Page 67 of Once More, My Darling Rogue
“It’s a gift,” she told him. “Surely you’ve had gifts before.”
With care, he slowly unwrapped it and simply stared at the glass-blown red and blue dragon, with wings spread wide as though about to take flight.
“It’s a dragon,” she pointed out.
“I can see that.”
“Unfortunately, its tail chipped when I dropped it. I wasn’t thinking about anything beyond the horse. Why are people so cruel?”
Very tenderly he cradled her bruised face. “I don’t know. Yet sometimes they are very nice indeed and it’s just as confounding. I like the dragon a great deal.”
“You will need to hold back a portion of my wages as I want the purchase to come from my purse not yours.”
His lips twitched. “Yes, your wages. I’ll adjust them accordingly.”
“See that you do.”
His grin grew ever so slightly. “You can be quite bossy.”
“I’m the housekeeper. I’m supposed to be bossy.”
“So you are. I’m going on to the club to prepare for the meeting with Morris.”
He couldn’t have said anything that would have disappointed her more. She wasn’t ready for him to leave. “What about your sleep, your bath, your dinner?”
“I have rooms at the club. I’ll bathe and eat there. See that you ice your eye some more.” With that, he picked up the dragon and left.
Leaving her with the sense that she had done or said something terribly wrong.
He didn’t want her giving him gifts. He especially didn’t want her knowing how touched he was by the dragon. Or how unsettled he was that she had known such an item was perfect for him. Few knew about the dragon on his back, even fewer knew the reasons he had changed his name to Drake.
She made him feel vulnerable, exposed. And he’d been stupid enough to tell her about the black eye she’d acquired when she tried to get Grace’s cat out of a tree. And Phee’s mutt of a dog that had always bared its teeth at him, as though it were charged with protecting her from all things male.
He’d forgotten those stories about her, but now he viewed them slightly differently. Had she rescued the dog from a man who beat him? She’d bravely gone up to get Grace’s cat, just as today she’d braved a brute of man in order to stop him from taking a whip to a horse that was too old to be pulling a wagon as weighted down as that one had been.
Now that brute of a man, belligerent and angry, stood before him while Drake counted out the coins. He considered offering Morris a job in the club that would ensure he never had a need to hitch a horse to a heavy wagon, but he didn’t much like the man and didn’t think he would be an asset to Dodger’s. One didn’t solve one problem by creating another.
But he’d made Phee an offhand promise that this man would never again beat another horse. Another aspect to his day that he’d never imagined—giving a vow to Lady O. But the simple wordsI’ll see to ithad been an assurance, a promise, a vow. He would honor his word. To her. For her.
When the final coin was set down, Morris reached for the pile.
“Not yet,” Drake commanded, the tone of his voice brooking no disobedience, the possibility of the coins being snatched back into his coffers hovering between them. He made a notation in a ledger. “I’ll need your mark here indicating that the horse now belongs to me.”
“Ye say that like I can’t write me name proper.”
Drake merely arched a brow. Morris scowled, took the offered pen, and scrawled two X’s joined by a half moon. Then he glowered. “I got the better end of this deal. Won’t be long before you’ll be calling for a horse slaughterer.”
It was an honest trade, a licensed trade, governed by laws. The city was teeming with horses. They needed to be mercifully put down when the end of their life came. Drake momentarily wondered if when the time came for Daisy—which he didn’t think was in the too distant future—Phee would still be with him or back in the world where she despised him.
“Some whiskey to close the deal?” Drake asked.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Leaning back in his chair, Drake reached for the whiskey and poured it into two glasses. With this man he didn’t have to stand in order to dominate, to prove his position of power. In fact insolently lounging conveyed the message much better. And he had been correct. He’d broken the man’s nose. His jaw, however, seemed intact. He should have struck a bit harder.
Before Morris could enjoy the taste of fine whiskey, a knock sounded on the door that Drake had closed earlier. This was a personal matter and he’d not wanted to be disturbed—until now.
“Come.”
