Page 37 of Dangerous Exile
He halted at the top of the stairs, his right foot atop the landing and his left foot on the last step. Even at that, he was still taller than her. “I didn’t think about food. You’ll probably need more than some tough meat and bread. And I can’t have you soused all the time.”
She glanced away from him, spying what looked to be a wide ballroom to her right. “So, this is where I am staying?”
“Yes. It’s the only other place that I trust to be safe, Ness. No one knows of it, so no one would ever find you here. You could, quite frankly, grow old and die here, and someone would find your bones tucked into a bed a hundred years from now when the building is torn down.”
She chuckled, unease in the sound. But as long as she wasn’t locked in an insane asylum, she was grateful. “Please tell me that is not my fate. Please tell me there is another way.” She exhaled a quivering breath. “Another way to be free of Gilroy. I can’t live hidden away forever, Talen. I cannot.”
His gaze locked onto hers, the rasp in his voice dropping to a low rumble, both calming and determined. “Once I find the men looking for you, we will figure out a path forward, I swear it.”
She held his stare for a long moment, trying to judge the sincerity of it. Trying to not break under the weight of the fear that had crippled her bones for the past four years. She wanted to believe him. Wanted so much to believe Gilroy wouldn’t find her—couldn’t find her.
But what then? He would always send more. And this was no life. Hidden away in an empty, cavernous house.
She straightened her spine. Patience.
A path forward would reveal itself eventually, she just had to be patient. Patient and quiet and hidden away from everything and everyone.
A prison of a different sort, just not the terrifying one she’d existed in under Gilroy’s thumb.
Her bottom lip jutting upward, she nodded.
{ Chapter 14 }
“Oh, you are up here.” Surprise sent Ness’s hand flying onto her bare chest above her chemise, the wide silk sleeve of Talen’s dark blue banyan slipping far down her arm. He’d given it to her earlier in the night, promising to bring her more clothes from the Alabaster in the coming days.
His feet swinging down to the floor next to a lantern, Talen sat up from the long wooden chaise longue he’d been stretched out flat upon, his right forearm propped under his head. “How did you find your way up here?”
Ness looked from him to the roofs of the buildings surrounding them, lower than the top of Talen’s house. Lights as far as the eye could see, glowing orange in the night. The city streets far below were busy at this time of night, though the stark noise of it didn’t reach up to her ears, just the fat echoes of the many wheels and hooves on the cobblestones.
Her gaze shifted back to him. “I couldn’t sleep. I tried, tried for hours, but then I heard sounds, sounds from above so I followed them. It took me a while to find the staircase next to that last room in the attic.”
He pointed to a dark corner of the rooftop terrace. “You probably heard Cat.”
“Cat?” She took a step closer to the corner he pointed to and saw a black tail twitch in the dark. A black cat with two white paws sat eating something from a bowl, paying her no mind. “You have a cat?”
He shrugged. “More of a visitor that visited often enough I finally began to feed it.”
Her lips pulled to the side in a wry smile.
She hadn’t figured him as an animal person. Especially not one that would take in a tiny cat. A lion. Maybe. Or a dragon. Definitely.
She turned around in the dark, surveying the rooftop oasis that sat atop his townhouse. Taller than all the surrounding buildings in every direction, the rooftop terrace held several benches, the chaise longue Talen sat on, chairs and a table. Vines grew from planters along the edges of the space, curling up onto the wrought iron railing that topped the half-wall surrounding the terrace.
“You really shouldn’t be poking around other people’s houses, Ness.”
“You didn’t lock my room, didn’t tell me to stay in one place for a change, so I took advantage.” She walked over to the edge of the rooftop, setting her right hand on the iron railing. The view stretched to street after street, full of busy coaches, all black and shiny with the finest dressed people within, rolling to and fro through the maze of the lanes below. Lights glowed in the many townhouses around them—a thousand flickers of flames that warmed the city, almost making it charming for the late hour. She’d heard that London was active during much different times than in Scotland, but had never been able to judge it according to the Alabaster. It was a gaming hell, after all.
Talen cleared his throat. “Then this is me telling you to stay in place. Your room. Up here. That is the extent of where you can go. I cannot afford anyone discovering you are here.”
Without turning around to him, she offered him a slight nod.
“Promise me, Ness. Don’t make me sink to locking you in your room again.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “But at the Alabaster you did that to lock others out, not me in.”
“Yes. But I also wouldn’t think twice about locking you in your room below for your own good. You know I will do it.” The hard cut of his voice sliced into the night, making her cringe.
He would do it, she didn’t have a doubt.