Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,87

slips down to the thick rug. “I told you that I can’t cast stones—I meant it, Damien. I really meant it.”

Voice low, I murmur, “Tell me.”

Her fingers tighten around her upper arms. “After I stopped . . . working for my father, I found myself at a crossroads. I was only twenty-three but I felt ancient here”—she briefly presses a hand to her chest—“and, more than anything, I was a realist. Dreams were for good people, honest people. And I was, admittedly, quite adept at doing nothing but spreading my legs.”

Those words, her words, are ones I’d uttered in her ear while pressing her up against a glass window at the Palace. Arrogant. Patronizing. Crude. Any lingering trace of salvation dissolves on my tongue. “Rowena, I was an ass. I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” she interjects firmly, shaking her head, “no, you were right. And I recognized it even then. England . . . the whole country was already taking a turn for the worse and I had nothing but this house. I inherited it when Mum died and I could have sold it. Sometimes I wonder if I should have sold it, but the satisfaction I felt knowing that Father couldn’t take it away from me . . . it was worth every bit of hardship.”

Bloodthirsty thing.

I want to kiss her even more for it.

“Did you live here?” I ask.

She laughs. “No, I leased the flat that your man Hamish brought me to the other day, the one in Hurlingham. Realist. Pragmatist. It’s all the same, isn’t it? I couldn’t bear to part with Holly Village but leasing it would at least keep me afloat.”

One glance around the elegant room around us is confirmation that, at some point, Rowena managed to do a whole lot more than just keep herself afloat. The sleigh bed alone must have cost a fortune. Bringing my gaze back to Rowena, I watch as she lifts a hand to her head, only to hover her palm above her skull.

A nervous tic that she tries to cover up by tugging on one ear.

“You did something else,” I say, eyeing that hand on its trajectory back down to her side. “You might as well just spit it out.”

Her shoulders square off. “I had information.”

The implication of that one statement is enough to rock me back on my heels. “Jesus, Rowena,” I breathe. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“I set up a private forum under an anonymous name.” Her chin hikes up, as if daring me to find fault with a decision she made ten years ago. “It turns out that that the old adage is true: it’s better to smile to your enemies than it is to frown at your friends.”

“No one says that,” I edge out.

“Matshona Dhliwayo did.”

Oh, bloody fucking hell. “Rowena, it doesn’t matter who said it. The fact is, you turned a profit on selling intel from MPs. You could have been caught.”

“Instead I grossed nearly a million pounds in the first year alone and I re-invested all of it.”

Torn between the ridiculous urge to applaud her ingenuity while also calling her damned sanity into question, I run my hands over my face. It doesn’t matter that it’s been years, my mind paints an image of her behind bars or, worse, dead—and it sets my blood on fire.

I demolish the space between us in three strides, and, before I even realize it, my hands are on her elbows and my face is in hers and I’m locked back in the darkness that I once told her to harness before it consumed her.

Right now, envisioning her limp and broken, I am consumed.

“Do you know how bloody easy it is to hack a website?” I growl, shaking her. “I can do it in my fucking sleep, Rowena. I can do it with my hands tied behind my back, or blindfolded, and I’m telling you right now, the fact that you’re standing here is proof that either all politicians are idiots or that you are the luckiest woman—”

“I hired someone in the field.”

My lids fall closed and I pray for control. “You hired someone,” I manage on a tight whisper, “to create a forum where you sold private information?”

“I’m not—” She struggles in my arms and plants a firm hand on my chest. “I’m not naïve.”

“In this,” I clip out, “you are.”

She pushes against me. “After some major digging around that lasted months, mind you, I found someone who’d done some work for MI5. He must have thought me ridiculous.”