Dangerous Exile (An Exile Novel Book 3)

by K. J. Jackson

  He reached Talen, grabbing his left arm in mid swing and pulling him backward. Backward away from the sniveling bastard he was crushing. Backward from the red rage filling his mind, his sight.

  Instinct had devoured him and the only thing he could do was swing. Swing and destroy.

  “Talen—you need to stop. Stop.” Declan yanked harder, sending the two of them slamming backward into the opposite wall.

  It was just enough to snap him out of the rage. Just enough for him to look down and be able to see what he’d just done.

  The man’s face was mush. Cut after cut. A bloody mess. Bones clearly broken. No skin visible.

  Shit. He hadn’t just killed him?

  The man twitched.

  Not dead. Small favor.

  “You know he’s Baron Jaccard’s youngest brother?” Declan’s furious whisper rang in his ear. “What are you thinking, Tal?”

  Talen nodded, his glare still pinned on the motionless man by his feet. He didn’t care whose damned brother he was. He’d had his hands on Ness. About to hit her. He deserved so much more than what Talen had just done to him.

  “Talen.” Ness’s voice squeaked out and his glare shifted to her.

  What in the deuced devil was she doing out of her room?

  All the red rage reflooded his vision.

  Talen yanked his left arm from Declan’s grasp and moved to her, grabbing her about the waist and picking her up, carrying her over the other inert body on the hallway floor and into her room. He threw her onto the bed.

  “Why in the almighty hell were you out of your room, Ness?” His hands went onto his own hipbones, his fingers gripping hard so that he wouldn’t reach out and shake her. “Tell me they dragged you out there. Tell me you weren’t out there on your own accord.”

  Her eyes wide and panicked, she looked up at him, then shifted her gaze to the doorway where Declan stood.

  “No.” He reached out and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look back to him. “Don’t look at Dec. He’s not going to save you. Tell me what you were doing.”

  Her fingers grabbed his wrist, pushing his hold off of her face. “I—I was—I was getting ice. Ice for my forehead.” She pointed to the lump on the middle of her head.

  “Ice?” His caustic chuckle cut into the room. “Ice? You needed ice? Where did you think you were going to get ice?”

  “The kitchens. They had ice—I just wanted the swelling to go down so I thought I could use the servants’ stairs—”

  “You thought that traipsing all over the Alabaster was a fine idea?” His arm lurched up at his side. “What did I tell you? In this room. In my office. Nowhere else.” He leaned over her, his words vicious. “What did I bloody well tell you?”

  Her head bowed, her right fingers twisting in her muslin skirt on her lap as her voice came out small. “Stay in the room.”

  “Stay in the damn room.” His arm swinging wide, he spun from her, his voice thundering. “You couldn’t have gone down there without being seen. Now more people know about you. That was what was keeping you safe, Ness. No one knew you were here. No matter how long your husband’s tentacles are, he couldn’t reach you where he couldn’t find you.”

  He whipped back around to her. “How many people saw you on the way to the kitchens?”

  She glanced up at him, her shoulders lifting. “Just three, maybe four.”

  “Three, four? How many? What did they look like?”

  She cringed, her eyes closing. “Two footmen, one had light blond hair, one had sandy blond hair. Both were lanky, but shorter than you. Two helpers in the kitchen, they were young—girls—one was peeling potatoes and the other was scaling fish. They pointed me toward the ice house. That was all. That was all, I swear. Except for the other girl in the kitchen—she was doing something on the floor, I don’t know what, cleaning, maybe.”

  “Bloody hell—five?”

  She cringed, nodding.

  His glare didn’t shift from her. “Declan.”

  “I’m on it.” Declan left the room, closing the door behind him.

  “What?” Ness jumped in place on the bed, looking ready to run out with Declan. “Where is he going?”

  “To clean up the mess you just made. The mess I just made.” He turned from her, his fist punching hard into the wall. Not that it mattered, his knuckles were already split. “Ice. Bloody damned ice.”

