Every time Captain got close, a little voice suspiciously like Whoopi Goldberg’s seemed to whisper, “You in danger, girl,” but this was the first time Sam believed it. She’d seen firsthand the brutality Captain’s strong body promised. He’d shattered pint glasses and tossed smaller women around like they were nothing. Until this moment, she’d considered him a threatening non-threat, someone whocouldhurt her but liked to see her shake more than he wanted to see her in pain. Because the power of possible violence was sweeter than actual violence. Trying to make her cower and quiver satisfied him more than actually laying a finger on her.
But as the cold felt tip of the marker came in contact with her bare stomach, she flinched as if he’d threatened to hit her. Sam believed every fear her body whispered to her. The lettering took time, minutes stretching out in endless reams before her as she stood on display for the indifferent to hungry crowd of regents waiting for their Captain.
“There.” He nodded, satisfied with himself. For a brief second, his eyes paralyzed her, but not in the way the mechanic had this morning. There, she was a participant in an exchange. Here, she was a snake trapped in the spell of a charmer. A charmer who had danger lurking behind his shadowed face. It was a secret moment, one the regents behind him couldn’t see. A private, unspoken intimidation he gifted directly to her before brightening up. His flask flew from his breast pocket to his lips. “All right, lads. To the wine cellar.”
Sam stole a glance down at her stomach.
PROPERTYOF THE FUTUREEARL OFHILLSBOROUGH.
The words crossed her skin in hideous black ink, the scrawls of a deranged man who held her future in his hands. Inside, she shook with anger, burned from the humiliation, and wanted nothing more than to crawl back into her clothes and run away where none of them could ever find her again.
But as the men walked away, their drinking songs banging against the church’s ancient stone walls, Sam couldn’t help but listen to them. Drunk as they may have been, unpredictable and volatile as they were, their words rang out in perfect time and harmony. They clutched one another for support. Laughed and picked PJ up when he tripped over a loose stone paver. Her mind wandered to the boisterous chandelier-shaking laughter they shared with her father this morning.
She’d never had anything like that before. Not in her entire life. She’d never been this close to belonging before.
The Animos Society was everything wrong in this world. Vicious. Cold. Calculating. Demeaning. Privileged. Manipulative. Unfeeling. Cruel.
But, dammit, they were a family. And Sam would stand out in the cold for a million nights like this if it meant she could be part of it.
Chapter Six
Daniel couldn’t sleep. Not for lack of want or trying. After a day of sweat and lugging engine parts across a too-crowded mechanic’s workshop, he needed the rest. Every time his head hit the pillow, he heard Angie telling him about Alanis Trent and the future he could have if only he could write one perfect song.
Her questions didn’t bother him. What really nettled was the uselessness he felt every time he glanced at his guitar or picked up a pen to write lyrics. A songwasbrewing inside of him, but it dodged and weaved away every time he got close, taunting him. Closing his eyes to sleep would bring the melody closer, out of the fog of noise in his brain, but he only had to reach for his instrument before the song disappeared.
His dream and the song were intertwined. He couldn’t have one without the other.
This dangerous combination of anxiety and hope led to him wandering the streets of Oxford well after midnight, guitar slung over his back just in case the song found him along the way. On a night like tonight, he wanted to connect with the music, not shut it out, and Saturday nights were great for busking.
He loved Oxford. It was a collection of castles playing dress-up as a school. The same awe he felt as a young boy strolling through the yards with his mother filled him anew whenever he surveyed the towering spires and reverent, church-like windows of these houses of learning. If his nan’s shop was straight out of Diagon Alley, the buildings of Oxford were Hogwarts, a magical land kept secret from him by having the bad luck not to have been born rich enough to attend lectures there. But he visited. And often. The darkened shop windows and chanting lads passed him by carelessly until he walked into the vast yard of Christ Church. Christ Church was one of his favorites, a massive cathedral whose reverence was undercut by the flock of longhorn cattle who freely grazed upon their vast green lands.
It was a popular cut-through for people trying to get home after a long night out. The perfect place to sell his songs.
But tonight wasn’t like usual, with a few random kids strolling through or stopping to smoke their cigarettes before they got home to annoyed roommates. There, on the edge of the pavement so as to observe the DONOTSTEPONTHEGRASSsign, was a woman. An almost-naked woman. She stood in the cold without moving, not even tilting her head at the small crowd assembled around her. Even from halfway across the yard, Daniel could hear the barbs on their slurring tongues. Words and insults he wouldn’t sling at his worst enemy.
Instinct forced him to act.
“Hey!” he bellowed.
Power he didn’t know he possessed rippled and radiated from deep inside of him. Like a pack of synchronous flamingos, the taunting party stared in his direction, blinking stupidly as he approached.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Spooked, the crowd dispersed, but the head of the half-naked woman in front of Christ Church didn’t move. She might as well have been a statue. Even when he spoke, she didn’t give him any attention.
“Miss, are you all right?” he called, approaching her, reaching out a friendly hand in surrender.
Then he realized who he was talking to. This was not performance art. This was not a spectacle. It was the woman from the house.
It took a moment—no, longer than a moment—to fully comprehend what it was he had walked into here. In the middle of a cold winter’s night, the daughter of a duke stood in front of Christ Church in her knickers, covered in angry and disgusting black marker scribblings that would have put the devil to shame.
And she was almost crying. Her body trembled. Her knees knocked. The skin around her lower lip was white with the force of her own biting down on it. Her eyes brimmed with tears she refused to shed.
His heart bled for her, but everything about her told him it would be worse to let her know how deeply he pitied her. In spite of her bare flesh and the insults written on it, she held her shoulders back and her chin up. The closeness of her tears didn’t affect the steady, commanding tone of her voice.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
