“Just like you don’t know who ordered you to kill me?” Drake taunted. “Spare me the lies. The truth begets leniency.”
The man answered with a glare.
“Very well, I only have to break one of you.” At the man’s frown, he added. “Oh, you don’t know yet. The one who stabbed me is also in our hands. He’s with another brother of mine. That one hates to speak, loves toconvince, if you get my meaning.”
Drake dragged a chair closer and dropped into it, elbows braced on his knees as he studied the damage he’d done to the cockchafer’s face. Both eyes were already swollen half shut, all manner of color blooming along his jaw. He’d been doing this a long time. Long enough to know when men would talk and when they’d endure. This man would endure. At least for today. Tomorrow or the day after was another matter.
He studied the man for a moment longer. Considered the wisdom of what he was about to do. What the devil did he have to lose anyway? Might as well ask for some advice from someone who wouldn’t tease him to the underworld and back. “While we’re on the topic of stabbing someone, have you ever had a lover?”
The man’s scowl turned fierce. “What?”
Drake merely cocked his head. “Have you ever had a lover? The long-term sort, not the one-night sort?”
The man spat his way.
“If you answer my question, I’ll let you be for the rest of the day.” A big bloody concession, considering. He could vent his frustration all day long.
“Is this some sort of trick?” the man snapped.
Drake spread his hands, the picture of patience. “No trick. Though, I suppose you’ll have to take my word for it.”
The man stared at him, pulled his lip up in a sneer, then growled. “Of course I’ve had a lover. What man hasn’t?”
This man. “Then tell me,” Drake said evenly, “what do you do when you’ve offended her?”
“Depends on how you offended her.”
Drake sighed. “She asked if we were lovers and I didn’t answer. No, I did answer. I asked her what she believed lovers to be.” The most foolish damn question in the world.
A snort, as the man settled with his back against the wall, still vigilant, but less guarded. “What did she say to that?”
“To forget she asked.”
A contemptuous laugh. “You’ve put your neck in the noose. Just find another bird.”
Drake scowled. “I don’t want to find another bird.”
“Then why the bloody hell would you answer her like an imbecile?”
Drake kicked the man’s outstretched leg. “Why don’t you tell me a few ways I can make this right? I’ll consider it a favor and ease up on the fists.”
The man laughed, a mocking, deuced annoying laugh. “If you must ask advice from your own prisoner, you are in a sorrier state than even you imagine. There is no bloody advice that can help you.”
The man was just asking for a beating then. “I don’t accept that.”
“Isn’t she just some chit? There are plenty of them to warm a bed.”
No, there weren’t, and no, she wasn’t justsomechit. Given her bold nature, it was easy to forget she likely hailed from the aristocracy in some fashion. Drake had not cared at first. He did not judge in this regard. His own cousin was an earl, the Earl of Dare, so he did not share Maxen’s aversion, despite the irony that his brother had married the daughter of one.
“She’s not replaceable,” Drake reaffirmed.
The man snorted again. “If she was so dear to you, you’d not have hesitated to stake your claim and make her yours.”
Stake his claim, heh? By what right would he claim her? He was the bastard of a duke, acknowledged only enough to be useful, never enough to be safe. A man with no legitimate name to offer, no clean history to present, no future that did not carry the shadow of everything he had built and everything it had cost. The ruler of Brighton’s underbelly, sure. He had made himself powerful in the only world that would have him, and that world was not one a woman like Violet—bold and bright and deserving of better—ought to be drawn into.
Here, loyalty was bought in blood and kept by fear. Enemies did not knock before striking. Protection came with violence attached and consequences that did not stop with him. Sometimes did not stop at all.
You still want her.
