Exiled Duke: An Exile Novel

by K. J. Jackson

  Jasper pointed out the window. “We’re almost there, Hoppler.”

  “I bloody well know where it is.”

  “I just didn’t know you were aware of its exact location.”

  “I sure as hell know it,” he snapped.

  Jasper nodded, quiet for a moment. “We’ll find her, Hop.”

  Strider glared at him. Glared at him with such fury Jasper looked away, his lips pulling to the side as he suddenly found interest in the passing townhouses.

  The carriage slowed and Strider was out the door before it stopped.

  The townhouse the Flagtons had rented was nicer than he’d imagined. Wider than the normal townhouse, it was four stories in white stucco with crisp black trim along the windows and door. They had plenty of coin in their pockets to have paid Pen all these years.

  He bounded up the front stairs, the side of his fist banging on the door.

  A butler with his coat askew opened the door.

  Strider didn’t bother with him, pushing past the man and stopping in the small foyer. He glanced down the hall and then up the stairs. “Flagton!” he bellowed, his voice echoing up the staircase.

  A man’s head popped out of a room located down the main hallway of the house.

  Flagton. He looked just like what Strider remembered of his father, except less bald. Same stringy blond hair. Same beady dark eyes. Same mouth that was too small for his face.

  Strider advanced.

  Flagton stepped out into the hallway. “Sir, what is the meaning of this—you cannot come into someone’s home and—”

  His words cut off as Strider reached him, grabbed the lapels of his coat, and then dragged him toward the open front door.

  Jasper stood between them and the butler, not that the servant was inclined to do anything to stop Strider from dragging Flagton out of the house.

  Into daylight and Strider threw Flagton down the four front stairs. The bloody prig tumbled, grunting as various parts of his body slammed into the stone steps. He landed in a heap on the brick walkway, flailing for footing, searching for who had just thrown him out of his own home.

  Strider was down to him, the front of Flagton’s coat bunched in his fists before Flagton could gain his feet.

  “Where in the blasted hell is Pen, you bastard?” He shook him, sending Flagton’s head flopping. “What did you do to her?”

  “Pen?”

  “Penelope—Miss Willington—you know damn well who I’m talking about. What did you do to her?”

  Flagton’s hands flew up, waving. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Strider leaned down, the force of a thousand hurricanes in his words. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Where is she?”

  Flagton paled, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “I—I—I don’t know. She’s not here.”

  Strider’s hold shifted and he gripped the man’s cravat in his left hand, yanking it tight until it was a collapsing noose. His right elbow drew back, then sprung, sending his fist straight across Flagton’s jaw. “Where is she? You tell me now or I will tear out every one of your fingernails. And that is just the start of the pain I will cause you.”

  His head bobbing about, his eyes still glazed from the punch, Flagton reached up with both hands, his weak fingers wrapping around Strider’s forearm. “Please…please…I removed her from the house. She was lying, she was—”

  “When?”

  “A week ago.”

  Strider yanked him upward, his words seething as he set his face in front of Flagton’s bleary eyes. “Did you give her anything?”

  “Give her anything? What—no—she was lying—she deserved it. She lied and—”

  “You kicked her out of your home without a penny? Without clothes? With nothing?”

  “She deserved it.”

  “She has spent the last seventeen years waiting on your bloody mother, your father—you—hand and foot, and you kicked her out of your home with nothing?”

  “No—no, no. We fed her. Clothed her. She had everything with us. Everything she needed and she threw it all away. She could have had me and instead—”

  Strider’s fist met his face again, knocking the grotesque words from Flagton’s putrid mouth. The thought that Pen would ever want this sniveling, slimy excuse for a man was laughable. Blasphemous. Enraging.

  His fist slammed into Flagton’s face again. And again. And again.

  Only red in his eyes now.

  Red and the blurry outline of Flagton’s face in front of him. Flagton’s eyes had long since rolled back in his head, but still Strider pummeled him. Over and over and over, blood flying with each strike.

