Tempting the Scoundrel (Private Arrangements Book 2)

by Katrina Kendrick

  “Nick?” Alexandra followed him. She put a hand on his arm to try and stop him, but he shook her off. “Nick, what is it?”

  Thorne couldn’t even get the words out. His anger made his blood run so hot that he saw red. He had told O’Sullivan everything, every fear about his marriage, how he intended to make it up to her. Every fucking thing. He barely remembered making it through the hallway and down to one of the private gaming rooms. O’Sullivan was there showing a new dealer how to make a performance out of shuffling the deck.

  O’Sullivan looked up as Nick came into the room. He frowned. “What’s happened?”

  Thorne ignored his question and said to the lad, “Get back to work and shut the door.” His tone didn’t leave any room for arguments. The young dealer quit the room in a hurry.

  O’Sullivan set the cards on the table with an expression of concern. “Problem?”

  Thorne smashed his fist into O’Sullivan’s face. O’Sullivan stumbled back, hitting the edge of the game table. The table rocked. Dice clattered to the floor.

  O’Sullivan straightened, his eyes blazing. His jaw was already red from the hit, his lip bleeding and beginning to swell. Tomorrow he’d have a hell of a bruise, and that was less than what the bastard deserved. “What the fuck was that for?”

  “You know exactly what the fuck that was for,” Thorne said, taking another threatening step forward.

  “Nick.” Alex’s hand was on his arm. “Don’t.”

  Fine. Thorne threw Alexandra’s wooden box of papers into O’Sullivan’s chest. The other man caught it. “What is this?”

  “Open it,” Thorne bit out.

  With an exasperated noise, O’Sullivan opened the latch, looked inside, and froze. He shut his eyes. “Thorne.” That was it. Just the name.

  Same as a goddamn confession.

  “Tell me why you wrote those,” Nick said, his voice dangerously low. His hands curled into fists. “And I’ll consider not breaking your fucking face.”

  “Nick.” Alex’s grip on his arm tightened. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “It matters to me. I want him to tell me why.” When O’Sullivan didn’t answer, Nick snapped, “Why?”

  “Because she was asking about you,” O’Sullivan said, wiping the blood from his mouth. “She did her research around Whitechapel and asked about you. And I knew it was only a matter of time before she came back into your life and fucked you up again.”

  “Don’t,” Thorne said sharply. “Don’t you dare pretend this is about her. This is about you not trusting aristos after what Sunderland did to you.”

  O’Sullivan flattened his lips. “This is about you getting a fucking knife to the gut because your mind was on her.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Alex asked Thorne softly.

  After she’d left him at Roseburn, he remembered feeling crazed. His obsession with taking power from Whelan became consuming. His enemy was an obstruction, an impediment to a better life. He would go to bed at night and agonize ever every moment they ever spent together, every lie he ever told, until the regret gnawed at him.

  But he’d had nothing to give her. What did he have? Money that was hers, power he’d stolen. Dozens of enemies trying to kill him.

  So he’d eliminated them.

  “You didn’t tell her?” At Thorne’s silence, O’Sullivan let out a dry laugh. “When he came back from Hampshire, it was like Thorne wasn’t even the same person. He was so obsessed with finding some way of winning over your lofty fucking approval that he barely slept at night. Whelan wasn’t the only one looking to grab power, and all it takes is one distraction. So yeah, when you came around asking about him and wrote about the East End, I responded. I wanted you to stay away. Because I didn’t want to see you break him.”

  Alex’s touch fell away. Some private grief crossed her expression, and he did not wish to see that. Hadn’t he hurt her enough?

  “Get out,” Nick told O’Sullivan quietly. “Grab your things, get out of my club. I’ll give you an hour.”

  For a moment he wondered if O’Sullivan would argue with him. But the other man gave a nod, set the wooden box of articles on the table, and left.

  A beat of silence filled the private game room. When his wife finally spoke, it was to quietly say his name.

  “I have work to do,” he said to her. “We’ll talk later.”

  Chapter 30

  Hours later, Alexandra found Nick alone in a staff room playing a solitary game of snooker.

