Page 26 of Tempting the Scoundrel
The little girl in the green dress looked shy now. “The ladies what see me in passing on the streets don’ look at me nice-like. Hurts my f-f—” she frowned, glancing at the other girl with a questioning expression.
“Feelings,” Brown Dress finished.
On second inspection, Alexandra decided Brown Dress was older—at least nine years old. She only appeared so young because she was small. Like many of the children in the East End, malnourishment had stolen height and weight from her.
Nick wasn’t feeding his own children properly?
Never mind the weapon, Alexandra was going to set Nick on fire,thenshoot him.
The younger girl curled next to Alexandra and propped her chin atop her knees. “Thought ye was dead, but Fiona kept insisting ye wasn’t.”
Fiona rolled her eyes. “And she’s not, is she?” To Alexandra: “What’s yer name, lady?”
“Alexandra,” she said, still confused. If not Nick, these children had to belong tosomeonehere. Why else would two little girls be loitering in the private suite of a gaming hell? “And who might you both be?”
“Two naughty children who picked the locks again and are about to be late for school,” a new voice said.
Alexandra looked over to see Nick leaning against the doorframe, watching the girls with an amused expression.
“Is she really a lady, Mr. Thorne?” Fiona asked, giving the bed a jostle. “She’s ever so pretty. She got skin like milk, she does.”
His black eyes sought hers. “Lady, she is. And, aye, very pretty.”
She had forgotten the trick of those eyes, how off-kilter he could make her feel. His heated expression promised long days in bed, hours of devotion to her pleasure. Even now, after everything he had done, the stark hunger in his stare sparked some light inside her. Some twin desire that she had tried for years to extinguish.
But she was no longer the infatuated girl in Stratfield Saye. Give her a blade, and she’d cut him from her heart for good.
Brown Dress touched her wrist. “Why she got bruises on her arm?” the girl asked. “Like ‘andprints, them. Looks like me ma’s did after spendin’ a night with a man.”
Nick clenched his jaw and pushed off the doorframe. “Fi, Lottie, away from the bed now. O’Sullivan’s gonna take you to school and I don’t wanna hear any complaining, either. Lottie—” He let out a breath. “Lottie, sweetheart, where are your boots?”
Fiona bounced off the bed and ran to Nick, who clasped her hand. “She lost ‘em, Mr. Thorne.”
“I didn’t lose ‘em,” Lottie said, slowly getting off the bed. “Gave ‘em to a girl what just came into the orphanage. Didn’t have any boots, she did.”
“And now you don’t have any,” Nick said. He shook his head. “Go find O’Sullivan and have him fetch a pair for you from Mrs. Ainsley’s, then it’s straight to school, all right? Off you go.”
“Bye, lady!” Both girls disappeared out the door.
As their patter of footsteps disappeared down the hall, Nick cleared his throat. “How’re you feeling?”
“Like I’m being stabbed through the skull,” Alexandra said.
Nick’s smile was small. “I’d expect so. Didn’t think a woman so small could consume that much brandy in a single evening. Want anything for your bad head?”
“No. I’ll use the pain as a lesson never to drink again.”
Alexandra fretted with the sheets, her skin so pale against the deep crimson. In the morning light, the bruising along her arm was more visible. It was worse above her elbow, where a clear imprint of five fingers left their marks.
“Bruises anywhere else?” Nick kept his voice light, but Alexandra was not fooled. Violence flickered across his features.
“Possibly.” As cold rage continued to play across his face, she felt compelled to add, “They look worse than they feel.”
Nick came closer. She had forgotten how he commanded a space, how the walls seemed to contract when he entered a room. He stared at her bruises intently, as if counting each one. Memorizing the shape of them. Imagining how her attacker put them there. Yes, this was not Nicholas Spencer, the schoolmaster who had come from Southwold. This was the man who commanded the East End. His reputation for violence was as renowned as a general on the field of battle.
He turned and picked up some folded clothes from the wingback chair. “Here.” He set the bundle beside her. “Thought you might like something to wear that wasn’t a night rail.”
The shades were more somber than she usually wore: grey, brown, and black. The corset was the only item that held any color at all, and the pretty rosebuds on the undergarment unsettled her. Had he unlaced the stays while taking it off another woman? Had he admired the shape of her in it?
