Wolves, not sheep, I remind myself.
It takes every ounce of self-control to keep Dad’s knife steady when I spot blood beading beneath the blade, coating the metal with a glossy red. My stomach heaves. “You have some nerve,” I whisper.
Saxon’s eerily colored eyes never leave my face. “And you have none.”
My grip on the knife goes slack at the unexpected cut of his words. Mistake number one. The confessional is tiny and the next thing I know, he’s leveled the blade with my collarbone, and I see it then, my entire life flashing before my eyes.
And it’s pitiful.
No big dreams.
No great ambitions.
No hope for anything but survival for myself and my siblings.
I draw in a ragged breath, at the same time that Saxon presses Dad’s knife into my lap, laid flat, so as not to hurt me. He twists away and taps on the screen separating us from the priest. “She’ll be here.”
I hear the quiet creak of a wooden bench beneath the priest’s weight, as though he’s shifted around. “Tell me, my child,” he murmurs, clearly directing the statement to me, “have you sinned?”
My fingers curl around the knife’s smooth hilt. I shot King John with a rifle that I stole then discarded in the Thames. I’d trembled as I lined up the shot. Then brought to mind every piece of advice my father ever gave me during all the times we hunted pheasant back in Yorkshire.
Aim, sweet Isla, he would tell me with a smile quirking his lips, and don’t you dare close your eyes when you shoot or you’re likely to hit me instead.
Pulling the trigger on another human being felt like scraping my soul raw.
In my lap, I grip the hilt of my father’s blade tighter, then confess: “Yes, Father, I have sinned.”
11
Saxon
If looks could kill, then I’d already be dead.
We’ve barely stepped outside of Christ Church when Isla storms past me. She manages three furious strides, her blond hair catching in the breeze, before whirling around. Blue eyes blazing, plump lips flattened in displeasure, cheeks reddened from the cold or anger, I don’t know, but she gets in my face and bravely—or stupidly—holds her ground.
“What was that?” she snaps, waving a hand at the church.
Involuntarily, my gaze latches onto the freckles scattered across her nose. Innocent, it’s how she looks, despite the all-black attire today—but bloody hell if she isn’t one step away from blowing a gasket. I’ve never had another woman repeatedly try to kill me. Maim me, yes. Kill me? Not so much. It’d give me a complex if I weren’t already such an emotionless bastard.
I catch her wrist. “You’re making a scene.”
“Oh, I’m making a scene? Right. I don’t even—” She snaps her mouth shut, tongue running along the seam of her lips. “I don’t appreciate being jerked around for your entertainment. You saw . . . You . . .” Shaking her head, her gaze drops to the ground between our feet then returns north, to land somewhere in the vicinity of my throat. “You don’t do charity and I don’t beg for scraps. If we’ve learned anything about each other in the last twenty-four hours, it’s that, which means I’m being fully transparent when I say this: I’m running on fumes. Financially, emotionally, mentally, I’m one step away from calling it quits and dragging my siblings to the farthest corners of this bloody country and setting up shop as a ragtag team of hermits. And don’t you tell me I won’t last roughing it out in the wilderness.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
She kicks her chin up, ignoring my bite of sarcasm. “Tell that priest of yours I won’t be attending Mass or confession or whatever the hell it is that he thinks I’ll be schlepping myself over here to—”
“You will.”
Her muscles twitch under my grip. “Bark another order at me and I’ll finish off what I started. My knife, your neck, one happily-ever-after.”
My teeth clench tight. Fuck, she is infuriating.
I yank her close, her captive hand trapped between us. “Had you waited five more minutes, I would have filled you in at the pub.”
“Instead you’re the one making a scene,” she retorts, sharply rotating her hand as she fights my ironclad hold.
“No, Isla,” I grind out, drawing my thumb over her fluttering pulse at the heart of her wrist, “I’m giving you what you bloody asked me for.”
“By trying to frighten me, clearly.”
“By trying not to get you killed!” My temper spikes at her implication that I might do her bodily harm. I don’t know the last time I raised my voice, but here I am, standing in the middle of a public street, fighting a losing battle that has my blood boiling in a way that I haven’t felt in years, if ever. “Your parents may have been murdered but somehow you’re still living with your head in the clouds. Any other man would take your proposition and spin it to his advantage. Last night, any other man would have dragged your skirt above your hips, kept your body locked under his, and taken what you didn’t offer him freely. You’re so goddamned keen to insert yourself into this world of which you know absolutely nothing.”
I feel her knuckles brush my chest as she furls her fingers into a fist. “You’re no gentleman,” she whispers roughly. “If you’re trying to paint yourself as a man with a heart of gold—”
“I have no heart.” I issue the words without fanfare before releasing her hand. Then drag my palm over my trousers, as though that alone can rid me of the last vestiges of her warmth. “And I’m not some knight in shining armor here to save you. Don’t twist this into something it’s not.”
She draws her hand up to her chest, then closes the other over it. “Then why help me? Why bother with any of this?”
I don’t know.
I asked myself that same question throughout the night and I’m no closer to discovering the answer now than I was yesterday. But then I remember seeing her lifeless form at the riot, her arms cradling her head and her legs drawn up tight like a cocoon, and that lurching sensation returns with a vengeance.
Isla Quinn is nothing to me.
Her happiness means little, her survival even less so, and yet I haven’t walked away. Haven’t even considered it.
Needing space, I fall back a step and dig my fingers into my hips. Swing my gaze right, then left. Commercial Street is busy this time of day: people going to work; others headed out for lunch or errands. Adjacently, Fournier remains quiet. Aside from patrons entering The Bell & Hand, no one bats an eye at us standing in the middle of the street, nor do they approach. Even so, I lower my voice to keep us from being overheard. “Father Bootham holds confession—think hard on that. His congregation runs a mixture of loyalists, anti-loyalists. He hears all.”
Isla’s brows hike up. “You say this as if you know it firsthand.”
“I say this because he reports everything that he hears back to me.” Hands still locked on my hips, I lean forward. “Everything, Isla. But the man is devout, and he feels better spilling secrets when it’s under the guise of asking God for forgiveness.”