“That should help, some,” Calum conceded.
Some? Ryker gritted his teeth. He’d staked his future and his club on a some?
Loud shouts went up at the back of the hell, cutting into their discussion, and they looked out to the brawl that had broken out. Surrounded by shouting patrons, Niall hurled one of the guests against the wall and buried his fist in the gentleman’s nose. The dandy howled wildly.
Christ.
Blood pumping through his veins, Ryker surged through the crowd, with Calum at his heels. Shoving fancy lords out of his way, Ryker grabbed Niall’s arm just as he made to plant the man another facer. “Control yourself,” he commanded.
The patron, crimson seeping from his broken nose, brought his arm back, but Calum caught it, wrenching it behind the man with such force he cried out.
Snarling like an untamed beast, Niall wrestled against Ryker’s hold. “Enough,” Ryker ordered, his chest heaving from his exertions. He jerked his chin, and Oswyn immediately took his cue, rushing forward.
“Let me go,” the nobleman whined, battling Calum’s hold.
“Get him out of here,” Ryker ordered the guard, ignoring the gentleman.
“Let’s go, ye,” Oswyn barked, and with a hard grip on the bloodied patron, he steered him from the club.
Loud whispers buzzed through the onlookers, and Adair pushed through the throng. “A round of brandy for the patrons,” he called, and the noblemen lingering instantly abandoned their places and returned to their tables.
“In my office,” Ryker bit out, releasing Niall.
Not another word was spoken until they were shut away.
“What in hell was that?” Ryker demanded as soon as he’d closed the door behind him and Niall.
His brother eyed him with a pugnacious glint in his eyes. “There have been wagers.”
He gave him a look. “That is the whole business we are in.”
“That you’ll make yourself a widower,” Niall snarled.
Of course the men who visited his tables speculated on the sins Ryker was guilty of in building this empire. He gnashed his teeth. “Who was he?” But never had he harmed anyone whose care he’d been charged with.
“A new patron. Wickshaw. A merchant.”
He cursed. New patrons meant a growing fortune, and yet with every new member permitted entry, there came a risk. Ryker stalked over to his sideboard and poured himself a drink. The last bloody thing the club required were fights between the workers and patrons. Ryker downed his brandy, welcoming the warm trail it blazed. “Regardless of what’s said, you still need to get bloody control of yourself,” he said, jabbing his empty glass at the other man. Niall was a loyal street rough who’d pull a blade and ask questions later. With his fighting skills, few could rival him. But the man had a damn temper that wrought nothing but trouble. “Lords have to trust they are safe here.” It was one thing to dance on the edge of respectability. It was quite another for those same gents to risk their lives. “We’re done here.”
Niall gave a brusque nod, and then opened the door, revealing Calum at the entrance. Wordlessly, they exchanged places.
Glass in hand, Ryker stalked over to his desk, on to the next business. “Where are the liquor reports?”
“They aren’t ready.” Calum shrugged again. “Adair is doing his best, but he’s no more adept at preparing those reports than Niall or myself would be. You should see to them.”
A pit settled in his stomach, familiar, and ever present from the lie he lived. There had to be someone he could trust. “Find me names.” He dragged over a ledger and opened it. The inked letters upon the page mocked him, and an old familiar rage slithered around inside, filling him with a potent self-loathing.
Oh, the irony. A duke’s bastard son, risen from the ashes—he had more money than most lords. More power than any thug in the Dials. And he couldn’t read the written reports about his own damn gaming hell. Ryker curled his hands to keep from hurling the book across the room.
“There is something I’ve come to speak with you about,” Calum said quietly, bringing his head up.
“What?” he demanded.
“It is your wife.”
What now? He and Calum, who’d been friends and brothers the longest, had a deeper bond that allowed Calum certain liberties. They did not, however, speak of anything beyond the welfare of their siblings and the running of the club. “What is it?”
“I brought her trunks to her rooms.”
