He’d found out last night about the men looking for her, but he didn’t tell her until this morning. He’d said he’d wanted her to sleep soundly after the attack in the hallway. Yet the look on his face when he’d woken her soon after dawn had said volumes. He’d told her about the men searching for her, that they had yet to be found, and then he’d set Verity onto her to get her ready to leave.
She’d been fighting waves of panic ever since.
As expected, Gilroy had sent men after her. She was his property. And he hated nothing more in this world than losing what was his. She’d thought she would be safe at the Alabaster under Talen’s watch, but she’d been silly to think it would be that easy to escape Gilroy. If his men were at the place where Juliet had worked, then they were only streets away from finding her.
The wheels crushing on gravel, the carriage lurched to a stop.
“Stay in here.” Talen shifted forward from his seat, reaching around her head to tug the hood of her cloak up and around her face. “Declan came out ahead of us to arrange privacy as we entered, but I need to verify it before you set one foot out of this carriage. Trust me on this.”
His look met hers, his light blue eyes indomitable. She trusted him. How could she not? He’d kept her safe thus far, just as he’d sworn he would.
She nodded.
Talen opened the carriage door and the bright light of the day flooded the interior of the coach for the seconds it took for him to alight. She was still blinking the white splotches out of her eyes when he reappeared, opening the door and holding his hand up to her. “Pull the hood as much as you can over your face and keep your head down. Look at your feet, nowhere else.”
A fresh wave of terror gripping her, she did as bade, the hood of the dark grey cloak taking away all but a narrow slice of the world in front of her. She set her right hand into Talen’s grip and stepped down from the carriage.
His arm went around her shoulders and he ushered her forward. Her focus stayed on the tips of her boots peeking out from under her skirts with every step, their feet crunching along the grey gravel until they came to the wide, cream stone steps. Up and into a cavernous foyer—she could tell by the hollow echo of their footsteps—and then Talen turned her to the right, prodding her up two levels of stairs.
It wasn’t until they’d walked along a long hallway where she could hear people—some singing, some talking, some yelling—that he steered her into a room.
The door clicked closed, but she still kept her head down.
“You can look up now, Ness,” Talen said.
Her head lifted slowly, her hand pushing back the hood away from her face and onto her shoulders.
A room. A simple room with gauzy curtains pulled in front of the windows. A bed with thin wooden rails sufficing as the head and foot boards. White sheets and coverlet. Empty walls. One wooden chair by the fireplace. That was all.
Not the luxury that had been surrounding her at the Alabaster house, but she didn’t need luxury. She needed somewhere safe to hide.
She looked to Talen. “Where are we?”
“Somewhere safe. Somewhere no one will look for you.”
She nodded, moving over to the window and she pulled aside the gauzy white curtain.
Black iron bars crossed the window.
No in. No out.
How had she not realized it?
The sounds she’d heard on the way in. People in all states.
Mad people.
She doubled over slightly, pain seizing her gut, all the air leaving her as though she’d just been punched. Her fingers crumpled the curtain in her hand and she looked back at Talen, her voice nothing but a whisper. “Wh—where are we?”
His left hand lifted, palm toward her to calm. “It’s an asylum, but it’s the safest place there is, Ness. No one will think to search for you here.”
The world started spinning around her.
No. No. No. He couldn’t leave her here. Not here.
She forcibly stretched her fingers, letting go of the curtain, and rushed across the room to him. “No—no, please don’t do this. Please.” Her right hand grabbed the lapel of his jacket, tugging it, her voice pitching high and fast. “Please don’t leave me here, Talen. I can’t. I can’t. Please don’t leave me.”
His head snapped back, confusion creasing his brow. “But it’s perfect. We’re outside of London and it’s the safest place for you. No one will find you here, Ness. I swear it.”
“No, please. Please.” She yanked on the front of his coat, words heaving from her chest. “Not here. Anywhere but here. Please, please. There has to be somewhere else. There has to be. Please.”
He caught her wrist, stilling her frantic hand as he ripped her grip from his coat. “Now you’re the one acting quite mad.”
She gasped back a sob that threatened with his words and her legs buckled under. She dropped onto her knees in front of him, her neck craned to look up at his face, her panic taking her breath as her manic words barely squeezed through her throat. “No—I swear, I swear I’m not crazy, Talen. I swear it. Is this because I think you’re Conner? Because I won’t believe you? I’ll believe you. I’ll do it. I’ll stop. I’ll stop insisting you’re him. You’re not. You’re Talen. Only Talen.”
She grabbed the bottom hem of his coat, tugging at it as she begged. “Please, just don’t leave me here. I’ll never say another word about the past. Never. Talen. Talen Blackstone. That is who you are. I can do it. I’m not mad. I swear I’m not.”
His forehead still wrinkled, he looked down at her, his light blue eyes searching her face for understanding as to why she was suddenly acting insane.
Blast.
She was acting like a mad woman. Falling to the floor. Begging. Of course he would think this of her.
