At one time, that admission would have earned a derisive sneer from Ryker. “Shopping,” he repeated dumbly. In the time he’d come to know Penelope, she’d proved herself wholly uninterested in fripperies or baubles. Now, his shoulders sagged with some relief. He located Adair at the front of the club, a hand at his waist, as he assessed the club.
Then, a kind of calm settled over the hell, as the patrons retrained their attentions on the games that had called them there.
The calm held an even thicker promise of ominousness that chilled. “See that the private suites are secured,” Ryker said out the side of his mouth.
The front doors exploded open, and he swung his gaze to the front of the hell. He stood rooted to the floor as Niall spilled into the entrance, his arms full. One word tumbled from Niall’s lips. “Killoran.”
A dull humming filled Ryker’s ears and jumbled his mind, making it impossible to speak. To breathe. No. Ryker shook his head and retreated a step. Niall’s frantic shouts came as if from a great distance, muffled and incoherent. Penelope’s head wobbled forward, limp.
It wasn’t her. It was another. It was another woman with midnight curls and a faint birthmark on her neck.
“Ryker.” Calum’s frantic shout yanked him from the precipice of hell and propelled him into movement.
Ryker raced over, meeting Niall, and his brother turned her over. His stomach heaved as bile climbed his throat. “Oh, God.” Blood soaked her cloak. Her cheeks a stark white.
She is dead . . .
“She is alive,” Niall rasped, and Ryker’s eyes slid briefly closed. “Oi’m so sorry.”
This is my fault. I should have been at her side. Nothing and no one was more important than her . . .
A tortured groan ripped from deep inside, and Ryker thundered for a doctor.
Fueled by madness, Ryker rushed through the hell with Penelope’s limp frame in his arms. Patrons hurriedly cut him a wide swath, stepping out of his way.
With Niall hot at his heels, Ryker raced up the steps. They reached Ryker’s chambers and his brother threw the door open, allowing Ryker inside.
Breath coming hard and fast in his ears, Ryker carried Penelope’s lifeless form to the bed and set her down gently on the coverlet. With trembling fingers, he unfastened her cloak and it lay a mark of green upon the white blanket. The air slipped through him on a slow, painful exhale. The whole of her gown had been soaked through.
“Oi bound her,” Niall said, his voice tortured.
The bindings heavy with blood. Her blood.
Another agonized moan escaped him. Ryker came up on his knees and with all the breath trapped in his lungs pressed his ear to her chest. Her heart beat reassuringly, slower. Her breath shallow. He slid his eyes closed a moment. Thank God.
“Two of Killoran’s men attacked me on the street. Penelope came back. Joined the fray.” Agonized remorse hung on that telling. “I’m so sorry,” he repeated.
I’m not a woman who’d ignore someone in need . . .
A strangled sob escaped him as he fished his knife out and cut away the bindings. Ignoring the flurry of activity of servants rushing in with strips of bandages and fabric and bowls of water, Ryker gently cut the bodice of her gown away. He damned his shaking fingers and peeled the fabric away from the wound, so that her life’s blood spilled onto his hands, staining them, marking them.
You foolish, foolish woman.
Blood still seeped from the laceration but a quarter of an inch wide, yet capable of ending her smile. And her laughter. He blinked back a thick haze that fell over his eyes and held his palms up, staring blankly at them.
Her blood.
Someone wept . . .
Tears fell copiously on the tops of his hands, and he glanced down as the crystal drops blurred with the red of her blood. It is me. I’m crying. With a curse Niall pressed a fabric to the wound, applying pressure. “I don’t believe it pierced an organ,” Niall said quietly from his side.
“Stone,” he rasped. The bloody doctor born of the streets who tended broken noses and limbs, and despised everything connected to the nobility, was all he had to care for her? His gut churned. “Where in blazes is Stone?” Oh, God. So much blood. So much.
“He’s gone,” Adair replied from where he kept guard at the doorway.
Gone?
