Dangerous Exile by K.J. Jackson

{ Chapter 14 }

“Oh, you are up here.” Surprise sent Ness’s hand flying onto her bare chest above her chemise, the wide silk sleeve of Talen’s dark blue banyan slipping far down her arm. He’d given it to her earlier in the night, promising to bring her more clothes from the Alabaster in the coming days.

His feet swinging down to the floor next to a lantern, Talen sat up from the long wooden chaise longue he’d been stretched out flat upon, his right forearm propped under his head. “How did you find your way up here?”

Ness looked from him to the roofs of the buildings surrounding them, lower than the top of Talen’s house. Lights as far as the eye could see, glowing orange in the night. The city streets far below were busy at this time of night, though the stark noise of it didn’t reach up to her ears, just the fat echoes of the many wheels and hooves on the cobblestones.

Her gaze shifted back to him. “I couldn’t sleep. I tried, tried for hours, but then I heard sounds, sounds from above so I followed them. It took me a while to find the staircase next to that last room in the attic.”

He pointed to a dark corner of the rooftop terrace. “You probably heard Cat.”

“Cat?” She took a step closer to the corner he pointed to and saw a black tail twitch in the dark. A black cat with two white paws sat eating something from a bowl, paying her no mind. “You have a cat?”

He shrugged. “More of a visitor that visited often enough I finally began to feed it.”

Her lips pulled to the side in a wry smile.

She hadn’t figured him as an animal person. Especially not one that would take in a tiny cat. A lion. Maybe. Or a dragon. Definitely.

She turned around in the dark, surveying the rooftop oasis that sat atop his townhouse. Taller than all the surrounding buildings in every direction, the rooftop terrace held several benches, the chaise longue Talen sat on, chairs and a table. Vines grew from planters along the edges of the space, curling up onto the wrought iron railing that topped the half-wall surrounding the terrace.

“You really shouldn’t be poking around other people’s houses, Ness.”

“You didn’t lock my room, didn’t tell me to stay in one place for a change, so I took advantage.” She walked over to the edge of the rooftop, setting her right hand on the iron railing. The view stretched to street after street, full of busy coaches, all black and shiny with the finest dressed people within, rolling to and fro through the maze of the lanes below. Lights glowed in the many townhouses around them—a thousand flickers of flames that warmed the city, almost making it charming for the late hour. She’d heard that London was active during much different times than in Scotland, but had never been able to judge it according to the Alabaster. It was a gaming hell, after all.

Talen cleared his throat. “Then this is me telling you to stay in place. Your room. Up here. That is the extent of where you can go. I cannot afford anyone discovering you are here.”

Without turning around to him, she offered him a slight nod.

“Promise me, Ness. Don’t make me sink to locking you in your room again.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “But at the Alabaster you did that to lock others out, not me in.”

“Yes. But I also wouldn’t think twice about locking you in your room below for your own good. You know I will do it.” The hard cut of his voice sliced into the night, making her cringe.

He would do it, she didn’t have a doubt.

“I promise.” She turned back to the street, leaning forward, her right arm long along the railing propping her up as she watched the carriages below. She would promise him anything at this point. He’d brought her here instead of leaving her in that madhouse. It was better than she could have hoped for.

“Thank you for not leaving me there.” She said the words softly, letting them drift off into the night air of the city, not sure he even heard her.

“What did you mean at the asylum when you said, ‘not like your mother’?”

Her mouth clamped shut as she stilled in place. The gratitude hadn’t been an invitation for questions, but she should have been prepared for Talen to be curious. She’d acted like a madwoman when he’d left her there. Now he wanted to know why.

Her look trained on a woman in a glowing silver gown floating down the street at the arm of a gentleman. So simple. So light. A burn deep in her chest seared with envy. She would never be a woman like that. Light. Easy. Not a care in the world.

That sort of freedom was stolen from her long ago, so what did it matter now if she talked of her mother? Who was there to judge?

Her mouth opened, hanging agape for long seconds before she could form words. “My mother was the finest woman. A lady, through and through, the fourth daughter of a baron. She loved me so much. Loved my father.” Her head shook, the darkness of the night sinking into her lungs.

“But?”

She turned around to look at him and leaned back against the railing. The black cat with two white paws had moved from the corner, curling in and out of his legs, though Talen’s attention was solely on her. His forearms balanced on his thighs, he stroked its back, sending warbling purring that sounded more like a mouse squeaking into the night air.

“But my father tired of her. Tired of her by the time I was ten. To be honest, I don’t know that he ever cared much for her. Not for how he treated her. Treated me. Still, it took him years to get rid of her.”

“How did he do that?”

