AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Five paces and he realized Pen wasn’t following him.
He stopped, turning around to her. “Pen?”
She hadn’t moved away from the door, her stare fixated on the handle. “But…but…”
“But what?”
She looked to Strider, her green eyes huge. Huge and scared. “But I need that money I paid her.”
“It’s gone, Pen. There’s no getting it back. Already pissed away on a gaming table, knowing Lew. You’ll need to try again and maybe don’t be so gullible next time.”
“But I—I don’t have any more money to hire anyone else. To even buy the ticket to Hampshire—I gave it all to her.”
His left eyebrow arched. “That was all your money?”
She nodded, her face in shock. “It was all I could find on the streets over the years. Every penny, every shilling, every coin I had ever touched as my own. All of it. It’s gone and I have…I have no way now.”
“The Flagtons don’t pay you?”
She shook her head. “They never have. I get food. Clothing. That is all. They don’t pay family, Mrs. Flagton always said.”
That made Strider pause, and he turned fully toward her. “They’re your family?”
Her shoulders lifted, her look sinking to the walkway between them, her voice a whisper. “They’re all I’ve ever known, Strider.”
“Pen.”
Her eyes closed, her head shaking.
“Pen.”
She looked up, finding his face.
He took two steps toward her. “You’ve known real family, Pen. You’ve lived it.”
Her eyes winced as though he had just struck her, a palm hard across her face. “No, you told me yourself, Strider. I wasn’t your family. I was charity. Pity.” She paused, drawing in a shaking breath as her bottom lip slipped under her teeth for a long moment. “I don’t know what that time was—when I had your mama, your papa…you.” Her hand lifted helplessly at her side. “A dream, a fairy tale. Mama June…” She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “A dream was what that was, when I was with them, with you. A dream. Nothing more. Nothing real.” She shrugged, expelling the threatening tears with a long exhale.
Before he could say a word, she tucked the package into the fold of her forearm against her body and she stepped forward, reaching out to grab her valise from his grip. Their knuckles collided, but he didn’t let go of the bag.
“Where are you going, Pen? I thought we were leaving for Bedfordshire.”
“No, I need to leave.” She tugged at her bag. “I have to figure out a way to get to Hampshire and deliver this, or Lady Flagton will know. Bedfordshire will have to wait.”
She yanked her bag from his grip and turned around, walking away from him.
A pang sliced across his chest. Regret—guilt—of what he’d said to her seventeen years ago. Told her she was nothing. A burden.
He stilled.
Guilt?
He didn’t feel guilt. And regret was for the weak. For those that didn’t know how to move forward.
But there it was, speeding his damn heart in his chest. Guilt. Pity. Regret.
He didn’t care for it. Didn’t care for how the weakness of it seeped through his veins.
He stared at the back of her retreating form. The skirts of her black dress barely moved about her legs. The way she walked without sway, her shoulders so tight they were made of marble.
