her. I am sure we can come to some sort of agreement that benefits both of us.”
“How the hell do you know I have her?” he snarled, his jaw clenching.
Artemis chuckled. “I didn’t, until you just told me.”
Bloody hell.
It was a trick as old as the Tower of London, and he’d just let himself fall for it. Because he wasn’t thinking clearly. How could he, when his only thought was of Persephone? And his first instinct was to protect her.
Not to complete the job he’d been given.
Not to collect his reward.
But to keep her safe, no matter the cost.
“Where is she, Black?” Artemis skimmed her tongue across her bottom lip as her eyes took on a greedy gleam. “I’ll walk away with fifty pounds in my pocket if I can return the dear duchess to her friends. Twenty of that can be yours if you cooperate.”
“You can’t have her.”
“Why not?”
Because she’s mine.
He almost said the words out loud.
Almost.
“I’d be a fool to settle for twenty when I can make ten times that by delivering her to the duke.” He sipped his ale. “And we both know I’m not a fool.”
“Do we?” Her head canting, Artemis studied him closely for a moment. Then she smiled, slow and sure. “You have no intention of handing the chit over, do you?”
His hand tightened on his tankard until his knuckles gleamed white in the dim light. “Walk away, Artemis. While you still can. We’ve got an alliance between us, but I’ll break if it I have to.” All devil now, his gaze burned into hers. “And then I’ll break you.”
Artemis was intelligent enough to realize when she’d pushed too far. Clinking her cup against his, she chugged her ale and jumped to the ground. “Fair enough, Black. Fair enough. But you know you can’t just keep a duchess forever. She’s not a houseplant, and I’m not the only one who’s going to come looking for her.”
“You worry about your affairs,” he growled. “Let me worry about mine.”
Lucas picked up his tankard, ready to resume drinking. Except even after Artemis had sauntered away, the dark cloud she’d brought with her remained. Because she was right. He couldn’t keep Persephone forever.
That was the difficulty with wild roses.
They could survive in captivity. But they wouldn’t thrive.
If Lucas wanted Persephone to bloom, there was only one thing he could do.
He had to let her go.
Chapter Nine
Percy saw little of Lucas over the next four days. He was in and out, leaving her to wander the house by herself and gaze wistfully out the window as she waited for him for to return. Rather like a war widow waiting for her soldier, or a wife waiting for her husband. Except Lucas wasn’t in the British army, and they definitely weren’t married. Just the idea was ludicrous. Laughable, even.
But then, why did her mind keep circling back to it?
Boredom, she decided late one morning as she took her tea in the parlor. With nothing to do but help Bessie bake in the kitchen, and pick out more furniture from the catalogue Lucas had given her, she was hopelessly bored.
It was, strangely enough, a nice feeling. To be so free from worry and concern for her own personal safety that she was actively searching for something to do instead of contriving the best way to make herself invisible. Even when she’d lived with Helena, there’d always been a nervousness she couldn’t quite shake. The uneasy expectation that at any moment she’d open the door and there would be Andrew, waiting for her with that awful look in his eye.
But she didn’t feel that here, with Lucas.
He’d promised the duke would never touch her again, and she believed him.
It was as simple–and as complicated–as that.
On a sigh, Percy added a dab of honey to her tea and swirled it in with a small silver spoon. No matter how hard she tried to keep them straight, the lines between her and Lucas continued to blur. He was her captor. She was his prisoner. It should have been easy. Easy to hate him. Easy to be afraid of him. Easy to count down the hours until she might see Helena and Calliope again. Except those weren’t the hours that she counted. Instead, she’d been keeping track of how many days it had been since she and Lucas had last kissed…and wondering when they might do it again.
Absurd. She knew it was absurd.
But once more, her head and her heart found themselves at odds, and