Eve’s shoulders shook with a hideous laugh devoid of her effervescent spirit and cheer. “Oh, come. You remembered me only in hatred and rightfully blamed me. Don’t you lie to me now.” Then she dissolved into shuddery, noisy tears that shook her slender frame.
Groaning, Calum hauled her close.
He was being kind to her.
Again.
Why was he being so bloody kind? It made Eve sob all the harder. She struggled against him, not wanting this offering. She’d already taken so much from him. Jeopardized his very existence countless times. Eve wrestled in his embrace, but he merely folded her in his powerful arms, quelling her struggles.
His heart throbbed hard against her ear in a steady, heavy beat of his strength and vitality. No longer fighting his hold, she collapsed against him and took the solace he offered.
She cried for the little girl who’d thought him dead because of her carelessness. She cried for all the years she’d spent missing him. And she cried because there could never be a future with the two of them together in it. Not that he’d spoken of wanting more . . . but lying in his arms, feeling the weight of his body cover hers and learning the taste and scent of him, she’d allowed herself to believe . . .
Calum pressed his lips close to her ear, his gentle murmurings lost to her weeping. “Shh,” he whispered, rubbing his hand in a smooth, circular pattern over her back. “Don’t cry, love.”
Love. With his hoarsened, desperate pleading, she could almost convince herself that endearment was real. Eve wept copious tears until nothing but empty, hollow sobs shook her chest and then dissolved into an occasional noisy hiccup. Silence fell in the stable, broken only by Tau’s occasional whinny. “After he’d had you dragged off, he came for me.” Calum’s muscled frame turned to marble against her. “He accused me of helping you. Said I needed to be punished.”
A low growl rumbled in his chest. “What did he do?” The deathly promise there was so different from his earlier warmth it sent ice racing along her spine.
He gave her a slight squeeze, and that firm, reassuring pressure brought her eyes closed. Except for when the memories slipped in, she’d not allowed herself to think of Gerald’s brutality against her. She bit the inside of her cheek so hard, the metallic tinge of blood flooded her senses, forcing her back to that night. “He ordered a cold bath. I hid. He, of course, found me. When Gerald is bent on evil, not even Satan himself could stop him.” It is why you should leave this place . . . Because ultimately, his darkness always won out.
“Eve?” Calum urged.
Giving her head a shake, she rushed to be done with her telling. “He dragged me by my hair abovestairs.” Her skull ached with the remembered pain of that viciousness as he’d torn clumps of brown tresses from her head. She touched her fingers to those spots and then, belatedly realizing what she did, let her hand fall to her side. “When we reached my room, he shoved my face under the water.” Blanching at the remembered horror: the sting of it as water filled her nostrils and burned her throat Choking, gasping. She shook her head. She couldn’t paint the details of that act. How she’d been so very certain when the water flooded her nostrils and mouth that she’d die there. “Afterward”—it was safer to start there—“he tossed me into that water.” Freezing. It had burned as sharp as the pain in her lungs from that dunking. “And then he left.”
A black curse exploded from Calum’s lips.
Eve twined her fingers with his, finding strength in that connection. How she’d ached to feel him again like this, even a simple touch, since he’d discovered her identity. How she’d wanted them to return to the beauty of anonymity and pretend. “After that night, he told me you’d died. Taunted me with the story of how he watched you hang and then swing in the gallows, and I knew I deserved Gerald’s punishment that night for what I’d done.”
“No,” he moaned.
Eve covered her eyes with her hands and sobbed all over. “I lied again. I told you I didn’t cry.”
“Oh, Eve,” he said on a broken laugh, once more gathering her close.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Calum repeated somberly. When she made to speak, he touched his fingertips against her lips. “You were right,” he murmured stroking her back. “I did blame you because it was easier to blame you than myself.”
She struggled back to look at him. “Blame your—”
“I stole your brother’s watch fob. I knew who he was. I knew the risk of taking from a man whose home I visited countless times and planned to visit countless others. Every time I lifted a purse, that was the risk I chose.”
