The Scoundrel's Honor

by Christi Caldwell

  She’d been dreaming, and it had been so real. Someone had been crying.

  A faint whimper penetrated the quiet, and she whipped her gaze toward the plaintive sound. Ryker thrashed his head back and forth on the floor. “No,” he pleaded. A low, pained groan filtered past his lips, and he jerked his neck. Her heart wrenched. What demons did Ryker Black battle?

  “Nooo,” the low moan emerged as a partial sob.

  Galvanized into movement, Penelope swung her legs over the bed. Ignoring the chill of the floor penetrating her feet, she rushed over. In one quick movement, she fell to a knee beside him and touched his shoulder. “Ry—” Her words ended on a gasp.

  He shot a hand out, catching her hard in the cheek, and pain exploded as she cried out and fell back, hard on her buttocks.

  Chapter 12

  Dearest Fezzimore,

  It was horrid. I had a nightmare that I was lost and alone, running away from Mrs. Jenkins, and there was no one to help. Promise you’ll always be with me, Fezzi.

  Penny

  Age 9

  The nightmares had come. And this time, unlike all the other times, there had been someone with him. A delicate lady. His wife.

  His stomach heaved.

  Oh, Christ.

  And he’d hit her.

  Of all the violence he’d visited, the battles he’d wagered and won, never had he put his hands on a woman. Not even Diggory’s whore who’d delighted in raining a makeshift rod down on his back.

  Penelope lay sprawled on her back with her night shift rucked up to her knees. She cradled her cheek in her hand. He braced for the deserved terror in her eyes.

  Instead, she looked at him, worry melded with pain. “What were you doing?” he groaned, and in one fluid movement, he was at her side. What had possessed the fool woman to come upon him when he was sleeping? Ryker gently took her hand and lowered it. The air left him on a loud hiss. An angry, crimson imprint of his hand marred her smooth, porcelain white skin.

  “I . . .” She bit her lower lip, and that slight evidence of her pain hit him like a kick to the gut. “You were having a nightmare and I was attempting to wake you.”

  The earlier talk of Diggory and his youth had stirred all the darkest nightmares. He scrubbed a hand over his face. His wife had fashioned herself as some kind of protector: her sister, now him.

  And here he’d long believed those ladies of the ton put their own self-interests before all others. Ryker ran his fingertips over her bruise, and she winced. “Did I hit you anywhere else?” he asked gruffly, touching her temple.

  A single blow to that fragile spot had seen countless men killed in the streets. How very easily he could have killed her. Bile burned in his throat.

  She shook her head.

  “Lesson one,” he growled, “never wake a man, unless you’re prepared for the consequences.” Ryker stood and scooped Penelope up.

  “I can walk, Ryker,” she insisted, pushing against him as he reached for the door handle.

  “Do you hear me?” he demanded, lowering his head so their noses brushed.

  “I-I am not a child to be lectured in the schoolroom.” That tart, unrepentant chiding came out as a breathless whisper.

  Any other would have been reduced to a blubbering mess of tears. His young wife, however, despite the strain revealed at the very corners of her eyes, boldly met his gaze.

  Shifting her in his arms, Ryker yanked the door open and closed it quietly behind them. He started toward the end of the corridor. Darkness blanketed the halls, with intermittently lit sconces casting eerie shadows that flickered and danced in the inky blackness.

  I could have killed her . . . I could have felled her with a single blow . . .

  His insides twisted in vicious knots that robbed him of breath. After breaking free of Diggory’s clutches, he’d fashioned himself a protector for those who were in his care, and in one unintended outburst, he’d leveled Penelope. He glanced down, and their eyes met. “I cannot determine if you are a bloody lackwit or the bravest woman I know.”

  Surprise glimmered in the endless blue depths.

  “It wasn’t a compliment,” he muttered, as he started down the servants’ staircase.

  Her lips twitched, and even in the darkness, he detected her wince. “I suspect that is the closest I’ll ever receive to being one from you.”

