“I did not forget,” he seethed, shooting a look over his shoulder at the closed door. By God, she’d ruin him with the truth. Unbidden, his gaze went to the book she’d been reading. And all the old familiar nausea roiled in his belly, as he was reduced to the humiliated, angry, ashamed man dependent on those around him to make sense of vital words on a page. Ryker grabbed the small leather children’s primer. He wanted to snarl and hiss and snap at her for stirring this deep-seated disgust with who and what he was. He let the book fall to the bed and curled his fingers, welcoming the sting of pain as his nails shredded the skin of his coarse palm.
Penelope placed her hand on his shoulder, and his muscles jumped reflexively under her gentle touch. “I once had a governess who explained that numbers are far more abstract concepts than words will ever be,” Penelope said softly.
“Your governess was wrong,” he said bluntly. Numbers were easy. They didn’t require analysis and could be configured in a way that had long made sense.
Penelope let her arm fall to her side, and he mourned the loss of her touch.
She hitched herself onto the bed and gripped the mattress. “Yes, I would agree on that score. But in this she was right.” A mischievous sparkle glimmered in her eyes. Who had she been as a child? With her penchant for trouble as a woman, she’d have been a spitfire that no governess could tame.
“You must have driven your father grey,” he said wryly.
Her smile dimmed. She glanced absently at the book. But not before he’d caught the sadness that sparked in her blue eyes. The sight of it hit him like a kick to the gut. This pain for another was foreign; it was a pain he’d thought he’d long ago made himself immune to. Or he’d believed so.
“I do not even remember my father,” she said softly. “I was but two when he passed.”
As one who’d spent the early years of his life wishing the Duke of Wilkinson to the devil, he couldn’t connect what it was to know this grief. The only man who’d been a father to him had beat him with regular frequency, rivaled only by the whore that man had made his wife. Nonetheless, he wished in this instance he had words for her. Wished to erase the hurt and restore her grin. But he’d never been that man. Nor would he ever be.
And for the first time since he’d escaped Diggory, he humbled himself before another. “I’ll begin the damned lessons.” Ryker scrubbed his hands up and down his face. If anyone had wagered a week ago he’d be sitting with a fancy lady, whom he’d confessed his inability to read to, and now sat taking lessons from that same woman, he’d have lost the gaming hell and the shirt on his back. “Yes, I know how to make sense of numbers.”
Several hours later, with the fire dying in the hearth, Penelope lay on her stomach, beside him. Of all the battles he’d fought in the streets, of all the men who’d waged war against his club, this moment, struggling through the children’s primer, laid him low in ways no other battle could. All the age-old self-hatred and disgust simmered, melding and blending, so that the words blurred as they always did.
Penelope touched her fingertip to the large letter B etched on the page. She gave him a patient look. “You cannot hear the u in buy. It is silent when you speak this word. It . . .” She pushed herself upright. “Ryker?”
And he snapped. With a growl, he surged to his feet. “The bloody letter doesn’t make the bloody sound, and yet it is included anyway. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense.”
She shook her head and spoke slowly. “It’s silly, isn’t it?”
His frustration spiraled. “It’s bloody rot.” All of it.
Penelope closed the book. “We can try again tomorrow.” Had she thought she could come in here with her children’s books and transform him into a man capable of reading the words that had long eluded him?
“I cannot meet tomorrow.”
She placed the primer on the nightstand. “Very well, then, the next day.” The unyielding set to her mouth spoke to her determination.
A woman of her indomitable spirit would never be deterred. She’d slip further and further into his world, transforming his club, his employees, him, and would not cease until his world matched her expectations of it.
“Since the day you entered this club,” he said harshly, “you came in and tried to change it all.” Her mouth fell open, and she shook her head, a protest on her lips. “You want to change the role of the women who work here,” he reminded her.
She folded her arms as mutinous now as she’d been that first night. “No woman desires the job of whore,” Penelope insisted once more. “They should be allowed work that does not require them to sell their bodies, Ryker,” she shot back.
The seed of guilt she’d planted, days earlier with that same charge, took root and had grown, infuriating him with his damnable weakening. “You change my office. It was a place that was mine, set up as I wanted it. And just like you decided it was unsuitable, you’d now change me.” He continued over her gasp. “Change me like I’m your next project.”
“No.” She gave her head a dizzying shake. “That is not—”
“You have this vision of perfection, Penelope Tidemore.” He searched around and his gaze landed on that journal always out. He yanked it from the top of the nightstand and retreating several steps, he waved it about. “What do you keep in here?”
“Give me my diary,” she bit out and, with a breathtaking resolve, stomped over.
Ryker held her book aloft, the pages containing words he’d never make sense of. Words that offered a window into her world. “Do you write about your dreams and wishes?” And why do I so desperately want to know what’s contained within the pages? Which only further fueled the fury pumping in his veins. With himself. For caring. For hating himself, still. For reminding him of his greatest failings. Of who he was and who he’d never be.
Penelope reached up on tiptoe and wrenched her journal from his fingers, hugging it to her chest. “There is nothing wrong with having dreams and wishes. Didn’t you wish for this club?” she retorted. “How is that any different from the hopes I carried?”