His club patronage on the decline, his guards fighting the members, he didn’t have the time for Calum’s veiled delivery. “Get on with it?”
“I knocked and she opened the door.”
Ryker swiped his hands over his face. No, the lady he’d married hadn’t been born with a suitable wariness of life. The same woman who’d hired a hack, and snuck through the alleys of St. Giles to put to him an offer of marriage, wouldn’t have the proper guard in place. “The private suites are safe.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he saw the lie there.
“Your brother-in-law found his way abovestairs,” Calum pointed out.
And then eventually married Helena after it. Helena, the master bookkeeper whom Ryker had sent away for her safety—he’d never believed she’d ultimately choose life among the peerage. In the end, her decision had been made, and for it Ryker now found himself with an unwanted wife. A wife with a too-full lower lip and smoky lashes . . .
“I’ll speak to her.” Something he wished to do as little as possible. Ryker weighed his words and spoke to few. He picked up his glass and took another drink. The clock ticked away a grating rhythm, punctuating the expanding quiet. “What now?” he snapped as Calum continued to stare.
“She is not Helena.”
No, she most certainly was not. In his haste to marry the Earl of Sinclair’s sister, he’d thought of his club and the welfare of his workers. He’d thought of his sister’s reputation amongst the ton. Now, there was Penelope, a garrulous lady who wore her emotions in her eyes, whose care fell to him.
“Helena was prepared to protect herself in these streets,” the other man dangled. And she had. She’d also been the one to end Diggory for good. “Your wife is as ill equipped to defend herself as you are to dance with the Queen of England.”
The unspoken words hovered between them, the meaning clear: Ryker needed to teach Penelope how to defend herself. He glowered. “I do not need a lecture on how to care for my wife. I’ll teach the lady how to hold a blade and cut a man. But she will never, no matter how many bloody lessons she receives, be prepared for this world.” A memory of Penelope as she’d been in the gardens, jamming her knee between his legs, and planting him a solid punch to the belly, came to him. An unwitting appreciation again stirred. His spirited wife had a fighting instinct. Only . . .
Musings slipped in: Penelope’s soft frame under his, wiggling and . . . He growled. “Now, get out.” Ryker jammed his finger at the doorway.
The other man hardened his mouth. With a brusque nod, he stalked to the door.
Ryker returned his attention to the stacks of ledgers.
“Oomph.”
He shot his head up.
A guilty blush on her cheeks, Penelope stumbled into the room. “Uh, hello.” She offered a sheepish smile.
By God, had she been listening at his goddamn door? Mayhap the lady had more skill at subterfuge than he’d credited. First, she’d been silent under a stone bench, listening to his exchange with Calum. Now at his door. He thinned his eyes into narrow slits.
“Ry-Ryker.” Was the lady always wearing that perpetual dimpled smile?
“Get out.”
Penelope jumped. “Of c-course.” She spun on her heel.
“I was speaking to Calum.” His words brought Penelope wheeling around.
As Calum left, Penelope cast a quick, covetous look over her shoulder.
He shoved to his feet. “First, hiding under my sister’s bench, and now listening at my keyholes,” he chided, his v
oice low. Even with the distance between them, he detected the lady’s audible swallow.
“I was not . . . listening.” She was a rotted liar. It would have found her dangling from the noose as a child had she been born to Ryker’s world. His gaze went to the long column of her graceful neck, and he ached to explore that silken flesh. “I was . . . I was . . .”
A wave of lust slammed into him, as he studied the small birthmark on her porcelain white skin, a distorted heart, until now unnoticed. His skin, and the women he’d taken to his bed, bore the evidence of hardship and struggle. He’d always seen those lily-white ladies and sneered at their flawless flesh. Who knew such a mark could rouse this hungering—a need to taste.
She moistened her lips. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Like what?” he whispered, taking a step closer.
“As though you can’t decide whether to spank me or kiss me.”
Ryker pressed his eyes closed. Surely she’d not said what he’d heard?