Eve made a sound of protest. She’d not allow him that. “You were hungry.” Never in all the years that she’d thought of him and believed him dead had she ever held him responsible.
“Desperation will make a person do desperate things, won’t it?” She opened her mouth, then registered his piercing stare on her. Their gazes locked. “I understand why you did what you did. Then, and now.”
Eve ceased breathing as she took his words in, and they were an absolution of sorts.
It was not my fault . . . I had not been the one to cart him off. My only crime had been trying to help him . . . He, the unlikeliest of people, had helped her to see that.
She lay against his chest and drew in a slow breath, letting it fill her.
And in the stillness of the night, in his stables, a calming peace stole through her. Blinking back the residual tears still clinging to her eyes, she caressed the jagged scar by his mouth with her fingers.
Calum caught her wrist in a delicate hold and dragged it to his mouth. Little shivers tingled up her arm as his lips caressed the inseam of her hand. He held it there, close, his breath stirring her skin. “It is why you began working with the foundling hospital,” he correctly surmised.
Nodding through the haze cast by his seductive hold, she studied their joined hands. “I first came to London eight years ago. I had one Season.” It had been a miserable affair where she’d spent more time watching from the wall than dancing with any interested or uninterested gentlemen. She took care to omit those humiliating details. “When my father tired of London, I was only too happy to leave.” She pressed her hand to his side, where the blood had once spilled from. Calum covered her palm, forcing her to stop, and dragged it back. “After all the painful memories associated with that place, I was content to leave it all behind and be the”—she twisted her lips in a droll smile—“dutiful daughter.” That grin faded. “Then, my father suffered an apoplexy and lost the use of his legs. He was confined to a bed, and his care fell to me. When he was sick, I took over the bookkeeping. After he . . . died, when I returned to London, I discovered the foundling hospital. Being there gave me purpose and made me feel I was helping . . . if even in some small way.”
“You are a remarkable woman, Eve.”
She gave thanks for the cover of darkness that concealed the heat cascading over her cheeks. “Do not make more of it than it is. I did not find the children and nurses there until a year ago,” she protested, not wanting him to make her into one who’d done anything extraordinary.
“Because you were caring for your father.” His mouth hardened, and the gold flecks in his eyes glinted. “A father who owed you his protection.”
She’d long ago accepted that her father had ceased to see her when his beloved wife died. “I’ve forgiven him,” she said simply. Just as she’d forgiven Kit for being invisible.
“It is more than he deserved,” he said in steely tones.
“Mayhap. Mayhap not.” She shook her head. “But no good has ever come from resentment. It just begets more anger and hatred and further darker emotions.”
Calum palmed her cheek. “Eve, I—” Leaning toward those words, she silently cried out when he stood. He swiftly exited the stables. “What is it?” he demanded.
“A patron has demanded to see you.” Adair’s voice carried over to her ears.
“You are acting head tonight.”
Eve strained to hear the hushed murmurings. “He’s demanded an audience . . . the Duke of Bedford.”
Calum fell silent. The earth stopped spinning. And then Calum again spoke, knocking the universe back into motion. “Tell him I’ll be along momentarily.”
The soft pad of Adair’s footfalls marked his departure. Eve slowly stood.
Calum stepped back inside. “Do not leave the stable,” he clipped out.
“He’s here for me.” Her voice emerged threadbare, and she hated herself for that weakness.
“You are not leaving with him.”
She gave him a sad smile and shook her head slowly. “Your club.”
Calum gripped her hard by the shoulders and brought her up on her tiptoes. He lowered his head, shrinking the distance so their noses touched. “He will not know you’re here.”
“But what if he already—”
“Enough.” He settled her back on her feet. “After I leave, do not answer to anyone. Not even a guard from inside this club. Stay here. I’ll return shortly.” Calum lingered, halting as though he wished to say more.
And then without another word—he was gone.
