Page 92 of Claimed By Her Forbidden Duke
“Try,” she encouraged. “I will listen as long as it takes.”
His eyes immediately went to the curtained windows, but she drew him back with a brush against his shoulder. He flinched, but she kept her hand there, a steady presence.
Slowly, she let her hand slide over his broad chest to feel his heartbeat. For a man so steady on the outside, what wars did he face internally and endure so quietly?
“I will not turn my back on anything you admit. Do not think of dawn or anybody out there. This isus. I am Penelope, and you are safe in this room with me.”
He was silent for a long time, so long that she thought he wouldn’t answer her. But then he did, and his voice was tight. “It is not my safety I worry for but others who might witness me in this state. Sometimes it happens when I am awake, too.”
“You will not hurt me.”
It was a comforting reminder rather than an order, a gentle way to remind him that in this room, he didn’t fight what haunted his mind.
He shook his head. “I… It is not a kind tale.”
“If I wanted a kind tale, I would have gone to a library. I am asking for what it is you wish to share.”
He nodded, and she shifted to get comfortable, keeping her hand on his bare chest while he steadied his breathing. Shadows still haunted his gaze, but he was composed, a testament to how quickly and often he must have needed to do this.
“For seven years, I was in the Caribbean, having been kidnapped by a man named James Logan.”
Penelope tried to keep her reactions quiet, her expression neutral, even as the information surprised her. Everybody said he had vanished of his own accord, leaving Arabella defenseless.
To know that he had not chosen that, that he’d given up his entire life for the safety of his sister… it made her heart ache for him even more.
“I was ambushed one night in London, and when I came to, I was aboard a ship, thrown right into the dregs of the underground Logan had set up there. He had a reach everywhere, but that island is notoriously the most dangerous simply because more things can be done over there in secret, less regulated dealings. I was their… glorified messenger, let us say, but the messages I delivered were not notes written with good ink on good paper.”
“He killed a man.”
“I heard he murdered several.”
Penelope had dismissed her friends’ words as gossip, the ton working its nasty magic with rumors.
“Yes,” he sighed, turning to look at her with heavy eyes. “If you are wondering, my messages were Logan’s, and they came drenched in blood rather than ink. They were delivered by fists rather than words. On my first night in captivity, I was prodded awake with a knife to my throat and Logan’s face close enough that I knew true fear for the first time in my life. He turned the blade’s handle towards me, and he told me I could either kill a man who had wronged him or be the new target. I had left behind my father, my sister, my cousin. It was my survival, and I had no choice.
“I took the knife. The minute I did, I knew I would never be the same, that there was no coming back from what I had to do. I was right, of course. I took the directions and hunted the target for hours, still aching from being smuggled out of London. I found an older man, gray-haired and trembling, in the corner. He pleaded for his life, and I cut his words short with a terrible strike that did not kill him as quickly as I had thought it would. I had never raised my hand to a man before that night. As that man bled out slowly and painfully, I could only watch, horrified.”
His voice broke, and tears welled up in his eyes, making them shimmer. He stared down at his hands.
“I have committed a thousand sins,” he whispered, curling his fingers into fists. “So much blood, Penelope. My own, Logan’s enemies, Logan’s men who betrayed him. I fought and killed for my life out there, because every time I bit back, snapped like a feral hound that refused to be tamed, Logan told me he would have Arabella punished. He would tell me every way he would have my sister broken down, ruined both physically and mentally. And, every time, I knew that I would be broken before she was ever harmed. So I stood alongside Logan the whole time and did his bidding.”
He spoke quickly now, as if he knew that if he stopped, he might never speak of it again—and perhaps some part of him needed to.
“It was not all death. Sometimes I stole, and sometimes I lied to save myself. I harmed men and made them leave the island. But my hands have been too coated in blood to ever think I was worthy of having a peaceful life when I returned. You see now why I am reluctant to enter Society the way the ton expects me to. What good is a husband who has one foot in reality and the other trapped in a nightmare that never ended even when he fought to be free?”
Penelope swallowed at that. She had never approached Edmund with the intent of looking for a husband, but hearing the hard rejection in his voice made something strange crack inside her. She did not want that, and she had her own reasons for not making this arrangement permanent, but…
Heavens, why do I feel emotional about this?
Edmund was still staring down at his hands and shook his head. “I promised myself to exact revenge on Logan after everything I went through and did. His own men turned on him some time ago, and I took my chance. Julian’s, too.”
“Julian’s?”
He nodded, meeting her eyes again. He smiled slightly. “That is how we met.”
“You two are truly friends?”
“Did you think I merely borrowed his house without being close enough to be given privileges?”
