He waited for her to turn away. For her shoulders to slump, defeated. Then he could leave.
Instead, her eyes closed with a slight cringe. “I didn’t want to do this.”
“Do what?”
“You help me and you can have me.”
A chortle blasted from his lips. “I can have you? As in sex?”
Her eyes flew open. “Yes…I…”
“That is what you bring me?”
Her cheeks started to flush. “I thought…I thought…”
He laughed again. “Why would I want you? Have you ever even touched a man, set your tongue to his lips, to his cock?”
Her entire torso snapped ramrod straight, her jaw dropping with a gasp.
“Exactly.” He took a step to the side, slowly walking around her, appraising her from all angles. “Why would I want that innocence? Why choose that when I have a stable of women ready and willing and knowing exactly what to do with their tongues?”
By the time he rounded to the other side of her, the flush on her cheeks had deepened, crimson creeping into every corner of her flawless skin.
With a wicked exhale, she spun to him, her eyes ablaze. “You don’t have to humiliate me.”
“Frankly, I don’t know what to do with you.”
“Fine. I’m not attractive. I understand. So then do this for your mother, for what she wanted for us—she wanted us to have a future where we were bound by nothing except what we wanted in our hearts. Help me for what she wanted for us. For what she was to us.”
“My mother is dead.”
Cold. Harsh. The truth.
Her eyes shifted back and forth. Panic. This wasn’t going how she imagined it would. When they were nine she used to get anything she wanted from him. But that was a different time, a different place.
He started toward the door. “You’ll excuse me, Pen. This was grand, seeing you again, but I have a business to run. I’ll have my man escort you out of the rookeries and back to the Flagton home.” His hand reached out toward the door.
Footsteps thudded across the floor and she dove in front of him, her hand on his chest to stop him. “Wait. I have something. Something that you may want.”
“You’ve got nothing I’m interested in.”
“I’m quickly finding that out.”
His left eyebrow cocked.
“It’s from the past. From Belize.”
“Everything burned, Pen. Everything.” His hand reached up to remove her palm from his chest.
She held tight against his grip on her wrist, her fingers curling onto the top cut of his waistcoat. “No—I have something of your father’s.”
He stilled. “What? You have something of my father’s?”
“I do. I never told you.”
“How is that even possible?” His hand left her wrist and clamped onto the side of her neck, his thumb pressing into her throat, his voice rising. “What the hell do you have?”
She shook her head. He could smell the obstinate defiance in her.
“No, Strider. You help me first and then I will tell you. Show you.”
His fingers squeezed into the flesh along the back of her neck. What the hell kind of game did she think to play with him? Him. She had no clue who he was now. The pain he could inflict without remorse.
He leaned down, his face only a breath away from hers as his fingers tightened along her neck. “I don’t make deals with ignorant, innocent chits who dare to wander into my den.”
Her green eyes met his, fire flashing. “Then it’s a good thing I didn’t wander in here. I came here for you. For your help, Strider. And I intend to have it. Are you going to help me or not?”
Her glare set on him, slicing him through. The uncanny color of her eyes, the depths of them had always done that—seared through to the deep within. Unearthly, how she could see the souls of men.
He seethed for long breaths, his fingers twitching, thinking to squeeze out of her whatever she was pretending to have.
She had nothing. He knew it.
He saw their home burn to ash just the same as she had. They had even gone back, sifting through the charred remnants of their life, only to be run off by a neighbor.
There was nothing.
Her green eyes didn’t blink. She didn’t back down. She never had. She’d never known when to give something up—never known what was good for her. For she was staring at the worst of the worst right now.
Him.
He was definitely not good for her. Not since the fire. He never had been. Never would be.
But if she wasn’t lying…if she had something—anything—from his father, it could be the difference. It could give him the one thing he’d been working toward for all these years.
For that, he just may have to chance it.
His fingers loosened on her neck. “I’ll help you, Pen. But it will be on my terms and you will do exactly what I tell you.”
She nodded.
Fool girl.
She had no idea she’d just crawled into the devil’s bed.
{ Chapter 3 }
Walking as slowly as she could afford to through the gardens behind the townhouse Mrs. Flagton had rented in London, Pen fingered the note deep in the pocket of her skirt that had been passed to her by the fishmonger at the market.
Strider had remembered something—something that she had no recollection of.
Part of her mother’s family name and that she had been the third youngest of her family.
It was more than she remembered.
Mama June had always referred to her mother as Mrs. Willington. That was all. That her mother had been a princess that had floated across the sea to land at their shores.
Pen just hoped those few facts Strider remembered would be enough for him to find her mother’s family. He’d noted in the missive that he was already exploring a number of leads in order to track her down.
It had been a week since she had found him at the Den of Diablo and a lead couldn’t come fast enough. This was the first she had heard from him—it’d been pure agony waiting for him to investigate. She wanted—needed to be doing something to speed finding her family along. To be this close, in the same land where her mother once walked, where her grandparents lived, but to not know who they were, was torture.
