Following close at her heels, Ryker studied her. Before he’d known her, he would have hurried her past the tables she lingered at and returned her attention to the sole purpose in being here—finding a weapon. The Hell and Sin demanded all of Ryker’s attention and didn’t allow for frivolous pursuits.
But now he continued to assess her. What did she find pleasure in? Other than that leather diary in her arms, he’d not a hint of what she enjoyed or how she spent her days. They were irrelevant questions in the course of a marriage of convenience. Or they should be . . . Somewhere along the way, however, the lines of their business arrangement had blurred. She’d become a . . . friend, a lover, and a woman he very much admired.
Penelope bypassed furs and bonnets and ribbons, those fripperies he’d have wagered any proper lady would give her attention to. Eventually, she stopped alongside a booth littered with children’s toys and books. With her long, gloved fingers, she picked up a book, turned it over in her hands. The vendor, an aging man with greying hair, rushed over and said something that earned one of her blinding smiles. The shopkeeper tipped his head and blinked wildly. Then his lips turned up, revealing a largely toothless, besotted grin.
Yes, Ryker could well commiserate with the poor bugger. Penelope Pippa had that effect on a man, made him forget which way was up and which down.
The pair continued their exchange, and then Penelope fished several coins from her reticule. The shopkeeper gathered cloth and proceeded to wrap her package.
Niall sidled up to him. “Are you making moon eyes at your wife?” Disgust coated that charged accusation.
“I do not make moon eyes at anyone,” he gritted out, looking at the other man, and then went still. Such loathing teemed from his brother’s eyes; a chill iced Ryker’s veins. Hatred was an equally weakening sentiment. It flawed one’s judgment and made one reckless. Could Niall hurt her . . . ? As soon as the disloyal thought entered, he thrust it aside.
Niall might despise Penelope for her birthright, but he’d never do her harm. Disquieted by both the glaring hatred and his own lingering doubt, Ryker abandoned his side and joined Penelope as she finished her transaction.
She looked up with some surprise, and then handed over her small, white-wrapped package. “Will you?” His hands reflexively closed over it.
They resumed walking. Several tables away, the silvery glint of knives and pistols caught his eyes, and he opened his mouth to bring his distracted wife back to the reason for their trip.
But she stopped alongside a table filled with sketch pads, charcoals, and pastels. Almost lovingly, she trailed her fingers over the goods and wares. “Are you an artist, Penelope?”
Where did the question come from? From this insatiable need to know more about this woman you’ve tied yourself to. In a decision he’d resented five days ago. No longer. Now he didn’t know what to make of this desire to learn of and about another soul.
Her eyes sparkled. “When I was a girl, I was a horrid painter.” The unexpected path she’d taken him down distracted him from his agitated thoughts and to a different road that led into the world of her childhood. She would have been trouble. It was a wonder her brother hadn’t gone grey. “I was even worse at sketching.” She gave her head a rueful shake. “I worked so very hard at it. I stared at those sketch pads and easels all day, and frowned and glowered at them.” She looked to him and held his stare. “Until one day, it occurred to me.”
“What?” the question came forward, before he could call it back. A single utterance, meant to elicit information about his new wife, another human being, when he’d deliberately avoided learning anything of anyone through the years.
“I was trying so hard, and I was so frustrated, that I could not see anything beyond the pressure I placed on myself.”
Ryker stilled, as the significance of those words settled around them.
“And you are now a proficient artist.” Because all proper English ladies were flawless in those pursuits, and he’d wager his soul on Sunday that there was not a thing Penelope could not do.
She snorted. “Oh, hardly. You’d certainly never display my work in a museum.”
His lips twitched. How was he capable of smiling for the first time in more years than he could remember, after her discovery and his club facing ruin? What manner of sorceress was she? “How very reassuring,” he said dryly.
