Exiled Duke: An Exile Novel
Page 6
“She was wrong.” His eyes darkened, all emotion sinking away from his face. “And don’t look at me like you want it to be true, Pen. I am not the best of men. The only thing you’re going to find in me is darkness and demons and, if you look hard enough, the devil himself.”
She chuckled sarcastically. “The Den of Diablo.”
He nodded.
Her arms splayed out across the table, her fingers stretching toward him. “But none of this—what you’ve done—means that you still can’t do her memory justice and be the best of men.”
He scoffed, his left eyebrow lifting. “You’re living in magic and fairy tales if you think that, Pen. Some holes are too dark and deep. Something you wouldn’t know about.”
Her hands snatched backward to her body, her fingers clasping together in front of her belly and the nail of her middle right finger dug into her palm, working back and forth. “My life has never been a fairy tale, Strider. Never. Not since your father and Mama June died.” Her words shook. “But she was the smartest, kindest person I’ve ever known and I remember everything she ever taught us. What is good and right and honorable. She taught us all of that. And she saw the future for what it could be, never mind what reality surrounded it.” Her shoulders lifted. “So maybe that’s what I want to see. Her hope. Her hope for you. Her hope for me.”
Silence. Only a bored stare from his eyes.
She looked down from Strider’s impenetrable stone countenance to the plate before her.
What had she been thinking? That she could invoke memories of the past and he would smile and declare how very wrong his life had turned and swear he would be a better man?
Foolish.
The food stared up at her, making her stomach roil. “Can we please inquire as to the readiness of my room?” She unclasped her hands and pushed the plate of food away from her. “I’m feeling ill.”
{ Chapter 7 }
Strider stopped in front of Pen’s door, tilting his ear toward the wood. It was so deep into the night they were only hours from dawn. He’d woken when he’d heard footsteps thudding in the hallway and he didn’t care for it. Not when they were outside of Pen’s room.
Silence.
She was sleeping, of course.
Sleeping peacefully, as only those who’ve solely known good could.
Anger spiked down his back. He’d seen the judgement in her eyes at dinner. How horrified she’d been when he’d admitted to killing. To revenge.
He was the worst kind of human now. He knew it and better for her to be well-aware of that fact as well. He would never again be the boy that she once knew. The one that had once dreamed of valor and courage and to follow in his father’s brave footsteps. His father had been exiled from his family—true, but he’d had the convictions to stand by what he loved—Strider’s mother. Him. A man of unimpeachable honor.
Strider shook his head. Thoughts like that hadn’t entered his head in seventeen years. Blasted woman. Pen had been back in his life for a mere fortnight and he couldn’t control his memories—couldn’t block everything that needed to remain sequestered in the back of his skull. It was the only way to stay sane. Stay in the moment. Move forward without regard to right or wrong.
He turned from her door, set to go back to his room, then spun back, his fingers tapping on the side of his thigh.
His mind would rest easier if he could see her sleeping.
As quietly as he could, he slid the extra key in the lock to her room that he had gotten from the innkeeper and cracked open the door. He didn’t want to startle her awake and have her see him in her room with only the loose lawn shirt and trousers he’d bothered to drag on.
Poking his head past the door, he scanned the room. Darkness filled the corners, but the drapery had been drawn away from the window and the low half-moon sent a silvery glow to the room. There. The bed.
The empty bed.
All of his muscles tightened and he opened the door fully, stepping into the room. The blood pounded faster and faster in his head as he searched the corners of the room. Empty. All of it empty.
A flailing wild hope had him checking under the bed just in case.
No Pen.
He whipped around.
Where in the hell was she?
He ran out into the hall, speeding down the corridor and banging on all the other four doors of the rooms on that level. Shoving the bleary-eyed people aside, he charged, one-by-one, into each room and checked it.
No Pen.
Frantic, he tore down the stairs and repeated the search on the floor beneath them.
No Pen.
Just angry guests, ready to attack him.
He ignored each threat flying his way and ran down to the last floor of rooms above the dining area. A repeat of the upper floors.
Still no Pen. Not captured and dragged into someone’s room. Not trying to escape. Just more innocent people trying to sleep.
Swearing to himself, he bolted down the last steps of the stairwell and searched the dining room and the bar area of the inn.
Empty tables, everything cleaned and ready for the morning breakfast.
Outside.
Hell, if someone had grabbed her and pulled her out into the night…
Rage lit the blood in his veins and he sprinted to the door, bursting out into the cool night air.
The main road—nothing—no one. Silence. No screams. No wagons.
The stables.
He had to check the stables.
He ran around the inn, rushing straight toward the barns set further down the rolling hillside behind the coaching inn.
Movement out of the corner of his eye.
What was that?
He turned to the right only to see Pen in the moonlight, shifting her body upward from lying flat on the grassy knoll. She propped her torso up on her elbows, her eyes panicked for a moment before she found his face.
“Strider?”
“Pen?” Her name sliced through his teeth, fury shaking his voice.
