Chapter Three
What met Violet first was the smell. Having always loved flowers and even opened a botanical shop to follow her dream, her nose was more sensitive to foul odors than most. And this was bad.
Not the expected flash of sweat and tobacco—though those were present in abundance—but something worse. Blood, she thought.
Old blood.
The sort that shouted of a bloody fight where no one had bothered to clean up after the spectacle.
Metallic. Rotting. Violent.
The odor struck the back of her throat, setting every instinct on edge and sparking the urge to flee.
This is your worst idea yet, Violet.
She swallowed hard and stepped farther into the abandoned building, the hood of her cloak drawn low over the cap that tugged tight over her pinned hair.
The trousers she wore itched, but they were a necessary precaution.
She tried to keep her walk loose, the way men did when they had nothing to hide.
However, those men didn’t wear cloaks, did they?
And she’d yet to spot a soul.
Where is everyone?
The building was dark, save for the faint tremor of a candle somewhere ahead.
Its weak flame licked the wall, carving out brief shapes before darkness swallowed them again.
If she hadn’t seen the leaflet itself, she’d have thought this to be a cruel jest. But what exactly did she know?
She’d never attended a fight before. All she knew was what her brother had always boasted about.
But she was fairly certain it wasn’t supposed to be this eerily silent.
She also shouldn’t be venturing farther into the building.
What she should have been doing was running.
Running far away. Every step cautioned her to turn, but the desire to confirm whether it was truly that blackguard pushed her forward despite the fact that not a soul stirred in sight within the shallow light.
Ah, dickens.
The beat of her heart pounded so blazingly loud in her ears, she was half certain the whole world could hear the drum. Still, she forced her feet forward, sticking close to the peeling walls.
Had she gotten the time wrong? Missed the fight? Had the fight perhaps been canceled? Those were all possibilities and the only things that made logical sense. Perhaps this was for the best. Knowledge was preferable to ignorance, though ignorance had its comforts. Even so, something seemed off.
She followed the light to an equally forsaken room.
No, two rooms. The wall between them had been knocked through, leaving a ragged edge of plaster along the edges.
The space was vast and empty now, stripped of furniture.
A candle was set on the floor at the center, illuminating a big stain of dried blood.
The back of her neck suddenly prickled, a slow crawl that made her pulse stutter, and the peculiar sense of being watched filled her.
This is what you get, Violet. This is what you get!
Woman. Alone. Being reckless.
It might be nothing . . .
She scoffed at that little voice and turned in a slow circle, eyes sweeping over the walls, the doorway, the hollow corners where the candlelight failed to reach for the source of the prickle. The room offered nothing. No movement, no sound, not even the whisper of anything.
Except, perhaps, the suspiciously placed candle.
And the creeping awareness pressing between her shoulder blades.
Leave, Vi. Now.
Her feet remained rooted to the spot, as though some stubborn, desperate part of her refused to abandon her goal before finding proof whether her brother had been here tonight or not. Whether he’d truly come to Brighton for some fight.
It’s not worth it!
Fine.
She agreed. Best to handle the matter as though he were here and she’d need to keep her head even lower for a bit.
The air shifted behind her, so slightly she might have imagined it, yet every hair on her arms lifted in answer. Violet whipped around.
A man stepped from the shadows.
Enormous, all blunt muscle and brutal confidence, a jagged scar carving its way across his face.
Him.
Lord, oh, Lord. A Fury.
The one whose face could never be forgotten. Violence clung to him the way salt clung to the ocean air. The same ilk as her brother.
The question begged: What was he doing here?
“Well, what do we have here?” he asked, his voice rough enough to ripple along the skin of her arms.
He did not recognize her, did he? The last thing she wanted to be was Persephone to this man’s Hades!
There’d be no reason for him to recognize you, Vi.
Just keep your cool. She touched the hood of her cloak anyway.
A small reassurance. Angelica’s words from earlier that day resurfaced unbidden.
Defiance and danger. The thrill was being somewhere you shouldn’t be .
. . Well, she had succeeded splendidly in that regard.
And how the dickens was she supposed to respond? “I . . .” Ah, blazes. “I seem to have lost my direction.”
The candle flickered, its weak light dancing over his scar, giving his face brief life and menace, as shadows leaped across his features. He looked every inch the brute her friends whispered about, and she, the fool who’d wandered straight into his . . . lair?
