“Isn’t that the same?” Poppy asked. Sir Faithful yelped in apparent canine agreement.
“No, it is not.” At their mother’s adamancy, Penelope and Prudence exchanged looks. “He is a viscount who was awarded vast properties, and as such, he will make your sister a very estimable match.”
Her stomach dropped. This is what she’d made. Not a love match. Not a union based on mutual understanding and respect. But an estimable one.
Prudence joined their hands and squeezed. Heart in her throat, Penelope looked miserably at their entwined digits.
“Now come.” The dowager countess gave a quick clap. “It is time for your wedding, Penelope.” Her mother extended an arm. “Do not let this be a day of sadness,” she censured her other daughters. “’Tis Penny’s wedding day.”
Penelope’s wedding day.
In all her girlhood dreams of how it would be, never had it been just an estimable match. And it most certainly had never included her brother threatening the groom with death.
With a sigh, she started for the door.
In the years since he’d escaped Diggory’s clutches, Ryker had never stepped out of the Dials alone. Be it the guards in his hell who’d proven their loyalty countless times. Or the de facto brothers he’d found on the street. He never ventured out without the backup of someone he trusted.
It wasn’t weakness that had brought him to that rather cool logic. A solitary figure in the Dials was gutted and tossed into the Thames. If you had a man willing to lay down his life for yours, well, that was a person even the lowest rung of Diggory’s gang knew to fear.
Until now. Ignoring the chill left by the raging storm outside, Ryker hooded his gaze and flicked it over the earl’s library. The man of the cloth gulped for the fifth time since Ryker had been ushered to the front of the room. The Earl of Sinclair and one of Ryker’s other former patrons, Lord St. Cyr, stood shoulder to shoulder. Their like hardened stares spoke of their palpable hatred of him.
Folding his arms dismissively, he looked forward. A young lady, not many years off from his bride and in possession of that lady’s same midnight ringlets, skipped into the room. With a frank boldness, she stared at him. She came to a stop directly across from him and matched his pose.
She touched one finger to the corner of her eye, and then jabbed it in his direction. Her meaning clear. If you hurt my sister, I will end you . . .
Despite himself, Ryker’s lips twitched at the girl’s brazenness. If the lace-wearing minx who’d stolen into the alleys beside his club had aged Sinclair, this girl would put him in his grave.
“Poppy,” the earl called, in crisp tones.
I would marry you to save my sister Poppy . . .
Dragging her heels, the girl made her way over to the front row of chairs neatly assembled. By the five remaining seats, there would be additional guests coming to the happy occasion.
Ye need to learn to avoid notice. Oi’ll teach ye how to be silent . . .
Diggory’s long-ago threats whispered around his memory. Ryker’s palms moistened, and for the first time, he saw the benefit to those crisp white gloves donned by lords. He’d long jeered the dandies who hid their hands. Nothing proved more dangerous than a weak grip on a weapon. Now, with his perspiring hands, he thought mayhap those fops had the right of it. For those articles, though posing as weakness, could also hide another.
Minutes? Hours? Later, three additional ladies streamed into the room, and promptly claimed chairs beside Lady Poppy.
Everyone stared at the back of the room.
Mayhap she’d changed her mind. Mayhap the lady had waited until her entire family was ensconced in the bloody library, and then hightailed it to wherever it is ladies went.
You’d better hope she doesn’t. Because then where will your club be?
From out in the hall, a little giggle cut the tension of the room.
A little girl dressed in a white ruffled gown, mayhap Helena’s age when he’d rescued her from Diggory, walked into the room. Swinging a basket in her hand, she sprinkled petals on the earl’s floor as she skipped down the makeshift aisle.
Sinclair choked and looked to his wife. “Are you mad?” he mouthed to the lady with dark-red hair. That challenge earned him a reproachful look.
And once again, Ryker found himself agreeing with the damned earl. For surely, with all the madness that had unfolded these past forty-eight hours, not a single person present thought there was anything remotely romantic in this ruthless union.
Then, his bride stepped into the doorway. In another horrendous, voluminous lace gown that concealed any hint of womanly curves. But then, he’d had her under him and knew there was not much in the way of womanly softness.
The lady—He grimaced . . . You should call me Penelope . . .
Penelope, rather, met his gaze with an unflinching directness, and the piercing blue brightness of her eyes went through him.
When he was a boy of twelve, he’d nicked a sapphire necklace from a lady outside of the Drury Lane Theatre. When he’d pulled the gemstones from the fancy piece, to sell them individually, he’d studied one of those stones in his hand. Never in his life had he seen something so purifyingly blue. Not even the sky. Especially not the London one, which was the only one he’d ever lain beneath.
Until now.
Penelope tipped her head and sent a curl tumbling over her eye. She brushed it back, and that slight movement jerked him to the present.
What in hell was he thinking . . . ? Ryker went stiff and swiftly trained his gaze on the top of her black curls, as she walked the same path the girl had moments ago, ultimately claiming the spot beside him.
Lord Sinclair took her hand and folded it between his gloved ones. “You do not have to do this, Penny.”
