She faced him, arms crossed in a way she hoped looked confident while hiding her chest. “Ye got a problem?” she asked, trying to ignore the smell of stale beer emanating from him and his hot, putrid breath that mingled with hers on her lips. She pushed back the urge to vomit and managed to cock one eyebrow.
He grinned down at her. “I got somethin’.” He ran a finger across her temple, brushing against the edge of her wig. “Mebee I should explore that more.”
Her racing heart abruptly stalled and she reflexively reached to her hairline—holding the wig to her head firmly. In her periphery she saw some of her other cellmates straighten, attention firmly on her. One dropped his gaze to her backside and began to run his hands together.
Her throat closed completely.
This is bad. This is very, very bad.
Her only possible savior was the guard determined not to hear her. “Sir?” She looked over her shoulder, praying to see him coming in her direction—and she saw something else entirely.
Edward, strolling down the cold, dark corridor as casually as though he were walking down a busy street. Edward, looking like the devil himself. He was taller than most men, six feet something of furious, tightly held violence. His pale blue eyes were ice cold, and they were fixated on the man whose breath she could still smell.
All the tension drained from her, and she sagged into the bars, forehead resting on the frigid metal.
She was safe.
At least, safer than she’d been a second ago.
But despite the relief, a pit of nausea formed in her stomach. Edward. Of all people to come to her rescue, it had to be Edward. Her throat tightened and hot tears pricked at her eyes as she looked up at him. He was harder than the man she’d known years ago. His lips, once soft to kiss and quick to smile, were pressed thin. There was a deep furrow between his brows, the groove accentuated by the severe, fluctuating flame from the torches.
He was mere feet away now, his arms crossed. When his stare shifted to her, it lost none of its anger. It didn’t soften a whit.
She swallowed.
“Finley,” he said in a loud voice with a razor’s edge to it. The cretin next to her dropped his hand and stepped backward. The other men in the cell found somewhere else to look. Edward had that effect. He expected to be respected, feared, obeyed, and he was.
The man next to her didn’t need to know Edward was a duke. The royal power rolled off him.
How had she not noticed? How had she not picked him for what he was? It was so damn clear just looking at him that he was a man of actual influence. Clearly a lord with a title and estates and a whole damn society that yielded to him.
How had he fooled her for two entire weeks?
She prided herself on her intelligence. She might be an “odd” creature, completely incapable of behaving like a young lady should, but she was smart. Smarter than most men. Educated—if not traditionally. She should have spotted his ruse from a mile away. That she hadn’t was humiliating, and she didn’t really want to examine why she’d missed it, because then she might need to admit that it was because she’d wanted to. She’d been so taken with him, so utterly besotted by his attention and his confidence and the way he filled a room with his presence, that she’d willingly overlooked the clues that he was more than what he said.
And that deliberate obtuseness had been her undoing. Her broken heart was her own fault.
“Your sister sent me,Finley. You’re a troublesome lad.”
The arrogance in his voice rubbed raw. It was the oxygen needed to fuel her burning anger. What she wanted was to tell him to go jump into a pigs’ wallow, but she’d keep her mouth shut until she was out of this mess.
She looked away, avoiding his gaze. Just behind him was the guard who had steadfastly ignored her. He held the best-looking ring of keys Fiona had ever seen.
With a rattle and heavy click, the guard unlocked the cell door. The squeal of non-lubricated metal on metal was as welcome as it was jarring. She brushed past Edward as she escaped and didn’t turn around as the door clanged shut behind her, or as the men in the cell started to shout, or as Edward’s steps sounded behind her. She held her head high and walked as quickly as she could down that corridor, and to her freedom.
Chapter 4
Fiona stared out the window of the Wildeforde carriage. Grey cobblestones, grey buildings, grey sky. The people they passed were almost as colorless—clothes worn, faded until they almost blended into a muddy sea.
Every face turned as the ornate carriage with its gold-leaf crest passed—each face gaunt, expressionless. It was a look she was only too familiar with. She swallowed the lump that formed in her throat.
You haven’t been starving in years.
Across from her, Edward—a man who’d never wanted for anything—stared at her, his expression grim. He was waiting for her to speak. It was a power game. The great Duke of Wildeforde flexing his might.
“What?” she snapped. The disguise she’d donned that morning to attend the rally itched. The wig, the breast bindings, the bootshe’d stuffed with newspaper to give her extra height—it was all irritating. “What are you looking at?”
“Why are you in London?” He crossed his ankle over his knee, folding his hands on his thigh in a paternalistic manner, as if she were an errant child who needed scolding. But the aloof posture belied the anger in his voice.