His mouth pulled to the side as he tried to figure her. “Ness, this doesn’t have anything to do with who you think I am. You’re only here because this is where I need you to be.”
With the softest of motions, his fingers sank into the side of her hair. Far too gentle, like his own hand disagreed with his words, battling them. “This is how I keep you safe.”
He wasn’t listening to her. Not hearing her. Her fingers curled into a death grip on his coat. “But no. You don’t understand. You cannot leave me here. You cannot.”
His hand pulled away from her hair, his voice going gruff. “No, I have to leave now. I can’t afford any more time here. Someone may see me that shouldn’t. I’ll be back once I’ve found those men searching for you, I swear it.”
He grabbed her right hand and had to peel back her fingers, one by one, to disengage her clamp on his coat. Free from her, he took a step toward the door.
Her heart thundering in her chest, she crumpled in that instant, defeat overtaking her voice, sobs starting. “Don’t leave me here, Talen. Please. Please, not like my mother, please.” Her sight blurry with tears, she reached out, grabbing furiously at his retreating feet. Black boots moving out of her grasp. “Please, Talen. Please don’t do this. Please.”
The boots stopped for a long second at the door and she looked up, searching for his face through the shield of tears clouding her eyes.
“We covered this.” He stared down at her, his face hard as granite. “I’m not your hero, Ness.”
Before she could blink, he was out the door.
The clink of the lock set in place.
{ Chapter 12 }
It was what needed to be done.
He’d panicked, true. And this had been the first place he could think of where Ness would be free from harm. The last place anyone would look for her.
Above everything else, she needed to be safe.
Leaning forward, Talen pulled aside the curtain in the carriage and watched the retreating large, pale pink monstrosity of a building. A giant rectangle, pink stone. Even the outside of the place looked like it was trying to pretend everything was fine.
When it wasn’t.
That had been clear the m
oment Ness had figured out where he’d brought her.
Her reaction? That wasn’t fine. Not in the slightest.
And it had him staring at the building quickly shifting out of view.
Everything that he knew of Ness had just been flipped. She had inhuman ability to withstand the worst pain. She was strong. Or wanted to be. That she’d even admitted to wanting to be strong had taken courage he hadn’t thought she possessed.
And he’d seen, day after day, what she was willing to do to make that happen—doing everything he asked of her.
Lift books to strengthen her muscles? He’d walked into her room several times a day, only to find her stretched out on the floor, doing that very thing.
Come directly at a blade instead of cowering from it? Again and again she’d lurched toward him, hitting his arm from the side before he could take a swing.
Smash every movable item in his office across his head? That…that she probably actually enjoyed.
All of it was against her nature, but she did it. Did it because she’d discovered a well of courage deep within. Did it because she refused to ever be a victim to her own inaction again.
Her fight against the two fops cornering her in the hallway at the Alabaster was testament to the fierce spirit within her that had been unleashed.
But there—in that retreating building, she wasn’t fine. All of her courage had deserted her, turning her into a blubbering mess, begging on the floor.
The asylum slipped out of view and he let the curtain fall back into place.
Ness would be safe in the madhouse. Her arm would finish healing. No one would find her. It was the best place for her at the moment. The room had been simple, but private, far from the sounds of the other patients. And he’d paid handsomely to have her taken care of well, her every need more than met. He only needed a few days, a week at most, to find the men that had been looking for her and either turn them against her husband, or have them removed from England, or dispose of them, if that’s what it took.
Above all else, Ness would be protected.
Still, four little words she’d uttered haunted him.
Not like my mother.
She’d said the words brutally, like she’d dredged them up from a raw, deep wound that she’d had to tear open. Tear open for him.
And the despair that had been in her eyes had pinpointed onto him, as though he was the one that had just inflicted some horrifying terror upon her.
He didn’t care for it. He wasn’t the one looking to own her, to kill her. He was the one wanting to keep her safe.
But the accusation had been there in her eyes. How could he do this when he knew full well he was the only person she trusted at the moment?
How could he do this—of all things—to her?
It didn’t make any sense. He shook his head, the drama of her reaction worming far too fast into his head when he’d already made up his mind.
Stay the course.
It was just a room he’d put her in. A simple room where she would be taken care of. Warmth, food, drink. All of her basic needs met. Everything she had at the Alabaster, though not as opulent.
He’d even had his driver bring into the caretaker a crate of the books Ness had been reading. Strips of ribbons marking pages in a dozen books. She wouldn’t be bored.
Sure, the adjoining rooms were full of the mad and insane, but she had to see that this was the safest place for her. Didn’t she?
He closed his eyes and the instant image of her betrayed, tear-filled eyes engulfed his mind.
He held the image in his head for a long moment, then inhaled a deep breath, capturing it in his chest before it escaped in a long sigh.
His eyes opened and he shifted, banging on the top of the carriage.
“Bring it back around, Tom,” he shouted, and the carriage instantly slowed.
“Right away, sir.”
Talen sat back against the cushions as Tom went a stretch farther before he could turn the carriage about.