  He stepped away from the wall, his arms clamping across his chest as he moved in front of her once more. “Why in the hell didn’t you just ask?”

  She pointed toward the door, fear in her eyes. “But Declan—where is he going? He’s not going to hurt them? The footmen, the girls?”

  His head snapped back. “What do you think we are, Ness? Cutthroats? No. Declan is going to ensure their silence with few fat bags of coins.” His eyes narrowed at her. “What in the blasted hell kind of man do you think I am?”

  “I don’t know—how should I know?” Her right hand waved manically in front of her. “You just pummeled a man in front of me. He looked dead—”

  “He’s not dead.”

  “He wasn’t far from it—what if Declan hadn’t pulled you off of him? What then? How do I know what you’re capable of? You own this place. Half of the surrounding area from what I’ve gathered. Everyone is afraid of you. And what you did, it was…it was…it was vicious.”

  Talen had to take in a deep breath at the fear in her eyes. Breath that seethed back out through clenched teeth. “What they were about to do to you was vicious.”

  Her mouth clamped closed, her eyes dipping to the floor between them.

  He attempted to rein in the rage in his voice. “I’ll make no apologies for it, Ness. They deserved every blow that was laid.”

  There it was. The exact man he was. The reality of it hanging in the air between them. Vicious. Cold. Brutal.

  Better that she knew.

  Silence for the longest stretch, her gaze solidly on the floor. A minute, probably more. But he wasn’t about to apologize for the very thing that was keeping her safe.

  “I tried.” The smallest whisper eked from her lips, yet her eyes didn’t lift upward.

  “What?”

  “I tried.” Her look, skittish, ventured up, but only to his chest. “Thank you. Thank you for coming. I tried. I tried to get away, tried everything you taught me. I was desperate and going to try to sweep his feet next. But the lock he had on my hair was too harsh. But I was trying.”

  It was small, but he heard it, the quiver in her voice. A quiver that made him pause. Pause and really look at her without rage tingeing his eyesight red.

  Her dark hair was askew, the thick braid her hair was often in half undone. Tufts of hair errantly floating about her face. A tear in the right sleeve of her dress. Her breathing still ragged.

  “Hell, Ness, are you okay?”

  Her chest lifted in a deep breath and she finally met his gaze. “I—I am. I am fine, nothing more than bruises, and my arm survived the impact.”

  His look jumped to her left arm. “Wait. What?”

  She looked down, dropping her left arm along her skirts and angling her body slightly to the side to hide her left arm. “Nothing. I am fine. It is nothing.”

  He took a step toward her. “What impact did your arm survive?”

  She sighed. “My arm. The splint board broke when I slammed it into the groin of the one that had my hair. The one you pummeled.”

  His brow furrowed. “You what?”

  Her gaze went evasive. “I crushed it—the board—into his…uh…protruding member.”

  “You what?” An instant chuckle vibrated up from his chest. “Well done.” But then his hand dragged down over his face, his head shaking. “No. Dangerous. You shouldn’t have put your arm through that—you could lose it, lose your whole arm if you injure it again and it becomes infected.”

  Her glare met his. “I didn’t have anything else to grab to help me—no weapon. There was nothing in the hallway. The board was the
only thing hard I could use because I had to save my knee for the other one’s ballocks.”

  The laughter took him over again before he could look at her. “Again, well done. But dangerous—did you look at your arm? Does it hurt? It could be out of alignment.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to look at it.”

  He moved forward, dropping to balance on his heels in front of her. Snatching a pillow from the head of the bed, he set it on her lap and then gently grabbed her left arm from where she had hidden it and he set it atop the pillow.

  Silently, a smile still playing at his lips, his attention stayed on her arm as he loosened the white linen bandaging that bound her broken arm to the splint. “You fought.”

  “I did. For what little good it did.”

