Exiled Duke: An Exile Novel

by K. J. Jackson

  His back to her, he poured a splash of the burnt-red liquid into a glass. “I’m meeting an old friend and didn’t want to do it in London.”

  “So, your escape has nothing to do with the woman that showed up at the Den of Diablo yesterday?”

  “What?” He spun around to her. Pen couldn’t have gone back there—she wasn’t that stupid to set foot into the rookeries again. Not to mention he had men watching her and they would have stopped her from aiming even one foot in that direction. “What woman?”

  “Miss Willington.”

  His heart stilled in his chest. “Pen went to the Den? Is she…”

  Juliet waved her hand. “She’s fine and well. I talked to her. Egbert remembered her from the last time she landed at the Den and brought her up to me.”

  He exhaled a long, silent breath.

  “I can see the relief on your face, Hoppler, try as you might to hide it from me. This woman has quite the hold on you—why?”

  Strider avoided her question. “What did she want?”

  Her mouth quirked to the side. For a moment, she looked to press her question, but then she looked from him to the window. “She wanted you. She was convinced you were there. I convinced her you weren’t.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That you were out of town and even if you weren’t you would be unavailable.”

  “She accepted that?”

  Juliet’s right brow arched. “You seem to know her well. She didn’t accept it and said you’d change your mind about seeing her.”

  “And?”

  She took a long sip of her cognac, her stare assessing him over the rim of the glass. “And I told her in the six years that we’ve worked together, I have never once known you to change your mind on anything. It doesn’t happen.”

  He nodded.

  “Or am I wrong on that score?”

  “I don’t change my mind—you know that.”

  “Exactly.” She dipped her head to him. “At that, she seemed to accept what I told her. I had Jasper procure a carriage and then accompany her home.”

  “Thank you.”

  Juliet nodded. “Who is she, truly? She’s the reason you were gone this past week, wasn’t she?”

  A knock on the door saved Strider from having to answer the question. Juliet was too good at getting him to talk, and he had no intention of speaking about Pen with her. He looked to the door. “Come.”

  His butler opened the door. “Sir, Mr. Draper is here.”

  “Show him in.”

  Juliet looked to him, her delicate eyebrows lifting. “Draper? That’s the old friend you’re meeting? This must be serious.”

  “It is.”

  “Care to share?”

  “No.”

  With a slight shrug she stood, her fingernails tapping along the side of her glass. “Maybe after Draper’s visit?”

  “Maybe not.”

  She smiled, her eyes twinkling. For all of her elegance, Juliet had a wild streak deep within that skirted danger far too easily. And peppering him with questions about Draper and a woman from his past was dangerous. A fact she knew quite well.

  She moved to the sideboard to set her glass down. “You will excuse me, then.”

  “Do you plan to stay at the Willows for long?”

  “A day or two, maybe. I’ll get the women in order—curb their enthusiasm for bringing this place into the current century.” Her shoulders lifted in a sigh. “I find myself thinking the Den tiresome as of late. The same of everything, all the time.”

  He knew it as well.

  The slow eroding of his soul, day in, day out, dredging in the worst of humanity. He’d thought he’d become immune to it, and then Pen had shown up. Reminded him what he used to be once upon a time, and the second he’d set foot back into the Den of Diablo, the weight of it had landed like a boulder onto his shoulders.

  So much so he’d needed to get out of London—not just to avoid the happenstance of Pen looking for him, but to avoid everything in his life if only for a few days.

  It would only take a couple of days. Two, three days at the most and he’d get his senses back about him. His head right. The ice in his veins back. And then he could go back to London.

  Juliet slipped out the side door of his study just as Draper walked in from the main hall.

  “Rune, good to see you.”

  Rune smiled—a far too easy smile for a man that rarely did so. “As it is to you. Your message said you’re calling in a favor?”

  “I am. Thank you for trekking out here.” Strider poured his old friend a glass of cognac and handed it to him before grabbing his own glass and motioning to the chairs in front of the fireplace. “How goes the expedition planning?”

  Rune took the glass from him and sat. His hand ran through his light brown hair. “Good. Hiccups, of course, but we’re past those. We’re set to sail for the Yucatán in another week.”

  “Perfect.” Strider sat down opposite him. “Would you mind taking the ship a bit farther south than you were planning?”

  Rune cocked an eyebrow. “That, I can do. What’s the favor?”

  “You’re unimpeachable—between your connections from the Firefox, your father’s reputation, and the countess you just married—you’re the exact person I need.” Strider took a sip of his drink. “And frankly, the only one I trust.”

  Rune’s hands clasped around his glass. “What do you need of me?”

  “I need you to talk to some people for me.”

  “Talk to some people? That is all? Where?”

  “In Belize.” Strider reached into an inner pocket of his coat and pulled out a folded sheet of vellum. He handed it to Rune. “Here’s the list.”

  Rune unfolded the paper and scanned the list. “Who are they?”

  “Two were witnesses to my birth and the third a priest. All knew my father and mother.”

  Rune’s jaw dropped and he looked up from the paper. “Does this mean you have proof?”

  Strider nodded.