“You expect me to believe that Miss . . .?”
Dash it. No amount of disguise could disguise her voice. “I think it best for me to go,” she deflected.
“So soon?” that low voice purred.
Voices don’t purr, Violet! He is not a cat!
Maybe a tiger?
“Didn’t you come here for the fight?” he added, his dark eyes ever watchful.
She hadn’t expected him to ask so bluntly. Something was truly off here, so she could never admit to her mission. “Fight?” she repeated, forcing a shaky laugh. “Do I look as though I frequent fights?”
“You are in such a place.”
Quibble much? “Yes, I suppose I am. I’m lost, you see.”
“Lost? Do you need for me to escort you home, then?”
Not on your life! “There is no need for that, sir.”
“But you are lost.” His scarred brow rose. “Do you not need aid?”
Certainly not from you, sir. “I can aid myself, thank you.”
“I see.” His gaze drifted down the length of her, taking stock of every inch of her. “You look,” he said, the corner of his mouth curving slightly, “exactly like trouble that’s found its way to the wrong room.”
Her stomach knotted, and blaze it, the knot tangled with a treacherous trace of thrill. “Then I’ll just be taking my trouble elsewhere.” Violet shifted as though preparing to pass him, even though the path to the door lay squarely through his considerable bulk.
The man didn’t move. “I wouldn’t do that, love. You might trip over something unpleasant on your way out.”
“Such as?” she challenged, her mind flashing with bodies strewn across the floor.
“Me.”
Violet started, the single word settling between them like a dangerous challenge. Her mouth moved before her brain. “I beg your pardon?”
He grinned, a flash of teeth so sinister it finally roused the desire to abandon this plan. “Who are you, love? Who’s your master?”
Master?
She inched back a step. “I am my own master.”
“Is that so?”
Of course, he didn’t believe her. Why would he? She swallowed hard, pulse hammering, but managed to tip her chin. “That is so.”
“Then you wouldn’t be here, love.”
Could she retract her earlier denial of being lost? No, Violet. Do not do that. She had to keep her head at a time like this. Otherwise . . . she did not wish to contemplate the consequences. “A simple coincidence.”
“So you meant to enter an abandoned building at night?” His tone remained dry, but his eyes were sharp, dissecting. “Just not this one?”
“Yes,” Violet said, lifting her chin.
His shadow stretched toward her, long and dark and inescapable. It didn’t just touch her; his darkness seemed to wrap around her ankles, rooting her to the spot as if the world itself were conspiring to keep her there, right where he wanted her.
“You know what I think, love? I think you were meant to find me.”
Voilet shook her head, the air suddenly too thick to breathe. “No, I—” The flame of the candle died at that very moment, startling her, making her mouth snap shut.
The room plunged into darkness.
*
The moment the room went black, Drake shot forward, absolutely refusing to let this unexpected little flame escape.
Violet Sharpe.
Their newest tenant. Even her name felt like it belonged nowhere near him. However, from the one or two fleeting moments he’d heard her voice, he’d recognize her cadence anywhere. And then there was the unmistakable flash of red hair beneath her cap that not even the dark of night could hide.
His arms accurately found their mark, circling around her waist and pulling up tightly against him, back to chest, before she could escape, and their eyes adjusted to the darkness.
Small in stature, probably a head or more shorter than him, yet delightfully soft in all the right ways.
And hell, she was warm. Warmer than he’d expect from a woman sneaking about at night.
“Let go of me!” she hissed, twisting like a wild creature caught in a snare.
Well.
“Not before you tell me what you are really doing here,” Drake said, his voice a rough growl meant to pin her as surely as his arms did.
“I know nothing!” she spat back.
“And you expect a man like me to believe that? Love, you could be blindfolded and drunk and still not wander into a place like this by accident.” He tightened his hold an inch, just enough to remind her he had her. “Try again.”
She stilled, and Drake’s mouth twisted into a sardonic smirk.
“There it is,” he murmured. “Sense.”
“Release me.” She wiggled against him. “You are hurting me.”
“No,” he said quietly, his breath brushing the side of her neck. Christ, she even smelled like them. A field of flowers. Flower-scented trouble. “If I meant to hurt you, you’d know.”