  “Hoppler. Hop! You need to stop.”

  Strider got the vague sense that Jasper was yelling at him, but he seemed so far away, like he was screaming from a far-off street.

  “I don’t”—his fist went for Flagton’s nose— “need to do anything”—another swing, crunching bone along the bastard’s jaw— “except make this”—the next blow landed at Flagton’s temple— “sniveling worm pay.”

  “It’s broad daylight. People are gathering.”

  He swung another jab at Flagton’s cheek. More bones crunched. “I don’t care.”

  “I do.” Jasper grabbed Strider’s arm as it coiled back again. He dropped to Strider’s ear, his voice hard. “This isn’t our corner of the rookeries. I’m not saying we don’t do this. I’m not saying this rat doesn’t deserve all of it. All I’m saying is we drag him to our area at night to do this when there’s some semblance of deniability—or at least we’ve paid off all witnesses.”

  Sense.

  Jasper was talking sense that somehow made it down to the tiniest sliver of him that was not boiling with red-hot rage at the moment.

  His left fingers uncurled, his knuckles cracking as he let loose of Flagton, letting him drop to the ground.

  Jasper pulled Strider back before he could send a kick straight into Flagton’s belly. Pulled him backward and then rounded him to shove him into the carriage.

  Strider didn’t take his glare off of Flagton. Not until the carriage started moving and Flagton jerked out of view.

  He looked down at his blood-covered hands. Blood that could stay there for all he cared. He wasn’t going to clean up, wasn’t going to sleep, wasn’t going to eat, wasn’t going to stop, until he found Pen.

  He’d tear London apart at the seams if that’s what it took.

  Every contact, every favor was about to be called in.

  He would find her.

  { Chapter 22 }

  She’d done well these past two weeks.

  So much so, an inordinate sense of pride surged through Pen as she walked home from the goldsmith shop in Leicester Square. She’d just convinced the goldsmith to give them every fifth bracelet he was making for them for free. Something he was smart to do, for the exposure of his work at one of Daphne’s events was sure to bring more business to his struggling shop.

  The pride, deep down in her chest, was foreign, for in the Flagton household if she’d ever shown the slightest glimmer of pride, it was stamped down—a sin against the morality of man.

  But she had done well. Daphne had been impressed with her ability to haggle with the vendors and had started to send her on her own a few days ago. All those years of battling with peddlers and shopkeepers to get the lowest prices on what Mrs. Flagton wanted had, in essence, saved her life.

  She had a bed at Daphne’s home. Food—Daphne had the most extraordinarily talented cook—in her belly. Coins in her pocket—more than she had ever held as her own. And most importantly, a tenuous toehold for a future that didn’t involve selling her soul just to live another day.

  Tomorrow was the first gathering that Daphne would have Pen walk at. Daphne had deemed her cheeks plumped up enough from the days with no food, and it had been a relief to Pen. She wanted to contribute so much more.

  Daphne held her flash fêtes, as she called them, at
a large pavilion in Vauxhall Gardens. Dressed in exquisitely trimmed silk gowns in a wide hue of colors and then bedecked with bracelets, earrings, headdresses, pendants, unusual caps, necklaces or parasols, Pen would be one of Daphne’s four women that would stroll the gardens for an hour before the event started, giving the invited women a taste of what Daphne had in store for them that day.

  Pen’s charge: to turn heads.

  She only hoped she could live up to what Daphne saw in her. She had watched the last flash fête six days ago from the corner of the pavilion Daphne reserved, and was dumbfounded by the whole of it. The amount the ladies were willing to pay for some of the baubles. The strong punch. The treats that were set out—she had thought Daphne’s cook was talented, but hadn’t imagined she could make such marvelously diverse pastries and sweets—each one melting on the tongue. Every lady in attendance was in the best of spirits and more than excited to see what Daphne’s latest collection was.