  She watched as he aimed the cue and struck. The colored balls at the end of the table separated with a crack. He lined up another shot, his movements smooth and practiced, with an expression of complete focus. She wondered how many games he had played in the privacy of this room, with only his thoughts for company. Enough that every shot seemed to take no effort at all.

  Alexandra closed the door and leaned against the frame. “So this is snooker,” she said. “My brothers described it to me, but I’ve never seen it played.”

  Nick didn’t look up. “A few officers from India told me about it. Thought it sounded fun, so I commissioned a table. I’ll come up to bed in a few hours.”

  Did he believe he could dismiss her? She almost snorted at the absurdity. He knew her better than that. “I’m not one of your staff that you can command, Nicholas. I want to know happened after I left you at Roseburn.”

  Nick clenched his jaw. “Nothing to tell.”

  “Mr. O’Sullivan seemed to think differently.”

  He set the cue down on the table with a knock that made Alexandra wince. “O’Sullivan’s inability to mind his own fucking business is why I sacked him.”

  “He cares about you,” she said, very softly, watching Nick’s tense shoulders. Still, he wouldn’t turn around.

  “Let me ask you something.” His voice was steel scraping over stone. “Did you avoid me because of those reviews? Would you have come to me during those four years if he had never written anything?” At her hesitation, he gave some humorless laugh. “And you want me to forgive him so easily.”

  “I never spoke of forgiveness. I pointed out a truth.” Nick didn’t reply. He toyed with the cue, his fingers skimming across the wood. “Tell me what happened after Stratfield Saye. You took the East End from Whelan and then what?”

  A sigh left him. “What matter?”

  Alexandra pressed her lips together and came forward. She set her hand to his back, felt the long, slow breath he drew in. “The scar right here—” she rubbed at his shirt, just over the mark—“I don’t recall seeing it five years ago. And a few others.” She skated her fingertips down the long line of his covered torso. She imagined each one, those long thin lines that were not there in Gretna. “What happened to you mattered to Mr. O’Sullivan. And it matters to me.”

  Nick grasped the edge of the snooker table, the line of his shoulders tense. “Not everyone was eager to let me take Whelan’s place,” he told her. “So they told me at the end of a blade whenever I walked the streets.” His face was as still and immovable as stone. “I was tired. The club bled money and I had long hours until it was in the black. That took two years.”

  Alexandra didn’t wish to think of him being attacked while she enjoyed the comfort and safety of St. James’s. Had one assailant succeeded, she might be a widow—and she would never have come to know the man she married. All the years they spent apart seemed so pointless. Why hadn’t he come to her?

  “Mr O’Sullivan said you kept working to win over my opinion,” she said. “Before, I might have wondered if he was wrong. That caring would have required some attempt to visit me and earn my regard. But in all those years, you never came to my door.” She dropped her hand from his shoulder. “Now I want to know why.”

  “I was there,” he said, very softly.

  Alexandra froze, certain she had heard him wrong. “Say again?”

  “I showed up a hundred times on your doorstep. Rehearsed a hundred different apologies, a hundred different
ways. At first I left because I had nothing to offer you.” He made some bitter noise. “I was a criminal from the streets dodging assassination attempts from men who wished to challenge me for power, scraping by with my useless life because I had money I stole from you. In what world did I deserve you?” At her silence, he continued, “So I built the club and made it profitable. Figured even if I couldn’t offer you respectability, then at least I could pay you back with every shilling I earned.”

  Every shilling . . .? She gaped at him. “That line about pounds, shillings, pence, and properties?”

  The look he gave her was tender. “Truth. The club belongs to you. What isn’t used to pay wages goes into an account in your name.”

  The revelation left her with some hollow feeling in her chest. How many times had he stood outside her brother’s house, deciding how to word an apology? How many times had she’d been inside, sat at her desk, torn between hating him and missing him? How many times had the butler come to tell her she had a visitor, and she foolishly wished it was her errant husband?

  So many.

  And it was never him.

  Tears stung her eyes. “You could have told me that,” she said. “Or any of the hundred apologies you rehearsed.”

