“You think he’ll step into your lure? No sane man would.”
“I’ll bet my dagger on it.” He didn’t have a reputation as King of the Pits for nothing. Or the Brighton Brute. Or the Devil’s Fist. He didn’t box much these days for that reason alone. No one dared to take him on. Back in London, whispers were shared, but since most there believed them to be myth or rumors, they’d gladly stepped up. He’d won every single match.
“So serious,frère. And if he takes the bait? Do you takehishands then?”
“Perhaps.” That would depend. They lived by a set of rules, one of the most important being they didn’t kill. However, there were many ways to deal with foes. Certainly more interesting ways. Rook’s presence, unfortunately, spoke of not just any foe. Drake suspected a titled one. They were always the messiest, but not impossible to handle.
Whether Rook could be trusted was another matter.
“You know if it touches you,” Reaper drawled, “it touches us.”
“Ye of so little trust.”
“Maxen is going to shite if he learns of this.”
Drake doubted that.
If the “Bulldog” wanted his hands, let him come try to take them.
“Oh, by the by, the nobs staying with the little flower left today.”
Drake stilled, the shop owner’s heart-shaped face flashing before him. He shook her off just as she appeared. “Oh, them.”
“What do you mean, ‘oh, them’? Didn’t you stare at that little flower like you wanted to inhale all her sweetness?”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
Reaper’s grin only widened. “It’s always nonsense until it isn’t,frère.”
Drake ignored him.
Hard.
Harder than he needed to. Flowers, after all, had no business growing in barren lands. And he had no business stopping to take in their beauty.
Chapter Two
One week later
Violet adjusted asprig of heather and stepped back to survey her work, considering them with the same scrutiny she reserved for most things in her life these days. Two baskets of arrangements sat upon the table, each distinct in character. One displayed soft, romantic blooms for Mrs. Penworthy’s tea, and the other looked bright and cheerful for a young woman recently recovered from a fever. Both, she hoped, would do justice to their recipients. One could never be too careful, after all. A stem too long, a bloom too eager, and the entire arrangement lost its balance.
People, she had found, were much the same.
With the exception of her friends, flowers were far easier to manage.
Fortunately, she’d been too busy for loneliness to settle in her bones since her friends had returned to London. The shop demanded more of her than she’d anticipated—early mornings trimming stems and setting out fresh arrangements, afternoons divided between her courtyard and the little plot of land behind the shop, and evenings spent tallying accounts by candlelight. There had been no time for melancholy to creep in. Not that she would permit it, anyhow.
She didn’t care much for broods.
She preferred enthusiasm.
This might not be the privileged life she’d lived before, but it was the one she’d chosen for herself. She’d never enjoyed idleness anyhow. A life of leisure, she’d learned, at least in her case, invited too many thoughts to the surface. Thoughts peppered with “what if I”. Better to keep her hands busy and her mind occupied. Flowers didn’t hurt, didn’t expect, didn’t break their word. Flowers brightened, cheered, and soothed.
Something neither her brother nor her fiancé could ever do.
Never mind them.
She’d learned to block out the horror of them. The nights spent sobbing into her pillows. The disorienting feeling of slowly disappearing into a void of nothing and ceasing to exist.
