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When Ava was marched through the door like a prisoner being brought to the guillotine, her mouth gagged and her hands bound, it took every single ounce of self-control Heath possessed not to take Jones by the throat and squeeze until his ugly face turned purple and his eyes bulged out of their sockets.
Even as his hands began to clench into fists he felt Collinsworth stiffen beside him. The earl’s dark beady eyes shone with excitement as he breathed, “Is that her? Is that the one I want?”
Heath fought to keep his tone neutral. “Yes.”
“Take that thing out of her mouth,” Collinsworth ordered. “I want to speak with the chit.”
Inwardly preparing himself for the condemnation he knew he would see in her eyes, Heath did as he was asked. He threw the rag on the floor, grinding it beneath his boot heel as he walked around to the front of the chair and met Ava’s disbelieving stare.
For a moment time itself seemed to stop. Everyone else in the room faded away. There was only him and there was only Ava, her hair tangled, her cheeks impossibly pale, her arms bound and pinned. Despair clawed at his insides, tearing flesh from bone. How she must hate him. How could she not, when he hated himself?
He’d left his townhouse intent on finding her. He’d even made it to the edge of St. Giles before he realized he had no idea where to start. She could have literally been anywhere within the twisted maze of alleys and tenements and he’d been at a loss of where to start. So he went to the beginning, where it had all started.
With Collinsworth.
Before he lost everything in a foolish gambling bet to none other than the Duke of St. Giles himself, the earl had owned one property in London and another in the country, a family estate by the name of Rosemore that had been in his family for generations. Now everything he’d once had was gone, including his wife, who had packed her remaining dresses before they could be sold off to creditors and fled to parts unknown. As a result the earl’s heart burned with vengeance and he had concocted some wild scheme to see it carried out.
It wasn’t until Heath met up with Collinsworth this morning in the crumbling townhouse the earl now called home that he learned the full extent of the man’s lunacy... and the depths to which he was willing to go in order to ensure his revenge against the Duke of St. Giles.
Silencing Ava was but a small stepping-stone. She was worthless to him; as worthless as the woman he had already ordered drowned. A woman who, when she was pulled from the dark, murky waters of the Thames, Collinsworth claimed as his wife. A wife, he’d told the Bow Street Runners, who had been murdered. The suspect?
None other than the Duke.
For Collinsworth’s elaborate plan to work, he could not risk a witness to his crimes. Especially not a witness who could testify he’d been the one committing murder.
“You,” Ava rasped, her voice sounding as though she’d inhaled smoke. Green eyes filled with accusation, she glared at Heath. “What are you doing here?”
He opened his mouth to reply but Collinsworth, sleek and slippery as any snake, uncoiled himself from the far wall and sauntered across the room to stand beside Heath. “Hello my dear,” he said pleasantly. “It seems you had a bit of trouble getting here. My due apologies. You see, I tend to forget how rough my men can be.” He swept an arm out, indicating Heath and Mason, who lounged in the corner picking something out of his teeth with a shard of metal. The other thugs had already taken their payment from a pile of coins sitting in the middle of a table in the adjacent room and dispersed, no doubt to spend their money on whores and drink.
“Hard working fellows, though.” Collinsworth winked. “I will give them that.”
Any hope Heath had of Ava behaving meekly and doing as she was told fled the instant he glimpsed the gleam in her eyes. Do not do it, he warned silently.
The way Heath saw it, they had two options. The first - and the easiest - would be having Ava vow not to speak a word of what she’d seen. The odds of Collinsworth accepting such a promise were slim, but the man was erratic, often making decisions on a whim.
Ava met his gaze, then dismissed it. “You,” she hissed, turning her full attention to Collinsworth. “Does it make ye feel like ye have real bollocks to have a woman half yer size kidnapped and another thrown in the river? Ye cowardly scum. Ye bloody cocksucker. Ye bacon brained fatwit. If I had the strength of a man I’d knock out yer teeth and—”
Heath sighed.
The second option it was then.
Because Jones posed the biggest threat, he took him out first.
Not wanting to draw attention with a gunshot, he lunged across the room and caught the larger man with two powerful uppercuts in rapid succession. The first caused him to stagger. On the second he went down, clocking his head on the corner of the stone mantle in the process.
He turned to do the same to Collinsworth... only to stop short when he saw the earl standing behind Ava, one hand braced on her shoulder, the other holding a knife angled against her throat.
“Well that was certainly... interesting,” he said mildly, one brow arching. “Would I be correct in guessing this woman is behind that little display of male aggression?” At Heath’s curt nod, Collinsworth smiled thinly. “I rather thought so. You haven’t stopped staring at her since she was brought in. I suppose this is not the first time you’ve met? Oh, do not bore me with the details,” he said, waving an arm in the air when Heath opened his mouth to reply. “It is not as though I truly care. I cannot let her live, you know. Not with what she has seen.”
