Bradley glared, his other foot swinging up and—
With the grit of teeth, Ridley blocked it with his arm, but it still connected to his injured leg, sweeping into the scarred muscle and bone. Searing pain blinded him into staggering back and off to the side. He seethed past breaths, hating that he wasn’t what he used to be: stronger.
Bradley jumped onto his bare feet and snapped up both fists. “Whoever falls first. Gauntlet!”
Gauntlet? Was this prick for real?
Who used that word anymore?
Dragging in calming breaths through nostrils, Ridley widened his stance, mentally adjusting to his own physical pain. “No. You’ll have no satisfaction in turning me into a villain.” He held up both hands. “These hands and these knuckles walk out of here clean. I’m not going to prison.”
Fists still up, Bradley rounded him. “I thought you wanted the key.”
Ridley gave him a withering look. “I’ll just shoot off the lock.” Tossing the empty decanter onto the chaise, Ridley strode past. “Excuse me while I return to a woman who will never be yours.”
There was a pulsing moment of silence.
Bradley sprinted at him full force from behind.
Abecedarian. Skidding aside, everything slowed barely enough for Ridley to tick through what to grab.
The marble bust on the pedestal. It would kill him. Glorious idea, but…
A sizable ledger on the— Good enough.
Ridley swiped up the ledger and swung it out full force just as Bradley rushed again. The thudding impact against that head with the leather bound ledger snapped Bradley’s body sideways. Sweeping out his good leg, Ridley accosted Bradley’s stumbling frame to ensure a hard topple and shoved Bradley head first onto the chaise.
Both flipped.
Bradley jarred the chaise out toward Ridley, causing Ridley to stumble back against his limp with a muscle straining hiss that sent him against a sideboard. He winced in disbelief.
Jumping back up, Bradley sprinted and thudded into Ridley full force with a muscled thud.
Everything after that was a bit of a blur.
Furniture was overturned. Vases were shattered. Curtains were ripped from the rods. Shirts were used as choking devices and buttons were being popped off every waistcoat as noses, jaws and heads and fists were thudded to bleeding.
Ridley was morbidly impressed by the challenge.
The son of a bitch could fight.
His mind blanked as he let the devil do the rest.
Knuckles. Head. Jaw. Head. Mouth. Face. Face. Face. Face. Blood.
It spattered their clothing. Some of it was his.
Delivering one last downward solid blow, that sent Bradley to the floor, Ridley whipped off the key from that throat, snapping the silver chain that left a blood mark.
Ridley shoved the chaise between them. With evening ragged breaths, Ridley stepped back, folding himself back into his mind.
A warm liquid line traced its way from his own nostril toward his lip. Ridley staggered against his aching leg that felt as if he’d ripped a muscle. Fuck. He was getting too old for this. “You ran at me,” he growled, pointing rigidly down at Bradley who was wheezing. “Remember that when the Field Marshal asks. Remember that or you’re fucking dead.”
Bradley glanced up from the floor he was now on, his hair hanging in his eyes and blood smearing his entire face, mouth and nose. “You’ll be the one dead if you don’t look after her,” he bit out.
Ridley refrained from delivering another blow to that golden head. “I would lock yourself in a prison cell right now to ensure I don’t get to you after I open that trunk.” Still pointing, Ridley stalked out before he backhanded the son of a bitch with the decanter that was still on the chaise.
* * *
Spence’s Hotel – an hour later
It annoyed him that he had to now call on the Field Marshal and explain why he had roughed up the viceroy’s favorite Lieutenant. News of it was going to be all over the compound and Jemdanee didn’t deserve to have her name dragged into any more than it had been.
With a blood-stained towel on his shoulder, Ridley grudgingly squatted before the trunk and seated himself on the marble floor, wincing against the stab of pain from the blow Bradley had delivered to his injured leg. “Prick.”
Dragging in a mind-steadying breath, he gritted his teeth and quickly pushed in the key to the lock, turning it. The bolt unhinged and he removed the lock, setting it aside with a clatter.
Unstrapping the lid, he pushed it open, letting the lid thud against the wall behind it.
His brows flickered.
Gathering a handful of parchment, his gaze settled on hundreds of…
Charcoal sketchings. One of Jemdanee sleeping, with her hands curled peacefully beneath her cheek and the linen spilling over her chemise clad shoulder. Another of her ink stained hand unfurled against a prescription ledger, where she dozed at a paper strewn pedestal desk. Another of the ropes and plants hanging in her room. Chunmun digging into a bowl of papaya. Slippers overturned and kicked beneath the bed.
Swallowing against the tightness of his throat, Ridley slowly gathered more and more and more and more, angling his head to see each and every one. He sifted through countless images, glimpsing stolen moments he himself had lost and had been unable to witness, yet ones that had been captured for him to see.
His eyes burned as he frantically gathered more and spread them out, breathing past every moment he had missed. Her head buried beneath a pillow with her knees curled, her braid frayed. Another was with her mouth unattractively open as if she were snoring.
None of them were provocative or inappropriate in nature.
It didn’t make it any less disturbing.
He hadn’t been there to protect her from a man coming into her room.
