“Would ye care for water, my lady?” The same young serving girl, near in age to Poppy, held up a pitcher.
A wave of homesickness assailed her. How she missed her sister. Penelope blinked, forcing back those useless drops. “No,” she said gently. “And please, Mrs. Black will do.” If her husband was determined to shed his noble connections, then blast it, she’d not stand on stiff formality, either. “What is your name?”
The young servant stared at her wide-eyed. “Amanda, ma’am.” Did the girl believe Penelope one of those snobbish sorts?
“Thank you, Amanda,” she repeated softly.
“Amanda,” Cook snapped from across the kitchen, and the servant blushed.
“Ma’am,” the girl murmured, and then after dropping a curtsy, she rushed off.
Left sitting there, the servants eying Penelope the way they might the devil come to collect, Penelope stared blankly down at her barely touched plate. With a sigh, she abandoned the kitchen.
Her husband wouldn’t take a meal with her. Her brothers-in-law had fled as though she’d unleashed a stream of locusts. The servants despised her.
Well, she’d not drown in self-pity.
Penelope made the long, slow climb abovestairs to the main apartments and started down the hall. Her husband believed she was a naïve miss who didn’t even know a game of hazard from whist. This home may not be the fine townhouse she’d expected to someday live in as a loving nobleman’s wife, but it was hers.
Penelope just passed Ryker’s office door when the sound of voices stretched out into the hall.
“I am your sister, Ryker.”
The Duchess of Somerset’s sharp exclamation pierced the wood, and Penelope froze. She eyed the door a moment, and then alternated her stare down the hall toward her chambers. How many times had she been advised against listening at keyholes? No good could come from it. Nonetheless, she crept over to that heavy panel.
“You did not think it important I attend your wedding, Ryker?” The shocked pain of the duchess’s inquiry was met with stony silence.
Penelope’s heart thudded.
Do you have nothing to say?
Did those words belong to her or the duchess?
“I married the lady.” The lady? The man who’d so expertly and beautifully strummed her body to life and laughed with her at the kitchen tables should now call her “the lady.” “I did as Society expected,” he continued. “Your Society.”
Penelope frowned. He would so divorce himself from the world to which Penelope herself belonged.
“It is your Society, too,” the duchess shot back with impressive courage. Penelope silently applauded the woman’s reminder. “And you are my brother. I would have been at your wedding.”
“We were married as a matter of convenience. Nothing more. She needed a name and protection for her sister, and I had to salvage the reputation of the club.” An air of finality hung on her husband’s low, rumbling baritone. It was the pronouncement of a man who answered to none and, as such, considered the matter done.
Penelope stared unblinking at the door; the air was robbed from her lungs as if she’d been punched in the solar plexus. Even though she knew his words to be the truth. Even as she’d been the one to formally present Ryker with a beneficial arrangement, their intimate game of whist in the kitchens and their explosive embrace had fueled the kernel of hope inside that someday they could be something more. He’d taken her in his arms last night, and made her body feel . . . alive in ways she’d never believed possible.
“That does not have to be what your arrangement is,” the duchess said matter-of-factly, echoing the secret wishes Penelope carried. “And tell me, will Clara remain on?”
Clara? At that abrupt shift in discourse, Penelope wrinkled her brow. Why ever would the duchess care whether—?
“Can I help you?”
She whipped around. Adair studied her through thick lashes; suspicion seeped from his green eyes. Wariness. Mistrust. Ruthlessness. All the cornerstones of her new home. She gave her head a shake. “N-no.” God, how she despised herself for that slight quake.
Her brother-in-law looked at her a moment, and then held an arm out. Penelope hesitated, and then placed her fingertips on his sleeve. He motioned to a room, and she stared at her chamber doors. Yet another man inside this hell who’d have her closed away inside a windowless prison. Well, she’d not debate her plans for the day with him, or anyone.
“Thank . . .” Penelope swung about, but the hall was empty. She may as well have imagined the exchange. How did these men of such size move with such quiet stealth?
She steeled her jaw, embracing the healthy fury that rolled through her in waves. Fed it. Fanned it. For it prevented her from fixing on the impassionate words her husband had delivered about her.
Ryker. His brothers. Every employee who worked here expected she would be content to do as she was bid. Why, they treated her more as an underfoot pup than a woman with a mind of her own.
Well, whichever name she’d joined to her own, Banbury or Black, she was and would always be a Tidemore.
Continuing down the corridor, she descended the steps . . . and bumped into a towering bear of a man.
A small shriek escaped her as formidable hands folded around her shoulders. But he only steadied her. The man Oswyn. The same one who’d found her outside the Hell and Sin days ago and roughly brought her up to Ryker’s office. By his sheer size, he was a man who could snap her with one flick of his wrist.
“Mrs. Black,” the bald man greeted with such an emotional diffidence in his eyes, she drew back. “Can oi help ye?”
She managed a halting smile. “Not at all. I was merely visiting the . . . club.” That was a good deal less unsavory than calling it a hell. However did that term come to be, for that matter? A hell conjured images of wicked evils . . . Her intrigue piqued, and she stepped around the guard.
