CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Some men deserve to die.” —The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to Lady Atherbourne in a letter of exceptional gravity.
Felix Foote sat across from her in his Knightsbridge parlor, legs crossed and posture hunched. “You intend to kill him, do you not? I must have assurances.”
Syder twirled his walking stick between two fingers, twisting it in place on the wood plank floor. “He will die,” he confirmed softly. “After a time.”
Sarah’s head continued to throb, making her vision blurry, her stomach precarious. They had removed her bonnet, so the firelight disturbed her sight, causing odd shadows and flickers.
Both men spoke as if she weren’t there sitting between them, her wrists bound at her back, her ankles bound together. She sat on the floor, her back resting against the sofa where Syder lounged, twisting his black cane as though trying to erode a single point in the plank.
Foote’s toe stretched out to nudge one of her boots. “I want her. I will have her. That was our agreement.” His nasal voice made his words into a whine. It was difficult to read Syder, and she was afraid to look at either man for fear of drawing attention, but from the change in the pace of Syder’s turning fingers, she suspected Foote was beginning to outlive his usefulness.
“You may have her after our business is concluded, Mr. Foote.” The precise, toneless words should have warned the snake it was inching dangerously close to a much more lethal predator, but Felix Foote had never been the intellectual sort.
“I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble,” he whined. “Courted the whore for more than a year. Traveled all the way to London to hunt down her lies.”
The walking stick spun faster. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“To be sure, you had the dealings with Lacey. And recognized his mother’s name when you heard I had made inquiries—”
“Mr. Foote,” said Syder. “We are at the culmination of our agreement. Now is hardly the time to lose one’s confidence.”
Foote shifted gingerly in his seat, still pained from his collision with her knee. “My point is that, were it not for my persistence in discovering the truth about Miss Battersby’s supposed engagement, you could not have followed his trail to—”
The cane’s tip tapped twice. Tap-tap. Then, it was gently set aside. She watched Syder’s polished shoes walk casually to the other man’s chair.
Foote’s legs uncrossed and splayed wider. “What are you—”
Wet gurgle. Legs kicking. Jerking. Flailing.
A spray of warm, metallic liquid.
On her face. In her hair.
Her eyes were closed. It was not real.
Someone was wheezing, whimpering. Weeping. She wished they would stop.
It was not real.
“Calm yourself, Lady Colin.”
It was not real.
“Oh, I do like that title. Lady Colin.” Polished shoes strolled back to the sofa. The cane resumed its twisting motions. “It will be like killing him twice.”
Penetrating deep, the ice turned everything numb. She opened her eyes. Pressed her lips together until her teeth dug into the soft inner flesh, stifling her distressed keening. Blood dripped from her hair onto the bodice of her gown, soaking the white trim at the neckline. Her shoulders ached from her awkward position. Her teeth began to chatter.
A finger drew one of her curls away from her forehead, the sodden lock of hair dragging against her skin. “You know, you remind me of someone. She, too, has a curious strength. Resilience.” Another stroke, then the finger was gone. “Lovely, curling hair.”
She sat, shaking in the silence, wondering when he would kill her. Wondering if Colin would come. Whether she wanted him to.
No. She could not bear for him to be destroyed because of her. She would rather die.
“You would have liked her, I think,” Syder continued in his soft, even voice. “Quite brilliant.” He chuckled, the sound almost normal. “I fancy she takes after me a bit.”
That was when she remembered. He had talked of a ward. A girl. She had assumed it to be a lie, but perhaps it wasn’t.
“I considered keeping you alive to act as her governess. She must be constantly challenged or she grows bored.” He tsked and gave another small laugh. She could almost believe she was hearing the father of one of her students ramble fondly. “Alas, I have many demands upon my time and cannot devote the attention to her studies that I once did. I have attempted to explain I am building a kingdom for her, ensuring she will never again want for a single thing her heart desires. She can sometimes be … resistant.”
The walking stick stopped its spinning. The finger came back to stroke her hair, cooling now as the blood slowed its drizzle against her skin.
“It is comforting to speak of her with someone who understands these things.” The finger withdrew, leaving only the blood and her horror behind. “A pity you must die.”
*~*~*
The house was nothing—a plain, brick structure similar to many along Sloane Street. Colin handed his reins to Thomas and nodded to Harrison. “Wait for Atherbourne and the others.”
“I am coming with you.”
He shook his head. “Syder is clever. We will need the element of surprise. I shall delay as long as possible.” Indicating Harrison’s waistcoat, he said, “Mind the time. Ten minutes, come all, others or no. Enter through the garden. Thomas.”
“M’lord?”
“Find somewhere to tie the horses. His grace will need your assistance.”
Skin crawling, urgency coursing through his blood, he glanced in each direction, looking for signs of Syder’s men. The long street was quiet. Snow began to fall, joining that which was already melting and muddying into a slushy soup. Gritting his teeth, he loped across the street to the painted black door. He did not bother to knock. Inching the door open a crack, he listened.
A voice. Syder’s.
A muffled, feminine whimper. His heart and lungs and bones and blood roared, recognizing the sound.
Sarah. It was Sarah.
