"She woke an hour ago, Your Grace. Mrs. Graves prepared some beef broth. She ate a little. She is awake now."
Theo nodded.
He walked up the stairs. His boots felt heavy. The adrenaline of the evening was fading, leaving behind a profound bone-deep exhaustion. He pushed open the door to the master suite. The room was sweltering, the fires roaring in the grates.
Josephine was sitting up in the massive bed, propped against a mountain of pillows. She wore one of his large white linen shirts, the cuffs rolled up to her elbows. The fine fabric swallowed her frail frame, but the color in her cheeks was slightly better. The haunting gray pallor of the slum had faded to a fragile porcelain. She looked at him as he entered.
She did not smile. She did not look relieved. She looked terrified. "You did it, didn't you?" she asked.
Her voice was barely a whisper, thick with sleep and fear. Theo stopped at the foot of the bed. He looked at her dark hair against the white pillows, at the heavy swell of his child beneath the blankets. He had no desire to lie to her. He would never lie to her again.
"I dissolved the betrothal in front of the entire dining room," he said softly. "I told them you are my wife. I ordered her out of the house by morning. Her accounts are frozen." Josie closed her eyes.
A tear slipped free, tracking down her cheek. It wasn't a tear of joy. It was the terrified weeping of a woman watching a firing squad load their rifles.
"She will ruin my father, Theo. She warned me. She promised me."
Theo walked around the bed.
He sat on the edge of the mattress, careful not to crowd her. He reached out and took her hand. It was warmer now.
The chill of the street was finally driven out of her skin. "She will not," Theo said. His voice was an iron vow. "I will not let her."
"You don't know her," Josie sobbed, pulling her hand away to cover her face. "You grew up ignoring her. I saw her up close. I saw the way she smiled when she handed me those ledgers."
"She enjoys the cruelty, Theo. She will destroy my sisters. They will be destitute. My father will hang."
"Josie, look at me."
She shook her head, crying into her palms.
The stress was tearing at her. She curled inward, her breath hitching in a way that terrified him. Theo leaned forward. He gently but firmly pulled her hands away from her face. He forced her to look at him.
"I was a coward," Theo said. The confession scraped his throat raw. "When you handed me those papers eight months ago, I was a coward. I let my pride blind me. I let you walk away because I was too arrogant to fight for you and too blind to see what was happening in my own home. I let you freeze in a slum."
He swallowed hard, fighting the tightening in his chest. "I cannot undo that. I will spend the rest of my life trying to apologize for it, but I am not that man anymore. I am not the bored aristocrat who lets his mother run his life. I tore my world apart tonight because I would rather burn London to the ground than see you cry like this again. I will fix this."
Josie stared at him.
Her chest heaved. The terror in her eyes was warring with something else, a desperate, fragile hope. She hated hoping. Hoping in St. Giles got you killed. "How?" she whispered.
"How can you fix it? The ink is already dry on those ledgers."
Theo's jaw tightened. "Ink can be bought, and so can the men who spill it. Rest, Josie. Keep my son safe. I will bring you the ashes of those ledgers before the sun sets tomorrow."
London had a dark underbelly, a subterranean world of vice, forgery, and violence that existed entirely to service the pristine aristocracy living above it. Gentlemen of the ton did not forge their own documents, just as they did not slaughter their own meat. They hired professionals.
Theo did not sleep. At dawn, he left Somerset Square dressed in plain dark clothing devoid of his usual diamonds and silk. He took a heavy oak walking stick with a lead-weighted handle. He walked to a high-end gentlemen's club on St. James's Street, not his own, but one known for turning a blind eye to high-stakes gambling and ruined men. He found exactly who he was looking for, sitting alone in a corner booth nursing a glass of gin at 7:00 in the morning.
Lord Harrington. A man who owed Theo's estate over 4,000 pounds in gambling debts. A man who intimately knew the men who operated in the shadows. Theo slid into the leather booth opposite Harrington. The ruined lord blanched, his hand trembling as he set his glass down.
"Westmore, I swear the funds are coming from my estate in Cornwall. The harvest was—"
"I don't care about the money, Harrington," Theo interrupted. His voice was low, cutting through the stale air of the club. "Consider the debt forgiven, completely erased, provided you give me a name."