She shivered imagining what his pretty near actually looked like. It didn’t matter. The drop was heart-stopping anywhere along those bridges.
“Can we keep them?” Theresa asked. “There’s only eleven of them.”
Only eleven kittens. She could have wept. The cat population in the Worth household—already approaching dangerously Malthusian levels—had nearly quadrupled with the retrieval of that sack.
But she’d promised her brother and sister that even if they didn’t always have fine clothing and servants, they would always have love. She thought of Camilla, sent away because girls of her age talked too much. One of her sisters was somewhere in England—and maybe not loved at all.
She thought of Benedict laughing, looked at him running a finger down the soft fur of that little black kitten.
And she thought of Christian. He’d been everything to her once. At least, he’d been the promise of everything. For all that he’d wanted to marry her—for all that he cared still—when push came to shove, he’d not thought of her wellbeing at all.
She came over to the edge of the bed and picked up a little yellow cat who emitted a mew of protest.
“Benedict,” she said, “Theresa. There was a rule. The rule was: No cats.”
Theresa’s lip trembled. Judith took off her bonnet and let the strings trail on the bed. It was instant mayhem: three kittens leapt at once, pouncing on this new and exciting prey.
“I’m proud of you,” Judith said. “I wouldn’t want siblings who thought that rules were more important than kittens. You did the right thing.”
Their faces lifted, twin expressions of joy lighting them.
“Here are the new rules,” Judith told them. “We can each keep one kitten. You have to find homes for all the others.”
“Yes, Judith.”
“You have to keep order. No teaching them to climb or whatever it is that you do. And it is your job to keep the females locked in a room when they go into heat.”
Her two scapegrace siblings smiled and nodded. Of course they did; they’d say anything now. Judith knew who was going to be stuck actually enforcing these rules.
But Benedict was smiling again, and Judith didn’t care.
“If you don’t pay any mind,” she reminded them, “you’ll discover that inattention on that score is how sacks of kittens end up hanging from hooks on bridges or worse. Do not fail me.”
“Yes.” Theresa nodded vigorously. “Thank you. Oh, thank you, Judith.”
“And so, until we can find them all homes…”
She looked at them, and then snapped her wrist so her bonnet strings trailed over her brother’s lap. “It’s kitten wars!”
Four little cats raced over him, claws out. They were still small enough that they would do no more than tickle. Kittens batted. They pawed. They pounced. Her brother shrieked, and she ran the bonnet strings across his legs.
Benedict dissolved into laughter as the cats regrouped, rolling around and pouncing once more. “Can’t. Breathe.” He choked. “Too many kittens.”
“Just eleven, did you say?” Judith narrowed her eyes at her brother and sister. “Fear my wrath. Feel the claws.”
“No, no!” he shrieked. “No claws. No claws! I will retaliate!”
He didn’t. He laughed and gathered the kittens in his arms.
“Do your worst,” Judith said. “I’ll be waiting.”
Christian awoke at the toll of noon the next day.
Acceptable, if this had been mid-Season, and he’d been burning the midnight oil in a socially acceptable fashion. Embarrassing, since he’d gone to bed at eleven. His head ached with the subtle pressure that came from not enough sleep. His eyes felt as if they’d been dragged through gravel. He’d dreamed again last night, a wisp of memory that had largely vanished from his conscious mind. Something about empty rooms and unending corridors in the Tower of London.
By the time he made his way downstairs, he’d done his best to dull the ache of his head with willowbark tea. He’d managed to lose the most persistent throb of his head, if not the sense of unease that accompanied it.
The voices that he heard in the parlor didn’t make him feel more comfortable.
He inhaled and strode past the open door.
“Christian.”
The voice was like a noose, catching him up. He turned.
“Where do you think you are going?”
His mother and his cousin sat together, looking suspiciously innocent. Like a pair of panthers that had been lying in wait at the watering hole for prey to wander past.
“Come.” Lillian patted the sofa nearest her. “Join us. Tell us how you’ve been.”
“I’ve an appointment.”
“Oh, you mean the one you had Mr. Lawrence make at your solicitor’s office?” His mother smiled. “No, you don’t. I’ve moved it.”
“Mother.” He strode into the room. “I’m twenty-eight, for God’s sake. I have responsibilities, duties, business. You can’t move my appointments as if I were a child.”
Her smile sharpened. “I would agree, dear, except—”
Lillian set a hand on his mother’s arm, clearly a prearranged signal.
She sighed and subsided. “Christian. We are worried about you.”
This was not going to be simple. He sank into a chair near her. “Am I shirking my responsibilities?”
“Yes,” Lillian said. “You’re not taking care of yourself. You must have lost a stone this last year. You only ever make jokes; you hardly laugh at anyone else’s. You’re so pale. You don’t go riding any longer. You don’t have any fun.”
A snippet from last night’s dream snapped back into his head—of turning a corner of one interminable hallway and seeing Anthony Worth in front of him. His friend had been dressed in the blue-and-something undress uniform of a beef-eater.
“That’s not yours,” Christian had said. “You shouldn’t be wearing it.”
Dream Anthony had simply shaken his head and frowned. “Who are you?” he’d asked. “I don’t know you.”
In his dream, just as in reality, Christian had called for help, screaming. Guards had come—this time, the real yeoman warders of the Tower of London, their faces shadowed in dark clouds. They’d laid hands on Anthony, and his friend had burst into shards like a vase shattered with a stone.
Christ. No wonder he could scarcely sleep. A year ago, the last of the investigators had returned. The man had talked to three of the convicts on Anthony’s prison ship. All three of them had reported the same thing: Anthony had not disembarked at any point from that ship.
Up until that point, Christian had held onto hope. He’d held onto all his hope as hard as he could. He’d tried his best to believe that Anthony couldn’t be dead.
“I think you should see my doctor,” his mother said.
His mother meant well; she loved him. With his father gone, it was his job to protect her, even if the thing he protected her from was the truth.
He had been an odd child, given to making lists and counting objects. He’d thrown tantrums about colors, of all things—he hadn’t been able to learn his colors like the other children. But it was the nightmares that had been the final straw. He had used to throw fits in the middle of the night—massive screaming, shouting fits that he could not be woken from, and that he did not remember the next day.
His father had worried that he was mad. In fact, he’d wanted to have Christian put away. His mother had protected him from that. She’d found a physician, and together, they’d helped him sleep through the night.
He could never let himself forget that: His mother had acted out of love. She had protected him. She had saved him.
If she ever found out what had resulted from her efforts, she’d never forgive herself. He couldn’t protect her from what was happening to him now, but he could protect her from that discovery.
And so instead of telling her to never mention that physician to him again, he simply folded his arms. “There’s noth
ing wrong with me that a physician can cure,” he said gruffly. “And you know I hate the taste of his mixtures.”
Lillian reached out and took his hand. “Christian. We’re your family. We love you. If something’s wrong with you, we want to help.”
He looked at his hand in hers. There were worse things than being loved, far worse things than having a cousin and a mother who cared for him and worried over him.
“What is it, Christian?”
He could have made a joke, but even he couldn’t figure out how to work England’s greatest chicken killers into this moment.
“It’s guilt,” he said. “Good, ordinary British guilt. Nothing more.”