His words stole the breath from her lungs. She was a burden. He’d been taking pity upon her. She’d known it from the start.
Except that wasn’t all of it. Every one of the glances that she’d seen from him when he thought she wasn’t looking. He’d stare at her, his jaw flexing back and forth. She’d thought he’d been working out how to get rid of her from the Alabaster.
But it hadn’t been a detached scowl in his eyes. It’d been heat.
He’d been thinking about complications. About whether she’d be worth it.
Her voice shook. “Which means that you were considering those complications?”
He leaned forward, setting his cheek next to hers, his words a whisper in her ear, though there was no one there to overhear them. “I’ve thought about your lips under mine, yes. My hands dragging down your body. Tasting your skin. Pulling your skirts up and slipping into you and watching your face as I do, the innocence in your eyes turning into raw heat. I’ve thought about how your mewls would sound in my ears, your gasps for breath. I’ve thought about watching the pleasure roll through your face, pleasure like you’ve never felt before—never felt what your body can truly do, can truly be.”
Her eyes closed, and her body swayed slightly, sending her leaning into him.
He didn’t pull away, his breath still heating her cheek. “I’ve thought about it all, Ness. All of it. All of what it would mean. And it would mean too much. You can’t handle what I want from you right now. And I can’t do that to you.”
He pulled up slightly and her eyes popped open, only to see the width of his chest taking up her world. Her gaze lifted, finding the scant moonlight reflecting in his light blue eyes. “You can’t do it to me because?”
“Because I respect you.”
“Are you saying you respect me like you do Juliet?” Her words were incredulous. No man had ever bothered to actually respect her. Certainly not her father. Certainly not Gilroy. “That we are friends?”
The slightest smile came to his lips and he bent down, farther this time, to where his lips were almost brushing her neck. “I have never wanted to do to Juliet what I want to do to you. But I do hold you in the highest esteem. Your spirit. Your courage. Your tolerance for pain.” The rasp in his voice rough, his breath stayed hot on her skin. “So just turn away, Ness. Turn away and make this easier on both of us. I don’t want you. Can’t want you.”
She stood as still as a statue for far too many thumps of her heartbeat, until she caught her breath and her forehead wrinkled. Her movements wooden, she shuffled a step away from him and turned to look down on the city, her right hand gripping the railing, the only thing keeping her upright. For a full minute, she’d begun to think he wanted her. Wanted her beyond the unwanted burden she was on him.
And she rather liked the idea of it.
But he didn’t want her. Anything to do with her, really.
Fine.
She was perfectly adept at making benign conversation.
Her forefinger flung out from the railing into the night air. “This house is so much taller than the rest in this area. Do you like it up here because you get to look down on everyone?”
He chuckled as he turned toward the street and set his forearms upon the railing. “No. I have several reasons. That is not one of them.”
“Tell me one of them.” She couldn’t look at him, her stare firmly fixed on the cobblestones below.
“I kept this townhouse for its height—but it’s not so I can look down on everyone, it’s so no one can look down on me. No one can see me. I like to be anonymous, but I find that hard to come by with the business I am in.”
“Reasonable. If I recall correctly, when I first arrived in London, I merely uttered the name Blackstone and people’s eyes went wide. Everyone had heard of you. Feared you.” She glanced at him. “I envy you this.”
“What?”
“You know who you are, where you belong, who you can depend upon. I’ve never had that. Not since my mother was sent away. Since then, there hasn’t been a place for me in this world. A true place for me. A place without fear. A place with simplicity.”
“You can have that here, for as long as you need to.”
“Thank you.” Her mouth quirked to the side. “But I’m allowed my room. This terrace. That is it. This isn’t simplicity, Talen. This isn’t normal. None of it is.”
“What if I brought Verity over? Aside from Declan she’s the only other person I would trust with knowing this place exists.”
“No—I don’t want to jeopardize your anonymity here.”
“I trust her.” He shrugged. “She would never let it be known.”
“You would do that?”
“If it would stop you from sulking about, then yes. It may even squeak a smile out of you.”
She smiled at him, meeting his look. “Don’t think me ungrateful, because I am. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me when I was nothing but a stranger dumped upon your doorstep.”
“I wouldn’t say dumped. Juliet is smart. She would never dump anyone.”
“She is that. Regardless, you took me on when you had no reason to. You’re more of a hero than you give yourself credit for.”
“Ness—”
“So tell me another reason you like it up here.” She pointed outward into the night air as she cut him off, knowing what he was going to say. He wasn’t her hero. That was his opinion. Her opinion, she was beginning to suspect, was very different.
“Another reason?” He turned toward her, leaving his left arm draped across the railing, and pointed upward. “The stars. Up here on clear nights, I’m above the lights so I can make out the stars.”
She glanced upward. The sky was clear and the stars were shining brightly. That’s what he’d been doing lying on the chaise longue when she’d stumbled upon him. “You like the stars?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“From my years at sea. I learned to navigate by them, though I wasn’t very good at it. Declan was always better. But truly, I always liked the mystery of the stars more than the practicality of them—fixed stones in the sky, marking the way, yet always moving. Always moving.” He looked up, his eyes shifting across the night sky. “Look at that one.”