He gave the earl credit—he was unapologetic and undaunted by Ryker’s presence. It said something about the man. Then, should it come as any real surprise given the spitfire who’d nearly unmanned him in Helena’s gardens?
Penelope looked up at Ryker and worried her lower lip. Did she look for him to concur with the earl? If so, the lady was to be disappointed. She’d already presented a far too practical reason to join together. The Hell and Sin didn’t just matter for the wealth it afforded him, but also for the people dependent upon it.
“Penny?” the earl repeated. Hope tinged that single word. Yes, what lord would wish to see his sister married to a man like Ryker? Even with a newly minted title, the stench of the streets would be forever on his skin. He flexed his jaw. Nor did he wish to remove that piece indelibly burned into him. It had shaped him into a person who’d not be taken down by the harshness of life.
The lady’s full lower lip trembled and then she drew in an audible breath. “I am ready,” she said softly.
Her brother hesitated, and then with the same reluctance of a man turning over his spoils to the constable, he placed Penelope’s fingers in Ryker’s, joining their hands, and then claimed a place beside his own wife.
Ryker stared down at the pairing, his olive-hued skin marred and scarred from too many fights. Hers delicate and pale. A lady’s hands. Softer than any other woman’s he’d ever touched. Softer than any he’d ever wanted to touch. Except . . . there was a radiating heat from her delicate palm that brought with it an inexplicable . . . calming. Ryker swiftly released his grip, and her arm hung at her side.
The vicar coughed into his spare hand. “Shall we?”
In the end, the ceremony proceeded. Not over anyone’s dead body, but in a tense, perfunctory manner in the Earl of Sinclair’s library. A library brimming with guests. Ryker stood stiffly beside Penelope in her voluminous skirts. For the number of bloody peers staring back as witnesses, it may have been any long-anticipated union. As it was, but for the hopeful entry of a child littering the floor with flower petals, the Tidemores displayed varying degrees of shock, horror, and sadness on their faces. He didn’t like the peerage. He’d no use for their ladies, and no respect for the lords. But in t
his moment, he admired the young woman’s pluck. For her family’s weepy displays of emotion, she stood beside him, her face a smooth mask, as the vicar provided them the formal lines that would see them forever bound.
“I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful Day of Judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it . . .”
From the corner of his eye, he caught Penelope peeking up at him. Alas, with the questions she’d put to him when she’d stormed his office yesterday morn, the lady well knew the folly in this union. When no objections were given, the greying man resumed.
Ryker had spent so much of his life clawing out of the streets and building his club, he’d not allowed himself to think of binding himself to a woman. Given the crimes he’d committed and the enemies he’d made, letting any woman at all into his world was folly. Certainly not a lady of the Quality. Diggory’s men, now Killoran’s men, would always be seeking Ryker’s weakness, and adding one additional person to those he was responsible for hadn’t been something he’d deliberately sought.
There were no roots or names for him to pass down to another. The club would carry on for himself, Adair, Calum, Niall, and Helena. When they died, what mattered whether there was any to retain the spoils their crew had amassed?
Now there was this woman. He’d no doubt he could see her protected, just as he’d cared for Helena for almost twenty years. No, he didn’t doubt it. But neither did he welcome the prospect of having any lady inside his hell.
“Ryker Banbury, wilt thou have . . .”
“Your name is Ryker Banbury?”
The vicar stumbled over the vows. With the lady’s less-than-discreet whisper she was fortunate to have been born a pampered miss. She wouldn’t have survived a day in the Dials.
He nodded once.
The vicar opened his mouth to resume.
“But you said I was to call you Mr. Black.”
And Ryker, who’d never been, or would ever be, a praying man, prayed for patience.
“My name is Ryker Banbury.” It was a name he’d been stripped of years earlier by the man he’d been turned over to in the streets. And if it hadn’t been for a chance discussion he’d heard as a boy of five, between Diggory and the prostitute he’d made his wife, then Ryker never would have known a duke’s blood flowed through his veins. That discussion he’d shared only with his brothers. He didn’t intend to speak of it with Penelope. In front of a room of witnesses, no less. Ryker motioned to the vicar.
“Wilt though have this—?”
“Then why did you tell me your name is Black?” she asked on a loud whisper.
“Penny?” the earl called from his seat.
“Do you truly wish to have this discussion in front of your entire family?” Ryker infused a steely edge meant to deter.
The lady blinked and glanced about, before ultimately settling her gaze on the strained vicar, who tugged at his collar. Penelope’s cheeks pinkened. “You may resume.”
Ryker gave a nod for the man to continue. “Wilt thou take this woman to thy wedded wife”—he said on a rush, his words coming double time—“to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall—?”
“I will,” he bit out.
“Live,” the vicar finished.
“Penelope Pippa Tidemore, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”
“I will.” Her affirmative pledge rang with a surprising strength.
The vicar made to speak once more.
“With the exception of the part about obeying.”
Ryker held his head in his palm. He’d no doubt the termagant had little intention of obeying. She was incapable of it. Not for the first time reservations in marrying one such as her rushed to the surface . . . for reasons that had nothing to do with her station, and everything to do with her goddamn chattering.