Carried. Dreams now spoken of in the past tense. “My club was a dream built on nothing more than what could fill my pockets.” That blunt, bald truth earned another frown. “Coin to keep me fed and a roof over my head.”
“I believe you want more than that, Ryker,” she said softly, with an unerring accuracy that probed deep inside to a part of him he hadn’t known existed—until now. Nay, until her.
Terror licked at his senses, and he took a step forward. “Then you’d be wrong. You want the world to be a certain way and your husband to be someone else.” She bit her lower lip. Whoever the man she’d dreamed of for herself, he certainly hadn’t been an illiterate bruiser from the streets. “Would he have read you sonnets?” he jeered. “Would he have written you love poems?” Her cheeks pinkened. She slid her gaze away. Of course he’d been correct on that score. Ryker slashed the air. “I will never be that man. No matter how many lessons you put into making me someone else—”
“I did not want to make you someone else,” she cried, red color rushing to her face. “I wanted to help you.”
He recoiled, as her words sucked the life from the room. Help him. Like he was one of those pitiable creatures bored ladies devoted a minute of their attention to before forgetting the plight of the poor. Ryker shot his hands out and took her by the shoulders. The book fell from her hands, landing with a loud thwack. “Let us be clear,” he seethed over Penelope’s gasp. “I do not want, nor do I need, help.”
“Everyone needs help sometimes, Ryker.” Her faint whisper barely reached his ears, but he heard it.
Gazing over her stricken face, Ryker released her with such alacrity, she stumbled and her knees hit the edge of the mattress, knocking her into a sit. He’d spent the whole of his life surviving. With the exception of the men he called brothers who survived hell at his side, no one entered his world. Until Penelope. Penelope who’d staunchly defended him to societal misses who were more
her equal than Ryker would ever be. Penelope who with her feminine touches and innocent smiles and reading lessons filled his life with tantalizing gifts he was better off without. Not when they would only weaken him. “I do not need anything, madam,” he said quietly. “Let that be clear.”
And before he did something mad like take her in his arms and claim that full, tremulous mouth under his, Ryker spun on his heel, stalked off, and left.
Never feeling more like a bastard than he did in that moment.
With a restiveness that would keep any hope of sleep at bay, he made his way to the observatory. Calum glanced briefly back, and then switched his attention to the floor.
Closing the door, Ryker took a place beside him at the window and surveyed the crowded room. Though not the numbers they’d enjoyed prior to the scandal a week earlier, the hell hadn’t seen a downturn in their recent business with the fight that had broken out.
“Patrons are returning,” Calum observed.
Had anyone truly believed bored nobles would forever forsake years of their personal pleasures because of a scandal involving one lady? You believed it.
And now for that fear, he had a bride for it. A bride who’d flipped his world around. Her stricken expression filtered into his thoughts, and a tightening squeezed at his chest.
He thrust aside the weakening. Penelope needed to be clear on the actual state of their marriage and her role here and in his life. Otherwise, she’d continue to wreak havoc on his existence.
“I need you to instruct Penelope on how to handle a knife.”
Calum swung his gaze to Ryker. From the glass panel, the other man’s face registered surprise. What did the other man have to question? The matters of anything unrelated to the club had long been relegated to others. Penelope was no different. Liar. You’re scared of her in ways you’d never feared Mac Diggory.
“I am interviewing a new bookkeeper in the morn. She needs to learn.”
“And you do not believe as the lady’s husband the responsibility falls to you?” his brother asked with a sardonic edge to that inquiry.
Retraining his focus on the tables below, he shook his head slightly. “It matters that the lady can properly defend herself.” And that is all. “She’ll learn that at your hands.” A slender beauty in a pink confection that clung to her every curve slid into focus. The woman layered herself against one of the patrons and trailed her fingertips down the portly man’s sleeve. By the aged wrinkles marring his face and his heavy jowls, the lord was old enough to be her grandfather. The nobleman nuzzled her neck, angling her head back at an awkward angle that tipped her face up in Ryker’s direction. The muscles of her face contorted with a palpable disgust that reached across the club.
No woman desires the job of whore . . . They should be allowed work that does not require them to sell their bodies . . .
He’d long told himself the women who took work here as prostitutes were better off. Their bellies were never empty. Their safety assured. If any patron became too rough, they were barred from dealings with the prostitutes. Now, Penelope’s volatile charges echoed around the chambers of his mind, making him question the lives of those women on the floors below. His role in perpetuating an existence that saw them sell their body for coin.
He groaned. Mad. He was utterly, stark-raving mad.
Penelope stared at the door her husband had slammed. He’d rushed away from her as one who had the hounds of hell nipping at his heels.
He was determined to push her away. Keep her out.
Given the cool businesslike arrangement they’d worked out for their own respective security, that response was merited. Understandable. Beyond their names and joining, what need did they have for each other?
Only, she wanted more with him. And for him. Not because of the dispassionate union they’d entered into nearly a week ago, but rather because she’d come to care for him.
Her throat tightened, and she hugged her arms close. Nothing good could ever come in loving a man like Ryker. Penelope stilled, her pulse pounding loudly in her ears. Love a man like Ryker? Why should the thought of love slide in? They barely knew each other at all.
