From Runaway To Pregnant Bride

“Six.”

Six years old. So, he hadn’t been abandoned at birth. He’d have memories. He’d have suffered the grief of loss, something they had in common. “Do you remember your parents?” she asked softly.

“I remember a woman’s voice singing.” He gave her a sly look from beneath the brim of his hat. “And a man’s voice telling her to shut up.”

For an instant, the cutting reply silenced Annabel. Then she launched into another attempt to get a peek into his mind. “What happened to you when they died?”

“Aren’t you full of questions today?” Clay glanced up into the clear blue dome of the sky. “Could it be that the sun is frying up your brain?”

Annabel gave him an innocent smile. “Just passing the time.”

Clay walked over to the mule, squatted on his heels to inspect the hooves and spoke without looking up. “Someone took me to the nuns. The nuns only looked after girl orphans, so they sent me to an orphanage that was little more than a workhouse. Boys as young as three were hired out to chimney sweeps and farmers and storekeepers—anyone who would pay.”

Annabel could see the tension in Clay’s naked back and shoulders, could hear the bitter note in his voice. Pity welled up inside her. They were both orphans, but the similarity ended there. Unlike her, Clay had no happy memories of loving parents to draw upon. He’d grown up with cruelty and neglect.

Had he ever felt love? Did he even understand such emotion? Did those hidden feelings of kindness and caring she had credited him with really exist, or had she merely imagined them, fooled by her own sentimental nature?

“How old were you when you left the orphanage?” she asked, aware that any moment now he might decide she was pushing too hard and react with anger.

Clay rose to his feet. Although his voice remained calm, there was no mistaking the warning in his manner. “I was fourteen, and I was not a scrawny kid like you. I was capable of doing a man’s job, instead of loafing about in the sun and bothering other people who have better things to do.”