Penelope blinked several times, and then smiled. “You misunderstand. I do not have to be Rembrandt or Bellini.” He’d not further diminish himself by acknowledging an absolute lack of knowledge of those two names. “As long as I accept that for me it is enough to find joy in it, then that is enough.”
Surely she wasn’t suggesting he’d someday find joy in the written word? He’d rather hurl those pages into the fire for kindling . . . only . . .
“Is there anything I can help you with?” The shopkeeper startled them from their exchange and he silently damned the man for his intrusion.
“No,” Ryker said with such cool abruptness, the man gulped loudly.
“What my husband means to say,” Penelope added with a warm smile, “is no, thank you.” Slipping her fingers into his, she gave a slight squeeze, and it propelled him into movement. Bringing him mercifully back to the sole reason for their trip to Bond Street.
Ryker led them to the table filled with blades of various lengths and widths. He eyed them with discriminating eyes. Sliding her hand free of his, Penelope picked up a thick blade with a heavy hilt. Her hand curled around it, sagging slightly under the weight of it. “Here,” Ryker said in low tones, as he wrapped his hand about hers. “Feel the weight of it. How does it feel in your grip?”
“Heavy,” she replied automatically.
Guiding her hand backwards and forwards, he allowed her to test the movement. Ryker whispered to Penelope, “If someone comes upon you, the slightest hesitation can prove costly.” He whispered close to her ear: “The trick, Penelope, is to carry a weapon you can easily slide out and handle. To move with an ease so that your opponent can never have the upper hand.”
The shopkeeper rushed over, and then stopped when Ryker held up a staying hand. Assessing the collection of knives, he shifted his attention back and forth between two, before ultimately settling on one with a sapphire-encrusted hilt.
The color of her eyes. He swallowed a groan as Niall’s earlier charges came rushing back. “Here,” he said gruffly, and handed over the other blade.
Penelope shifted it experimentally. Loud whispers sounded from behind them. “She is shameful . . . then, can you expect anything else of a Tidemore . . .” Fury snapped his body erect. And the same bloodlust he’d known on the streets when he’d been challenged by rival street urchins coursed through him.
He growled low in his throat. To his wife’s credit she gave no outward reaction to the disparaging remarks. Except . . . he peered at her. Little white lines formed at the corner of her mouth and high color flooded her cheeks. “This feels perfect.” Penelope offered the blade over, and he collected it.
Eager to be free of this place and return to the familiarity of St. Giles, Ryker turned the knife over and withdrew his coin. The balding young man flared his eyes and choked at the small fortune extended for him.
“We did wonder what manner of man would wed a Tidemore. And now we know just what kind. A bastard from the streets.” That meaningless barb from the ladies behind them rolled off Ryker’s jaded back. He’d long grown immune to societal disdain, and though he didn’t give a goddamn what anyone said of him, he was consumed with a need to destroy anyone who would hurt his wife.
He told himself this surge of protectiveness had to do with nothing more than an obligation to guard those entrusted to his care.
Yet why did that feel like the grossest kind of lie?
“They say he is a murderer . . .”
That not wholly incorrect supposition was met with a flurry of giggles.
Penelope spun on her heel and stalked over in a whir of skirts.
Swallowing a curse, Ryker grabbed the knife he’d purchased for his wife and made to collect her, but froze.
Hands propped on hips, fire flashing in her blue eyes, she had the look of a warrior princess ready to slay the poor fool who’d stormed her keep.
“Do you wish to know what manner of man I married?” she demanded, as the two ladies with their cream-white cheeks and golden curls stood, eyes rounded, properly silenced. His wife continued on. “I married a gentleman who has made a fortune, not because of anything handed to him, but because of his strength, wit, and courage.” She flicked a derisive stare down their plump frames. “Which is a good deal more than I’ll ever say about the poor gents you two find yourselves wed to.” She took another step. The ladies retreated. “Furthermore, my husband is a hero. Recognized by the King himself for his valor. So, unless you think you know better than the King, then keep your vile, nasty opinions to yourself.”
