A Dangerous Deceit (Thief-Takers) Read online

  Her friend’s expression softened, and her voice turned gentle. “Love is rarely a mistake, dear. Even when it hurts.”

  “I don’t… I’m not in…” Oh, God,was she in love? She let her hand fall to her lap. “Maybe it’s not love. It could be infatuation. I’ve never experienced love before, so how can I be certain what it feels like?”

  “You leapt from a moving train to keep Mr. Harmon and me safe. You know perfectly well what love feels like.”

  Jane let out a long, heart-felt sigh. It was a different kind of love, but Mrs. Harmon was right. She knew how love felt, and she knew she was in love with Gabriel. Deeply, desperately, undeniably in love with him. She felt it every time she looked at him, every time he smiled at her, every time he touched her.

  “Has he lied about himself?” Mrs. Harmon asked.

  She threw her hands up in the air. “How should I know?”

  “You might ask him.”

  “Does it make a difference, thekind of lies a man tells a lady?”

  “As a rule, I would have to say no. But you must admit that the circumstances have been unusual.”

  She could admit it, but it didn’t make her feel appreciably better.

  Mrs. Harmon tipped her head at her. “Is there one lie in that—I will concede, very extensive—list, that troubles you more than the others?”

  “Well, no.” It was all of them put together. It was the fact that he’d pressured her into sharing her deepest, darkest secrets, while hoarding all manner of secrets himself. And not even big, life-changing secrets that might have been difficult for him to surrender. She could sympathize with that wholeheartedly. He’d kept relatively small things from her. Lots of them. And that made everything about their relationship feel terribly one-sided, as if she’d been taking all the chances, all the risks. As if he expected her to trust him with everything, while he would trust her with nothing.

  “I’m very afraid I may have misjudged the extent of his feelings for me,” she admitted. “I’m so bad at reading people. I can never tell—”

  “When it comes to this sort of thing, we are all novices. Even the most perceptive woman will find herself at sea when faced with the prospect of unrequited love. Believe me. I’ve been through this particular gauntlet six times.”

  “Six? You’ve only been married four times.”

  “Not every man I’ve loved returned my affection.”

  “That’s not at all reassuring.”

  Mrs. Harmon reached over and covered Jane’s hand with her own. “Six times, Jane. And I don’t regret a single one of them. I think you should talk to him.”

  Jane nodded reluctantly. She wasn’t ashamed to have avoided Gabriel for the day. She’d needed time to think. But Mrs. Harmon was right. It couldn’t go on forever. “I’ll speak with Gabriel tonight.”

  Or possibly right now, she amended when Gabriel appeared in the doorway. “I’d like a word, Miss Ballenger, if you don’t mind.”

  Jane briefly considered inviting him to sit with her and Mrs. Harmon, but her friend dashed that idea by leaping from her chair and spouting some nonsensical excuse before hurrying out of the room.

  Gabriel gave her a small, cautious smile as she rose from her chair. “I’ve wanted to speak with you all day, Jane.”

  “I didn’t wish to see you.”

  “I understand.” He caught his hands behind his back. “I apologize for not telling you I held on to your brother’s list.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  There was a long pause before he answered. “I am sorry it had to be done.”

  Her temper flared. “That is not the same thing.At all.”

  “Jane—”

  He moved toward her, but she sidled away, determined to keep some distance between them. “You lied about where we were headed, about where the Harmons were going, about the list. About so many things. You havedeliberately kept me in the dark this entire time, haven’t you?”

  “I have kept you safe,” he said gently. “If Kray had captured you, he could have used what you knew against you, the Harmons, Lord Renderwell’s involvement—”

  “Or I might have used it to my advantage.”

  “You couldn’t have used the list,” he replied, his voice patient and tender. “Knowing of it would have done nothing but make you a target.”

  “I was already a target,” she pointed out. “You made me an ignorant one. I should haveknown it was in our care. I should have been made aware of the respectability.”

  “The what?”

  “The…” She stammered a moment. “The respect… No, the…”

  “Responsibility?”

  “Yes. Damn it. The responsibility. It should have been mine as well as yours. You should not have lied to me. About any of it. At least, not after…” Not after they had come to know each other. After he had caught her from the tree, and picked flowers for her in the rain. Not after he had kissed her in the stable loft and made love to her in the inn. She wanted to say all that, but she didn’t know how to do it without giving away too much of herself.

  “Not after I told you my own secrets,” she said instead.

  “That wasn’t very long ago, Jane. And you kept your own secrets from me for most of our journey.”

  “That was different.”

  “I fail to see how.”

  “I wasafraid. But I told you anyway. I could have made excuses or simply told you to mind your own business.” Not easily, and probably not well, but she could have done it. “I didn’t. I confessed everything to you while you told me nothing. You’ve let your lies carry until the very end. Until the job was done.”

  “That job was to keep you safe. Sweetheart, we’re going in circles.” He moved closer to her, stopped again when she shook her head at him. “I know you’re angry, and I’m sorry for it. If—”

  “But you’re not sorry you did it,” she cut in, and grimaced. Theywere going in circles. “Your intentions may have been good, Gabriel, but you’ve made me feel like a fool.”

