She yanked at her arm, trying to pull her hand out of view. “Nothing, It’s nothing.”
His grip tightened on her wrist. “You do this to yourself, don’t you?”
“Strider, it’s nothing. Truly.”
“No, I’ve seen you, Pen. Sitting there in the carriage like a statue. It was the same thing in my drawing room. The same thing in the park. You’re cold marble. Not moving a muscle, not letting even the slightest blink veer out of place when you are hiding whatever it is you’re thinking. But your finger, your finger betrays you.” He shook her wrist. “This blood betrays you.”
She glared up at him, fire in her eyes, though her voice and face stayed eerily calm. “What do you want me to say, Strider? That I learned early on with the Flagtons that I couldn’t show emotion—couldn’t be angry, couldn’t be scared, couldn’t be happy, couldn’t cry, couldn’t have opinions, couldn’t speak out of turn, couldn’t be anything other than a silent, frozen statue in their household? That’s all they would allow, so that’s all I was.”
His gut twisted harder.
While he had spent the last seventeen years raging at everything that moved against him in the slightest way, she had sat, silent, taking everything that was piled upon her by that blasted family. Taken all of it and channeled into her hands, her fingers, the scars he could see dotting her palm evident.
Rage against her false sense of calm reared in his chest and he yanked her wrist past his waist, making her fall into him. Her right palm landed on his chest so she didn’t crash into him. He leaned down until his forehead almost touched hers.
“If I ever see your hands clasp like that again, Pen, I swear—”
“You swear what—you’ll slap me? Yell at me? Beat me?” Her voice still held no emotion. “I’ve been through it all and you can’t do a thing to change what I do to survive.”
She stared up at him, so defiantly emotionless Strider snapped. Anything to put the real Pen back in front of him. He needed her yelling at him—not this block of granite she’d shifted into.
He dropped her wrist, reaching out and wrapping his hand around her neck. Pulling her into him, his mouth met hers—angry and raw and she didn’t know what to do with the kiss, with him. Not until her lips started to respond on their own, carving their own place against his mouth. Emotion. Honest emotion from her. Emotion she couldn’t hold fast against. He let his tongue slip past her lips to taste her.
A sharp blade of lightning cut down his spine—she tasted like summer and salty air and sweet. Things he’d locked away to the past and never revisited.
He pulled his mouth away from hers and stared down at her, their breath mingling. “This. This is what I’m going to do. Someone needs to shock you out of the granite statue you’ve locked yourself into.” Both of his hands went up, capturing the sides of her face, his voice so raw he didn’t recognize it. “Nothing in. Nothing out. That’s all you know when there is so much more, Pen.”
His lips clamped back down onto hers, the rage in him still boiling so savagely he couldn’t control it, couldn’t control the kiss until he was bruising her and still he wanted more. Hell, she wanted more—everything his mouth did she repeated. Enthusiastically—driven—like the secrets of the world were locked away in his mouth.
He didn’t just want more, he needed more. Everything she tasted of, everything she was.
Everything he couldn’t have—the innocence of her.
A split second of clarity and he yanked his lips away from hers.
Spinning around, he stalked toward the carriage they had left at the corner of the Jacobson estate.
She would follow or she would not.
He didn’t care.
Couldn’t care.
{ Chapter 10 }
The black dress wouldn’t do.
She had known it after what she had seen on the London streets. Lace and chiffon and silk and muslin, all in the most wonderful of colors and patterns. Dresses that set off the women as formidable, important, distinguished.
No, the black dress wouldn’t do. Especially after seeing the Jacobson estate the previous day. They were people accustomed to lace and chiffon and silk and muslin. Not bland black dresses.
But Pen was at a loss for how to rectify the situation as she’d given all her money to Ole Ona to deliver Mrs. Flagton’s package.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the cheval mirror in the corner of her room at the coaching inn. The morning light hit her hair, making it glow, and she tucked a loose strand along her temple behind her ear. She’d left her hair long in the back, only pulling the front locks back into a loose chignon, hoping against hope her long blond strands would pull attention away from the black dress if she draped them forward over her shoulder.
But little could be done to temper the severity of the cloth. She resigned herself to her drab dress as she set it upon her body. The black would have to do—she had no other choice. Her family wouldn’t care, she was sure of it. They would be happy to meet her, happy to embrace her no matter what dress she wore.
If they were truly her family, that was. That still had to be determined.
And the pestering doubts that Strider had put into her head yesterday had stuck with her all night, making each second tick by with increasing dread. The closer to morning it got, the more anxious she’d become.
She’d let Strider rip holes in her hope. Hope she needed desperately to hold on to.
She looked out the window. Grey skies, but no rain. Maybe there was time for a walk before they set off to the Jacobson estate. She could clear her head in the open air—this country air that didn’t sink into her lungs, weighing her down like the air in London did.
Air that was free of Strider. That would be nice. She’d breathed nothing but his air in the waking hours these past days—air that had set into her lungs just as heavily as the London air. The man was insufferable, setting his doom onto her at every turn, scowling at her for hours on end in the carriage—and then he’d had the audacity to kiss her yesterday.
