Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,79

aware ye have weaknesses who can be used to see that you do comply.

Those words had haunted Tynan the whole length of the journey here, a reminder of everything he’d feared should the world learn of his sister’s existence. And now Hinton knew about Faye. The warden had clearly made assumptions about Tynan’s connection to her based on her role in freeing him.

And God help him, those assumptions had proven true. Just not in the way the other man thought.

Opening the door of his residence, he let Faye in ahead of him and then closed the door behind them.

They were silent.

She was silent.

More than he’d ever known her to be. Hell, more than he’d in fact believed her capable of.

As he divested himself of his cloak, he kept an eye on her. She stood at the hearth, still wearing her cloak.

Since they’d boarded the hack that had been there waiting for her and journeyed the short trip to his temporary household, she’d said nothing. Not so much as a sound or word or sigh had escaped her. She was in the stage of shock where a person couldn’t get oneself out of the horror they’d witnessed or the danger that had befallen them.

But then, being attacked did that to a person. And for a lady who’d lived only a sheltered existence, facing two attacks within a day’s span would be shocking.

His mind roiled, churning like his gut. He wasn’t going to be able to protect her. It was every worst fear that had kept him from letting anyone else in.

Tynan crossed over to her.

She stiffened at his approach but did not turn to face him. She just kept her entire focus on the flames jumping in the hearth.

“Faye.” He spoke in the same hushed tones he’d used when he’d saved his mother from an assault from another resident in the workhouse. That had been the first, last, and only time he’d ever seen the hunted, haunted look in his mother’s eyes, before she’d blinked wildly and brought herself back. From that moment on, he’d been alerted to the fact that his mother, whom he’d previously taken as unshakable, was very much human and very much in need of his protection.

“I am…” His throat thickened. “I am sorry you found yourself in that situation.” Because of me. Coward that he was, he couldn’t get out the whole of it. As he’d always known, people in his life would always be at risk.

If it hadn’t been Hinton, it would have been another.

Before, however, there’d only been Sara. Sara, who was shut away and safe. But running about as he had with Faye had left her open to the danger she’d faced today.

Still, Faye gave no outward indication she’d heard him. Her fingers went to the clasp of her cloak, and she fumbled with the fastener. This was his fault. It was as he’d warned her from the start, that any connection to him proved perilous for her. It was why he’d vowed to keep his sister hidden and to never let any person close. Knowing that did nothing to ease the cold that had settled within him the moment she’d been overtaken by Hinton’s man.

“Faye,” he repeated with a greater insistence.

At last, his voice penetrated. She paused in her futile efforts and turned wide eyes to his.

Those eyes had fascinated him from the start. There was almost a strangeness to them, so unique in their largeness that they passed to a point of perfection.

Her long, inky lashes swept down as the lady blinked. “Lothian.”

He paused. Of anything she might have said, he’d not expected that.

“Is he the one who helped free you of the workhouse?” she murmured.

“Aye. He’s a marquess.” Lothian and Tynan’s precarious future, however, were secondary to him in this moment. All his focus, all he cared about in this instant, was her. “May I help you?” he asked quietly, motioning slowly to the fabric she still clutched in her white fingers.

She followed his gesture to the silvery clasp of the muslin article.

Faye let her arms fall to her sides. “Yes.”

With slow, careful movements, he brought his hands up and, in one movement, unfastened the clasp.

He slipped the fabric off her shoulders and draped it across the back of the closest chair. His gaze immediately caught the streak of slightly faded crimson on her neck. That bastard had cut her.

His chest lurched. In his years at the workhouse and then the time he’d spent as warden of Newgate, he’d never