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“Sink me. One hour. One hour was all I needed.” Strider stood from behind his desk, his knuckles crunching hard onto the edge of the wood. “Fine, I need a drink anyway. I’ll look at her and then will you get rid of her?”
Jasper nodded, following him out into the hallway and down two doors to the smoking room Strider kept here at the Den. Like a library in any other fine house, he kept the room just for him and those he needed to impress—or intimidate. Aside from the windows, door and fireplace, every inch of wall space was filled with bookshelves and stuffed with tomes. It kept the room quiet and he mostly used the chamber to gain a sliver of silence in the madness that was always around him. Madness that was always vying for his attention.
He went to the sideboard and poured a full tumbler of Courvoisier cognac. After taking a long sip, he refilled his glass and then poured a tumbler for Jasper.
Strider walked across the room to where Jasper stood next to the bookcase on the wall that adjoined the drawing room. He handed Jasper the extra glass and then removed three fat books with worn leather covers, the gold lettering long since rubbed off, and set them on the waist-high ledge of the bookshelf. Leaning down slightly, he peered into the open space on the shelf, then reached in and silently slid the small metal flap on the Judas hole to the right.
A perfectly concealed view into the adjacent drawing room.
There in the middle of the room. A rigid woman in a black dress sitting on the one hard chair in the space. Her hands clamped together in her lap, unmoving.
His gaze travelled upward to her face.
Shock jolted through his body, tensing every muscle and making his heart stop for a full second.
He reeled away from the bookcase, his head suddenly light.
Three steps backward before he’d convinced himself he hadn’t just seen what he thought he did.
His feet cautious as he stepped forward, he took a full gulp of the cognac, then placed his glass down on the ledge. He set his eye to the peephole, his stare crazy as he focused on the figure in the middle of the room.
The bloody ass of Hades. It couldn’t be.
Couldn’t.
Penelope Willington.
Pen.
His Pen.
She sat there, an aberration from another time, another place. Her big green eyes, lined with the darkest lashes, stared at the door to the room, waiting. Patient. Still.
Pen had never been patient. Never.
But there she sat. A stone.
The slight rise of her chest with every breath the only indication she was alive.
His gut sank, his chest tightening until he couldn’t force a breath into his lungs.
Pure.
She was pure—as pure—innocent as the last day he’d seen her.
How in the hell had that happened?
How in the hell had his own life veered so far into darkness that the purity of her struck him as odd—something he almost didn’t recognize?
But there she sat.
Dressed in black, the fabric that looked to itch her skin raw was starched high under her chin, choking her. The shapeless dress hid her body. Her light blond hair pulled into a low bun that sat just below the simple black cap on the top of her head. The strands below the cap circled her head like a golden crown in the dim light of the room. She teetered on the edge of the hard chair, her spine so rigid he could run a ruler down it.
Next to him, Jasper took a sip of his cognac. “Ye see? She’s not our kind. She’s no whore and, well, she’s a delicate one—ye can see why I felt bad about kicking the lass back out onto the street at this time of night. I dinnae ken how she made it here in one piece. Ye know as well as I how the drunks would tear her apart if we sent her out there again.”
Strider could see perfectly well.
His jaw hardened, shifting to the side. Pen always had that air about her. The kind that made others want to take care of her. Coddle her. Protect her from the slightest threat of harm.