She followed to where his finger pointed, turning her back toward him to do so. “Which one?”
“Actually, look at those three—the three in a tight line, together. That is Orion’s belt. He just made it into the sky here in London.”
“Orion?”
“Do you know mythology?”
She shook her head as her neck craned her face to the sky.
“Orion was a great huntsman that Zeus placed into the stars as a constellation after a scorpion stung and killed him. The scorpion constellation—Scorpius—will never be in the sky at the same time, as they chase each other around the world.” Over her shoulder, his pointer finger shifted up and down. “See how those three stars make a belt? His head is up there. And coming off the belt are three stars that are his sword. On either side are his legs. One arm is held high, the other holding an animal hide. On that side, Taurus the bull is snorting, charging him. Those two have always been my favorite.”
She chuckled. “I don’t think I’m seeing what you’re seeing.”
“Come over here.” He set his hand on the small of her back and ushered her to the wide wooden chaise longue. “Lie down.”
Her eyebrows cocked at him.
“Trust me. It’s easier here.”
She sat, then stretched her legs long onto the chaise. Talen squeezed in next to her, careful to not bump her left forearm and the splint, and then slid his arm under her head for a pillow as they both reclined flat on the bench.
Far too intimate, yet she couldn’t excuse herself. She had barely two slips of cloth on her skin and he was so warm in the chilly air. And smelled too good, something that always unsettled her, how she so liked the scent of him. How it made her chest tighten every t
ime she was near him.
His body next to her a rock of strength, the whole of him a haven. A solid, begrudgingly accommodating haven from the pain and the turmoil her life had become. She didn’t want to leave it. Leave him.
“Now look.” His left arm went up toward the sky, his forefinger wagging towards a clump of stars. “There is a V-shaped star cluster, that’s the bull’s snorting snout. You follow those to the left and those are his horns, ready to impale.”
“That is a snorting snout?”
“If you use your imagination, it is.” The cat jumped up onto the chaise and picked its way to a spot in between Talen’s calves. He let it paw at his trousers for a moment as it nestled in, then continued. “We have a cat and Orion has a dog, Sirius, there, the brightest star in the sky. And here is a nice trick—from that star on the belt through his arm you can draw a line to the south.”
“These stars guided you on the sea?”
“Aye.”
“You’ve seen faraway lands, haven’t you?”
“I have.”
“I wish you could remember the time before the ship.”
He stiffened, his bicep clenching under the back of her head. “Does it even matter, Ness?”
“No. No, I guess it does not. We are where we are.” Her right hand flicked up toward the sky. “What other tales are up there in the sky?”
“Too many to count. I spent years listening to grizzled old sailors speaking of the stars.”
She pointed upward in the sky to a bright star. “What’s there?”
“You just found the north star in the little bear, a tale of its own.”
The odd rasp in his voice suited the air about them, nothing but the dark and the stars above them. Low and gravelly, and lulling her to sleep with tales of bears that saved Zeus from his father.
Sleep with only one thought on her mind.
She’d never felt safer.
{ Chapter 15 }
Ness nudged open the door of Talen’s study slowly, letting the door creak on its hinges as she peered into the room. Two large windows at the back of the chamber lent moonlight to the space. This floor was off limits to her. But this was necessary and she would be quick.
Seven days of wandering between her room and the rooftop terrace and Ness was near to going out of her skin. For as much as Gilroy held her in a tight cage at Whetland Castle, she’d been free to walk the grounds, and she’d had her maid, Gertie, to talk with.
Verity was sweet, ever attentive, and Ness was happy for her company, but the hours when Talen was not at the townhouse stretched long, and she could only read for so long, day after day.
So it had been a fine idea to go searching for a quill and an inkwell. She’d found paper in the secretary in her room, but nothing to write with. If she could jot a letter to Juliet—whether or not Talen would actually allow her to post it, it would ease all of the madcap thoughts running about in a circle in her brain.
What she should do next. How she could ever find a life away from Gilroy. Her attraction to Talen and everything he was—though she fought against it every day.
He didn’t want her. He’d made that clear. Insisted she turn away.
Yet he would still arrive at the townhouse deep into every night after the business of the Alabaster was done, bringing her something—a dessert, a new book, a map of the stars. They would train. Then eat. Then sit on the terrace looking at the stars until the first rays of dawn streaked into the sky. He lived his life opposite the sun, and she’d flipped her own schedule so that she could spend as much time as possible with him.
Something she should cease, if she was smart.
But she was quickly deducing that when it came to Talen, she wasn’t thinking straight.
She needed to tell all of this to someone, and Juliet was her only option, whether or not the letter was actually sent.
Ness stepped into the study, quickly spying an inkwell at the top left corner of the desk. Perfect. Now she just needed a quill.