  “Once I got to your doorstep, they all seemed inadequate.”

  Alexandra put a hand on his cheek, forcing him to look at her. “Let me hear one.”

  Nick slid to his knees. He stared up at her, and Alexandra’s breath caught. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “And I know that isn’t enough. It’ll never be enough.” He grasped her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. “But I am yours, and I love you. And if you let me, I’ll prove it to you every damn day.”

  She let out a long, slow breath. “You were wrong,” she said gently. “That was more than adequate.” She gave him a smile. “I will demand proof, however.”

  Nick nipped her fingertips. “Will you?”

  “Oh yes. I’ve gone without proof for”—she glanced at the clock—“approximately eight hours.”

  “Far too long,” he agreed, rising to his feet. “I’ll just have to take the rest of the night off and show you again, won’t I?”

  Chapter 31

  The open window framed Alex in a pale light. Nick stroked her hair—still a mass of tangles from their lovemaking—and she murmured his name in her sleep. Nick, she said. Nick, Nick, Nick. And he knew, from her soft smile, that she dreamed of good things.

  Behind her, the moon peaked through the tenements of the East End. He imagined the weary mothers tucking their children into bed, hoping for a few hours’ rest before the factories opened at dawn. He heard the dim shouts and singing of the men and women at their local taverns, enjoying fried oysters and ale—joyful hours between backbreaking work at the docks. He imagined the children in the streets, relying on the kindness of strangers—not always successfully. Sometimes those strangers were looking for another person to break for money.

  And one of them still lived.

  His wife whispered his name again in her sleep. She would never be safe until he stood over Whelan’s corpse. No one would. The weary mothers, the tavern crowds—some of them remembered when Whelan ruled these streets, when they owed him protection money that might mean the difference between a full belly or a blade to the gut.

  It was time Thorne put an end to it.

  As he began pulling on clothes, he imagined them like a suit of armor before walking into his last battle. This time, only one of them would make it out alive.

  Thorne picked his weapons, put on his jacket, and bent to kiss his wife. He never wanted to leave her side again. “I love you,” he whispered, and he hoped it wasn’t for the last time.

  Thorne left the club and set off through the streets of Whitechapel. The winding alleyways were redolent with smoke, a hint of meat pie from a nearby tavern. The raucous laughter from the street over did not fit his mood. He felt like a child again, making his way back to his master after a night of work. His pockets then had been laden with coins and pilfered jewelry, things that won no praises from Whelan. That only served to delay another beating.

  His breathing quickened as he approached the old tenement where Whelan and his men once resided. Where Thorne and O’Sullivan and the other lads slept in the dark cellar. It was empty now—or, it was supposed to be. If people on the streets sought refuge in his former place of torment, he wasn’t going to stop them. He’d only bought the building to let it fucking rot.

  The housing block seemed to loom in the darkness. His was little different than the buildings beside it; a patchwork of hastily repaired brick that gleamed from a recent downpour, with an arch over the door. Hard to believe this place had haunted his nightmares, that a mere tenement of stone could carve such a permanent corner of his mind. It had reduced him to circling this street for so long, terrified of what he’d find within those dark walls. Terrified of being trapped in the dark again.

  Thorne finally understood: this place existed within him. He’d carried it for years, and no amount of distance would ever change that. He could let it rot, let it burn, watch it fall to ash, but he’d still remember every goddamn creak and rat-infested corner.

  And he’d remember the man who put him there.

  Thorne went up the steps and through the dark door.

  Chapter 32

  Alexandra woke to an empty bed. The sheets beside her were rumpled, but cold. Nick had been gone a while. His warmth had left the room. The noise below stairs indicated the club was still in business hours, and the first light of the sun had yet to breach the sky.

  Had he changed his mind about taking the night off? Or was he at the snooker table, thinking again over his row with Mr. O’Sullivan? She didn’t wish for him to be alone with such doubts.

  Alexandra pulled on a wrapper and padded into the hall, where two men were stationed outside the bedchamber door. “Excuse me,” she asked the nearest one, who she recognized as Doyle. “But can you tell me where I might find my husband?”

