Page 49 of As the Devil Dares

“She needs surgery, but I’m certain she’ll be fine,” Mariah told her softly, kindness lacing her voice. “Go down to the kitchen and show Mrs. Smith. Tell her that I said it was okay if you have a biscuit while you wait for her to stitch up Lucy’s arm, all right?”

The girl nodded with a loud sniff. Mariah hugged her once more, then placed a kiss on her forehead and set the girl on her feet. With a parting glower at Robert, Polly ran from the room with her doll clasped tightly to her chest.

Mariah kept her gaze on the doorway long after the little girl disappeared as a quiet stillness fell over them. “Go on,” she urged softly, not looking at him. “Say it.”

“That doll’s missing its head,” he returned in the same solemn voice.

She sighed heavily. “I know.” Her slender shoulders deflated. “Polly’s father died when the Mary Grace went down last year. That doll was the last present her father gave her. It’s falling apart and lost its head last month, but she refuses to part with it, no matter that I’ve promised her a new doll to replace it.”

Robert understood that. Even now he carried with him the pocket watch his father had given him when he was graduated from Oxford. The same pocket watch that hadn’t worked in years.

“You can say the other, too.” Her gaze found him then, and wariness flickered in her green depths as if she expected him to attack. “That I’m wasting my time and money on this school. That I’m a fool to think that I can make any difference. That one little girl means nothing when so many are on the streets.”

Beneath her defensiveness, he glimpsed vulnerability, and it took his breath away. No one in the ton would have ever suspected that this softer side existed to the Hellion. He certainly hadn’t, and it surprised the hell out of him. So did the gnawing realization that he liked it.

He reached out and covered her hand with his. “I would never say that.”

She looked down at their hands, as if surprised at the tender gesture, but didn’t pull hers away. Then she stunned him by slowly bringing her other hand to cover his. The sudden connection that blossomed between them was undeniable.

“Why not?” she challenged softly, watching as she trailed a fingertip over the back of his hand. “My father would. In fact, he’s said so several times.” She gave a defeated glance at the dirty puddle around her. “Perhaps he’s right.”

“He’s not,” he assured her quietly, giving a small squeeze to her fingers as he thought of his sister and the orphans she’d helped in their village. One kind soul could change the path of every life it touched.

She slowly pulled her hands away, and immediately, he missed the warmth of her understanding touch. “Better not let Papa hear you disagreeing with him, Carlisle,” she warned, but with more teasing than reprimand. “You’ll lose your partnership.” She paused a beat for effect. “On second thought…”

He ignored that barb, not wanting to engage in battle, not when they were finally beginning to understand each other.

But something about her teasing bothered him. “Is that why you care so much about this place?” Had he completely misunderstood the complicated relationship she had with Henry Winslow? “Because it irritates your father?”

“No.” A conspiratorial smile played at her lips. “That’s just a delightful bonus.”

He grinned. There was the minx he knew, in the mischievous gleam of her eyes and the impish twist to her lips. His gut tightened to see such stubborn resolve matched with feminine vulnerability. The combination was bewitching.

“My mother grew up two streets from here.” She turned her face away to avoid his gaze, but not quickly enough to prevent him from seeing the glistening in her eyes. He recognized that grief. It was the same that he carried for his father. “It sounds foolish, I suppose, but after she died, whenever I missed her so terribly that I thought I might die myself, I would come here to St Katharine’s and feel close to her again.”

“Not foolish at all,” he murmured. After all, hadn’t he done the same thing, by living at Park Place, by working at the same desk where his father had?

When she glanced at him, a shared understanding softened her features, and he once again felt that inexplicable connection between them. Once again saw the vulnerability in her that she tried so hard to hide from the world.

“When I returned from Miss Pettigrew’s, I wanted to help the families of St Katharine’s,” she explained. “I finally had the financial means and plenty of time on my hands, so we decided to open the Gatewell School.”

“We?” he asked gently.

“Hugh Whitby and me.”

So that’s how the dandy had first worked his way into her heart. Yet even knowing his charitable bent, it was deuced hard to like him. Or acknowledge the flash of jealousy toward the man.

“Baron Whitby lets us stay here rent-free in return for keeping up the building, so the children help with the maintenance. They learn carpentry and masonry, housekeeping skills, how to raise vegetables and herbs in the garden…”

As he watched her speak about the school, admiration for her began to warm inside him. She certainly wasn’t some idle society daughter whose only forays into charity were hosting teas and ladies’ circles. No, Mariah preferred to work. That was one of the most unconventional aspects to her. One Robert found himself liking a great deal.

She shrugged her slender shoulders. “Whenever we can, we turn the work into a lesson.”

“That’s an unusual education.” And ingenious.

“It fits our mission. Primarily, we run a vocational school. We teach work skills, as well as a foundational education in the basic subjects.” She looked down at her hands. “We also provide an afternoon tea, which for some of the children might be the only meal they have all day, and we offer a safe haven during the day while their mothers work.”

Judging from the chagrined expression that flitted over her face and the way she refused to meet his gaze, the school also provided a place for the children when their mothers couldn’t find honest work and had to sell their bodies to survive.