He tentatively took hold of her hand. She didn’t pull away. “I’m grateful you’ve let me come see you while you’ve been here. It’s nice being with you, sitting beside you, talking with you.”
She met his eye. “I like talking with you too. I ain’t always been able to trust people enough for talking. I’ve needed to, though.”
“I’m here now. I’m listening.”
She shifted her position and tucked herself up against him, her legs bent and resting against his. He set his other arm around her and held her close. The arrangement felt like something a husband and wife would do at the end of a difficult day: quietly sitting, taking comfort in each other’s nearness. He liked having her there, liked holding her this way.
“I was afraid it’d be one of my uncles what found me,” she said. “My cousins ain’t exactly doves, but my uncles are—” He felt her take a shaking breath. “Uncle Silas is a scorcher of the worst sort. People whisper when they talk about the Kincaids, but they scatter when they see him. He kills people, and they know it. Everyone knows it.” Her voice had dropped to a strained whisper. “My uncle Arlo ain’t much better.”
“Do you think they’ll give up on recruiting you back to the family business?”
He felt a shudder flow through her. “Never. No one questions Silas. No one thwarts him. My father could manage it now and then, but only by warning him that walloping and killing too many people would draw notice. It weren’t my father’s authority that won; it was my uncle not looking to get caught.”
“I wish you had even just one person in your family you could think about with fondness.”
“I know you think of your mother fondly,” she said. “You don’t talk about her much, but when you do, there is love in yourvoice.” She looked up at him and smiled sadly. “I can tell you miss her.”
“I do, and not just because she’s the only family I have,” he said. That spun his mind toward something else. “At least, I think she’s the only family I have.”
She turned her head to look directly at him, confusion in her eyes.
“There’s a man that’s come by the house a couple of times, and I saw him on the street at one point. He watched me very closely, enough that it caught my attention.”
She held more tightly to him. “Are you in danger, Baz?”
He didn’t know why it touched him so much that she worried for him. Perhaps because so few people had during his life. “I was wary of Mr. Snelling at first, but he came again today and explained his interest in me.”
“What did he say?”
“That I look a great deal like his sister, and he wonders if maybe we’re related.”
“If you are, that’d mean you have family.” She sounded as happy for him as he knew he would be if it proved true.
He nodded. “He lost touch with his sister twenty-five years ago. He’s not heard from her since. I find myself wondering if his sister and my mother might be one and the same.”
Gemma studied his face. Eager hopefulness sat in her eyes, something he didn’t see often. She was so adept at hiding her thoughts that it was often difficult to know what she was feeling.
“That would make him your uncle,” she said. “He would know where your mother came from and who her family were.”
His mother had never shared those things with him. Life had torn her down enough that she’d kept so much about herself hidden, even from her son. He felt that gap keenly to this day.
“I would know my mother’s actual given name,” he said. “I’dknow what county she hailed from, what brought her to London. I’d know what other family she had—what other familyIhave.”
“You deserve to have family, Baz.” She set her hands on either side of his face, holding him gently. The soft, gentle touch warmed his heart even as it sped his pulse a bit. “You deserve to be happy. You have given so many people their lives back. You deserve to claim yours.”
“Don’t you deserve happiness as well?” he asked softly.
“It’s difficult to feel something that don’t even seem possible.”
With her as close as she was, his arms wrapped tightly around her, the two of them pressed together with her hands gently caressing his jaw, he could actually believe there might be hope on the horizon. Hope. And family. And love.
“I don’t mean to give up, Gemma.”
“Give up onwhat?” she whispered.
“On us.”
He kissed her. He’d meant for it to be a simple show of affection, of tenderness. But the moment his lips touched hers, all thoughts fled. There was warmth. Softness. And passion. He pulled her closer. She set her palms against his chest but not pushing him away. Touching him as if holding him there.