Ryker stood immobile, his mouth open, in no doubt a like image to the equally stunned nasty ladies before his wife. Never had a member of the peerage ever served to defend him. He’d long been beneath their notice, lesser than the dirt that sullied their slippers. And here was this fearless woman he’d been forced to wed who’d so boldly and proudly challenged his detractors.
“Well, then, if there is nothing else to say here.” Penelope gave a toss of her curls. She wheeled around, and their gazes locked.
A half grin pulled at his lips. In this very public place, that expression would signal his weakness, and yet he could no sooner stop the smile than he could bury the blade in his hands inside his own belly. Ryker inclined his head and held his elbow out. She took a step forward when one of the young women called after her.
“If you are so happy with your new circumstances, then I expect you should be grateful to the persons who saw you ruined that day.”
His wife’s entire frame jerked, but she did not break stride. Reaching his side, she placed her fingertips on his sleeve. “I am ready.” That reedy thin whisper belied the remarkable show of spirit that had only temporarily silenced her weaker adversaries. But then, ultimately even lesser opponents landed a mark.
It had been these two women. And in this case, they’d struck the most permanent, costliest blow for Penelope . . . and him. Only why didn’t that latter part ring true with the same conviction it had five days earlier? By their gloating expressions and the malice in their mirthless smiles, they reveled in the truth that they’d ruined Penelope. And for all the indifference he’d prided himself on—of people’s opinions, actions, or evil deeds—this treachery against his wife sent every muscle tensing.
An animalistic growl climbed his throat, and the soulless women turned a ghastly shade of white. Then, they fled.
“It is fine,” Penelope said softly. “Let us go.”
“You did not have to do that,” he gritted out. He didn’t wish to be beholden to her or anyone. Her defense of him, unmerited and unwarranted, highlighted a slow-growing truth. She was not the self-centered lady he’d taken all the nobility for. She was a woman of strength, character, and courage who’d defend with the same devotion all those in her life.
Including him—a man undeserving of it.
“I’ve been the subject of cruel gossip, Ryker,” she said from the corner of her mouth. “As have my sisters and brother. I’ll not idly stand by while your character is besmirched. I’ve already told you,” she said in hushed tones. “That is not the manner of woman I am. I am not afraid of the fight.”
Another frisson of fear rolled through him. That rhetoric, that flawed logic, had seen countless men slain in the streets. Such a weakness was ingrained in a man’s soul. It could not be erased. It only saw one defeated. He clenched his teeth with such ferocity that pain radiated up from his jawline.
“Does it matter so much to you what people say?” he asked in gritty tones. For being bound to a bastard, literal and figurative, people would forevermore whisper about her. It shouldn’t bother him, and yet it did for reasons he couldn’t rationalize in the crowded bazaar.
“It bothers me when those accusations are untrue,” she said with matter-of-factness.
That thinly veiled cruelty his wife had endured amongst Society, both the same and yet so very different from everything he’d known. For the viciousness found in the streets of the Dials, there was at least an honesty to the people. Men and women wanted coin and wished you dead to get it, and there was nothing clearer, safer, in that sound understanding.
He’d long scoffed and sneered at the lords who graced his club, and at their proper, polite world. Only to find there was perhaps an even greater ruthlessness to it. He dimly registered Niall trailing along close behind.
They moved on in silence through the bazaar. Happy laughter and excited chattering, a mocking backdrop to their own dismal quiet. They didn’t speak another word until they were ensconced in the carriage, and the conveyance lurched forward.
Seated on the opposite bench, Penelope pulled the curtain back and stared out the window into the passing fashionable streets. What was she thinking? Was she regretting the day she’d come and put to him an offer of marriage?
Of course she was. What lady dreamed of being forever tied to a man such as him? Even as he’d accepted that obvious, pragmatic fact since they’d pledged their vows, sitting here with their evenly drawn breaths the only sound, he felt something new—regret. A lady with her innocence had no business living in a world where she needed to be under lock and key, with death and danger looming.
