No Earls Allowed (The Survivors #2)(87)

“You are always counting,” Robbie muttered.

“When do we eat?” Jimmy asked. “I’m starving, and once Mrs. Dunwitty finds us, we’ll be trapped all morning.”

“Can I sit on your lap, Major?” Charlie asked around his thumb.

“Actually,” Neil said, speaking through the cacophony for the first time, “I haven’t time to eat this morning. I need to speak with Billy.”

Billy, who had been sitting in a corner, looking down at his hands, raised his head. He was clean of soot and ash, but he had a welt on his forehead and his lip still looked swollen. The boy rose slowly to his feet. “What is it, Major?”

“I’d like to speak in private.” Neil motioned to the door. Billy made his way across the now-silent room, and Neil led him into the parlor, where he left the door open slightly. “Sit,” Neil ordered, gesturing to the couch. He tried not to remember lying on that couch himself, Juliana wrapped in his arms. He tried not to remember her in his arms, pushed up against the far wall, her lips hot and eager.

“You have a choice to make,” Neil said when Billy sat. “About your future.”

Billy looked up, his eyes defiant. “What choice? No one ever gave me a choice. I had no choice about living here. No choice about being beaten every day, before Lady Juliana came, no choice about what to eat. What choices do I have?”

“You have to choose between living here or out there,” Neil said, crooking his thumb at the street.

“That’s no choice. If I don’t do what Slag wants, he hurts me.”

“Slag is gone now. That means you do have a choice.”

“And when another takes his place?”

“Walk away. If you can’t, you send for me.” Neil reached into his coat and took out a card. “This is the name of my solicitor. He can always find me, and his offices are not far from here.”

Billy took the card, looking at it as though it were an exotic piece of fruit.

“You can always come to me for help, but if you want to live here, if you want to stay at Sunnybrooke, you’ll have no more dealings with the gangs and the upright men.”

Billy pressed his lips together. “I don’t see the problem with making a little extra on the side.”

“The problem,” Neil said levelly, though he wanted to rage at the boy to stop being an idiot, “is that sort of activity leads to the events of last night. Either I have your word you will walk the straight and narrow, or you pack what meager belongings you have and leave right now.”

Billy’s head came up. “You can’t make me leave. Lady Juliana won’t make me leave.”

“Yes, I will.”

Neil’s gaze shot to the door where Juliana stood in the small opening. She pushed it wider, the skirts of her green dress swishing against the wood. She looked beautiful with her copper hair in a sleek tail down her back and the tight-fitting bodice of the dress molding to curves he wished he could forget. The contrast between her fragile beauty and the dark squalor of the orphanage was stark, but somehow she managed to look regal all the same.

She did not look rested. Her eyes were puffy, her mouth a tight line. If he hadn’t known her well, he might not have noticed, but he knew her now. Knew he was most likely the cause of her tossing and turning.

“Mr. Wraxall is correct, Billy. You do have a choice to make.” She moved into the room, her gaze on Billy and studiously averted from him. “Last night proved to me that every relationship has give-and-take. I can offer you love and safety and a home, but I can’t make you take it.”

She didn’t look at Neil, but he knew she spoke to him as well as to Billy.

“And you cannot have things both ways. You choose this orphanage and me, or you leave. I do not want to give you up, but I have eleven other boys to think about. I won’t sacrifice them for you. And I won’t risk them for you again either. Make your choice.”

Billy looked from Juliana to Neil and back again. The silence in the room was so heavy Neil wished he could push the weight from his shoulders. He wished he could take Juliana in his arms, tell her he’d made his choice for her.

Because he loved her too.

Then Billy lifted a hand and swiped at his eyes, but it wasn’t enough to stem the tears. Juliana leaned forward and stopped herself. She wanted to take the child in her arms—and that was what he looked like again, just a child—but she would wait until he made his choice.

“I want to stay with you, my lady,” Billy sobbed. “Please let me stay.”

And then Billy was in her arms, and she was patting his back and smoothing his hair, and whispering that everything would be okay. Over Billy’s shoulder, Juliana’s gaze met Neil’s. Neil nodded. Everything was as it should be again. She had her lost chick back under her wing.

She’d saved another boy, but Neil was no child who could be soothed with a pat on the back. She couldn’t change the station either of them had been born to.

With a sardonic salute, he walked away—out of the parlor, out of the orphanage, out of her life.





Twenty-one


Life went on without Neil Wraxall. She hadn’t thought it would. She’d thought she’d wither and close herself off from the world like Harriett had when Lainesborough had finally shown his true colors.