His attention on her voice drawing him closer and closer, Hunter didn’t see the leg stretched out in front of his feet. He tripped, stumbling forward as he tried to stay upright and avoid landing on a little girl cowering to her mother’s skirts.
Both women spun around at the noise and Hunter landed hunched over, one hand gripping the bench next to the little girl. With the slightest luck of grace he had landed with both of his feet on the ground. He straightened himself slowly, afraid to look up.
A breath to steady himself and he forced his eyes upward to the women.
All air left the room.
Hell. It was her.
Eliza.
Except there was no Eliza. He had damn well searched the land over for Eliza Wilson. And the woman didn’t exist. Never had.
Who the hell was he looking at?
Strands of her light brown hair peeked from beneath her dark cap. Her green eyes, just as big and as bright as spring buds—just as they had been three years ago on the continent—stilled every muscle in his body.
Her mouth agape, she stared back at him. Her air was gone just the same as his.
The tall woman next to Eliza politely coughed into her large, curled hand.
Hunter couldn’t move.
Neither could Eliza.
The tall woman coughed again.
This time, Eliza jumped, spinning to her. Her eyes blinking furiously, her look swiveled back and forth from Hunter to the woman. “Marjorie, will you excuse me for a moment?” Her gaze ran scattered around the room. “Pull Randolph down from the third floor and tell him I need him to restore order in here, please. He can only hide up there for so long.”
Without another word, Eliza turned stiffly to Hunter and nodded toward the stairwell, then silently brushed past him.
He followed, surprised his feet were able to move after her, for the rest of him was still frozen in shock.
Up three flights of stairs and then Eliza walked down a long hallway in front of him. Floorboards were popped askew in the corridor, reaching up to trip him. Eliza’s fast strides didn’t leave him margin for the slow and steady gait he usually maintained. Had to maintain.
At the end of the hallway, she opened a door and disappeared into a room.
Ducking under the short frame of the doorway, Hunter had to stay slightly bent under the angled wood rafters until he made it to the inner wall of the room where the ceiling was higher.
By the time he stopped, Eliza had moved around him and closed the door. She now stood, her back to him, both of her hands clutching the doorknob.
The slight set of her shoulders lifted up and down with each breath. Her breathing was rapid. Just as rapid as his.
Good.
He wasn’t imagining this.
He wasn’t dreaming this.
She was just as jolted with this as he was.
“Eliza—”
She spun around at her name, her hand flying up to stop his words. “You—you left me. You abandoned me, Hunter, and now you show up here—alive and healthy?”
His head snapped backward. “Alive? Of course I’m alive. When did I die?”
Her trembling hand fell from the air, her arms wrapping around her middle as her breath left her in a stuttering exhale. Her legs giving out, she fell back against the door, sliding down the length of it to rest on her heels. The crown of her head tilted back, clunking onto the wood as her eyes squinted closed.
Hunter forced down the instinctive need to step to her, to scoop her up from the floor and crush her into his chest.
Her head shaking, a visible tremble ran through her body before her eyes cracked open. Her green eyes glistened with unshed tears. It took a long moment before her look dropped to him and she hiccupped a breath. “They said you were gone. Left to nowhere. So I—I always think of you as dead, buried—I had to.”
“Dead? On the coast?”
“Yes. I couldn’t bear it that you abandoned me. Death I could accept.” She shook her head, her full lips straining, pulling inward before her next words. “It is you, isn’t it, Hunter? I can’t—I—tell me—tell me something that is you so I know it’s truly you.”
He stared at her, his look unwavering and his feet refusing to step to her. His eyes dipped to her arm wrapped around her waist. “I know how you got that long scar up from your left elbow. I know why it exists.”
She blinked, an instant gasp parting her lips.
Hidden to the world, he knew the jagged white line of skin running along her upper arm was from a shard of glass tearing into her skin when he pushed her out that second story window in Spain.
He knew it. She knew it.
She nodded, belief finally starting to filter into her green eyes. Belief and anger. “Alive…but you left me…you abandoned me just when…” The word petered to nothingness, her breath not willing to support more words.
“I left you word, Eliza. A letter. A long one. The boy swore he would get it to you. They requested me in an encampment down the coast to train several marksmen. I was well enough and they desperately needed a man. By that time I could sit up, hobble about at the least, so I did it. But I never would have agreed if I had known when I got back to the hospital that you would be gone. Never.” The last word tore from his throat, ripping open the rage—the loss—that had seized him that day he arrived at the hospital to find her gone.
“Hunter—”
“I followed you, Eliza. Followed you on the next ship to England. And I have scoured this land to find you.” His eyes narrowed at her. “But I have been searching for a ghost—no, not a ghost—someone that never even existed. I had no way to find you, Eliza—the only Eliza Wilson on English soil is a little old lady in Cosgrove. So you’re not Eliza—what did that woman downstairs call you? Bridget?”
She cringed at his words, cringed at the anger palpitating in his voice.
