Exiled Duke: An Exile Novel

by K. J. Jackson

  “No.” He stepped to her, tugging the sheet away from where it wrapped around her chest, pulling it down past her torso. His fingers quickly worked the knots on the twine binding her wrists together. “But there were a lot of things I didn’t mention. Since the fire, time has never been kind to us. Too long in poverty. Too short in bliss.”

  He winced as her fingers rubbed on her wrists, smoothing the raw red welts the twine had left. The fishmonger hadn’t taken any care with Pen at all. He needed to send someone after the imbecile.

  He dropped to his knees in front of her, untangling the sheet from her legs and untying her ankles. “It’s why we’re here. Why I had you brought here. We need time. Time without interruptions. Without impending doom.”

  His hands lifted to rest on her knees, his eyes meeting hers. “But first, you stink of fish.” He inclined his head to the adjoining chamber. “Bath.”

  Her nose wrinkled at him, her glare able to melt ice. “I didn’t stink before I was accosted.”

  “I apologize for that as well.” He stood, holding his hand outward toward the steaming bath he’d had readied for her.

  Her body nearly shaking in anger, she stood from the chair and spun, untangling the last of the sheet from her body. He couldn’t blame her for her anger. He’d had her accosted on the street and scared the wits out of her. Every fiery look aimed at him he deserved.

  But he didn’t care. She was here. In front of him. Unscathed enough to blame him for the injustice of her current situation.

  After his last days of terror—turning over every rock and searching every hovel in London for her—he’d take anything she doled out to him at this point.

  Pen silently walked past him into the bathing chamber and sat on the wooden cane chair, untying her boots and removing them.

  Strider followed her, leaning against the frame of the door as he watched her.

  Her boots off, she stood and unbuttoned the simple wool pelisse in a deep blue that was a shade darker than the functional cerulean muslin dress she wore underneath. She was in color again, not in black. Aside from the smell of her, she looked well. Her cheeks flush and healthy, the soft muslin dress fitting her shape closely, accentuating her curves. He needed to find out where she got it from—what man was daring to set such finery on her.

  She draped the pelisse over the chair and then looked to him. “Turn around.”

  “I’ve seen it all before, Pen.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’ll see it again.”

  Strider stifled a sigh. He was to blame for letting a fishmonger set his stench onto her, so he’d have to suffer the consequences. He’d hoped they would already be past this part—her anger—but a bath was more than necessary before anything else.

  He turned around, his stare landing on the wooden floorboards, but he didn’t move away from the door.

  More correctly, couldn’t move away from the door. All he’d wanted to do since walking into the room was to grab her and grip her body to his in such relief that she was alive, well, and uninjured after being kicked out of the Flagtons’ home.

  The water splashed onto the sides of the copper tub as her body slid into the liquid. He didn’t turn around to look at her, but stood, silent, waiting, his arms clamped across his chest.

  Water dripped, plunking into the bath as she began to scrub her body.

  Minutes he stood, silent, listening to her scrubbing as every muscle in his body pounded, demanding he turn around and strip down and join her in the water.

  “You stole me from the street, Strider. Had me abducted like a common criminal. Why?”

  Strider’s right hand lifted, his fingers running along the back of his neck, settling all the hairs that had spiked with the accusation in her voice. “I had to bring you here for I knew you would never come to me. No matter how low, your pride would never let you come to me. So I had to bring you to me.”

  Silence.

  The water splashed slightly. “Strider.”

  He looked over his shoulder and his body nearly shattered into a thousand pieces. Pen naked in the tub, her blond hair wet and long about her shoulders, rings of water lapping at the top swell of her breasts. Perfection.

  Her dark lashes looked even darker with a sheen of moisture on them, her green eyes intense on him. “I never would have come because you…you don’t want me. You hate me for what I wrought. What I took away from you.”

  “I do.” He turned fully around to her. “And you hate me for the choices I’ve made, the life I lead.”

  Her lips pulled inward for a full breath. “I do.”

  Two steps forward and he leaned over the tub to set his face next to hers, his breath hot along the side of her neck. His words low, slow. “‘Out beyond the ideas of wrong doing and right doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.’”

  “Rumi,” she whispered, the memory of the words from years ago crashing to the forefront of her mind.

  He pulled back slightly to see her eyes and he nodded.

  “Your mother’s favorite.”

  He nodded again, then stood, taking a step back from the tub. “You can find me when you are finished. Or you can walk out the front door to the waiting carriage and take the bag of coins inside of it that will set you onto a new life of your own will. There is nothing attached to the money—no demands, no requests, no favors.” He paused, closing his eyes with a deep breath.

  His spine steeled and he opened his eyes to her. “I only need to know that you’re safe. Stay or leave, it’s your choice, Pen.”

  { Chapter 24 }

  Stay or leave.

  Everything her heart wanted against everything her mind knew she should do.

  She stared at her feet propped up in the copper tub, the tips of her big toes just breaking the surface of the water.

  Strider would never forgive her for what she’d done. She knew that of him. Once his mind was set, it was set. And it had set against her the moment she had handed him that letter from his father. There would be no coming back from it.

  She couldn’t risk her heart with him again.

