Maybe he was right. Maybe they were nothing to one another now—acquaintances at best. Maybe she had to let the past dissolve into the nothingness he was convinced it was.
But she didn’t think she could do it—let the empty hollow of forgotten years seep into her chest. Part of her—the part of her that had held herself together all these years—would be destroyed if she gave up on who she had been—who Strider had been.
They had been family.
She held onto that past because it was the only thing she had.
Feelings Strider clearly did not reflect.
He had his empire to run, so what did he need her for? His life was full. Busy. No time for the past and what it reared.
She looked to the carriage on the side of the road, propped up slightly on its left side with a fat branch. The driver shifted about on his back on the dusty road under the carriage as the two footmen looked on, standing next to the wheel hovering just above the ground. Her finger flicked out toward the coach. “You don’t need to order them about?”
His eyebrow lifted. “Meaning?”
“That seems to be who you are now.” She didn’t bother to look up at him—her neck had craned one too many times in the past days in order to see his face. “A man who sets fear into people and has them do his bidding.”
His feet shuffled in front of her and Strider sat down next to her with a sigh. He pulled his legs upward and rested his forearms on his knees. “The last thing I know about is axles. They don’t need me in their business any more than I need them making suggestions on how to run a gaming hell or a brothel or a shipping company.”
Her look swung to him. So casual, how he talked about his business—how he spoke of the worst of men’s vices.
She shook her head to herself.
They were in very different worlds.
“Who is Madame Juliet?”
His head tilted to the side as he looked at her. “What do you know of Madame Juliet?”
“Just that her name was mentioned several times by your men when they put me into that drawing room at the Den of Diablo. Something about her raising hell if I was an actual whore. Who is she?”
Strider chuckled to himself. “That seems right. You think my men are scared of me—you should see them around Madame Juliet. She can bust a man down to the size of a walnut in a minute’s time.”
Instant jealousy spiked through her gut. The way he laughed, the way his eyes softened at her name, it was clear Madame Juliet was someone special.
Her back stiffening, she looked away from him. What did she expect? Strider was handsome, even if he was brutal. Of course he had women—he probably had hundreds of them all seeking his attention.
Jealousy had no place, yet she couldn’t stamp it out. All those years without him and she’d always considered Strider to be hers. Even apart. Hers.
Pen nodded, swallowing hard. “She must be special.”
He looked at her, his dark eyes questioning. “She is. She takes no brickbat from any of the customers and keeps everything running smoothly at the houses of ill repute I own. Most importantly, the women in the houses adore her.”
“That seems…almost pleasant if that is the business one is in.”
He shrugged. “I’ve heard the women say it’s not the worst way to make a living—at least in the houses I own. I supply the rooms and safety for women—for a fee—and they work for themselves.”
“Even though Madame Juliet is in charge?”
“She’s only in charge by vote. The women choose for her to be in charge—every other month they meet with the option to have someone else lead. The women in my houses don’t like drama and they don’t stand for backstabbers. Madame Juliet is as smart and as fair as they come, and they all recognize that.” His eyebrows lifted as though he couldn’t quite believe they acted with such decorum. “And that band of women is as fiercely loyal to each other as any man I’ve ever seen in battle.”
“What happens to them when they’re too…old for the business?” Her cheeks tinged pink at the question, but she couldn’t stifle her curiosity.
“The ones that have been in my houses the longest? Most retire into the countryside—they have a village in Berkshire that they’ve mostly taken over. When they work for themselves and can keep their wages, many of them have built themselves small fortunes that will see them through the rest of their days.”
Pen nodded, pursing her lips. “So prostituting isn’t as bad as one is led to believe?”
His look whipped to her, his face hardening. “It is a hard life, Pen. Horrible and dangerous for most. Make no mistake on that. But if one is in the business, my houses are a welcome respite. We have a waiting list for new women to join the houses.”
She coughed a chuckle. “A waiting list?”
“I know.” A wry smile lifted the side of his face. “It is odd. But it is testament to how Madame Juliet runs things.”
Pen looked down at the flower in her hand. Unwittingly, she’d twisted the stem so far down and tight around her forefinger, she’d crushed half the petals.
She flicked it off her fingers and dropped it to the grass next to her legs.
Metal suddenly screeched and clanked, and a blasphemy rang out from under the carriage.
Fixing the axle must not be going well.
She glanced at Strider’s profile. The question that had been on her mind for days seared close to her tongue. He was talking about prostitutes already, so the question seemed natural at this point.
She cleared her throat. “The first time you killed someone—did you enjoy it?”
His look snapped to her and his eyebrows drew together into a harsh line across his brow. “Killing?”
She nodded.
For one miniscule second, his face looked pained before he looked away from her, his gaze locked onto the carriage. His voice dipped into a low rumble. “Of course not. I felt no power from it. The opposite. Every life I’ve snuffed out has taken something deep out of me—stolen it away. The last one just as harsh as the first one.”
