“My cousin?” Strider put his hand on her shoulder, trying to calm her.
She jerked her shoulder from under his hand, her head shaking, hysterics flying from her mouth. “Your cousin—no—that’s not your cousin—I know him—I know that man. I know him.”
“Pen, stop, breathe.” Strider set his drink on the ground and stepped in front of her, blocking the view of his cousin as he grabbed both of her shoulders to steady her. “What are you talking about? You know him from where?”
Her eyes squeezed shut as her mind sank far back into the past. Back to Belize. Back to the night of the fire. The flash of the sound that woke her up ringing in her ears. Getting up from her bed and rubbing her eyes. Dragging her feet to Strider’s room to find him still asleep in his bed. Turning around and jerking to a stop at his doorway, her toes almost squashed by a man running past his bedroom door. A man so big. His hand ran into her, shoving her back so he didn’t trip over her. Stopping. Looking down at her. The face. The same face. The pistol in his hand.
Her eyes still closed and lost in the memory, Pen swayed on her feet, Strider’s grip on her the only thing keeping her standing. Her words tumbled out, madcap, her head shaking. “It was him—he was there—I thought it was a dream—a dream—I always thought it was a dream—but he was there, it was real—”
Strider’s hands on her shoulders shook her. “Where?”
Her eyes flew open, wide and panicked, suddenly positive that what she’d always thought was a dream, wasn’t. “In our house—Belize—that man—your cousin—he ran into me—stopped and looked at me and then kept running. Him. He was there.”
Strider’s eyebrows hardened to severe lines. “My cousin?”
She reached up and grabbed his forearms. “Your cousin—he was in our house that night of the fire. I went back to bed I was so tired and then the next thing I knew Mama June was waking me up, dragging me out of bed and the smoke and the heat was all around us and we were running from the house.”
His fingers dug into her shoulders even as the whole of his body went still. Coldly still. “But it was him—my cousin?”
Her eyes closed. “Him—it was him. He grabbed me—looked at me. And his hands, his hands were bloody. And there was a pistol in his hand.”
“My father?”
She nodded, gripping onto his arms, gripping so hard she thought she could erase the memory from her mind with the strain of her knuckles.
His voice dipped to an icy calm. “You are positive of this?”
She nodded, her voice numb, her hands shaking. “I am. I always thought it was a dream.”
Strider wrapped her under his arm, holding her to his side as he moved through the crowd to a smattering of chairs along the far end of the racetrack past the finish line.
He nudged her into one of the open seats and dropped to balance on his heels in front of her. His hand reached up, gently tracing the wisps of hair along her brow. “Sit here. Catch your breath. I’m going to get you something fresh to drink. Don’t move from here. Watch the races. I will be back directly.”
She nodded, the whole of her body still shaking.
Strider stood and disappeared into the crowd.
It took a full minute for her to realize how light and calm his voice had been. Too calm for what she had just told him.
The crowd erupted around her, yells and shouting piercing the air as the first race started.
It wasn’t right. His calm.
Twisting on the chair, she scoured the crowd around her.
He was gone.
She flew to her feet, pushing through people, searching for Strider, searching for his cousin.
The purple curricle—she had to find that.
Weaving through the crowd that was pressing against her toward the racetrack, she finally broke through the bodies and found the purple curricle.
No one stood by it.
Her look frantic, she scanned the long line of coaches, the field, the trees that lined a river at the far bend.
Dark coats moving amongst the trees.
Picking up her skirts, she sprinted along the corridor between the crowd and the carriages. Into the woods, she skidded to a stop where the line of trees ended twenty yards away from the steep bank of the river.
At the edge of the bank, Strider stood over Frederick, his fists straining and already bloody from the face of his cousin now splayed out flat on his back.
Frederick had both hands outstretched above him in defense, his voice squealing. “Your mother was innocent—innocent—and he ruined her and took her away from me.” Even with his high-pitched squeal, Pen had to strain her ears forward to hear him over the crowd behind her.
“My mother?” Strider’s roar shook the air. “He didn’t take her away from you—she was never yours. She was ten bloody years older than you.”
Frederick’s hands slammed onto the ground and he pushed his chest upward, screaming at Strider. “She was my blasted governess—mine—and your bastard of a father took her away from me. She was mine. She was mine until he turned her into a bloody whore, just like the rest of them.”
“I told you to never speak about my mother.” Strider swung, landing a punch right between his cousin’s eyes. “You killed him, didn’t you?”
“Yes—yes, I did—and I loved every second of it,” Frederick screamed, blood and spit frothing at his lips. “I loved watching him fall—the blood coughing from his lips. And I would have killed you too if I had seen you—they had one child and she was a girl—not a boy—not you. I touched her—they had a girl.”
Strider lifted his fist and swung at Frederick’s temple, sending his cousin’s head flailing. “You didn’t do your research—and you didn’t bother to look around. I was there to see what you did to him and I’ll see the same fate handed out to you.”
Another punch flew from Strider’s right fist, the sound of crunching bones sparking into the air. And another swing from his left.
Blood flew everywhere, off of Strider’s fists with each blow. No man could survive the pummeling he was handing out.