“When I was fourteen he wanted to have his mistress move into our estate in Cumberland, so he placed my mother in an insane asylum.” Her right hand moved to clutch the front of his banyan higher over her bare chest to cut the chill invading her. “He committed her to the asylum and my mother wasn’t mad. She was sad. Sad that her husband had no regard for her. But she was always sane. And once she realized she was in there for good, with no escape, she was even sadder.”

“Could you visit her?”

“I was allowed to see her once a month and I lived for those days, for she would always brighten when she would see me. Sing me songs she used to sing to me when I was child. Like she could send time back to where I would crawl in her lap and she would sing to me. I think she thought I wouldn’t notice the marks on her arms if she was singing. The marks set onto her arms by her own fingernails. The gaping wounds where she’d gouged out her own skin.”

Even with the scant light from the lantern, she could see his eyes darken. “Yet she was sane?”

“Too sane. And it was more painful—harder—because she was. If she were mad…it would have been easier. But she wasn’t.” Her bottom lip pulled under her top teeth for a long moment as she choked back tears. “I would ask father to bring her home. Beg him. Beg him for hours on end. He would do nothing but laugh at me.” Her hand curled onto the folds of the banyan at her chest, her knuckles near to popping. “Every time, he would laugh. Until he didn’t.”

“He stopped?”

“He did. That was the day he told me he’d found a new place for me to live. He was done with me. That I was to marry Gilroy. I didn’t even know the man. But Gilroy had seen me at our estate, reading in the gazebo. Father said Gilroy offered him a healthy sum for me, and he sold me. Sold me to him like a sack of grain.”

“Did you not have a dowry?” His forefinger twirled around the cat’s half-missing left ear.

“Why waste a dowry when he could get paid instead?” She unclenched her hand from the banyan, flattening her hand on the slope of her chest. “I fought him on it for a week, refusing to marry Gilroy. I had never stood up to him until that moment, and I paid for it. Paid for it with bloody lips and bruised cheeks until he finally gave me an ultimatum—my choices were marriage to Gilroy or marriage to a lecherous old marquess looking for his fourth wife, or exile, or the madhouse.”

A shudder ran through her and she exhaled a long breath. “I chose Gilroy. So I was sent to Whetland Castle in Scotland with my maid. Married within a day. It was its own exile that I never saw coming.”

“Why?”

“There were no women at Whetland. Only a few maids. A cold castle. An even colder man that was my husband.”

His head shook and he looked down at the cat wrapped around his left leg, scuffing its chin against his calf. He scratched it behind the ears for a long moment before looking up at her. “Your mother, is she still in the hospital?”

Her mouth opened as she sucked in a hiccupped breath. She shook her head, her eyes closing, fighting the tears that threatened. No matter how many years had passed, the images in her mind stayed vibrant, as though they were happening in front of her in that very moment.

“I was allowed to visit her one more time before I left for Whetland and I was the one that found her, a sheet wrapped around her neck and tied to the railing of the bed. She looked so peaceful, like the sadness couldn’t get to her anymore. It was all I wanted, month after month, to see her happy, at peace. But not like that.”

A sob gargled up her throat as she buried her face in her right hand for a long moment. Her voice reclaimed, she looked at Talen. “Not like that. I don’t know if she knew I was leaving her behind. She lived for those visits with me, and if she knew they were ending…”

Her right arm wrapped across her ribcage, her gaze going to the left, locking onto the greenery wrapping up the trellis in the corner. “They said she killed herself. I never believed it. She would hurt herself, bleed her arms, yes, but to kill herself? No. She believed in the sanctity of heaven and hell. She would never.”

The same visceral rage from when she’d first heard those words spoken—that her mother had killed herself—surged in her gut. Surged to the point of almost exploding when she was always so good at tamping down the anger.

What the hell was happening with her? She excelled at controlling the rage. The pain. Holding back tears. But now, in the last few weeks, it was all she could do to hold onto the slightest remnants of sanity.

Sanity.

Tight control.

Always tight control, or she was two steps away from belonging in a madhouse herself.

She swatted away the tears that had escaped onto her cheeks and turned away from Talen, staring out at the rooftops. Gagging downward the spiked ball of rage stuck in her throat, she heaved a breath—it usually wasn’t that painful, ripping at her throat like that.

Her look glazed over and she forced her voice to as neutral a tone as possible. “But then again, my mother wasn’t insane when my father stuck her in that place. Maybe it did eventually drive her mad.” Her shoulders lifted. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

“I’m sorry.” Talen had stood and moved directly behind her, making her jump as his words drifted soft into the air about her right ear. “I didn’t know. I never would have brought you there—much less left you there had I known.”  The odd rasp in his voice wrapped around her chest, making her heart constrict.

“There was no way you could have known.”