Heath’s hands curled into fists. Patience, he told himself. You must have patience. “You have two choices, Collinsworth. You can kill her,” he said flatly, “but you won’t get to me before I tell the Runners what you’ve done.”
“And what if you do?” the earl scoffed even as a glimmer of uncertainty flashed in his eyes. “No one will miss two dead whores. No one will care. No one will even know who they were.”
“I’ll know.” Heath’s voice was smooth as velvet and hard as steel. “And I will hunt you to the ends of the earth. I will kill you slowly. Inch by inch. Painful breath by painful breath. You’ll beg for death by the end. Or... Or you let her go, and you live.”
Collinsworth had begun to sweat. Perspiration streamed down his forehead in rivulets, plastering his hair to his scalp. Wiping at his eyes with one hand, he clung persistently to the knife with the other. “If I let her go she’ll run straight to Bow Street. Both of you will.”
“No she won’t, and neither will I.”
Ava’s lips parted in protest. Heath silenced her with a cutting glare. “No she won’t,” he repeated. “You have my word.”
“Trust the word of a common thug and his little guttersnipe whore?” Collinsworth sneered. “Do I look that stupid?”
“Yes,” Ava said immediately.
Heath didn’t so much as blink. “What other choice do you have?”
Collinsworth’s grip on the knife tightened. Ava whimpered when the blade nicked her skin, and Heath growled low in his throat as a tiny rivulet of crimson trickled down her neck. “Fine,” the earl snapped before he stepped back and lifted both hands in the air. Frustration creased his brow and anger mottled his cheeks with splotches of red. “You win this round, but there will be another.” His upper lip curled. “My advice to you is run. Run, and don’t look back.”
Heath didn’t need to be told twice. Plucking the knife from Collinsworth’s grasp he used it to cut Ava’s bindings. She sagged forward, her body flagging even as her spirit remained strong.
“Do ye dare touch me,” she hissed, pushing at his hands.
Ignoring her protests, he picked her up and, cradling her against his chest with the same care he’d used the very first night they met, carried her out of the brick townhouse without once looking back.
“Let me go,” Ava demanded the second they entered Heath’s townhouse. “Now.”
Heath set her down gingerly, his large hands lingering on her shoulders until she shrugged them off and stalked across the room, her slender body trembling with anger and adrenaline and the tiniest, teeniest sliver of hope.
When she reached the wall she whirled around to face Heath, and even though her knees trembled and her arms ached and her head pounded as though someone were whacking her upside the temple with a hammer, she remained standing, staring at the man who had both saved her life... and put it in danger.
“You worked for Collinsworth as one of his lackeys.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement. One she desperately needed verified, even though she already knew the truth.
“Yes,” Heath said quietly. He watched her intently, his gray eyes dark as a storm and just as brooding.
“That first night in St. Giles... You weren’t there by coincidence. You were there hunting me.”
“Yes.”
Ava took a deep breath. “Then why not bring me in?”
She could see Heath struggling with what he wanted to say. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, jerking as though being yanked by a string. He ran a hand through his hair, pulling the unruly ends taut. His head dropped. Lifted. Their eyes met. Held. “I was drawn to you. I do not know how else to explain it. I’ve brought in dozens of people before and always collected my reward without a hint of guilt. It’s my job, and I am damn good at it. But with you... with you it was different from the first moment I saw you.”
Ava’s heart stuttered inside of her chest. The betrayal she’d felt when she first saw Heath inside Collinsworth’s townhouse began to fade away, as did the doubt that had torn her away from him to begin with. “Why?” she whispered. “Why me?”
Heath’s laugh was short and without humor. He shrugged helplessly. “I cannot give you an answer. I know you want one, but I don’t have the words inside of me to tell you how I feel. I’ve never been a man who looked for love, nor was I one who expected it to find him. But it did. You did. You found me, Ava, and you changed me for the better. I do not know how I lived my life before you, or how I will live it without you by my side.” And then he knelt, and Ava’s entire world tilted on its axis. “Marry me,” he said hoarsely. “Marry me. Be my wife. I love you, Ava.”
Tears flooded her vision. She had refused to cry for fear or pain but for love... For love she would cry. For love she would hope. For love she would dream. For love, true love, she would give up everything. Her fears. Her doubts. Her insecurities.
In four steps she was across the room. A fifth brought her down beside him. She wrapped her arms around his waist, burrowing her face in the crook of his shoulder. “Ye didn’t find me,” she whispered, holding him tight. “We found each other.”