Her chest tightened, the air squeezing out of her lungs. “How old were you the first time?”
His shoulders lifted. “Fifteen, sixteen—I’m not sure. Time moved differently in those days.”
“What happened?”
“You don’t want to know, Pen.”
“Or do you not want to remember?”
His head turned, his light brown eyes pinning her. “Probably both.”
Her look went downward between them. Telling her would be giving her something of himself and he wasn’t about to do that.
When was she going to understand that?
He wanted nothing to do with her and he wasn’t about to give her more than the bare minimum. What it took to get her from London to Bedfordshire and back to London, and then he would be done. She’d be cast out of his life once more.
It was so deeply ingrained in her to do so, but she needed to stop looking—asking for more from him. Stupid, every time she did it. Every time she set herself up for disappointment.
She wasn’t going to get anything from him and it was time she stopped trying.
{ Chapter 9 }
Strider looked at the Jacobson estate, his gut dropping.
It was sprawling, elegant. Pompous with its undulating weaves of tall, tightly trimmed evergreens in figure eights that led to the wide main entrance. Perfect grass. Perfect hedges. Perfect Portland stone facade on the straight and looming lines of the manor house, with four symmetrical levels of evenly spaced windows. Not much imagination with it, but perfectly proportioned, perfectly grand.
He’d never trusted perfect.
Perfect hid some of the worst evils.
His fingers tightened on an iron spindle in front of them, one thin rod of the long barrier between Baron Jacobson’s world and the real world.
Aristocrats were like that. Erecting tall iron fences to separate themselves. They thought it held them apart, kept them protected. Bu
t all the fences did was to create a false sense of security. There were always people looking in. Always people planning. People like Strider.
The spindles of an iron fence were no protection—they were a beacon to the masses. The fences drew them in, making them wonder, making them covet. Iron fences were dangerous.
Walls. Walls were much better. Solid barriers, be they stone or mortar or brick. High and thick. No one in. No one out.
The waning sunlight hit the top row of windows on the main house and reflected sharp light into his eyes.
They couldn’t call today, not at this hour and not properly cleaned from the trip.
He turned his head to Pen, his eyes running up and down her body. Both of her gloved hands gripped iron spindles as she stared at the house—fear mingling with excitement in her green eyes. Hope. So much hope in her eyes it almost hurt to look at her.
The serviceable black dress hanging from her shoulders did nothing for her. Made her look like a scullery maid—sans the apron—at best. It hid the curves of her body. She had an ample bosom under that starched cloth—he’d noticed it more than once in the carriage in the last three days. But she was slight—too slight. Enough meat on her to be alive, but not much else. More than once as the carriage went over a hard rut on the road, he looked to her, worried she’d shattered at the impact.
“We will call on them tomorrow morning, Pen.”
She nodded, not looking at him, her look riveted on the house. She’d already come to the same conclusion.
Strider dropped his hand from the iron spindle and turned fully toward her. “If it is them—if they are your mother’s family—don’t expect them to be anything, Pen.”
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and then her stare went back to the house. “What?”
“You have expected me to be someone I’m not since you found me.” His arms crossed over his chest. “Don’t make the same mistake with them.”
Her head swiveled to him, the sharp glare in her eyes aimed directly at him. “That’s not fair. We…we have history. Hard history that gutted both of us, whether or not you will admit to it.” She looked forward, her forefinger flicking out from the spindle to point at the manor house. “If they’re my mother’s family, won’t they want to know me? Won’t they want to know what became of her?”
“You don’t know their history. You don’t know how or why your mother left this land. Think—just think on it, Pen. Why would a peer’s daughter board a ship to travel halfway around the world—especially if she was with child?”
She shook her head, her lips pulling tight. “You just don’t want me to go to them. To meet them.”
“I don’t want that?” His eyebrows lifted high. “I brought you all the damn way here for this very thing.”
“And now you don’t want me to meet them—I can see it in your eyes, Strider. That stare is the same from when we were children—how your eyes look when you’re trying to control me, control what I do.”
“Pen—”
“No.” Her hard gaze whipped to him. “We don’t know that she was with child when she left here. Lots of things could have happened between when she left her family and when she birthed me. You don’t know. She could have met my father—a handsome soldier and fallen in love—but she was so beloved the only way for them to be together was to run off and escape on a ship to the Americas. Then the storm that took my father into the sea blew the ship south and my mother landed in Belize.”
His eyes squinted at her. She was slipping into dangerous territory, concocting stories about a past that she knew nothing about. Her mother died in childbirth soon after arriving alone in Belize Town. Pen was brought to his mother by the same midwife that had delivered him mere days before. “Quality should stay with quality,” was all the woman had said as she handed Pen over to his mother. It had been June. Facts that they knew. Facts that were real. Anything beyond that was supposition.
“Don’t look at me like I’m crazy, Strider.”
“Do you hear yourself, Pen?”
“What is wrong with hope—with imagining what I hope could have been?”
“I don’t imagine on things. I only trust facts.”