  Should he suspect anything different from the brazen creature who’d stormed his office and all but made him an offer of marriage? “With your recklessness, you’re going to find yourself dead.” The sooner she learned the dangers that lurked in every corner and situation, the safer she would be.

  She darted her tongue over her lips. “A-are you threatening me?”

  “I don’t threaten people.” He paused at the bottom of the stairwell. His gaze strayed to her crimson lips. “I act.” Memories rushed in of the taste of her, and now, with her body flush to his, and only a thin slip of white fabric between them, lust waged a war on his flagging self-control. “Do not approach me when I’m sleeping. Ever.” Of all the women he’d had, never had he slept with them following that mindless act. In part because it had merely been sex, and in part because of the nightmares that sometimes visited him. Those episodes had gripped him since he’d been a boy. Calum and Adair had received countless bloody noses for attempting the same feat his fool of a wife had.

  Ryker resumed walking.

  She wrinkled her pert nose. “I wouldn’t have simply ignored you while you cried.”

  He stumbled. Heat climbed his neck. “I was not crying.” He’d shed his last tear when he was a boy of four who’d been backhanded across the face by Diggory’s whore.

  “Er . . . yes. Of course you weren’t.” Jesus, the woman was a rotted liar. “But if you were,” she said as casually as if they spoke in a fancy parlor, and not as though she was pressed against him, their bodies flush, “I still would not leave you. I’m not a woman who’d ignore someone in need.”

  He lowered his head, and their breath mingled. “You’re a fool, my lady.” A woman who bound herself to a man like him, and who’d open her door to a simple knock, and now who came upon him in the middle of his sleep, could come to no good end. An eerie dread crept along his spine. “Lock the door,” he gritted out, and set her down on the long bench at the kitchen table.

  Penelope tipped her head, and looked about. “Which door?”

  Ryker gritted his teeth.

  “Oh, you mean in the future.” His wife blushed. That innocent expression at odds with the jaded people Ryker kept company with.

  Determined to put up necessary rules that would serve as the foundation for her survival, he laid his hands on the table, effectively trapping her. “Do not approach me when I am sleeping. Do not ask questions. And trust no one. Those three rules might save your life.” Might. The lady would no doubt find ten other ways to Sunday to risk her fool’s head.

  Her lips parted on a small moue, bringing his gaze again to the tempting flesh. I am going to kiss her, again. God help me. Desire heated his veins, and he leaned up to take her mouth. “First, you mentioned four rules.” He froze, their mouths a breath apart, transfixed by her breathtaking fearlessness. “Second, you might try to intimidate me, but I do not believe you’d ever hurt me.”

  Her words effectively doused his appreciation. That unwavering confidence sent waves of disquiet rolling through him. A woman so trusting of him, a man she’d known but three days, did not belong in this world. To send her back to her equally pampered family would only mark her as easy prey for Killoran. “I already hurt you,” he said curtly, brushing his knuckles down her swollen cheek.

  “Very well. You’d never intentionally hurt me, Ryker. There is a distinction.”

  On what would she base that faith? “You’ve known me not even three days,” he said gruffly.

  “Would you intentionally hurt me?” she returned.

  “No,” he conceded in low tones. “I would not.”

  “There you are, then.�
�

  Too many times, however, he’d bloodied his brothers’ noses for their efforts at rousing him from his tortured dreams. Hurt, whether deliberately inflicted or not, brought equal suffering. “There are rules you’ll follow. They’ll keep you alive.” It had allowed him to see one and thirty, nearly two and thirty years.

  “Well, I am not going to follow rules if it means other people are suffering or in distress—”

  “I was not in distress,” he growled.

  “If you choose to ignore someone in need, that is your decision. We are two different people, then.” In a world of understatements, hers was the greatest.

  They stared unblinking, locked in an unending battle. And he didn’t know whether to shake her or kiss her for being so bloody stubborn and naïve. Their chests rose and fell in time. Kiss her? What was this unwitting fascination with the lady’s tempting lower lip? And the scent of her . . . and the taste . . . ?

  He emitted a strangled groan.

  “Are you scared again?”

