Chapter Thirty
Five adults and one child kept silent until Lady Rainsford rushed through the front door past Fleming, who had ensured that no other servants had witnessed the scene.
Rose spoke before anyone else. “I am not your child!” she cried, looking up at India. “I don’t like that woman.” Her little face crumpled, but she managed to halt the tears. “I don’t like the way people keep speaking as if my father didn’t exist. My father was Will Summers, and just because he is dead doesn’t mean that he didn’t exist!”
Then she twisted out of India’s hold, taking a step toward Thorn. “You shouldn’t give me away like that,” she cried, her voice rising. “I don’t want to be their daughter. I don’t even know them!”
For his part Thorn was in the grip of a rage that was only barely in check. What was India doing, declaring that Rose was her daughter? And Vander? Why in the hell had Vander made the claim that he was married to India?
India was his. Not Vander’s.
She would never be Vander’s.
But he looked down at Rose and realized all that would have to wait, because Rose was his as well. She was the bravest little girl he’d ever known, but her lips were quivering and her eyes were terrified. Almost certainly Lady Rainsford had called her names before he arrived, ones that she didn’t understand. She had been surrounded by shouting adults—and she thought her guardian had given her away.
He scooped her up into his arms and turned away from the adults silently watching them. “I did not give you away, Rose, and I never will. It was all a misunderstanding.” He began walking toward the dower house. “Let’s go home and we’ll ask Clara for some hot cocoa. Where is Clara, by the way?”
“That lady came and told Clara to stay,” Rose said, a sob breaking from her chest. “She brought me back to the house. But Lady Xenobia came outside just as she arrived, and they had an argument.”
“Did my parents and Vander come at the same time as Lady Xenobia?”
“No, they came just before you. Lady Rainsford is most unpleasant.” Her legs clung to his side, but her rigid backbone told its own story.
“She is not a likable woman,” Thorn observed, in one of the world’s great understatements. He pushed open the door of the dower house. “What you need to know, poppet, is that you are and always will be your papa’s daughter. Did you know that I saved Will’s life once?”
She stirred in his arms, but he didn’t release her. He just strode over to the sofa and sat down, keeping her on his lap. “We were around eight years old. It was winter, and there were ice floes in the Thames.”
“Did you have to go into the icy water?” She sounded slightly less distressed. “Papa told me that he used to fish spoons out of the river.”
He nodded, tightening his arms around her. “If we didn’t jump in ourselves, our master would throw us off the dock.”
“That is a despicable thing to do,” Rose said. Her hand curled around his forearm.
“He was the same sort of person as Lady Rainsford,” Thorn said. “Not someone you would wish to know. The amount of food Grindel gave us depended on what we brought him. Some of the boys were too small and too frail to go into the water when it was icy, so the big boys had to earn food for all of us.”
“Eight years old is not very big,” Rose observed.
“Your papa was the type of boy who never gave up. He dove and dove that afternoon,” he told her. “He was certain that he had felt something at the bottom of the Thames, something big down in the muck. Something that might make Grindel happy enough that he would let us sleep indoors.”
There were no words adequate to describe Grindel. Not for the first time, Thorn wished the man were still alive so he could kill him in memory of the boys who hadn’t survived.
“I wish Papa hadn’t been stubborn,” Rose said. “Did he find that big thing?”
“The last time he went down, he didn’t come back up. I stood on the dock and watched the spot where he dove, and I didn’t see any bubbles. I didn’t know what to do. The Thames is dark and murky at the best of times, and in the winter, it’s like Hades down there.”
“What’s Hades?”
“A terrible place. A place where a boy might find himself cut to the bone by a piece of metal sunk at the bottom, or he might come face to face with—” He caught himself. “—with a fish.”
“A fish wouldn’t scare me!”
“We were city boys, and we knew very little about fish. For all we knew, they would nibble our toes.”
“Did you jump in after Papa?”
Thorn nodded. “I did. It was so cold that I felt as if the ice were eating my bones. I kept going because Will was down there somewhere. Finally I saw just a flash of his yellow hair, the same hair that you have.”
“What was he doing?”
“He was stuck,” Thorn said. “His foot was caught in a net dropped by a fisherman. I almost didn’t get him out in time, but we managed. And we made it back to the dock.”
The truth was that the Thames had damn well nearly taken both of them that day. He still had no idea how he got Will back to the dock.
“Did you have to sleep in the graveyard that night?” Rose asked. She had forgotten to keep her back stiff, and her cheek nestled against his chest as if she had always been his child.
“We did not. After your father warmed up, he unclenched his fist. And he was holding the top of a silver teapot.”
“You mean that little round piece?”
“Exactly.”
“Was that enough so that all of you could have supper?”
“It was. Grindel let us all sleep inside for the next week, because it kept snowing.”
“It must have been a very costly teapot,” Rose said.
“It had a crest on it, which meant its owners would be grateful to have it back. But the more important point is that Will and I shook hands the next morning, and Will said that he owed me. And that someday he would pay me back by giving me the most valuable thing he owned.”
“What did he give you?” Rose tilted her head back and looked up at him.
“You.” Thorn smiled down at her. “He gave me you. You were the most valuable thing that Will Summers ever owned in his entire life. He couldn’t stay with you, Rose. But he remembered his promise, and he mentioned it in the letter he sent to me.”
“Oh.” Her voice sounded terribly sad.
He put his cheek down on her soft hair, remembering Will and his stubborn, brave nature, seeing how beautifully it had come out in his daughter. “Now you are mine,” he told her, “by gift from your father. You mustn’t ever think that I would give you away, Rose. I am proud that you are mine.”
“But you put me in the dower house.” Her voice quavered. “And that lady said that I was hidden away, and she made it sound awful.”
Thorn had to unclench his back teeth before he shocked Rose with his opinion of Lady Rainsford. “I should never have agreed to it,” he said. “I will never do anything like that again.”
“But if you keep me as your ward, you can’t marry Miss Rainsford,” Rose said anxiously. “Her mother thinks that I am Lady Xenobia’s daughter.”