Her head snapped back. “What are you doing out here?”
“What am I doing out here?” His voice thundered into the still of the night as he advanced on her. “What the hell are you doing out here? Did someone drag you out here? Where is he—tell me where that bastard went to and I’ll—”
“Strider, stop.” The snap in her voice cut him off and she pushed herself upright but stayed sitting. “I came out here on my own. No one inside is awake or roaming about and I couldn’t sleep so I came out here. No one knows I’m out here—I’m perfectly safe.”
“Safe?” His hands balled into fists and he stopped beside her, his chest heaving as he stared down at her, his voice still a loud rumble he couldn’t control. “You don’t know a blasted thing about whether or not you’re safe.”
Her neck craned so she could look up the full height of him, her voice irked. “Why do you even care?”
“Why would I not care, Pen?”
“There seem to be a thousand reasons why.”
He stopped, exhaling, and ran a hand across his eyes. “You weren’t there. You weren’t there in your room and then I couldn’t find you. You were gone. I checked every room in the damn place and you were gone and I didn’t know what happened to you.”
Her head tilted to the side as her voice softened. “What is going on in your mind right now, Strider?”
His hand fell away from his face, and he looked at her. He stood between her and the moon, and she was fully in his shadow now. But he could still see the concern in her eyes.
He shook his head. “It’s the nightmare—the nightmare that I started having after the fire.”
She reached up, grabbing his hand and tugging it downward. “Sit.”
With the adrenaline seeping out of his body and leaving him empty, woozy, he succumbed to her tugging. Against all his better judgement, he sat.
“You never told me you had nightmares after the fire.” She pulled her hand away from his, hiding it away in h
er skirts. “Tell me.”
He looked toward the treetops just behind the stables. He wanted to resist, but he couldn’t and his voice slowed, his throat raw. “You are by me, sleeping next to me in that cove that we used to sleep in sometimes just outside of Belize Town. You’re on your side and curled up in front of me like you always used to. But then I wake up and you are gone. Cold sand all around me. Gone and I can’t find you and it’s dark, and you’re gone…just gone. I can’t find you in the darkness. I never stopped having the damned dream and then just now, inside…” His thumb jabbed over his shoulder toward the inn. “Inside was just like that—the vicious terror of it—the dream.”
“Why did you never tell me you dreamed that?”
He glanced at her. “I didn’t want you to worry on me. We had enough to worry about back then.”
Her eyebrows had pulled inward as she stared at him. “And you still dream it?”
His shoulders lifted. “Occasionally. I thought that once you went to live with the Flagtons that the dream would stop because I knew where you were. I knew you were safe.” He looked away from her. “But it didn’t. It only got worse. More frequent. It was years before I didn’t have it every night.”
She nodded, silent for several long breaths. “I am sorry.”
His gaze shifted back to her. “Sorry for what?”
“For not trying harder. For not running away from the Flagtons and then making you leave with me—to somewhere—anywhere. You pushed me back there time and again and I should have pushed back. I only wanted to be with you and I didn’t try hard enough. If I had just tried harder—was stronger—you never would have hated me. Never would have sent me back to them as you did that last time.” Her look shifted forward, her right hand going down into the field to tear out a fat chunk of grass. “If I could have figured a way to get away from them sooner, everything would be different. Everything.”
Her head bowed, the fingers of her left hand plucked the grass from her right and dropped them blade by blade onto her lap.
“What are you doing out here, Pen?”
She glanced at him, her bottom lip jutting up. “I am fine. No harm has come to me. People are wary of the deep dark—this time between when the drunks pass out and when the bakers rise. It is the true witching hour. But I have always held these moments in the night tight to my chest. It is the only time I can find peace. The only time I can escape the house without Mrs. Flagton knowing.”
Brushing the grass off her lap, she lay back down on the knoll, her stare up into the blackness of the night. Her left forefinger pointed upward to the sky. “The stars. I find that one. The one that always looks particularly bright and is surrounded by those other three. I stare at it and imagine you, somewhere, lying on your back, with your arm up and tucked under your head. You can’t sleep, just like me. And your eyes scan the sky and then they pause. Pause on the very same star that I am looking at. And just like that we’re connected. Connected once more, no matter how far apart we are. All those years, I never knew where you were. But with that star, that one right there, I always knew.” Her left forefinger fell from pointing at the sky and curled toward her, landing lightly on her chest. “You were here. With me. Always. It’s how I never lost hope that I would see you again. I always knew I would.”
He stared at her in wonder. Stared at her mouth, at the certainty of her lips.
Such faith.
He had nightmares. She had stars.
How she had managed to not let that faith extinguish in the last seventeen years was beyond him.
Faith that was unshakeable.
Faith in him.
Faith he was going to have to destroy.