Pen’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. Her words frozen just as her body was. Strider couldn’t kill him. There was too much at stake. Their future. Their future they had only just found.
Battling the lead in her veins, Pen found her feet and rushed forward, trying to grab Strider’s elbow as it jerked backward. “Strider—you have to stop. Stop. You can’t kill him.”
“I can.”
“No.” She screamed at the top of her lungs straight into his ear. Making him hear her.
As loud as she screamed, it was nothing against the roar of the crowd in the air as the horses approached the finish line.
“No—no, Strider. Stop.” She managed to catch his arm, and she yanked backward with all her might, her feet slipping on the grass, sending her falling, hanging from Strider’s arm. “Stop. Please, just stop.”
His opposite fist lifted again. But then, miraculously, it paused.
He looked over his shoulder at her dangling off of him. His eyes closed for a long second and then he dropped the arm she held onto, shrugging her off of him.
She fell to the ground just as Strider turned back to Frederick and lifted his fist for one last deadly blow.
“Strider—”
He jerked back suddenly.
Jerked back, got to his feet and turned, stalking away from the scene.
He was walking away.
Walking away for her.
Her head dropped, her breath heaving against the grass. As much as she wanted to see his cousin dead, they were doing the right thing. She had done the right thing to stop him.
The movement next to her didn’t even register until the heel of a boot pinched her pinky finger into the ground as it passed her.
She looked up to see Frederick had staggered to his feet and was trailing Strider.
Silver.
Bloody hell.
A pistol in his hand. A pistol he was cock
ing.
Pen bolted to her feet, running, running. Faster. Faster. Frederick aimed the pistol at Strider’s back. Close enough he wouldn’t miss. Faster. Faster.
She jumped in front of Frederick.
Jumped just as the pistol fired.
A wall between Frederick and Strider.
A second of searing fire blasted through her side and her body jerked backward, the ground rushing at her.
She landed hard on her arm and rolled onto her back, her head flopping to the side.
She blinked.
The odd sensation of nothingness in her side struck her. No pain. No feeling at all.
She blinked.
Frederick started staggering backward, his hands high in the air in front of him, his mouth flapping. Whatever he was screaming wasn’t making it into her ears. Only ringing.
Boots. Boots in front of her eyes.
From her sideways view on the world, she saw Strider’s boots dig into the grass, dirt flying as he charged at his cousin. Steel flashed—a blade in his hand. A blade swinging.
Quick. Perfunctory. One slice across his cousin’s neck.
Strider stopped, the blade gripped in his hand, his stance wide.
The spent pistol dropped from Frederick’s hand as he grabbed at his own neck, trying to stop the blood. Staggering backward. Backward.
And then he was gone. Dropped over the bank of the river. Gone.
Strider whipped around, running to her.
Seconds. Mere seconds it had taken for him to dispatch his cousin. He had been holding back. Holding back for her.
His blade was so much easier.
Strider knew what he was doing and she’d been a fool to demand that he be anything different than what he was. Deadly.
His black boots thundered on the ground toward her. Slow, even though he had to be fast. And then he got blurry. Blurrier. Blurrier.
The colors of his boots and the grass and the sky and the trees bled together, swirling, until there was nothing but blackness.
{ Chapter 27 }
Something was wrong.
Deathly wrong.
Pen opened her eyes and saw Strider on his side next to her, his head bowed slightly as it lay on a pillow, his shoulder drooping, his eyes closed. Dark circles etched deep into his face around his eyes and his cheeks sank inward. He looked like hell had reached up and grabbed him, flattened him, and then spat him back up onto earth.
Dead.
He couldn’t be dead.
And why were they on a bed together?
The river. The races. His cousin.
His cousin with a pistol.
No. Please no.
She moved her right arm to grab him and her body instantly revolted, pain sweeping through her. No matter. Her fingers stretched out to him, reaching his chest, reaching the swath of skin showing above the top v in his lawn shirt.
Her forefinger moved, her fingernail scratching him.
No reaction.
She scratched harder.
A gasping inhale and his whole body jerked, his eyes flying open.
A blink. Another.
He flew upright on the bed and heat instantly left her chest—his hand, his arm had been splayed across her torso.
“Pen? Pen?” The sound of her name cracking, rough, he leaned over, hovering above her with wild eyes, his hands on either side of her face, clutching her to look at him.
“Strid—” The sound stopped for lack of moisture on her tongue. She swallowed hard, trying to make her tongue to work. “Strider—you are not well?”
His forehead wrinkled. “Me not well? Pen, you took a bullet meant for me. A damned bloody bullet meant for my back.”
“I did?” Her eyes closed, the pain in her body radiating out from her side suddenly making sense. She opened her eyes to him. “But you look like death—are you injured?”
A crooked smile crossed his lips. “No. Not at all.” His hands tightened about her face. “I look like death because you were flirting with death and I did not care for it.”
She nodded, which seemed like the least offensive move against the pain she could make. Spikes of torture still jabbed down her back with the motion. “Your cousin?”
“Dead.”
Pen exhaled.
