Dangerous Exile (An Exile Novel Book 3) Read online

  Mrs. Jenkins grunted as she bent further over, looking from all angles at Ness’s wrecked arm. “Ye did this to her?” She didn’t look back to Talen.

  “No.”

  “Did you give her anything?”

  “Laudanum.”

  She grunted again, then stood straight, her focus on Ness’s face. “The laudanum will help, child, but the best we can hope for is that ye pass into darkness for a spell during the worst of it.”

  Ness’s good eye closed and she gave a slight nod.

  Mrs. Jenkins spun and pointed at Declan. “Ye hold her legs.” She looked to Talen. “Ye get in the bed with her and hold her body back, Mr. Blackstone.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “You want me in bed with her?”

  “I want her upright and a force holding her back against me pulling. This break isn’t kind how it’s started to fuse back together. It should have been reset days ago.” She shook her head, obvious disgust on her face at his lack of calling for a bone setter sooner. “Either that laudanum was too much or she’s in a fever. The child can’t even hold her eyes open.”

  Talen didn’t bother to correct Mrs. Jenkins on any of the assumptions she’d made. The woman would think what she did—she’d never be any different.

  He moved to the opposite side of the bed to approach Ness from her right side and crawled onto the mattress. He lifted Ness’s torso up as he slid into place behind her, positioning her between his legs. He wrapped one arm around her waist and the other across her upper chest, attempting to make sure the coverlet didn’t shift too low for modesty’s sake. He’d already seen Ness’s entire body, but he didn’t need Mrs. Jenkins thinking any worse of him, or she’d never come back to the Alabaster to set another bone.

  Ness was slight, as though she’d been slim before this had happened to her, and then she hadn’t eaten for days. Even more gaunt than he had noted when he had checked her body for injuries earlier.

  And hot. Her skin boiling under his touch. He hadn’t realized fever had taken her over.

  Pushing the bottom of the coverlet aside, Declan found her legs at the base of the bed and locked his hands onto her ankles. Ness’s eye had remained shut, her mouth silent, her body limp as the laudanum had already taken a hold of her.

  Or not.

  The second Mrs. Jenkins pulled Ness’s upper left arm away from her torso, Ness went rabid—screaming, legs kicking, her body thrashing.

  The pain brutal or a hallucination taking a hold of her, Talen wasn’t sure.

  Her right leg kicked, jutting up and out of Declan’s hold and her knee cracked Declan in the right eye as he tried to retrieve it. It was enough to send him flailing back a step. “Bloody hell—”

  “Ness—calm,” Talen ordered into her ear. “We’re fixing your arm so be still.”

  She froze, her body tense against him. But she stopped whipping about. Her head turned, her right ear pressing against his chest as she looked away from what was happening to her left arm.

  Mrs. Jenkins was quick, wrenching and manipulating Ness’s arm into position as she realigned the bone.

  But with every twist, every yank Mrs. Jenkins made upon her arm, Ness’s body flinched. He felt it in her muscles. But she didn’t scream. Didn’t kick. Didn’t fight the pain.

  Her chin merely curled down, taking every stitch of torture the grinding of marrow against marrow caused.

  Talen had seen plenty of bones set in his day, some in the strongest of men. Men he’d had to punch out so they wouldn’t hurt the bonesetter. None of them had ever taken this sort of pain with the stoic silence that this woman did.

  Whereas he didn’t truly believe her before—that she had ridden the entire way from Edinburgh to London in the mail coach with her arm like this—he believed her now.

  She and pain were well acquainted.

  That didn’t stop her body from shaking, the agony overwhelming.

  Of all of it, that struck him. How her body shook uncontrollably against him. A life in overt turbulence.

  One last wedge of Ness’s arm and Mrs. Jenkins looked up to him, satisfied. “I’ll wrap it with a splint.” She leaned over to dig through the satchel she’d dropped on the floor and pulled free a plank of wood and long strips of linen. “Ye need to have her leave it in place for weeks, a month, more if it still pains her. It cannot slip out of place.”