But she was helpless in this mission. She was in a strange land, she had no resources to hire an investigator, and she knew no one. Strider was still her best chance.
Her only chance.
A fact that still didn’t sit well with her. He’d changed so much. So much bigger—a man. A man like his father—who had been so tall and strong she had thought the sun revolved around him.
Strider’s honey-brown eyes had hardened so much in the years they’d been apart—though that didn’t stop her from staring at them, getting lost in the heat of them. No matter that he looked at her with a healthy note of disdain.
With his disregard of her, his ridicule—she wasn’t sure it was wise to rest her future on his broad shoulders.
Not that she had other options.
This had to work. It had to.
Pen stepped up into the rear of the townhouse, walking along the main hallway, buried in the shadows. While the house Mrs. Flagton had rented was overly large, it was drab with very little light making its way inward. The interior cast a shadow of doom upon Pen whenever she was trapped inside. Luckily, Mrs. Flagton had her going on endless errands.
Trips to the drapers, buying fruit from costermongers, visiting the tea and confectionary shops, the hatter, and the shoemaker. Not to mention the long trek to the fish market for fresh fish they could not get in Belize. Mrs. Flagton hated to leave the house, while the trips outside had been Pen’s only saving grace in the last several weeks.
“Where have you been?”
Pen’s hand jerked out of her pocket, her fingers instinctively clasping together in front of her belly.
Percival, Mrs. Flagton’s son, stepped out of the study and moved in front
of her, blocking her path down the corridor. He was good at that, creeping about and pouncing upon her.
Her lips pulled back in a strained smile. “Your mother requested that I visit the same fishmonger at Billingsgate Market that we got that flounder from last week. She wanted more, as she said it reminded her of her childhood in Portsmouth.”
Percival’s eyes travelled down her body and back up. Slowly. Leering. The man hadn’t matured past the fourteen-year-old lecher that liked to stroll into her bedroom when she was bathing. He was three years younger than her, but that hadn’t stopped him. If anything, it had emboldened him. He’d kept at it for weeks until his father beat him for it. That was the point at which she had been moved into Mrs. Flagton’s room. Not that she minded. She knew sleeping on the thin mattress in Mrs. Flagton’s room for all these years had kept her safe from Percival.
He cleared his throat. “Where is it?”
“The fish? His boy will deliver it to Cook later this afternoon. I got it for a good price, as requested.” It truly was fortunate she was so good with numbers and bartering or Mrs. Flagton would never let her leave the house.
The edge of his right lip twitched in a spasm. If he didn’t believe her, he wasn’t going to press her on it. “You’ve been going on my mother’s errands much of the time since we’ve been in London. Perhaps your chores would be faster if I accompanied you.”
“Do you not have too many meetings with the solicitors to be concerned with the menial tasks I do?”
“I can excuse myself.”
“Your mother wouldn’t like that.”
“My mother?” He scoffed. “There will come a day when you cannot hide behind my mother anymore, Penelope. That day is coming soon.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
His snarl shifted into a smirk. “The old bat isn’t well—or haven’t you noticed?”
She hadn’t noticed. Mrs. Flagton was the same as always. Stiff. Cold. Demanding. Righteous. But she’d kept her son’s hands off of Pen and that alone was worth it. Just like her dead husband, Mrs. Flagton was puritanical to her marrow, and she expected it out of everyone around her.
A shiver of ice ran down Pen’s spine. She thought she’d have more time. More time to escape this house. To escape Percival.
“And the first thing that will go when she dies is her opinions on me touching you.” He stepped forward as his hand lifted—slowly so as to not draw attention—his palm moving inward and upward to graze her breast.
Pen snatched his arm at the wrist, wrenching it away from her body before he made contact. “Then I’ll go—I’ll disappear.”
He snickered. “You’ve got nowhere to go. No one to run to. And the second you set foot out of this house I’ll send a constable after you—”
Her head snapped back. “You wouldn’t—for what? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
He snapped his arm away from her hold and leaned toward her, his slimy breath invading her pores. “For stealing my mother’s jewelry. That alone should get you the noose.”
Pen’s jaw dropped. This was new. He’d never threatened such a thing. He’d never dared.
Avoid.
Avoid him like she’d always done. Always been forced to.
“You must excuse me, your mother is expecting me.” Her head down, she shoved her way past him in the hall. Her hand unconsciously went down to clutch the tightly folded paper through her skirts.
It was something—even if it was only the slightest hope—it was something to hold on to.
Strider needed to find that information on her mother’s family—fast.
Fast or she would be done for.
One way or another.
{ Chapter 4 }
There. Sitting on a black iron bench facing away from him toward the canal in St. James Park with a black valise next to her.
Still in a starched black dress. Still rigid to the point of quivering.
Ten days later and Pen was exactly as he’d seen her that night at the Den of Diablo. The rigidness hadn’t been a result of her showing up in a gaming hell with her nerves shot to hell after walking through the rookeries. She was still stiff from head to toe. Repressing every speck of energy. Everything controlled. Everything hidden.
People like that were always on the edge of shattering. He’d seen it a hundred times before.