  “I was never scared,” he said through a suddenly tight throat. Except, with the heat of her satiny soft skin burning him from the outside in, he appreciated there were far greater dangers than the ones to be found in the streets.

  He firmed his mouth. “You, my lady, would do well to quickly learn that danger lurks everywhere.”

  Ryker shoved away from the table and strode to the cabinets along the opposite wall. Dropping to his haunches, he retrieved several cloths, and standing, he dipped them inside the bucket of water left out by Cook for tomorrow’s laundering. He twisted the fabric in his hands, wringing out the excess liquid. He felt Penelope’s stare on his every movement.

  Ryker returned to the table and then, swinging his leg over the opposite side of the bench, he sat. “Turn your face toward the counter,” he murmured.

  Trustingly, too trustingly, she angled her head away from him. His gaze took in the long, graceful column of her neck. He ached to suckle that satiny soft flesh, take it between his teeth and gently nip and—

  Penelope glanced questioningly back.

  Wordlessly, Ryker brushed his fingers over her jaw, nudging her back. He pressed a cloth against her wounded flesh and a little hiss escaped her lips.

  Guilt turned over anew. “I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. Words he never spoke. He made no apologies for who he was or anything he’d done.

  Until now.

  “It is fine,” she said with a crooked smile. “I was born a lady, but I had three troublesome sisters who perfected the art of pugilism. Our brother thought we should know how to properly defend ourselves,” she explained.

  Her brother would gleefully take Ryker apart should he see his sister’s injured cheek. As the compress lost its cool, he tossed it aside and reached for the other. As he held it to her wounded flesh and studied the top of her midnight curls, the luxuriant strands shimmered a near blue-black in the candle’s glow. He itched with the need to tangle his fingers in those tresses and see if they were as satiny soft as they appeared. “I can hold it, Ryker,” she said firmly, applying gentle pressure to his hand.

  He quickly dropped his hand, giving thanks for the dim light that concealed the flush climbing his neck. Blushing like a callow youth with his first whore. What was next? Waltzing lessons?

  Once again, her probing eyes settled on his face. That piercing intensity roused a greater terror than the crowds of people he’d long ago learned to fear. Swinging his other leg over the side of the bench, Ryker reached in his jacket and drew out a cheroot.

  “It was a sneeze.”

  He froze, his hand midway to the lone candle atop the table.

  “In the Duchess of Somerset’s gardens, you were speaking to Calum and heard a noise. He believed it was the wind.” She smiled sheepishly. “It was a sneeze.” With her other hand, Penelope signaled to the cheroot. “They tickle my nose. My brother used to indulge but stopped because . . .”

  Never more had he longed for the pull of a cheroot, the soothing calm as he filled his lungs with the bitter smoke. With a sigh, Ryker stuffed it back inside his jacket and instead withdrew a deck of cards. Absently, he fanned them.

  “You are quite good at that,” she observed.

  He glanced over at his wife. From around the white fabric pressed to her cheek, Penelope studied his movements. Ryker grunted. He should be. He’d been dealing cards for illegal games in the street since he was five.

  “Do you have a favorite game?” she ventured, setting aside her cloth.

  Ryker continued to shuffle the deck. Their arrangement had been settled on as a purely strategic partnership—a business alliance. That was the only use or need he had of a wife, particularly a lady from the ton. With her every inquiry, Penelope challenged that deal.

  Then, you didn’t truly discuss those expectations.

  “I don’t answer questions about myself.” This day, with this woman, he’d already given her more than he’d shared with the whole of his siblings combined.

  Penelope waggled her eyebrows. “That is hardly hopeful for a just-married bride and groom.” She dropped her elbows on the table.

  That was the only way they’d go through their marriage. He’d erected walls to insulate himself from hurt. That fortress would hardly be shattered by a chattering miss. He opened his mouth to disabuse her of any romantic inclinations.

  Penelope held her hand out. “May I?”

  Casting her a dubious look, Ryker turned the cards over.

