CHAPTER SIX
“My sources are superior to all others. Question this fact at your peril.” —The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to Lord Dunston in reply to said gentleman’s skepticism about a certain gaming club proprietor’s implausible bloodlines.
“Looks like the devil ran you to ground and trampled you with the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”
Ordinarily, Henry might have laughed at Sebastian Reaver’s extravagant description—the club owner was better known for hard calculation than florid rhetoric—but it had been weeks since he’d felt the slightest amusement. Weeks since she had stood in his bedchamber and told him …
He shied away from the thought, unable to remember without losing his mind.
Stroud still had not forgiven him for shattering the dressing mirror or dismantling the draperies.
Henry sat in the plain, wooden chair in front of Reaver’s plain, wooden desk and crossed his legs with feigned insouciance. “The devil would have to catch me first.”
Reaver grunted. Dark, heavy brows lowered over assessing eyes. The man was massive—yard-wide shoulders, flagrant muscularity, rough features, and nearly six-and-a-half feet of height. Henry knew of only one other with a similar frame. Rumors had been swirling for months about a connection between the two men. Such a link seemed improbable to Henry.
The man in question was the Earl of Tannenbrook, a Scot who had inherited an English title, whereas Sebastian Reaver was an orphaned commoner who had clawed his way up from rank poverty with an unusual combination of brute strength and ruthless cunning. Reaver was vocally prejudiced in favor of commerce and against the privileges of nobility. He’d been a thief, a workman, a bruiser, and now, the owner of a gaming club that regularly stripped wealthy bloods of their fortunes.
Apart from which, the source of the information was Lady Wallingham. Henry remained skeptical.
“Devils tend to excel in that regard.” Reaver paused, appearing to calculate his next word. “Sabre.”
Henry grinned but kept it cold. “Cannot say I own one, old chap. Not even for ceremonial purposes.”
“Regardless, it is what they’ve dubbed you. Some say you are deadly as a blade.”
Holding that dark gaze with unflinching directness, Henry tsked. “Some say your blood is nobler than your current vocation would suggest.” With satisfaction, he noted the glint of surprise, the faint narrowing of Reaver’s eyes.
Ah, so the rumors are true, he thought. Well done, Lady Wallingham. “Perhaps we should cast aside speculation and return to the business at hand.”
That business was information—and Reaver’s was both expensive and worthy of the price. “Chalmers knew something, that much is certain.” Blunt-fingered hands lifted a stack of papers and extended them across the desk.
Henry took them, quickly scanning for pertinent names. Syder, mainly. But also anyone who might know of Syder’s ward.
Reaver continued, “He was paid well for his silence while Syder lived. Quarterly installments. Those payments ended December of ’17. That was when Chalmers began living beneath his brother’s shop.”
Henry glanced up from the papers. “Why keep him alive? Syder was—”
“A butcher. I know.” Reaver lifted a finger toward the documents Henry held. “They were chums from boyhood, it appears. Chalmers was the reason Syder became a solicitor in the first place. This, according to Chalmers’s brother and sister.”
The door to Reaver’s office opened and Drayton entered, his chest heaving, his houndish face more haggard than usual. After a quick nod of greeting, he said, “No easy way to say it. Bow Street is compromised.”
Henry frowned. “How deep?”
“My men are clear of it. But at least four others have received notes like Boyle’s.”
Reaver’s bass rumble intruded. “Higher demand for Sabres than I might have predicted.”
Ignoring him, Henry glanced down at the papers. “And Mrs. Boyle?” he asked, his tone suggesting it didn’t matter in the slightest. Drayton would know better, of course.
The runner’s silence was too long.
“When?” Henry said softly, rubbing the corner of one page between his thumb and forefinger.
“Three days ago. She left the cottage you purchased to visit her mother. My men found her on the road to Manchester.”
Henry nodded, feeling his gorge rise. “The babe?”