The air left him on a swift exhale, and Ryker, with his palms stained crimson, sank back on his haunches. He’d shut everyone from respectable origins out, and now Penelope lay here, with no one but him, Niall, Adair, Calum. Ripping at his hair, he shoved to his feet and looked around. By God, think, man. Think. He dug his fingertips into his temple, and Penelope’s blood smeared his skin. I, alone, cannot help her . . .“Do not leave her,” he managed raggedly.
And to the shouts of Calum and Adair, Ryker raced from the room. He broke into a sprint, rage and terror fueling his every step. “My horse,” he boomed at a servant who had the misfortune of stepping into his path.
The young man nodded frantically and sprinted in the opposite direction.
“Where are you going?” Calum called, his footsteps echoing from over Ryker’s shoulder.
Ignoring his brother’s frantic calls, Ryker bolted down the stairs and through the now-empty hell, rushing outside to where a servant waited with the reins of his mount. The thick, dank air, often reassuring in its familiar stench, hung heavy, and his belly churned. Ryker continued riding until the streets changed from dangerous to fashionable.
He brought Fortune to a halt outside the fancy London townhouse and handed the reins to a nearby street urchin. Ryker tossed a bag of coins in the greedy urchin’s hands. “There will be more,” he panted, and bolted up the steps.
She is going to die.
And it is because you selfishly bound yourself to her, all to save your club. She’d belonged with a proper gentleman, who took her for walks in Hyde Park and read her sweet sonnets. He’d bartered his soul too many times to count in his life, and now the devil had come to collect. Not breaking stride, Ryker hurled the front door open and stumbled into the foyer. “Sinclair,” he thundered, as servants came scurrying.
The butler rushed into the foyer. “You cannot—” The servant skidded to a stop, and his eyes formed round circles as he took in Ryker’s bloodstained visage.
“Sinclair,” Ryker boomed again, and pushing past the terror-stricken servant he took the steps two at a time.
The rapid beat of footsteps sounded from behind him. “What is this about, Black?” Sinclair demanded, that sharp command bringing Ryker to a stop.
He wheeled around and turned up bloodstained palms. Through a tight throat, he managed one word: “Penelope.”
All the color leached from the earl’s face, as he alternated his blank stare between Ryker’s crimson fingers and face. An agonized groan befitting a wounded beast echoed around the foyer, as Sinclair staggered back a step. “No. No. No. No,” the earl keened.
Ryker tried to force words out. “She is alive.” Or she was, when he’d left her. Agony cinched off his airflow. “There was a fight. In the streets.” And his fool wife had rushed toward it to help a man who’d treated her with nothing but unkindness.
I do not run away from the fight, Ryker . . .
“She is at my—our—club but I . . .” He who’d never asked a soul for a scrap, who had opted to steal what he needed before begging, humbled himself before this man. “I need a doctor for her. I need help. I need . . .” He raked shaking hands through his hair. “Please,” he managed that entreaty, a word born now for a woman whose life mattered more than his own, or his club, or anyone.
The earl covered his eyes with a large shaking hand. “She is alive,” he breathed. Then, his brother-in-law gave his head a hard shake. “Send for Dr. Carlson and see that he goes straightway to the Hell and Sin,” he called out to a footman, and the young man took off running. “My mount,” he thundered, with a resolve and steadiness to his tone that reached inside and managed to pull Ryker back from t
he cusp of madness.
“It has already been seen to, my lord,” the butler assured, rushing for the door.
He yanked it open and together Ryker and Sinclair rushed outside. They rode at a breakneck speed through the fashionable streets of London, earning shouts and raised fists.
Ryker’s breath came ragged in time to the thundering of Fortune’s hoofbeats.
Do not die. Please, do not die . . . And as he rode, he bartered with a God he’d once believed false. I will give up all for her, just do not let her die . . .
After an infernal stretch of time, they arrived at the club. The guards waiting outside rushed to collect the reins of their horses as they dismounted, and a young man immediately yanked the door open.
Falling into quick steps alongside one another, Ryker and Sinclair moved through the eerily empty club. Silent. As death.
A moan trapped in his throat, and Ryker choked on it. “She is in our chambers.” How long he’d spent shutting her out—of his life, his gaming hell—but it was them, together. She owned his club and his heart with equal power.
