A Gift for Guile (The Thief-takers) (25 page)

Less now than she’d once been, but only because she now chose to use her skills differently.

Samuel watched her for a moment, his gaze speculative. “Were you lying when you told me you wanted to be more?”

“No, of course not,” she replied quickly. “I do want to be more. I think I am more. But I can’t be someone else.”

“You are a different woman than you were when you worked with your father. Doesn’t that make you someone else?”

“No, it makes me a different
me
.”

He muttered something under his breath, something that sounded rather like
barrister
. “We’re arguing over semantics.”

“We’re not. You’re just missing the salient point,” she replied and ignored his grumble of dissent. “I am still a Walker. In many ways, I am still
that woman
.”

Bafflement briefly crossed his features before he seemed to recall his words from the night before. “I spoke out of anger,” he said with a grimace. He shifted closer to her and rubbed the back of his fingers along her cheek. “You’re not that woman, Esther. Not anymore.”

It would be so easy, she thought, so incredibly easy to simply agree with him, to accept the reconciliation he was offering. She could lean into his touch then. She could twine her arms around his neck and pull him close. Yesterday’s terrible fight could be forgotten. Tomorrow they would go on as if nothing had come between them.

She could keep him.

But for how long? How long would it be before she did something, or said something, that reminded him that part of her was
that woman
? How long before she hated herself for pretending to be someone she wasn’t?

She felt as if she were standing on the brink of a great precipice, her toes already dangling over the side. And she wanted to jump. She longed to throw herself into the air with a shout of laughter and with her arms flung wide. But she was terrified that at the end of the long, tumbling fall, she would find herself all alone at the bottom of a chasm. She was afraid she would look up and see Samuel still standing on the edge or, worse, halfway to climbing his way out again.

She needed him to jump with her. And she needed him to do it with his eyes wide open.

Drawing away from his touch, she turned to fix her gaze on the carpet at her toes. “A part of me is, Samuel. As a Walker, lying comes easily and naturally to me. I’m not ashamed of that, any more than I am ashamed of my knives, or my ability to cheat you out of a fortune in a card game, or the fact that I am not put off by a bit of danger. I regret how I utilized the skills I learned from Will. I do not regret the skills themselves. Nor do I—”

“I see no reason you should be ashamed,” he cut in.

She threw him a cautious glance. “You had little patience with my unique capabilities today.”

“I had little patience with how you chose to apply them,” he corrected.

“My skills are mine to use as I see fit.” She shook her head when he made an aggravated noise in the back of his throat. “And I don’t think you’ll ever approve of the way I choose to apply them.”

“That’s not—”

“Someday,” she cut in, eager to explain herself. “I will do more than dream of traveling to Paris. I’ll see it for myself. Maybe someday, when Peter is grown, I truly will move to America. Perhaps I’ll set up a shop. Or apply myself in some other trade. I heard Renderwell say the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Chicago is rumored to employ female investigators. Who knows, maybe… Good Lord, you’ve gone pale at the very mention of it.”

“Well, for God’s sake,” he snapped and rose from the bed. “Should I relish the thought of you jumping from one danger to the next? Do you expect me to apologize for wanting to protect you this morning? For being afraid for you?”

“No.” She didn’t mean to dismiss his concerns, only make him understand that she’d not bend her will to match his own. “I wasn’t serious about the Pinkerton Agency, merely making a point. And I do know that it was every bit as difficult for you to take me to the station as it was for me to sit at home whilst you searched for Edmund on your own. I—”

He swore savagely and moved to stand in front of her, his enormous frame filling her vision. “No, Esther, it
wasn’t
. I have significantly more experience and training, and I am twice your damned size. An injury that inconvenienced me could kill you. I know it was hard for you to wait, to set aside your desire to act, and I’m sorry for that. Maybe I should have…” He dragged a hand through his hair and shook his head. “Maybe I could have bent more there. I will try to bend more in the future.” He dropped his hand. “But let us be honest, you weren’t terrified for me when I went out, and you weren’t bloody ashamed of yourself.”

