“Just like that? You’re giving it to them?” The question squeaked past her lips before she could consider the wisdom of it.
She expected him to offer some modicum of resistance. A great big man like him? She thought he might at least appear menacing.
One of the men laughed and elbowed his partner. “Got a feisty one ’ere. More mettle than the big lad.” He chuckled. “She ’as a point. Perhaps we should be calling the big lad a lass.”
Mackenzie showed no outward reaction at the insult to his manhood.
The other scoundrel nodded, his narrow face reflecting none of his friend’s amusement. The thin, gaunt lines of his features made him appear practically cadaverous in the murky night. “What else you got? Besides that pocketbook?” His turned his gaze to Poppy and gave her a slow once-over.
Her chin lifted. “I haven’t any money.”
She felt his gaze continue to scan her in the feeble light of the streetlamps. “What’s that there on your finger? A ring? I’ll ’ave it.”
She immediately covered her mother’s wedding ring as if she could erase the memory of it. It was a simple silver band, etched with her parents’ initials. Aside of her memories, it was all she had left of her mother. She shook her head vehemently. “No.”
“It’s not worth the fight. Give it over,” Mackenzie growled without turning to face her.
“It’s worth it to me,” she argued, clutching her hand tighter, glaring at the back of him. “I’m not giving it up.” She turned her glare to the pair of villains with their avid, feral eyes. “It’s not even gold. Worth nothing—”
“Then give it over,” Mackenzie bit out.
“It’s sentimental,” she argued. Blast him! Whose side was he on?
“Very sweet,” Cadaver-face uttered, stretching out his arm and flicking his long fingers impatiently. “Now give it to me before I ’ave to take it from you myself. You don’t want me to do that, poppet. Trust me there. You might find me taking something else for me troubles.”
Mackenzie turned his face to the side and addressed her through lips that barely moved. “Damn it all. Give over the ring and hold your tongue, girl.”
She puffed out an angry breath of outrage. No one spoke to her like that. Not even her father used that tone with her. “Just because you’re willing to roll over and play coward does not mean I am!”
With a curse, he turned and grabbed her hand.
“What are you—” she sputtered as Mackenzie seized her finger and worked the ring up the digit. It caught at her knuckle. Still sputtering, she tried to yank her hand away, but his grip was like iron. He twisted the band until it finally slid free.
“How dare you!” she screeched, punching his arm several times. His bicep felt like a slab of solid meat. Impenetrable to her puny blows. She wondered if he even felt her. “You’re as bad as they are!”
He ignored her and faced the ruffians, tossing the ring up in the air. Cadaver-face caught it neatly in his hand and her heart sank, dropping to her feet.
He faced the men again. “You’ve got what you want. Now go,” he said as though he had not just handed over a keepsake that meant so much to her. As though he had not cut out a very important piece of her heart. She blinked burning eyes. Her thumb swept over the back of her finger, marveling at how it suddenly felt so strange and bare there, like the slick, smooth skin of a scar.
She couldn’t help herself. She made a sound of disgust and crossed her arms. For all his air of menace and brawn, Struan Mackenzie was about as imposing as an iced biscuit.
Cadaver-face pocketed the ring and stepped to the side with all the idleness of a man strolling the park. He peered at her where she stood with her arms crossed. “Never would ’ave expected a small package to possess such fire. I like ’er. What about you, Cam? What do you think?”
Her crushing disappointment over losing her ring flowed into something else, something razor-sharp and icy as her gaze darted between the two men. She felt like a hare facing down a pair of hounds. Mackenzie already proved he would offer nothing in the way of protection. She had only herself to rely upon.
“Well, if you like ’er.” Cam lifted an arm, stretching past Mackenzie to touch her shoulder lightly. “Maybe the big chap won’t mind if—”
Mackenzie’s hand sliced through the air with stunning swiftness and wrenched Cam’s hand from her. “You have my money and the ring. Take them and go.”
