“Indeed.” A hard glint iced his hazel eyes. Gone was all hint of affable gentleman; in its place was an unyielding stranger. She blinked, and once more he was the smiling gentleman who’d assisted her. She’d not, however, imagined the glimmer there.
For the first time, the folly in sending Niall away registered, and she backed up.
“I confess to some surprise at seeing you here, Lady Chatham.”
Having long been baited by her troublesome sister Poppy, she well recognized the efforts on this man’s part to needle her. Not giving in to fear or unease, she plastered a smile on her face. “I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage, sir.”
He touched the lapels of his sapphire coat. “I am merely a humble mister, Mr. Broderick Killoran at your service, my lady.”
Broderick Killoran. The owner of the rival gaming hell. Dread slithered around inside. She was not so much a fool to believe this a chance meeting between her and the man who’d brought trouble to Ryker’s club. “Thank you for your assistance,” Penelope said between tight lips. “I will leave you to your books.” She made to step around him, but he inserted himself in her path.
Her heart lurched. It was silly to fear him. She was in the middle of a shop and need but call out and the shopkeeper would come running. Niall would be here. And yet there was a menacing darkness in this man’s eyes which roused terror in her breast.
“Do you know what I find as interesting as your being here . . . alone, Lady Chatham?”
She met that taunting question with a stubborn silence. Inside her cloak pocket the heavy weight of her dagger burned with a steadying reassurance.
“Your reading selection.” He flicked a finger over the book at the top of her stack. “What need would you have of children’s primers, hmm?” His eyes bore through her, searching and probing, and she’d wager her very life that he could see the secrets inside her soul.
“They are for my niece, Mr. Killoran, who I’ll be paying a visit to shortly.” The lie tumbled out easily. “If you’ll excuse me?” She dropped a curtsy.
This time, he made no move to stop her, and anxiety loaned speed to her steps as she started in the opposite direction.
“I must applaud your husband in his selection of bride, Lady Chatham,” he called after her.
Continue walking, Penelope. Continue walking.
“You are generous to indulge him so. Or is it merely rumor that Clara remains on in your new . . . home.”
He’d been the one to send the missive. His reach had extended inside Ryker’s club and within the walls of their chambers. Even as she knew not to indulge him in this game where she was the mouse and he the hungry cat, she turned around. “Why don’t you say what it is you intend to say?” she urged, with the frosty tones the leading matrons of Society would be hard-pressed not to find fault with.
“Oh, come, my lady. You’re an innocent, but you’re not stupid.” A slow, jeering grin crooked his lips up at the corner, and this expression of mirth once more met his eyes, only a chilling derision.
“You, however, are, if you think to drive a wedge between me and my husband with your sordid lies.”
The man blinked several times, and then flared his eyes.
“Killoran.”
She wheeled about. Relief assailed her, and she was never more grateful for the appearance of another person in her life. Niall stood at her shoulder, tension dripping from his volatile frame.
For all the steely derision she’d been the recipient of from her brother-in-law, now, with the promise of death in his eyes as he stared at Killoran, she’d no doubt he’d lay down his life for her.
Mr. Killoran rescued his wide brimmed black hat and set it on his head. “Marksman.” He pulled the slight brim forward. “Send my regards to Black.” With a final, mocking half grin, the stranger turned on his heel and stalked off.
She slid her eyes closed.
“Did he hurt you?” Niall demanded roughly.
She gave her head a tight shake, and then eyes trained forward, marched to the front of the shop. An old, balding bookkeeper rushed over as Penelope settled her items on the counter. As he gibbered on about the last sunny skies, she fished around her reticule and withdrew her payment.
Niall remained close. From the corner of her eye she detected the manner in which he skimmed his gaze about. After a seemingly endless transaction, the shopkeeper turned over her books.
“Mrs. Black?” Niall asked, a question in his tone.
Penelope quickly gathered her books, and started for the front of the shop, desperate to return to the safety of the Hell and Sin.
Niall reached past her and shoved the door open, motioning her ahead of him. Quickening her pace, she wound her way through the large throng of shoppers.
Niall followed close. How very different the streets were, but the ugly evil in people’s soul she’d fast come to appreciate extended beyond rank or social status. Ultimately, men and women, lords or ladies, gaming-hell workers or strangers in the street—all were in equal possession of black souls. They were people who delighted in hurting others.
“You didn’t forget your reticule,” Niall observed.
Now he’d speak to her. All these laconic men she now called family guarded their words the way the King’s Army guarded the kingdom. Penelope met his correct supposition with silence.
“Ryker’s world is not safe, Penelope,” Niall said in ominous tones, using her Christian name for the first time since she’d joined herself to Ryker.
Ryker’s world. That slight but significant reminder that she was not one of them. “Killoran would have gladly gutted you in that aisle and left you bleeding there at his feet before I could have returned.”
Her stomach pitched as she conjured a sea of crimson, and she hated that weakness in herself. Hated that she’d be dependent on protection from others to care for her, like a child in need of a nursemaid.
He pounced on her weakness. “Great danger comes with being married to Ryker. You’d be better amongst your own kind.” Her kind.
