Page 41 of Tempting the Scoundrel
His eyes seemed to darken as he pressed her fingers to his scar. “You know what. You never demanded answers from me. Never asked about my past. Never even asked me why.”
Alexandra didn’t wish to tell him that she had investigated him, too. That she kept her notes in the box with his articles, a reminder of her youthful folly. That understanding more of him never seemed to matter; it didn’t take the pain away.
“Isn’t that the problem?” she said. “I shouldn’t have had to. I trusted you were telling me the truth. I married you because I trusted you.”
His hand tightened around hers. “No secrets between us, Alex. Not this time. Don’t let me be like the men you’ve investigated, known for a liar.”
“But you are,” she whispered.
Nick’s eyes were bright, almost fevered. “Ask. Please, Alex. Ask.” At her hesitation, he continued, “You ought to know a thing or two about the man whose name you bear.”
Say something, she told herself. It should have been so easy to reply that she didn’t intend to bear his name any longer.I want a divorce.Such a statement would have been so final, a period at the end of their tragic story. If she wanted to dig the blade deeper, she could mention the ship, the length of the ocean, and the miles of distance she would one day put between them.
But these words would not come. This was the most vulnerable she had ever seen him, and something in her could not walk away without knowing who she was leaving behind.
Alexandra’s gaze lowered to the scar. Just one of many. None of them made him any less beautiful. They were a map of his past, the things he’d kept hidden from her. “Tell me this one, then. Only this one.”
Nick shut his eyes and loosed a breath. She wondered if it was in pain or relief. “When I was a kid in the Nichol, some toff took a liking to my ma. She worked the streets, did whatever she could to bring coin home and raise me as best she could. This toff treated her like shite but paid her better than most, so she kept him around.”
Alexandra noticed the subtle thickening of his Irish accent, the lulling cadence of it. When she’d known him as Nicholas Spencer, his English accent had been lovely, but this? Oh, she loathed that he’d had to hide it from her. Nick’s voice was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard.
“Anyway,” he said, running his fingertips along the back of her hand. “He showed up at our door one day looking for a quick fuck, so ma has to oblige him. He’d been paying our rent. Who was she to deny him? He roughed her up, of course. I heard it from the next room. When I went to defend her, he whacks me on my arse with his cane. I come to realize that thing has a blade hidden in it when he swipes me here. Told me it was something to remember, the next time I think of interfering.”
Alexandra swallowed back the bile in her throat. She had known Nick’s past was full of cruelty. A man like him could not grow up to become King of the East End without knowing a thing or two about awful men. But the thought of someone deliberately hurting him made her feel sick.
“How old were you?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Seven, I think. Ma died not long after, anyway.”
“I’m sorry, Nick,” she whispered.
Nick looked at her. “I don’t want your pity. That’s not what this is for.”
“What is it for, then?” she asked tiredly.
He reached up and cupped her cheek. “Just truth, Alex. Nothing else.”
No, that look was too intense. It said too much. Who was he to make her feel these things? He wasn’t her infatuation anymore. She wouldn’t be dazzled by a pretty face and a kind smile. He had lied to her, betrayed her, abandoned her, and insulted her.
She moved out of his reach, the distance between them already as vast as an ocean. She didn’t need a ship to cross it. “You gave me that too late.”
He didn’t look angry. Not frustrated, either. Only understanding. “I know it,” he told her. “But let me be clear: you still have the right to demand answers from me. Doesn’t matter how many years pass, you will always have that right.”
She stared at him, at his scars bared to her.Tell me about that one on your wrist, she wanted to say. Then another, then another. All those missing pieces of his past accumulated like the notes in her box.
Perhaps she needed them before she closed the lid on her folly for good.
Before she could answer, an insistent knock came to the door. “Thorne?” It was O’Sullivan. “We’ve got a situation.”
Thorne didn’t look away from Alexandra. “What is it?”
“The lads found another body.”
Chapter 13
“Stay here,” Thorne said to Alex as he shoved on his coat. The movement made him wince, damn Latimer to hell.
“Absolutely not,” Alex said, jerking open the connecting door to her bedchamber. She disappeared inside and he heard her rustling through her wardrobe. “I’m coming with you,” she called out, voice muffled from the depths of her closet.