  He swore softly and reached for her before she could slip away. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he pulled her tight against him. “You’re not a fool. Nothing you’ve done—”

  “Don’t.” She leaned back, needing to put some distance between them. “Don’t coddle me, or charm me, or try to cajole me into smiling. That’s not what I want. I don’t want words from you at all.”

  He seemed to stumble with that, releasing her with a shake of his head. “Whatdo you want?”

  “For you to trust me. The same way I’ve trusted you.”

  ***

  Gabriel opened his mouth, spread his hands, and…nothing. He had nothing.

  He was a man of words, of charm if need be, wit and charisma if the situation called for it, and threats and dire warnings if it came to that.

  It was what he did. It was how he navigated his way through the world. It was how he conquered it.

  What the devil was he supposed to do without the words? How could he fix things if she wouldn’t let him apologize and explain? How could he make her feel better, make her understand?

  At a loss, afraid of the distant look he saw in Jane’s eyes, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her.

  He put everything he had into that kiss, every promise of passion, every whisper of devotion, every word he had to swallow for her. If she wouldn’t let him speak them, then he would show her. He would show her everything.

  He wanted the kiss to be enough. For the both of them. But even as he felt Jane lean against him in surrender, he knew it wouldn’t be. He wasn’t showing her anything new. She already trusted him with this. This was the wrong way. He knew it even before she pulled away.

  Her amber eyes tracked over his face, still distant, and infinitely sad. “Perhaps…Perhaps a little time spent apart would—”

  “My real father is Mr. Edward Mitcham,” he blurted out, shocking even himself. Releasing her, he took a full step back. “Christ, I’ve never told anyone that.” He
hadn’t meant to tell her. The words had just popped out. “Not even Samuel.”

  She looked as surprised by the sudden admission as he felt. “I don’t understand. Did you say—”

  “Edward Mitcham was my father.” It was easier to say the second time, less jarring to hear. But it still jolted his heart into a painful rhythm.

  She gave a small shake of her head. “But Captain Arkwright…”

  “Captain Arkwright was my mother’s husband. She married him a month after meeting Edward at a country fair. According to both my mother and Edward, it was love at first sight. But he was a common laborer, and she was a well-bred young lady already engaged to the captain. They had a brief affair before her wedding.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” A furrow appeared across her brow as she studied his face. “Are you afraid I’ll judge you for the circumstances of your birth? Gabriel, I would never—”

  “No, that’s not it.” He wished it could be that simple.

  “Then what is it? I can see you’re afraid.”

  “I don’t know where to start. I’m not sure why I—”

  When he broke off, she hesitated a beat, then took his hand and led him to the settee. He followed her, feeling lost and stunned as she sat him down.

  “Start at the beginning,” she suggested, just as he had the day before in the inn.

  He nodded, but it was long time before he was able to talk. It was so strange, so unfamiliar to speak the truth.

  “I barely knew the captain. When I was a young boy, he would be at sea for months at a time. During his brief trips home he was distant and aloof. He always seemed more like a stodgy old uncle who’d come to visit than he did a father. He provided well for us, I can’t say he didn’t, but eventually my mother decided that being the wife of a cold and absent sea captain was not enough for her. She wanted Edward Mitcham. And when I was seven, we ran off in the dead of night so she could be with him.”

  “Seven years after they’d met?”

  “After my mother passed, I found a stack of love letters exchanged between them over the years they were apart. They managed to see each other only twice, but the distance did nothing to stem their affection. They were extraordinary letters.” Watching them turn to ash in a fireplace had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

  “What happened after you left?”

  “At first I was dumbstruck by the sudden change in my life. One moment I’d been comfortably tucked up in bed, and the next thing I knew my mother was introducing me to this strange man at the railway station two villages over. She told me we were all going to Leeds where Mr. Mitcham, who was my new father, had just taken a position. I was to call myself Gabriel Mitcham from then on, and never mention my old life in Cornwall again.”

  “GoodLord.”

  He smiled a little at the shock in her voice. “She wasn’t as blunt as all that. They both took great care in explaining the situation to me during our journey. First her, then both of them together. Still, that first month was an adjustment. We sold our fine clothes, and used the funds my mother had saved to let rooms over a shop. I practiced calling myself Gabriel Mitcham, and I memorized the fictional story of our family’s past.”

  Her hand tightened over his in sympathy. “That wasn’t fair to you.”

  “Perhaps not, but I have no complaints.” He looked up, caught and held her gaze. “Not one. The first few weeks might have been overwhelming, but it was worth it in the end. We were poor. There were no servants or tutors, no money for toys and games. But I never went cold or hungry. There was coal when we needed it, and new clothes and shoes when I outgrew my old ones. And there was love, Jane. Tremendous amounts of love. My father worked himself to the bone for a pittance. When he came home at night, exhaustion was etched into every line of his face. But he would smile and laugh and ask after my day at dinner. And at the end of every meal, he would pronounce my mother the finest cook in England, and she would blush like a schoolgirl. Every time. And then he would sing in this magnificent bass that would shake the rafters. About halfway through the song, he would leap from his chair, sweep my mother into his arms, and they would dance.” The memory brought on a bittersweet ache. “Every night, no matter how tired or worn, he found the energy to dance with his wife. He always found time for his family. When the other boys at school took exception to my fine speech and manners, he taught me how to mimic their accents, and how make a proper fist and use it. He taught me how to fish and how to shoot. We couldn’t afford a weapon, of course, but he convinced the factory foreman to loan us his rifle now and again. He found a way, my father.”

