Leo’s steps slowed a little, surprised by her response. “He did. Sat at the kitchen table with a hornbook, struggling to sound out the Lord’s Prayer.”
“With such a determined son, I expect no less from the father.” Esteem warmed her voice.
Leo felt as though he’d taken a punch to the chest. To steady himself, he took a drink of wine. He had expected bafflement from her, or outright disdain. But not this ... admiration. Especially not in the clarity of a barren, moonlight-blasted garden. Yet she saw him fully, and liked what she saw.
“No one more determined than Adam Bailey,” he said after a moment. “Was as determined.” Leo’s father had died as he lived: working. Always wanting more. A trait shared by his only living son.
Leo had advantages his father did not. More wealth, a greater understanding of the exigencies of business. And magic, given to him by the Devil.
Leo would use his every power to seize whatever he wanted.
As if frustrated by the growing bond between him and Anne, clouds slid across the face of the moon, blotting out its light. The garden sank back into darkness.
“Fifteen shillings a week. That’s what he made.” The same amount Leo carried in his pocket wherever he went. “Hardly more than subsistence.”
“Something altered your circumstances.”
“A rich man’s fancy.” The irony hardly escaped him.
“He gave my father a commission. A bloody big commission that meant pulling me from school so I could help complete it in time. The man wanted a dozen racing saddles. And he wanted them within a month. So we made the damned things, my father, my mother, and me. I was ten at the time. We had to hire the coffin-builder’s wagon to make the delivery.” Sometimes he woke from dreams to find his fingers holding a phantom awl.
“The man must have been quite fond of horseflesh,” Anne murmured.
“He owned two horses only, to pull his carriage. Said that he’d been thinking about taking up racing, and wanted to be prepared, should he ever indulge the whim.”
Anne’s laugh was wry. “No wonder you think all noblemen are fools.”
He stopped and faced her. “I never said that.”
“Those words specifically? No.” Some light escaped the house, tracing the line of her cheek and curve of her ear as she stared up at him. Her gaze was alert, unblinking. “Yet it’s there, just the same. Your opinion of the upper classes is ... low.”
“They haven’t given me much cause to believe otherwise.” Memories of university lacerated him. He still heard the taunts of the noblemen and gentlemen commoners, how they’d called him scum and upstart vulgarian and emptied their chamber pots onto his bed when he was out attending the classes they disdained. The burning shame of those days still charred him around the edges.
He had returned home after one term, swearing never to go back. After that, he had worked beside his father once more, only by then work meant not the saddlery but Exchange Alley.
She dropped her gaze, yet only slightly, before looking up again. “So, those of noble birth are all the same person wearing different masks?”
Her voice held a bite, faint, but there, and he respected her for it.
“There are ... exceptions.”
“And I am indeed grateful you made an exception for me.” She moved away from him. “I find myself chilled. I’ll return inside.”
He caught her wrist as she turned, and drew her back. “Neither of us is who others suppose us to be.”
She gave this consideration, which was more than he had given her. “These past few days have been educational.”
“For both of us.” He still believed most aristos to be spoiled buffoons, but he was sage enough to admit when there was something to learn. Mostly, he was learning the intricacies of his wife. “Stay out here with me. Please,” he remembered to add.
Her wrist slid from his grasp, and for a moment, he thought she would storm back into the house. Instead, she looked pointedly at his arm, which he offered. She accepted, and they resumed their stroll, with the sounds of crunching shells beneath their feet and the distant tolling of Saint George’s bell marking the hour.
Ten o’clock. Bram would be at the Snake and Sextant, the usual meeting place for the Hellraisers before they ventured out for the night’s exploits. Edmund went out seldom, now that he had the wife he had coveted. John often had dealings at Whitehall that kept him late. Which meant that Bram was alone. Unless Leo joined him.
He waited for the feeling of restlessness that always presaged his evening entertainment. The need to do and see more and more. An unceasing appetite for the pleasures afforded by wealth.
Part of him felt he should go, merely on principle. Prove to himself that marriage had not changed him, nor the essence of himself.
Yet jagged and uncertain their conversations might be, he found himself enjoying Anne’s company. He liked talking with her. If he required a rationale, he could tell himself that he merely wanted to speed up the process of rogering his wife. And he did want that. But she was more than a receptacle or ornament. A person. Entire and genuine. Soft, but not fragile. Innocent, yet not immature.
There could be much more to Anne than he had first accounted—a thought both alarming and intriguing.
Since the subject seemed to interest her, he said, “The money my father earned from the commission was substantial. More than he could make in a year. But he didn’t put it back into the saddlery. He invested it instead. In a shipment of Indian cotton.”
“I didn’t realize saddle makers knew so much of overseas trade.”
“They don’t. My father would go to the pub and have someone read him the newspaper. Got his imagination sparked by tales of wealthy nabobs and all the faraway places making such wondrous things. He wanted to be a part of that.”
“It was a bold thing to do,” Anne said quietly. “Invest when he had so little experience with it.”
“The neighbors called him a fool for pissing away a year’s earnings, and all for a bit of Oriental cloth. Their smirks died when he earned thrice what he had invested.”
“What a fine day that must have been for you.” She smiled.
He remembered it vividly. The letter that came from London. Leo reading the letter aloud as his father stared at the banknotes stacked on their single, rough table. His mother’s tears. And his father’s vow that he would invest again, and again, until they could have butter on their bread and fresh tea in their cups. His father had contracted a sickness that day, a sickness for the future. Leo caught it, too. A fever in his blood, one he hoped would never be cured.
“By the time I was fifteen,” he said, “we were more than comfortable. We were rich. And every day, I grow richer.”
“Gaining you everything you want.”
He chuckled at that. “There is always more.”
“Never enough?” She glanced up at him through her lashes.
“When I become the wealthiest man in England, perhaps then.” But he doubted it. He stiffened when he caught the soft music of her chuckle. “You think my ambition ridiculous.”
She shook her head. “You mistake me. My laughter is for the peculiarities of circumstance. Yesterday, I found myself married to a man I barely know. And today, I learn that this man and I share something unexpected.”
“We share a name now.” And a bed, though they had only slept in this bed.
“Something else. For I realized just now”—she moved to stand before him—“that the saddler’s son and the poor baron’s daughter are more than husband and wife.” A rueful smile curved her lips. “We have both stood outside the assembly hall, watching the dancers.” She glanced toward the house. “Now it’s time to go inside.”