Page 61 of Tempting the Scoundrel
“Did she ever . . .” she bit her lip, but didn’t finish the question.
“No.” He had the lock open now. Whelan had demanded efficiency; Thorne could pick a lock with his eyes closed, in mere seconds. Now he toyed with the mechanism, wanting to linger with her a moment longer. “Never went back. Sold herself to the wrong man one night. He wasn’t quick with her.”
Her face had gone soft with some thought or another. She was always thinking, his wife. “Did you find this man?”
“Sure, I found him some years later.” Thorne could no longer tarry with the lock; eventually she’d notice that he’d opened and closed it several times. He shoved open the door and stepped aside for her. “And I wasn’t quick with him.”
Alex stepped past him and hesitated. Something unfathomable passed through her expression, one he could not comprehend. She was a lock he could not pick, one forged from the strongest steel and most complex mechanisms. The only way through her walls was if she let him inside.
Her light touch on his arm made Thorne’s breath catch. It indicated some weakness in the lock of her heart, the tiniest mechanism yielding. “Good,” she whispered, and then she disappeared into the tenement.
They both ascended a narrow row of stairs that creaked under their weight. The tenement was quiet. Most residents would be out by now, either to work in one of London’s many factories or to drink in one of London’s many taverns and gin palaces. These doors were all locked to them.
And only one remained ajar.
Alex’s hand shook as she pushed open the door and they went inside.
The place was empty. Not only was the woman Alex sought not there, it was as if no one lived in the place at all. All that remained in the small flat was a bare bed, a single table, and a stool. Millie, wherever she was, had vacated the premises.
Alex sat on the bed—the springs squeaking under her weight—and looked desolately out the window.
Thorne had a foolish notion to comfort her, but all that came out was, “She might have moved on. Rent was too high.”
His wife gave a dry laugh. “I paid her rent.”
Say something else, you idiot.“Perhaps she—”
“Please,” she said, shutting her eyes briefly. “You promised no more lies. Remember?”
Fuck. She had him there, didn’t she? “I’m sorry, Alex.”
They both fell quiet. Thorne wished he knew the perfect words to say. Figured some aristo in St. James’s would have told her something pretty to take that haunted look out of her gaze, but all Thorne had were lies, and she was right: hehadpromised the truth.
After a long moment, she let out a breath. “Do you know anything about opal mining?” she asked him.
It was a strange shift in topic, but as she stared out at the roofs of the other tenements in St Giles, Alex’s mind seemed to be working again. Perhaps it was a question to distract from her thoughts and worries. Something to renew her focus.
Nick shook his head. “Just seem the gems. Very pretty.”
“Very pretty,” she echoed with a gusty sound. “Quite so. Australia is vast and hot, and the sands that surround the opal mines are more effective than iron bars. The gems come from down in the earth, through narrow passages that go meters deep. Millie used to tell me it was difficult to breathe down there in that dark place, that you start to crave sight of an opal because finding one meant eating at the end of the day. Think of what she went through to survive that place, only to—” She made some soft noise and gripped her dress hard. “Can you imagine?”
The dark felt almost tactile. Closing in and suffocating. You learned to tell time by the space of your breaths, and would do almost anything to leave it: kill, maim, or steal. What matter? They took place in fresh air.
“Yes,” Thorne said, very quietly. “I can imagine.”
Alexandra’s shoulders tensed. “Is that right?” she asked.
The answer left him in a breath: “Ask me.”
Thorne watched as she drew her lip between her teeth, as if resisting the urge. But in the end, this action was not enough to quell her curiosity. “You have scars on the side of your torso,” she asked him. “Just under your arm. Eleven of them.” Her gloved fingertip settled on the fabric of her dress as she seemed to trace the lines there. “They look like notches. Deliberate.”
Thorne froze. “Yes.”
“Tell me about those.” She kept tracing with her finger. “In Gretna, they seemed . . . more recent. Less faded.”
“They were reminders,” he told her quietly. “I marked them myself before I left for Hampshire. When I was there, among riches I had never experienced before, I needed to remember why I went. What I was risking if I failed.”
“Reminders,” she echoed, breathing the word as if she struggled with it.