It was all she needed to hear. Sleep sounded like a nice idea.
She drifted off, Strider’s face above her.
All she needed.
~~~
It was progress.
Wrapped in a robe, Pen sat on a chaise lounge by the fireplace in Strider’s room.
Pillows were propping her up, true, but her strength was mostly back. She’d made it from the bath to the lounge on her own two feet, and now her toes warmed by the fire as she set a comb through her hair. The maid had offered to get the tangles out of her hair, but Pen wasn’t accustomed to someone offering to help her at every turn. Especially with things she was perfectly capable of doing on her own.
One of Strider’s maids had been in the room almost continuously since she’d fully woken up two weeks ago, but it felt good to send the maid off and run the comb through her hair on her own. Her arms were now working as they should without sharp jabs of pain racking her body. The wound on her side where the bullet had gone in was now more of a dull ache that she could ignore if she kept her mind occupied elsewhere. Books helped with that, but not much else. Juliet—the only other person at the Willows aside from Strider she knew well enough to talk to—had left the estate soon after she had been shot.
And Strider had been steadfast in his refusal to talk about anything beyond these four walls and her recovery. When he was in the room, he cut their conversations short. She had thought it was because of the maids always present, but she was beginning to get the sense he was avoiding her.
A knock rapped on the door and she stifled a sigh, hoping for more time away from the maid’s presence.
“Come.”
The door opened and to her relief, Strider walked in. He stopped by the wide chair that sat opposite the chaise lounge by the fire, his left hand going to rest on top of it. A strong leather wingback chair that was as manly as Strider’s room. She knew the chaise lounge had been brought in especially for her. It was a woman’s lounge through and through—fat cushions in a pale pink and black damask. Strider hadn’t mentioned where he had been sleeping. She only knew it hadn’t been in this room during the last two weeks.
A weak smile came to his face. While he was clearly as fit and strong as ever, the dark circles under his eyes had faded, but were still present. He wasn’t sleeping. Not well, anyway. “I brought your friend, Daphne, here from London.”
“Daphne? You did?” Pen smiled, her eyes lighting up as she pulled herself straighter on the lounge. “She is here? I will be so happy to see her. I still feel terrible about disappearing on her when she was counting on me.”
“I explained everything to her and apologized profusely. She’s just happy you are alive and well.”
“You apologized profusely?”
He chuckled. “I did.” He moved to the side of the lounge, his left fingers tapping along the outside of his dark trousers. “She’s here to take you back to London.”
“Take me back to, London?” Her head tilted to the side. “You must need to attend to business there? Is this about the title—is it all settled? I didn’t want to ask with a maid in the room.”
“It is settled. Witness statements have persuaded the committee in the House of Lords about the legitimacy of my claim, and without Frederick to contest it, they have already made the transfer of the title.”
“That is wonderful.” Relief flooded her—she would never have been able to forgive herself if he had lost his place in his family because of what she had kept from him. She smiled. “That is why you need to go back to London?”
He shook his head. “I won’t be going back. You will be. I bought you a house in Golden Square and I’ve arranged a full staff and several of my men to guard it. It is close to Dap
hne’s residence, and I have set up two trusts for you to live off of. You will want for nothing.”
“Trusts? A house?” Her head jerked back, her eyes narrowing. “What are you talking about, Strider?”
His mouth opened as he took a deep breath. “I can’t do this—you can’t be in my life, Pen.”
“What?” Her hand flew up, palm to him. “Stop—stop right there.”
“No.” He exhaled, his jawline setting hard as he stared down at her. “I can’t have you in my life—what happened with Frederick—it was just the tip of the mound of enemies I have—too many enemies. And this.” His right hand shifted, waving over the wound on her side. “Watching what this did to you, almost killing you. The surgeon didn’t think you would live. I didn’t think you would live. And I can’t…can’t let it happen again.”
Her eyes narrowed at him and her back straightened as she swung her legs to the floor. “Don’t live in fear, Strider—it doesn’t suit you.”
He took a step backward. “No. You were the only thing that could ever strike fear in me. And I won’t risk this. Won’t risk you ever again. Don’t argue this with me, Pen. This is how it is.”
Instant ire flooded her veins. That he would decide this for her—that he thought he could decide this for her.
“You never knew how to let someone fight for you, Strider.” Her palm slammed into the cushion by her thigh as her look skewered him. “But it’s always been me. I am the one that was meant to fight for you so you don’t have to fight life alone. You know that. You just aren’t willing to admit it.”
His right hand balled into a fist. “No.”
She shoved herself upward, gaining her feet, and she stepped toward him. “But you don’t get a choice in this matter. When we were young and first separated, I always escaped whatever cage the Flagtons put me in to run back to you. Again and again. This is no different.” She stopped in front of him, staring up at him, the anger boiling so fiercely in her blood she wanted to slap him—slap sense back into him for the nonsense he was spewing.
“Pen, sit down.”
“No.” Her hand swung in front of her. “Whatever cage you think to put me in to keep me away from you, it won’t work. You need me at your back. And I need to be there.”
Exiled Duke: An Exile Novel Page 20