  With her long, ladylike fingers she fiddled with the cards, arranging them into a neat pile. “Before my brother married, he would often have gentlemen over to play whist,” she said, giving all her attention to shuffling the deck. “I used to sneak out and watch them.” She mimicked his earlier actions, and several cards popped free and fell to the table. “I always thought it looked like good fun because of the whole dice-throwing business.”

  His lips twitched. “Hazard.”

  She tipped her head.

  “Hazard involves two dice.”

  “Truly?” she asked.

  Had he ever been as innocent as this woman? Ryker nodded.

  “Hmph.” She gave her head a bemused shake, dislodging an errant curl. “I swore it was whist.”

  He collected the loose cards and handed them over. Their fingertips brushed and a charge of heat scorched him. Ryker quickly drew back. What power did this woman hold over him? With her slender frame, narrow hips, and pert breasts, she would never have enticed him for even a second look. So how to account for this rush of awareness?

  Brushing that tight curl behind her ear, Penelope reinserted the cards into the pile. “Regardless, they would make wagers while they played.” She glanced up at him again. “Scandalous wagers that did not just involve money,” she said on a conspiratorial whisper. “A wager, then?”

  What was she on about?

  “A game of chance. I win, I ask my questions and you answer. If you win, well, then you may ask a question.” She scrunched her mouth. “Or ask me nothing. Winner decides.”

  Cards and dice were purely tools to fleece men out of their purses. The games she spoke of were better reserved for those bored nobles and pampered children. Releasing a long, slow sigh, Ryker proceeded to deal the cards. “Whist. The game is played clockwise, the ace, king, queen, jack are highest, counting backwards with two being lowest.” He paused and set the stack down. “Cut.”

  With her wide-eyed stare, she shrugged. “I . . .”

  Ryker quickly demonstrated, splitting the deck, and then dealt out half the cards to Penelope and the other half to himself. “You lead to the first trick. I’ll play the same suit. Highest card trumps it.” He breezed through the instructions. “First to reach five points wins. Any questions?”

  He could practically see the wheels of her mind racing. “Er . . . yes.” She chewed the tip of her index finger in a slight, telling gesture that would have cost her a fortune at a legitimate gaming table.

  Penelope finally let h
er hands fall to the table, and she hovered them over her cards. She caught her lower lip between her teeth.

  Ryker studied her full bow-shaped lips, the crimson red hue conjuring summer strawberries, and he wanted to taste the sweetness of her lush mouth. He’d been too long without a woman. There was no other accounting for why such a rather innocent gesture should fill him with a desire to lift her white skirts and make love to her atop the kitchen table with everything and everyone outside this room forgotten.

  Penelope set down a ten of diamonds.

  Swallowing a groan, Ryker studied his cards, and flipped over an ace.

  “Well, drat,” she muttered.

  That win afforded him any inquiry . . . or by her rules, his desperately craved silence. “Why were you under that bench?”

  The blood drained from her knuckles as she gripped her cards. “Cowardice.” Her soft whisper reached his ears.

  A lady who’d hire a hack, set out through the streets of St. Giles, enter his club, and offer him marriage? There wasn’t a thing cowardly about her. Foolish, mayhap. But never cowardly.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked, shifting closer to her on the bench.

  Penelope tapped the cards on the table. “That would be a second question.”

  Not taking his gaze from hers, Ryker tossed down a jack of hearts.

  Her curse, one that would have shocked most members of his club, filled the kitchen, and his lips pulled in another grin. The muscles of his mouth protested the unfamiliar, revealing gesture. “Why did you say it was cowardice?” he asked, before she’d finished setting down her three of hearts.

  She played with the cards in her hands, devoting her attention to them as though they contained the answer to man’s existence. “They were whispering about me. Saying nasty things about my family. I said my piece to the ladies.” Her lip peeled back in a derisiveness that matched his own regard for people of her station. “And then ran off. Like a pathetic, hurt child.” And for that one decision, she’d found herself ruined.

  A pall of silence fell, broken only by the occasional crackle of the blaring fire. “May I deal?” she asked softly. “I am clumsy at shuffling, but I expect I can at least attempt it.”