They stepped inside, and his heart squeezed with renewed terror. Absolute quiet hung in the room, and his brothers looked back. Ryker’s throat worked. “Is she . . . ?” Please, do not let her be dead . . .
“She’s alive,” Niall said gruffly.
Lingering his gaze on Penelope’s still form, largely cleaned of blood, the earl shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it onto a nearby table, stacked with journals. Penelope’s journals. On numbed legs, Ryker followed the other man, a gentleman who’d entrusted Ryker with the care of his sister. He balled his hands and hovered at his wife’s side. I’ve failed her. I’ve failed her in every way.
The earl sank to a knee beside the bed and covered Penelope’s white hand. “Oh, Penny,” Sinclair whispered, his voice cracking. “What have you done?” Then the facade of strength came crumbling down as he bowed his head and wept.
Ryker’s insides twisted at the broken sounds of despair spilling past his brother-in-law’s lips. “Send for my mother,” the earl managed.
Adair looked to Ryker, and he managed a slight nod.
Moments later Oswyn threw the door open, and a tall, bespectacled gentleman, out of breath, came rushing in.
“Carlson,” the earl greeted hoarsely, coming to his feet.
Dr. Carlson didn’t bother with greetings but hurried over to his patient. No words were needed. The grim set to his mouth and the resignation in his eyes spoke to the truth that Ryker had known since Niall stumbled into the club.
Time passed in a whir. And through the bloodcurdling screams that pierced Penelope’s lips when the doctor doused her wound in alcohol and then stitched her flesh, Ryker’s thin grasp on sanity grew more and more taut. She is going to die. She is going to die, and with her will go my very reason for breathing. Ryker dug his fingertips hard against his temple and ground the digits sharply into his flesh.
I cannot bear this. If he could not do something for her, he would go mad.
Another wrenching cry filled the room, and with a primal growl Ryker shoved to his feet.
Penelope’s rasping breath filled his ears and tortured his mind. She is going to die . . . She is going to die because of me, and my feud with Killoran . . . “Go to him,” he said on a steely whisper.
Niall and Calum paused.
“Killoran,” Ryker managed the one name.
Do it. Have the bastard killed. You want to kill him. Stick a dagger in his heart and end him . . .
“What do you want?” Niall asked, his meaning clear.
Hate will destroy you if you let it, Ryker . . .
“Answers.” There could be no more death. Death fueled only more death. “Leave him living when you’re through.”
That gravelly command set his brothers into movement.
He swallowed around the swell of emotion in his throat. This great rivalry that had sustained him. This need to own the preeminent hell, it brought him no joy. It brought him wealth and power. But otherwise, his life as one of the wealthiest self-made men in the realm was as empty as it had been all those years earlier when he’d thieved for Diggory.
Penelope mattered. Her life. Her happiness.
A woman wants a life that is free of danger . . .
Those words, her words, once spoken, whispered tauntingly around his mind.
And she will die because of me . . . Agony sliced through his insides, worse than any blade or bullet he’d taken to his person, and while the doctor continued to tend her wound, Ryker sucked in slow, gasping breaths—and prayed.
Penelope’s world existed in a haze of sharp agony and a whir of confusion.
Muffled voices and sharp weeping penetrated the fog she existed within.
“Grave, Mr. Black . . . Very dire . . .”
That grim verdict rattled around her head as her mother’s quiet sobs filled the room. Except through the thick fog of confusion, Penelope battled to make sense. Why would her mother be here? She’d never step foot inside a gaming hell.
Penelope struggled to open her eyes. To reassure her mother that she would be all right. That she was always all right, and yet she could not fight free of the heavy blanket weighting her limbs. Why can I not move . . . ?
“You cannot die . . .”
Poppy. Then always fearless and optimistic Poppy dissolved into a blubbering mess.
What was this dream she could not climb out of where even Poppy visited the club and cried at her side? Penelope struggled to lift her fingers, to stretch them out and reassure her that she would not die. Penelope wouldn’t allow it.
