The back of her neck suddenly prickled, a slow crawl that made her pulse stutter, and the peculiar sense of being watched filled her.
This is what you get, Violet. This is what you get!
Woman. Alone. Being reckless.
It might be nothing . . .
She scoffed at that little voice and turned in a slow circle, eyes sweeping over the walls, the doorway, the hollow corners wherethe candlelight failed to reach for the source of the prickle. The room offered nothing. No movement, no sound, not even the whisper of anything.
Except, perhaps, the suspiciously placed candle.
And the creeping awareness pressing between her shoulder blades.
Leave, Vi. Now.
Her feet remained rooted to the spot, as though some stubborn, desperate part of her refused to abandon her goal before finding proof whether her brother had been here tonight or not. Whether he’d truly come to Brighton for some fight.
It’s not worth it!
Fine.
She agreed. Best to handle the matter as though he were here and she’d need to keep her head even lower for a bit.
The air shifted behind her, so slightly she might have imagined it, yet every hair on her arms lifted in answer. Violet whipped around.
A man stepped from the shadows.
Enormous, all blunt muscle and brutal confidence, a jagged scar carving its way across his face.
Him.
Lord, oh, Lord. A Fury.
The one whose face could never be forgotten. Violence clung to him the way salt clung to the ocean air. The same ilk as her brother.
The question begged: What washedoing here?
“Well, what do we have here?” he asked, his voice rough enough to ripple along the skin of her arms.
He did not recognize her, did he? The last thing she wanted to be was Persephone to this man’s Hades!
There’d be no reason for him to recognize you, Vi. Just keep your cool.She touched the hood of her cloak anyway.A small reassurance. Angelica’s words from earlier that day resurfaced unbidden. Defiance and danger.The thrill was being somewhere you shouldn’t be...Well, she had succeeded splendidly in that regard.
And how the dickens was she supposed to respond? “I...” Ah, blazes. “I seem to have lost my direction.”
The candle flickered, its weak light dancing over his scar, giving his face brief life and menace, as shadows leaped across his features. He looked every inch the brute her friends whispered about, and she, the fool who’d wandered straight into his... lair?
“You expect me to believe that Miss . . .?”
Dash it. No amount of disguise coulddisguiseher voice. “I think it best for me to go,” she deflected.
“So soon?” that low voice purred.
Voices don’t purr, Violet! He isnota cat!
Maybe a tiger?
“Didn’t you come here for the fight?” he added, his dark eyes ever watchful.