  Pen had been nursing a nervous pit of excitement in the depths of her belly for days. She couldn’t fail Daphne. Not after all her generosity.

  Though both her fear and excitement were diluted by the current state of her heart. Which was—she admitted to herself early on—crushed to the point that very little feeling made it in and out of her body.

  Strider was fully and completely lost to her.

  The harsh truth she’d only begun starting to accept.

  Even though she’d known it the moment he left her. Even if she had harbored hope for days after returning to London—for too long, if she was honest with herself.

  She’d ruined Strider’s life. He’d had a chance to escape the squalor they were in after the fire, and she had taken that chance away from him. Taken what he was due in life. Taken what he was owed. Taken his chance to be the man both his father and Mama June hoped he would be.

  She had ruined all of it.

  Out of fear. Weakness.

  It was only right that Strider was now lost to her.

  Yet that didn’t stop her from wondering—imagining—what he was doing at that very moment. Probably at the Den of Diablo, going through accounting sheets. Or maybe walking his streets, talking with people, helping the innocent ones where he could. Or possibly chatting and laughing with that gorgeous woman that had greeted her when she had gone to Den of Diablo after arriving back in London. Madame Juliet. That woman was the epitome of grace and kindness, even if it shrouded an iron spine that was fiercely protective of Strider.

  A cold spike of jealousy sank through her belly, but she had to ignore it for how grateful she was. Grateful Strider had someone like that. A woman that would protect him. Love him. Wouldn’t betray him like she had done.

  Thoughts of Strider ate away at her mind—as was too often when she wasn’t at the markets or helping Daphne organize the wares and wardrobes for the latest gathering—and Pen looked up, realizing that she had missed her turn three streets back.

  With a sigh, she turned around, her steps quickening. Daphne would be expecting her in a few minutes. They still had to go through the delicate gold and ruby entwined bracelets that Pen had acquired from the goldsmith, deciding on pricing for each.

  In her haste, she didn’t realize a fishmonger’s cart had been set in her way and she nearly tumbled over it, catching herself halfway to the ground by gripping onto the edge of the cart. At least she hadn’t fallen directly into the muck of the street.

  In the next instant, a thick hand set onto her back and shoved her, her head hitting the corner of the cart.