  What did he even want with her now? To torture her more? To entice her toward him and then toss her aside—making sure she truly suffered? Cruelty—but what did she even know about what he was now capable of?

  Footsteps in the adjoining bedroom startled her out of her reverie, and Pen perked up in the tub.

  The steps in the bedroom were light, delicate. Not Strider’s heavy boots.

  A woman appeared in the open doorway to the bathing chamber, holding a pretty peach muslin dress up in front of her.

  A woman with auburn hair coifed to perfection and the face of a sweet angel.

  Pen squinted at her, making sure she was seeing what she was seeing correctly. Madame Juliet? “You…you’re the woman from the Den of Diablo? Madame Juliet? But…your face?”

  Alarm widened her eyes and Madame Juliet touched her cheek. “What’s wrong with my face?”

  Pen tried to pull her jaw up from gaping. “You—you’re young.”

  “Oh.” Madame Juliet laughed, her fingers dropping away from her face. “That. This.” Her forefinger pointed at her face, swirling in a circle. “I suppose you only met me at the Den. The rouge and the charcoal do wonders for making me look older.”

  “But when I met you there—you were older. Or not older—powerful—owning everything in the room.”

  Madame Juliet laughed again. “I don’t know about that. But the more that I look like I’m in charge, the easier it is to control the customers at the Den. If I look older, that is good. Age brings power.”

  Pen weakly nodded.

  Juliet’s head tilted to the side. “Most of the time that is true. Though sometimes age brings tomfoolery.” She waved her hand. “But in my situation. Power. At least at the Den it is true.”

  She moved to the side of the bathing chamber, draping the dress she held onto an open side cabinet that held a stack of towels. “This is what I truly look like�
��when I’m out of London, at least.”

  Pen had thought Madame Juliet was beautiful at the Den of Diablo. But as Juliet moved into the room, Pen realized what a true, natural beauty she was.

  Jealousy surged in her gut. Jealousy she tried to clamp down upon. Madame Juliet had never treated Pen with anything but kindness and respect. Admirable, for how Pen had shown up at the Den demanding to see Strider.

  She had to remember Juliet was what Strider deserved. A woman fiercely loyal. A woman that would never disappoint him. Never betray him.

  She swallowed hard, looking down to the now tepid water barely moving in front of her.

  “I brought you this dress, as I heard word about how you arrived here and by whose hand.” She picked up Pen’s dress and shift from the chair and sniffed. Her nose scrunched. “And I imagined you would smell about as much as this dress does. And your shift—the stench sank deep through the layers. I’ll fetch you a new chemise and undergarments as well. And I’ll send this down to be laundered.”

  Her nose still wrinkled, she crumpled Pen’s dress, pelisse and chemise into a ball and tossed it out into the bedroom.

  Pen glanced up at her. “Thank you. It is kind. I didn’t mean to offend you about how you look—you are quite beautiful. You were at the Den of Diablo as well. I was just surprised at your age.”

  She smiled with an incline of her head. “I will take that as a compliment.”

  “You are here with Strider?”

  Juliet’s smooth forehead crinkled. “Here with Hoppler? No. I am here on respite for a few weeks with the other women.”

  Strider had more women here? Not just this beauty, but more?

  She should have asked more questions about her surroundings.

  “Where, exactly, is here?”

  “Hoppler didn’t tell you?”

  Pen shook her head.

  Juliet sighed, waving her hand in the air. “Just like the man to forgo the details.” She moved closer to the copper tub, sitting on the cane chair. “This is his home in Berkshire, though truly, Hoppler doesn’t come here often. It’s called the Willows and it’s on a rather large estate.”

  “Is this near the village that the retired…ladies…have gone to? He mentioned a place where some of the women from the brothels retire.”

  “It is. Fifield. And many of the women stay here while they are deciding what they want to do next. Some have a house built in the village. Some go home to wherever they were before they landed in London. And some just like to come out here a few times a year to escape the suffocation of London.”

  “It all sounds so…proper.”

  “Proper?” Juliet guffawed. “Do not mistake it—we know well the business we are in and the unsavoriness of it. We just choose to take ownership over our choices on the matter. And for many of the women, the ones that save, they’ll never have to lift a finger the rest of their lives. The whole of it is a bargain for how some of us have fallen and what could have become of us.”

  “That is so unusual…and commendable.”

  She shrugged. “We have Hoppler to thank. For as brutal as he can be, he’s also is the kindest man I know.”

  Pen’s right hand lifted, her fingers curling over the curved edge of the copper tub. “You sound like you know him well.”

  “As well as anyone at the Den, I presume. He isn’t an easy one to know.”

  “You are…” The words froze on Pen’s tongue and she had to force them out. “Together?”

  Juliet laughed, her hand going to her chest as she leaned backward in the chair. “No—no—I should have made that clear the moment I walked into the room.” She looked at Pen, her face holding sudden concern. “Your hand is gripping the tub so tight I’m afraid your knuckles are going to pop out of your skin. So I repeat, no—no, Hoppler and I are not together. We are friends—dear friends—nothing more.”

  Pen forced her fingers to uncurl from the edge of the tub and her hand sank down into the water. “Why not more?”