  “He loved you,” Jane said softly.

  “He’d always loved me. Those letters he sent to my mother? They weren’t just love letters to her. They were tous. For seven years he had asked after every detail of my life. He worried over my illnesses, rejoiced in my childhood accomplishments. No part of my life was too insignificant to interest him. There was more love in those letters than I’d ever known from the captain. And there was more love in those three years we spent in the little rooms over the shop than there had been in the seven I lived in the fine house in Cornwall. No one has ever loved me with the same fervor as my father. Not before, or since.”

  She was quiet a moment, before asking, “Only three years?”

  “My father was killed in an accident at the factory.”

  She sucked in a small breath. “I’m so sorry.”

  “My mother was lost without him. For a time, grief robbed her of her senses. She bought a headstone for him, an enormous, ghastly affair fit for a duke. We didn’t have the funds for it. Within a month, we’d lost our rooms and had to take up nightly lodgings in common boardinghouses. Filthy places with people packed in like cattle.” He’d learned quickly that there was a difference between a school yard brawl over insults, and a fight with a hungry man for the coin in one’s hand. “My mother died in a cholera outbreak that fall, but before she passed, she gave me the last of our money, scarcely enough to eat for another day, and instructed me to return to Cornwall. The captain was dead. He’d died at sea mere months after we’d left him, having never even known we were gone, but his parents, she was certain, would care for me.”

  “They did, didn’t they? I remember reading of them in the papers.”

  He gave a small nod. “They scarcely recognized me when I showed up on their doorstep. I was thin and dirty, my hair had grown long, my clothes had gone to rags. But I was bundled up in blankets and set before the fire. They plied me with warm broth and endless questions. They had no idea where I had been for the last three years, and…” And as he’d sat there in that immaculate little parlor, warming from the inside out, the most hideous fear had washed over him. “I didn’t know how to answer their questions. I wasn’t their grandson, Jane. The captain wasn’t my father. I was sure that if they so much as suspected the truth, they’d turn me out. And I had nowhere else to go. I knew I had other relations scattered about the country, but I had no idea where to even begin looking for them. So I lied. I concocted a fantastical story right on the spot. I told them my mother had left her husband on a whim. She’d wanted an adventure, and we’d had one. Just the two of us…until she’d died unexpectedly in Scotland. Her last act was to pay a local woman to see me home, but the woman had taken the money and left me to fend for myself. I’d sold my fine clothes to pay for passage partway to Cornwall, and begged rides along the road the rest of the way. Hence my ragged appearance.”

  Her fingers moved over his, brushing lightly against his knuckles. “Did they believe you?”

  “All too well, in fact. But my lie as their truth wouldn’t do. They couldn’t let it be known that their son’s wife had left him and gone traipsing about unattended. They created a fictional story to hidemy fictional story.” He laughed without humor. “Christ, what a farce. They decided my mother and I had gone to France at Captain Arkwright’s behest. We’d traveled in the company of some distant relative who’d since l
eft for a new life in America. That was the story I brought with me to school a few months later. And that is the story that still stands today.”

  “You sound so angry,” she whispered.

  Anger was too easy, too tame for what he felt. “Edward Mitcham was the best man I’ve ever known. He was myfather. And I denied all knowledge of him. I stood in that fine parlor in my filthy rags and told a lie that completely, utterly eradicated his existence from my life. I can’t stand the memory of that day. I can’t stand being dirty because itreminds me of that day. Of that filthy, cowardly boy.”

  “It wasn’t cowardice.” Jane’s hand tensed over his. Her voice was firm, but soft. “It was the act of a grieving, desperate child.”

  He shook his head at her and would have pulled away if she’d let him. “I’ve been a grown man for some time now, and I’ve never fixed it. I meant to. I thought, after school, once I’d established my career and could fend for myself, I would fix it. But I couldn’t do it. By the time my education was over, I knew I couldn’t tell the people who had taken me in, paid for my education, cared for me like their own, that I wasn’t the child of their dead son. It felt selfish.”

  “And so it would have been. You might have felt better for it, but it would have wounded them deeply.”

  He nodded, grateful for her understanding. “I decided, out of respect, I would wait until they were gone. But then I helped rescue a kidnapped duchess, and suddenly, I was famous. Suddenly, every familial relation in England, no matter how distant, was touting their connection to me. They told their stories to the press. They used my reputation to secure business deals and invitations to the homes of some of England’s wealthiest families. Their sons were admitted to the best schools. Their daughters met peers. They built lives on my good name. My reputation was no longer my own. Tainting it would taint them all.”