No quills were next to the inkwell so she rounded the desk, quickly pulling open the set of drawers on the left side. Papers, a letter opener, but no quills. Onto the middle drawer. Three were lined up neatly with sharp nibs ready for writing. She pulled two free and her eye caught the red wax of a broken seal on a letter in the drawer.
She paused. A seal she knew. The distinctive north tower of a castle with garland curling up the sides. The Whetland Castle seal.
Her eyebrows drawing together, she fingered the edge of the paper. Juliet had said she would send a letter posthaste after Ness left Edinburgh, but she wouldn’t have had access to the Whetland seal—they had brought nothing with them to the city besides the clothes on their backs and the coins in the heels of Juliet’s boots.
Juliet must be back at the castle.
Good.
Relief flooded Ness. She had been in fear that she’d destroyed everything between Juliet and her brother-in-law, Evander, with how they’d escaped from the estate.
Ness set the quill down and picked up the tightly folded letter. Talen hadn’t said anything about a letter from Juliet, aside from mentioning the first letter he’d received from her a day after Ness had arrived at the Alabaster. She flipped it over and saw her name on the outer swatch of paper.
Her name. Not Talen’s. Her letter. Not his.
Her hands shaking, she unfolded the letter, quickly scanning the contents.
Then scanned them again.
Then sank onto the chair behind the desk, studying each word in Juliet’s elegant script.
…Gilroy is dead…
…Come back to Whetland…
…Evan has written to your father of Gilroy’s death and he travelled here to collect you…
… I told them you were visiting a friend in London. For appearances sake, it would do well for you to travel up here if you are feeling well enough…
She stared at the letter, frozen in place for far too long. Hours. Hours she sat with the letter in her lap, rereading the words over and over.
Gilroy was dead. Dead. She was free.
She stayed frozen in place, staring at those words, her mind not able to move past that one line. Gilroy was dead.
Frozen, until she heard the rear door open and close on the floor below her. Talen’s heavy footsteps walking along the main corridor below. Up the stairs, passing by the first floor and continuing upward.
The echo of his footsteps a level above, steady, then quickening, disappearing higher to where she could no longer hear them.
It wasn’t a full minute before they thundered down the stairs, the pace of them frantic as they moved from room to room above her.
Out back to the stairs. Down to the drawing room. The ballroom. The dining room. The respite room.
And still she couldn’t move.
The door to the study swung open with a thud and the footsteps stopped.
His breath heaving, Talen found her sitting behind his desk in the moonlight, instant fury on his face, his words thundering. “What in the hell are you thinking, Ness? I couldn’t find you—couldn’t find you and you were in here. Sitting in here the whole damn time?”
“Don’t yell at me.” She didn’t look up at him as her words came out measured and wooden against his anger.
He stormed into the room, his arm swinging in the air. “Your room. The terrace. That was the agreement. You promised.”
“Yes, well, I needed ink and a quill. I waited until twilight. Didn’t even light a candle. Then I snuck down here like a good little mouse that would never be found.”
“Why are you talking like that?” He took two more steps forward. “Look at me, Ness. Look at me.”
Her eyes slowly lifted to him. “How long have you had it?”
“Had what?”
She lifted the letter from her lap, dropping it onto the desk.
“Shit.”
Her eyes closed as she drew in a deep breath, then she stood, her knuckles landing on the desk as she lea
ned toward him, a bitter edge she couldn’t control lacing her rising voice. “How long have you had it?”
He exhaled, straightening his spine as he glared at her. “Days. But that’s no reason to sca—”
“No reason to what? To scare you? I have been terrified of my husband finding me for almost a month—terrified. Every single day. Every hour. Terrified. And you knew this?” Her hand slammed down onto the letter. “You’ve known this for days? Days and you haven’t told me.”
“You don’t understand, Ness.”
“What don’t I understand? That Juliet sent me a letter that you deemed you should open before me? That you deemed should be hidden from me? I trusted you, Talen. Trusted you when I had no reason to. I trusted you and this is what you do to me? What else are you keeping from me? I could have left days ago, but you’ve kept me here in a prison of your own design.”
Her right hand flew through the air. “Buy me off with a few books and treats and stars and I’ll just stay here, no questions asked?”
His left hand curled into a fist at his side. “You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“The men are still out there. The ones looking for you.” The words barked from his mouth, the ire in his voice palpable. “They’re still searching for you. We found one of them but not the other three. You think they got a letter from Juliet? You think someone told them Gilroy was dead and they wouldn’t get paid even if they managed to find you and bring you back to Whetland? They’re still after you, Ness. You’re still not safe.”
“But why not tell me?”
His voice notched louder. “You want me to talk about the danger you’re in? Talk about what men like this will do to you if they find you? They find you, they bring you back to Whetland, and I promise you that journey will not be pleasant for you. Men like this will abuse you to no end. You are nothing more than flesh to toy with as long as they have you in their possession.”
He moved around the desk and captured her face in his hands, his ice blue eyes intense in the shards of moonlight. “Is that what you wanted to hear? For me to add more fear into your eyes? There is already so much that haunts you why would I ever want to add more to it?”
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