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Strider needed to find that information on her mother’s family—fast.
Fast or she would be done for.
One way or another.
{ Chapter 4 }
There. Sitting on a black iron bench facing away from him toward thecanal in St. James Parkwith a black valise next to her.
Still in a starched black dress. Still rigid to the point of quivering.
Ten days later and Pen was exactly as he’d seen her that night at the Den of Diablo. The rigidness hadn’t been a result of her showing up in a gaming hell with her nerves shot to hell after walking through the rookeries. She was still stiff from head to toe. Repressing every speck of energy. Everything controlled. Everything hidden.
People like that were always on the edge of shattering. He’d seen it a hundred times before.
He never would have imagined she would turn out like this.
Strider looked about the park, watching the splotches of color promenading far off on the opposite side of the canal—the dandies and their chits preening and posturing. This area of the park was not fashionable. Enough people about, but the goal on this side was not to see and be seen.
His gaze traveled back to Pen. Why in the blasted hell had he agreed to help her? An instant of madness? He didn’t need the trouble of her—the distraction of her moving into his life. Even if it had been fairly easy and only taken a few days to find out which family her mother had most likely come from.Baron Jacobson in Bedfordshire. The old man had a slew of daughters and rumor from years ago had it that it wasn’t easily apparent what happened with all of them nearly thirty years past.
He sighed. One quick trip to Bedfordshire and he could be rid of her.
Pen had insisted that they leave for Bedfordshire this day. He hadn’t been thrilled when he opened that note from her passed through the fishmonger. For days he’d put off telling her he’d possibly found her mother’s family. And he’d hoped to put her off even longer, as he was thick in the middle of taking over a whorehouse by the docks and Madame Juliet was about to have his head for abandoning her so close to the reopening of the house. But if he trusted anyone to do his work for him, it was Madame Juliet.
Strider walked to the left so he could see the angle of Pen’s face. Her gaze stayed intent on the water in front of her, her black-gloved hands clasped on her lap with her right fingers curled up under her left fingers. Unmoving.
Pen had never been able to sit still. Yet there she sat, a master at it.
She looked like a bloody statue now.
Everything about how she’d randomly just shown up in his life was suspicious.
He moved toward her, his long strides eating up the earth between them.
“How did you get away from them?” He stopped at the side of the bench, glaring down at her.
She looked up at him, not startled, like she’d seen him approach her from behind since the moment he’d stepped foot in the park. “What?”
“How did you get away from the Flagtons? They don’t let you set foot outside that house without a footman trailing you. And even at that, it’s only to the market or to a shop.”
Her fingers tightened in her lap, the tips of her left knuckles shaking. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve had someone watching the house.”
“You what? Why?”
His shoulders lifted. “I like to know everything about everyone I’m dealing with.”
“And I’m someone you’redealingwith?”
His head tilted to the side, not answering.
She shook her head, her eyes closing for a long second. “Why? What were you hoping to learn, Strider? That my life is very small? That I am severely limited on where I can go, what I can do? You could have just asked me whatever questions you had and I would have told you what you needed to know.”
“Questions like what exactly is it that you have of my father’s?”
Her mouth clamped shut.