It could have ended badly.
Ridley eased out a shaky breath. “Fuck.”
And that is what I fear most. That you have already crossed over beyond my reach, pursuing a justice you will never reach…
The bloodied towel from his shoulder slipped and rustled to the floor.
Staring at the trunk, he slowly gathered all of the sketches and numbly returned them one by one into the trunk, realizing he had failed her.
He, who always looked for the devil on the head of a pin to be able to nail it, had missed the most important pin.
Why save the world when he couldn’t save the one who mattered most to him?
If he was distracted by cases, while bringing more and more loons into their lives, her in peril was only the beginning. He wasn’t about to fool himself or the impediment of his limp that he’d be able to protect her when it mattered most.
He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d ever been physically bested by another man but it happened. It. Happened.
Gritting his teeth, he latched the trunk and locked it.
He was doing what he should have done when he married Elizabeth.
It might have saved their marriage.
He was retiring. Tonight.
* * *
Spence’s Hotel – Early evening
The double mahogany doors leading into the massive lavish private quarters were swept open by a dark-skinned Persian dressed in a flowing emerald-green garb bound by a thick, red sash.
With a slight bow, the Persian gestured toward the long marble corridor beyond. “Sahib Ridley insists upon your warm welcome. The calling bell in the corridor will bring me to this door.”
With Chunmun on her hip, she felt like a zookeeper in need of shelter.
She brightened in disbelief. “I thank you.” She slowly entered the mosaic corridor lit by torches and lanterns, the unending gleaming white marble strewn with jasmine and marigold.
The gods were in awe.
As was she.
The banyan doors closed behind her, introducing a silence of grandeur that made her feel like a harem girl arriving to entertain the prince.
Chunmun grunted a
nd tilted over heavily against her arms, signaling he was done being held.
She quickly set him onto the floor.
He glanced up at her, confused.
“I am as overwhelmed as you are,” she breathed out. “Whoever thought he was this posh.”
Chunmun turned and picked at the marigold on the floor and tossed it.
She smirked and seated herself beside him, gathering the flowers into a pile.
He eyed her and shoved the pile.
She grinned and gathered the pile again.
He darted down the corridor, tail up.
Thrilled by the entrance to her own private floor, Jemdanee scrambled up onto her feet, whirled twice, and then sprinted down the gleaming white marble in bare feet after Chunmun, past countless rooms and doors, throwing open door after door to reveal massive receiving rooms and bedchambers with domed ceilings. “Choose a room!” she called to Chunmun. “Any room! Which one? Seize it before I do!”
He disappeared into one and moments later, emerged, dragging linen.
She laughed. “Well chosen.”
Quickly veering toward a banyan door that had been marked with chalk patterns, she peered in, noting all of her trunks were stacked within the room.
She wandered in, grinning and trailed a hand across the mosaic walls leading her into the room before a four poster bed covered in netting.
She paused, seeing another adjusting door to another bedchamber.
It was closed.
Something whispered to her that it was his room.
She bit her lip.
Pausing before that door, Jemdanee quickly glanced at the clock on the mantel, noting it was almost eight o’clock at night. “Ridley?”
She tapped at the handle of the door and pushed down. It opened.
Pushing open the door, she edged in. “Ridley?”
There was no answer, but a lone lantern had been lit.
Her skin prickled in awareness as the scent of his cologne lingered in the massive bedchamber.
She could feel his karma in the room as if he were still in it.
It whispered of the sophisticated man who spent too many hours in his own head.
Slowly, she circled the massive mosaic bedchamber, realizing the room had already long been settled into with personal effects. He was far more organized than she remembered him to be.
From the keen, alphabetized organization of scientific books to perfectly folded Parisian clothing in his wardrobe to his desk where even the parchment was aligned by a ruler and the quills set equally straight, it was obvious every detail mattered to him. Even all three inkwells had been filled at the same level in each crystal, whispering that he had carefully measured and controlled the amount of ink he poured in.
It bespoke of a man who had been touched by a need to showcase every detail.
It was who she used to be prior to the Government House.
She went over to the books he was reading.
Careful not to disrupt the entire row of spine-aligned books, she gently nudged out one and started paging through it. Letting it fall open to one page, she read:
* * *
These properties therefore (always the concomitants of fluid bodies) produce these following visible effects: First, they unite the part of a fluid to its familiar solid, or keep them separate from its dissimilar state. Hence quick-silver will stick to gold, silver, tin, lead
She pulled in her chin and slapped it shut, examining its worn leather binding.
Seeing there was no title on the leather binding, she quickly paged it back open to its front. Her brows shot up as she read aloud, “Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.”
Mmmhuh. “Only I would love you.”
Awkwardly closing the book, she tucked it back into the space she’d taken it from. “I am at a loss as to what your mind finds attractive. What does that say about me? Not very much.”
On the side board was an expensive looking bottle of French cologne and a shaving blade whose ivory handle she breathlessly touched knowing it had scraped the contours of his jaw every day.
She paused, noting a copper bowl.
Angling in close, she peered into it.
A ripped piece of parchment revealed the words…
Lay on the bed and wait for me.