That isn’t altogether true.
For she did know so very much about him. Of his loyalty to his siblings, people he’d literally killed. Of his devotion to the club and all the men and women who relied on him for security. She knew despite the child he’d been, battered by the cruelty of London’s underbelly, he’d risen despite that hell, emerging triumphant when most others would have been defeated by life. He was a man who presented a hard exterior to the world, and yet who’d carried her through the hell to tenderly minister her injured cheek.
Oh, God. I love him . . .
Penelope pressed her eyes closed a moment. And she knew he wanted nothing to do with her. Not truly. Oh, he might not despise her, as he’d succinctly stated, but there was nothing more. There was no affection there. Given the accusations he’d hurled, why should she expect his affection?
He believed she wished to change him. To mold him into her vision of what he should be. Absently, she drifted over to the stack of books atop their bed and neatly reassembled the pile of children’s primers. She dropped to her knee and gathered her neglected journal. Then, isn’t there truth to his accusations? Penelope sifted through the pages, skimming entry after entry of the ideal she’d created in her mind. Those hopeful musings belonged to a child without a true grasp on life or people.
Claiming a spot on the floor, she laid her back against the bed and proceeded to read those entries.
He shall read me sonnets . . .
Her toes curled involuntarily into the cold, hardwood floor.
Did you believe he’d read you sonnets? Write you love poems . . . ?
How humbling that his accusations had proved so wholly accurate. They were the wishes of a girl who’d not given true thought to what love entailed. Oh, she’d longed for an honorable, courageous man . . . and yet, that is whom she’d married. She’d just assigned a girl-like dream to who he would be in addition to those things and attached love to those showings.
Throat working painfully, Penelope flipped through entry after entry.
We shall waltz under the moonlight with the stars twinkling on . . .
Ryker Black would never be a man who willingly waltzed. Life had proved the frivolity of those balls and soirees that had consumed her own family’s life. For years, Penelope had worked toward the perfection Ryker had spoken of. She’d attempted to be the model daughter who would free her family from scandal with the match she’d make. She’d perfected the acts deemed ladylike. And then she’d entered Ryker’s home and attempted to perfect the hell. She’d sought to transform his office into the place she thought it should be. Just as he’d accused.
Penelope stared unblinking at the words on the page so long, they blurred before her eyes. Never, in wanting to teach him to read, however, had she done so because she was ashamed of who he was. She’d wanted to help him because it would empower him and free him in ways he did not realize.
But how could he see that offer as anything different from the others she’d exacted? Having carried the secret pain and shame of it for the whole of his life, he’d not simply be able to devote himself to reading with an optimism in her motives or his ability. And she should have had the foresight to know that.
A knock sounded at the door and brought her surging to her feet. He’d returned. Hope blossoming in her breast, she sprinted across the room, pulled the door wide, and her heart dipped. “Oh.” She could not prevent the dejected utterance from slipping out.
The voluptuous beauty Clara stood staring at her with a guarded expression. With her generous hips and equally generous breasts, in a scandalous crimson gown that clung to those healthy curves, she was the model of feminine beauty. The kind of womanly perfection that artists memorialized on those naughty paintings that men dreamed of. That Penelope would never be.
And Ryker had known this woman in the mo
st intimate of ways. A vicious, lifelike jealousy stirred low in her belly and spread throughout like a cancer.
Since the revelation days earlier, a young kitchen maid had begun assisting Penelope through her daily ablutions. “I do not require help,” she said tightly. She made to close the door, but Clara stuck her foot in the doorway.
“Wait.”
Presented with the possibility of slamming the oak panel in her beautiful face, Penelope hesitated. Alas, eighteen years of proper behavior drilled into her won out, and she stared expectantly at her husband’s former mistress. “Say whatever it is you’ve come to say,” she demanded tightly. She wanted this woman gone. This woman whom her husband trusted and who belonged more in his world than Penelope ever would.
“You believe I do not like you.”
No one in this hell liked her. But why should they? She was an outsider, playing in their world. A longing for her always-smiling family assailed her with such force her heart ached.
“What do you want?” Penelope asked tiredly.
“May I come in?”
Penelope firmed her lips.
“Please,” Clara said quietly, in an entreaty Penelope would wager her very life she made to no one.
She wanted to tell her to go to hell and slam the door in her face like an angry child. Penelope stepped aside and motioned her in.
The courtesan moved in a whir of noiseless satin skirts, drawing Penelope’s gaze once more to the glorious gown. With its plunging décolletage and midnight lace overlay, there was a sophistication and allure to the crimson garment. Unbidden, she glanced over at her own miserably dull, proper lace skirts on the floor. Yes, what gentleman would prefer a lady in white lace when he could have a siren in flame red? Penelope shoved the door closed.
Clara spoke without preamble. “I’ve known Mr. Black for nearly seven years.”
Seven years. Penelope’s teeth scrabbled at the inside of her cheek, tearing up the flesh. How ironic, when he’d known Penelope just seven days. “Have you?” she managed woodenly, because some response was merited.
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