Penelope stopped in the middle of the pavement so abruptly he collided with her. The package tumbled from her hands and lay on the dirtied pavement, forgotten. “What a sad, narrow-minded existence you live,” she said quietly, ignoring the lords and ladies who gawked at them. Let them talk. It was what they’d do, anyway. “You go through life hating all people born to my station, and you’ve effectively judged and condemned us all.” And with what Ryker had shared, they each had good reason for their mistrust. Emboldened by his silence, Penelope waved a finger under his nose. “In the streets of the Dials you no doubt knew men and women who were disloyal, ruthless murderers. Does that mean all the men and women born to those streets are the same?”
“Yes.”
At that steely, effortless deliverance, goose bumps dotted her flesh. Angling her chin up, she retained his gaze. “I pity you, Niall Marksman.” Gathering her packages, she resumed her march to the carriage, quickening her steps.
Was this to be her future with Ryker? In love with a husband who at best cared for her and brothers-in-law who at best didn’t like her? And who at worst wished her to the devil.
A loud shout went up, muffled by the crowded streets, and brought her to a sudden stop. She glanced around.
Her heart caught.
Two hulking brutes in coarse garments surrounded Niall. One of the tall strangers brandished a knife and screams erupted. Lords hurriedly escorted ladies from the fray. Her heart thumped loudly in her ears as the world moved in a sickening whir. She shot a frantic look in the distance to where their carriage awaited, and then back to Niall, locked in battle with his attackers.
With a curse, Penelope rushed forward. Niall glanced over his shoulder and his eyebrows shot to his hairline. “Go!” he thundered.
One of his assailants brought his knife back.
Most people don’t know how to use a knife, and so when they first stab a man, they raise the knife high and slash down . . .
Niall sidestepped the fatal blow. The heel of his boot caught a stone that jutted from the pavement, and he stumbled.
The other attacker smiled gleefully and pressed his advantage. She staggered to a stop as Niall withdrew his weapon, and in one fluid movement, he buried it in the man’s hand.
An ungodly scream that sent chills through her filled the London streets.
As Niall made to yank his knife free, his other assailant surged forward.
Energy thrumming in her veins, Penelope fished her dagger from her cloak, and rushed behind him. She scraped her knife down his back, shredding the fabric of his cloak. The man spun, tripped, and promptly righted himself. With a roar, he brandished his knife and surged toward her, just as she brought her arm out and swiped her blade down the side of his cheek.
A crimson trail stood out stark on his heavily pockmarked face.
The air left her on a sharp hiss, and she stared numbly at the blood seeping from that gash.
Agony ravaged her side, a pain sharp like the burn of a flame. Her lips parted on a whispery sigh, and she glanced down and then up in numbed shock. She pressed trembling hands to her side. Sticky warmth coated her fingers. Oh, God . . . No. She shook her head several times.
Fear glazed the stranger’s eyes. He staggered away, and then took off limping down the cobbled roads. Then everything proceeded in a blur of time where the world froze around her and then continued spinning rapidly out of control. A constable converged on them, and lords and ladies flooded the streets amongst excited whispers. Niall pressed his knee into his attacker’s back and turned him over.
From over the heads of the small crowd, Niall caught her eye. He flashed a half grin and smartly touched the corner of his brow.
She swayed and fell hard on her knees. A new set of cries went up.
All hint of smile withered from Niall’s heavily scarred face as he shoved his way through the crowd. He came to a stop and held a hand out. “Don’t go fainting on me now . . .”
Penelope held her trembling, blood-soaked palms out. “I-I was . . . I believe . . .”
His eyes fell to the crimson stains, and he paled. “Christ.” With a violent curse, he swept her into his arms and took off running down the street.
Every jarring step, every frantic movement, sent further agony lancing through her. She groaned. This is the hell Ryker had known. Only he’d been a boy . . . Her head lolled limp against Niall’s shoulder.
“Yer a bloody fool,” he rasped.
“Would you have had me just leave you?” she whispered while terror and pain warred for supremacy.
“Yes.”
Blackness licked at the corner of her consciousness and she fought the thick cobwebs descending over her vision. “I don’t leave my family.” She could not give in to sleep. For with it could come eternal darkness. I don’t want to die . . . There was so much she wanted to do. She wanted to have little dark-haired babes, with dimpled cheeks like their father. She wished to waltz with her husband under the stars and play more midnight games of whist when the rest of the world slept on. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her frame shook uncontrollably. She gasped as pain ripped through her side.
Niall shouted to the driver Terry, and the man jumped from his perch. She dimly registered him yanking the door open and collecting her from Niall, and then handing her back inside the carriage. Of their own volition, her eyes slid closed, but not before she spied terror parade across his face. Blackness plucked at the corner of her vision, and she forced her eyes open.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Niall shrugged out of his jacket and with several jerks of the fabric shredded it with his powerful hands. Slumped against the side of the carriage, Penelope borrowed support from the edge and studied him.
“Ryker would have been proud, don’t you think?” Her words emerged faint to her own ears.
