However, something else blazed in her reticule like a cursed relic. Satin. Flat-soled. Impossibly incriminating.
The thought made her wince. She hadn’t wanted to leave her shop with the slipper. Just the thought felt like peeling skin from bone. But she had no choice.
She would not—could not—live under the shadow of fear.
From Maxen Fury.
The landlord. The beast. The darkness personified. A thorn wedged most rudely in her otherwise perfect new beginning. A man whose shadow seemed to swallow the sunlight and block out her stars.
Andhehad her slipper.
It wasn’t just that he’d found it. It washowhe had looked at it—like a man unearthing a secret. Like he already knew it was hers. The man was suspicious. Too perceptive by half.
But no matter.
Today, she was clever. Careful.Invisible.
She would rid herself of the other half of that blasted pair of slippers and erase the evidence before the beast sniffed out the truth. Who knew what he would do in his quest to find the culprit of that night. Her imagination also wasn’t of any help! Would he break in and rifle through her belongings? Something more nefarious?
Her shoulders crept up in revulsion.
Who’s overly suspicious now, Calliope?
Well. She was.
And frankly, she considered itprudent.
Dark eyes swam in her mind.
Ah, stars.
Why did the man have to be so sinfully, wickedly,uncomfortablyhandsome?
It wasn’t until after she’d closed the shop yesterday that she’d let herselffeelthe full impression he’d left behind. Not just the obvious things—danger, damnation, destruction—but something else. Something that seemed to linger right beneath her skin. The way her breath had wanted to catch each time he looked at her—not from fear, but, when she looked closer, from something far more foolish.
Recognition.
Not of him but of herself.
Of something inside her, bottled and waiting.
And the sound of his voice—it hadn’t threatened. Well, ithad—but the promise of his undertone had also stirred. Rough and calm, yet it had traced through her like a whisper of a warning. As though he were speaking not to her ears, but to something buried deep under layers of good sense. A part of her she hadn’t known was paying attention. And that scar? She’d tried her very best to ignore her curiosity, but she couldn’t help but wonder about its origin. How had he gotten injured? It must have hurt terribly, mustn’t it?
Don’t be a fool, Calliope.
He’d gotten that scar doing underhanded things! She’d be betteroff directing all her thoughts to Mr. Rollings and let him serve as a continuing reminder of what happened to those associated with her landlord and his cronies. What might happen to her if she lost vigilance. Look at how she had trembled after their two encounters! If her landlord had been an ordinary man in ordinary circumstances, she might have believed the flutters to be something perilously close to attraction.
Calliope would love to believe she had more sense than that. No, those flutters had been instinct. A warning. The body’s natural response to a predator.
Most certainlynotattraction.
In any case, what attraction could it be? Despite her rather sheltered upbringing, she was no prude. She loved books and stories and romantic tales. How many times had she dreamed a powerful hero had rescued her from Duvessa all those nightmarish years? But stars, Maxen Fury was no prince! A dark prince, perhaps. Certainly not one who saved ladies from draconian stepmothers.
A ridiculous notion, truly. One man with a deep voice and a brooding stare and suddenly some buried part of her thought it recognized him?
What nonsense.
The breeze teased a strand of hair loose from her bonnet as she searched for the perfect spot to dump her slipper. She had scouted a dark, narrow alley earlier. One where a clever girl might consign a slipper to ruin.
