Winter's Warrior (The Wicked Winters Book 13)

by Scarlett Scott

  But she took his arm just the same and allowed him to lead her to his office. Barnaby had been sleeping by Jasper’s desk, snoring like a drunken sailor. As they crossed the threshold, he woke, yawned, and rose to greet them. To Caro, he offered a sniff and a lick of her hand, as if to tell her he remembered what had happened several hours before. She scratched the dog’s head and swallowed down a lump rising in her throat.

  “Too soft, this hound of mine,” Jasper muttered, shaking his head as he crossed to the sideboard where he kept an array of spirits.

  “He is a sweet lad,” Caro said, gazing into Barnaby’s wide, brown eyes.

  Barnaby sneezed, then made a whining sound before sitting on her feet.

  “He’s worried about you,” Jasper observed, pouring them some wine and returning to her, holding out a glass in offering. “He ain’t the only one.”

  “I am perfectly fine,” she lied, then raised the Madeira to her lips, swallowing the cool, rich liquid and wishing it could wash away her pain.

  “You’re swilling your wine like a toss pot.”

  So she was. But damn him for noticing.

  This mess was all his making, curse it.

  Her anger toward him and his forced secrets returned, replacing the sadness. “This is all your bloody fault, Jasper. If you had allowed me to tell him who he was weeks ago, he never would have found out in this way.”

  Jasper raised his glass in a mocking salute. “I was meant to be the fucking hero of this tale, believe it or not. One bloody favor, and have a look at what happens. A ham-fisted Winter puppy blackens my eye after he’s been bedding my sister.”

  She winced at the anger in her brother’s voice. “He hasn’t been bedding me, and he’s hardly a puppy.”

  “Acts like one, and if he ain’t bedding you, how’d you get that love bite on your damned neck, and what was he doing with you this morning?”

  She drank some more wine, delaying the inevitable. “It was one night only.”

  Her cheeks were on fire. Never had she imagined having to engage in such a discussion with her brother. Her utter mortification was complete.

  “Satan’s teeth,” Jasper growled. “They’re going to pay for this, the lot of them.”

  “Please do not strike up another war with the Winters over what happened between myself and Gavin,” she begged, despising the thought.

  Suttons and Winters had been competitors and mortal enemies for years until recent developments and the need to work together had forced them to find common ground. She had no wish to be the cause of a return to hostilities.

  “No.” Her brother shook his head, his jaw going hard. “Nothing you say will change what needs to be done. They are the reason I kept him under this roof for so long. They are the ones who asked me to keep his presence here quiet. This is how I am repaid for going to them the moment I discovered you had found Gavin Winter’s sorry arse in the alley.”

  She frowned at her brother, confusion settling over her. “You went to the Winters and told them we’d found Gavin?”

  “Aye. More fool I am.” Jasper raked his fingers through his dark hair, then drained the last of his wine. “I should have demanded a ransom. Instead, like a bloody dupe, I agreed to their plan.”

  Her heart was pounding harder now, her mind beginning to make sense of her brother’s furious rants. “What was their plan?”

  “To keep ’im here until they could get to the bottom of who’d tried to crash ’im.”

  In his outrage, Jasper was once more dropping the h and speaking flash. “They knew for certain that someone was trying to kill him? That what happened to Gavin was not the work of footpads or some other bad sort?”

  “Aye. Apparently another of the Winters, Demon, took a lick on the head not long before Gavin nearly cocked up his toes.”

  Icy fear laced through her heart. She had suspected as much, but somehow, hearing Jasper give credence to her suspicions made the idea of someone attempting to kill Gavin far more real than it had been before. And now, he was no longer protected. No one had known he was alive, but soon, everyone would. Including the person or people who wanted him dead.

  “Why did you not tell me the truth?” she demanded. “You never spoke a word of this before. If I had known—”

  “If you had known,” Jasper interrupted, “it may have put you in danger as well. Or any of the rest of us. I did what I thought best, and so did they.”