The amount of anger in his voice surprised her, but the raw pain she heard buried beneath absolutely shocked her. She chose her next words with extraordinary care, and still she managed to trip over her tongue. “I didn’t want… That is… It was not my intention to hurt you. I am sorry that I did. Truly. But you’re wrong if you think I wasn’t afraid for you.”

He sucked in a breath to speak, then pressed his lips together and shook his head again. After a moment, he visibly relaxed. The harsh lines of anger eased from his features, and he blew out a long breath of air. “I’m sorry as well. I shouldn’t have lost my temper, and I didn’t mean to belittle your own fears, nor—”

Before he could finish, she rose from the bed, brushing past him to take up position in front of the cold hearth. His forgiveness and apology only served to make her feel worse, only cementing her belief that they were hopelessly ill-matched. She had wounded him without meaning to, without even realizing what she’d done.

“Hurting you is the last thing I want to do. But…” She brought her hands up in a helpless gesture, one facing palm up and the other bunched around the wet handkerchief. They both trembled slightly. “I can’t promise I’ll not do it again.”

She couldn’t promise to be what he needed. What he wanted.

He looked as if he meant to argue, but she rushed ahead, her words spilling out in a great tumble. “Because I’m sorry that I hurt you, but I’m not sorry that I went to the station. I’ll never be content to let someone else make that sort of decision for me. I don’t want somebody else to decide where I am to go, or how much I am to risk, or what dangers I am allowed to face. I won’t be made to feel as if I’ve no control over my own life. I can’t pretend to be something, or someone, I’m not, and…” Her voice was growing oddly strained, and she couldn’t seem to stop twisting the handkerchief in her hands. “And that’s exactly want you want me to be. It’s what you need me to be—an obedient, biddable lady who will be happy to do as she’s told. I’m not a biddable woman. I’m not even a particularly
good
woman. Certainly I’m not the thieving Esther Walker of old, but neither am I the deadly dull Esther Bales. I’m trying to be the best of both, really, but you seem to have willfully forgotten I was the former in the hopes I’ll be the latter.”

“Esther—”

She shook her head when he stepped toward her. “We really
are
incompatible. I’d thought perhaps our differences would prove an interesting challenge, but clearly there isn’t enough understanding between us to bridge the gap—”

“Esther. Stop. Good God.” He reached for her, but she dodged away.

“No, there’s no point in—” She sidestepped him again, narrowly avoiding his grasp. “You’ll never want…”

“Come
here
, damn it.” He lunged and caught her around the waist. A choppy laugh broke from his throat.

He was amused? She was a hair’s breadth from tears and he was
laughing
? She struggled in his implacable hold. “Why are you laughing?”

“Because you’re bloody hard to catch, for one thing.” Adjusting his grip, he pulled her even closer. “Esther, listen to me. It’s only an argument. We’ve had them before. There’s no—”

“Of course we have.” She ceased her attempts to break free but remained rigid in his arms. “But this is different.”

“Why is it different?”

“Because it’s important!”

Because I am afraid.

God, she was positively
drowning
in fear. She was scared she’d already gone over the edge of that cliff. She was afraid she’d jumped over with a man who thought she was someone else. She was worried that one day she would look at Samuel and find him staring at her just as he had in the parlor, his steely gray eyes brimming with anger and contempt. That would break her heart as nothing else ever had or ever could.

All humor fled from Samuel’s face. “Sweetheart,” he said softly, and his hand came up to gently cup the side of her jaw. “It’s important to me as well.”

“But you aren’t listening. You don’t understand.”

“I’m trying to,” he said carefully. “You believe we don’t suit because I want a biddable woman and you are, most assuredly,
not
biddable. Do I have it right?”

“That is part of it,” she said and watched him warily. “You were of a similar mind yesterday, and again this morning.” He hadn’t been willing to consider even a friendship with her.

A furrow formed across his brow as he considered her words. “I was angry,” he replied after a time. “I resented being reminded of a time when I felt helpless and unnecessary.”

