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He matched her smile with his own. “My father wasn’t a bad man. He was good. And kind.”
“So, what, you were simply fourteen and angry?”
“That’s more than enough reason for many fourteen-year-old boys, but no... He had kept a secret from me.” He met her gaze. “Do you know it?”
She shook her head. “I do not.”
He believed her. “But you wish to.”
“Of course I wish to.”
Why? Because information was currency? Or because she wanted to keep his secrets with hers?
“But more importantly,” she added, unaware of his thoughts, “would you tell me?”
Maybe. But not then. “No.”
She smiled. “I have no difficulty imagining that you think this secret was big enough to send you on a six-year underground fighting ring spree. Tell me the rest of the story.”
“I was furious. I enjoyed putting my fists into other boys’ faces in order to make the anger less...”
“Angry?” she helped.
He nodded. “While we certainly didn’t fight with all the gentlemen’s rules of boxing, we had a fairly decent set of rules that kept bruises from faces—”
“And noses from breaking?”
“And that,” he said, enjoying her more than he should. “How does my nose look, by the way?”
She made a show of adjusting her spectacles and peering at it. “Like it hurts.”
It did, but he’d never admit it. “I’ll tell you this—Billy had a damn fine right cross.”
“Don’t fret, Duke. You did alright.”
In the wake of the words, Henry recalled the battle, which came in little snippets and then all at once, with a full accounting of what had happened. “What happened to him? Danny?”
She met his gaze, and he recognized the flash of shame there—wanted it gone. Banished forever. She shook her head. “I sent him back to Lambeth.”
She wasn’t ready to trust him, and Henry wanted to snarl in frustration. He’d clung to every secret, every bit of information. Patchworked it together. But there still wasn’t enough.
Who was Adelaide Frampton?
Not Frampton.
The words whispered through him as he replayed the scene in his mind, turning it over and over, trying to recall every moment. Every word.
You’ll always be Lambeth, Addie Trumbull.Clayborn’s gaze went wide, things coming together. Trumbull, like Alfie Trumbull.
Suddenly, everything began to make sense.
Alfie Trumbull was the leader of The Bully Boys. And Adelaide—
The stories she told. The wedding for partnership. The boys on the bridge. Her father, the king. Her comfort in that South Bank warehouse, on those docks battling those South Bank bruisers, sparring with that Lambeth thug.
She wasn’t simply the Matchbreaker, hunted by criminals hired by Mayfair monsters. She was daughter of the king of The Bully Boys, a South Bank princess, left to her own devices when she’d escaped her father.How had he simply let her leave?If she was Henry’s, he’d do all he could to keep her. To prize her. To love her.
And Alfie Trumbull had done the opposite. He’d let her go, then sentDannyto fetch her back for punishment.