It took her a long moment, but she finally shifted, straightening her shoulders and pushing herself up along the wood and then off from the door. She moved across the room and planted herself in front him. “No, my name—my name is not Eliza, Hunter. It never was. That was the name my father made me use with all the patients. He didn’t want them to know who I was. It was one of the barriers that he insisted upon. Bridget is my given name.”
“Barriers?” His tongue curled around the distaste of the word as though he had just licked the heel of a boot fresh from London streets.
“I was going to tell you, Hunter—that day, that day you disappeared. I was set to tell you my name.”
A sarcastic chuckle barked into the room “Of course you were.” The edge of his mouth lifted, almost to a sneer. “Do you know how long I searched for you? The madness I drove myself to?”
Her arms folded across her chest, her voice setting into a low tone. “The barriers were there to protect me from exactly what happened—the only problem was that my father wasn’t there to stop me from falling for you. Do you think you were the first man that attempted to woo me from a sick bed, Hunter?”
“No.” He refused to let her ire cut into his outrage. “But was I the first man to save your life?”
She blinked, her mouth stretching into a tight line. “Yes.”
He leaned forward, his eyes skewering her. “So you at least owed me that. Your name.”
Shaking her head she took a step back and turned from him. She walked over to the small square window at the front of the room, her black cap brushing along the rough-hewed rafter that angled down above her. Long breaths passed before she spoke, her voice now a shadow of what it had been a moment ago. “Of course I owed you that, Hunter.”
“What were we, Bridget? I thought…” He paused, clearing his throat. His voice went rough, cracking with the question that had haunted him for three years on his tongue. “Was I just another patient to you? Just another man you took pity on—pretended affection with to make him well?”
Her shoulders lifted, tensing with the question. She didn’t turn around to him, h
er words echoing off the window back to him. “I promised my father—it was the one condition he had for me to accompany him to the continent. Don’t fall in love. Anything else I did was fine. But he made me swear not to fall in love. He knew—he knew that the place where we were travelling to was full of death and blood and destruction and would have the ability to rip my heart to shreds.” Her fingers lifted, pressing onto the glass. “He knew men would be dying, desperate. Would do things they would not in their right minds. He knew they would promise me the world and then return to their lives, their families, and I would be forgotten. Banished to the wasted lands of war. Banished to memories best forgotten.”
She spun to him, her hand lifting to her face. She swiped away a tear, or at least he thought it was a tear—she was too quick to see it for certain.
“I kept that oath to my father until you, Hunter. You were the only one. And my father was right. I never should have let my heart go there. Never. It ruined me. Those days ruined me. You ruined me when you abandoned me.”
The devastation in her green eyes welled as her look cut into him. Pain that could only be borne from love.
At some point, she had loved him.
Loved him enough to be looking at him with that much torment in her eyes.
In that moment, everything sank away. All his doubt, frustration and anger from the last three years sank away—for he was looking at the woman he had loved—had never stopped loving.
He took a step toward her, searching for words, when the door swung open.
A man stepped into the room, his overcoat of bright purple with orange trim flashing, swallowing the air in the tiny space. The few dark hairs on his mostly bald head were slicked back, a factitious grin on his face.
Hunter recognized him instantly.
Bournestein.
Murderer. Thief. King of St. Giles—or at least his corner of the squalor.
Too many of the guards at the Revelry’s Tempest had tangled with him over the years.
Bridget jumped in front of Bournestein, a calm indifference sweeping her face. The pain Hunter had just seen a moment ago in her eyes vanished behind a pandering smile. “Mr. Bournestein, this is a surprise visit.”
Bournestein’s beady eyes only rested on Bridget for a moment before he looked at Hunter over her shoulder. “I come to see the adjoining building ye be insisting upon, and I imagined ye would want to guide me through yer vision for the place.”
She nodded. “That is very kind of you to be so responsive. Yes, we should go.”
Bridget’s smile went wider—the indulgent but distancing smile Hunter had seen countless times on her face as she talked to over-zealous suitors attempting to woo her from their sick beds. A flash of doubt snaked around his chest, squeezing it. Had she always looked at him like that as well? Maybe he didn’t remember the truth. Maybe he remembered only what he wanted to.
No. What he saw in her green eyes a minute ago was not pandering, was not false.
Bridget took a step toward Bournestein, her hand brushing into the air to usher him out the door.
Bournestein didn’t move with her, instead turning to Hunter. “Don’t I know you from somewhere, friend?”
Hunter’s muscles coiled, but he stilled himself, offering up only bored nonchalance. “No. I cannot say that you do, Mr. Bou…” He looked to Bridget.
“Bournestein.” She filled in the name. “Please, Mr. Bournestein, I am sure you saw the many people I must tend to downstairs—if I may be so bold as to suggest that we must hurry this along?”
Bournestein ignored her, taking a step toward Hunter. “What are you doing here, friend?”
What was he doing here?
Dammit, he almost forgot. Aldair.
“I was just looking for my cousin, Aldair. I lost him last night during a brawl on Russell Street. I thought I saw him take a knife and I was told that if he was injured there was a chance he stumbled into here. I was just speaking to Miss…” He looked to Bridget, realizing she never told him if Wilson was truly her family name.
“Morton.”
