“It’s not your services that have been asked after,” Tierney said.
Someone from Boritania, then? It seemed unlikely after the intervening years, and yet the past was never far from his thoughts. Damned difficult to forget when every day, he had to see the tracery of scars covering his body.
Theo went cold, that old, familiar knot of dread tightening in his gut. “Who was asking?”
Tierney watched him with a curious expression, rather akin to a cat studying a mouse, awaiting the moment when he might pounce. “A lady.”
Not his uncle. Thank Christ. Theo had vowed that if he ever looked upon his uncle again, it would be with his dagger sunk deep between the bastard’s ribs, watching his lifeblood spew from his mouth as he choked on it.
But a woman? That hardly made sense.
“What is her name?” he asked, struggling to keep the intensity of his reaction from showing on his countenance.
“She claims to be Her Royal Highness, Princess Anastasia Augustina St. George.”
“Stasia?” His pet name for her fled him before he could help it, so great was his shock.
He could scarcely credit it. His sister was in London? How and when had she escaped their uncle’s tyrannical rule?
Tierney calmly exhaled a cloud of smoke. “A mercenary who knows a Boritanian princess. Rather an intriguing development if you ask me.”
“When did she come to you?” Theo asked, ignoring the pointed question in the other man’s words.
Tierney was no fool, but Theo wasn’t in the mood to discuss the particulars of his violent past as a former prince. Not now, not ever. He’d buried that part of himself long ago.
“Yesterday,” Tierney said mildly, inhaling from his cheroot.
His gut churned. He’d never thought their uncle would allow any of his sisters to leave Boritania alive. They were far too useful as pawns, just like his brother Reinald. And Gustavson would be able to marry them off to other rulers and increase his own power and position. Had Stasia somehow fled?
“Why should you think she was looking for me?” he demanded.
“Because she said she was searching for her brother.” Tierney tossed his cheroot into the grate of the fireplace as calmly as if they were discussing what he’d eaten for lunch. “The exiled Prince Theodoric Augustus St. George, a man she had reason to believe has been living in London and calling himself Beast.”
Damn it.
He struggled to maintain his composure, to show not a hint of his rising inner turmoil. “I’ve never heard of him.”
“Indeed,” Tierney drawled. “And what am I to tell the princess, should she lower herself to pay me another call?”
Theo rose, needing to leave. Needing air and space and freedom. Needing to get the hell away from the demons he’d thought he had outrun. The demons that had suddenly reappeared, threatening to drag him back down to the bowels of hell.
Not this time, he vowed inwardly. Theo had fought too hard, had survived too much, to surrender without a fight.
He held the other man’s feral green gaze. “Tell her that her brother is dead. I killed him myself.”
With that, he took his leave.
CHAPTER5
Pamela returned from her shopping expedition exhausted, irritable, and in a grim mood. But despite her lack of sleep the night before, she knew there was no solace to be found in a nap. Instead, she delivered a much-wearied Lady Virtue to the safety of her bedchamber. After making certain that Ridgely was not at home and there was no danger of him skulking about Hunt House, ready to practice more of his rakish wiles upon his innocent ward, she ventured to her own rooms to retrieve her folio and porte-crayon.
On days such as this, when she felt as prickly as an embroidery needle, she often found solace in her drawings. Despite the chill of the late-afternoon air, she gathered a wrap and slipped outside into the calming quiet of the Hunt House gardens. Its unique position on a sprawling parcel set back from the streets afforded room aplenty. Her father had spared no expense on the spectacle of Hunt House, from its massive carved staircase, to its painted ceilings within. But it was out of doors, in the garden, that Pamela had always found herself most at home.
Gravel paths led gracefully through intricately planned plantings of hollyhocks, roses, and columbines. Although the flowers had lost their blooms, some of their greenery remained. As always, she wound her way to the farthest corner of the gardens, to where a small stone bench was situated along a neatly trimmed boxwood hedge and a triple-tiered fountain whose cheerful gurgling sounds provided soothing accompaniment.
She settled herself on the bench, opened her folio, and chose the black chalk end of her porte-crayon to begin. In her solitude, Pamela found her mind wandering back to the source of her distress.
Beast.
