Page 30 of Exiled Duke

He turned his head to Pen, his eyes running up and down her body. Both of her gloved hands gripped iron spindles as she stared at the house—fear mingling with excitement in her green eyes. Hope. So much hope in her eyes it almost hurt to look at her.

The serviceable black dress hanging from her shoulders did nothing for her. Made her look like a scullery maid—sans the apron—at best. It hid the curves of her body. She had an ample bosom under that starched cloth—he’d noticed it more than once in the carriage in the last three days. But she was slight—too slight. Enough meat on her to be alive, but not much else. More than once as the carriage went over a hard rut on the road, he looked to her, worried she’d shattered at the impact.

“We will call on them tomorrow morning, Pen.”

She nodded, not looking at him, her look riveted on the house. She’d already come to the same conclusion.

Strider dropped his hand from the iron spindle and turned fully toward her. “If it is them—if they are your mother’s family—don’t expect them to be anything, Pen.”

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and then her stare went back to the house. “What?”

“You have expected me to be someone I’m not since you found me.” His arms crossed over his chest. “Don’t make the same mistake with them.”

Her head swiveled to him, the sharp glare in her eyes aimed directly at him. “That’s not fair. We…we have history. Hard history that gutted both of us, whether or not you will admit to it.” She looked forward, her forefinger flicking out from the spindle to point at the manor house. “If they’re my mother’s family, won’t they want to know me? Won’t they want to know what became of her?”

“You don’t know their history. You don’t know how or why your mother left this land. Think—just think on it, Pen. Why would a peer’s daughter board a ship to travel halfway around the world—especially if she was with child?”

She shook her head, her lips pulling tight. “You just don’t want me to go to them. To meet them.”

“I don’t want that?” His eyebrows lifted high. “I brought you all the damn way here for this very thing.”

“And now you don’t want me to meet them—I can see it in your eyes, Strider. That stare is the same from when we were children—how your eyes look when you’re trying to control me, control what I do.”

“Pen—”

“No.” Her hard gaze whipped to him. “We don’t know that she was with child when she left here. Lots of things could have happened between when she left her family and when she birthed me. You don’t know. She could have met my father—a handsome soldier and fallen in love—but she was so beloved the only way for them to be together was to run off and escape on a ship to the Americas. Then the storm that took my father into the sea blew the ship south and my mother landed in Belize.”

His eyes squinted at her. She was slipping into dangerous territory, concocting stories about a past that she knew nothing about. Her mother died in childbirth soon after arriving alone in Belize Town. Pen was brought to his mother by the same midwife that had delivered him mere days before. “Quality should stay with quality,” was all the woman had said as she handed Pen over to his mother. It had been June. Facts that they knew. Facts that were real. Anything beyond that was supposition.

“Don’t look at me like I’m crazy, Strider.”

“Do you hear yourself, Pen?”

“What is wrong with hope—with imagining what I hope could have been?”

“I don’t imagine on things. I only trust facts.”

She exhaled sharply, her look shifting to the house. “Why don’t you want me to meet them?”

He grabbed her arm, squeezing it until she looked at him. “Don’t you understand? People are not kind. They are not benevolent.”

“But they are—they can be.” Her right hand left the spindle and she motioned toward the house. “You don’t know that there aren’t the most wonderful people in there that are going to welcome me with open arms.”

His eyes closed, a slow sigh seeping from his lips as he released her arm. “Do you remember—remember when our house in Belize Town was burning?” His eyes opened, his look intent on her. “Mama saved us—dragged us out of the house, one under each arm—and then pushed us across the street and ordered us not to move and then she ran back into the house for father.”

Instant tears sprang to her eyes. “Yes.”

“Do you remember at the end, when the house had crumbled to a charred, black skeleton? No floors, only sticks jutting up from the rubble along the edges.” He swallowed hard. “The smoke, the stench of it. And we were still waiting for mama to appear, to walk out of the ashes.”

“I remember.” Her voice cracked.

“There was a crowd around us. All of us standing, watching the horror of it. And then the fire had died enough—just smoke—and daylight had come and the crowd started to disperse, nothing else to watch, and still, you and I stood there, your hand gripping mine.”

Her face tilted upward, draining back the tears. “We didn’t know what to do.”

He nodded. “And I saw our neighbor. Mrs. Halikin.”

A sad smile came to her face. “I always liked her, she was always so kind to us.”

---