Cadaver-face moved with a swiftness that matched Mackenzie’s. He brought a blade up, waving it before Mackenzie’s face.
She gasped, but Mackenzie didn’t even flinch. His big body didn’t move. Nor did his hand loosen from Cam.
Mackenzie stood as still as a column of stone, hard and immobile, only his voice rippling over the air like a warm current. “I won’t warn you again.”
Cam snickered at the whispered threat, clearly not worried. “If I were you, I’d lift your ’and off me before Kenny here decides to use that there knife and—”
Mackenzie moved in a blinding flash.
She didn’t think someone of his size could move with such speed. In a maneuver she couldn’t even process, he disarmed Kenny, seizing the knife from him and bringing it down in an arc and driving it into Cam’s arm.
There was a moment of absolute stunned silence.
Poppy froze, gaping. Then Cam started screaming, registering the pain of the knife embedded in his arm.
“Oh?” Mackenzie queried in that deep brogue of his, his manner eerily mild. “Hurts, does it? Aye, I’ve been stabbed before.” He blinked with mocking innocence. “Would you like me to remove this wee blade from your arm, then?”
Cam nodded and started pleading and blubbering amid his sobs.
Kenny made a move as though to do it for him, but Mackenzie waved him away and turned the hilt of the blade, twisting and digging it deeper into his cohort’s arm, producing a fresh wave of sobs. Kenny watched, frozen and wearing an expression of mingled fear and dismay.
“Mackenzie,” she murmured, not sure what she was asking. She only knew she didn’t like the situation. The tinny smell of blood in the night air. The violence. The fear. Hers or theirs, she wasn’t even certain anymore.
Mackenzie looked at her beneath hooded eyes and her heart tripped. He looked like some fierce Viking with his glittering eyes and hard expression. “Yes, kitten?”
“Please.” She shook her head, unsure what she wanted to say. What she wanted him to do. He held her gaze and the pulse at her neck continued its wild tempo, threatening to break free of her skin.
She only knew that she had misjudged him. This man was no coward. She wasn’t certain what he was, but he was not that.
Mackenzie grunted and looked away from her. He reached inside Cam’s pocket and fished about until he pulled out her ring. He brandished it in the air between thumb and forefinger, offering it to her.
She hesitated only a moment before snatching it from him with a happy cry and slipping it back on her finger. “Thank you.”
He gave her another one of those enigmatic looks and turned his attention back to the would-be thieves. “I’ll take my pocketbook back, too.”
Kenny hesitated and Cam shouted at him, panting and perspiring now, his face in a perpetual grimace as he suffered the blade in his arm. “Gor, give the man what ’e wants!”
Kenny fumbled for the purse and practically threw it in their direction. Mackenzie caught it nimbly and slid it back inside his jacket. Without removing his gaze from the pair of thugs, he slid the knife from Cam’s arm like it was nothing to him. A task he did all the time. Plucking a flower from a vase.
Cam collapsed against his friend, clutching his arm and gasping.
Mackenzie’s deep brogue rolled over the air. “Now you two disappear before I call the Watch. And don’t let me ever see your faces again.”
Their heads bobbed. “Y-yes, guv’nor. Apologies to you and yer lady.” They shuffled away, eyeing Mackenzie as though he might change his mind and spring
at them.
Poppy watched them flee down the alley where the shadows were the deepest. They turned at the far end until they were out of sight. Only then did she realize her mouth sagged open. She closed it with a snap and swung her gaze back to Mackenzie. She’d been wrong about him. She shook her head slightly, still perplexed. He’d simply been restraining himself the entire time.
His fingers lightly brushed her elbow. “Are you well? I don’t need to fetch the smelling salts, do I?”
She inhaled and that only made her head spin with the scent of him. She hadn’t noticed it before. Masculine and woodsy. How he smelled woodsy in the midst of London she could not begin to fathom.
That hand on her elbow drifted up, trailing along her arm to curl over her shoulder. “Your heart is racing.”