Except the inky blackness pulled at her consciousness and dragged her away from the tangible grief of her family.
She thrashed, fighting her way back, and an agonized groan tore from her throat.
“You are not to die, Penelope Black. Do you hear me?”
Through the miserable haze of her nightmare, she smiled through the pain. There was Ryker. Commanding and unyielding even in her wretched slumber. “I cannot live without you . . .” Ryker’s broken cries slipped through the curtain of blackness, and she thrashed her head back and forth. Her entire body burned with a vicious heat, as though someone had touched a flame to her and she was going up in a scorching conflagration.
I am dying . . . It is me . . .
In the murky netherworld she dwelled in, reality shifted in and out of focus, with her mother ordering about a room of people, and Poppy and Prudence sobbing, and then there was Ryker—pleading, begging forgiveness.
“I am so sorry. So sorry. I love you . . .” He loved her? Clawing at the darkness threatening to pull her under, Penelope moaned, searching for Ryker’s hand, wanting the gift of what he offered.
And then she remembered nothing more.
Chapter 24
Dearest Fezzimore,
Someday, I wish to have a gentleman who will sweep me into his arms and carry me. I’m not entirely certain where the heroes in my books carry those ladies, but I expect it is wonderful.
Penny
Age 11
Postscript: You mustn’t mention anything to Mama about me finding her secret collection of gothic novels
In the days that followed, Ryker remained at Penelope’s side. His wife’s ragged, shallow breaths thundered loud in the silent chambers. The only other sound in the midnight quiet that of the Dowager Countess of Sinclair’s hushed murmurings.
From where Ryker stood in the far corner, with his back against the wall and his hands folded behind him, he took in the loving tableau of mother tending daughter. The dowager countess stroked Penelope’s hand and hummed an eerily discordant tune.
All his life he’d believed lords and ladies as soulless, faithless creatures incapable of caring about anything beyond their wealth and power. His life had been so devoid of any warmth or tender sentiments that he’d convinced himself those were illusions reserved for foolish dreamers, too weak to survive on the truth that was life.
&n
bsp; It had been easier to believe love and laughter and warmth were as false as a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow than to accept that they were real gifts, gifts fate had deemed Ryker Black unworthy of.
Now he stood a silent observer to the tender exchange between the dowager countess and her still-unconscious daughter, in a moment that only further shattered all the old lies he’d constructed his very existence on. The parade of Penelope’s devoted family inside the club and in these very chambers, long barred for entry to anyone but himself, had proved those lies. The ravaged lines of their noble brows, the unapologetic tears shimmering in their eyes. These were people who loved powerfully. And he’d robbed them of the woman deserving of that love.
His throat closed, making it impossible to drag forth air, and he stared into the inky darkness broken only by the hearth blazing in the corner. He knocked the back of his head silently against the wall.
The shadows danced ominously off Penelope’s still form. Periodically, she wrenched her head to the right and then the left, whimpering and burrowing into the mattress. Agony sluiced his insides. And he wanted to take all her tortured pain and make it his own. But he could not. He was left powerless. Watching. Waiting. For her to open her eyes. For her to die. For something.
“Shh,” her mother whispered, stroking Penelope’s sweat-dampened brow. “She is calmer when you are at her side.”
He could pretend he didn’t hear the older woman. Could remain on guard in the corner, an observer, and nothing more. Wordlessly, Ryker pushed away from the wall and with wooden steps crossed the room. He hovered behind his mother-in-law’s chair, and then claimed a spot on the edge of Penelope’s bed.
Ryker forced himself to look at his wife, and with the distance of the room now erased, it hit him like a blade to the heart. Her high, proud cheeks sunken in and their color a ghastly white, she bore little resemblance to the spitfire who’d gone toe-to-toe with him since she’d stormed his office.
Oh, Penelope.
Ryker collected her limp fingers and turned them over in his hands, studying the smooth white skin. His gaze snagged on a slight scar, and he passed his thumb over that out-of-place mark. He wanted to know all her secrets. All the stories she carried. The words she labored over in her diaries, he wanted for himself.
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