  “You made me lie to him,” she shouted.

  Barnaby rose from his place on her feet and made an agitated turn about the room.

  “If you’d told ’im who he was, he’d have gone back to The Devil’s Spawn, and what good would it have done ’im?” he countered.

  And he was so calm, so reasonable that Caro wanted to shake him. Or blacken his other eye. Her hands trembled at the revelation and she could not help but to feel betrayed by her own brother. “I lied to him because you asked it of me.”

  “Aye. As you should. You’re a loyal Sutton.”

  “I should have been loyal to him.”

  Because I love him.

  Jasper took the wine from her hands, which was for the best. She’d been about to either spill it or toss it against the wall. “You did what was right. We all did, in our ways.”

  If lying to Gavin had kept him safe, she would make the choice again just as she had done. There was no question; she would save his life before any other decision, even if it meant destroying his faith in her.

  “He’ll never forgive me for this,” she whispered, the words torn from her.

  “He’ll forgive you,” Jasper vowed. “Because ’e has to marry you now, the whoreson. No Winter is going to bed my sister without making an honest woman of ’er.”

  Her brother was serious, she realized. Jasper intended to see her married to Gavin Winter. And while her foolish heart leapt with hope at the thought, the rational part of her mind knew that marrying Gavin without earning his forgiveness would be an even greater blow than watching him turn his back on her this morning. She would not force him to wed her.

  And that meant he could never be hers.

  Gavin was bruised and battered, bloody and more miserable than he’d ever been in his life. He could recall all the damned years of his existence now, though the feeling was still strange, all this remembrance after so many weeks of emptiness. Still, he knew the difference.

  By the time he reached the back entrance of The Devil’s Spawn, the gaming hell he and his half brothers and sister owned and operated together, he felt a bit more like himself. But the homecoming was bittersweet.

  Because it didn’t feel like home when he rapped on the door and was swept inside the corridor by a guard who looked as if he had just seen a corpse come back to life. It didn’t feel like home all the way to his brother Dom’s office.

  And Gavin knew the reason why. It didn’t feel like home because she wasn’t here.

  But everything he’d known with her, he reminded himself, had been a bloody lie.

  He could never forgive her for what she had done. She had committed an act of betrayal so deep, so cutting, there would be no healing.

  Gavin didn’t bother to knock and announce his presence. He threw open the door and crossed the threshold, halting at the sight meeting him.

  Within, he found three of his half brothers. Dom, Devil, and Blade. They had been gathered around Dom’s desk, and it had appeared as if they were discussing something of great import when he had intruded. Three sets of eyes hit him at once.

  Dom, the eldest of them all, responsible for the daily running of The Devil’s Spawn, spoke first. “Holy Christ, you look like shit.”

  He passed a hand over his ravaged face. The bout with Jasper Sutton earlier had not been pretty. “Ain’t dead though.”

  “Thank the Lord for that,” Devil said.

  Blade cocked his head. “I don’t know, brother. You look as if you’ve recently escaped the body snatchers.”

  Emotion rose within Gavin, str
ong and fierce. He had missed his family. He loved them and their antics. Their sallies, their banter, their howls of laughter, their knife-tossing competitions, the way they protected one another no matter what happened.

  He was home here, amongst people he could trust.

  “I feel as if I’ve escaped the body snatchers,” he told Blade wryly. “I’ve spent the last few weeks at The Sinner’s Palace, kept under guard by Jasper Sutton, without an inkling as to who the hell I was.”

  “You remember us,” Dom said. “Your memory has returned?”

  “Aye. Why else would I be here?” He searched his brothers’ countenances, feeling as if something were amiss.

  Dom winced. Devil lowered his gaze. Blade cleared his throat.

  His instincts never failed him. Something was wrong. Desperately, terribly wrong.

  This was not the bloody welcome he had expected. Unless he was mistaken, there was guilt on every one of their damned faces. Suspicion began to rise.

