“Take off your waistcoat and give me your shirt.” She put her hand out as he divested himself of the garments. The waistcoat went onto the floor, and he delivered the shirt into her grasp. “This is probably ruined.”
“I’d ruin a thousand of them if it meant I could have tonight. With you.”
A flush of heat raced through her as he scooted closer to the edge of the bed. She gently pressed the damp cloth on the cut, dabbing up the blood. Pulling the cloth back to find a clean area, she pressed down on him again, drawing a soft gasp from his lips.
“Do you need stitches?” she asked.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“You asked me. Why would you think I’d know?”
She looked at the many scars marking his chest, shoulders, and arms until settling on the scar cutting through his chin and lower lip. “This was not your first knife fight.”
“No.”
“Why?” She held the cloth against his wound and with her other hand, ran her thumb over a scar on his left shoulder, then another on the front of his upper arm. That one was long, maybe four inches.
“When I was young, it was how we gained respect and exerted our dominance. Proving your strength was critical to survival. Not just for me, but for Selina. Before I sent her away to school.”
“You sent her away.”
He nodded. “She would have been raped and forced into prostitution if I didn’t.”
Anne swallowed. She couldn’t imagine such a life. “How old were you?”
“Fourteen. She was eleven. I’d saved enough by then to pay for her school, and I kept moving up in the ranks. By then, I was running one of Partridge’s receiver shops.”
“What’s that?”
“A place where we fenced stolen goods. The gangs of thieves would steal the items, and I would sell them. I ran several of them by the time I was sixteen. Partridge trusted me. He liked me.”
“Who is Partridge?”
Rafe’s features hardened. “Was. He was the man who purchased me and Selina from our ‘uncle’—the man who kidnapped us from Stonehaven. He was a footman there, and his sister was our nurse.”
Anne fought against the tide of emotion welling up within her. Lifting the cloth, she studied the gash. Perhaps two inches wide with neat edges, the damage didn’t look great, especially since the bleeding had stopped. “You need a bandage.”
She started to turn, but he gripped her upper arm. His eyes were dark and intense, the fiery orange spot burning with promise. “It will be fine. For now.” He took the cloth from her fingers and scooted toward the center of the bed before adjusting the pillows and settling back against the headboard. “Sit with me.”
Anne climbed onto the bed and sat next to him. She laid her head on his shoulder.
“You are the loveliest nursemaid.” He put his arm around her and draped the cloth over his cut.
“Why did you get into a knife fight last night?”
He exhaled, his fingertips stroking her arm. “After the dinner, I found myself going to the only place I truly know, the only place where I belong. Or used to, anyway.”
She angled her head so she could see his face. “The men there fight with knives like the children do?”
“Mostly for money, but also for the other reasons I mentioned before. I thought it would make me feel…not better, but more like myself.”
“And did it?”
He shook his head.
She traced the scar on his chin, starting at the base and slowly moving up to his lip. “And this was from a fight?”
“A particularly fierce one. I was seventeen. The other lad wanted to kill me.”
She tensed, lowering her hand to his chest. “Did you—”
“No, but Partridge had it done. He didn’t want anyone to question my authority again. That was the last time I fought, until last night.”
“That you managed to survive your childhood is astonishing.” Anne’s throat tightened. “Not only that, but look at what you’ve built, what you’ve become. And I don’t mean an earl. Even if you weren’t going to be ennobled, you’ve accomplished so much. You seem destined to be great.”
“It never felt like that. Every day was a struggle.”
“Even the days with your wife?” she asked softly. When he stiffened in response, she blurted, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you about her.”
He pulled the cloth away from his chest and tossed it to the side of the bed. “I’m glad you did. I won’t keep anything from you. Not anymore.” He turned, and she lifted her head from his shoulder. “What I wanted more than anything was a family. I lost my parents, I missed my sister. By the time I was twenty, I was smart enough to recognize that Partridge and the other men in his employ were not a family. Still, it was the most secure I’d ever been, and at that time, Selina was lost to me. She’d left the boarding school to take a position as a governess.” His eyes briefly closed, but not before she saw the flash of pain in their depths.
She didn’t want to interrupt, so she waited for him to continue. In the meantime, she skimmed her fingertips across the varied slopes of his muscled chest.
“When I was twenty-five, I fell in love with Eliza. She was the daughter of a cobbler. Dark-haired and so full of vibrancy and laughter, she was everything I dreamed. Her father didn’t like me, but she believed he would come around. I wanted to earn his approval, and not just for her, but for me. I craved her family, that sense of belonging that had eluded me my entire life.”
His words curled around her heart and made her love for him expand. Emotion cinched her throat, and she flattened her palm against him. Perhaps the heat of his flesh would warm the chill inside her.
“I planned to leave Partridge’s employ. To do that, I reinvented myself as the Vicar, a moneylender in Blackfriars.”
At the mention of that name, a tremor passed through her. She wanted to ask how he’d become acquainted with Gilbert, but again, she wouldn’t interrupt.
“Partridge didn’t like that I left.” Rafe’s jaw clenched. “I was his best officer, you see. He gave me an ultimatum: return to his employment or he’d ruin my life. I thought he meant my new business endeavors. In addition to lending money, I also owned my own receiver shops—and the bookshop in Paternoster Row. And I was making other investments, looking to the future, because by then I had a wife, and soon I would have a child.” His voice cracked.
Anne cupped his neck, stroking her thumb along the underside of his jaw. “I’m so sorry.” She assumed he was going to tell her that Eliza had died in childbirth.
He took a deep breath and looked into her eyes. “This is where I may lose you—and I won’t blame you for it. Every time I told you I wasn’t worthy or that you could never know everything about me, this is what I was referring to. It isn’t just that I was married or my wife died. Or even that Partridge killed her—and our unborn child.”
Rafe’s body went completely rigid. Anne held her breath, desperate for him to continue and yet terrified by what he might say next.
“It’s that I killed him in retribution. I stole into one of his flash-houses where he was, and I cut his throat open, just as he’d done to Eliza.”