Page 92 of Tempting the Scoundrel
“Let me ask you something.” His voice was steel scraping over stone. “Did you avoid me because of those reviews? Would you have come to me during those four years if he had never written anything?” At her hesitation, he gave some humorless laugh. “And you want me to forgive him so easily.”
“I never spoke of forgiveness. I pointed out a truth.” Nick didn’t reply. He toyed with the cue, his fingers skimming across the wood. “Tell me what happened after Stratfield Saye. You took the East End from Whelan and then what?”
A sigh left him. “What matter?”
Alexandra pressed her lips together and came forward. She set her hand to his back, felt the long, slow breath he drew in. “The scar right here—” she rubbed at his shirt, just over the mark—“I don’t recall seeing it five years ago. And a few others.” She skated her fingertips down the long line of his covered torso. She imagined each one, those long thin lines that were not there in Gretna. “What happened to you mattered to Mr. O’Sullivan. And it matters to me.”
Nick grasped the edge of the snooker table, the line of his shoulders tense. “Not everyone was eager to let me take Whelan’s place,” he told her. “So they told me at the end of a blade whenever I walked the streets.” His face was as still and immovable as stone. “I was tired. The club bled money and I had long hours until it was in the black. That took two years.”
Alexandra didn’t wish to think of him being attacked while she enjoyed the comfort and safety of St. James’s. Had one assailant succeeded, she might be a widow—and she would never have come to know the man she married. All the years they spent apart seemed so pointless. Why hadn’t he come to her?
“Mr O’Sullivan said you kept working to win over my opinion,” she said. “Before, I might have wondered if he was wrong. That caring would have required some attempt to visit me and earn my regard. But in all those years, you never came to my door.” She dropped her hand from his shoulder. “Now I want to know why.”
“I was there,” he said, very softly.
Alexandra froze, certain she had heard him wrong. “Say again?”
“I showed up a hundred times on your doorstep. Rehearsed a hundred different apologies, a hundred different ways. At first I left because I had nothing to offer you.” He made some bitter noise. “I was a criminal from the streets dodging assassination attempts from men who wished to challenge me for power, scraping by with my useless life because I had money I stole from you. In what world did I deserve you?” At her silence, he continued, “So I built the club and made it profitable. Figured even if I couldn’t offer you respectability, then at least I could pay you back with every shilling I earned.”
Every shilling . . .? She gaped at him. “That line about pounds, shillings, pence, and properties?”
The look he gave her was tender. “Truth. The club belongs to you. What isn’t used to pay wages goes into an account in your name.”
The revelation left her with some hollow feeling in her chest. How many times had he stood outside her brother’s house, deciding how to word an apology? How many times had she’d been inside, sat at her desk, torn between hating him and missing him? How many times had the butler come to tell her she had a visitor, and she foolishly wished it was her errant husband?
So many.
And it was never him.
Tears stung her eyes. “You could have told me that,” she said. “Or any of the hundred apologies you rehearsed.”
“Once I got to your doorstep, they all seemed inadequate.”
Alexandra put a hand on his cheek, forcing him to look at her. “Let me hear one.”
Nick slid to his knees. He stared up at her, and Alexandra’s breath caught. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “And I know that isn’t enough. It’ll never be enough.” He grasped her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. “But I am yours, and I love you. And if you let me, I’ll prove it to you every damn day.”
She let out a long, slow breath. “You were wrong,” she said gently. “That was more than adequate.” She gave him a smile. “I will demand proof, however.”
Nick nipped her fingertips. “Will you?”
“Oh yes. I’ve gone without proof for”—she glanced at the clock—“approximately eight hours.”
“Far too long,” he agreed, rising to his feet. “I’ll just have to take the rest of the night off and show you again, won’t I?”
Chapter 31
The open window framed Alex in a pale light. Nick stroked her hair—still a mass of tangles from their lovemaking—and she murmured his name in her sleep.Nick, she said.Nick, Nick, Nick. And he knew, from her soft smile, that she dreamed of good things.
Behind her, the moon peaked through the tenements of the East End. He imagined the weary mothers tucking their children into bed, hoping for a few hours’ rest before the factories opened at dawn. He heard the dim shouts and singing of the men and women at their local taverns, enjoying fried oysters and ale—joyful hours between backbreaking work at the docks. He imagined the children in the streets, relying on the kindness of strangers—not always successfully. Sometimes those strangers were looking for another person to break for money.
And one of them still lived.
His wife whispered his name again in her sleep. She would never be safe until he stood over Whelan’s corpse. No one would. The weary mothers, the tavern crowds—some of them remembered when Whelan ruled these streets, when they owed him protection money that might mean the difference between a full belly or a blade to the gut.
It was time Thorne put an end to it.
As he began pulling on clothes, he imagined them like a suit of armor before walking into his last battle. This time, only one of them would make it out alive.
