She waved them off, watching the four disappear down the road toward the broader thoroughfare, bound for their waiting carriage.
Ah, yes. It’s time.
Time to face her new life by herself. Violet stepped back into her shop, eyes skipping over all the plant life.
I can do this.
Perhaps fate would be kinder this time around.
A new name.
A new life.
Freedom.
This was her world now. At least... for as long as she could keep her hard-won independence. And she intended for that to be a very long time.
*
Some things neverleft a man.
Drake Fury inhaled the comforting stench of gutter. Familiar as blood. He had lived with it all his life. Had been born in it. Sobering how a torn face and vicious beating could change a man’s priorities.
“Enough.Please,” the unwilling beneficiary of his attention rasped.
Drake looked down. The man’s hand lay clutching his arm, fingers crooked at unhappy angles beneath the weight of Drake’s heel. Sweat slicked the fellow’s temple. He had the pasty look ofa wastrel who lived on pipe and bad outcomes. The kind of man who kept one eye on exits and the other on who might be gullible enough to pay for information not strictly his to sell.
“Who is your boss?” Drake demanded, lifting the pressure of his heel. The man’s mouth worked. He would talk. They always did. The only question was how long he wanted the talk to hurt.
“Some rich fellow in London,” he gasped. “I don’t know his name.”
“What else do you know?” He applied pressure again, causing the man to cry out. “Surely that’s not all?”
“I don’t know anything! Just that you offended the man in a boxing match.”
Boxing match?
London?
That trip had been a while ago. When he’d approached his cousin, the Earl of Dare, to help him retrieve a deed from his father’s widow. A deed that had once belonged to his mother. In the end, he’d gotten what he wanted, and he’d also taken up more than a few matches.
Had there been anyone who stood out?
Drake couldn’t recall.
“Why am I not surprised?” Reaper drawled from the doorway of the dungeon, shoulder propped against stone, a grin dragging one corner of his mouth. “Collecting secret admirers like this.”
Drake cursed. “What the devil are you doing here?” He hadn’t wanted his brothers to catch wind of this little problem. One that also only recently came to his attention after this cockchafer tried to put a knife in his gut.
“Shouldn’t you be asking how I know to be here,frère?”
Damnation. “How?”
“Followed you.”
Drake scowled at his brother and gritted his teeth. “Why? Don’t you have better bloody things to do with your time?”
“When our dear uncle Sirius is at large, and you’re behaving suspect?”