He never would have imagined she would turn out like this.
Strider looked about the park, watching the splotches of color promenading far off on the opposite side of the canal—the dandies and their chits preening and posturing. This area of the park was not fashionable. Enough people about, but the goal on this side was not to see and be seen.
His gaze traveled back to Pen. Why in the blasted hell had he agreed to help her? An instant of madness? He didn’t need the trouble of her—the distraction of her moving into his life. Even if it had been fairly easy and only taken a few days to find out which family her mother had most likely come from. Baron Jacobson in Bedfordshire. The old man had a slew of daughters and rumor from years ago had it that it wasn’t easily apparent what happened with all of them nearly thirty years past.
He sighed. One quick trip to Bedfordshire and he could be rid of her.
Pen had insisted that they leave for Bedfordshire this day. He hadn’t been thrilled when he opened that note from her passed through the fishmonger. For days he’d put off telling her he’d possibly found her mother’s family. And he’d hoped to put her off even longer, as he was thick in the middle of taking over a whorehouse by the docks and Madame Juliet was about to have his head for abandoning her so close to the reopening of the house. But if he trusted anyone to do his work for him, it was Madame Juliet.
Strider walked to the left so he could see the angle of Pen’s face. Her gaze stayed intent on the water in front of her, her black-gloved hands clasped on her lap with her right fingers curled up under her left fingers. Unmoving.
Pen had never been able to sit still. Yet there she sat, a master at it.
She looked like a bloody statue now.
Everything about how she’d randomly just shown up in his life was suspicious.
He moved toward her, his long strides eating up the earth between them.
“How did you get away from them?” He stopped at the side of the bench, glaring down at her.
She looked up at him, not startled, like she’d seen him approach her from behind since the moment he’d stepped foot in the park. “What?”
“How did you get away from the Flagtons? They don’t let you set foot outside that house without a footman trailing you. And even at that, it’s only to the market or to a shop.”
Her fingers tightened in her lap, the tips of her left knuckles shaking. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve had someone watching the house.”
“You what? Why?”
His shoulders lifted. “I like to know everything about everyone I’m dealing with.”
“And I’m someone you’re dealing with?”
His head tilted to the side, not answering.
She shook her head, her eyes closing for a long second. “Why? What were you hoping to learn, Strider? That my life is very small? That I am severely limited on where I can go, what I can do? You could have just asked me whatever questions you had and I would have told you what you needed to know.”
“Questions like what exactly is it that you have of my father’s?”
Her mouth clamped shut.
He stepped around to stand in front of her. “Life is a lot easier when you know everyone’s secrets. So I watch people. Our past together doesn’t make you exempt from that.”
Her eyes narrowed at him. “Life is easier how?”
“Easier to control people, blackmail them. Easier to know true intentions, what people most desire. Easier to know what my enemies’ next steps are.”
Her head cocked to the left. “Blackmail? Enemies? What has happened to you? You sound like a blackguard. The kind your mo
ther would have ushered us across the street from.”
His mother? She thought to invoke memories from eighteen years ago? She had another thing coming if she thought the past and long dead people held any sway over him.
Strider’s mouth pulled to a thin line. “I am what I am.”
She heaved a sigh and stood from the bench, her body far too close to his. Her hands stayed clasped in front of her. “But enemies? I’m not your enemy, Strider.”
He stared at her, silent.
He didn’t know what she was yet. But he did plan to find out.
“How did you get away from them?”
“That is why it has to be today that we leave for Bedfordshire.” Her hand motioned to the surrounding park. “That’s why I needed to meet you here. I wrote you that in my last note.”
He’d read the note, but he hadn’t planned on leaving today. They worked on his time, not hers. “We’ll go when I’m ready, Pen.”
“No, it has to be today. Mrs. Flagton is sending me to her cousin in Hampshire to deliver a package. It’s something she didn’t trust her son to do for her. But she’s expecting me to be gone for five or six days.”
“Hampshire is in the opposite direction from Bedfordshire.”
She gave him a withering look. “I know that. I got on the stagecoach out of London, let the driver go a distance, and then threw a fit and demanded he stop so I would be let off after we were well away from Walton.”
“Who’s Walton?”
“The footman your man sees trailing me about.”
“Won’t Mrs. Flagton know that the package wasn’t delivered?”
She sighed. “I paid a woman to deliver it for me with a note saying I am ill at a coaching inn and couldn’t make it to the house. It’ll be enough.” She nodded her head to herself. “It’ll have to be enough.”
“Who is delivering it?”
“I’ve already found a woman, her name is Fiona.”
“Where does she live?”
“On Newton Street.”
He exhaled a scoff. “That’s Ole Ona and she’s not going to deliver the package. She took your money, Pen.”
Her clasped hands started to agitate up and down in front of her belly. “No, she did not. The fishmonger knew her—he sent me to her days ago and said she could do it. I talked to her again this morning on my way here and she said she had already bought her ticket on the mail coach.”
Exiled Duke: An Exile Novel Page 3
