“Seventeen.” A pause. “I think.”
He did not even know his age? Poor boy.
“And before that?” she persisted.
He turned his head, his eyes hooded. “I don’t remember.”
Or else, she thought, his memories were too painful to recall.
She squeezed his arm. They both had been forced to start over. And at almost the same time, it seemed. “I was thirteen when I came to Moulton.”
“Yes, I know.”
She blinked. How could he know? But of course he had been talking with Julia. “I did not want to be here,” she confessed. “For a long time, I resented the . . . the circumstances that brought me. I missed my life in France. My home. My family.”
For weeks and months, the gray wet English weather had seemed to overshadow her very soul. She had succumbed to clouds of grief, storms of tears, and homesickness.
“You escaped the Terror,” Lucien said, his voice flat. “If you hadn’t, you would have died.”
“Bien sûr.” The French slipped out, as it did sometimes when she talked about her childhood. She smiled up at him in apology. “At thirteen I did not always think very clearly, you understand. Now I am wiser. And grateful.”
“Grateful.” His face was unreadable, as it often was, with the marble austerity of a disillusioned saint.
She wished she could make him smile.
“To be alive,” she explained. She gestured around them at the winter wood, the dormant trees, the wisps of frost, the forest floor sleeping under a blanket of bracken, leaves and snow. “All this—life—is a gift. What you make of it is up to you.”
His words.
Lucien stared down at Aimée’s bright face.
His words, wrested from the dark prison of memory on what must have been the worst night of her life, offered to comfort and encourage him. The irony cut him like a knife.
He had saved her life and ruined it, and she was bloody grateful.
She smiled at him, her eyes shining with sympathy, her fingers light and warm upon his arm. Their gazes locked.
He felt it. The snap of connection, like a key in a lock, like a piece in a puzzle, like two halves sliding together to make one whole. It’s you.
Behind her blue, translucent eyes, recognition wavered. Doubt bloomed.
Tension thrummed along his nerves.
If she knew the role he had played in her life, would she still feel grateful? Or would she hate him?
It didn’t matter. She could never know. The threat of demons, the unpredictability of humankind, compelled the Nephilim to live secretly.
She could never know him.
He drew a ragged breath, torn between relief and regret. Though why he should feel regret he was not sure.
“Is that why you want to go to London?” he asked. “To make a new life?”
She blinked those long, lovely lashes like a dreamer waking from sleep. “What?”
He helped her over a log fallen in the snow. “You wanted to talk with me about a position in London.”
“Not for myself. For Miss Finch. Julia’s lady’s maid.”
Lucien raised his brows. “If the girl thinks to improve her lot in London, why doesn’t she apply to your housekeeper for a reference? Or Lady Basing.”
“Her lot is not so easily remedied,” Aimée said. “She is with child.”
Ah.
Lucien considered. “Can the father be brought to marry her?”
Aimée pressed her lips together. “No.”
Suspicion stirred in his gut. “Basing?” he asked grimly.
She lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. “He denies it. He will not take any financial responsibility for her or the child.”
Swiving son of a bitch. “So you came to me.”
“I am not asking you for money,” Aimée said hastily. “I know you are . . . That is, this is none of your affair. But . . .”
She knew he was short on funds. She had applied to him for help anyway. He was oddly moved by her trust.
“You did the right thing,” he said. “Martin can take her to Fanny.”
“Fanny?”
“Fanny Grinton on Maiden Lane. She can give your maid shelter until permanent placement can be found.”
Aimée bit her lower lip. “How much will it cost? I can contribute a little to Finch’s keep, but . . .”
He shook his head. “It isn’t necessary.”
She shot him a skeptical look, very French. “Your Miss Grinton takes in boarders out of the goodness of her heart?”
“Yes,” he said shortly.
She looked unconvinced.
“Fanny was in service herself once,” he explained reluctantly. “Until she was debauched by the master of the house. When his wife threw her into the street, Fanny prostituted herself to survive. Now she rescues others who have suffered a similar fate.”
“This is an inspiring story. But inspiration does not pay the bills.”
“The residents of the house take in sewing and laundry. They contribute what they can,” he said.
“And you provide the rest,” Aimée guessed with an approving nod. “Which is altogether noble and generous of you.”
He was shaken by her faith in him. Unlike Amherst, she believed the best of him without hesitation. Without question.
He did not deserve her good opinion.
“I am no hero. No angel. I am not even a very good man.”
“Most gentlemen in your circumstances would not spend their resources on those less fortunate.”
“I have to.” His hands curled into fists at his sides. He forced himself to relax them, forced himself to say, “I hired her.”
Aimée’s brow puckered. “This house on Maiden Lane . . . It was your idea? You hired Miss Grinton to run it?”
“Yes.” His head throbbed. He was tempted to let her go on believing that. To let her think well of him. But he had never been good at pretense. “No. I was her last client.”
Aimée continued to regard him, her face calm.
Didn’t she understand?
“I hired her as a whore,” he said harshly.
He didn’t know why he told her. To shock her, to drive her away? Or was he hoping, against hope and all reason, for her absolution?
He held himself stiffly, prepared for her blushes, braced for her condemnation.