“How can you know that?” Her voice came out in a scratchy rasp. He couldn’t feel her racing heart. God willing, he could not hear it pounding like a drum. No, he couldn’t know how it pounded.
As though he could read her mind, he said, “I can see your pulse here.” His gloved fingers brushed the patch of skin visible at the base of her throat. Her breath quickened at the sensation. “It’s fighting against your skin.”
She swallowed and nodded jerkily, wishing she could blame it on the fear of moments ago. Their brush with danger. And yet it wasn’t that. It wasn’t those men. He was more dangerous to her than them.
It was this. Him.
Chapter 12
Treacherous thoughts flitted across her mind. She batted them away, but still they hovered, threading their way under her skin and into her blood.
What would it feel like to have his fingers on her without the gloves? His mouth? She fought to swallow against her suddenly thick throat as she stared into Struan Mackenzie’s deep gaze.
She had allowed Edmond certain liberties. Oh, she was still a maid. Nothing too intimate had transpired between them, but she was no stranger to kisses or a man’s touch.
She had known Edmond all her life. It had seemed acceptable, on occasion, to indulge in a few kisses and caresses. She had thought they were to be married. She was her parents’ daughter, after all. Like them, she believed in passion and following one’s heart.
Over kisses and mild petting, Edmond had whispered fervent promises of marriage. Those words had persuaded her to shove aside her reservations. And yet in all their trysts, she had never felt this breathlessness. This pooling heat in her belly. It was a heady sensation.
She moistened her lips, trying not to notice the way his gaze followed the trail of her tongue along her bottom lip. “I’m not going to swoon if that’s what you’re so worried about. I’m not that manner of female,” she whispered.
“No?” His boot scraped against the ground as he stepped closer. “And what manner of female are you, Miss Fairchurch? I confess it has been a point of curiosity for me ever since we met.” The purr of his voice dragged over her skin.
She swallowed against the giant lump in her throat. “I’m not that squeamish.”
“No,” he agreed. “You are not.”
“Nor am I the sort of person to disarm a street ruffian with my bare hands.” She shook her head, her voice tight and breathy . . . still in awe of him. “But you, apparently, are. One moment you behaved as a coward and handed over our belongings with nary a blink, and then you did that trick with the knife. However did you do that?”
“Those two men?” He jerked his head toward where they’d disappeared, still keeping his gaze trained on her face. “I didn’t think they were truly dangerous.” He lifted one big shoulder in a scant semblance of a shrug. “And I was right.”
“Then why hand over your purse in the first place? And my ring?” She bristled, recalling that point with the most indignation.
“Because you were here.”
“Me?” She pulled back slightly. What did her presence have to do with anything?
He stared at her a long moment before elaborating. “I didn’t feel the need to risk your safety.”
She stared at him blankly, struggling to process his words.
He released an exasperated breath. “I was attempting to protect you. Not that you were any help in that endeavor, Miss Fairchurch. A paltry bauble isn’t anything to risk your neck over . . .”
“It wasn’t a mere bauble to me.” Her spine shot straight. “It was more than that to me.” Her father didn’t have much. As a tutor, he had scrimped and saved to buy her mother that ring. Their meager home and everything within it was gone, lost to them. All she possessed was that ring.
Suddenly she noticed the muscle ticcing madly in his cheek. He was angry, and that only discouraged her. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. He was a man accustomed to having his way. He wouldn’t know what it felt like to be her . . . to have so little, to want to cling to what little was left to her.
“What were you thinking?” he bit out. The velocity of his words propelled her back a final step, forcing her against the wall of the alley. The scratchy brick scraped at her mother’s old cloak and she hoped it wasn’t snagging the already worn fabric.
She forgot about the cloak when his hands came up on either side of her head, caging her in. She gasped and looked left and right at the hard arms on either side of her head.
He continued, “A token from your lover isn’t worth calling attention to yourself . . . and that’s precisely what you did when you refused to give that ring up.”
