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, her 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 }
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 least 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.
She turned to the doorway, her breath held.
Hunter turned the corner, stepping into the room before he spotted her. He halted on sight, jerking to a stop.
He was real.
Not a dream.
That fact alone stole the breath from her lungs, just as it had hours ago.
She hadn’t just imagined him appearing out of nowhere this morning. Hadn’t set his face onto some random man in her mind. Hadn’t spotted him along a crowded London street.
It had happened enough times in the past years—all of those imaginations—that she could no longer trust herself, trust her own eyes. There had been far too many sightings of this man that she could not force to leave her mind, her soul.
No matter how hard she had tried to forget him, his face was always there to haunt her. The scar on his left cheek. His dark irises, with their rogue silver blue flecks set as juxtaposition against the strong angles
of his face—for even as dark as they were, his eyes softened the hardness of him and allowed her to look beyond the unbending warrior that had once saved her by pushing her out a window.
Eyes that now stared at her with disgust.
She pounced before he could back out of the room, jumping to within an arm’s reach of him. “You need my help, Hunter.”
His hand flew out between them as he took a step backward. “I don’t want your help, Eliz—Mrs. Morton.”
She exhaled a long breath, realizing why the disgust had manifested on his face. “This is about what Bournestein said?”
He stared at her, the hard line of his jaw betraying his silence with the slightest flex.
“It’s not true.”
His stance widened, his arms crossing over the layers of his crisp dark coat and waistcoat. “And I should believe you because you have always been so honest with me?”
Her eyes pinned him. “You should believe me because of who you once were to me.”
His lower jaw shifted to the side. “It’s not enough, Bridget.”
“Do not be daft, Hunter.” She waved her hand in between them, the reticule strapped to her wrist swinging through the air. “Of course I’m not married—do you think my name is the first lie I’ve ever told to protect myself? If I was working in St. Giles and I was unmarried, what do you think would happen to me? How do you think Bournestein would see me—use me?”
A slight cringe creased the edges of his dark eyes—he recognized full well what would happen to her as a lone, unmarried woman in that part of London. “And just what are you doing in St. Giles, Bridget? Why would you go there? What are you doing with Bournestein?”
“Stop, just stop, Hunter.” Both of her hands flew up, her palms to him with her fingers stretched wide. “I can explain all of that—I will explain all of that. But you need to come with me. Come now while he is unguarded.”
“Who?”
“Your cousin—he is at my hospital, he has been since last night.”
Hunter’s clasped arms dropped to his sides. “He’s what?”
“He was there when you were there this morning, but I couldn’t tell you. Not in front of Bournestein. His men brought your cousin in last night with a knife wound and have been guarding the door. You said his name is Aldair, correct? He told me his name when I finally got back to the room they put him in.”
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