  Talen nodded. “We will keep it wrapped.”

  Mrs. Jenkins was quick to set the wooden splint along Ness’s forearm and then wrap it with the linen to lock it into place.

  She stood straight, her gaze resting on Ness’s face that was turned away, quivering against his chest. Mrs. Jenkins pointed to Ness’s head. “And have the apothecary get an ointment for her face to relieve the swelling, the poor pup.”

  “Thank you for the prompt work.” Talen motioned his head toward Declan. “Declan will take care of you.”

  Mrs. Jenkins picked up her bag and followed Declan out of the room.

  This was the moment when he needed to extract himself from Ness’s body, but her shaking had yet to cease.

  There was something inherently wrong about it, the thought of abandoning the tiny waif while she was still quivering.

  One would think he was going soft, for how long he sat there, his arms wrapped around her body, trying to soothe the residual shocks of pain rolling through her.

  But sit he did.

  Until the trembling eased and her body relaxed against him, a deep laudanum-induced sleep taking her over.

  Thank the saints.

  He’d never stood for a woman sleeping against him, but in this case, he’d take it. Anything to ease the torture in her body.

  He finally allowed himself to take a deep breath and he realized how uncharacteristic of him it was, caring at all if her pain eased. When had he started to care about the wretched souls?

  Never.

  Which told him he needed to get out of that room posthaste, as Ness had already wasted too much of his night.

  Talen shifted her body gently away from his chest and pulled his left leg from the side of her, then laid her body back onto the bed.

  Taking care to not disturb her left arm too much, he tucked the coverlet up and over her chest and atop her toes.

  Poor pup indeed.

  Madame Juliet better have a good reason for all of this nonsense.

  { Chapter 3 }

  Talen entered the Blue Waters room two days later, determined to get answers where Madame Juliet had sent him none.

  He’d been expecting a message, a note from Juliet, which he’d gotten—but it had been short and raised more questions than given answers. Namely, who exactly was this woman Juliet had sent to him?

  Time to get the answers he needed from the most likely source.

  He closed the door of the Blue Waters room with a loud snap and Ness stirred, her one good eye blinking hazily until she realized someone else was in the room with her.

  She rolled onto her right side, trying to push herself to sitting, but her arms were heavy, her head bobbing in a slow circle, her focus out of her right eye blurry.

  Good. She was still deep in the fog of the laudanum he’d had Declan carefully administer to her throughout the last two days. It’d been necessary. Necessary for her pain, aside from the fact that the last thing he’d needed was a caterwauling woman in pain a floor above the Midas Room—where the highest stakes were won and lost.

  At her movement in the bed, his hand lifted. “No, Ness, do not sit up. It is too much for you.”

  She collapsed downward, sinking into the bed, gratitude in the exhale seeping past her lips that were now less swollen. Her right eye focused on him and the plump bruise about her left eye had finally eased enough so he could see a sliver of that eye.

  Her mouth parted, words croaking past her lips. “You are Talen Blackstone?”

  How many times was he going to have to answer that question from her?

  Talen veered, moving to the tea pot beside the bed. He
poured a shallow cup for her, then moved to the bed, holding it to her lips. Drips of it snaked into her mouth until she pulled away.

  Setting the cup on the bedside table, Talen moved to stand beside the bed, his fingers tapping on the light blue coverlet that hung over the edge of the mattress as he looked down at her. “Aye. I am Talen Blackstone and I have some questions for you.”

  Her right eye, still unfocused, drifted up the front of his body to land on his face. “What?”

  “Who sent you?”

  “Juliet. Juliet Thomson.” The name was drawn out, her voice drifting from high to low. Damn the laudanum still in her brain.

  He nodded. “I understand she went north with a Scotsman. You met her there?”

  “I did.”

  “Why did she send you to me?”

  “I need help.”

  “And she thought I would help you?”

