?" She clutched her shawl and took a step forward. "I have to-"
"Catterton."
Her heart lurched even as it soared. His voice was nothing like him, laced with a rich, dark emotion. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up against the rough cloth of her bonnet, the one it had quite broken her heart to have to wear, but which she had tried to embrace gladly as part of her sacrifice. Perhaps not so large a sacrifice as this, but large enough. He'd pounced on the word Catterton as if he were really struggling to master this, to master himself, and that was the word to remind himself of whatever he was here for. He pounced on it with more emotion than she'd ever heard in his voice.
"Catterton? What has Catterton to do with this, Your Grace?" The words were out of her own mouth before she could stop them.
"Catterton is where I see you. Where I have always seen you, if you must know.
Not here. To return to the watch, do you know why I damned my father to hell?"
His voice, now quieter than a mouse but deadlier than a knife, eviscerated her.
"I wouldn't know. Because he cheated at chess?"
"Oh, he cheated in every way possible, but not at that. It's taken me until now to forgive him. It's taken me this long to understand. After all, he loved her."
My God. What was he trying to tell her?
"Your Grace, whatever you think, and how very nice that was for him, apart from the watch there is nothing here for you. I'd be obliged, before Hodges over there sees it-"
"Nothing? Is that really what you think?"
"Yes, I do, Your Grace. If that is what you are somewhat misguidedly here for, I can't and won't let you put me above-"
"Why the blazes shouldn't I put you above Phoebe, if that's what this is about? She's not mine. She never was. And in many ways, I've held to that because I didn't want to put myself out there again. If that is why you left me, you need to tell me now. If there was some other reason, if you really can't bear my odious company, can't bear me, then say that, now too."
"Well, actually, Your Grace, now you come to mention it ... "
"Why did you leave me?" His voice dropped. "Do you at least mind telling me that much?"
She stared harder at the unkempt clover tufting the base of the nearest gravestone.Couldn't he guess why she'd left? Not because of the baby, or Phoebe. Not because of what she knew of him either. How could he make her sacrifice worse than it was, sticking pins in the effigy she'd already made of herself? Too managing. Too optimistic. Too stupid. Too grasping. Too much of a nothing beneath her bright star.
More than his watch, she had the crippling knowledge that went with it. It was sacrifice enough. And, if she was these things, it was nothing to what he was, coming here and making the fuss to end all fusses, having landed her in this mess. It wasn't even as if being with him was an option. Not when he knew the truth about her.
"Well. I would like to." Somehow she found her voice. "But I'm afraid that-"
"I love you, and I don't ever want to be without you again. No. Wait ... Where are you going?"
My God. Where did he think? She couldn't stay here. And where was Hodges when she needed him? Wandering about between the stones, his blond head just visible? Had Stillmore paid him to stand off?
"Christ ..."
She hurried on, ignoring the slithering sound of Stillmore, slipping on the mud and getting back to his feet.
"Bloody hell, come back. Must you spend every moment of your damned life running?" He lunged forward, catching her against the church wall. A sharp pain shot through her side as it grazed the rough stone.
"Please, Your Grace. I never asked you to come. I didn't want you here-I don't want you here. And I especially don't want you here talking this rubbish. If this is your move, it's your worst one yet. If you don't mind me saying. Now let me go before I scream for Hodges."
"But I am here."
"And I'm going to scream."
"And you do know there are those who will silence you if you do."
"Not this time.
"That's what you think."
"Get out of the way."
Her breath tore in her throat as she thumped her fists off his chest.The hard press of his body was right there against her. She would scream. Her move, if it killed her. She'd be the one to turn him away rather than see him go when she told him the truth. There was no place for her in his world. And love? Love was something she'd overcome.
"Jesus Christ, have you done something to your shape?No. No, you have."
"I ... I ... haven't. The food in the workhouse is very, very ..."
"The food in the workhouse is-. Bollocks." He flicked his gaze downward, realization thundering into his eyes. "Jesus."
The pressure of his body against hers slackened, and she managed to inch along the church wall.
"Let me save you the trouble of doing your calculations," she whispered. "It's nothing to do with you."
"This ... this is why you ran away? Tell me the truth, damn you."
"I just did."
"It's mine, isn't it?"
Her move, her move all right and she must make it. She dragged up her chin.
"It's Gabe's."