He swiftly blocked her path. “Mr. Black gave ye permission to do that?”
Gave her permission? She pursed her lips. If Ryker Black, his servants, brothers, or God himself thought she required permission to move freely, particularly in her own home, well, then they were madder than an entire floor of Bedlamites. “He did.” For he didn’t not give her leave to move about. After all, he’d given her four rules last evening, and not a single one of them had mentioned visiting or not visiting the gaming floors.
Oswyn peered at her, and she forced herself to go still. Did he seek the veracity of her claims?
Never more did she wish she’d been born with Poppy’s ease in fibbing. She released the breath she’d been holding as Oswyn stepped aside. With a flounce of her curls, Penelope started forward.
Her skin pricked with the guard’s gaze on her neck, and she quickened her pace before he called her out for the liar she was.
The sooner Ryker and his workers understood she had no intention of obeying those rules either, the better off all would be. There was a difference between adhering to propriety and politeness, and then being dictated to.
She was a Tidemore. Even if her husband still didn’t understand the significance of the name she’d been born to. Why, she was—Penelope froze. Her mouth formed an O.
On their wedding day, she’d been rushed through the hell so quickly she’d not had proper time to soak in the grandeur of it all. Now she took in the previously missed details. Everything from the crimson carpeting to the velvet-covered gaming tables. The gentlemen who occupied those seats had their gazes trained on the cards in their hands as though they contained the answer to life.
A long, slow exhalation of air seeped from her lips as all the vows she’d made to herself and her mother to be that proper daughter died their final death. For the excitement unfurling slowly inside that urged her forward, to explore, was as great now as it had been when she’d been a girl nicknamed “Trouble” by the servants.
Penelope strode through the club. Dealers glanced up from their tables as she passed. Shock stamped their feature
s before they swiftly returned their attention to the patrons seated before them. The hushed whispers from gentlemen who’d at last noted her presence filled her ears.
She kept her gaze trained forward. With each step, her throat tightened. How quickly she’d become a young lady without a home. Shunned by polite Society for first her siblings’ scandals and now her own, neither did Penelope belong in Ryker Black’s universe. A wave of homesickness filled her. It was a silly, girl-like response a man like Ryker would no doubt expect of his proper bride. Yet there it was. For, at least in the Tidemore household, she’d been teased and bothered . . . and visible. Here, she was viewed as nothing more than an oddity, a peculiar creature plucked from its natural surroundings and thrust into this foreign habitat.
Oh, God. Her stomach muscles clenched painfully, and she fixed on the pain to keep from shedding the tears stinging her eyes.
Presenting her back to the club, Penelope found a place beside an empty, dealerless table. With the tip of her fingers, she absently spun the edge of the wheel. Even that slight force sent it whirring at a dizzying speed. She eyed the spinning numbers as they blurred together, and the crimson and black spots on that wheel stood in vivid contrast.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
She stiffened as Calum’s voice sounded over her shoulder, but she did not turn around. He’d been the man—nay, brother—meeting with Ryker the night she’d been ruined. “Where should I be?” she asked, unable to keep the acrimony from creeping in. Everyone always believed they knew precisely what she needed and where she should and should not go.
The wheel glided to a slow stop, and she reached her hand down to set it spin once more. Calum reached out and halted the movement. She braced for another lecture, and God help her for being a weak fool, she was going to dissolve into a blubbery mess in the middle of the club. And then all these noblemen would report the news with glee, and—
“What number?”
She blinked in rapid succession. “What?” He didn’t intend to send her away?
“Give me a number,” he clarified, picking up the white ball.
“Two,” she said automatically. It had been two days since she’d abandoned the life of proper English debutante for this new, scandalous existence.
Calum spun the wheel in one direction and then released the ball in the opposite.
Penelope stared, and excitement built. The thrill of chance, even if there was nothing to win but her own hazard. The wheel slowed, and the ball bounced once, twice, a third time, and then settled. Three. Close to winning, which ultimately was nothing but losing.
She sighed.
“It seems as though you should be able to win,” he said, bringing her eyes up. “There are only thirty-seven numbers.” He remained with his gaze on the gaming table. It’s better if you realize there can be no true winning. Not in this place.”
She frowned. His had been some kind of unspoken lesson, then. She would never properly win a place in this hell. Or did he speak of something more? Did he speak of her husband, Ryker?
Penelope leaned forward and plucked the white ball from where it had settled. “I suspect it depends on what you view as winning, Calum.” Matching his movements from before, she set the wheel into motion and released the ball in the opposite direction. “Winning isn’t black or red but rather the thrill of excitement. The possibilities and a willingness to try and attain something when everyone is wagering against you. Even if your ball doesn’t land in the correct spot, there was still joy before it.” She lifted an eyebrow as the wheel slowed, and the ball fell neatly into the two spot. “And I would say that is a different kind of winning.” Penelope might never have a loving husband, but she would take her happiness where she could. And she would be damned if she allowed Ryker Black, this man, or any other proprietor of the club to dictate her movements.
