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Juliet swallowed hard at the pain Ness was about to suffer on the journey.
But Ness would get to London. And then Blackstone would take over.
Ness would be fine.
That was what mattered. Ness would survive.
As for herself…she would just have to cauterize closed the gaping hole that Evan had set into her chest last night. A wound that had throbbed, agonized with every step the horse had taken away from Whetland.
There was only one thing to do now. She would cram that wound full with work and work and more work. The Den would need her hand more than ever before, no matter if Hoppler lost Pen or not. Either way, he wouldn’t be fit to run the place for a long time.
She would move forth, one foot in front of the other, as she always had.
The mail coach lurched forward and rambled down the incline of the street.
Juliet exhaled the breath she’d held in the pit of her lungs for thelast seven hours.Ness would survive.
And Juliet would heal the broken shards of her heart.
It was all she could hope for now.
{ Chapter 28 }
Never to come back here.
The rumble of Evan’s voice from the night before echoed in Juliet’s ears. Shifting her cloak from her left arm to her right, she glanced over her shoulder at the coaching inn that serviced the London stagecoach route.
Fare paid and ready to go. Tomorrow she would travel back to London. For as tempting as the idea was to return to Whetland Castle, for as much as her heart screamed at her to go back and to beg for Evan’s forgiveness, she couldn’t do it.
No matter what happened between them, Gilroy would always have a hold over Evan. That was proved beyond dispute last night.
Gilroy would always win. She would always lose.
She couldn’t suffer through life like that.
As painful as it was to leave Scotland, she had no choice. Evan would never look at her the same. Never wisp his fingertips across her neck as he once did. Never set his lips to her body, making her want a lifetime of breathing his air.
The smallest part of her that had dared to hope on a future with him had been beaten into oblivion, where it always should have stayed. It’d been idiocy to let the spark of such hope even catch to flame.
He’d made his choice. She had as well.
And there was nothing left to do now but leave.
Juliet strolled along the incline of the walkway, studying the bricks of the buildings.A city of another age, so many of Edinburgh’s buildings sat hundreds of years old, testament to another time. Tight lanes and walkways, everything busy about her, so very much like London.She worked on recalling all the history she’d heard of the city from clients at the Den—both dastardly or glorious, depending on if she had a Scot or an Englishman sitting in front of her. That was the thing about history—it all depended upon your point of view.
Her eyes lifted, searching the upcoming buildings for the inn suggested by the stablemaster, as the main coaching inn where the stagecoaches assembled was full. Though it didn’t matter which inn she found, as all she wanted to do was collapse into a room and attempt to not break down in sobs. A bed was all she needed for that. If she was lucky, she’d be asleep in minutes and blissfully delivered from the horrors of the past night.
She felt the point of steel in her side before she heard the hiss of words in her ear.
“Where the hell is she?”
Her feet stopped, her body frozen.
The blade poked harder into the flesh just below her right rib cage as an arm wrapped around her from behind. “Scream and I gut ye.”
The arm shoved her into the cramped, dark quarters of an empty alleyway and she twisted, dropping her cloak, trying to escape the arm, the blade.
No success, but she saw the face of the man that had shoved her into the close.
