Page 93 of Claimed By Her Forbidden Duke
She stayed silent, but after a moment, she admitted, “I did not think you allowed anybody close enough to call them a friend.”
“Julian is the closest,” he told her. “We bonded over the need to survive. I ensured that he got out of his hellish contracts safely. That is his story to tell, but for now, that is what you may know. Ever since I returned to London, I have been searching for the man who paid Logan to kidnap me. I cannot let it rest.”
“That is the business you cannot focus on, then,” she guessed.
Edmund nodded. “You are a terribly beautiful distraction, Penelope.”
Something curled inside her. Their arrangement could not, and should not, take him away from what was important. He had gone through hell and come out alive. How could she ever thwart what was rightly his to hunt down?
“Then let me in,” she said. “Instead of pushing me away, let me get involved if it means not side-tracking you.”
He let out a low laugh that wasn’t humorous but not quite condescending either. “I would happily be side-tracked?—”
“Edmund.” Her tone was berating, her eyebrows knitted together now that she knew. “You have been so secretive about your business, yet you have opened up to me now. What can I do for you to let me in?”
He leaned into her, and for a moment, she let herself be distracted by his mouth on hers, kissing away her questions. He grasped her chin, and she was once again reminded of how they had not bothered to clothe themselves. His hand slid down the side of her body, cupping the top of her thigh to draw it over his.
“Nothing,” he told her finally, pulling away but barely letting their mouths part more than an inch. “I would not have you involved in such danger.”
“I am sure you can still speak to?—”
He kissed her protests away—and he kept kissing her until his fingers slipped further inward, until they slipped inside her. She knew she was falling for his distraction, and she let herself. He had told her enough tonight.
She had to know that was enough. She had to be content with everything he had given her and knew it could not be more. Not in a permanent arrangement, and not when it came to his nightmares.
ChapterTwenty
Aweek after Edmund had that nightmare, he was still reeling from how much he had divulged to Penelope. Not even Julian had heard the true extent of what he had gone through.
While he had not told Penelope everything, he had told her more in one night than he had even let himself think about. Once he had started talking, he had felt something loosen in his stomach—as if there had been tension there, and speaking to her had helped to ease it. That terrified him.
To know that her presence had comforted him…
He could barely stand it. He had distracted her, but ever since then, he had seen the questions in her eyes as she looked at him. He’d also noticed the paleness of her face in the two times they had met privately. He saw how she flinched whenever Finley drew near.
Finley had behaved terribly in public enough when it came to Penelope, but how much more overbearing was he in private? Her dresses began to climb higher up her neck, bordering on being the wrong style entirely, and Arabella had mentioned that people were gossiping about them.
As soon as she shut herself in Julian’s house, Edmund always made sure to undress her almost immediately, freeing her in a way he could not in public. He hadn’t dared ask her yet what was happening at home, scared that his questions would coax out her own.
“Your Grace.” A voice from the doorway had Edmund glancing up to find Gregory poised to be received. “I have news of the Poseidon warehouse.”
Finally.
It was not bitterness, but relief. Edmund had needed a breakthrough after the investigation yielded very little. He had made it to a deep, dark place of who had been involved in his capture, and now the information was harder to get. More walls were up, and he had grown impatient.
“Report,” he ordered.
“I have evidence of illicit transportation and dealings,” Gregory said, producing a document. “This is from a man who cut ties with Cyrus Reed. He was involved in it all up until recently, but it appears his family was threatened when he lost some cargo. An innocent mistake, to have lost it, but the threat made him reform his ways. He gave me his last agreement in exchange for legal protection and not being reported.”
“Legal protection,” Edmund snorted, but then his eyes landed on the name on the page.Mr. Dominic Haddon. It was the man Edmund himself had interrogated, who he had used against Laurel Kerry to get more information on Reed.
Had he caused the threats?
“With a business like his, Haddon is lucky enough to have only received threats,” Edmund said, looking through the contract, searching for the name or signature of Cyrus Reed.
“That is why he asked for protection,” Gregory said. “For his business partner was not so fortunate. Mr. Laurel Kerry was found dead in an alley recently.”
Edmund went cold, and his hand shook. He was aware of Cyrus Reed’s signature at the bottom of the page, but he barely noticed or acknowledged it.