He yanked his stare off of her face and looked across the distance at the three barns that sat along the bottom of the incline. “I was never looking at the stars, Pen. I never thought I’d see you again. You found hope in those stars. I found blackness. Unending darkness that permeated every choice I made, everything I did. The stars guided me in a very different direction.” He pulled his legs upward and rested his forearms on his knees. “One where hope didn’t exist. Only survival. And the things that I had to do to survive have devoured my soul until there is no lightness, no stars left. One cannot take souls—decide death—without the hand of the devil stealing everything inside of you.”
He shook his head and then looked down to his right. He had to say this directly to her so she understood. So she would give up on him for good. “Whatever it is you’re hoping to find in me, you won’t. It’s not there. Not anymore.”
She met his stare. “But what if there is something left in you—something good that you don’t even know exists?”
“That is hope talking. Only idiots hope.”
“Hope made me find you. Hope made me convince you to help me. Hope is easy when it’s all one has.”
“Hope is a fool’s game.”
She pushed herself upright, her gaze meeting his. “For all you want me to give up on you, I don’t know if I can. It would be too easy and my life has never been easy since the fire.”
“Listen to easy.”
“I am trying, but I’m not done with you, Strider. I am still trying to place in my mind what you are now—the man you’ve become. The deaths and suffering you’ve caused. The special cruelty you seem to have reserved just for me. I’m still trying to place all of that against the person I know you to be.”
From her lips, a ‘know’ instead of a ‘knew.’ So stubborn—continually refusing to accept what he was now.
His jaw shifted to the side, but he refused to look away, drawing up every moment of shame, every moment of pain he’d felt in his life to help him hold fast against her stare that was trying to see into the pits of his soul. “Because you shouldn’t place it—any of it. I’m helping you for one reason. For what you have of my father’s. You don’t need to understand me. You don’t need to like me. We are in different worlds now. Worlds that are intersecting for a short period of time, and then I will walk away from you and never think of you again. Do not mistake this for anything more.”
Her head dropped forward, locks of her blond hair shimmering in the moonlight draping in front of her face. She stayed that way for long seconds, breath after breath.
She shifted, suddenly popping up to her feet, her voice cracking as she looked down at him. “I recall. I am hideous and naïve and you want nothing to do with me. You made that clear at your gaming hell.”
Her fingers lifted, pushing back the loose hair along the side of her head as she drew in a wicked breath that seemed to hold back a sob. “Just because you feel that way, doesn’t mean I feel the same about you, Strider. You are still my family. Still the only person left alive that I love. Still the boy that saved my life again and again that year when we were on our own. Still honorable and strong and good.”
Her palms lifted into the air. “So what if that’s naïve? So what if I still want to see all of that in you? It doesn’t hurt you in the slightest what I think of you. But you—you are determined to slice a blade into my chest with every word you utter at me. And I…I don’t know what…” Her voice trailed off as her shoulders lifted.
“Pen—” He stopped his own words as he instantly realized he couldn’t give her anything at this point. She was the furthest thing from hideous and she needed to know that. But she was so close to giving up any hope she had for him, and that had to happen. His tongue slipped between his teeth and he bit down.
She exhaled, her voice broken. “I don’t know…I don’t know what you are, what you want…and I’m tired.”
She turned slowly on her heel and moved past him, walking toward the rear door of the inn.
Silent, he watched her feet drag across the grass, her black dress fusing her to the darkness about her, her bare toes curling into the ground with each step.
Bare toes, just as she always liked when she was young. She’d never had any use for shoes.
She disappeared into the inn.
For she was mistaken.
How she saw him. How she believed in him. It did hurt him.
It gutted him to the core.
Because he knew full well how very wrong about him she was. He was none of those things that his mother had hoped for him.
He inhaled a deep breath of cool air into his lungs. Air that sat, heavy in his chest, not moving.
Fight it though he was, the visceral instinct to protect her had reared the moment he had seen her in the Den of Diablo. Instinct that had refused to yield.
That left him with one thing.
He had to protect her from himself, his world—at all costs.
{ Chapter 8 }
Pen twirled the stem of a corncockle between her forefinger and thumb, watching the feather-light petals dance as she tried to determine if the color was a purple or a deep pink.
The tips of boots shuffled into her view as she sat on the hillside.
“Do you remember how your mother used to make up stories about my mother?” She looked up to Strider’s face. The sunlight hit him from the side, turning the ends of his brown-black hair a lighter color—almost red with the orange hue of the setting sun. “How my mother was a princess who got onto the wrong ship and sailed to Belize? How the ship was almost lost in a storm. How she charmed everybody on board. I always loved that story.”
He gave a slight head shake. “Why do you remember these things?”
“Why do you not remember these things?”
“I don’t look back. I look ahead.”
She nodded, her look dropping back down to the flower as she gave it another twirl. Why did she ever expect him to say one thing to her without animosity lacing his words?
She wanted the Strider she once knew back. The one that was kind and would save kittens from the docks with her. The one that could fall into fits of giggles, laughing so hard he’d drop to the ground, holding his belly. The one that was fearless, that wouldn’t let any of the other teasing children even hint that she was an orphan. The one that knew to his bones she was his family.