“I am afraid you cannot simply change the vows, my lady,” the vicar said on a strangled plea. “You either pledge to . . . or you do not.”
A loud eruption of coughing sounded from where Poppy Tidemore sat which sounded a good deal like “do not.” Followed by a grunt and an angry whisper from the dowager countess.
Having called family only those who concealed their every emotion, he didn’t know what to make of this expressive lot. Ryker fixed his gaze forward.
If she refused, at worst the decision would belong to her. As such, the lords who took umbrage with Ryker’s supposed actions that evening in the gardens would not be forgiven, but they might be overlooked. Do not . . . do not . . . do not . . .
“I will,” she vowed, the words all but dragged from her.
The ceremony resumed, and just like that Ryker Black, now Banbury before this woman and strangers, who’d disavowed the peerage, found himself inextricably linked to these people, forever.
Until death did they part.
Chapter 8
Dearest Fezzimore,
When it is my wedding, we shall eat dessert biscuits and iced pudding. And oranges. Oh, and pineapple cream, of course. It shan’t even matter if Mother objects to only dessert treats for the wedding meal. After all, I am the bride.
Penny
Age 8
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
Following the wedding ceremony, the rapid tap of pens marking pages filled Jonathan’s cavernous office.
Jonathan stood several feet away, as a kind of sentry, beside their mother. Fingers trembling, Penelope added her name beside the hastier, nearly illegible scrawl of Ryker Black—that was, Ryker Banbury. Yes, if you paid attention to the details around you, one could glean much about a person.
And with Ryker’s speed and sloppy signature, he wanted this moment at an end.
This is not how my wedding was to have been. As a girl she’d envisioned a wedding feast of desserts. As a woman, she’d imagined love and laughter and so much more.
Her gaze fell to the page.
Ryker Banbury, Born in London 21st May 1791.
He has a birthday coming . . . Penelope stared transfixed by those details. Those intimate but meaningful parts about the man she’d married that had been, until now, foreign to her. She shivered. He was a stranger in every way, and in every sense of the word.
“My lady,” the vicar prodded, spurring her into movement.
She dipped her pen into the crystal inkwell once more and marked her name on the next sheet presented. Since she was a small girl, she’d quite openly dreamed of love, to her mother’s chagrin. As a young woman, she’d been more discreet in those hopes. After all, she had sought to be everything proper and polite. But the dream had always been there. It had never died.
Until now, that was. She froze, her pen poised over the sheet, and stared blankly down as a glob of ink smudged the page. Regret assailed her, taunting her with the finality in marrying a man who’d wed her to save his club and wanted nothing to do with her beyond that.
Mayhap it doesn’t have to be that way. Mayhap you can carve out a new life with this man . . .
“My lady,” the vicar said frantically, jolting her from her hopeful, romantic musings.
Warming, Penelope added her name to the next place indicated and, with still-shaking fingers, set her pen down. It is done. Or it would be when Ryker completed his final signatures.
“We will leave shortly.”
Mayhap it was the length of the ceremony. Or mayhap the two days of whirring thoughts and rapid decisions. Or mayhap it was just that she’d simply misheard Ryker.
Penelope and her mother spo
ke in unison.
“What did you say?”
One thing was a certainty; mother and daughter were of like thought.
“We will leave shortly.” Ryker directed that statement to the pages before him. He scratched his name, or some variance, upon one official sheet, and then moved to the next, and final.
Heart thudding, she looked with stricken eyes to her gaping mother and glowering brother, and then back to her husband. “But . . . but there is the wedding breakfast,” Penelope blurted, as Mr. Banbury, or Mr. Black, or Lord Chatham, or whoever he was, quickly scrawled his final indiscernible signature upon the official documents.
He grunted. He grunted? “I have matters to attend at the club.” A thread of finality hung on that statement.
Matters to attend, did he? And deep inside, Penelope knew when she left this townhouse, on this man’s arm, her life would be forever altered. No longer would she call this townhouse home. No longer would she spend the whole of her days alternating between teasing Poppy and working alongside her to drive their mother to madness. The carefree laughter, all of it, would just . . . end. As though it had never been. “No.” The firmness of that denial brought her husband’s attention slowly in her direction.
The vicar swallowed loudly and hastily gathered the items he’d brought to officiate the ceremony. Dipping a swift bow, he rushed from the room, not bothering to await permission.
“What did you say?” Had his words rung with fury it would have been less intimidating than this emotional flatness.
Another shiver scraped her spine. How was it possible for a man whose well-muscled form radiated such heat to be so frigid?
Penelope fisted her hands at her side. “Mother, Jonathan, will you excuse Mist—?” Her lips pulled in an involuntary grimace. She’d just linked herself forevermore to this man, and she could not use his given name? “Ryker,” she amended, “and me so we can speak?”
Mother and son lingered.
“Penny?” Jonathan said gruffly.
“I asked you to excuse us,” she demanded, and Penelope’s last surviving parent looked pleadingly at her son. A muscle twitching at his eye, Jonathan led the dowager countess out.
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