Page 20 of From Hell
There’s something wrong with me.
“I need to go,” I hear myself say, getting to my feet and turning away to retrieve my umbrella, fumbling with the straps of my bag. He doesn’t make a move to stop me but reaches for his wallet. I get to the doorway, half aware that I haven’t even paid for my drink.
“Laine.” The way he says my name sounds intimate—too intimate.Close. His breath is warm on the shell of my ear as places a hand on my shoulder, the heat from his body making me shiver and almost lean back into him.
Not quite.
“You’re forgetting something.” I turn my head to see him out the corner of my expecting a demon enticing me back into Hell I’m forever trying to escape from, but all he offers is a gentlemanly smile, traces of his deviant side neatly tucked away.
“Here.” He slips a card in my hand, his thumb sliding across my palm, searing it with desire. “You wanted access to my father’s library. This will get you inside the club.”
Then he’s gone in the flurry of people leaving, and I’m left standing in the doorway, frozen from the inside out.
* * *
“Since you’re not doinganything significant with your life on the weekend, you should go to this.” Fiona Summers nee Lee waves the textured eggshell invitation with gold lettering at me. It’s the one Jaxon gave me in a cream envelope.
There was also a blank check inside, which I tore up.
How dare he.
After seeing him, I ran across the road in the rain to the hospital to pick up my car and say goodbye to my mum before I drove home, but now I’m questioning that last bit of logic as I place my palm on the desk, asking for my invite back.
My mother reluctantly hands it to me. As I stuff it in my pocket, she observes me like a hawk, blinking slowly, sipping pink liquid from her favorite mug while sitting in her office chair.
She’s definitely drinking again. It’s not pink lemonade in theBest Surgeon in the Worldmug. However, being half-cut hasn’t impaired her observation skills. The hawk spotted the invitation in my pocket the second I walked through the door.
“An invite to the Foundation’s Annual Charity Ball doesn’t happen often,” she reminds me.
The huff in my chest deepens as I lose my patience. “I’m not going.”
“Give me one good reason.”
When I give her a sour look, she sighs. “It’s for charity. How do you think it makes me look when my daughter can’t be bothered to make an effort.” She gives me the once over, taking in what I’m wearing: my homemade dress stained with rainwater and grimaces. “You need new clothes.”
At least I kept my jacket on. If only she could see the rest of me. Battered, bruised, arm covered in stitches and wrapped in gauze. I could barely hold it under the hot water to clean it as I showered. The dull throb getting stronger by the minute, eating away at my sanity. I’ll need to take some of the painkillers I took from Jaxon when I get home.
“I’d rather stick a hot poker in my eye,” I mutter, the pain making me less cheery.
My mother takes a dainty sip of her gin. Hard to do from a mug. “Jaxon Clémont invited you. You don’t say no to a man like him.”
Since I hardly ever visit her, I forgot she likes to coerce me into attending events where she thinks I’ll find a husband, especially since she only has one incarnation of her genes to show off to her wealthy friends.
She loves to parade me in front of them, hoping to palm me off on one of England’s noble families as the perfect daughter-in-law and to make the choice she never did.
“And you would know.” It’s a low blow. My mother is dating Abe Simmons, Jaxon’s father, the Foundation’s long-standing chairperson, known for his wandering hands and cut-throat aggression in the industry, seeking underhandedfavorsfor the funds he freely distributes.
I’m sure Mum owes him a hefty sum for my medical bills after the attack, and that’s why she’s dating him.
“You should go and speak to Abe about doing something more worthwhile. He still has a space on his fundraising team,” Mum continues, unfazed by my dig, twisting the knife further.
“And run around sucking up to him all day? No thanks.” Simmons might be my mother’s new political bit on the side, but he’s also a womanizer, and I’d probably stab him before the end of my first day.
“Suit yourself,” she huffs. “But the Foundation does a lot for patients who could not afford our hospitals.”
I roll my eyes. “By providing medical loans that they can never repay,” I say under my breath.
“You do not know what it takes to survive, what I have to do to keep my job, what I’ve had to give up. This town thrives on the established professions, and the ball is an annual soiree of the institutions and trusts ruled by the elite families of Whitechapel that keep the town running.”