  For the slightest second, her right eye seemed to focus on him directly. “You’re the only one that can protect me.”

  Doubtful.

  Sending the slip of a chit like this deep into the heart of the rookeries was far more dangerous than the hundred other places Juliet could have sent her. But Juliet had sent Ness to him. Which meant that the danger lurking about the woman was significant.

  Danger he wasn’t sure he wanted to invite into his life at the moment.

  He stifled a sigh. He already knew everything he was asking Ness. The letter from Juliet had told him this much, but it had been clearly written in haste.

  Ness needs to be hidden, protected.

  No one can know she’s with you.

  She is off-limits.

  Details had been lacking. Especially on that last line. Did Juliet really think he couldn’t keep his cock in his trousers? Especially when it came to a battered and bruised woman?

  But Ness’s story thus far matched what Juliet had written. Small favor. At least he wasn’t dealing with a liar.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re Talen Blackstone. You just told me that.”

  He shook his head. “No. Not my name. Do you know what I am, what I do here in London?”

  She blinked. Then blinked again, slowly, like she was trying to make her mind work through the opium muddle that had taken over her brain. “Juliet said to mention the Selkie South Brothel.”

  “Aye.”

  Her look lifted to him. “So you deal in brothels?”

  “No.” He exhaled a sigh. “Not since the one I had burned to the ground.”

  Her right eye opened wide. “But, Juliet—no. She cannot be…I cannot believe it.”

  “Believe what?”

  “Juliet couldn’t have been from a brothel—she said she knew people—the wrong sort of people, but I never imagined. But then you and that other man called her ‘Madame Juliet.’ I remember that.” Her head shook. “But no. Not Juliet.”

  Talen smirked. “She does know the wrong people. And she is exactly what you are afraid to think she is. But I can tell you this, Juliet is a lot of things, including a very good friend to you if she called in the Selkie South Brothel favor for you.”

  Her right hand lifted, heavy and slow, and she set her fingertips along her hairline at her temple. Her head shook slightly. “I am sorry. I cannot think…think quickly at the moment. Why can I not think?”

  “You still have laudanum in your body.”

  “You gave me laudanum?”

  “Aye.”

  “Why?”

  “To ease the pain as the bone in your arm was reset.”

  Her head shifted on the pillow, her gaze going down to her left arm. “I…I didn’t even notice. When did that happen?” Her right hand went down and her finger started to tug at the bandages.

  “Two nights ago.” He grabbed her hand and pulled it away from the bandages. “Don’t move it. The bonesetter was specific.”

  Her hand jerked out from his hold as though he’d scalded her. Between that and how she’d recoiled from Declan’s touch, it was clear she didn’t react well to men.

  But then she looked up at him, her peculiar amber eye settling on him with wariness. “Why do you owe Juliet?”

  “She didn’t tell you?”

  Ness shook her head.

  He took a step away from the bed. “Then it’s not my place to tell you.”

  She nodded, more to herself than to him. “Whatever she did, it must have been enormous for you to take me on. I realize you want nothing to do with me.”

  She was astute, even with a half-addled mind and only one good eye.

  “It was enormous. She saved numerous lives.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “But that is long in the past and I’m more concerned about the present. Juliet said you need to be hidden. I want to know why.”

  Her mouth clamped closed and Ness turned her face away from him, burying her head deep into the pillow.

  “No answer? Fine. Then I can presume it has everything to do with this? The broken bone, the cuts and bruises?” He motioned to the full of her beaten body. “But it would make it a hell of a lot easier if I knew who I was protecting you from. So, who did this to you?”

  Her head shifted on the pillow and she looked up at him. “I cannot tell you.”

  Talen stifled a sigh. He wasn’t about to argue with an opium-foxed woman. Especially one that didn’t trust him. The questions would have to wait for later.

  “Then you will rest more.” His arms relaxed to his sides and he inclined his head to her. “Clear your head. And I will ask the questions when your mind is once again your own.”

