Page 55 of The Scoundrel of Drury Lane
“Well, darling, did you buy them?”
“Yes... I certainly did. Oh, Kit, youarewicked.” She playfully pushed against his shoulder.
“Yes, the wickedest,” he assured her with a leonine grin and then kissed the tip of her nose before he grew serious again. “You... won’t have any regrets tomorrow?” Kit asked her as sleep crept closer and closer to her.
She closed her eyes and yawned. “About what?”
“About marrying me.”
“I could never regret that... not to a man like you.” She pressed her cheek against his chest, feeling his pulse beat steady. After what they’d just shared, she knew now she wouldn’t have any regrets.
“And what sort of man am I?”
Suzannah was exhausted and could barely think clearly as she answered. “A good man. A man deserving of love.”
* * *
Kit swallowedhard against the lump in his throat.
“A good man... A man deserving of love...”
He held on to her for a long while, but when he was certain she was deep in slumber, he slipped out of his bed and tucked the covers around her. It wasn’t easy to leave her in his bed, leaving the sweet scent of her that permeated the air with roses and springtime. The warmth of that bed and the warmth of his future wife were far too tempting, but he had a mission tonight. He stared at her sleeping form as he dressed and pulled on his boots, then quietly left the room and found a footman still awake in the downstairs entryway.
“My lord?” the man asked.
“I shall return in a short while. I hate to ask this, but will you please wait up for me?” He didn’t want to bang upon the door late at night and wake everyone.
The footman straightened up and fetched Kit’s hat for him. “Of course, my lord.”
Once Kit was ready to leave, he chose not to wake poor Samuels at this hour of the night so he found a passing hackney on the street and rode to the docks, where his friends had reported that they had seen James Murray.
The dockside tavern that Felix had told him about was not a place a decent London man would ever find himself in, but Kit had faced far worse in the colonies. A few bare-knuckled bruisers didn’t frighten him. But the foul stench of unwashed bodies, mixed with the brine of brackish waters from the nearby docks, combined with the tart scent of ale and other things in the air made Kit’s body tense with disgust. Had he softened so quickly? He’d lived in conditions like this for years, yet now all he wanted was to go home to Suzannah and his warm bed.
As he moved through the tavern, a bar wench shrank back in fear and men stepped aside, all too aware of his strength and size and the menace he carried with him.
A familiar figure was seated by the wall near the fire roaring in the hearth. Kit walked over and pulled back a chair at the table across from him. The man was nursing a pint of ale from a tin mug. Kit waited for him to lift his head and look at him. The man’s eyes flashed with recognition, then horror. Kit almost smiled.
“You...” James Murray’s eyes bulged.
“Hello, Captain.”
“I already told those men of yours that I would testify for you,” Murray hastened to say.
“Thank you,” Kit replied.
“Is that why you’re here?” Murray asked. Waves of whiskey rolled off the unshaven man’s breath.
Kit was quiet a long moment before he finally asked the question that had plagued him.
“Why didn’t you kill me?”
Murray seemed to sober a little at the question. “Why?”
“Yes, you took the money, and you knew it would be a risk not to do what you’d been paid to.”
Murray took a long gulp of his ale before he spoke.
“I could say it was because of your father. I didn’t want some fancy earl raising questions and making my life unnecessarily complicated. But the truth is, I saw something in your eyes that day when you came to my cabin. You had more than vengeance in your eyes—you had righteous indignation. Divine, even. It was like Nemesis herself had blessed you and damned all those who’d wronged you. I wanted to play no part in whatever happened next. I feared that if I tossed you overboard you’d survive. Better to leave you alone and pray that on the day you came back for revenge, when you inevitably found me, you’d have no cause to kill me.” Murray’s gaze swept over him. “By the looks of you, the labor made you quite capable of snapping my neck, or worse.”