He looked back to Bournestein, meeting his beady eyes. “I was just speaking to Miss Morton about the rooms here I may have missed in my search, and where I might also search for him in the area. My cousin is tall, my height, brown hair, a bit broader. He has a scar that runs along his left cheekbone.”
Bridget’s eyes widened at his description.
Bournestein nodded and then looked to Bridget, his voice casual. Too casual. “I assume you didn’t find his cousin?”
She had already hidden her surprise by the time Bournestein’s eyes reached her. She gave a slight shake of her head. “No.”
The hairs on the back of Hunter’s neck spiked. Bridget’s reaction. Bournestein’s nonchalant inquiry.
Hunter moved toward the door, wedging himself in between Bridget and Bournestein. “I imagine then, that my cousin is in a gutter. If you will excuse me, I need to continue my search.” With a slight bow of his head to both parties, he moved out the door. His look stopped on Bridget. “Thank you again for your assistance, Miss Morton. I appreciate your time.”
“I was happy to assist—”
“Tis a Mrs. Morton, sir, not a Miss.” Bournestein cut her off, his eyes calculating on Hunter.
Without a blink, Hunter looked at Bridget and inclined his head to her. “Mrs. Morton.”
He turned, walking away with as much steadiness as he could muster.
Mrs. Morton.
Married.
Eliza—Bridget—was married.
He nearly stumbled, then sent all his concentration to his feet.
Slow and even steps.
Nothing to betray his foot.
Nothing to betray the frenzied fury pounding through his veins.
{ Chapter 4 • To Capture a Warrior }
She shouldn’t be doing this.
Stupid, truly it was. Dangerous.
But she would risk anything to see him again. To prove he was real. Alive and not dead as she had come to believe in her mind.
Bridget stared up at the front facade of the building she had been directed to, her toes tapping on the bottom stone step.
The Revelry’s Tempest.
It sat, enormous and elegant in pale, thick-cut stone—though just as non-descript to her eye as all the other townhouses on the block. Expensive. She could recognize that of it, though it seemed an odd place for a gaming hall. Even with her father’s sufficient funds, hers was never a world of fancy carriages and fine silks. Hers had always been a world of medicine and broken bones and blood.
As he had exited Cranesbill Hospital, Hunter had stopped Marjorie and had discreetly shared the name of the establishment where word could be sent if his cousin appeared.
She had taken that name to her neighbor, old Mr. Hapson, a hack driver who knew every street and establishment in London, and this was the address for the Revelry’s Tempest that he had directed her to.
A deep breath she didn’t realize she was drawing in sank into the bottom of her lungs, tangling with the churning pit of her stomach.
Stupid. Dangerous.
Necessary.
She tilted her head back to see up past the front edge of her bonnet. Why would Hunter ask for word to be delivered here? Did he own this place? Work at it? She had no idea what Hunter would have moved on to after the war. He had talked about perhaps purchasing a swath of land in Yorkshire to farm and raise sheep after he sold his commission. Or possibly moving into trade. Or becoming a gamekeeper. Just as long as he was in the wild—not in a city like London.
He apparently hadn’t meant any of it, for he had landed exactly where he swore he would not.
Her lips drew inward as she debated between the front and the rear door in the waning evening light. The place was obviously alive—she could see people flitting about in the windows, preparing for some sort of event, lighting candles.
Her head dipped and she picked up her feet. Rear door. It would cause the leas
t offense if she was wrong about his status.
She moved around to the alley. Walking past the spacious mews, she cut in along a narrow corridor hidden from the expansive garden that filled the rear courtyard behind the building to find the rear servants’ entrance to the house.
Within minutes after knocking, she was trailing behind the most stunning man she had ever seen. Short dark hair atop chiseled features with mesmerizing steel grey eyes—her tongue had frozen against her teeth when he had answered the door. After pinching herself to interrupt her own stare, she had managed to stutter out her request to see Hunter.
In silence, the silver-eyed man led her down the rear staircase and deposited her in a large room. The raw walls of grey stone, the wide curved fireplace, the dark furniture and sideboard lined with decanters of dark liquid told her she had been shown into a room for men and only men.
Her nose wrinkled. Vestiges of pipes and cheroots in the air swirled with the lingering trail of brandy, maybe whiskey. The smell held fast to the thick wood of the table that centered the room. Everything in the room sat large and heavy—even the dark black marble on the sideboard that held the full array of spirits was positioned higher than normal. Chairs were scattered to and fro—all with a wide seat and sturdy legs.
A domain of men if ever there was one.
The stunning man turned to her—his steel eyes looking her up and down. “You said you have information Crawford needs?”
Bridget nodded. While she hadn’t given this man any more detail than that, she got the unsettling feeling that his silver eyes saw everything about her true reason for coming here.
“It is urgent?”
She nodded again.
“I will send Crawford down.”
He disappeared out the door, leaving Bridget to stand in the room, her fingernails digging into her palms.
It was long—too long for her frayed nerves—before she heard boot steps on the stone floor echoing down the corridor to this room.
Logan’s Legends: A Revelry's Tempest Regency Romance Box Set Page 12