  “It bought you time.” He glanced up at her, then looked back down to her arm. “What if Declan and I had been a minute later? What would have happened then? Seconds count, Ness. People think they are nothing. They wile them away. But they count. They always do. Seconds can be the most important thing.”

  She inhaled a deep breath, her chest lifting in front of him. “It makes me sad to think of all the seconds that have been wasted in my life. Too many to count. Too many spent accepting what was around me instead of devising a way to take them for myself, to make them my seconds to do with what I will.”

  He tugged free the last of the linen strip away from her arm and set it on the bed, leaving her forearm balanced upon the broken plank of wood. He looked up at her, their eyes almost level. “That must mean you are now devising a new life for yourself?”

  Her right shoulder shrugged. “Possibly.”

  “Then I can only imagine it includes A System of Sheep-Grazing and Management.”

  An instant smile broke her face wide and her laughter floated into the air, her head tilting back. Magic, the sound of it, the way it lit up her face and the air about her. Magic he would capture and bottle if he could.

  Twinkling, her amber eyes centered on him. “I do believe I may have overlooked that option for my future. Something I will have to consider.”

  The air between them hard to breathe for how light it was, his lungs were suddenly starving for air.

  He rocked up from his heels and stood, going to the chest of drawers by the door. He pulled the second to top drawer open and pulled out a new splint and a fat rolled strip of white linen bandages. “Mrs. Jenkins left two other splints here in case they were needed.”

  “That was forward thinking of her.”

  “She’s thorough and the best bonesetter for a reason. Though the most cantankerous woman that I’ve ever known. You should have seen her scowl when she first saw you. She thought I was the cause of your injuries.”

  Ness laughed. “I don’t imagine you took that well?”

  “Why don’t you imagine it?”

  “You are not one to let misconceptions hang out in the open without correction.”

  She had that right about him. “No, I don’t suppose I am.” He paused for a moment as he shut the drawer, taking a steadying breath of air that actually reached his lungs.

  He walked back to her, dropping down to his knees as he studied her arm. Still black and blue, and the skin was shriveled from being under the bandages, but her forearm looked straight, solid. There was no tinge of green to the skin and the scabs had healed over, which was promising.

  “Does it hurt?”

  She shook her head.

  He wasn’t certain of her motion, but let it pass. Of course it would be hurting. Of course she wouldn’t admit to it. She was stubborn, just like him.

  His fingertips went gently to the spot on her forearm where the break had happened. “It’s healing well. You’re lucky it was a clean break.”

  “It didn’t feel like a clean break at the time.”

  “Nor I imagine in the days after before it was set properly.”

  A frown set onto her lips, her face darkening. “No, I don’t think anything started to heal until I arrived here.”

  He instantly regretted bringing up the past. The past that was still too raw and painful for her. Better topics. He needed better topics, but his mind was blank.

  Talen cleared his throat, glancing up at her, spurting out the only thing that popped into his mind before he could stop himself. “Why did you hate that boy?”

  “Which boy?” Her brows lifted.

  “That boy that you think I am—which I’m not. Conner, that was his name?” He lifted her wrist and slowly started to slip the new splint in between her arm and the broken board below it.

  Her head tilted to the side as she looked at him oddly for a long second, but then a half smile lifted the right side of her face. “I hated him for good reason.”

  “Which was?”

  “He was keen on putting toads in my slippers.”

  Talen laughed. “Seems appropriate. Funny, though.”

  “Was it? Of anything, toads in my shoes? They are infinitely worse than frogs in one’s slippers.”

  “What’s wrong with toads?” His attention stayed downward on her arm as he finished sliding the new splint into place. “They aren’t slimy. Just kind of lumpy.”

  “Which is exactly their folly. One’s toes sink deeper into the slippers, because there isn’t the instant reaction to the frog slime. It isn’t until the flesh of the toad squishes against your toes that you realize.” She shuddered. “Infinitely worse.”

