Page 25 of The Scoundrel of Drury Lane
It took her a moment to find the words to speak. She held her breath, thinking of all the moments of sorrow that had so often weighed her down. But the other questions she had would not let her stay silent for long.
“Did you... ever meet any convicts during your time in America? I know England stopped sending them to the Americas after the war, but...”
“I have met some. Why?”
Jude had trusted her with his past. Now she needed to trust him and confide in him about Kit. She took a moment to think about what she should say.
“I met a man yesterday who spent seven years in the penal colonies of Australia. He seems so broken by what he endured. Full of so much anger. So much that I don’t know how he doesn’t tear the world apart with his bare hands.”
Jude reached out and covered one of her hands with his, giving it a squeeze.
“Some men feel helpless, but rage gives them power for a time. Anger gives them something to hold on to, like a lifeboat in a storm. A man ties himself to the oars and rows and rows. Every wave threatens to drown him. That lifeboat of rage is all he knows, but a man cannot survive forever with that rage.”
Suzannah’s throat tightened at the thought of someone feeling so helpless.
“How do you help them find the shore?” she asked.
“You show him the one thing that is stronger than hate and rage.”
“What is that?”
“Love, Suzannah. Love in our fellow man, our brothers and sisters, or that one person we let in to our hearts. Love is the wind in every sail that carries a man’s boat to shore. Show him love and do not back down. A man’s rage can bluster and wail like the violent storms that swell the seas of a man’s heart. But love calms all waters in the end.”
Suzannah turned her hand over underneath Jude’s and gave it a squeeze in return.
“You are a rather wonderful man, you know?” She smiled and wiped away tears from her eyes.
Jude’s smile sparked with mischief. “Yes, I am,” he said with a cheeky wink, and then he got up to meet his cue from the lines being said on stage so he could adjust the sets. Suzannah looked back down at her sketch and cursed as she realized she’d smeared the lines around Kit’s jaw all over the sleeve of her day dress.
“Oh blast!” She frantically rubbed the charcoal off her gown, but then her gaze fell to the sketch again. Her lips parted as she saw the change the smudges had made on Kit’s face. She pulled her pencil out and added longer hair and a beard more distinctly where the new smudges were along his chin and jaw.
The wild beast of a man who’d saved her life two nights ago stared back at her from the pages of the sketchbook.
His eyes...She knew she’d seen Kit’s eyes before. He had rescued her. He could have easily killed her that night, but instead he’d escorted her home and returned her hair ribbon the next day. Why had he not harmed her then? Why had he come back the next night as himself? He had seemed genuinely staggered to learn she wasn’t an actress, and that she was Suzannah Townsend. Her appearance clearly surprised him, yet he said he’d been looking for her.
Perhaps he hadn’t known what she looked like until that night? If so, her rescue must have been a kindness to a stranger. If he’d known who she was before, he might never have saved her from those men. The thought made her shudder.
She stared at the sketch a long moment, wondering if it was safe to return to Kit’s home.
“He’s back,” Flory murmured as he passed Suzannah, his arms full of costumes for the seamstress. The play’s rehearsal had finally ended.
“Who is?”
“Your gentleman caller.”
She leapt up, her sketches falling to the ground in a flutter of charcoal-smudged papers. “Oh heavens...” As she bent to collect the sketches, a shadow blocked out the theater lamp lights above her head. When she looked up, she expected to see Flory again, but a darkly intimidating face, bestowed with masculine beauty, gazed down at her.
“I thought it was wise to escort you to my home again this evening, in case you tried to change your mind,” Lord Kentwell said. His lips twisted in a dark smile. “Youwereplanning to keep our bargain,weren’tyou?” he challenged softly.
She blew out a breath, which sent a loose lock of hair out of her eyes and then she swept a hand over the sketches in her arms before she scowled back at him.
“I was going to keep my promise.” Her tone was sharper than she would have liked.
He bent down and retrieved one last piece of paper from the floor and studied it.
“This looks like a rather dangerous fellow. It’s good that you will be accepting my escort to and from the theater each evening while we work together.” He turned the page around, and she saw a sketch of him with long hair and a beard. A hint of dark amusement glowed in his eyes. “I would hate for you to run intohimagain.”
“That was you, wasn’t it?” she asked softly. “The one who saved me from the men in the street.”