  Blackness.

  ~~~

  A grunt, low and in her chest, sparked Pen awake.

  Awake, even though the blackness still surrounded her. She was moving through the air. Hands on her body.

  Thick hands.

  Just like the one that had shoved her square in the middle of her back, sending her flying into the cart. A fishmonger’s cart.

  Fish, she smelled it all around her.

  Her body lifted and her belly slammed onto something hard, immobile. A shoulder. She’d just been tossed over someone’s shoulder. A fishmonger, if the stench was any indication.

  Her senses started to come back to her.

  The blackness came from a dark sheet over her head. She wiggled. The sheet wrapped her whole body, binding her in place. Her wrists were tied together in front of her. She twisted. She couldn’t kick—her feet were tied as well. And a rag—a dry rag sucked all the moisture out of her mouth. Her tongue moved against it, trying to dislodge it.

  Every step the brute took sent a shock into her stomach, the bones of his shoulder jabbing into the soft flesh just inside her hip bone.

  Stairs. His steps slowed, his breath panting as he carried her up stairs, the jarring into her belly more brutal than it had been.

  His feet thudded across floorboards until she was flipped off his shoulder and set into a chair that she sank back onto, so deep into the soft cushions that she couldn’t move between the sheet wrapped around her body and the fluff of the feather filling.

  His footsteps moved away and a door closed.

  Quiet.

  Hell.

  This was it.

  She’d been set into a brothel. Not even by her own free will.

  She’d finally had a future, and now this.

  This.

  Her tongue curled against the rancid rag. She would fight this. Fight each and every time a man touched her. Fight until her body gave out. Fight to get back to her future—the one she was just starting to see.

  Bile ran up her throat. Fighting was perfect for men like Percival. Fighting would do nothing but excite them. Fighting would just send macabre pleasure running across their faces. The pleasure of giving her pain. Watching her body contort in agony.

  She tried to swallow back the bile.

  Hell, if she’d come here on her own, she could have at least been choosy, found a whorehouse with kind women in it. There had to be some houses like that. Like the ones Strider owned. There had to have been a better choice.

  Instead, it was over.

  She was done.

  { Chapter 23 }

  She sat on the fat upholstered chair in the middle of the room.

  Her body wrapped in a rough, dark gray linen sheet, wiggling, trying to escape the binds.

  A slash of rage shot through Strider. The fishmonger had said he hadn’t hurt her, but here she was, bound in a mess of twine and rags.

  He should have crushed that fishmonger rather than paying him off.

  The thought to go after the cretin flashed across his mind, but he instantly dismissed it. He couldn’t let Pen sit another second in fear.

  Strider rushed forward, ripping the sheet away from her head, tugging at the tangle of it until her face was in the light.

  She shook the hair away from her face, her green eyes wild, panicked, until her focus caught him.

  She stilled, her nostrils flaring, her breath coming in short heaving bursts above the rag stuffed in her mouth until the reality of the situation hit her. Fire ignited in her green eyes.

  “I apologize for this—this wasn’t what I intended—your fear.” Almost afraid to set her mouth loose, his hand lifted, plucking out the rag stuffed in her mouth.

  Her tongue smacked against the roof of her mouth repeatedly until her lips set loose. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing to me? You apologize? Apologize for having me abducted from the middle of the street? In the middle of the day?”

  His hands lifted in between them, palms to her to calm. “Pen, I—”

  “No. I’m not going to listen to you, Strider. I have places I need to be.”

  His hands dropped, his voice taking on a hard edge he couldn’t control. “Places? What have you been doing?”

  Her entire body—still trapped in the bindings and sheet—convulsed as a screech hummed from her chest. “You blasted man. Daphne—her name is Daphne Bannon. I have been working for her—she sells items to ladies of the ton and she hired me
. I live at her home. She is expecting me—would have been expecting me hours ago. We have so much work to do.” Her look flew toward the window, her eyes squinting at the daylight. “Wait, what time is it—what day is it?”

  “Thursday—it’s not even five. The fishmonger brought you straight here and I rode like the devil to beat him here.”

  A frustrated growl shook her body. “It’s been hours—hours I’ve been gone. Daphne will be worried.”

  “I’ll send someone to let her know you’re safe.”

  Her green eyes pinned him. “Now—do it now, Strider. Daphne Bannon in Golden Square.”

  “Let me untie you first.”

  “No. Now.” She shook her head as her voice spiked, her glare cutting him through.

  With a sigh, Strider straightened and went out of the room. He found Jasper down the hall and told him to head back to London with the message and a healthy stack of coins for Miss Bannon’s trouble.

  When he stepped back into the room, Pen was looking around the chamber as she tried to wiggle out of the cloth wrapped around her.

  Everything about what she had just said reeked of wrong. No woman just took in another woman. People weren’t like that. Miss Bannon was probably enticing women in and then peddling them out to men. Or worse.

  He stopped by the door. “Who exactly is Daphne Bannon?”

  “No.” Her glare skewered him. “You don’t get questions. I was the one that was just abducted, so I get to ask the questions. Where am I? This isn’t the Den of Diablo, there are trees outside.”

  Strider glanced about the room. Dark colors filled the space, deep blues and greys in the bedding and draperies, just as he liked it. Leather wingback chairs by the fireplace. The chair she sat in was the only thing feminine—overstuffed with feathers and upholstered in a light rose color, it had been dragged into the room just before Pen had been carried in here. “No, it’s not the Den. You’re in my bedroom in the home I keep outside of London. Close enough that I can easily get here. Far enough away that I don’t feel haunted by the ghosts of London.”

  “You never mentioned it.”