The menacing proprietor stared at her for a long moment, and then he gave a slight imperceptible nod she would have missed had she not been studying him so closely. “There is truth to that, my lady.” It was an acknowledgment of sorts. A truce, if just an uneasy one.
“Penelope,” she insisted. Strangers though they may be, he was still family, in name.
A commotion sounded from within the club, and they looked as one. A fight had erupted between two coarse-looking gentlemen in garish finery. Volatile tension replaced the earlier calm from Ryker’s brother. He caught her by the hand and guided her through the club, ushering her away from the scene.
Her gaze caught on the two men wrestling on the floor. One landed a solid punch to the other’s nose and crimson blood spewed from his nose. Penelope’s stomach pitched, and she closed her eyes a moment, willing back the nausea.
When she was a girl, chasing her sister through Kent, she had landed hard on a jagged stone. The piece had stabbed into her knee and left in its place a bloody wake that had stained her white skirts. Since then, the sight of it turned her stomach.
“Mrs. Black?” The gruff concern in Calum’s voice pulled her back.
Penelope took a steadying breath. She’d be damned if she showed them another hint of weakness. “I’m fine.” With a toss of her head, Penelope exited the floors. When they’d reached the stairway up to the private suites, she looked back at the man trailing her heels like Poppy’s loyal dog. “Go. You certainly have greater things to see to then escorting me abovestairs.”
“You’re my responsibility.”
Responsibility. Somewhere along the way that is what she’d become—to Ryker, to this man, to the angry maid who attended her. Isn’t that what you’ve always been, to everyone? “I promise, I can see myself abovestairs without escort,” she said softly.
Calum hesitated and with a short bow stalked off.
Her brother-in-law now gone, Penelope sagged against the wall. She drew in slow, even breaths, fighting back the nausea. The muffled shouts from within the club diverted her attentions from the memory of that shattered nose and flow of blood . . . Penelope groaned and with that, she only invited in, once more, the memory.
Since she’d been a girl listening to her brother’s pursuits at these very clubs she’d built them up to be a thrilling place she longed to visit. Exciting as it may be to think of a gaming hell, it was altogether different to witness the violent outbreaks on those floors.
She opened her eyes and stared blankly at the opposite side of the stairwell. Just as she’d allowed herself to romanticize what her marriage would be, so too had she deluded herself about the truth of those wicked clubs.
In those dreams, she’d not been shut away in a windowless chamber devoid of furniture and company.
Another shout went up and sprung her into movement. Penelope hurried up the stairs. Even in daylight, there was an eerie darkness in the narrow corridors, accentuated by the dark wood floors and the walls devoid of any hint of art.
She wandered through the halls, slipping inside room after room. Either empty or nearly empty, one would never suspect this floor inhabited by anyone but ghosts.
Since she was a girl, furniture and paintings and baubles had just simply . . . been. As long as her memories went back, paintings of landscapes and ancestors adorned the walls. Vases brimming with flowers had been cleverly placed upon Chippendale tables. Vibrant satin wallpaper. Had it always been that way? Or had her mother married into a cheerless house in desperate need of a feminine touch? One thing was certain: her mother and her sister-in-law would have claimed ownership of the home.
Penelope reached the last room and pushed the door open. Dust hung heavy in the air. Giving her eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, she peeked her head inside, and then glanced back. Part of her braced for one of the many angry workers in this club to charge forward and order her gone.
For so long she’d worried after pleasing her mother, and then her brother, and then as a young woman . . . Society. When had she given thought to herself? To what brought her happiness?
The inked black numbers in Adair’s sloppy hands b
lurred before Ryker’s eyes. Staring at the same page for the better part of an hour had that effect. He blinked, bringing the calculations into focus.
There was no other accounting for staring at the same goddamn ledger. Where words had always made little sense to him, over the years, he’d at least known how to puzzle through numbers.
Now, they may as well have been as great a mystery as the letterings marked inside books for the sense he could make of them.
It’s just you said, “because I’ve married” . . . but you are married to me . . . so together, you and I make a we . . .
Ryker’s world had been upended. There was nothing else for it.
The memory of Penelope’s breathless screams as she’d found her release taunted him and left him aching still. His fingers twitched with his need to wind them through her luxuriant, silken midnight tresses. Those magnificent curls that deserved to be fanned on a pillow, not upon a hard floor. With a growl he snapped the book closed and sent several papers fluttering over the side of his desk.
Over the years, he’d had numerous whores. The only constant lover had been Clara, and theirs had been an emotionless, beneficial arrangement between them. Two people who used each other to safely slake their lusts, all the while assured there would be no expectations of more.
Never had the memory of Clara, or any other woman, lingered still. Not this distracting, maddening pull that had him wondering over her . . . and more, wanting to see her.
Ryker fished a cheroot out of his boot and carried it to a lit sconce. He took a long, slow pull, savoring the warming effect as it filled his lungs. All the order he’d carefully constructed, the walls he’d built, were being kicked at by the peerage who’d ruin him on a misunderstanding. By a sister who’d found her voice and used it to let him know just what she thought of Ryker’s views on keeping people out. By a wife who’d come undone in his arms.
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