“Except there was a way I could have known.” He moved to her left side, setting his hand on the railing, his eyes searching her face. “I could have asked you questions. Could have listened to your answers. I could have known what happened to your mother and this whole day would have been avoided. But I’ve been avoiding asking you questions for days now, and that is my own failing.”

“Your failing? No. That is ridiculous to put that upon yourself.” She turned toward him, her eyebrows lifting. “But why have you not wanted to ask me questions?”

His lips pursed for a long moment, hedging his reply. Measured. He was always so measured around her it was no wonder she secretly celebrated breaking through his granite facade when he smiled or chuckled.

“I had originally thought that the less I knew of you, the better. You were a job Juliet sent to me.” His mouth pulled into a tight line, fighting what he didn’t want to say. “But then I did want to know more about you—every damn minute we’ve spent together has only stoked that thirst. But I knew full well I couldn’t act upon it. Juliet sent you to me to protect. Nothing more.”

“You’ve wanted more?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what I want when I’m with you.” His head shook slightly. “I want to know everything about you. I want to know nothing. Neither is a path I should take.”

She froze, her eyes fixed onto his. “Why can’t you want to know more?”

“You want the thousand reasons why not? You’re an innocent. You’re married. You think I’m someone that I’m not. Juliet explicitly told me to keep my hands to myself.”

His right hand flipped up as his shoulder lifted. “I can’t afford the complications in my life that come with someone like you. Yet Juliet set you in front of me.”

His words stole the breath from her lungs. She was a burden. He’d been taking pity upon her. She’d known it from the start.

Except that wasn’t all of it. Every one of the glances that she’d seen from him when he thought she wasn’t looking. He’d stare at her, his jaw flexing back and forth. She’d thought he’d been working out how to get rid of her from the Alabaster.

But it hadn’t been a detached scowl in his eyes. It’d been heat.

He’d been thinking about complications. About whether she’d be worth it.

Her voice shook. “Which means that you were considering those complications?”

He leaned forward, setting his cheek next to hers, his words a whisper in her ear, though there was no one there to overhear them. “I’ve thought about your lips under mine, yes. My hands dragging down your body. Tasting your skin. Pulling your skirts up and slipping into you and watching your face as I do, the innocence in your eyes turning into raw heat. I’ve thought about how your mewls would sound in my ears, your gasps for breath. I’ve thought about watching the pleasure roll through your face, pleasure like you’ve never felt before—never felt what your body can truly do, can truly be.”

Her eyes closed, and her body swayed slightly, sending her leaning into him.

He didn’t pull away, his breath still heating her cheek. “I’ve thought about it all, Ness. All of it. All of what it would mean. And it would mean too much. You can’t handle what I want from you right now. And I can’t do that to you.”

He pulled up slightly and her eyes popped open, only to see the width of his chest taking up her world. Her gaze lifted, finding the scant moonlight reflecting in his light blue eyes. “You can’t do it to me because?”

“Because I respect you.”

“Are you saying you respect me like you do Juliet?” Her words were incredulous. No man had ever bothered to actually respect her. Certainly not her father. Certainly not Gilroy. “That we are friends?”

The slightest smile came to his lips and he bent down, farther this time, to where his lips were almost brushing her neck. “I have never wanted to do to Juliet what I want to do to you. But I do hold you in the highest esteem. Your spirit. Your courage. Your tolerance for pain.” The rasp in his voice rough, his breath stayed hot on her skin. “So just turn away, Ness. Turn away and make this easier on both of us. I don’t want you. Can’t want you.”

She stood as still as a statue for far too many thumps of her heartbeat, until she caught her breath and her forehead wrinkled. Her movements wooden, she shuffled a step away from him and turned to look down on the city, her right hand gripping the railing, the only thing keeping her upright. For a full minute, she’d begun to think he wanted her. Wanted her beyond the unwanted burden she was on him.

And she rather liked the idea of it.

But he didn’t want her. Anything to do with her, really.

Fine.

She was perfectly adept at making benign conversation.

Her forefinger flung out from the railing into the night air. “This house is so much taller than the rest in this area. Do you like it up here because you get to look down on everyone?”

He chuckled as he turned toward the street and set his forearms upon the railing. “No. I have several reasons. That is not one of them.”

“Tell me one of them.” She couldn’t look at him, her stare firmly fixed on the cobblestones below.

“I kept this townhouse for its height—but it’s not so I can look down on everyone, it’s so no one can look down on me. No one can see me. I like to be anonymous, but I find that hard to come by with the business I am in.”

“Reasonable. If I recall correctly, when I first arrived in London, I merely uttered the name Blackstone and people’s eyes went wide. Everyone had heard of you. Feared you.” She glanced at him. “I envy you this.”

“What?”

“You know who you are, where you belong, who you can depend upon. I’ve never had that. Not since my mother was sent away. Since then, there hasn’t been a place for me in this world. A true place for me. A place without fear. A place with simplicity.”