“A token from my lover?” Is that what he thought? He was wrong. So wrong. Was that why he cared so little about giving away her ring? She longed to smack that smug condescension off his face. Her lips worked, but her outrage blocked anything coherent from forming on her lips.
“Am I incorrect? Did Autenberry not give you the ring?” he sneered as though he were deliberately trying to be cruel. As though he wanted to hurt her. Like the mean girls back home who took jabs at her once it became clear that her sister far outshone her. When Bryony was eleven years old her beauty was already glaringly obvious. “I admit it’s rather modest. I’d expect something more extravagant from him.” A certain thickness entered his voice as he demanded, “A different lover, then?” He leaned in, his breath on her cheek sending ripples of awareness through her.
“You cad,” she charged. “The ring was from no lover. It was my mother’s ring.”
He fell silent at that, just the fall of his breath so close on her skin.
“An apology would be the gentlemanly thing to do at this point,” she got out past her clogged throat.
One corner of his mouth curled. “I’m a bastard born to the streets of Glasgow. Never mistake me for a gentleman.”
“Duly noted.”
“Did you not hear me warn you to keep quiet?” he growled, evidently moving on to the next subject.
“Indeed. I seem to recall you ordered me to hold my tongue. Maybe if you had not spoken to me like a senseless child—”
“Should I have taken a few minutes to politely and gently explain to you that I did not want to draw undue attention to your person in front of those ruffians? Rather counterproductive.”
He was maddening, trying to make her feel dense. And foolish! True, he was succeeding but damn if she would let him know it. Her eyes burned but she blinked the fire from them.
His head canted in a way that reminded her of a predator right before it pounced on its victim. “I’ve saved your life twice now in so many days, Miss Fairchild. How on earth have you managed to arrive at your age unscathed?”
She breathed through her nose, controlling her ire. She’d never been a temperamental individual, but this man brought out the worst in her. “You know as well as I do that they weren’t about murder. Nothing as dire as that,” she said in an attempt to make light of the night’s brush with danger.
These words only seemed to enrage him. His eyes went black. He thrust his face closer, his voice a hiss as he lifted one hand from the wall by her ear and lightly circled her bare throat. Not strangling, altho
ugh she imagined he would like to do that very thing. No, his touch was gentle, his thumb brushing the side of her neck in the most distracting manner.
“What are you—” she started to say.
He cut her off. “You cannot be that naïve. How could you mistake their intent when they said they liked you?” His gaze traveled over her insolently. Not that he could see much of her beneath her voluminous cloak, but she felt stripped naked. “They sought to relieve you of something far more valuable than a mere bauble. I’m certain that clever brain of yours can surmise to what I refer.”
She did, but she wouldn’t humor him with a response.
He continued, “It’s one thing to let them take your ring and my money . . . another thing entirely to let them put a hand on you.”
Her breath hitched at the sudden deep timbre of his voice. She read menace in his eyes.
He sounded—and looked—as though he could kill for her. She’d never felt that before. Never felt that there was anyone out there who would go to extreme lengths for her. It was strange. It filled her with an anxious giddiness and that terrified her. She did not need to be feeling that way. Especially not with him.
“Poppy?” The hushed whisper of her name—the first time she had ever heard him say her Christian name—only made that giddiness spread through her in the most awful, traitorous way.
“That’s Miss Fairchurch to you,” she reprimanded, her voice gentle and lacking all heat.
He lowered his head. “Poppy,” he repeated as though she had not corrected him. More than likely he simply did not care. She knew that he put little value into her wishes.
If he cared about honoring her wishes, then he would not be with her at this moment. But he was. And his presence here might very well have saved her. Again. The fact only irritated her. Absurd, she knew, but there it was nonetheless. She was now indebted to him for her life no less than two times.
Her pulse hammered at her throat. No doubt he could feel it with his hand on her. His fingers moved again, grazing her skin, his touch warm through his gloves. Hot actually. She felt singed, burned at his caress. Any attempt to speak was impossible in that moment. Not with him looking at her as though he wanted to strangle her.
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