Page 15 of Heart of Iron
“Aye.I’ll be off.”
“Not home,” Honoria said.“You’re not fit to leave just yet.I want to check on you before you go.Lena?”
Lena’s head lifted like a startled doe.“Yes?”she asked warily.
Honoria took a shallow breath, as though considering her words.“Can you see Will to the kitchen and sit with him awhile?Make sure he gets something into his stomach.You know how he gets after some excitement.”
“That ain’t necessary,” he said.
Lena exchanged glances with him.“I was hoping to speak to you, Honoria.”
Even Blade stared at her, a silent question in his gaze.Honoria’s eyes met his and somehow the question was answered.Blade growled under his breath and nodded.“Best to get somethin’ into you, Will.We’ll be down shortly.”
No help for it.He was stuck with her and the room was suddenly far too small.Will opened the door and stalked through.Lena hurried behind him in a swish of skirts with a muttered curse about gentlemen allowing ladies to go first.
“I ain’t no gentleman.”
“Well, everyone knows that,” she murmured.“They don’t call you the Beast for nothing.”
The words shouldn’t have stung.He’d been called worse for years.Indeed, he’d taken the name on, molding himself into it.Using it to keep curious humans at bay and predators on their toes.
But for some reason, hearing it from her lips felt like a knife to the chest.
Following his nose to the kitchen, he found it empty.Lady Luck wasn’t with him today.Though a bubbling pot of soup on the stove bore evidence of Blade’s housekeeper, Esme, there was no sign of the actual woman.
A light touch fumbled at his wrist.The smooth silk of her elbow-length gloves.“Here,” Lena said, tugging his hand toward one of the low stools by the hearth.“Sit.I’ll fetch you some soup.”
She let him go, but the feel of her touch remained, like phantom fingerprints.Will sank slowly onto the stool, watching as she bustled about the kitchen.
Lena looked out of place.The hearth dominated the room and emitted a constant blanket of heat.Soot stained the ceiling, and the workbenches were heavy and scarred from frequent use.Strings of onions and herbs dangled over the main bench, along with a row of copper pots strung from metal hooks.It was homey and inviting.Precisely everything that Lena was not.
Her red velvet skirts were hooked up just enough to reveal a flirtatious froth of underskirt, and her corset narrowed an already slender waist to a size he could span with his hands.Black bands of lace decorated her bodice and the panels of her skirts.As she reached up to try and fetch a bowl, the creamy mounds of her breasts threatened to tumble from her bodice.A hint of black lace edged against her creamy skin.
Will’s fingersitched.
He could remember the first time he’d ever seen her, bustling along Petticoat Lane with her gray Serge skirts swishing around her ankles and her battered bonnet barely protecting her from the rain.Clutching a sodden newspaper over her head, she’d slipped on the edge of the gutter and the newspaper had torn in two, disintegrating in Lena’s hands.With a helpless laugh at a pair of street urchins, she’d given a shrug, then tossed the newspaper aside.The sound of her laughter went straight through him; it was the type of sound that always made Will feel like an outsider looking in.Joy radiated off her, like warmth from the fire on a cold winter’s night, and Will felt an almost envious stirring, as if he wanted to stretch his hands out and catch some of her effervescent happiness.Dragging her bonnet off her head, she’d tilted her face up to the rain as it wet her lips, her eyelashes fluttering against her pale cheeks, and Will had almost fallen off the roof as he strained to look.
Women made him uncomfortable at the best of times.His own mother had sold him once it became clear he was verwulfen, and the only other woman in his life had been Esme.After a year or so of her presence at the warren, he’d started to relax around her, but everything about Lena set his hackles on edge.A curious, uncomfortable feeling that he didn’t understand.With a vampire stalking the rookeries, he’d been in charge of keeping an eye on the younger Todd siblings and protecting the house at night.Every day he’d followed Lena to work and then home again, without her even knowing.He complained about it to everyone he knew, but the truth of it was that he began to relish the moments when she’d appear at the door of the clockmaker’s, giving a cheery little wave back into the shop.In the grim reality of Will’s life, Lena became the one bright spark, a yearning for something he’d never had or felt before.
It was safe for him to feel that way.She was a stranger still, no threat to him, nor he to her.It wasn’t until he came face to face with her that he’d realized how different reality might be.Stepping out onto the roof one night in her nightgown, of all things, Lena had stared at him as if he were some hulking brute, darting a swift glance at the window she’d come through.
With his palms sweating and his throat tight, Will had been unable to speak.Then suddenly the words had come, blunt and awkward.“Youwouldn’t make it in time,” he’d said.“Andifyoucouldn’t avoid me, then you couldn’t avoiditeither.Are you stupid, girl, to come out here with the creature on the loose?Or just wantin’ to die?”
The worst thing he could have said, for her eyes had narrowed and she’d drawn herself up as if she were a queen and he the lowest of street scum.
She made him feel like the small, helpless boy that nobody had wanted—nobody but Sturrett, who’d seen a way to make coin off him.Will had sworn he’d never feel that helpless again, but seeing her always threw him into a maelstrom of emotion, and even now the hungry, angry part of him was restless.His beast, prowling like a caged wolf inside his chest.
Can’t let it out.
Can’t ever let it out.
“You don’t need to do this,” he said bluntly, as she bustled around the kitchen.“I can manage by meself.”
Lena unpinned her hat and tossed it carelessly on the bench, followed by her gloves.The hint of smooth skin and manicured nails drew his eye.She’d touched him once with those hands and he’d never forget it.
“You always need food after one of your episodes.”Humming under her breath, she began to ladle soup into a bowl.
“It weren’t an episode.”His tone was far sharper than he’d intended and she stilled.Cursing himself, he continued, “I only get shaky when I’ve exerted meself, or lost too much blood.It’s just the virus, healin’ me.This is different.”