Dread filled his chest with every clomp of the horses’ hooves on the gravel of the drive back to the asylum.
There was one other place he could take her.
He didn’t want to do it. Shouldn’t do it. Hell, it was idiotic to do so. But she’d be safe there.
Within minutes he was back at her door in the asylum, watching the caretaker turn the key in the lock. He pushed past the older woman as soon as the lock cleared and strode into the room.
Ness sat on the floor, unmoved from where he’d left her, now crumpled into a ball, her face hidden under her right arm, sobbing to herself.
She didn’t even bother to look up at the sound of his footfalls by her head.
He dropped down to rest on his heels, his fingers dropping, drifting lightly into her hair along the side of her head.
She jerked into herself, then shifted her arm covering her face, peering up at him with visceral terror in her amber eyes.
She blinked hard, disbelieving it was him.
He held his open palm out to her right hand. “Come.”
It took her three full breaths before she lifted her hand, her fingers shaking as she set them into his grasp.
What he was doing was stupid. But stupid had its place. And apparently, this was it.
{ Chapter 13 }
“This is your house?”
“Aye.”
Ness looked up at the four-story townhouse as she stepped down from the carriage. Her fingers tightened around Talen’s grip as she studied the building.
After riding in the carriage in silence for the last two hours, she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just delivering her to another madhouse. A double-wide townhouse, the front façade was a deep red brick with bright white triangular pediments over the symmetrical windows. A deep blue double door centered the building. Impeccably neat and tidy in the twilight. Not even a stray leaf marred the wide marble steps leading up to the house.
“Head down.” He reached out and tugged the hood forward along her face that had fallen backward as she gawked upward, then stepped away to talk to his driver.
The carriage rolled away as he stepped back to her side. “Let’s go in.”
She hadn’t expected this. Hadn’t expected this quiet street in the middle of London. What little she’d seen of the city was loud and dirty with squalor overwhelming. This was the opposite. A peaceful park centered the middle of the square with the sound of children laughing twinkling in the air.
She stole a glance at him as they stepped up to the house. “I thought you lived at the Alabaster.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Why would I not? You were there all the time as far as I could deduce.”
“Aye. I do spend far too much time at the Alabaster, and I do have a room there as well.” He set his hand on the small of her back and ushered her through the entrance of the house, setting her in the middle of the foyer as he went back to the door.
The large entryway soared three stories upward along a gilded spiraling banister. Impressive. But something was off. It wasn’t until she looked to her left that she realized it was the drawing room. The well-furnished but eerily cold drawing room. She studied it for a long moment then glanced over her shoulder at Talen. “No one uses the drawing room?”
“Why do you say that?” Talen turned around to her after locking the door.
“Everything is perfectly positioned within it. No books. No drinks on the sideboard, not even a water ring stain on the wood. Just the gleaming furniture with perfectly plump cushions that appear as though they’ve never been sat in.”
His mouth quirked to the side. “Your eye for detail is interesting.”
“Interesting how?”
“Interesting as in you’re right. No one uses the drawing room. No one uses any of the rooms here. They are dusted and cleaned. That is all.”
“What?”
He crooked his finger over his shoulder to her. “Follow me.”
Talen walked
along the main corridor that led into the depth of the townhouse, not waiting and not looking back at her.
With a quick hop, she hurried behind him. “But you just said this is your house.”
“It is. That doesn’t mean I use it.”
He opened the rear door of the townhouse and stepped down onto wide marble steps that led to a picturesque courtyard. Hedges surrounded all sides and rows of flower beds held roses that had started to go dormant in the fall weather.
He shifted to the side, waiting for her to exit the house before closing and locking the door behind her.
He tucked the key into an inner pocket of his dark coat. “We should wait until darkness full descends, but dusk will have to do.”
“Do for what?”
“We aren’t staying here, Ness.”
Her forehead wrinkled, fully flummoxed. “We aren’t? Where are we going? I thought you sent your driver onward?”
“I did.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I need you to be quiet now. I’ll answer your questions in a few minutes.” He held his left elbow out to her. “In the meantime, take my arm and keep your head down.
Her lips pursed, she set her fingers along the crook of his elbow and they walked down the three steps to the garden, weaved past the rosebushes and exited out the rear wrought-iron gate to the mews.
Talen tugged her hood farther down over her brow, glanced to the right and left, and then started forward, straight through the coach house. After walking past stalls and carriages, they slipped out a back door onto the mews behind another row of townhouses. In silence, he ushered them to the left, walking along the shadows of the cobblestoned passage and crossing three streets before he turned to the right to lead her through another passage where he opened a tall metal gate at the rear of a townhouse.
Into the wide gardens—double the size of the gardens at the first house they’d walked through—he brought her up to the rear door and quickly set key into lock.
Ness only managed to keep her mouth shut until they were both inside and the door was firmly closed behind him. “Where are we?” She didn’t care for the slight shake of fear in her voice, but couldn’t quite control it.
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