Reminded…? Oh, God,
of course
. His mother. Another wave of remorse washed over her. She should have thought of that. She should have taken better care. “I’m sorry. I—”

“No more apologies,” he cut in and bent his head to press a kiss to her brow before brushing his thumb along the edge of her cheekbone. “As for the rest—you’re wrong.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t want a biddable woman, Esther. I want you.”

“No, you don’t. You want—”

“Stop presuming to tell me what I want,” he ordered with a hint of impatience. “I’m not a child to be told what’s best for me any more than you are.”

“I’m not…” She wasn’t getting through to him. “Why won’t you open your mother’s letters?” she tried instead.

He drew back in surprise. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I think it’s because you’re afraid she might be sorry,” she pressed. “And you’d never be able to reconcile that with the woman who betrayed you all those years ago. I think, with you, it must be one or the other.”

“One or other what?”

“One sort of person. Good or bad. Honest or a liar. Trustworthy or untrustworthy. Your world is so black-and-white.” And she was decidedly gray.

“My views are slightly more nuanced than that,” he muttered. “You think I should forgive my mother?”

“Not unless that’s what you want. But shouldn’t you make certain she is still a villainess before consigning her to a lifetime of your hatred? Perhaps she is…” She struggled to find the right word. “Imperfect. Perhaps she is imperfect and still worth knowing.”

Hope flickered when he didn’t immediately argue against the idea. “I don’t keep—”

Whatever he’d been about to say was lost when a hesitant knock sounded on the door.

“Come in,” Samuel called out as Esther quickly slipped from his arms and backed away a respectable distance.

Sarah stepped inside, studiously avoiding eye contact with either of them. “Begging your pardon, sir, but this come for you. I was told to bring it to you straightaway.” She handed Samuel a letter and quickly disappeared again.

Esther knew she should be embarrassed to have been caught in a closed bedchamber with Samuel, but she just couldn’t work up the energy for anything more substantial than a resigned sigh.

Samuel read the contents of the note and swore under his breath. “That’s it,” he growled in disgust. “I’m retiring. End of the year.”

“You’re what? Why? What’s happened?”

She reached for the note just as Samuel crumpled it up and shoved it in his pocket. “Our erstwhile lovers were arrested for a four-way brawl on Bond Street.”

“
No
,” she breathed, fascinated despite herself. “Even the ladies?”

“Evidently,” he muttered. “I have to go.” He reached for her again, catching her chin in his hand and holding her gaze. “I know what I want. You. Only you. Understood?”

Before she could respond, he took her mouth in a brief but hard kiss, then strode to the door.

For a long time after, she stood in the middle of the room staring after him as his words played in her mind over and over again.

I know what I want. You. Only you.

She wanted to believe him. She wanted to go back to envisioning a future with him. And yet she couldn’t shake the fear that someday he would change his mind. That there would be more fights like the one yesterday. They would add up over time, she thought, like letters piling up in a drawer, waiting to remind him of a woman he didn’t much like and would be better off without.

* * *

Samuel eyed the desk drawer containing his mother’s letters in the same manner Sarah had eyed the dead rat at her feet—warily, with no small amount of disgust and perhaps a begrudging sense of pity.

He shouldn’t have kept them. He wasn’t even sure why he had. He certainly wanted to be rid of them now.

Briefly, he considered tossing them out as rubbish. Then he thought about burning them. Finally, he imagined opening the drawer, inviting Goliath into the room, and letting nature take its course.

But even as he sat there in the silent, sleeping house, picturing all the ways he could be rid of the damned letters, he knew, in the end, he would open them.

“Damn it.”

It had been well past midnight when he’d finally been able to come home, and his first impulse upon walking through the front door had been to seek out Esther. He could wake her with a slow kiss, watch her eyes flutter open, her lips curve into a soft, dreamy smile. He ached to hold her, to have her skin under his hands, to feel her body move beneath his own.

He wasn’t sure he’d be welcome.

To his mind, their fight was over. They had reconciled, and it was time to move on. He wasn’t confident she shared his opinion, however. He’d sensed a distance between them even after he’d made it clear he wanted her. He’d sensed it even as he’d kissed her good-bye.