Chapter 45

"A what?"
Of course it wouldn't be anything good if it was associated with her, but she'd not the slightest idea what a tinker was, only that whatever it was, Devorlane Hawley bent his head forward so she couldn't see his face for his hair.
"A traveler." He took up the poker and beat the burning log into submission. "Tilly said he hung about Barwych for a time because-how should I phrase this ... "
Why would he be troubled to wonder, when he hadn't shrunk from divulging what he just had?
"He had a certain predilection for the ladies."
What was that supposed to mean exactly? He couldn't leave them alone? Keep his hands to himself? Or had he, like Devorlane Hawley, made outrageous demands? Demands, it shamed her to think she'd actually not just met-had enjoyed-to now be told... A traveler? She couldn't be descended from a traveler. Certainly the breath rushing down her nose in that second said not. Was this some equally vile decision on the part of this impertinent bastard to humiliate her? Tilly too? The last thing she'd do was let him see it. She raised her chin.
"Maybe he did, Lord Hawley, but that does not mean he had anything to do with me."
"I never said that he did. I just wondered-"
"You would know about such things yourself?"
He rose to his feet, brushing bark flakes from his otherwise immaculate trousers, as if it was all the most natural thing in the world. "Don't you see, a predilection would suggest there being children-"
Oh, and now she was the living proof of that? Some tinker's daughter? A man who liked women. Lots of them by the sounds of it. She supposed it could have been worse. She supposed he could have liked men, then she wouldn't be here at all. Boiling hot fury flooded her face, she raised her chin higher. "You would."
"And Tilly also remembers-"
"Whatever Tilly remembers she is wrong, Lord Hawley."
Or just maybe he made up these vile insinuations? He was low enough to. She was not the child of some traveling tinker. How ... how could she be? Sapphire, the greatest thief London had ever known.
Devorlane Hawley started toward her, his boots noiseless on the Turkish rug, his gait, vaguely ambling, something it never was. And his eyes? She withdrew her gaze from the measuring stare.
"She remembers old man Armstrong was taken with him because the name was-"
"Don't call him that," she snarled.
He stared as if she'd suddenly spouted two heads. Perhaps tinker's daughters did? She didn't know, not being one herself.
"The name was the same."
His voice washed over her. Maybe the names were the same, but it didn't mean a thing. No, she could think of only one thing. She must get out of here. There was not a single, solitary reason to stay.
"Tilly also remembers there being a squad of children-not just this man's, no. Local children nobody wanted. Mrs. Penrith, the estate manager's wife, looked after them till she died. The strange thing was, from what Tilly said-"
Leave? She went now. Calmly, with as much dignity as she could muster. Whatever the reason he said those things, said them as if he couldn't stop, it didn't mean her ears needed to listen to such blasphemous rubbish. Not when he didn't give a crumb of thought to them hearing it, although 'crumb of thought' wasn't the word that went through her head about what he didn't give about it.
"Oh, Tilly said? And she's sober enough a quarter of the time to remember her own name, let alone anybody else's?"
She walked across the floor and opened the wardrobe. Her coat was there somewhere, and when she located it, when she dragged it from the hanger, untangled the neck of it rather, she'd put it on. Her belongings, fortunately, were still in her bag. No, he needn't come up behind her like this so she was aware of him, short inches away. Of his shadow, of his scent. The hideous things he said.
"It was in the monk's cell."
Maybe Mrs. Penrith had, but that didn't mean she was one of them. Why that was as ridiculous a notion as her feet springing wings so she could fly about this fine chamber. But the lies, the calumny, the cheap attempt by Tilly to hit her in the gut with this bag of rubbish, simply because she was here in this house as Devorlane Hawley's mistress, was something else. A tinker's daughter? Her? She did not think so. Why, her name was Armstrong. Wasn't it? So she wouldn't listen to this. She smoothed the coat collar.
"You, of course, would know how it is to have a predilection for women, Lord Hawley."
He sighed deeply. Actually, with his jacket removed and his sleeves rolled up, and the firelight glowing on his face, he looked appallingly inviting. So much so the thought smarted, maybe that was why she thought so, because she was a tinker's, and God knows what kind of woman's, daughter? A hedgerow brat. Full of immoral yearnings. Thoughts. Needs. Temper. Fury.
"And you should be thankful, Miss Armstrong, that I take care of my women that way, rather than see another bastard child on the parish."
"A bastard child?" Cass turned and set the hanger back on the rail. It was an awful lot better than jab it in his eye. "Is that what you think? What you are saying? That I am, Lord Hawley?"
"A few other things perhaps. Not that necessarily."
And yet was it quite so clever, now that she'd taken the coat from the hanger, to put it on? The papers were downstairs and the papers were the key to this. The things that would prove beyond a shadow of a gray doubt she was of noble lineage, a cast out child, now in this situation because someone must have been jealous of her. Matthew too.
No. But she'd removed the coat from the wardrobe. She crossed to the bed. She did it largely in the hope something would occur. The thing was the business of the monk's cell was unnerving. Also, it wasn't good, those names being the same, no matter which way she looked at it.
Her throat tightened.
"Well." Though it was difficult to set the coat down on the bed, she did. To remain here but get rid of him, as she was going to have to do, required a degree of calm. "I daresay it all depends on the definition of bastard," she said.
"And yours doesn't mean illegitimate children?"
"Oh, mine doesn't mean anything. Pray don't let me be the one to cast the first stone. That would be immoral of me."
"That's good to know because it strikes me that's exactly what you're doing. But fortunately I'm thick-skinned. I know exactly what I am, Miss Armstrong. Fooling myself has never been one of my faults."
"And you are saying it is mine?" Pray God her chin's defiant angle was unmistakable, especially now she must either put the coat on, or sit back at the table. "No, you will be the one to take that back when I prove who I-and Matthew, of course-really belonged to. Lord Armstrong may not have wished to acknowledge us, for whatever reason, it is true. I understand that. It does not make me a tinker's daughter."
"Whether you are or not, and I'm sorry this isn't working quite the way you want, do you think that-"
"Why should I think when I'm not a tinker's bastard? Well? I know my origins."
"Well, I think too, Miss Armstrong. I think if you're not going to take the coach back to Barwych now, as that coat there says you are, although, of course you can come back, and if you're not going to be amenable to the supper I prepared for you-"
"You? Cook? That's in the same realms as me being a tinker's daughter."
"Had prepared for you then."
"Oh, don't change the subject."
"Or indeed, the information I gave you-"
"How can I be after you drove me around and around? Or indeed gave me that information?"
"If you don't want to listen to anything I have to say on that subject-"
"Unless it greatly improves it?"
"-you can come to bed and keep the end of the bargain we agreed the other day. Now, which is it to be?"
Well. Of course. It was always going to come to that. And it meant she could stay. She just hoped he didn't think that after last night's yawn-inducing session, his bed was a delight.
She reached to unpin her hair.
"Fine. Just give me a moment won't you?"