“And that is all true. I was going to say that he’s old.”
Sesily smirked. “Not that old.”
“Not old in body. Old in spirit. And he’s a bastard.” One who deserved a sound punch to the nose, apparently.
“Yes, I’ve sensed that last bit.”
“And so?”
Sesily sat back in the seat, the flash of her white grin barely there in the dim light. “And so I think he deserves a bastard in return, don’t you?”
Hang all men for making women feel.
Sera appreciated the simple, ideal vengeance of the moment . . . and the punishment it would mete out for Caleb’s interference in her own life—keeping Mal’s presence in Boston a secret. He did deserve a bastard, and Sesily was more than enough woman to play the part. But her sister did not deserve a man who had such a cold view of love. “Caleb . . . Sesily, Caleb is not the kind of man who is forever.”
Sesily looked out to the darkness beyond the carriage for a long time—long enough for Sera to imagine her sister might not speak. She did, finally. “No one is forever until they are.”
The simple statement impacted Sera more than she imagined it might. It lingered in the air between them, wreaking quiet havoc, until Sesily looked at her and said, “Are you forever? Is Haven?”
The questions shattered her—and she found herself unable to reply.
Terrified of what the reply might be.
Instead, she looked at her sister—the one who had taken London by storm and stood, brave and tall and beautiful and bold, willing to accept the life that came her way, as long as she had chosen it. A heroine among women.
Sesily deserved a crack at the life she wished, scandal be damned.
Didn’t they all?
Sera might not be able to have the future of which she’d once dreamed, but she could help her sisters have it. If this was her role—helping them to have the future they wanted—then that would be enough.
It would have to be.
“Then the Sparrow it is.”
Someone should find her future there.
Chapter 25
Town’s Torridest Taverns!
“American, there are ladies—”
Caleb did not look up from the whiskey he was pouring. “Tell them to find another place. We’re not a brothel.”
The guard he’d hired to man the door of The Singing Sparrow several weeks ago tried again. “They don’t look whores, American.”
Caleb gritted his teeth at the moniker, which he seemed unable to shake. Indeed, he seemed unable to convince anyone in the country to call him anything but the American—including the man in question, a Samoan hired away from his cargo hook on the London docks, along with a half-dozen other men, decent and strong. “Well, then let them in,” he said. “Women’s money spends as well as men’s.”
Fetu grinned, white teeth showing bright in the shadows. “They’re already in. I didn’t think I could turn away the Sparrow herself.”
The words caught his attention. Caleb looked toward the door, unable to see much in the crush of bodies stacked deep, with no care for the summer heat—not when there was entertainment and booze to be had. Instead, he set the bottle down and leaned over the bar. “She’s back?”
“Beautiful, tall, and angry as a fox when I questioned her identity.”
He had no doubt of that. What the hell was she doing back in London? Had the duke picked a wife? That’s when the other bit sank in. They. Sera wouldn’t have done it. Wouldn’t have risked her sisters’ reputations.
Her sister’s reputation.
He smacked his hand on the bar. “You said they.”
Goddammit. Sera hadn’t brought her here.
“There are two of them.”
“What’s the other look like? Plain and bookish?” Perhaps it was Sophie. “Tall as a tree?” Or Seleste. “Dripping in jewels?” Seline, maybe.
“Female.”
“What does that mean?”
Fetu’s grin again, this time, enhanced by enormous hands tracing an outrageously curved figure in the air. “Female.”
Caleb grabbed Fetu’s shirt in his fist, jerking him close enough to see the ink in the tattoo covering the crown of the man’s bald head. “You don’t notice that. She’s not female to you.”
The other man’s brows rose high on his bald head, but he was interrupted before he could reply. “Am I female to you?”
Caleb released Fetu and spun toward the words. Toward the woman.
Dammit, he didn’t want her to be female.
“No. You’re a nuisance.”
She laughed. The sound sin and sex, and welcome as the damn sun.
But she wasn’t welcome. He didn’t want her here.
Even if she was like a cool breeze in the hot, smoky room, hair up in pins that had worked too long a day, letting long, errant curls twist and cling to her neck and shoulder, the tip of one sneaking its way into the line of her dress. There was color high on her cheeks, a dewy sheen over the beautiful smooth skin there, and those lips, pink and full and perfect.
She raised a brow. “You can’t escape. Not unless you’re willing to leap over the bar and crash through a few dozen people clamoring to get a decent spot to watch the Sparrow perform.”
He pointed to Fetu. “Go back to the door.”
Fetu executed a short bow in Sesily’s direction. “A pleasure to meet you, Sparrow’s sister.”
She smiled at him and dipped into a little curtsy. “And you, American’s protector.”
Caleb wanted to break something. “He’s not my protector,” he said, hating that he felt the need to say anything at all. He didn’t care what she thought. Her thoughts were not for him to care about. “I don’t need a protector.”
She turned to him. “Oh? So why do you employ him?”
“Because he needs a protector,” Fetu said with a smirk.
“Go back to the door,” Caleb said, picking up a bottle and pretending to pour whiskey for men who were not waiting for drink. Once Fetu sauntered off, he tried for casualness, looking at Sesily once more. It was not easy, as she was far too beautiful to look at without fearing repercussions. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I wouldn’t have had to come if you’d been less of a coward.”
He grew hot with frustration. “A man would become acquainted with my fists for such a suggestion.”
She smirked. “Well, as we’ve already established, I am not a man. So I think I shall take my chances.”
With a near growl, he tossed the bottle onto a low table and came out from behind the bar, taking her by the arm and guiding her through the throngs of people, into the back room of the pub, where there was nothing but whiskey and gin to play witness. He released her and closed the door behind him.
Sesily was too surefooted, already taking one long step toward him, and Caleb had to work not to back away. She was distilled danger. And that was before she said, low and sultry, as if she were testing the depths of his wildness, “Perhaps not so much a coward, after all. What do you intend to do with me here?”
The question produced so many vivid, stunning, devastatingly wanton answers that he required a moment to wrap his mind about them. Of course, he did not intend to act upon even one of those answers, even as he quite desperately wanted to.