Page 3 of Dangerous Exile

Dead? Possibly.

But not likely with his luck.

His body still, Talen took a measured breath, concentrating on the air going into his lungs. His look shifted to Declan and he pointed at the lump of her body on the floor. “You brought her in here. You get to bring her out.”

Declan shook his head, his arms threading across his chest. “You can’t be thinking the street, Tal. You see the state she’s in.”

His scowl sliced into his friend. “I’m not an ogre, Declan. I’m also not stupid. If Madame Juliet sent her, this is serious. Put her upstairs in theBlue Waters room.”

Declan nodded, then moved to pick up the woman. He glanced over at Talen as he stood with the girl draped over his arms. “You’re paying attention now?”

Talen looked to the tiny form swallowed in the cloak in Declan’s hold. “Aye. I’m paying attention now.”

{ Chapter 2 }

“She’s awake.”

With a nod to thegentlemen playingFaro in the private Peacock room, Talen moved past Declan to the door his partner had just entered with the news. There was a sizable amount on the table at the turn. A breeding stable of racing horses, land in Dorset, a mine in Cornwall. All going to the house if the cards flipped well.

None of that was more interesting than the woman that lay in a bed two floors above him.

Declan followed him out of the room and Talen looked over his shoulder to his friend once the door was closed. “Did she say anything?”

“Verity indicated that she wouldn’t say anything. Only your name.”

Talen heaved a sigh. Not that he expected anything less.

His long legs carrying him fast up the stairs, Talen entered the Blue Waters room without knocking.

Going directly to the side of the bed, he stared down at the mangled mess of the woman’s face framed by disheveled dark brown hair—a face so bruised and battered and swollen it roiled his stomach to look at her.

Nevertheless, he had to at least look into her one eye he could see as he talked to her. Respect. Madame Juliet would demand it of him, and he owed her. Madame Juliet was the bawd at the Den of Diablo, the centralgaming house owned by Hoppler,his main rival and begrudging compatriot in rookery empire building. The last Talen had heard, Madame Juliet was headed north with a Scot, posing as his betrothed.

This lump on the bed was apparently a result of that ill-advised scheme.

Focusing on the oddly colored amber eye looking up at him, he pointed down at her arm closest to him. “Declan said you were seen getting off the Edinburgh mail coach. You rode in a mail coach all the way to London from Edinburgh with your arm like this?”

Her left arm lay atop the blue coverlet beside her body, the bottom half of her forearm grotesquely jutting the wrong way out from her elbow.

Her right hand clutched the top of the coverlet, pulling it up under her chin. Her voice still a squeak, her one eye didn’t look away from him. “You are Talen Blackstone?”

He nodded.

Her good eye closed, her head tilting back into the pillow. “Why am I naked?”

“We took off your cloak after your body collapsed, dead to the world, and we saw your arm. We had to make certain there were not other bones askew.”

She gave the slightest nod.

At least she didn’t fight him on it or take offense. Not that she was in a position for either reaction.

Talen cleared his throat pointedly. “I repeat, you rode in a mail coach all the way to London from Edinburgh with your arm like this?”

“I—” Her breath left her and it took concentrated effort for her to suck in air and force words out. Her right eye opened to him. “I did. I had to.”

She was lying. He’d seen her battered body. Bruises everywhere. The broken arm. The pain—every jolt of the coach would have been torture. Days of it. No woman could have suffered that and not gone mad.

He stared at her.

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