“You can have that here, for as long as you need to.”

“Thank you.” Her mouth quirked to the side. “But I’m allowed my room. This terrace. That is it. This isn’t simplicity, Talen. This isn’t normal. None of it is.”

“What if I brought Verity over? Aside from Declan she’s the only other person I would trust with knowing this place exists.”

“No—I don’t want to jeopardize your anonymity here.”

“I trust her.” He shrugged. “She would never let it be known.”

“You would do that?”

“If it would stop you from sulking about, then yes. It may even squeak a smile out of you.”

She smiled at him, meeting his look. “Don’t think me ungrateful, because I am. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me when I was nothing but a stranger dumped upon your doorstep.”

“I wouldn’t say dumped. Juliet is smart. She would never dump anyone.”

“She is that. Regardless, you took me on when you had no reason to. You’re more of a hero than you give yourself credit for.”

“Ness—”

“So tell me another reason you like it up here.” She pointed outward into the night air as she cut him off, knowing what he was going to say. He wasn’t her hero. That was his opinion. Her opinion, she was beginning to suspect, was very different.

“Another reason?” He turned toward her, leaving his left arm draped across the railing, and pointed upward. “The stars. Up here on clear nights, I’m above the lights so I can make out the stars.”

She glanced upward. The sky was clear and the stars were shining brightly. That’s what he’d been doing lying on the chaise longue when she’d stumbled upon him. “You like the stars?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“From my years at sea. I learned to navigate by them, though I wasn’t very good at it. Declan was always better. But truly, I always liked the mystery of the stars more than the practicality of them—fixed stones in the sky, marking the way, yet always moving. Always moving.” He looked up, his eyes shifting across the night sky. “Look at that one.”

She followed to where his finger pointed, turning her back toward him to do so. “Which one?”

“Actually, look at those three—the three in a tight line, together. That is Orion’s belt. He just made it into the sky here in London.”

“Orion?”

“Do you know mythology?”

She shook her head as her neck craned her face to the sky.

“Orion was a great huntsman that Zeus placed into the stars as a constellation after a scorpion stung and killed him. The scorpion constellation—Scorpius—will never be in the sky at the same time, as they chase each other around the world.” Over her shoulder, his pointer finger shifted up and down. “See how those three stars make a belt? His head is up there. And coming off the belt are three stars that are his sword. On either side are his legs. One arm is held high, the other holding an animal hide. On that side, Taurus the bull is snorting, charging him. Those two have always been my favorite.”

She chuckled. “I don’t think I’m seeing what you’re seeing.”

“Come over here.” He set his hand on the small of her back and ushered her to the wide wooden chaise longue. “Lie down.”

Her eyebrows cocked at him.

“Trust me. It’s easier here.”

She sat, then stretched her legs long onto the chaise. Talen squeezed in next to her, careful to not bump her left forearm and the splint, and then slid his arm under her head for a pillow as they both reclined flat on the bench.

Far too intimate, yet she couldn’t excuse herself. She had barely two slips of cloth on her skin and he was so warm in the chilly air. And smelled too good, something that always unsettled her, how she so liked the scent of him. How it made her chest tighten every time she was near him.

His body next to her a rock of strength, the whole of him a haven. A solid, begrudgingly accommodating haven from the pain and the turmoil her life had become. She didn’t want to leave it. Leave him.

“Now look.” His left arm went up toward the sky, his forefinger wagging towards a clump of stars. “There is a V-shaped star cluster, that’s the bull’s snorting snout. You follow those to the left and those are his horns, ready to impale.”

“That is a snorting snout?”

“If you use your imagination, it is.” The cat jumped up onto the chaise and picked its way to a spot in between Talen’s calves. He let it paw at his trousers for a moment as it nestled in, then continued. “We have a cat and Orion has a dog, Sirius, there, the brightest star in the sky. And here is a nice trick—from that star on the belt through his arm you can draw a line to the south.”

“These stars guided you on the sea?”

“Aye.”

“You’ve seen faraway lands, haven’t you?”

“I have.”

“I wish you could remember the time before the ship.”

He stiffened, his bicep clenching under the back of her head. “Does it even matter, Ness?”

“No. No, I guess it does not. We are where we are.” Her right hand flicked up toward the sky. “What other tales are up there in the sky?”

“Too many to count. I spent years listening to grizzled old sailors speaking of the stars.”

She pointed upward in the sky to a bright star. “What’s there?”

“You just found the north star in the little bear, a tale of its own.”

The odd rasp in his voice suited the air about them, nothing but the dark and the stars above them. Low and gravelly, and lulling her to sleep with tales of bears that saved Zeus from his father.

Sleep with only one thought on her mind.

She’d never felt safer.