She exhaled sharply, her look shifting to the house. “Why don’t you want me to meet them?”
He grabbed her arm, squeezing it until she looked at him. “Don’t you understand? People are not kind. They are not benevolent.”
“But they are—they can be.” Her right hand left the spindle and she motioned toward the house. “You don’t know that there aren’t the most wonderful people in there that are going to welcome me with open arms.”
His eyes closed, a slow sigh seeping from his lips as he released her arm. “Do you remember—remember when our house in Belize Town was burning?” His eyes opened, his look intent on her. “Mama saved us—dragged us out of the house, one under each arm—and then pushed us across the street and ordered us not to move and then she ran back into the house for father.”
Instant tears sprang to her eyes. “Yes.”
“Do you remember at the end, when the house had crumbled to a charred, black skeleton? No floors, only sticks jutting up from the rubble along the edges.” He swallowed hard. “The smoke, the stench of it. And we were still waiting for mama to appear, to walk out of the ashes.”
“I remember.” Her voice cracked.
“There was a crowd around us. All of us standing, watching the horror of it. And then the fire had died enough—just smoke—and daylight had come and the crowd started to disperse, nothing else to watch, and still, you and I stood there, your hand gripping mine.”
Her face tilted upward, draining back the tears. “We didn’t know what to do.”
He nodded. “And I saw our neighbor. Mrs. Halikin.”
A sad smile came to her face. “I always liked her, she was always so kind to us.”
His bottom lip jutted up. “Yes, she was. So I looked at her directly. You were still waiting. Waiting for mama to appear. Waiting for father. Waiting for someone to tell us what to do. But I knew by then Father wasn’t coming out of the ash. Mama wasn’t coming out of the ash.”
He paused, his nostrils flaring as he took a deep breath. “I was already thinking on what we would do next and I saw Mrs. Halikin. Her gaze went past me, just above my head, but then her look caught my eye. She stared at me for the longest moment. So long, our eyes locked. And I could see it in her. See her weighing her decision. See the moment she made a choice. See that the choice wasn’t pity. Wasn’t benevolence.”
“Strider…”
His lips pulled inward, then pursed. “She gave me the weakest smile, an apology I imagine, and then she turned around, walking back to her house down the street. Closing her door. She wasn’t going to help us. If anyone there would have, it would have been her. But it wasn’t. We weren’t worth helping. That was how she’d judged us.”
Horror crept into her green eyes as her body recoiled from him. Her hand lifted, covering her mouth. “That was when you said it was time to leave, wasn’t it? You said Mama June and your papa were gone to us and then you tugged on my hand and pulled me away from there. I didn’t want to leave, but you dragged me—crying and screaming—away.”
He didn’t bother to nod, his body, his head perfectly still. “I had to. There was no reason to stay.”
She staggered a step backward. Then another. Her right hand reached out to grip an iron spindle, her body wavering, a flag in the wind, her hold on the fence the only thing keeping her upright. “Why did you never tell me this?”
One long stride forward and he stopped in front of her, only a breath away as he looked down at her. “I never wanted you to feel what I felt in that moment.”
Her look crept upward, her eyes glossy and huge with unshed tears as she met his look. “What?”
“Worthless.”
She gasped, her chest lifting, and she turned from him, her back to the fence.
“People are not kind, Pe
n. No matter how you want to believe it. They are in this life for themselves—no one else. I would have thought you would have resigned yourself to that fact long ago.”
She stiffened. Her back snapping straight and her body turning into stone. If he didn’t know better, he’d be looking over his shoulder for Medusa. Her eyes hooded, the threatening tears dried up instantly, her face an icy mask as her hands clasped together in front of her belly.
She did that, curled her fingers together, wrapping one side into the other with her right hand always on the bottom when she stiffened like that.
The first few times he’d seen it, he had thought nothing of it, but he’d realized something. Her body did this anytime she put on the facade of calm. The facade where she was barren of emotion.
The first few times he’d seen it, Strider had thought she was merely being still—the epitome of calm—but then he saw her right middle finger on the bottom twitching. Well hidden, but he could see the movement.
He watched her for a long, silent minute.
Her finger was twitching right now.
He reached out and grabbed both of her wrists, pulling her hands apart and flipping them over.
The tip of her glove on her right middle finger had worn through, her fingernail poking through the thin leather. He looked to her other hand. Her left glove had a hole at the center top of her palm. He pulled it closer to his face. The skin underneath the hole was raw. Or was it bleeding?
Dropping her right hand, he peeled off her left glove.
She tried to tug her hand away, but he held her wrist in place, twisting her palm upward.
A smeared, bloody mess directly in the top middle of her palm.
He’d seen—caused—more than his share of blood, but the smear of it on her hand twisted his gut in a way he didn’t recognize.
“Strider, don’t.” The fingers of her left hand curled inward, hiding the gouge from his view.
He jerked her wrist upward. “What is this, Pen?”
Exiled Duke: An Exile Novel Page 7