  “Shit. How did that happen?”

  “Someone from the past.”

  Aside from Pen, Rune was the only other person that knew of Strider’s past in Belize. That knew what he’d had and what he’d lost there.

  Rune fell back into the chair and took a full swallow of his drink. His green eyes blinked again and again as his head shook. Green eyes much like Pen’s—that was why Strider had first talked to Rune when they were ten—because of his green eyes.

  Strider stared at him, silent.

  Rune flipped his hand upward from the arm of the chair. “Well, are you going to tell me or just sit there staring at me?”

  “Staring seems the better choice.”

  Rune tilted his head toward Strider, staring back at him for a long moment. “It’s her, isn’t it?”

  Strider nodded.

  Rune’s hand ran over his face. “Hell. She’s back in your life? How—where did she come from?”

  “She was still with the family I left her with years ago—she’s basically been an indentured servant to them. The family came to London and she found me.” His jaw tightened. “And no, she’s not in my life. But she did bring me something—something she’s had for years.”

  “Proof?”

  Strider nodded. “A letter from my father—his seal included.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Tell me of this side trip.”

  Strider leaned forward in his chair, his forearms balanced on his knees. “I want there to be no question this time when I bring it forth. That’s why it has to be you. Unimpeachable sources verifying the truth.”

  A determined smile hardened Rune’s face. “I’ll do it. And I’ll see if we can even move up the sail date. I want this for you, my friend.”

  Relief set into Strider’s chest. He wasn’t sure how Rune would take being summoned to the Willows for this. How he would take Strider’s request. He shouldn’t have questioned it. Th
e bonds—bonds that bind in childhood—were the strongest of them all.

  Strider lifted his glass to his friend. “Thank you.”

  Rune swallowed the rest of his cognac, set his glass onto a side table, and stood.

  Strider followed suit, walking with Rune to the door. “How’s that bride of yours?”

  Rune’s steps paused and he looked at Strider. “Something we never would have even dreamed about back in the Port of Veracruz.” His hand clamped onto Strider’s shoulder. “You might think to try it, eventually.”

  Strider stared at him, silent.

  Rune chuckled. “Just a thought.” He moved toward the door. “I’ll send word as soon as I have it.”

  Strider nodded. “Thank you.”

  As Rune opened the door, he looked over his shoulder to Strider. “Oh, and one more thing—have you thought about the after?”

  “The after?”

  “What you’re going to do after this business is done. What your life is going to be?”

  Strider stilled. There was an after?

  A burst of a chuckle shook Rune’s chest. “You might want to dwell on that for a moment or two, Strider.”

  With a quick incline of his head, Rune started out of the study. “Luck for you.”

  “Luck is for the weak.” Strider smiled as the words from a lifetime ago rolled off his tongue.

  “And we ain’t weak.” Rune closed the door behind him, his boots echoing down the main hallway.

  Strider stared at the door.

  He was close. So close to finally finishing this.

  As for the after…the after he would think about when it was done.

  He couldn’t afford to until then.

  { Chapter 18 }

  Strider had left her with the carriage to get back to London.

  A parting gift.

  A small crumb of pity so she could sob to herself alone, in private. The tiniest fleck of mercy so she could make it back to London.

  There had been those few fleeting moments walking down the stairs in the coaching inn when she had thought he had waited for her in the carriage. But when the footman had opened the door to her, the coach had been empty.

  She hadn’t seen Strider leave that village. She could only assume he’d gotten a horse to bring him back to London, though that hadn’t stopped her from searching the road—every road—for him until the driver had let her out five blocks from the Flagtons’ rented townhouse.

  Pen had needed those eight hours during the carriage ride to London to force her head right—to get it into her mind what her life would now become.

  A life at the mercy of Percival.

  For several minutes, as the carriage rolled through the city streets, she considered the option of never returning to the Flagtons’ home.

  But there was nothing for her. She had no money. Nowhere to sleep. No way to buy food. London was still a mystery to her, with its streets converging here and there without any sense of reason. She could barely navigate her way through the town, much less navigate how to survive in it.

  She presumed she could go from house to house, asking below stairs if they needed a scullery maid or a laundress or help in the kitchens.

  A possibility, except if Percival ever found her, retribution would be swift—a hangman’s noose for her, if he had his way. She had no idea how long his tentacles were—who he knew or didn’t know.

  There was only one place where she knew she could find work—a brothel in the rookeries where she could offer up her body. Something she couldn’t even consider for how it sent bile up her throat each and every time the thought crept into her mind. She knew she couldn’t willingly open her legs to any man. Not after being with Strider. Not after feeling his touch on her body. His breath on her skin.

  There was only one man that would ever touch her and he had abandoned her. Fully and completely.

  She had trudged back to the Flagtons’ townhouse three days ago, at a loss for any other option. And she’d been engulfed in a dark fog since then, her body moving, going through the motions of life at the Flagton’s, so dazed that she would lie down on the hard bed at night and not remember a single thing she’d done that day.

