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“No.” He stepped to her, tugging the sheet away from where it wrapped around her chest, pulling it down past her torso. His fingers quickly worked the knots on the twine binding her wrists together. “But there were a lot of things I didn’t mention. Since the fire, time has never been kind to us. Too long in poverty. Too short in bliss.”
He winced as her fingers rubbed on her wrists, smoothing the raw red welts the twine had left. The fishmonger hadn’t taken any care with Pen at all. He needed to send someone after the imbecile.
He dropped to his knees in front of her, untangling the sheet from her legs and untying her ankles. “It’s why we’re here. Why I had you brought here. We need time. Time without interruptions. Without impending doom.”
His hands lifted to rest on her knees, his eyes meeting hers. “But first, you stink of fish.” He inclined his head to the adjoining chamber. “Bath.”
Her nose wrinkled at him, her glare able to melt ice. “I didn’t stink before I was accosted.”
“I apologize for that as well.” He stood, holding his hand outward toward the steaming bath he’d had readied for her.
Her body nearly shaking in anger, she stood from the chair and spun, untangling the last of the sheet from her body. He couldn’t blame her for her anger. He’d had her accosted on the street and scared the wits out of her. Every fiery look aimed at him he deserved.
But he didn’t care. She was here. In front of him. Unscathed enough to blame him for the injustice of her current situation.
After his last days of terror—turning over every rock and searching every hovel in London for her—he’d take anything she doled out to him at this point.
Pen silently walked past him into the bathing chamber and sat on the wooden cane chair, untying her boots and removing them.
Strider followed her, leaning against the frame of the door as he watched her.
Her boots off, she stood and unbuttoned the simple wool pelisse in a deep blue that was a shade darker than the functional cerulean muslin dress she wore underneath. She was in color again, not in black. Aside from the smell of her, she looked well. Her cheeks flush and healthy, the soft muslin dress fitting her shape closely, accentuating her curves. He needed to find out where she got it from—what man was daring to set such finery on her.
She draped the pelisse over the chair and then looked to him. “Turn around.”
“I’ve seen it all before, Pen.”
“That doesn’t mean you’ll see it again.”
Strider stifled a sigh. He was to blame for letting a fishmonger set his stench onto her, so he’d have to suffer the consequences. He’d hoped they would already be past this part—her anger—but a bath was more than necessary before anything else.
He turned around, his stare landing on the wooden floorboards, but he didn’t move away from the door.
More correctly,couldn’tmove away from the door. All he’d wanted to do since walking into the room was to grab her and grip her body to his in such relief that she was alive, well, and uninjured after being kicked out of the Flagtons’ home.
The water splashed onto the sides of the copper tub as her body slid into the liquid. He didn’t turn around to look at her, but stood, silent, waiting, his arms clamped across his chest.
Water dripped, plunking into the bath as she began to scrub her body.
Minutes he stood, silent, listening to her scrubbing as every muscle in his body pounded, demanding he turn around and strip down and join her in the water.
“You stole me from the street, Strider. Had me abducted like a common criminal. Why?”
Strider’s right hand lifted, his fingers running along the back of his neck, settling all the hairs that had spiked with the accusation in her voice. “I had to bring you here for I knew you would never come to me. No matter how low, your pride would never let you come to me. So I had to bring you to me.”
Silence.
The water splashed slightly. “Strider.”
He looked over his shoulder and his body nearly shattered into a thousand pieces. Pen naked in the tub, her blond hair wet and long about her shoulders, rings of water lapping at the top swell of her breasts. Perfection.
Her dark lashes looked even darker with a sheen of moisture on them, her green eyes intense on him. “I never would have come because you…you don’t want me. You hate me for what I wrought. What I took away from you.”
“I do.” He turned fully around to her. “And you hate me for the choices I’ve made, the life I lead.”
Her lips pulled inward for a full breath. “I do.”
Two steps forward and he leaned over the tub to set his face next to hers, his breath hot along the side of her neck. His words low, slow. “‘Out beyond the ideas of wrong doing and right doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.’”
