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“I don’t know what’s happening here, but they aren’t going to tell us anything. That much is clear.” His voice was soft—softer than she’d ever heard it. “We need to leave.”
She nodded into his chest, but she couldn’t pull away, couldn’t make her feet move.
Strider lifted her, her toes just grazing the floor, and he walked them out of the drawing room to the front door already held open by the butler.
The balls of her feet stumbled along as he stepped down the three wide marble stairs and onto the gravel before he set her down onto her heels.
Strider’s carriage pulled up to them, and Strider waved off the footman. Keeping one arm wrapped around her waist, he leaned forward to open the carriage door and pull down the metal stairs.
She swayed, almost losing her balance, but in the next moment she was sitting in the carriage—not truly understanding how she got up and in there. Her arms wrapped around her middle as her stare moved numbly to watch Strider set the steps in place, and then he hauled himself up into the coach.
The carriage rocked with the weight of Strider getting in and sitting down opposite her. He knocked on the roof and the coach jerked into motion.
Silence sat about them until the horses turned from the long drive onto the main road and she could no longer see the estate out of the open window.
She had to force her shoulder blades to remain connected to the cushions behind her as it was nearly impossible to not scoot forward and lean out the window to keep her eyes on the perfectly manicured gardens that her mother once surely ran through, laughing. The sweeping lawn that her mother had grand picnics upon. The trees that her mother had once played hide and seek amongst.
Excruciating, not to look back and search for a piece of her heart that had been missing her entire life.
With a long blink, she looked away from the window, her gaze landing on Strider sitting across from her. His eyes locked on her, the intensity in his brown irises burned so fierce she almost jumped.
She heaved a breath, her chest lifting, and then she exhaled it, her voice cracking. “You were right. You knew. You knew what would happen and you were right to not want me to go.” Her right hand tugged away from holding her belly and moved up to stretch wide across her forehead, covering her eyes. “You were right to think me naïve—to have hope. I should have listen—”
“I can torture them.”
“What?” Her hand dropped away from her face. “Torture them? What are you talking about?”
“Torture, or I’m sure Lord Jacobson has some vice that I can exploit to get the truth out of him.” The growl in his voice nearly shook the floorboards beneath her boots.
“You—you want to torture him?”
“Or her—not torture, per se—a lady of that standing will do anything to keep her family out of scandal, so that would be more of a blackmail situation.” He nodded to himself, his right hand folding in and out of a fist.
Her head snapped back. “Do you even hear yourself, Strider?” Her face contorted as his words—the true meaning of them—hit her. “You’re talking about torturing my grandfather.”
“Aye. I would slide shears under his fingernails if it would get him to admit to who you obviously are.”
The savagery in his voice stilled her, cut into her chest. Savagery at her behest and he thought not twice on it.
She jerked forward, stretching across the carriage to grab his fisted hand, capturing it between her palms. “This—this isn’t right, Strider.” She met his manic gaze straight on, fighting the brutality of it with as much calm as she could muster. “We will not do anything to them—you will not do anything to them. They don’t deserve that.”
“You don’t know what they deserve.”
“I know they don’t deserve torture. I know they don’t owe me anything and I was wrong to show up here and ask them about my mother when there were years—years that her family could have searched for her. There were ship manifests—she could have been found if they had been determined. But they didn’t search for her. Search for me. It’s clear they don’t want anything to do with me and that is devastating—breaking my heart.”
Her head dropped, shaking for a moment before her gaze lifted back up to him. “But that is their choice. Made in weakness or fear or the need to forget the past—I don’t know—but they don’t deserve pain and torture for it.”
His right fist wrapped in her hands flickered, unfurling as his left fingers lifted and slid along her jawline, his thumb brushing her cheek. “You don’t have the stomach for it. You never did. I don’t have lines not to cross, Pen. Let me find the truth of this. I can.”
“No—then this is a line I am drawing for you.” Her head shook against his hand along her face. “Leave them to their lives—to whatever past they are trying to pretend doesn’t exist.”
“But, Pen—”
“No. There is right and there is wrong, Strider.” Her words came out sharp. “And I’ll not have you cross that line for me.”
“And I don’t think you can move on—”
“Mr. Hoppler! Mr. Hoppler!” A shout—a woman’s shout—from outside the carriage cut his words and they both moved along the benches to the open carriage window.
