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He swung another jab at Flagton’s cheek. More bones crunched. “I don’t care.”
“I do.” Jasper grabbed Strider’s arm as it coiled back again. He dropped to Strider’s ear, his voice hard. “This isn’t our corner of the rookeries. I’m not saying we don’t do this. I’m not saying this rat doesn’t deserve all of it. All I’m saying is we drag him to our area at night to do this when there’s some semblance of deniability—or at least we’ve paid off all witnesses.”
Sense.
Jasper was talking sense that somehow made it down to the tiniest sliver of him that was not boiling with red-hot rage at the moment.
His left fingers uncurled, his knuckles cracking as he let loose of Flagton, letting him drop to the ground.
Jasper pulled Strider back before he could send a kick straight into Flagton’s belly. Pulled him backward and then rounded him to shove him into the carriage.
Strider didn’t take his glare off of Flagton. Not until the carriage started moving and Flagton jerked out of view.
He looked down at his blood-covered hands. Blood that could stay there for all he cared. He wasn’t going to clean up, wasn’t going to sleep, wasn’t going to eat, wasn’t going to stop, until he found Pen.
He’d tear London apart at the seams if that’s what it took.
Every contact, every favor was about to be called in.
Hewouldfind her.
{ Chapter 22 }
She’d done well these past two weeks.
So much so, an inordinate sense of pride surged through Pen as she walked home from thegoldsmith shop in Leicester Square.She’d just convinced the goldsmith to give them every fifth bracelet he was making for them for free. Something he was smart to do, for the exposure of his work at one of Daphne’s events was sure to bring more business to his struggling shop.
The pride, deep down in her chest, was foreign, for in the Flagton household if she’d ever shown the slightest glimmer of pride, it was stamped down—a sin against the morality of man.
But shehaddone well. Daphne had been impressed with her ability to haggle with the vendors and had started to send her on her own a few days ago. All those years of battling with peddlers and shopkeepers to get the lowest prices on what Mrs. Flagton wanted had, in essence, saved her life.
She had a bed at Daphne’s home. Food—Daphne had the most extraordinarily talented cook—in her belly. Coins in her pocket—more than she had ever held as her own. And most importantly, a tenuous toehold for a future that didn’t involve selling her soul just to live another day.
Tomorrow was the first gathering that Daphne would have Pen walk at. Daphne had deemed her cheeks plumped up enough from the days with no food, and it had been a relief to Pen. She wanted to contribute so much more.
Daphne held her flash fêtes, as she called them, at a large pavilion in Vauxhall Gardens.Dressed in exquisitely trimmed silk gowns in a wide hue of colors andthen bedecked with bracelets, earrings, headdresses, pendants, unusual caps, necklaces or parasols,Pen would be one of Daphne’s four women that would stroll the gardens for an hour before the event started, giving the invited women a taste of what Daphne had in store for them that day.
Pen’s charge: to turn heads.
She only hoped she could live up to what Daphne saw in her. She had watched the last flash fête six days ago from the corner of the pavilion Daphne reserved, and was dumbfounded by the whole of it. The amount the ladies were willing to pay for some of the baubles. The strong punch. The treats that were set out—she had thought Daphne’s cook was talented, but hadn’t imagined she could make such marvelously diverse pastries and sweets—each one melting on the tongue. Every lady in attendance was in the best of spirits and more than excited to see what Daphne’s latest collection was.
Pen had been nursing a nervous pit of excitement in the depths of her belly for days. She couldn’t fail Daphne. Not after all her generosity.
Though both her fear and excitement were diluted by the current state of her heart. Which was—she admitted to herself early on—crushed to the point that very little feeling made it in and out of her body.
Strider was fully and completely lost to her.
The harsh truth she’d only begun starting to accept.
Even though she’d known it the moment he left her. Even if she had harbored hope for days after returning to London—for too long, if she was honest with herself.
She’d ruined Strider’s life. He’d had a chance to escape the squalor they were in after the fire, and she had taken that chance away from him. Taken what he was due in life. Taken what he was owed. Taken his chance to be the man both his father and Mama June hoped he would be.
She had ruined all of it.
Out of fear. Weakness.
It was only right that Strider was now lost to her.
