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Leave, and then what?
This hadn’t just been the death of her parents and what she had dreamed of them. It was the death of any sort of future she’d hoped to have. The death of her only escape.
What she would do now, she hadn’t a clue.
And she wasn’t even sure she cared.
{ Chapter 14 }
Two days into the journey back to London and Strider was beside himself. A state he had never experienced as an adult.
Beside himself because of Pen.
The silence that had permeated her during the last days. Her solemn face. Her wooden words in response to any question he asked. Something so deeply wrong within her that he wanted to shake her—shake out everything she had just learned—just felt—in Bedfordshire.
Even more, he wanted to go back to Baron Jacobson’s home and shake everyone in the family until their heads rolled. Each blasted last one of them. Except for Florence—though she, too, had walked away from Pen.
Strider had tried to convince himself that this was what Pen wanted—asked for—to know who her mother’s family was, regardless of the truth of it.
But she’d had hope. Optimism that they would embrace her. Tell her everything of her mother and how they had loved her before she left this land.
Hope that they would take her in, deliver her from the Flagtons.
And now she had nothing.
Strider looked across the small table at Pen staring at her full plate, fork in her hand, not having moved a single bite to her mouth since he’d delivered the food to her room. He had thought to retreat to his room at the coaching inn and leave her to eat alone, as would have been proper.
Separate rooms.
He hadn’t wanted to set any expectations on her and where she slept, no matter where his lips had been on her body days ago—and where her lips had been on his. That encounter had served a purpose—making her relax—even if it had unnerved him for how strikingly hard he had come. And into her mouth like he was a bloody animal. So raw that the very first thing he’d wanted to do after his body stopped shaking was to flip her onto her back and drive his cock full force into her.
Weak.
There wasn’t any excuse for how the whole of it had gotten away from him. And he couldn’t afford to have that happen again.
For he wasn’t about to allow her to look at him as her next avenue of salvation, though he already knew he would save her. Save her a thousand times over.
He’d already determined he was going to extract her from the Flagtons. What he couldn’t do when they were nine, he could do now. Give her the world and every opportunity it offered.
He'd tell her exactly what he was thinking—planning—before they were back in London.
But he couldn’t share any of that with her now. Not in her current state. She was clearly still in shock—she’d sunk so deep and so far into darkness that he didn’t trust her to be alone. He’d seen too many desperate people in this state do things they wouldn’t dream of in their right minds.
It'd been the right choice to sit down opposite her at the table. To eat his meal in silence. To watch her as she stared at her plate. She needed company—his company—whether or not she understood it.
He reached across the table with his fork, pushing a small round potato on her plate toward her. “You need to eat something, Pen. A bite. Two.”
It took a long moment before her face lifted to him. Her fork hand didn’t move. The vacant stare in her green eyes shifted to confusion, like she hadn’t realized he’d been sitting across from her for fifteen minutes.
His fingers went to the foot of her glass, nudging toward her theMadeirathat he’d thought twice about setting down in front of her. “Or drink something. I’d even accept that. Anything to fill your belly. Most in your position would be four glasses in and foxed by now.”
A blink, and her head dropped slowly, her stare shifting to the glass, watching the burgundy liquid swirl along the insides of the glass from his nudge. A long moment and her left hand jerked up from her lap and she wrapped her fingers about the glass.
She sat like that for a long, silent minute, before her forefinger twitched and she lifted the glass to her lips. One sip. Two. So small he wasn’t sure she drank any of it.
“Pen, eat something. One bite.”
Her look lifted to him, her voice a rough whisper. “This is vindication for you. I’m sure it’s good to see. You told me what they would be like and I didn’t listen. You cautioned me about what could have happened to my mother, but I wouldn’t have it. And now this. I’m a bastard.” Her eyes closed, her voice catching. “I don’t matter—I’m worthless.”