Shoving the door open wide, he charged inside and followed the voice to a room on the right. The rank, metallic smell reached him first. His feet staggered to a stop. His heart twisted and jerked hard within its cage, strangling his air, squeezing until he felt it crack.
Red. Everywhere. Soaking the area around the fireplace, the tight cluster of furniture where Syder sat, spinning a thin cane negligently between his finger and thumb. Opposite him, Felix Foote sprawled, his body slumped and staring blankly upward in a chair, a hideous, unnatural gape in the flesh of his throat.
Frantically, Colin searched. And found her on the floor, head hung forward, frightfully still. Stumbling several steps further into the room, he saw blood dripping down her face, coating her hair and skin. So much blood.
Light turned to darkness. Sound went silent. He could feel himself swaying, all strength draining out through his feet.
She could not be … Not Sarah. Please, for the love of God, no.
Syder’s voice emerged across a valley of fog. “She is yet alive, my lord. Fear not. We have been chatting while we awaited your arrival.”
He thought perhaps Syder rose from the sofa to stand next to Sarah’s hunched form, but he could not take his eyes from her. The knowledge that she lived was slowly expanding his vision, returning his hearing. Even now, he could see the fine trembling of her skin. She would not look at him, however. Her eyes remained downcast to a point on the floor near her bound ankles.
Swallowing his need to vomit, he prepared to move, his only thought to take her in his arms. But those arms were grasped and wrenched painfully upward behind his back.
“Are you acquainted with Mr. Lyle?” said Syder, giving Colin a polite grin. “He is no Benning, to be sure. He is, however, still above ground, which gives him a bit of an advantage over my former employee.”
Colin could sense the size of the man from the strength and angle of his grip. He was every bit as large as Benning. “If you touch her, I will kill you.” The guttural words emerged without Colin’s permission, a vow he would make to God himself. He wanted to scream and roar those words into dimming eyes as his knife plunged through the butcher’s heart. But it was unwise to grant Syder any further weapon. He knew with sickening certainty Chatham had been right on that score.
“Tut tut, Lord Colin. Ever the impulsive sort, aren’t you? These needless threats achieve nothing. Give me the name, and I shall consider our association concluded.”
“It will do you little good. He has reduced your monstrous empire to rubble.”
“Ah, but he has not taken my treasury, has he? With ample resources, and with time, even a humble solicitor such as I may rebuild what has been lost.”
He was not wrong. Syder had begun as a “humble solicitor,” just as he said. Using his knowledge of the law, he had slowly spread his poisonous arms outward into all quarters of London’s filthy underbelly. None of the businesses had been in his name, of course. He’d maintained a rather hidden existence, posing as a solicitor for the true “owner.” Then, to solidify his holdings and skirt prosecution, he had hired others to bribe highborn gentlemen of influence and to brutalize or slaughter anyone else who stood in his way.
It was why Colin’s contact had been forced to take things slowly, to plan and outmaneuver and untangle with excruciating care. To eliminate Syder for good, one could leave no remnant behind, lest he reemerge like a foul, pernicious vine.
“I refused to give you the name before,” Colin said. “What makes you think I would surrender it now?”
Syder stroked red fingers through the blood-soaked curls of Colin’s wife. “This.”
Feeling his stomach bind and lurch, Colin nearly retched.
“It is a simple matter, my lord. The name. It cannot be more dear to you than your beloved’s precious skin.”
“No.” The trembling word came not from him, but from her.
“Sarah,” he breathed.
“D-do not, Colin. Mustn’t … let him win.”
“He will kill you, sweet.”
Devastating honey eyes finally rose to meet his. “He will regardless. Y-you have braved too much in recovering your honor. Please do not let me be the reason you sacrifice it.”
“How affecting,” said Syder. “The name, my lord.” He removed a long, familiar blade from a pocket sewn into his coat. “If you please.”
Colin weighed the decision, knowing she was correct. The moment Syder had the information, he would slice her throat. And then Colin’s. How much longer could he delay? “Surely you do not expect to escape the consequences of what you have done,” Colin said, nodding toward Foote’s corpse. “This will see you hanged, Syder, if nothing else. And I shall relish watching your neck snap inside a noose.”
“Unlikely.” His voice was soft. Chilling. Certain. He pressed the knife’s tip just beneath Sarah’s delicate jaw. “If I were you, I would concern myself with her lovely neck.”
Colin’s breath sawed in and out. The man behind him had slackened his grip, apparently distracted by the conversation. Just a few moments more.
Sarah whimpered as the knife twisted and gouged. A trickle of her blood slid down to mingle with Foote’s.
“Stop! It is Dunston.”
Syder’s lifted the blade, turning surprised, faintly amused gray eyes to him. “The Earl of Dunston.” He chuckled. “Pleasant fribble. Impeccable dandy. You mean that Dunston?”
“Yes.”
Gray eyes lost their false amusement. “I do not believe you.”
The soft words were spoken a half second before his world was torn asunder.
A half second before the silver blade streaked across his wife’s throat.
Two seconds before the room exploded in chaos.
And three seconds before every good thing he had been or wanted to be died along with her.
*~*~*