  A half-smile lifted Juliet’s right cheek. “I could never compete with a ghost. And as it turns out, the ghost is alive and healthy and sitting naked in his tub right now, and I couldn’t be happier for him. I imagine you will soften his edges.”

  “I will?”

  “Unless you plan on leaving? He said it was a possibility. But you’re not, are you?”

  “I don’t know.” The words squeaked out of Pen’s mouth, soft and brittle.

  “You don’t?”

  She exhaled a long breath. “My heart…I lost him once. Then again. It was so much…too much.” Her words caught in her throat and she had to shake her head. “I don’t think I can repair what I have wrought upon him. And if he cannot look at me like he once did… I don’t think I can bear watching him walk away from me a third time.”

  “Except you’ll never know how he looks at you if you leave.”

  Pen’s mouth clamped closed, her bottom lip jutting up into a frown.

  Juliet stood, her fingers tapping along the back of the chair. “Hoppler is a good man underneath what his business makes him do, makes him be. He’s a good man. Honorable. Loyal. Fair. And once in a while, he’ll make me laugh if I’m lucky. He’s probably the best man I’ll ever know. You’re far luckier than you realize. He had you brought here instead of to the Den. I think that tells you everything you need to know about what he intends to do with your heart.”

  With a quick nod, Juliet left the room. Left Pen to contemplate her words in silence.

  Strider was a good man. The best. She already knew that.

  She just didn’t know what she was anymore.

  Not after what she did.

  { Chapter 25 }

  Stay or leave.

  He’d just gambled everything on those words.

  Giving her the choice. Giving her a chance to leave him.

  When he knew full well that he wouldn’t accept her leaving him. He’d respect it. But he wouldn’t accept it. Ever.

  Strider stared at the long whips of branches draping from an ancient willow. It sat by the stream running along the edge of the field of mature grasses ready for cutting that he stood in. The last breezes of summer air set the tree alive, making it dance. The sun was starting to touch the earth, the streams of clouds above it glowing yellow to orange to red.

  He’d been waiting two hours, probably longer.

  No Pen.

  No footman appearing to tell him she had left the estate.

  How long did it take to scrub the stench of fish away?

  The sudden crunch of grasses rustling behind him floated to his ears and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He braced himself, all of his muscles coiled.

  It was either a footman or Pen behind him. His future one turn away.

  “Strider.”

  Pen’s soft voice carried through the wind to him—the whisper of an angel cutting through all he didn’t deserve to give him all he needed.

  His muscles suddenly went to jelly, his eyes closed, and he had to take a breath. And another.

  His breath held deep in his chest, he spun to her.

  She stood, the undulating grasses reaching to her knees, a vision in a wispy peach muslin dress with an outer layer of delicate lace that drifted about her body like a cloud in the slight breeze. Her arms and hands bare, the tips of her fingers entwined in front of her. His eyes moved upward. Her blond hair, still damp with a slight wave in it, hung long and pulled over her left shoulder. Her full lips were slightly parted, her green eyes intense on him.

  And still. So very still.

  Her mouth parted further, the edges of her lips tugging slightly upward. “This is the field you wanted to meet me in?”

  “It’s as close as it comes.”

  Her smile spread wider. “It’s an actual field.” She looked around, her head slowly nodding. “It seems right.”

  “I wasn’t sure you would make this choice.”

  Her look swung to him, the orange glow of the setting sun hi
tting her green eyes and making them glow. “You were never a choice, Strider. You were always an inevitability.”

  He exhaled the breath that had been lodged in his chest, the reality of her words sinking into his muscles, into his bones, and grounding him to the spot in front of her.

  And then her next words swept the ground out from under him.

  “But I don’t know that it is enough. Not after what I did. How I ruined your life. Betrayed you. I don’t know how it can be forgiven.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It does.”

  He took a step forward, setting his body close to hers but not touching her. Not yet. “We make sense together, Pen. Somehow, we do. No matter what has happened to each of us. No matter what choices we have made. We make sense.”

  “But do we?” Her head shook slightly. “Truly? Or is that just something you’ve told yourself—I’ve told myself—because it seems like it should be so?”

  He drew in a deep breath, holding it in his chest, resisting the urge to wrap his hands along her face. “No. After all this time, I know it down to my marrow. My world makes sense when you are with me. You are the best of me—the middle of my extremes—the center of me, of who I can be. You are what I have been missing all of these years.”

  “No.” She paused, her lips pulling inward for a breath, the torment she was layering upon herself making the edges of her eyes crinkle. “What you were missing was what I took away from you—the title—that life. I forced choices upon you that you never should have had to make.”

  “What happened, happened.” His shoulders lifted. “Did it make me into a different man than I would have been? Yes. Did it make me into a better man than I would have been? Yes. I know that as well. I know what it means to survive. To build something out of nothing. That there isn’t a thing in this world that can bring me to my knees.”

  His eyes closed to her, his head shaking. “Nothing but you, Pen.”

  He exhaled as his eyes opened to her, his gaze piercing her. “You are the only thing that can bring me to my knees. For right or wrong, I will forgive you anything.”