Chapter 20
Calum had faced down devils in the street. He’d shared a roof and answered to one of the most ruthless killers and gang leaders in both St. Giles and the Dials. But of all those monsters whose paths he’d crossed, none had he ever wanted to end more than he did Eve’s brother.
A short while later, features schooled into a comfortable mask, Calum entered his office.
The tall, elegantly clad Duke of Bedford reclined in the chair closest to Calum’s desk. Legs sprawled before him, hands resting on his slightly rounding belly, he personified ducal power. In his very repose, he was a man who acted as though the world was his due and he would expect nothing less.
He’d also been the bastard who’d dunked Eve under freezing water when she was a child and arranged to have her raped when she was a woman.
And Calum, who’d always prided himself on his control, was proved wholly inadequate in an altogether different way. A muscle twitched at the corner of his eye, and he fought to repress the growl stuck in his chest.
“Your Grace.” God how he hated using that proper form of address that elevated this man in any way. Feeling Bedford follow his movements, Calum casually collected a decanter of fine French brandy and a glass. “I understand you wished to speak with me.” He tipped the bottle, and the clink of crystal was inordinately loud, that mundane sound at odds with the tension thrumming inside this room. He composed himself and turned back. “A drink?” Calum had learned long ago the dirtiest tricks to upend one’s opponent. The drunks had always been the easiest to topple. He held the snifter aloft.
The duke’s bloodshot eyes went to that glass, and he eyed it the way a starving man did food. Lord Bedford smacked his lips loudly. “Indeed. All business meetings must be conducted over fine spirits.”
Carrying the glass over, he held it out. “Is that what this is? A business meeting?” He moved around the desk and settled himself in the familiar folds of his seat. Mayhap it was nothing more than a request for an extension in his credit.
Eve’s brother took a long, slurping swallow of his drink. His throat muscles moved loudly in a revolting display of his weakness. While he drank, Calum’s gaze went to the other man’s lily-white hands. Free of calluses and ink stains, and yet they were large. And those same long fingers had gripped Eve by the hair and yanked her through their home. The imagined sound of her screams pealed around Calum’s mind. Laying his hands on the arms of his chair, he curled his fingers, gripping the edge to keep from ripping Bedford’s entrails out through his bloody mouth. After he’d finished his drink, Eve’s brother released a sigh. He set his empty glass down on the arm of his chair.
“You have something that belongs to me.”
Alarm bells went off. Fighting the sudden unease pulsing through him, Calum leaned back in his seat. He tilted his lips up in one corner. “I have a whole number of things that belong to you,” he drawled. “Unentailed properties. Your debt. Your former funds.”
The duke flattened his lips into a hard line. Leaning forward, he thumped the surface of Calum’s desk. His abrupt movements sent his forgotten glass tumbling to the floor with a loud thwack. “Do not make light with me,” he snapped. “Where is she?”
There it was, the question he’d have sold his soul not to have heard from this man.
The same mind-numbing terror that had seized all rationale the night he’d been hurled into Newgate struck. He tipped his chin. “If this is about the serving girl you recently accosted,” he said coolly, “our establishment no longer deals in prostitution. You’ll have to take that manner of business up with Broderick Killoran at the Devil’s Den or some other hell. If you’ll excuse me,” he said curtly, rising.
The duke stared up at him and then broke out into a laugh. “Do you take me for a fool?” His icy smile withered. “My sister is here.” He glanced about Calum’s office. “You, a worthless guttersnipe, are harboring a lady inside your hell.” Eve’s brother slapped his fist against his open palm. “And I demand you return her to me.”
Folding his arms at his chest, Calum came ’round the desk and positioned himself over the smaller man. “If you lost your sister, those affairs are your own. Now if that is the only reason you’ve come, on some madcap belief that she is, in fact, here, then you’ve wasted your time.”
A knock sounded at the door.
Grateful for the interruption, he called out.
Adair opened the door. “I was advised by this man that he had business with you and Bedford,” he said tightly. At his side, a cloaked figure—a stranger—cowered and shook.
