Instead, it was over.
She was done.
{ Chapter 23 }
She sat on the fat upholstered chair in the middle of the room.
Her body wrapped in a rough, dark gray linen sheet, wiggling, trying to escape the binds.
A slash of rage shot through Strider. The fishmonger had said he hadn’t hurt her, but here she was, bound in a mess of twine and rags.
He should have crushed that fishmonger rather than paying him off.
The thought to go after the cretin flashed across his mind, but he instantly dismissed it. He couldn’t let Pen sit another second in fear.
Strider rushed forward, ripping the sheet away from her head, tugging at the tangle of it until her face was in the light.
She shook the hair away from her face, her green eyes wild, panicked, until her focus caught him.
She stilled, her nostrils flaring, her breath coming in short heaving bursts above the rag stuffed in her mouth until the reality of the situation hit her. Fire ignited in her green eyes.
“I apologize for this—this wasn’t what I intended—your fear.” Almost afraid to set her mouth loose, his hand lifted, plucking out the rag stuffed in her mouth.
Her tongue smacked against the roof of her mouth repeatedly until her lips set loose. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing to me? You apologize? Apologize for having me abducted from the middle of the street? In the middle of the day?”
His hands lifted in between them, palms to her to calm. “Pen, I—”
“No. I’m not going to listen to you, Strider. I have places I need to be.”
His hands dropped, his voice taking on a hard edge he couldn’t control. “Places? What have you been doing?”
Her entire body—still trapped in the bindings and sheet—convulsed as a screech hummed from her chest. “You blasted man. Daphne—her name is Daphne Bannon. I have been working for her—she sells items to ladies of thetonand she hired me. I live at her home. She is expecting me—would have been expecting me hours ago. We have so much work to do.” Her look flew toward the window, her eyes squinting at the daylight. “Wait, what time is it—what day is it?”
“Thursday—it’s not even five. The fishmonger brought you straight here and I rode like the devil to beat him here.”
A frustrated growl shook her body. “It’s been hours—hours I’ve been gone. Daphne will be worried.”
“I’ll send someone to let her know you’re safe.”
Her green eyes pinned him. “Now—do it now, Strider. Daphne Bannon inGolden Square.”
“Let me untie you first.”
“No. Now.” She shook her head as her voice spiked, her glare cutting him through.
With a sigh, Strider straightened and went out of the room. He found Jasper down the hall and told him to head back to London with the message and a healthy stack of coins for Miss Bannon’s trouble.
When he stepped back into the room, Pen was looking around the chamber as she tried to wiggle out of the cloth wrapped around her.
Everything about what she had just said reeked of wrong. No woman just took in another woman. People weren’t like that. Miss Bannon was probably enticing women in and then peddling them out to men. Or worse.
He stopped by the door. “Who exactly is Daphne Bannon?”
“No.” Her glare skewered him. “You don’t get questions. I was the one that was just abducted, so I get to ask the questions. Where am I? This isn’t the Den of Diablo, there are trees outside.”
Strider glanced about the room.Dark colors filled the space, deep blues and greys in the bedding and draperies, just as he liked it. Leather wingback chairs by the fireplace. The chair she sat in was the only thing feminine—overstuffed with feathers and upholstered in a light rose color, it had been dragged into the room just before Pen had been carried in here. “No, it’s not the Den. You’re in my bedroom in the home I keep outside of London. Close enough that I can easily get here. Far enough away that I don’t feel haunted by the ghosts of London.”
“You never mentioned it.”