“No. It is done. Everyone that can be saved has been saved. We leave now.” Gabe’s jaw was granite and his eyes determined.
“I must say goodbye,” Abby said, trying to see around her brothers. Desperate to see Daniel for herself.
“No.” He grabbed her hand. Michael took the other, and then they were walking.
“Don’t do this, Gabe. I must—”
“We are going home all together. I need us to be together right now, Abby. I hope you can understand that?”
“I do. I just need to know—”
“The terror and utter helplessness that I felt when I could not reach you and Zach will not be something I forget easily, Abby.”
“We are safe, Gabe. But Mary. I must find her.”
“She is with her family.”
“You would not lie to me, he is safe?” Right then, she didn’t care what her brothers thought of her words. She was exhausted and desperate for reassurance that Daniel had left the water.
“Dillinger is safe. I saw him exit the water myself,” Zach said softly. “I would not lie to you in this, sister.”
She climbed into the carriage and sat wedged between Michael and Nathan as they rolled silently away from Vauxhall Gardens and a night that would change the lives of many for years to come.
Chapter 22
Daniel had woken on the second day after the events that took place in Vauxhall Gardens with an aching head and streaming eyes. He’d lain there and thought about moving, but doing so had caused aches in his body to protest vehemently. Instead he’d sent word to Alan that he would not be seeing him that day. He’d then fallen back into a feverish sleep that involved visions of him trying to save Abby as she sank below the black waters of the Thames.
The pounding on his front door later that day had woken him. Staggering to answer it, he found his parents on the doorstep. Ignoring his protests that he wished to stay in his bed, they had forced him from it, dressed him, and taken him home where he now resided in his old bed.
Stretching his legs to the bottom, he tested his aching muscles three days later and realized he felt a great deal better. He’d slept, been woken and force-fed broth and liquid, then slept more. He remembered voices; all of them had come to visit, even the nieces and nephews. He’d woken once as the day had been sliding into night and found Oliver seated beside him.
“Sleep, brother, I will watch over you.”
“Not dying,” he’d mumbled, which had made his brother chuckle.
“I’ll just sit here a while longer to make sure.”
Daniel had asked after Abby, to which Oliver had replied she was safe and well. He’d then fallen asleep once more.
Oliver would want to know about Abby now, as clearly there was more to his reaction to her than he’d let on before. He would need to avoid that conversation as he did so many with his big brother.
Was she really well, Daniel wondered now that he was thinking with a great deal more clarity. Perhaps Oliver had been lying, and she’d also fallen ill? He hoped if she had, her brothers cared for her as his family had.
Closing his eyes, he remembered that night at Vauxhall Gardens. When he’d known the boat was about to sink, he’d dived into the water and got as close as he could. Luckily, her brother had seen him and thrown Abby overboard.
He’d held her close, briefly, and then they’d swam to the bank. He and the others had then saved as many people as they could. When it was done, they’d staggered out of the water. Oliver had hauled him to his feet, wrapped him in a blanket, and hugged him hard.
Daniel had asked after her. His brother had told him Lady Abigail had been magnificent, helping people who had been in the water. Even breathing life into them. He’d said she’d gone home with her brothers, and that had been that.
Abby.
Would she forever be a deep ache inside him? Christ, he hoped not. He hoped another took her place. Hoped that a woman captured him as completely as she had. He refused to say the word love; it could not possibly be that when they’d spent so little time together, but he had to acknowledge there was some deep connection there.
“And that is enough of that.”
Swinging his legs out of bed, Daniel decided it was time to join the world once more. He washed and dressed, then left his room.
Their father had protested, pride making him state that he could care for his family, when Oliver had come to collect them that day many years ago. He had been busy since he’d left them with nothing but anger and hunger as his companion. He’d made a great deal of money, and with some of that he’d purchased them this home in London.
Daniel remembered the day as if it were yesterday. He’d found his brother on the doorstep, all grown up and looking like a gentleman. The relief that their life would change had been absolute for the Dillinger siblings.
Their mother had intervened and told her husband that his lungs were no longer capable of working in those mines and that he needed to consider his children. She’d told him in her calm, rational manner that he was being selfish. Her children had agreed.
They’d moved a few days later, packing up the only life he’d ever known and hated to move to a bright new future.
There were six bedrooms in the house, because his mother had declared that was more than enough for a family of eight.
Life as the Dillinger children had known it changed the day they stepped foot inside this house, and that was all because of Oliver.
Why, then, could he not move past the emotion that seethed inside him? He was a shallow, ungrateful man, clearly.
He wandered down the hall and took the stairs he’d run down with his
