Page 53 of Dangerous Exile
She nodded.
“I don’t know, Ness. I don’t know what it is about you, but from the first moment I saw you, even bruised and battered, you were someone that I knew, instinctively, that I needed to protect. I cannot explain it and I have not been able to place that compulsion. And then the more time I spent with you, the more I have come to want you just for you, beyond protecting you.”
Honest. Not a declaration of love, not that she was looking for one. Love was the last thing she needed at the moment. Her brow furrowed. “So if we did marry, how would we…I mean—us—you and me…” The heat of a blush crawled up her neck. “How would we live? Where?”
“We will figure that out.”
“Will we?”
His look centered on her, his light blue eyes untroubled. “We only need to worry about one thing at this moment, and that is get to Scotland as soon as possible. That is the first order of business. The rest of…everything…we will figure out.”
“Am I still in danger from Gilroy’s men?”
“When are you not in danger?”
She laughed. “True.”
“Your husband’s men. Your father. Random fops at the Alabaster. You collect danger like posies.”
Her smile faded away. “This isn’t fair. What I have brought you, the mess that I am, what it has made you do—spill blood.”
“Spilling blood means we now have information on the men Gilroy hired. Declan is on it and I imagine they will be found tonight.” His right cheek pulled back in a half smile, his fingers brushing the hair along her temple. “Plus, I don’t mind blood. Don’t mind any of the harsh realities of kill or be killed.”
He said the words so casually, her heart twisted at the thought of the boy she once knew becoming a man as hard and calloused as the mighty Talen Blackstone.
Her hand lifted, her fingertips tracing the line of his collarbone. “How was it that you became this?”
“Became what?”
“Harsh. Deadly.”
He stilled for a long moment, then his chest lifted in a deep breath. “The road to hell is littered with good intentions. It’s as simple as that.”
“Or as complicated. Something made you into this man—and I don’t judge you for it. I am not so daft that I do not realize that the man you are has saved me numerous times in the last month. But something built you into this man from the boy I once knew, and I worry on that. What happened to you?”
He shrugged. “I toiled for years on that first Royal Navy ship—it was where I met Declan. Those were harsh times and both of us were skinny whelps, prime for whippings. The war, what we saw. We were nothing in those days, so it was about survival.”
She winced, the thought of a cracking of a cat o’ nine tails across his back filling her brain. “And you did survive.”
“Aye, we did. After the war we eventually made it onto a privateering ship, theFirehawk, and after a number of years, we left the ship in London with a meager fortune. Declan and I pooled our money and we purchased a gaming hell by the docks. Then another one. Then another one. We moved the business farther into London. He took care of our people and I took care of the numbers. We both took care of any threats. And we hired the best men we could find—those that knew how to inflict pain, but were principled men.” His right hand ran through his hair. “It wasn’t long before our men became feared, which presented its own opportunities by the docks—acquaintances wanted our men to see to the safe delivery of certain goods.”
Her eyes went wide. “Smuggled goods?”
His look shifted from her to the ceiling. “The less you know, the better.”
“Or the more I know the better?”
His gaze dropped down to her, his look severe as he shook his head. “No.”
She gave him an exasperated smile. “So, you expanded your business.”
“We did. In those early days it was a scrabble for every coin, every speck of power. Lots of blood was spilled, territories carved out. But it worked. We earned our corner of London. A better life for me. For my men.”
His mouth closed in a long pause and she could see his mind drift to the past. “Then some of the men wanted to marry. Wanted families. Wanted better lives for their loved ones. Good intentions drove all of it. A slippery slope to what we did to expand. Little by little, morals slid away. There was always a reason. Johnson’s wife was sick and needed medicine and a home in the countryside to get her out of the London air. Tiller’s oldest boy needed a stash to go to America and buy land. Perkins’s family in Scotland was destitute, all of his twelve younger siblings due to the workhouse after his father died. Noble causes, all of it. All of us wanted better for those that depended on us. The ill-gotten measures to those goals became normal. Normal became moral. And that is where things stand today.”
She met his look, her bottom lip jutting up at the harshness of what she had to ask. “Are you a bad man, Talen?”
He paused for a long moment, his look on the soft cream ceiling—no cherubs, just simple, elegant coving along the edges of the room. “I don’t think so. But there will be plenty to tell you otherwise.”