  The fog hadn’t even lifted when she’d sneaked out of the Flagtons’ house in the wee hours of that first night and made her way to the Den of Diablo to see Strider. To beg his forgiveness. To do anything to erase the look of loathing on his face—the hatred she’d been left with.

  He'd refused to see her. His men and Madame Juliet had sworn he wasn’t at the Den of Diablo. But she had known the truth. He was there and refused to see her. A stake through the last of her hope.

  Three days since then of her body and mind deadened to everything about her. A walking ghost.

  Even the sun that had broken through the London cloud cover that day did nothing to buoy her disposition as she stood just past the iron gate in the rear gardens of the Flagtons’ townhouse.

  The sun, the scent of full gardenias surrounding her, the walk to and from the market—simple pleasures that she used to cherish couldn’t crack the despondency that had set into her bones.

  Pen glanced over her shoulder at the Flagton footman that had trailed her every step to and from the market. He’d veered to the coach house as she had stepped in through the gardens off the mews. She’d timed her arrival back at the townhouse perfectly at dusk, when the scent of the flowers in the garden was the strongest—cool and moist, as though each bud was sending out the last cheers of love for the little bit of sun that day. She adored this small slice of heaven. Or, she knew she did, even if she didn’t feel any of it at the moment. The numbness had swallowed everything.

  Nevertheless, she dawdled amongst the raised beds of gardenias and multi-colored dahlias. It was still a relief to breathe her own air for a tiny slice of time without the footman, Percival, or Mrs. Flagton looking over her shoulder. Except that when she was alone, in her own mind, her head swirled, exploding with the last moments she’d been with Strider.

  How he had looked at her.

  The disgust in his eyes. Then the cold.

  The frigid dismissal of her from his life.

  This time there was no justification she could convince herself of as to why he had abandoned her. He wasn’t doing it to save her. No. This time was real. And it was all her fault.

  Her steps through the garden quickened. Time alone was cruel, even if it came with the scent of gardenias.

  With wooden legs, Pen entered the rear door of the Flagtons’ house, setting down on a side table the basket of bread that Mrs. Flagton had sent her to the baker off of Wells Street to fetch. Never mind that Cook made perfectly passable bread and that Pen had passed four other bake shops on the way. The Wells Street baker was the best. And if she went right before he closed the shop for the day, she could get the bread three-for-one. Mrs. Flagton had been quite pleased with that bargain.

  Pen tugged off her gloves, setting them down by the basket, fighting back tears that conspired to overwhelm her. Her head tilted back, her eyes closed as she tried to drain away the building soup in her eyes. Of all things, she knew she couldn’t let one tear fall in this household.

  Only by the graces of the fates had she managed to hide her trip to Bedfordshire and she couldn’t do anything now to bring suspicion to her days away from the townhouse.

  “Bloody ballocks, Penelope, what are you doing?”

  Her eyes flew open, her look finding Percival standing in front of her in the shadows of the hallway. Had he been waiting in the dark for her arrival? How long had he been standing there?

  “My neck had a crick in it.” She rubbed her right fingers on the back of her neck.

  “A crick?” His eyebrows lifted high. “Plausible, but we both know you’re partial to lying now, don’t we?”

  The hairs under her fingers on her neck spiked. Percival was in the mood to skewer her—she’d suffered under his railings far too many times to not recognize the manic look in his left eye. �
��What are you speaking of, Percival?”

  He crept a step closer to her, his top lip sneering. “Where were you?”

  She pointed to the basket of bread on the side table. “To the baker. Your mother sent me. The footman accompanied me as usual.” Her hands clasped together in front of her belly, her forefinger working quickly through the scab that hadn’t fully healed from the night before when she’d sat with Percival and his mother and had to listen to Percival berate her again for how long it took her to deliver the package to Mrs. Flagton’s cousin in Hampshire.

  “As usual?” He snorted to himself. “And when wasn’t it usual, recently?”

  “When? What?”

  He leaned in toward her, his voice rising. “When wasn’t it, you little whore? Usual? When were you alone?”

  Her head shook as she leaned backward to avoid the putrescence of his breath. Best to not retreat a step just yet, or she’d have nowhere to escape. “I don’t know what you’re speaking of.”

  “You don’t?” His head bobbed up and down, his long blond hair flopping over his right eye as his lip turned into a snarl. “Of course you don’t, you little tramp. Lying won’t get you out of this—lying is just going to make me hurt you.”

  “What are you talking about, Percival? What did I do?”

  “I know—I know you didn’t deliver the package to our Cousin Ida. And if you didn’t deliver the package, then who did?”

  “I—”

  “No, shut your mouth, you slut. I don’t give a damn who delivered the package—all I care about is where were you when it was delivered? Whose bed were you in? I’ve seen the looks you give those men.”

  “Men?” Her head shook. “What men? I don’t know any men.”

  “The butcher. The fishmonger. The hatter. All of them—I’ve seen it. I’ve seen how you smile at them—taunt them. Tell me whose bed you were in.”

  “None—I’ve been in—”

  Quick as a snake, his hand wrapped around her neck, shoving her backward until she slammed into the wall next to the door. “Who?” he screamed, spittle forming at the corner of his mouth. “Who?”