She edged back, unnerved.
How did he know she would peer into the bowl?
The soft rustling and billowing of the net hanging over his bed made her turn and walk up to it. Fascinated by what continued to be the mystery of him, she sat on his bed.
A thud made me smile. “Chunmun?”
With the dragging sound of linen that came in through the open door, Chunmun wobbled and arranged himself on the floor beside her, burying himself.
She grinned down at him over the edge of the bed and patted the mattress. “Come.”
He peered up at her through linen and laid his furry head onto the floor, picking at the linen sleepily from where he was.
“Oye, oye, life is exhausting,” she teased, watching him. “Imagine if you were human. It becomes very complicated.”
He picked at the linen until his lids grew heavy and his overly long fingers stilled, eyes closing.
“Dream of fruit trees and jungles,” she whispered. A soft breath escaped her knowing Ridley was right. She couldn’t keep him like this.
She stared up at the ceiling.
Bored, she let her bangles jangle against each other.
She decided to stay in Ridley’s bed as he had asked.
Maybe he’d get inspired.
She unraveled her emerald green sari to better showcase her midriff and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And…
Somehow, she fell asleep, drooling onto the pillow.
It was the sonti she’d had at supper with Kalpita celebrating her departure.
Silence. Darkness. Dreams.
Hands curving. Fingers grazing. Warm lips.
Silence.
* * *
When Jemdanee startled awake, sunlight poured in through open shutters.
She staggered up in a frizzy curtain of her own hair and wrinkled sari to find she was no longer in Ridley’s bed, but…her own.
The man was being too much of a gentleman.
Grudgingly scooting off the bed, she paused.
Her entire room appeared to have had a wand touched to it. All of the trunks had been unpacked.
Her piles and piles of tangling saris which she always kicked off to the side and into corners, had all been methodically folded and placed into the open wardrobe. Her countless slippers, which were always falling out of the wicker basket and missing pairs due to her inability to dig to its bottom, had been removed from the basket and aligned onto a shelf beneath her wardrobe.
Her cosmetics and brushes, which she usually shoved into a drawer, had been all set out onto a dressing table which had undergone its own transformation of aligning all of her hair brushes by size, ribbons by color, and combs by assortment.
It was magic.
And on the marble floor—
Marigolds had been arranged beside her bed to spell NAMASTE.
She slowly grinned. “Someone is going to get kissed.”
A dreamy breath escaped her as she turned toward the side table where a marigold was laid beside a stack of gold mohurs and a missive.
My little raven,
I apologize for abandoning you and not returning on time. Indulge in a meal and enjoy the emporium knowing I am cursed to finish the last of my squadron duty. Not many more days remain until all of my hours are yours. Chunmun is enjoying the company of the valet who will be taking him for the day. Dress for comfort knowing sandals are a necessity and meet me at the Eastern gate outside of the barracks at 4 p.m. I look forward to seeing you.
Ever your serv
ant and overlord,
-R
She kissed the missive twice.
Chapter 7
4:07 p.m. - Eastern Gate
Squinting against the blazing heat beyond the gates of the barracks, Jemdanee lifted her newly purchased veil and tugged its coolness further down over her eyes to keep the sun out.
She paused at seeing Ridley.
He adjusted the straps of the saddle weighted down with weapons and a leather satchel on the lone horse. His cane was already tucked into the belt of that saddle, as well.
She eased the fluttering in her stomach at seeing him.
Her sandaled feet kicked up dust as she made her way over to him. “Only one horse?”
“You are late,” he rumbled out, tightening the thick belt with the strain of bulking muscles.
“By a minute.”
“By seven.” Ridley turned from adjusting the saddle and captured her gaze, the overly concentrated lines of his bruised face softening. “One horse will allow us to better maneuver through the crowds.”
Her lips parted into an O. “Whatever happened to your face?”
“Bradley.”
She gasped. “He did that to you?!”
Ridley gave her a withered look. “I faired a bit better than he did. I straightened his nose.”
Jemdanee glanced toward the barracks, trying not to panic. “The Field Marshal is going to—”
He snapped up a hand. “I already spoke to him.” Ridley hesitated, adjusting his leather belt. “I wasn’t looking to hurt him. It happened. The Field Marshal assured me Bradley will be transferred in the next seven days to another compound. Unfortunately, that will be the extent of his punishment given there are no laws for being a prick.”
He swiped his face and winced against the bruising. “I wish I could have done more. In my opinion, he should have been arrested for violating your rights on every imaginable level.”
She eyed him. “Why was he using…the door?”
“He fancied himself an artist. I will leave it at that.” Angling toward her, his throat worked. “Yesterday unfolded quite a few things for me.” He searched her eyes. “I can’t keep you safe if I’m distracted with a career that will only bring you harm. Unlike three years ago, I am physically compromised and I’m not bold enough to say I can guarantee anything anymore.” He was quiet for a long moment. “I’m retiring. The moment my contract expires with the government, I’m thinking of becoming a professor of criminology, instead. I could continue to offer my expertise in an educational setting, but without the mess. What do you think?”
The Devil is French: A Whipping Society Novel Page 13