“Alive. Mrs. Boyle must have hidden him before the attacker caught her. We’d not have found him at all but for his cries, the poor mite. He’s with his grandmother now.”
Silence fell like freezing fog in the room. Reaver, with stillness and patience, waited for Henry’s reaction. Henry could almost hear the hum and tick of the other man’s calculations. Reaver was nothing if not opportunistic.
But today, he surprised him. “When I spoke of the devil running you to ground, I’d not intended it literally. This Investor. Worse than Syder?”
Henry raised his head. Met the bruiser’s gaze, surprised to find it glinting with a hard edge. Reaver had known Syder personally, for they’d operated in the same underworld of gaming hells, albeit on different planes of depravity.
Sebastian Reaver might be ruthless, but he was no butcher.
That description belonged to Horatio Syder, a mundane solicitor who had been hired, funded, and directed by the Investor to establish a vast series of illicit “businesses,” ranging from distilleries and stockyards to gaming hells and houses of ill repute. He’d catered to the lowest perversions, installing both women and children in his brothels, many against their will.
One of those women had been Drayton’s sister. A week after Syder was killed, Drayton had taken five men—six if Henry counted himself—into the crumbling, vermin-infested warren where she was being kept, and had carried her out like a limp, vacant doll.
Betsy Drayton had died four months later, weakened and ravaged by disease.
She’d been but one of Syder’s victims. The list was lengthy.
In his hells, he’d prayed not upon the careless and wealthy, but rather young, green men newly arrived in London, fleecing them of their few measly pounds, leaving them destitute. Some had taken their own lives.
He’d run thievery rings all over the city, murdered and brutalized with no more care for the lives he took than for an insect one crushed under one’s boot heel. In short, he’d been a monster. A clever, conscienceless monster.
“Yes,” Henry replied to Reaver’s question. “The Investor is worse than Syder.”
Drayton grunted his agreement. “Might have said otherwise at one time. More elusive, for certain. But it is clear now that without the Investor, Syder would still be wielding a quill in some windowless office in Cheapside.”
With a headshake and a half-smile, Reaver leaned forward, his massive forearm braced on his desk. “How much longer can you keep up the chase, Dunston? Now that the devil is chasing you, I mean.”
Henry had asked himself that question countless times—more often over the last several weeks. He had no answer.
Ten years he’d been pursuing the Investor. He’d paid a bloody fortune for information from men like Reaver. He’d entangled himself first with the Foreign Office, then the Home Office in a bid to expand his reach. He’d risked his life and, more importantly, the lives of good men to lure Horatio Syder out of hiding. He’d lost lifelong friendships.
He’d lost … her.
How much longer can you keep up the chase?
“Took us years to bring down Syder. But we did it, didn’t we?” answered Drayton from behind him. He heard the Bow Street runner shifting, a signal of his imminent departure. Drayton was the restless sort, having worked himself nearly into the grave while searching for his sister. Even now, the runner was struck by a queer urgency whenever he’d been in one place too long.
Reaver possessed similar energy, except his was a furnace of ambition and drive he kept well hidden. Seeing him now, the massive shoulders tensing and relaxing as the man worked to contain himself, Henry could only conclude he needed a new challenge. It made sense. Reaver had spent his life fighting for every inch of ground. Now, his club was one of the most exclusive and lucrative in London. He was richer than most titled men. But a conqueror’s desire to test himself did not abate simply because he’d reached one pinnacle.
“Well,” Henry replied, holding Reaver’s shrewd, churning gaze. “Colin Lacey brought him down, to be precise. Syder attempted to cut his wife’s throat. Lacey was most … displeased.”
Reaver didn’t blink. “How was the Duke of Blackmore’s brother involved?”
“That, my dear fellow, is a long tale, indeed.” Henry brushed imaginary lint and smoothed an imaginary wrinkle from his sleeve. “Let it suffice to say Lacey lent me invaluable assistance, and when Syder learned of it, he attempted to persuade Lacey to reveal the identity of his pursuer.”
