never be able to live down), Lucas sprang off the mattress. His sudden movement caused the duchess to cringe away from him, and he cursed himself for his carelessness.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me.” He held out his hand, with his palm turned upwards.
She stared at it for a moment, then slowly lifted her head.
“I’m not a dog searching for a treat,” she said scornfully.
Lavender and lemon, he reminded himself.
Sweet and sharp.
Some might not have appreciated the distinction, but he did.
He appreciated everything about Persephone.
Her beauty. Her courage. Her gentleness. Her spirit.
It would be easy to look at her and just see the frailty and brokenness. But there was so much more. She was so much more. And there were other ways to comfort than holding out a hand. Other ways to soothe. Other ways to gain trust. He’d do them all, if he had to. Hell, he’d crawl over shattered glass if it meant putting the light back into Persephone’s eyes.
And that knowledge, that awareness, of just how far he was willing to go for a woman he’d just met, struck Lucas like a punch to the gut.
“You’re right.” He dropped his arm. “You’re not. And if you don’t want to be a duchess, then I’ll tell Bessie to take it easy on all of the Your Graces. I will admit, they were a tad over the top.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to be a duchess.” Persephone’s lashes swept down, concealing all the troubled thoughts swirling about in that brilliant, tortured mind of hers. “It’s more that…I’ve never felt like a duchess. Not really. And it feels like a mockery to be called one after the fact.”
“Why wouldn’t you feel like one?” he asked.
Her gaze rose. “Because he never let me.”
“Your husband.”
“Yes.” She ran her thumb across her chin. The gesture seemed out of place, until Lucas glanced closer and saw the sliver of a white scar he’d never noticed before. It started half an inch beneath her bottom lip before disappearing underneath the edge of her jaw, almost like a hook.
Red blurred the edges of his vision. He didn’t need to ask how she’d gotten such an unusual mark. The answer was obvious. And enraging.
How many other scars did she have? Scars put there by the husband who should have protected her.
Who should have kept her safe.
Who should have treasured her.
Who should have loved her.
Instead, he’d beaten her. Degraded her. Made her feel like less than what she was. He’d hired a dangerous criminal to track her down, and smirked while he’d done it.
Never mind that Lucas was the criminal in question. He had more virtue in his pinky finger than Glastonbury did in his entire worthless body. The duke was worse than a monster. He was pure, unadulterated evil. And by the time Lucas was finished with him, he was going to wish he was dead.
“Mr. Black?” said Persephone uncertainly.
He followed her fretful gaze to his hands and realized he’d curled them into fists. Fists he planned on using to pummel her husband into a bloody pulp.
“Glastonbury is never going to touch you again,” Lucas vowed fiercely. “You’ve my word.”
She frowned. “Then…what are you going to do with me?”
All things considered, it was a damned good question.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” Calliope said with a nervous glance over her shoulder. She was thankful it was still daylight, or else there would have no question as to whether or not she and Helena should have been standing outside a shoddy looking tavern in the middle of Seven Dials.
As dingy and dark as the rookery appeared in the middle of the afternoon, she was loathed imagining what it must have been like at night. If she wasn’t murdered in the next hour for the coins she carried in her reticule, Leo was going to kill her when he found out where she’d gone.
“It’s a proper public establishment, the same as any other we might find in Berkley Square.” Brushing off Calliope’s concern with a flick of her wrist, Helena drew back the hood of her cloak, revealing her fiery red hair.
“This is not Berkley Square,” Calliope noted as they stepped to the side to allow two burly men to exit the tavern. They leered at her, revealing teeth blackened with rot, and were it not for Helena’s ironclad grip on her arm she would have been hard-pressed not to turn on her heel and flee in the opposite direction.
This, she thought silently, was