Truly kiss her with a raw lust that he hadn’t bothered to hide.
Worse yet, she’d kissed him back. Her body—her mouth—betraying everything in her head.
She hadn’t had a clue what she was doing in the throes of the kiss. His tongue slipping past her lips, tasting her. Her response, following his lead, kissing him back, her own tongue breaching his mouth.
She knew full well what sin was—it had been drilled into her head every day by Mr. Flagton—but the heat of that kiss had pooled in the crux of her, making her ache between her legs. Sin that had felt more like heaven than hell. And every time she let the memory of it seep into her mind, her lips twitched, anxious, and her folds throbbed, wishing for more from Strider. More of everything.
Damn him.
She’d never thought sin was this easy to fall into. But her body had a mind of its own on the matter.
Her hand went to her chest and lifted the bodice of her black dress away from her bosom and the heat suddenly collecting there.
She hadn’t known what to do with the kiss. And she certainly hadn’t known what to do after it when Strider had shoved himself away from her and stalked to the carriage, the heels of his boots grinding into the gravel with each step.
She had stood there beside that fence, watching him retreat with her mouth half ajar—stupefied—until she realized he might very well take his carriage and abandon her.
All she had wanted from him since she had found him in London was the slightest smile, the tiniest kindness to tell her she wasn’t forgotten. That she meant something. That they had been family once upon a time and he remembered it and cherished it as well as she did.
During the last three days, she hadn’t been able to place the what and why of his constant anger at her, and then to have it swept aside the instant his lips met hers had flummoxed her. Her mind now sat even more scattered than it had been with the dread of meeting her mother’s family. With barely five words after the
y left the road in front of the Jacobson estate, Strider had deposited her in a room at the coaching inn. She hadn’t seen him the rest of the evening—the innkeeper’s wife delivered dinner to her room.
She’d gone to bed bewildered, with no clear path forward.
Yes, she needed air.
Good, solid, no-one-around her air.
Pen opened the door to her room, stepping out without looking and crashing straight into a chest.
Strider’s chest.
His right hand was on her upper arm instantly, pulling her upright just before she fell onto her backside after bouncing off of him.
“You were thinking of going somewhere?” His eyebrows angled inward, his look ready to scold. “We don’t leave for another hour.”
She motioned past him. “Just a quick walk for some air. The countryside is so much better than London and I feel like I can breathe here.”
His eyebrows relaxed. “That can wait.” He released her and lifted his left arm. Strewn across his forearm was a long piece of white cloth wrapping something. “I have something for you.”
She stilled, her look creeping up to his face. “Something for me?”
“I know.” An awkward grin that looked out of place crossed his lips—like he hadn’t smiled in years and couldn’t remember how. “I didn’t expect it either.”
Her brow furrowed and she stepped back with her hand on the door and her opposite arm swung wide to invite him into the room. He walked across the spacious chamber and set the cloth on his arm onto the bed, letting it drape down the side. Finding the loose long-edge of the fabric, he peeled back the white cloth.
A dress—no two—no three—had been wrapped in the sheet.
He picked up the first dress, a lavender satin concoction with rich white silk trim lining the top and bottom of the breast, with an x crossing the bosom. Full, white lace sleeves capped off the top, while the hem was left simple and flowing. He turned back to her, holding it up. “It will be easier today if you are dressed appropriately.”
Her chest tightened. It was elegant. Simple. Perfect. “I didn’t think…” She struggled for the right words that wouldn’t upset him and make him stomp out of the room in anger. “I didn’t think you wanted me to go.”
“I distrust what will happen with Baron Jacobson and his family. That doesn’t mean I don’t want you to discover the truth about who your mother’s family—your family—is.” He fluttered the lavender dress in the air. “This will help. It will help in those first seconds that they see and judge you. Though I wasn’t sure at the modiste what would fit you. I could only describe your height and width.”
Her bottom lip had pulled under her top teeth. A peace offering, she guessed this was.
Whatever his motive, she’d take it. She had no pride left at this point.
Pen closed the door and walked over to him, her fingers going to the sides of the lavender dress, sliding along the smooth softness of it.
She’d only felt cloth like this when she was young and she would grab onto Mama June’s skirts. Or when she would get into the giant chest in the corner of her room that Mama June had said held her mother’s clothes. Mrs. Flagton’s clothes had always been as stiff and rough as her own black dress.
“I’ll need to try them on.”
“I imagined.” He looked to the door. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“No, I don’t know how they fasten and I might need your help.” She looked over her shoulder. “I can change behind the screen.”
He dropped the lavender dress into her hands and she took it, clutching it to her chest as she walked over to the changing screen along the inner left corner of the room.
As quickly as she could, she stripped out of her black dress, leaving her short stays and chemise in place, and put the lavender dress on slowly, the fabric of it slipping across her skin like the softest kitten. She honestly didn’t care if it fit properly or not—anything was better than the atrocity of the black dress she’d been stuck in for the last seventeen years. It’d been replaced over the years, of course, as she changed size or wore out the seams, but it was always the same. Sober. Respectable. Cheap.
