Page 102 of Pride: The Rogue
Anne Bradstreet
Latimer thumbed through the rest. As he did, that sick sensation in his stomach grew.
“Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew…”
~Edmund Spenser
This time, when he shut the journal, he did so with a quiet, faint indecipherable click.
It was an accumulation: some poems and romantic sonnets, in their entirety. Single quotes or verses. Some original thoughts. Ones Livian recorded, because…
She is a hopeless romantic.
Sweat slicked his palm.
As if you hadn’t known that from the very start,Latimer castigated himself.
Aye, he needed to get the hell out of here.
Shite, he needed to have gotten the hell out of here, a day ago.
He stilled, registering footfalls outside before they even stopped outside his—Livian’s—room.
His company had arrived even sooner than expected. Given the hefty price Latimer paid a villager in the taproom and the man he’d fetched on Latimer’s behalf, it shouldn’t come as any surprise.
Though, if Latimer were being honest with himself, it felt a whole lot more like disappointment.
Unnerved, Latimer drew the door open to reveal Darren, one of six guards who’d followed Latimer when he’d left Forbidden Pleasures.
Neither man spoke until Latimer slipped out of the door. Before he did, Latimer, with a possessiveness he’d never experienced before, carefully drew the panel closed enough that the guard couldn’t see Livian sleeping.
“Problem?” Darren’s harsh, gravelly cockney possessed the quiet only a man who’d survived the Dials could manage.
Aye. “Of a sort.” Just not in the way the other man meant.
“The woman in there,” he explained, soto voce. “Her name is Livian Lovelace.” His muscles knotted. Why did it feel like a betrayal to reveal her identity, to one of his most loyal men? “I want you on her until she arrives safely at her destination. Keep your distance. She’s not to be harmed.”
Darren didn’t need to know anything more than that.
“Aye, sir.”
The guardalsoknew better than to ask questions.
After giving Darren a few more directives, Latimer returned to Livian’s chambers and closed the door behind him.
Though some five inches shorter than Latimer, Latimer witnessed enough of the brawny man’s skill with knife and gun to know he could cut down a man two feet taller and twenty stone bigger. As long as Darren was tasked with watching after Livian, no harm would befall her.
So what accounted for this impotent fury at Darren being the one to watch over Livian?
You’re going fucking mad.
Firming his jaw, Latimer, avoided the unsuspecting beauty buried under the covers.
He found a clean page in her book and carefully, quietly rent the sheet.
Latimer hesitated, then grabbed an entirely too small charcoal pencil.