“You.”
“Mmm.”
“And Lord Colin Lacey—a man constantly in his cups until his brother cut off his funds—protected you.” It was hard to blame Reaver for his skepticism. During the period when Lacey had patronized Reaver’s club, he’d been a scapegrace with few redeeming virtues. One would never expect him to withstand hours of torture for the sake of doing the honorable thing.
Henry sniffed. “I am an excellent judge of character. Lacey was always better than his poor choices. He simply needed a reason to realize it.”
“So, Lacey dispensed with Syder. And now, he knows the truth. Does Blackmore?”
“The truth about …”
“You. That you are Sabre.”
Henry merely stared back at the other man, letting his gaze slowly deaden.
Drayton answered for him. “His lordship doesn’t much fancy that name. Best leave off.”
To his credit, Reaver didn’t shrink, instead straightening in his chair and donning an unexpected pair of reading spectacles. Perched on the man’s twice-broken nose, the silver-wired rims were delicate and ridiculous.
He slid open a drawer and plucked another page from inside, shaking the paper briefly and glancing down to read. “Mr. Syder appears to have kept his ward, a girl of fourteen at the time of his death, confined to a house twenty miles outside Bath. According to the housekeeper, one Mrs. Ann Finney (lately of Bristol), he retained three tutors and two governesses for the girl over a period of ten years. All retainers have subsequently disappeared, presumed dead. Mrs. Finney expressed her desire for additional funds sufficient to travel to Canada. However, upon our return with said funds to her residence in Bristol, we discovered Mrs. Finney to be deceased.” Reaver lowered the paper and removed his spectacles. “This report was delivered to you last year.”
Henry did not reply. God alone knew how Reaver had acquired it. The man had sources throughout the city funneling secrets to him—in addition to the gentlemen who paid their gaming debts with the ton’s treasury of illicit information, Reaver bribed Home Office clerks, Bow Street runners, members of Parliament, and chambermaids in the households of Almack’s patronesses. Henry wouldn’t be surprised to discover the queen herself was in Reaver’s pocket. Secrets were his business as much as gaming.
Reaver lightly tapped the paper with a blunt fingertip, now lying flat on the plain, oaken surface. “She is your key, is she not? Syder would scarcely have kept her hidden without a bloody good reason.”
“Of what import should it be to you?” Henry replied, his tone nonchalant. “I pay you well for the information you provide. That is the extent of our association.”
Dark eyes narrowed and glinted with menace. “Someone is keeping Syder’s name alive. That someone is of interest to me and those who work for me.”
Behind Henry, Drayton snorted. “Protecting your territory, eh?”
Reaver speared the runner with a black glare.
“Drayton, perhaps you could make a few inquiries,” Henry intervened. “There may be a thread leading to the Investor. Or, at least, the Investor’s new venture.”
Nodding, Drayton pivoted with a flare of his greatcoat and exited Reaver’s office, taking his bristling energy with him.
“You don’t believe his inquiries will lead anywhere, do you?”
Henry sighed. “They rarely have before.”
“What about the ward?”
“No trace.” Henry waved a finger to indicate the paper lying beside Reaver’s thick wrist. “That was the last we knew of her. We don’t even know her proper name.”
“Perhaps you’ve not been asking the proper questions.”
Reaver’s rumbling reply dug a burning furrow beneath Henry’s skin. What in bloody hell would a Cumberland-born bruiser with too much money and too little concern about methods of acquiring it understand about chasing devils?
Nothing. Not a single, bloody thing.
Henry’s seething gut wanted him to lay the bruiser flat with a blow to that granite jaw. Every man he’d lost, the blood he’d spilled, the threads that had been abruptly cut every time he came within a breath of his quarry. Years upon years of hunting smoke, and nothing to show for it.
He could not react the way he wished, of course. He could not spew bitterly about everything he’d sacrificed, nor break the man’s nose a third time, nor rage about how many ways he’d asked “proper questions.”