  “Have you nothing to say?” he demanded. “Any of you?”

  He’d never known them to hold their tongues. A right vocal lot, the Winter siblings.

  “We knew you were with Sutton,” Dom said.

  What the bloody hell?

  He listed on his feet, feeling as if he had taken another blow in addition to the ones Jasper Sutton had landed earlier. Surely his brothers had not known he was being kept at The Sinner’s Palace, being fed lies by Jasper and Caro Sutton.

  Caro.

  His heart gave a pang at the thought of her. She had looked as broken as he had felt this morning, but he had forced himself to walk away. She had deceived him, betrayed him. Hell, she had allowed him to ask her to be his wife, to make love to her, and she had never once told him the truth. There was no excuse for what she had done. She was every bit as heartless and cold as her brother.

  “How?” he forced out, his voice hoarse.

  Disbelieving.

  “Sutton came to Dom,” Devil said grimly, stalking forward and catching Gavin in a brotherly hug. “You remember everything now?”

  “Aye.” Gavin extricated himself from Devil’s embrace, only to be caught up in a series of awkward hugs. First Dom, then Blade.

  “We are happy to have you back among us, brother,” Dom said. “Who else knows you are here?”

  He thought for a moment. “The guardsman at the door. A few others I passed on my way here. The widow Crawford, who called to me when I descended from the hack which brought me here.”

  “Sutton sent you here in a hack?” Devil demanded.

  “Damn it all to hell,” Blade muttered. “This cannot be good. Widow Crawford has the loosest tongue in the East End.”

  Gavin was more confused than ever. More confused, even, than he had been when he had opened his eyes to find the woman he had naively believed to be his guardian angel hovering over him. He could almost conjure her here and now—her delicate, lavender scent, her full, sensual lips, those wide, hazel eyes and that gleaming auburn hair.

  Hell.

  Would there ever come a day when he would not want her? When he would not love her? It had been hours, and all he wanted was to race back to her side, to find a way to forget the trespasses she had committed against him.

  His overburdened mind, which had been thumping ever since he had arisen that morning to his fully restored memories and which had been pounding mercilessly ever since his bout of fisticuffs with Jasper Sutton, throbbed even more.

  “Why did Sutton come to you?” he demanded, trying to make sense of the jagged bits of information he had received thus far.

  “He wanted to preserve the truce,” Dom said. “I asked him to keep you there until we felt it safe for you to return.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “You remember that someone attacked Demon outside Lady Fortune?” Devil asked, frowning. “Do you not?”

  “Aye, whoever was after his wine merchant,” Gavin said, recalling the day he had visited Demon at Lady Fortune in the wake of the incident.

  “We don’t think that’s the way it happened,” Blade told him. “Ambrose Stokes came to Dom after you’d disappeared, claiming someone had been trying to put a price on your head for weeks. He said what happened to Demon had been a mistake. The men hired for the task mistook Demon for you. They killed the wine merchant because he was going to raise a cry, but they didn’t finish the job with Demon because after they knocked him on the napper, they got a look at his face and realized he was not you. Davy found him and raised the cry, chasing them off.”

  “Stokes told me the bastards who attacked Demon came to him asking for aid, but that he declined,” Dom added. “They must have acquired more muscle and followed you after you had gotten soused with Demon. They attacked you when you were returning home and then left you for dead outside The Sinner’s Palace to try to pin the blame on the Suttons.”

  Ambrose Stokes was a notorious mercenary known for solving any problem for the right amount of coin. He was a vicious man. Gavin wouldn’t trust him as far as he could throw him. Still, he had recalled the memory of five men attacking him at once.

  “And how much money did Stokes want in return for his information?” Gavin asked, distrustful of the bastard.

  “No coin,” Dom said. “Stokes is looking to get out of the business. He knows forming an alliance with the Winters will be beneficial to him, and if his information can help us to discover who the hell wants you dead and why, I’ll return the favor.”

  Devil nodded. “We all will.”