  The brown and blue deep shading of her cheeks quivered and her mouth shifted into what he assumed was a smile. It was hard to tell for the bruises and the cut along the side of her mouth.

  Talen turned and walked toward the door.

  “Mr. Blackstone.”

  He paused, turning back to her.

  “Thank you. Thank you for helping me.” Her voice escaped in a whimper, a pitiful warble so soft, as though she’d never been shown the slightest kindness and couldn’t quite believe she’d been allowed to stay there.

  It shot through his chest at that moment—the cracking of her voice wrapping around something deep within him he couldn’t quite identify. The jolt of it reared so strongly he almost didn’t recognize it. But there it was.

  A visceral need to protect this woman.

  In his chest.

  In his gut.

  And he always trusted his gut. It had gotten him this far.

  As much as he’d like to, he couldn’t ignore it now.

  Ness was his to protect, at least for the time being.

  { Chapter 4 }

  Ness cracked her eyes and stilled.

  Stilled, waiting for the pain that had consumed her body for days to shoot through her limbs, twisting her stomach into such a hard knot she never expected to stand straight again.

  The pain didn’t come.

  Or at least, not as brutal as it had been. The pain in her left arm was now an ache that drifted between torment and an intense itch. The itch most likely because of the heavy bandages that wrapped her arm, keeping it immobile.

  She flexed parts of her body, finding that all of her muscles that had been clenched so tightly during the last days held onto residual soreness, but the sharp burn in them was gone.

  Her right hand escaped from under the coverlet and her fingers went gently to her face. Bruises along her cheek stung with the touch, but the swelling had gone down about her eyes and her lips.

  Wait.

  She could see out of her left eye again.

  Her eyes opened wider, blinking. She could see properly again. See the coved ceiling above her with fat cherubs painted about the expanse. Whimsy sure to send fantasy into dreams.

  Her look focused on one unusually round cherub, the dimples in his cheeks particularly mischievous. Cherubs?

  Why were there cherubs, of all things, on the ceiling? She was in a gaming hell, wasn’t she? Cherubs d
idn’t belong in a gaming hell. Or had she been moved? Or maybe this wasn’t a gaming hell at all. Maybe she had dreamed that.

  Her fingers drifted away from her face and she looked around the room, trying to place herself.

  Thoughts. Real thoughts in her head. Not demons and ghosts and torture and the disconcerting kaleidoscope of the world shifting about her.

  The room seemed to be the same. There were two plush blue upholstered chairs by the healthy fire in the fireplace. Had she had a bath there? Snippets of her body being submerged in warm water flashed through her head.

  Her hand went to her bare upper chest, her pinky landing on the ruffle of a chemise. Pushing herself upright in the bed, she shoved the coverlet toward her waist and looked downward. A silky white lace chemise draped over her body. She’d been naked at one point, she remembered that.

  Someone had obviously dressed her. But dressed her in what? The lace of the chemise swooped down far along her breasts, her nipples almost visible through the open weave of the lace. The chemise had either belonged to someone much larger, or far less chaste than her own wardrobe allowed.

  But her body was clean. The scabs of blood gone.

  She made a note in her mind to thank the person that had ushered her through the ablutions.

  Before she could take in more of the room, the door opened without preamble and a man walked into the room.

  Instinct sent her right hand to grasp the coverlet and pull it up over her chest.

  The man froze just as the door closed, his stare locked onto her. “You’re awake.”

  She had to blink. Then blink again.

  She squinted at him. Blinked. Squinted again.

  No. Impossible.

  Dead. He was dead. Been dead for thirteen years. Dead, but standing in front of her.

  Her jaw dropped, breathless words drifting from her mouth. “Conner Burton. It’s you.”

  The man’s forehead wrinkled. “Who?”

  “Conner. Your voice is different, raspy, older, but it’s you. I would recognize your eyes anywhere.” Her hand went over her mouth. “But no…it can’t be you.”