  Doyle and the other man passed each other a look. The large man cleared his throat and said, “He’s gone, miss.”

  Gone? “Where?” Another look passed between them and Alexandra lost her patience. “Spit it out.”

  Doyle gave a low curse, but answered her. “He wouldn’t say, miss. Only that we was to guard the door, and if he didn’t return by morning, told us to take you to O’Sullivan.”

  Some piercing dread went through her. Nick, what have you done? Where did you go? But she already knew the answer: he had gone after Patrick Whelan. And she did not know where, in the labyrinthine streets of the East End, the man was hiding.

  But someone else might.

  “Where is Mr. O’Sullivan?” Her voice was hoarse. At Doyle’s hesitation, Alexandra’s lips flattened. “You will take me to him. Now.”

  The journey to Mr. O’Sullivan’s flat was a blur. Alexandra urged Doyle to hurry, her focus entirely on Nick: where he was, what might be happening. A herd of elephants could have run through Whitechapel and she wouldn’t have noticed.

  When Doyle indicated which building and flat belonged to Mr. O’Sullivan, Alexandra threw open the door and raced up the uneven stone steps to the second floor. The door was shut, no light or noise from within. God, she hoped he was home.

  Alexandra gave three firm, no-nonsense raps. “Mr. O’Sullivan?”

  A sleepy groan came from within. Her heart gave a flip in relief. “Mr. O’Sullivan, it’s Alexandra. Please open the door, it’s urgent.”

  Another groan, a foul curse, then some rustling. The door opened to reveal a scowling Mr. O’Sullivan wearing only a pair of trousers and a loose lawn shirt. If the smell of spirits and bloodshot eyes was any indication, he appeared to be recovering from an evening of carousing. His gold hair stuck up in uneven tufts, which he smoothed down in irritation, knocking his spectacles askew. Mr. O’Sullivan looked like a disgruntled angel.

  The factotum straightened his spectacles and gave a sigh. “
What.” Before she could get a word in, he looked past her and straightened, all concern now. “Don’t tell me you walked through Whitechapel in the middle of the night by yourself.”

  “Doyle accompanied me.” Alexandra didn’t have time for this. “I need you to tell me where it was that Whelan kept you and Nick. The cellar he spoke of. I only know that it was in the Old Nichol.”

  Mr. O’Sullivan stiffened, and something haunted flickered through his expression. But a moment later, it was gone. “Where is Thorne?” he asked her, very softly.

  “He’s missing,” Alexandra said. “I think he’s gone . . . to that place. If Whelan is tracking his movements, he’ll follow.”

  O’Sullivan shut his eyes. “Fuck. Two seconds.” He backed into his room and emerged a moment later with his jacket on. Alexandra followed him down to the street where Doyle was still waiting on the pavement. The guard straightened at the sight of the factotum. “Accompany her back to the club, Doyle. I’ve business in the Green.”

  Alexandra stopped him. “Absolutely not. I won’t sit in the Brimstone whilst—”

  “What do you think Thorne will do if something happens to you?” Mr. O’Sullivan gave his head a shake. “No. I can’t take you with me.”

  Alexandra straightened and gave the factotum her best steely look, the same one she gave ruffians eyeing her pockets with interest. “Mr. O’Sullivan.” Her voice was firm. “I love him every bit as much as you do. Imagine how you would feel if I ordered you to return to the club and wait.”

  “Oof.” Doyle clicked his tongue. “She’s gotta good point there, boss.”

  Mr. O’Sullivan tilted his head back and let out a long breath. “Fuck. That she does.”

  Chapter 33

  Going down into that cellar made Thorne feel like he was a child again.

  The stench hit him first. It was the musty odor of old stones, water, and enclosed space. The second? He couldn’t tell if it were real, or another waking nightmare: the piss and shit that emanated from one corner of the room, the sweat of a dozen bodies in a space that got tighter and tighter as they grew. They had all huddled in the darkness for warmth, and for comfort. One of the few comforts they had during the hours between their tasks. Steal enough to earn food, and the rats might not come in the night.