But she shook her head, determined. “No, Felix. I will face whatever I must, as I always have. Alone.”
Everything in him wanted to fight her. But he could see the determination on her beautiful face. And so he did the only thing he could do. He relented.
“I’ll be damned if this was goodbye, Johanna,” he told her, and then he turned on his heel and stalked from the room.
He was going to find Theo and ask that he make certain Johanna had an escort from this night onward. If she would not accept his aid, he would have to make certain she was safe by other means.
As his footsteps carried him away from her, he could not shake the feeling that he had left a part of himself behind. He despised the sadness in her eyes. And he hated himself for being the one who had put it there.
Chapter Eighteen
Three nights hadpassed since Felix had come to Johanna in her dressing room and they had made love. She had heard not a word from him in the days since. Much to her everlasting shame, she searched the audience for his face each night.
But each night, like the one preceding it, he had not been there.
She should not have been surprised, she supposed, for she had told him to go. She had refused his marriage proposal, had told him that last, frantic encounter had been their goodbye. And though he had been adamant it was not, she had no expectations of him.
Why should she? Though she loved him, she could not trust him. And even if she could, a duke could not marry a woman like her. She could not change her past. She would always be Rose Beaumont, always Pearl’s mother. And she would always be the sister of his enemy.
This was for the best, she told herself as she made her way down a dimly lit theater corridor. Tonight was no different than any of the others which had come before. They blended together, an indistinct river without end. Drummond would stay away from Felix and Verity, and Johanna would have her life as she had always known it, living on the stage.
Unable to shake the sadness permeating her ever since their last encounter, Johanna emerged from the Crown and Thorn, into the little alley where her driver typically awaited her. The play had carried on a bit later that evening thanks to a problem with the limelight, which led to a tardy start to the show. Shivering as a wall of cool air hit her, she scanned the alley for her carriage.
Suddenly, something hard pressed into her back, and a familiar voice was at her ear. “Do not scream, Jojo, or I will shoot.”
“Drummond,” she said on a gasp.
Felix’s warning had been correct.
Her brother was here. In London. And not only had he found her, but he was holding a pistol to her back.
The dread and the fear which had been her constant companions since the day he had reentered her life came crashing down upon her. For a moment, her knees gave out, and she would have fallen to the street had he not caught her in an unforgiving grip, holding her steady.
“Not a word,” he warned.
Her heart was pounding, her mouth dry. She looked all around her, trying to find someone—anyone—who could help her.
“If you call out, I will put a bullet in you, Jojo,” Drummond said.
How coldly he could call her by her hated childhood sobriquet and threaten to shoot her at the same time. She did not dare put anyone else in danger.
“Mademoiselle Beaumont,” called out a voice from behind her.
She turned to see Mr. Nelson, one of the stagehands who had been markedly attentive for the last few nights, standing in the theater door. His expression was concerned.
“If you give him cause for concern, I will shoot him too,” Drummond whispered, lodging the pistol’s barrel more firmly in her back.
“Have a good evening, Mr. Nelson,” she called back, keeping the tremble from her voice by calling upon all her honed skills as an actress.
She pinned a false smile to her lips.
Mr. Nelson held his hat in his hands, looking from Johanna to Drummond, then back to Johanna. “Who is your friend, Mademoiselle Beaumont?”
“Mr. Silas Walker,” Drummond said smoothly, as if he were not threatening her life at that very moment. His tone was chipper, as if he had not a care. “A friend of Mademoiselle Beaumont’s from New York. Have a good evening, sir.”
The gun nudged her once more.
“Have a good evening, Mr. Nelson,” she added. “I will see you tomorrow.”
