Page 33 of The Confessions of a Lady
Penny stiffened, her shoulders inching closer to her ears. The man was directly behind her. She felt the prickle of awareness on the back of her neck where his pistol could easily be aimed.
The guard cowering on the ground covered his head, curled into a ball, and started to sob. She couldn’t be sure with all the rain, but he might have wet himself.
The blackguard in front of her refocused his gaze over Penny’s shoulder at whoever had entered the alleyway. He put his hands up in front of him in a pose of defencelessness. ‘Oi, now guv. No need for that. Juth having a bit of a lark.’ His new lisp made his words harder to discern.
‘Miss Smith, were you enjoying this little… lark?’ The gravelled voice, impossibly familiar to her now, created a fizz of something bright bubbling in her chest.
Liam!
The realisation was immediately followed by a sinking sensation.
Liam.
He would want to know where she’d been. What had happened in the alleyway. How she managed to hold her own against two large men intent on violence. All questions she would rather not answer.
Penny stiffened her spine and lowered her shoulders. She placed her left foot behind her, drawing closer to Liam without turning her back on the toothless bastard. Even with a primed pistol aimed at the man, she would never give an enemy her back. Odd, since Liam was supposed to be her enemy, standing behind her, holding a weapon. But the tingles she felt for him had nothing to do with fear.
So, Liam is no longer my enemy?
She moved to the side and stepped back again until he stood beside her.
Better.
In this situation, he was not the most dangerous threat but that didn’t mean she should let her guard down around him. Quite the contrary.
‘No, my lord. I was not,’ she said, her voice giving away none of her emotions.
Liam shifted his pistol, the muzzle aimed directly at the battered man standing in front of them. He pulled the hammer back. Penny darted her gaze to Liam’s hand as his knuckles whitened around the handle, his finger twitching on the trigger. He was going to shoot the man dead in this grimy back alley.
‘Don’t, Liam.’ She held no fondness for the assailant, and in the heat of the fight, she would have done what she must to survive. But the arsehole wasn’t worth killing in cold blood.
Liam’s head whipped around. His sharp gaze trapped her for a breathless moment. His nostrils flared, scenting her like a predator. His eyes stilled on the gash. ‘Did he do that to you?’
Oh dear.
Gone was the kind employer who smiled at his laundry maid and offered tutelage to his staff. In his place was a far more fearsome creature. A wild beast hungry for blood.
Penny kept her voice calm. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s just a scratch.’
Liam’s eyes dilated as his voice grew even more brutal. ‘He hurt you. He fucking deserves to die.’
The situation was precarious. Penny was standing on a powder keg, holding a stick of dynamite, and Liam was sparking like fire.
She held his gaze, intrinsically knowing breaking eye contact would also break Liam’s tenuous control of his anger. ‘Perhaps. But not today. Today, we turn around and walk away.’ Sometimes, life only gave two choices. Fight or die. In this moment, they had another option. And they would take it.
She put her hand on Liam’s arm; the steel of his muscles flexed beneath her touch. ‘He doesn’t deserve a piece of your soul, and that’s what he would take with him to hell.’
Liam clenched his jaw. He blinked once, twice. Lowering his gun, he looked back at the man. ‘Leave London. Now. And take this piece of filth with you. If I ever see you again, my smile will be the last thingyousee before you greet the Devil. Understand?’
The bastard’s eyes widened as he nodded his head.
Liam took Penny’s hand in his and turned, pulling her along. When he realised she was limping, he wrapped his arm around her waist and took most of her weight, heedless of the puddles they splashed through on their way back to the main road. Penny was already soaked through, so it mattered little that her skirts were now sodden, but she only had one other dress. She would need to launder this one carefully, patch any tears, hope it wasn’t ruined. She had no coin for new clothes.
And what a silly woman I am thinking of skirts at a time like this.
But focusing on her clothes was far easier than thinking about the impending conversation with Liam. Or processing what could have happened if he hadn’t been willing to listen to her and put down his gun. Or acknowledging the hard arm pressing against her ribs, the warm fingers gripping her hip, the flexing muscles of his thigh tight beside her leg as he matched her steps.
One more piece of contradicting evidence: a cold-blooded killer wouldn’t have hesitated to pull the trigger.