No, she belonged with one of those smiling, naïve lords whose only dance with danger came in the voluntary trips they took to the Dials.
He curled his gloveless hands into tight, merciless fists, and his veins heated with the desire to bloody that faceless, more deserving man. “Why are you so quick to believe everything that is said about me is untrue?”
“Because I have known you only a short time, Ryker, but I know you are a man of conviction and honor. Men with honor do not kill.”
And he hated this stirring of regret inside his chest, a desire for the first time to have been something more than the thief he’d been. For all the honor and pride he’d found in his ascent, he’d sold his soul to become the man he had. “You do not have to defend me,” he said harshly, needing to interrupt the too-perfect quiet of the carriage.
Penelope released the curtain and arced a midnight eyebrow. “And what? Have them disparage you with lies?”
“You are so convinced they are lies.”
His derisive taunt brought her lips down. “Would you have me believe you’re a murderer?” Her droll tone sent his back up.
With her every smile, and foolish defense of him, she battered the protective walls he’d built up. Planting his callused palms on his knees, he leaned forward, erasing the space between them. Penelope’s breath caught, and that slight audible take of her fear roused his pent-up frustration. “You once asked if I killed men.” He let that reminder linger between them.
Penelope moistened her lips.
“Do you want the truth?” he urged tauntingly, a ruthless bastard needing to resurrect those healthy barriers. “Or are you content with the lies that make you feel safe?”
Her perfect bow-shaped lips formed a tight moue, and dismissively she yanked off her gloves and beat them together. “I am not having this discussion.”
Except she had no choice. He placed his hands on either side of her knees. “Because you don’t believe it? Or because you do not wish to know the truth?” he taunted. “I killed men.”
All the color leached from her skin, as a sea of emotions paraded through her eyes—shock, disbelief, terror, and then denial. Squaring her shoulders, Penelope glared daggers. “I do not believe you,” she said curtly. “I do not know why you are so determined to have me be afraid of you. But I am not—”
“Three.”
Her pronouncement ended on a shuddery hiss. Clasping her hands at her throat, she shook her head frantically back a
nd forth. “I do not believe you.” Only this time, her words rang of an empty conviction.
He’d not have her raise him up to be an honorable sort whom she might feel affection for. The same evil that had coursed through Mac Diggory flowed in Ryker’s own veins. Raised, and reared, by that man, he’d allowed his soul to become tainted with dark and there was no entering the light. Not when he’d known only shadow. Ryker shoved himself back, away from her. “Three,” he repeated with an edge of steel as lethal as the blade in his boot. “So next time you want to see more in me, remember that.”
Penelope’s mind raced. How could he speak so easily of death? Her fingers crushed the satin gloves in her grip. Nay, death at his hands. A slight but vast difference that left the foundation of her world shaken.
And yet . . . peering at him, she took in the scar that marred the corner of his eye. Those upon his hands. Recalled the palette of jagged, puckered marks on his beautiful, broadly muscular chest. The sharp cries during his nightmares pealed around her swirling thoughts.
The whole of her life she’d had a view of how it should be. How her life would turn out. The same way her sister-in-law expertly crafted sketches, Penelope had drawn a world in her mind, of like perfection. The struggles that had plagued her family would not be her own. The love her siblings knew would be a gift she found. The husband she married would be charming and smiling and hopelessly loving, unafraid to give in to emotion.
She dropped her gaze and it snagged on the smooth white satin gloves clutched tight in her hands. That color of purity and innocence her mother had attired her in. Looking up, she stared with new eyes at her husband’s chiseled face. Carved of granite, he refused to yield a thought or emotion, and watching him, she was struck with the staggering, humbling truth.
Since the moment she’d begun to analyze the world and understand her place in it, everything had existed in very definitive shades of black or white. There was no in-between, no grey. As such, she’d sought perfection in a wholly imperfect world.
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