He’d surely found the only virginal lady of the peerage who spoke freely of kissing and spankings, which, God help him, only conjured forbidden images of her over his knee . . . He emitted a strangled groan and momentarily closed his eyes. Weren’t ladies of the ton proper creatures who guarded their tongues the same way they guarded their jewels?
“What were you doing outside my office?” he asked when he trusted himself to speak.
“Looking for you,” she said, with that remarkable candor. His wife brushed a tight black curl behind her ear. The stubborn strand promptly sprang free. His fingers ached with the need to brush it back. “I understand you have business you must attend, but . . .” Surely she would not lecture him? “I am your wife, and this is your . . . our wedding day. Granted, it was a match you probably didn’t want.” She paused and nudged her head toward him.
“What?” he demanded roughly.
Disappointment lit her eyes. “Food. I require food.”
All she wanted was food. He cracked his knuckles. Material comforts he could provide. “I’ll see a servant brings you a meal.” Ryker made to return to his desk, but a thick tension descended over the room, holding him in place. He dusted a hand over his eyes. “What now?”
The lady glowered. Where was her fear? Everyone feared him. Avoided him. “You needn’t be so surly. I merely thought we would take our evening meal together before . . .” Crimson splotches formed on her cheeks. “Before . . .”
“Before?” he repeated dumbly.
“Before . . . the marital . . . business.” So that was what she was on about. If the lady turned any redder, she was going to set herself on fire.
“The marital business?” he asked, feigning puzzlement. By God, he’d never delighted in teasing another soul in his life.
Penelope scuffed the tip of her satin slipper on the floor. “Uh . . . yes. Well, you know.” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “The bedding.”
Ryker snagged the inside of his cheek with his teeth to keep from laughing. He’d long been repelled by innocence, but staring at his wife, whose blush stained her small décolletage, neck, and face, there was something . . . riveting about her artlessness.
He preferred thinking of her as a pampered earl’s sister. Boring. Proper. Now, with that single utterance, “the bedding,” she’d invited him into fantasies of what it would be to have her lithe, eager frame beneath him. He swallowed a groan. What in thunderation was he thinking?
“Penelope,” he began, desperate to send her on her way. Beyond salvaging his club, he neither wanted a wife nor needed one.
She folded her hands primly at her waist. “Yes, Ryker?”
“I spend my days and nights working. That won’t change because I’ve married.”
“We’ve.”
“What—?”
“Well, it’s just you said, ‘because I’ve married’ . . . but you are married to me . . . so together, you and I make a we.”
Ryker stalked across the room, and she flinched, making a mockery of her earlier attempt at bravado. He marched past her and pulled the door open. “I will see to your meal.”
She searched his face. “I happened to, just by chance, overhear your discussion with Calum.”
Ryker winged an eyebrow up. “Overhear?” Yes, this one’s lies would have ended her the moment she was able to toddle outside of her cradle.
His bride fiddled with her silly white skirts. “Uh, yes,” she said, and followed his gaze to her hands. Penelope promptly stilled, and then jutted her chin out. “Despite your opinion of ladies, I am not squeamish. My brother taught me how to shoot, ride, and plant a facer. I can certainly learn how to wield a knife.”
So Sinclair was the reason the lady had handled herself with ease in the gardens. How odd that for the differences between them, he and Sinclair had each armed their sisters in ways suitable to their respective worlds.
“He taught you how to shoot?” he repeated, on a silken whisper, taking a step toward her.
His wife backed away from him, but he continued his slow advance. “What did you shoot, Penelope? Small game on your family’s country estate?” By the frown hovering on her full siren’s lips, she took umbrage with his, no doubt, accurate supposition. “Have you ever shot a person?” he whispered, coming to a stop so only a foot separated them.
“Of course not.” She folded her arms at her chest, plumping her small breasts, and his eyes wandered to her modest décolletage.
Ryker silently cursed himself. “Shooting a man is very different from stabbing one,” he said, coolly vicious. He bent, quickly retrieving his knife from his boot.
