Page 56 of The Scoundrel of Drury Lane
Kit didn’t disagree. He could very easily have killed Murray.
“You shouldn’t be here in a place like this. If the men who paid you to kill me learn where you are...”
Murray paled, and Kit realized that it hadn’t occurred to the old sea captain that he would be in danger.
“Surely you don’t think...” Murray glanced at the less-than-reputable people in the tavern.
“Take a hackney to this address and tell the man there I sent you. He’ll know what to do.” Kit passed a slip of paper with Darius’s address on it to Murray. He would have offered to escort Murray himself, but as the two had been speaking, he’d counted at least five men watching them too intently to be casually interested in them as strangers. It seemed he had been right in his concern that Murray would be discovered by Walsh and Balfour.
“You must leave this place at once,” Kit whispered. “I’ll hold them off.”
“What? They’re here already?” Murray gaped and snatched up the address from the table.
“Go. Now,” Kit growled as he stood up.
Murray leapt to his feet and bolted for the door. Kit tossed some coins on the table and moved to block the exit once Murray had left. If Kit had delayed even a few seconds, the five men would have beaten him to the door and caught up with Murray outside. Instead, the men were forced to turn their wolflike focus onto Kit. Kit smiled.
“Evening, gentlemen.”
The biggest brute sized him up. “We ain’t got no problem with you.”
His grin grew as he removed his cloak and hat and set them down on the nearest table. “I’m afraid you do. The men who hired you? I’m the one they really want.”
“If that’s true, I bet they’ll pay double for you, then,” the leader said with a dark chuckle. Two of the men behind the tallest fellow removed small daggers from their belts.
“I imagine they would... if you were to succeed.” Kit slowly raised up his loosely balled fists. “But I’m afraid all you will find here tonight... is pain.” It’d been far too long since he had broken some bones, and a dark part of his soul craved it now.
A quarter of an hour later, he was the only man still standing. He licked a split lip and flexed his bruised hands. Broken chairs and shattered glasses were strewn over the floor. Five bodies lay upon the ground, while many others cowered at their tables or had fled into the night.
His attackers were all still breathing. Kit knew better than to kill them, no matter how much he might wish to. He wouldn’t dare give Walsh and Balfour cause to put a noose around his neck. He removed several pound notes from his coat and laid them on the nearest table, then nodded at the barkeeper. He retrieved his hat and cloak, flashed a wink at a frightened serving maid, and walked out into the night.
When he returned to his home a short time later, he found Suzannah awake, dressed in his robe and anxiously pacing the floor of his bedchamber. She’d purchased a new robe for herself today, and yet here she was wearing his. Something about that stole his breath.
You truly are mine... aren’t you?He couldn’t help but think this as he cleared his throat to catch her attention.
“Kit!” She flung herself at him the second she saw him. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. He buried his face in her neck, kissing her ever so softly in the tender place where her shoulder met her throat. She smelled divine, even better than what he remembered from a mere hour ago when he’d left her.
He let out a slow sigh and just held her, feeling the rightness of her in his arms and knowing this was where he belonged. Here in this bedchamber with her. A comfort like he’d never known filled him so completely that he couldn’t breathe for a long moment. He simply felt it, that sense ofbelongingthat he had thought he had lost forever.
“Where the devil did you go? I woke up and found you gone. One of the footmen said you left, and... I thought... I was... I worried that...” She began to ramble, still panicked, and he could feel her anxious breaths against his chest as she burrowed deeper into his embrace.
“What did you think happened?” he asked as he tilted her face up to look at him.
“I thought perhaps something bad happened to you, or that you didn’t want to go through with the marriage after all. Oh—you’re hurt!” she gasped as she got a better look at his bruised face. “What happened?”
“I had an old friend to visit, and someone was trying to hurt him. I put a stop to it.”
“With what? Your face?” she snapped. “Your eye is blackening, and your lip is bleeding.”
“I assure you, the other fellow fared far worse.”
She pulled out of his arms to grab a cloth and wet it in the nearby basin. “Stop joking. Sit down.Now.” She pointed at one of the armchairs by the fire.
He sat obediently, amused and delighted to see her caring for him, mirroring what had happened the night he’d rescued her.
“Idiotic man,” she grumbled as she cleaned his cuts and then lifted one of his bruised hands and placed a tender kiss to his aching knuckles. “Going off in the middle of the night to get into fights? Please don’t ever do that again.”
“It’s not as if I left the house looking for a fight,” he said defensively. “Besides, I am more than capable of taking care of myself.”
