A lucky escape, Theodore. The trash has taken itself out. He stopped dead in the middle of the street, oblivious to a passing cart that nearly clipped his shoulder. His mother His mother had orchestrated the entire thing. He knew it in his bones.
The embezzlement charges against Josie's father, the swift, quiet dissolution of the marriage. Josephine wouldn't have just walked away and lived in a slum by choice. She was forced. She was threatened. And she had borne the threat in silence to protect him or her family, taking his child into the gutter rather than beg for his help.
Theo looked down at his clean, perfectly manicured hands. He felt sick. He had spent the last eight months playing the victim, wrapping himself in the luxurious misery of a heartbroken duke. Meanwhile, the woman he loved was freezing, fighting for scraps to feed his unborn child. "I will burn it all down," he whispered to the wind.
He didn't care about the scandal. He didn't care about Beatrice. He didn't care if he had to drag the Dowager Duchess into the street and strip her of her allowance. He resumed walking. His pace was relentless.
He wasn't the Duke of Westmore anymore. He was a man who had just found out he was bleeding to death, and he was walking toward the only person who could stop it. The transition from the affluent streets to the rookeries was stark. The pavement vanished, replaced by packed dirt and raw sewage. The buildings leaned over the street, blocking out the gray light.
Their windows broken and stuffed with rags. The smell was abominable, a mix of gin, unwashed bodies, and decay. Men with hollow eyes watched him from doorways. Women with painted faces hissed at him from the shadows. Theo ignored them all.
He walked with the terrifying purpose of a predator. He found Monmouth Street. He found the cooper's shop, the sharp smell of wood shavings and tar cutting through the stench of the street. Beside it was a narrow, rotting wooden staircase leading up into the darkness. Theo didn't hesitate.
He climbed. The stairs groaned under his weight. At the second landing, a rat scurried over his boot. He kept climbing. He reached the top floor.
There was only one door. It hung slightly off its hinges, the wood splintered. Theo stopped in front of it. His heart, dead and quiet for eight months, was hammering against his ribs with frantic, painful violence. He raised his hand.
He hesitated for a fraction of a second. What if she slammed it in his face? What if she hated him? She has every right to, he thought grimly. He knocked.
The knock echoed in the damp, freezing stairwell. It sounded too loud, too violent for the rotting wood of the door. Theo held his breath. For a long, agonizing minute, there was only silence. He raised his fist to knock again, harder this time, when he heard the faint scuff of a shoe against bare floorboards.
The door opened, not fully, just a few meager inches. Josephine stood in the crack. Up close, stripped of the market crowd, the reality of her condition hit Theo like a physical blow to the stomach. Her face, once round and full of color, was hollowed out. The cheekbones sharp beneath pale, translucent skin.
Dark, bruised circles hung heavy under her eyes. She was shivering, a violent, uncontrollable tremor that racked her entire frame. She did not look surprised to see him. She looked utterly, overwhelmingly exhausted. "Go away, Theodore," she said.
Her voice was raspy, stripped of its usual warmth. She pushed against the door to close it. Theo reacted on pure instinct. He shoved his heavy, bespoke leather boot into the gap. The wood groaned against the leather.
"Josie, let me in. "There is nothing for you here. She said, leaning her weight against the door. It was a futile gesture.
He was a broad-shouldered man in the prime of his life. She was a starving, pregnant woman. But the sheer stubbornness of her effort made his chest ache.
"I am not leaving this hallway until you open this door," Theo said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous register. "You can let me in or I can break the hinges. I do not care which." Josephine stared at him through the gap.
Her dark eyes searched his face, looking for the anger, the coldness she had come to expect from him. But there was no coldness left. There was only a desperate, frantic terror. Slowly, she stepped back, letting the door swing open. Theo stepped over the threshold and felt his heart stop.
The room was no larger than his dressing closet at the estate. The walls were weeping with damp. There was a single, narrow bed in the corner, covered in a thin, ragged quilt. A cracked ceramic pitcher sat on a wooden crate. There was a small fireplace, but the grate was dead, filled only with a handful of cold, gray ash.
The air inside the room was colder than the street, trapping the winter chill within the brick. This was where she lived. This was where she was preparing to bring his child into the world. He turned to look at her. She stood by the window, her arms wrapped defensively around the heavy swell of her stomach.
She refused to meet his eyes. "Have you seen enough?" she asked, her voice dripping with defensive venom. "Has your curiosity been satisfied? You may return to your pristine bride now. You will want to wash your boots."
Theo ignored the barb. He took a step toward her. "How long, Josie?"
"How long what?"
"How long have you lived in this squalor?" he demanded, the words tearing out of his throat. "How long have you been starving yourself to buy bruised cabbage in the mud?"
She flinched. "I am not starving. I am surviving. It is none of your concern."
"It became my concern the moment I saw you in that square," Theo fired back, closing the distance between them.
He stopped just a foot away, towering over her. "You are pregnant."
"Women get pregnant, Theodore. It is a biological reality. It has nothing to do with you."