After a courteous bow to Thea, Ventnor stalked back through the gate, Percy trotting behind him. Around her, his men continued their work, serious and professional.
“Are you all right, miss?” Gilbert asked, his dark eyes liquid with sorrow, his battered face creased with concern.
“Of course,” she said, and she was. After all, no one had tried to put her on the flames, so really, she was doing very nicely.
“I was worried he’d harm you, so I was trying to keep you safe. I never thought he’d go after the crates.”
“It’s all right, Gilbert.” Thea turned over the pamphlet in her hand. “None of us could have imagined it. Thank you for looking after me.”
“Where next, miss? You’ve had a terrible shock. You ought not be alone, but Miss Larke and Lady Belinda are not due into London until tomorrow and your sister is still in Brighton. Is there somewhere I can take you?”
Thea opened the pamphlet to the frontispiece. The Tale of Rosamund. By A Lady. This was all that remained of her story; it did not even bear her name. One last copy, and then her truth would be lost forever.
One copy was all she required.
“Warren Street.” Her voice was croaky, as if she had breathed in all that smoke. “To the blue door with the brass mermaid knocker. All that remains is for me to go home.”
With a shaking hand, Thea lifted that brass mermaid and let it drop. Once. Twice. Three times. The blue door opened. The unfamiliar servant said the right things, proper and polite.
“I wish to see Mr. or Mrs. Knight,” Thea said.
Smoke clung to her nostrils and coated her mouth. Her clothes must reek of it; certainly, she could smell it in her bonnet and hair. Inside her dirty glove, her palm was clammy and her fingers ached from clutching her pamphlet so tight.
“I shall see if they are home. Have you a card?”
A card. Of all the things she might have thought to bring.
Thea held out the pamphlet. “Give them that. Tell them it’s their daughter Thea. Tell them I have come home.”
That was enough to grant her entry to the foyer. She was not invited to remove her bonnet or gloves. She waited, and then Ma and Pa were there.
Their beloved faces were older, softer, but the same. Wary. Unwelcoming. Disappointed.
“What are you doing here?” Ma asked in a low voice, as though all of London were gathered in her foyer to overhear. “I made it clear that you are not welcome after the harm you caused this family.”
“Ma, I have so much to tell you.”
Pa held up the pamphlet. “What is the meaning of this?”
“That is my story.” Thea’s voice was too loud in the hushed foyer but she did not lower it. “Percy Russell and Francis Upton lied. I told you the truth but you wouldn’t believe me. You sent me away instead. I wrote it down and had it published, so that I might restore my reputation.”
Her parents exchanged a look.
“And what about the Earl of Luxborough?” Ma asked.
A thousand memories waltzed through Thea’s mind, coming to pause on him smiling at her, sunlight in his brandy-colored eyes. Then his disgust and annoyance, as he sent her away. No. Not that one. She would hold onto the good memories. Those wonderful memories of him would last her. They must.
“What about him?” she said.
“Lord Ventnor described your disgraceful behavior, and we were shocked by the earl’s attempt to secure your dowry when he had not the decency to marry you. Are you married to him, after all? Or at least engaged?”
“I am not.”
As one, her parents stepped away from her, as if she might transmit some horrid disease.
It was Ma who spoke next. “But did Lord Luxborough…compromise you?”
“I suppose in the language of the world he did. Perhaps I erred, but it was my choice and I have no regrets.”
“And he did not marry you.”
“He offered. I refused.”
Pa shook his head. “And you dare speak of your reputation. That is not how we raised you to behave.”
Silence filled the foyer, echoing off the refined ornaments. Ma wore a cap of the finest lace, and Pa’s embroidered waistcoat was silk. The very things they had fantasized about owning when they were rich. They had dreamed and planned and worked, and they had won.
But their eyes… Their eyes were cold, and not at all like Thea’s memories.
How Pa’s eyes would sparkle with mischief when he called his daughters “Ted” and “Harry,” and winked as he sent them off do boys’ work. How his face would light up with infectious optimism when he wove his bold schemes, as the family huddled around the single brazier and sipped at thin soup. And Ma, her fingers nimble as she stitched, offering ideas that earned Pa’s applause, her smile indulgent at Thea’s childish mischief, her bosom soft when she hugged her daughters and promised everything would be all right, for nobody could stop a Knight.
When, precisely, had everything changed? How had their buoyant hope hardened into this ruthless ambition?
“You raised me to believe our family would always be there for each other, whatever happened in the world,” Thea said. “All I asked was that you believe my side of the story. Had you believed me, back then, we could have solved the problem together, as we used to do. I could have gone away, to protect Helen and the Little Ones, but not as an outcast from my own family, not to that long, lonely exile, during which you did not write me a single word. But you chose to believe my enemies. You were meant to love me, but when that love was tested, you did not stand by me. You cast me aside.”
“Fine speech, Thea, but why should we believe your stories? You have confessed to your own scandalous behavior with Lord Luxborough.”
“Lord Luxborough believes my stories. If he were here now, as my betrothed? If he told you I spoke the truth, would you find you believed my stories then?”
They exchanged looks. “Well,” Pa said, “that would be a different matter.”
Thea nodded sadly. “Because his word is worth more than mine.”
“It isn’t like that,” Ma said. “But you always did make mischief and break rules, and, well, this is the way the world works.”
“Oh, I have had quite an education in the way the world works.” Thea studied her grubby pamphlet. How pathetic it was, this sorry tale, the last of its kind. She looked back up. “May I see the Little Ones?”
Pa crossed the foyer and opened the door, letting in the breeze and sounds of the street. He did not look her in the eye. “You had best go. It would not do for Lord Ventnor to learn that you were here. We cannot afford to displease him.”
“Ma?”
Her mother turned away. “It is best, Thea.”
Thea had nothing more to say, so she went out. The blue door closed behind her.
“Farewell,” Thea whispered to the brass mermaid and returned to the waiting hack.
Chapter 25
Voices from the drawing room had Rafe barging through the door to see who it was. Thea, he thought. Thea had come back.
It wasn’t Thea. It was a maid setting out tea and biscuits for Socrates.
The maid bobbed a curtsy and left, and Rafe sat and recalculated the hours. Thea would be in London by now. He should be with her, but she didn’t want him, and he’d vowed not to chase her again, so she was in her beloved London, and he was taking tea with a dead Greek philosopher.