Candlelight glinted off the smooth metal blade and Penelope’s arms fell to her sides. She stumbled backwards. Did she at last see the danger in the man she’d married? If so, it was the first wise thought or act on the lady’s part.
“I do not expect to shoot or kill a person.” Just like that she threw out the very reasons she could never properly, or safely, belong here.
“What is this?” he taunted. “A game?”
“No,” she exclaimed, color rushing to her cheeks.
“A diversion from your daily activities, then,” he said, as though she hadn’t spoken. “But when the blade touches you here . . .” The column of her throat worked as he touched the tip of his knife to her stomach. “And rips lower, when you feel it sink inside, you forget having ever known laughter.”
Her skin paled, and something new and unwelcome and unpleasant twisted away at him—guilt. Ryker thrust aside those weakening sentiments that would only leave them both vulnerable.
“Or the feel of it, as it slices through your flesh.” He trailed the blade to the spot just beside her navel. “When it goes in here, it pierces your insides, and you wait, hoping it won’t come, praying an organ wasn’t struck, all the while knowing . . .”
Fear bled from her eyes. “What?” her faintly breathless whisper spilled past her trembling lips.
“The moment you taste blood in your mouth, you choke on it, waiting for death.”
Silence wrung around the room. Horror and revulsion warred for supremacy in her face, and with eyes filled with terror, she looked around the room. Escape.
Good, she wanted to leave, and he should want her gone.
But she was the only person to stand up to him, and he’d reduced her to this ashen, quaking creature. His fingers curled around the handle of his knife, biting into the callused pad of his palm. “I am no viscount,” he said ruthlessly. “No fancy lord. No duke’s cherished son.” He tossed his knife aside, and it clattered noisily on the floor. “The sooner you disabuse yourself of such illusions, the safer it is.” For the both of them. He was a man carved from the dirt in the streets into someone who’d kick, claw, and kill to survive.
Wordlessly, Penelope scrabbled for the door handle, yanked it open, and fled.
A thick pall of silence descended over the room, and he lowered his forehead to the wood panel. He’d believed himself i
ncapable of guilt or any emotion. Only to find himself, in this moment, riddled with shame. You are a fool. It is for the lady’s own good. His savage lesson would be the first of many for Penelope. It was for the lady’s own good. Her survival depended on her strengthening her spine and learning his ways.
Chapter 11
Dearest Fezzimore,
If it is either me or Poppy that must be carted off to Newgate for her crime, I would rather it was me. Well, I’d really it was neither of us. But I am the elder sister, and I must protect Poppy . . .
Penny
Age 9
Penelope lay on her side, looking at the doorway. Just as she’d been staring at it for the better part of an hour. The meal she’d insisted upon hours earlier remained untouched on a tray, atop a small round mahogany table.
A warm fire crackled in the hearth and blended with that ticking clock, which was really her only company since Clara had ushered her to her rooms, and her trunks had been delivered, and then her meal brought. Those exchanges, however, didn’t truly signify. Each of the servants and Ryker’s brother Calum were about as thrilled with her company as Cook with a rat in his kitchens.
With a sound of annoyance she flipped onto her back and stared up at the white ceiling.
But she will never, no matter how many bloody lessons she receives, be prepared for this world . . .
Ryker’s words echoed around the chambers of her mind. She’d been treated with disdain by the peerage for her family’s scandalous history, and now she’d be an outsider amongst the people she’d now live with . . . forever.
Forever.
Ryker’s callously delivered lesson proved how much a stranger he was.
She’d come here in a bid to save Poppy’s reputation, and also to build a life for herself.
Since the Duke and Duchess of Somerset’s ball, however, everything had moved at a dizzying speed. Now, she lay here, waiting to become Mrs. Ryker Black. Or Mrs. Banbury.
A man whose kiss had liquefied her, but who’d then dispassionately touched a blade to her stomach. That sharp bite of metal against her satin skirts had let her inside his lethal world.
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