  “But why leave me at The Sinner’s Palace?” he demanded, still reeling beneath the weight of all these sudden revelations. “Why not bring me here?”

  “Because we wanted whoever is trying to kill you to believe they succeeded,” Blade offered, his voice grim. “But now, it’s only a matter of time before news that Gavin Winter has risen from the dead is all over the rookeries.”

  Icy dread slid down his spine, wrapped around his heart. “And who do you think is trying to kill me?”

  “Jeremiah Jones,” all three of his half brothers said in unison.

  Chapter 12

  After so many weeks of seeing Gavin every day, suddenly spending each day without him had been a more devastating blow than Caro could have anticipated. To keep her mind from thoughts of him, she went to her work room and did what she did best: she returned to her role as the Sutton healer.

  Measuring.

  Testing.

  Studying.

  Replenishing her stores.

  These were actions which had once given her great pleasure. Now, they did not even provide comfort. Or distraction. Because all she could think about was Gavin.

  A knock sounded at her door, and for a moment, her heart leapt, hoping it was him. But the portal opened and Pen appeared.

  “I thought I would find you here,” her sister said, her countenance wreathed with sympathy.

  And a touch of guilt, too, Caro thought. She had discovered that her sister’s ailment had been feigned. More of Jasper’s machinations in an effort to keep Caro from spending time with Gavin. She knew he’d been trying to protect her—that Pen and Jasper both had—but that did not mean Caro had entirely forgiven them for their subterfuge. Especially since the nights she had spent singing in the hell had robbed her of precious time with Gavin.

  Time she would never be able to regain.

  “I am working, Pen,” she said on a sigh, not wanting company just now.

  Lonely misery was far preferable to a well-intentioned sister attempting to cheer her. There would be no cheering Caro now. She had lost the man she loved. Worse, he was still in danger, and there was nothing she could do to protect or help him because he no longer wanted her in his life.

  “As I see and as you usually are.” Pen slipped into the work room despite Caro’s lack of invitation. “But there is something I thought you should know.”

  “What can it be, Pen? I’m in a dreadful mood.”

&
nbsp; “You’ve been in a dreadful mood since Gavin Winter left,” her sister observed, her expression knowing. “You fell in love with him, did you not?”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them once more. Thinking about Gavin made her heart hurt. “Yes. I did. But I also spent the last few weeks deceiving him, and I expect he shall never forgive me.”

  “That is why I thought you should know he is planning to fight Jeremiah Jones,” Pen told her. “Aidan knows all about it. It’s causing quite a great deal of excitement. Everyone is saying Gavin Winter has risen from the dead.”

  The pain in her heart turned to ice. “He cannot mean to fight in the state he is in. He is yet healing.”

  Pen laid a hand on her arm, giving her a soothing pat. “The match is set for three days hence.”

  Why would he agree to such foolishness? To such dangerous recklessness? Did he not have a care for himself?

  “I do not understand why he would agree to the match,” she said, struggling to make sense of what her sister had just revealed. “He is in no condition to face an opponent. Indeed, a man in his position should not take such a risk. If he suffers another blow to the head, there is no telling what will happen.”

  Dear God. She had to stop him. She had to find him and convince him to stop the fight.

  But where had he gone?

  “The wagers are being placed, and the odds are not in his favor,” Pen said softly. “Everyone believes Jeremiah Jones will win and that it will be a fight to the death.”

  A fight to the death.

  She was trembling as violently as a leaf in a wind storm, her stomach lurching. The thought of Gavin fighting an opponent until he breathed his last…it was unthinkable. She could not bear him being injured. Or worse.

  “No,” she denied, shaking her head. “It cannot be.”

  “The last man Jeremiah Jones fought died the day after the bout,” Pen said. “That is why I have come to you, Caro. Jeremiah Jones is a dangerous man.”

  Her mind was made. She had to see Gavin. Even if he did not want to speak with her ever again, she needed to try to persuade him against this fight.