Her fingertips ran along the skirt, making it wave, watching the light catch it as it floated about her body.
Beautiful. Pure beauty wrapping her for the first time in her life.
“I almost killed you, Pen.”
Her head jerked up. Strider had been silent and she had been lost in a reverie of the fabric.
Had he just said what she thought he did?
The rear of the lavender dress still gaped open along her back, so she set her hand on her chest, holding the cloth in place as she poked her head out past the edge of the wooden screen. “What? When?”
Strider still stood by the bed, his feet planted, across the room. His gaze travelled from the floor to her face and his light brown eyes looked like ghosts had visited—sad, vacant, living in another time. “When we were nine—that time after the fire when I couldn’t take care of you—even though I swore I would. You almost starved to death. I failed you so utterly the only option was to send you back again and again to that bloody deranged family.”
She stepped around the screen and walked halfway across the room to him, the skirt of the dress dragging behind her on the floor. “Strider—no. You never failed me.”
“I did. I couldn’t take care of you and I almost killed you.”
“You were nine. I was nine. We were too young.”
“Nine was old enough.” His voice was flat, emotionless. “I survived. I should have been able to save you too—save you from them. You begged me so many times and I couldn’t do it.”
Her eyes closed, her throat clenching. “Do you remember what you said to me that last time?”
His mouth clamped closed, his eyes darkening down to the depths of Hades. He nodded.
“You said I was a load you couldn’t carry. Useless. I was holding you down.” She winced slightly, the words still carving painfully into her chest. “And I was. I was all of those things. You needed to do it—send me back to them again and again—or I wouldn’t have survived. You were right. I wouldn’t have survived and I would have brought you down with me.”
His head gave a slight shake. “I didn’t even try.”
“No—you tried for a year—I tried for a year.” Her fingers curled into the satin of the dress at her chest. “Do you not remember how hard we tried to be fine—just the two of us? We struggled every day just to make it to the next. We wanted to be fine, but we weren’t. That was the harsh truth of it.”
She jabbed another step forward, her stare pinning him. “You—you were the only one between the two of us that was strong enough—had the mettle—to call it what it was. To send me to the Flagtons. And then to send me back to them again and again. If you hadn’t, I would have died. Or become a child prostitute. Or starved to death. You chose to do the only thing that was going to keep me alive.”
He wouldn’t look at her, his glare going to the upper corner of the room above her head. “But how I did it—”
“Yes. You were cruel and I hated you for it. I hated you for so long for what you said to me.” Her shoulders lifted in a shrug, slipping out of the loose sleeves of the dress. “But cruelty was the only thing that was going to work. You were always like that, Strider. You were kind or you were cruel. There was never an in between with you. I have always lived in the middle, but you—you always knew—to the marrow of your bones—what was right or wrong in your world.”
“Except that what I did was wrong and I crushed the one person I swore I would protect.”
“You did.” She nodded. “But, you were right to do it. Be cruel.”
His look finally dropped to her, his voice a low rumble. “I never meant the words, Pen.”
“I know—or I think I know,” she said, her voice soft. “Or I hope. Maybe it was a lie I told myself, and it took me years to come about to it—long after I saw you again in the Port of Ve
racruz for I still hated you then for it—but I understand now why you did what you did that last day.”
“No need for hope or a lie.” His gaze cut into her, so heated it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. “That is the truth of it. I never meant those words. Never.”
Her breath caught in her throat. Honesty from him—so recognizable from how he would look when they were young—that it sent a garbled sound bubbling upward in her throat, half a gasp, half a cry.
Silly, how a tangible touchstone from the past—the honesty in his light brown eyes—could make her insides crumble like that.
Her fingers twitched, wanting to reach out. Touch him. His arm. His chest. His neck. Pull herself close to him where she could hide in his mass just like she had done years ago. He’d always been her protector and the years had never tarnished the feel of it. To be held. Loved.
But no.
He wanted nothing to do with her.
She had to think only on that. Asking for more was dangerous, for it would only shatter her when he walked away again. And he would walk away. He was here for this meeting today and then he was done with her. If anything, the kiss yesterday was testament to that fact. He’d tasted her and then stalked away. Done.
Just as done as he would be in another day.
{ Chapter 11 }
At a loss to reply to his words, Pen’s back stiffened as her rigid arms shifted, trying to shrug her shoulders back into the lavender dress. She forced her cheeks upward, working to at least manifest a smile on her face. Unsuccessful, she awkwardly turned away from Strider, unable to bear his stare.
“Could you please?” Her right forefinger wagged over her shoulder to point to the laces lining the back of the dress.
Strider stepped forward silently, his fingers grabbing the edges of the dress and pulling it tight to her body. The satin in place, he worked the laces upward, his knuckles brushing against her back, searing his heat through her chemise onto her skin.
Holding her hair in front of her right shoulder, she craned her neck forward as her head stayed bowed. Still. She held her breath, her body rigid as his fingers worked the dress—a mouse in the corner, frozen so as not to be devoured. Crushed under his heel.
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