“Ah, splendid,” the duke called out, his bravado firmly affixed. “Mattison, please enter. Enter,” he boomed, firmly in control and commanding as though this were his office.
Then the name he’d used registered.
Mattison.
Nurse Mattison is loyal and devoted. She is the one who suggested I go into hiding here, knowing Gerald would never look for me here. She would not betray me . . .
Oh, Christ in hell.
Adair gave Calum a probing, silent look. I’ve failed everyone. Eve. Adair. Ryker, Niall, Helena. All of them. Guilt sat like a boulder upon his chest. He gave his head an imperceptible half shake, that slight movement they’d adopted years earlier to signify danger.
Adair gave no outward show.
“Mrs. Mattison, don’t hover out there. Come in. You, as well, Mr. Thorne. The more the merrier.”
Shoving back her hood, the tall, blonde-haired woman entered the room. She bowed her head, but not before he caught the flash of grief in her eyes.
Adair followed behind and closed the door.
Eve’s brother pushed to his feet. “I’m not pleased with the Hell and Sin right now,” the duke chided. “Tsk. Tsk. Nor is most of the ton. You’ve earned quite the reputation, you bastards from the streets, of taking up with ladies of the ton.”
A pit formed in Calum’s belly as Adair threw him a sideways glance that demanded answers he’d deserved a week ago. “If you’ve come here because you’ve taken umbrage with whom our proprietors have married, then you can cease wasting either of our time and take your services elsewhere,” Adair said with a frostiness Ryker Black himself would have been hard-pressed to emulate.
“Pfft,” Eve’s brother scoffed. “I hardly cared about the ones spreading their legs for you . . . before now.” A glacial mask iced the duke’s features. “Your brother is bedding my sister.” All the air was sucked free of the room, with the only sound being Nurse Mattison’s gasp. Then, “My beloved sister, whom all Polite Society has been searching for . . . is here.” He jabbed his finger toward the floor. “She’s your bookkeeper.”
The color leached from his brother’s skin. I am so sorry. Those words, a futile apology, offered nothing. Adair instantly composed himself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,
nor does my brother.”
“No?” The duke hooked his thumbs inside his waistband. “Know nothing, do you? Lady Evelina Pruitt?”
A vein throbbed at the corner of Adair’s left eye.
“There’s no one by that name here,” Calum said tersely.
“Mrs. Mattison?” the duke called out.
The woman gave her head a hard shake. “Your Grace,” she implored.
“Mrs. Mattison,” Eve’s brother demanded, ice in his command.
That nurse slid her eyes closed, and when she opened them, hatred burned from within. She directed that unveiled emotion at Eve’s brother. “I sent her here,” she said with remarkable cool. “Falsified papers. Arranged the post through the agency you used to find a person for the respective p-position.” Her composure cracked, revealing her turmoil. “She’s here.” That threadbare whisper contained barely a hint of sound, and yet it was enough.
Flummoxed, Adair looked to Calum.
Removing his gloves from inside his blue brocade jacket, the duke slapped them together. “Of course, this is no doubt a dreadful misunderstanding on your part. I expect my recalcitrant, half-mad sister has been passing herself off as a servant.” Half-mad.
When Gerald is bent on evil, not even Satan himself could stop him.
This is the danger Eve had faced. It was as perilous as any battle Calum or his siblings had known against Mac Diggory on the worst of days.
“What do you want?” Calum asked quietly.
“I want her back.” Calum had witnessed on the streets that death was preferable to some of the evil one might face. To turn Eve over to this man would consign her to a living hell. “As simple as that.” Lord Bedford tugged on first one, and then the other immaculate white glove with meticulous care. He made a show of wiggling his fingers and flexing his palm. Triumph glittered in the duke’s eyes. “You needn’t say anything now,” he said to his audience’s silence.
“What if I say no?” Calum shot back. Adair’s curse echoed around the room, and Calum continued over it.
“Why would you say no?”
The Heiress's Deception (Sinful Brides Book 4) Page 25