Because he was Dunston. A harmless, albeit dashing lord fond of hosting hunts and sporting new waistcoats. Dunston was wit and charm, humor and flair. He was not permitted bouts of fury.
Fury conjured an image of her. Maureen. Tears had reddened her eyes and nose. Her voice had been wrenchingly hoarse. Goodbye, Henry. I wish you well.
He shoved to his feet and stalked the length of the room to the single, narrow window. To either side were oak shelves. The right one held a clock, conspicuously ornate with filigreed gold hands. Reaver’s office—in contrast with the opulence of his club—was as plain and blunt and spare as the man.
Henry waited for the hands to move, noting as they did that the light outside the window shifted from yellow to gray. Rain was coming.
“I can help you.”
“No.”
Reaver’s rumble deepened. “Damn you, Dunston, you’ve been at this too long. Too many people can connect you to Sabre—Lacey, Blackmore, Drayton. How long until the Investor knows?”
“Not long, I expect. He has already tracked my connection to Bow Street.”
“Aye. It’s obvious you’ve some personal stake in the matter, but you need help. Give me what you have. Let me chase the devil for a while, eh? Perhaps I’ll have better luck.”
Henry first let silence yawn with only the faint tick of the clock to mark the time. Then, he answered, keeping his voice gentle but sparing no quarter. “You are unmarried. No children or family. So the Investor will start with your staff here at the club.” He turned away from the clock and clasped his hands loosely behind his back. “First, your majordomo will go missing. Shaw, yes? Then your secretary, Mr. Frelling. Newly married last month, I believe. His wife would be taken. He would attempt to kill you in a vain effort to save her. A knife, most likely. Quieter that way.” He looked Reaver up and down, taking his measure. “Frelling would die in the process, of course. And yet, you would be the one defeated.”
Black hair had fallen over Reaver’s lowered brows. The proprietor leaned forward in his chair, his fingers interlaced upon his desk, listening intently while trying to appear relaxed.
“The Investor loves that game best. Playing love against loyalty, affections against duty. It amuses him to make you choke to death on your own heart.”
Reaver shook his head. “All the more reason you could use my assis—”
“The information you provide is sufficient. We shall keep our arrangement as it is.”
He sat back, ran a massive paw through his hair, and released a gust of frustration. “You cannot protect us all, your bloody lordship.” His fist dropped to the desk with a solid thud. “If you want to catch the devil, you’ll need someone like me.”
“I have Drayton. That is enough.”
“It hasn’t been, though, has it?”
Ignoring the point, Henry turned back to the clock. Watched filigreed hands move incrementally. “Have you anything else for me?”
A loud sigh. Chair legs scraping. A drawer opening.
“Not on the Investor. But I took the liberty of acquiring information on Holstoke.”
Henry frowned. “Holstoke?”
“Aye. Appears he’s seeking a wife. It is what brought him and his mother to London after all this time. No debts. No drink. Not even a mistress, at present. Peculiar interests, gardens and such. But little cause for alarm.”
Henry faced him again, chills chasing bewilderment. “Why in blazes would I need information on Holstoke?”
One heavy, black brow lifted. “I assumed you would want it. She has been seen with him on at least seven occasions in the last fortnight.”
She. He could only be referring to one she, for Henry had only ever purchased information on one woman’s suitors.
Goodbye, Henry. I wish you well.
“Was I mistaken, then? Shall I cease further inquiries?”
He thought of her. The lips pursed as though upon a secret. The sunlit hair and helpless laugh. The silly observations about willow trees and walled gardens. The scent of vanilla and orange blossoms. The gentle stroke of her fingers upon his brow.
Upon Holstoke’s brow. Upon Holstoke’s …
“No,” he gritted, scarcely able to breathe past the constriction in his chest. “I want everything. Get me everything you can find on Lord Holstoke.”
*~*~*