Chapter 60

The bench's custody? As he stood there trying not to breathe his hardest, trying to breathe at all actually, but to assume his coat of boredom at the bloody dreadful do this was, Devorlane wondered one thing. Did she have any idea what they would do to her there?
"Cassidy Armstrong?" the old woman said again. "Why yes! I do knows this girl. I does. Cassidy Armstrong. Picked her up from the church door meself."
Christ Almighty, in heaven above, if that damned old crone in the corner didn't shut her goddamned cursed mouth she would be getting picked up from the church door he plastered her on. What Cassidy Armstrong's background was had been beyond obvious to him since Tilly first regaled him with that story. It had just been simpler, in so much as anything was with Cassidy Armstrong, to damn well ignore it. If only she'd done the same. But she was accursed that way. Niggle. Push. Shove. Insist. Even now the way she raised her chin didn't inspire him with hope. His heart dropped to his boots.
"You must be mistaken. I am Sapphire. And I can assure you I have never been at a church door in my life."
"Yes, you was, with a nice little piece of paper tied round your fat little day old ankle. Cassidy, what was your mother's surname, and Armstrong, what was your father's. Tinker man. From Donegal. Now, what was his first name again? I think I forgot. But someone here must know it."
His gut tightened. Why the hell had she admitted it? Right here in front of everyone. Mother of Christ. Was she so keen to get away from-he didn't dare think it-him?
He exhaled sharply. The hell, he wasn't that bad, was he? Perhaps that time he had been so insistent about reinstating the barriers? But hell, he'd been on the verge of possibly putting another child on the parish. And she? She'd been everything he'd dreamed of. Everything he'd wanted. Except she wasn't going to be his was she, with her terms and conditions and endless whinnying about everything it was possible to whinny about? When he wasn't exactly in the best of places, trying to give up overwhelming habits, trying to keep restraint, trying to keep the things he'd lived behind. So damn long, he didn't know how to let them go.
As for that damned letter coming today, the one that had thrown him clean into another universe-well, he could understand her getting uppity about it. He'd gotten uppity about it himself-furious rather, when he'd caught her in his things, because he'd written the original to Colonel "the coot" Caruthers so long ago he'd clean forgotten he'd done it. How was he meant to remember everything? These last few weeks he'd had to place himself at the opposite end of the compass from her.
The clock was ticking down to her coming to the end of that box of papers. He saw it every day, every evening, when she stepped into his room to remove that stupid poultice, he'd sat incapable beneath for two hours. It was what he expected to hear. That, or she'd found something. And he couldn't, he hadn't wanted to let her go. Ridiculous when he had always been able to let go of any woman that this one should be in his blood.
"A tinker man? Maybe you think so. Maybe he was. It's no odds to me." Her coolly enigmatic gaze swept nothing in particular. Not the crone, not Belle. It simply hung in the air, as it seemed she did. A glittering jewel's worth of hardness, of luminosity, of beauty. Then she swung her gaze to him. "I won't be owned, Lord Hawley."
Jesus.
"This woman is me."
It was, wasn't it? With a churning in his gut, he thought, not just about her succulent lips and her ice cool touch, he thought about her. The fact she preferred those papers to him-yes. But preferring those papers had always been the deal. And the rationality of this suddenly didn't matter. Because she was other things. Things that had made him step forward when Belle had accused her. Things that had always been there. He just hadn't want to see they were.
How could she prefer a hangman's noose to him? Christ. It was screamingly, blindingly obvious wasn't it, when he'd treated her as he had? Did he want this moment he'd dreamed of, clung to, the one where everyone knew how innocent he truly was, so badly? He knew he was innocent and that was all that counted, especially now his deepest desire was to protect her from what the old woman said.
She'd had such dreams, hadn't she? Despite everything and perhaps because of it, she'd had them. Ones he suddenly didn't want anyone to tear from her. Ones he'd sit with a poultice on his leg till kingdom come if it meant her keeping them. He stepped forward.
"Actually this woman is with me. And I deeply regret how very delusional she is."
"Delusional? Me? Oh, that's a good 'un."
"Very well. I know you don't care for the word. I admit I don't either. But you are. Which is possibly, in fact I'd say, probably, why you're with me. So I can look after you."
"You? Look after me? Was this in your dreams of a white Christma-"
"Don't laugh."
"Then don't soddin' make me."
Surely no matter how much she hated being owned and he-perhaps he had tied and tethered her as one might a fabulous bird of prey-she'd at the very least accept the hand he now placed on her arm?
She did, but he was left in no doubt that dog dirt, or a soothing balm, were one and the same to her. There was no trouble discerning which his touch was for all her gaze was the merest flicker across his wrist.
He canted his jaw. Christ, she was the most delicious he'd ever known her, her hands clutching her reticule, her exotic scent winding round his senses, her eyes staring straight ahead, that impeccable black dress outlining her breasts. It was no trouble to nudge closer, so her scent wound tighter and his body stood along the lines of hers.