  He chuckled as he picked up the fresh bandage and lifted her wrist and the splint to start the wrapping. “Whoever that boy was—he was devilishly conniving.”

  “That boy was you, Talen.”

  His hands paused and he looked up at her sharply, though he should have known she wouldn’t leave it be. What she thought the past was, and what the truth of it was, were very different things.

  “That boy wasn’t me.” His words spat out, clipped. “And I’ll not have you keep up this farce of how you know me. I’m helping you, Ness. You know that. You don’t have to pretend that you once knew me in order to gain my assistance.”

  His attention went back to wrapping her arm tight against the new splint.

  She puffed a sigh. “Then tell me—tell me who you were when you were six. When you were eight. When you were ten.”

  “No.”

  Her left fingers twitched. “I can’t feel my fingers.”

  Too damn tight. He stifled a growl and reversed course on the wrapping, loosening it until he was back at her wrist again. He started around her arm, looser this time. Or as much as the suddenly vexed blood pumping through his veins allowed.

  “Tell me.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  He shook his head. “Because I can’t. I don’t remember that time, but I sure as hell don’t have any memories of toads.”

  “You don’t remember?” Sudden excitement made her words vibrate. “Well, what memories do you have?”

  His mouth clamped closed.

  “Tell me. What memories do you have?”

  He looked up at her, his voice a growl. “None before the ship.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You have no memories before being on the ship?”

  “Don’t look at me like that.”

  The excitement had crept from her voice into her eyes, making them glow. “But that just proves it.”

  “It proves nothing.”

  Her right hand lifted in exasperation. “It proves it’s a possibility. A possibility that you are Conner. Don’t you see? Why can’t you remember?”

  His jaw tightened, his words seething. “I am not your dead friend, Ness. And I’ll not go through this with you again.”

  His head ducked and he finished wrapping her arm to the splint, tying it off. At least she was smart enough to keep her mouth shut.

  A knock echoed into the room and the door opened.

  “Tal. A word.” Declan’s face was serious. Deadly serious.

  Without a word to Ness, he stood and went to the door, fo
llowing Declan into the hallway. The two men that had attacked Ness had already been dragged out of there. Better their arses in the gutter. Dropping them face down, if his men were smart. He pulled the door closed with a snap. “What is it?”

  “Jasper from the Den of Diablo just stopped by. He said there were four men there, looking for a small woman with dark hair and amber eyes.”

  “What?” Ice snaked down his spine.

  Declan gave him a curt nod. “They mentioned Juliet like they knew her, but Jasper said these were not the type of men Juliet would have dealings with.”

  “Shit.”

  “Exactly. He just wanted you to be aware, as he hasn’t heard from Juliet in weeks. He’s sent word north to his cousin in Scotland to have him ask her about it. But he wondered if we’d heard from Juliet.”

  “You didn’t tell him anything?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Good. But dammit.”

  Declan nodded.

  His heart started thudding hard in his chest, a pit of fear expanding upward from his gut.

  Fear? He didn’t feel fear.

  Not since he’d been a whelp on the ship.

  But there it was, a rising tide in his lungs.

  He needed to find out the true reach of Ness’s husband. Clearly, Gilroy had connections to the London Underground if he had men sniffing about the Den of Diablo.

  Damn. Why had she picked tonight, of all nights, to show herself to far too many people in the house?

  He needed to find out exactly who the men were that were searching for Ness. The sooner the better. How many. Where they were from.

  And in the meantime, he had to get her somewhere impenetrable.

  The Alabaster was no longer safe.

  { Chapter 11 }

  “You are positive this is safe?” Ness leaned forward in the carriage, pulling the dark curtain open a crack to find sheep dotting a hillside. “Oh, we are in the countryside.”

  Talen swatted her hand away from the window and the curtain swung back into place. “You need to trust me on this. It is the safest thing I could think of.”

  She looked at him. Studied the hard set of his jawline. The dark stubble that had appeared overnight. A night with no sleep, she’d deduced.