“You can ask him yourself.” Niall flexed his jaw. “He’ll call you a damned fool, and then he’ll kill me. As he should. Here.” He knelt on the floor of the carriage as it rambled through the crowded streets. With quaking fingers, he pushed her cloak open. He sucked in a breath through his teeth.
Unable to look at the wound that continually seeped blood, she focused on Niall’s pale cheeks. “It is bad, isn’t it?”
He gave an uneven nod, and at that honesty she caught the inside of her cheek. “W-would I know already?” she asked, as he pressed a strip of fabric to her gushing wound, in a bid to stanch the flow.
“Know what?” he asked, not taking his attention from his efforts.
Odd, she’d spent her life nauseated by the sticky, crimson substance. Yet pain proved a far greater distraction from the nausea it had long inspired. “I-if it pierced an organ.” She tasted her lips experimentally for the metallic bite of blood that would signal her impending death. “Ryker said—”
“It didn’t pierce an organ.”
Wincing when he removed the bloodied strip and replaced it with another bout of pressure, Penelope dropped the back of her head on the squabs of the carriage. “For a boy born on the streets, Niall, you’re a horrid liar.”
As the carriage rolled along at an increasing speed, she dimly registered him reaching around her and binding a cloth tight at her waist. Agony licked at the edge of her wound, and she cried out as pain spread like fire through her whole being. Her lashes fluttered.
“Do not close yer eyes,” he ordered with a harshness that roused a pained smile.
“Never tell me you’re afraid I’ll never wake up, Niall Marksman?” Her eyes grew heavy as the edge of blackness crept forward, once more, and yanked at her consciousness, dragging her forward. If she slept, she feared she’d never wake again. She’d never told Ryker how desperately she loved him. How hiding under the bench had been the greatest scrape she’d ever found herself in because it had brought him into her life. She’d never be a mother or see her brother or sisters again. Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I’m afraid to sleep,” she confided on a broken whisper.
“Then don’t.”
“I cannot stay . . .”—awake. With her tongue heavy in her mouth, Penelope struggled to form words. With the weight of responsibility he carried upon his shoulders, Ryker would blame himself. She could not leave, having him believe this was his fault. “Tell him I love him.”
“Tell him yerself.” There was a desperate plea in Niall’s three words. He rapped hard on the roof, bellowing for Terry to hurry.
“I cannot stay . . .”
And at last, Penelope turned over the fight and embraced the numbing painlessness that darkness brought.
Chapter 23
Dearest Fezzimore,
I fell and landed on a jagged stone. I know it doesn’t sound horrible, but there was so much blood. I vow I will never be able to look at blood again the same way. Or rocks. You never can trust a jagged rock.
Penny
Age 9
His world had righted itself.
Hands clasped behind his back, Ryker took in the full gaming tables. The declining number of patrons had since climbed. Those numbers only swelling with the threat of danger whispered about the club, following Killoran’s planned attack.
The guard at the front opened the door, admitting three garishly clad dandies who stumbled into the club, drunk and ready to lose more coin to Ryker’s empire. Those same foolish pups who craved the danger found on the streets but who could never know the hell that came with it.
At one time, he had filed all those brainless peers into the same, neat category. None of them had proved his value or worth. That isn’t true . . . your brother-in-law nearly sacrificed his life to save your sister . . .
It was a detail he’d glossed over, failing to truly accept—until Penelope. She, the one woman who’d challenged his every belief and every rule, until everything he’d taken as fact had been cast into new shades of grey that he was still left to puzzle through.
Another trio of patro
ns surged through the front entrance, men who looked about the club and whose gazes landed on Ryker. Whispers were exchanged between them as they found a place at a nearby faro table.
“Full tables again.” Calum, who’d been stationed at his side, silent until now, made the same observation.
He nodded.
“And the bookkeeper you’ve hired?”
Surely, if your sister has proved the most proficient worker in the past, you can see that any woman is capable of that role . . . ?
What havoc Penelope had wrought on him and his club. He’d be damned ten times on Sunday before he admitted his wife’s challenge had led to that hiring. Ryker shrugged. “She is no replacement for Helena.” But she was the best of all the men to interview for the post . . . and for that, Penelope had been correct.
Calum snorted. “Who would be?”
Silent, unemotional, and content to remain closeted away in her rooms, seeing to the books, the woman whom he’d interviewed, Mrs. Hobbes, had proved unlike all the stammering, flushing bookkeepers desperate for employment.
The earlier buzz at the faro table spread quick and like wildfire through the club. The raucous din of laughter dimmed with the chatter of gentlemen seated about the hell as those peers angled their head around in his direction.
“What in blazes is going on?” Calum muttered.
Ryker frowned. Any slight deviation from the norm hinted at danger. It had been a lesson learned long ago and never forgotten.
Several bold, drunken dandies pointed in Ryker’s direction, and then gave their heads pitying shakes. Unease turned over inside him, and he glanced about for a hint of Killoran’s henchmen at work. “Where is my wife?” he asked, and quickly walked the perimeter of the club.
Calum hastened his step to keep up.
“She is accounted for. Niall escorted her to Bond Street. The lady wished to go shopping.”
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