Page 74 of Tempting the Scoundrel
New York Island has an area of twenty-two square miles and twenty-nine miles of water front, about three-fourths of which stretches along the Hudson and East Rivers, and the remaining one-fourth upon the Harlem River and Spuyten Duyvil Creek. The streets, roads, and avenues measure 460 miles. 291 miles of these are paved; 169 miles are unpaved. 19,000 gas-lights are burned every night—
Boots pounded down the hall outside her room. A door opened and shut. There was movement beyond the connecting door.
Nick was home.
Alexandra stared down at Miss Dawes’ letter, then at the passage she had memorized from a guidebook to the city of New York. Just one passage among many of places she had never visited.
In the weeks after her marriage became gossip fodder, the guides were comforts. The schedules of sailing ships were, each of them, possibilities. Escapes to her first destination. Now, like a boat that had capsized in a storm, she was left adrift at sea without a guiding course.
Should Mr. Thorne cooperate with your request . . .
Should he mount an objection . . .
“It’s time,” she told herself. Then she set her shoulders.
Alexandra grabbed Miss Dawes’ letter and threw open the connecting door. “Nick. We need to t—” She froze at the threshold with a gasp.
Blood stained Nick’s shirt and coat. He had a wild look to him: hair disheveled, jaw set, eyes deep and hard as volcanic rock. Though he posed no immediate threat, he looked . . .
Alexandra fought the urge to retreat, suddenly comprehending what had unnerved her. The man before her was what the criminals of the East End feared: the master of their streets. The one they told stories of, and warned people to fear. This was the man who intimidated even the most powerful men in the country.
And yet . . . she found this suited him. His dark beauty was as cold and alluring as a winter evening, but even ice held vulnerabilities. It fractured beneath too much pressure. His stare was both more incomprehensible and vulnerable than she had ever seen, dark depths beneath a cracked surface.
“What’s happened?” she whispered.
“I’m about to have a bath,” he said, in some strange voice she couldn’t understand. “Perhaps you’d like to speak when I’m finished.”
“Don’t dismiss me.” She came further into the room, close enough to look him over. “Are you hurt? Did Whelan send men to attack you?”
Nick’s laugh was dry as he reached for the decanter on his mantel and poured two fingers of whiskey. His hands . . . Alexandra drew in a breath. His hands were shaking and blood-covered. Did he experience this same awful fear when she came to him like this days ago? When she had been the one to bring blood on her hands?
He threw back his head and polished off the drink. “Concerned about me?”
She frowned. What mood was this? She did not understand it. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Three days ago you declared I meant nothing to you before we fucked,” he said flatly. “I did not imagine that.”
Something contracted in her chest. This dull ache had been her constant companion for the last few nights. She was beginning to understand that her heart had never healed, not fully. Fractured hearts were always so brittle.
She curled her fingers into her palm.It wasn’t true, she wanted to say.It meant too much, and I fear being hurt again.But in the end, she only said, “You are avoiding my question, Nick.”
He poured himself another glass of whiskey. “One of Whelan’s old allies was spotted at a public house in the Nichol. O’Sullivan and I went to have a conversation.”
“And did you . . .” She swallowed hard. “Did you have a conversation?”
Nick downed the whiskey and set the snifter down on his desk with a sharp rap. “Ask what you really mean.” At her silence, he made some noise. “Fine, I’ll do it for you: Is he dead? Yes. I shoved a blade into his gut. Ask me once more about the scars on my body, and I’ll tell you that this man had a way with a knife. Now ask me why I let him bleed out on the pavement instead of giving the coppers a new prisoner.”
“Why?” she breathed.
He stepped closer to her, his gaze as black and glittering as the sea at night. “Because. I. Wanted. To.”
Yes, she understood his reputation now, why some had remarked that he had the eyes of the devil, of a man possessed. But she had seen his scars. The King of the East End had been a necessity born of cruelty.
She, too, had killed. Survival came with a cost.
“Do you wish for my condemnation or my absolution?” she asked him. “For I’ll give you neither.”
“I wish for you to comprehend the manner of man you married. It isn’t a former schoolteacher. I’m not a gentleman. I’m not Lord Locke.”
