Chapter Seven
Lying on the floor, nearly crushed beneath his weight, all the while feeling the warm rush of his breath against her neck, Elizabeth fumed. It wasn’t anger at him, so much, though there was a goodly portion of it. She was angry at herself, angry at the reawakening of her true self.
She’d been convinced that she’d put her lustful ways behind her, that she would never again fall prey to her own desires. Yet, there she lay, consumed with lustful thoughts for a man who was practically at death’s door. If ever she’d required proof that true wickedness lurked in her soul, it had certainly been amply provided.
Lady Vale entered, two of the stronger footmen rushing in her wake. They managed to lift Mr. Mason off her and place him back into the bed. She felt immediately bereft of his warmth and the press of his body against hers.
What on earth is wrong with me?
He was a stranger, a man she’d only just met. And yes, it was certainly true that he had very bravely placed himself in danger in order to save her, but that certainly did not warrant her throwing herself at him like some wanton hussy.
Lady Vale fussed over his covers, getting him tucked into bed much like she would if he was a small boy.
“He was always willful,” she said. “Very determined.”
“If he is your son… it is a very big if, my lady, and a remarkable coincidence, do you not find it strange that Madame Zula, a woman proved to be a charlatan before our very eyes, warned you that he was closer than you ever imagined only to run into this man right outside her home? It smacks of collusion between them at best!” It was one more attempt at reason and, while she knew it would fall on deaf ears, Elizabeth felt compelled to make it.
Lady Vale sighed heavily before turning to face her. She wore an ardent expression as she pleaded her case. “I grant you, Miss Masters, that it is all very strange. And naturally, your distrust of Madame Zula is well founded… but I would rather believe every young man I meet to by my Benedict returned to me than to become so jaded and cynical that I might actually meet him and disavow him one day. What would you do, Miss Masters, if you had a child that had been taken from you so cruelly?”
In the face of such an argument, Elizabeth could do nothing other than relent. “I concede, Lady Vale. I cannot begin to conceive of what you suffered. I only wish to spare you more pain and to protect you from those who would exploit what you have already suffered.”
“Because you are well compensated to do so,” Lady Vale pointed out.
There was an accusation buried within that statement that perhaps any expression of concern was motivated entirely by monetary compensation rather than any moral or ethical concerns. It was insulting, but it was also, given the history of individuals who had used the tragedy of Lady Vale’s life to further their own ends, understandable.
Setting her hurt feelings and pride aside, Elizabeth explained, “It is what I have been appointed to do by Mr. Middlethorp, yes. But it is also the right thing to do… the moral and just thing to do. I am not attempting to be the villain of the piece, Lady Vale. Only to do what I have been asked—what you agreed to with Mr. Middlethorp as one of the conditions for allowing you to maintain a separate household! My purpose here is to protect your interests and to prevent others from taking advantage of you. I am sorry that you do not agree with my assessments of the dangers of this situation, but that doesn’t change them.”
Lady Vale was chastened, but far too proud to admit it. She rose to her feet with all the haughtiness of a queen. “I have some correspondence to attend to, Miss Masters. You will continue to oversee the care of our guest?”
“Certainly, Lady Vale. I will see to it,” Elizabeth agreed.
Lady Vale exited the room and Elizabeth sank into the chair beside the bed. Her gaze drifted to the too-handsome man who, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be sleeping in quiet repose.
Reaching out, Elizabeth touched his brow with the back of her hand. His earlier antics had spiked his fever again. His skin burned beneath her and she feared that if it continued to grow worse they might never have answers.
Before she could pull her hand away, his came up. Large fingers clasped her wrist, circling it so firmly she could not break free. The hold wasn’t painful, but it was quite forceful.
His eyes opened, but only slightly. “I have to find my Mary.”
“Then let Lady Vale’s investigators help you,” she urged.
“But you want me gone from this house… far from your half-mad mistress who sees a ghost in every face she passes,” he replied.
“I wish for you to discourage her belief that you are her son. Do not allow her to pin her hopes on such an unlikely outcome. Will you not help me dissuade her from this?”
He laughed, though the sound was more bitter than amused. “It has been my experience that a determined woman is never dissuaded… even when reason and evidence demand it.”
“Then in lieu of discouragement, a lack of encouragement will suffice. Accept her help… I certainly can’t imagine what any woman taken by those ruffians must be feeling. As frightened as I was by an attempted kidnapping, she must be terrified.”
His frown deepened. “Mary is not unfamiliar with fear and even with brutality, sadly. Whatever is happening to her, she does not deserve it and I should have been more diligent in my duty to protect her. Regardless, she will persevere and prevail. That is what we do.”
Elizabeth would have asked more questions. What he’d said piqued both her curiosity and her sympathy for both her rescuer and the missing woman, whoever she was to him. But his hand slipped from her wrist and his eyes closed once more. Given the injuries he had sustained, it was unlikely he would wake again for some time.
As she sat there with him, the silence of the room was broken only by the soft cadence of his breathing, strangely peaceful. In a house where she had no friends, either because the servants distrusted someone who was not yet one of them and not yet a member of the upper class or because they disliked her allegiance to Mr. Middlethorp, she’d had no human contact, no intimate conversations, in her life for years. She found herself in a situation where she could pour out all the things she’d been holding inside with no one the wiser.
As he slept on, she found herself speaking in hushed tones of her life before—of the mistakes she’d made, of the regrets she had and the painful truth. “I wonder who this woman is to you. This Mary? Your lover or your betrothed? Perhaps she is a relative? Or even your wife—I will never marry… I’d have to confess all my past transgressions to a husband. It would only be right, after all. And what man wants to marry a woman who is—who behaved so recklessly and improperly when no promises had been made or understandings reached? Certainly, I believed that Fredrick loved me and that we would one day wed. Why would I not have?”
Anger bubbled inside her, anger and resentment. No, Freddy hadn’t made promises. But she’d spoken of their future together, of getting married once the scandal surrounding her family’s loss of fortune had passed. In all the times she’d talked so excitedly of that future, he’d never once corrected her, never once stated that what she wanted for them had become an impossibility. He hadn’t lied to her, but he hadn’t been truthful either. Instead, he’d permitted her to lie to herself because it had been convenient for him… until it had not been.
She could still feel the crushing weight of rejection when she’d heard the news that he’d announced his engagement to someone else. The humiliation she’d felt when people had whispered and stared while they sat in their respective pews on the opposite side of the small village church on Sunday mornings. All those humiliations could have been borne, but not the humiliation she’d felt when he’d made the assumption that their relationship would continue in spite of his newly betrothed status. He’d thought she would simply be his mistress, had truly believed that she would accept that status and be grateful for it. It was then that she’d recognized the truth. He’d never loved her, and her love for him had been naught but an illusion, a fantasy created by a young girl too gullible and naive to recognize him for what he was.
Elizabeth looked back at the man lying in the bed. He wasn’t that sort. She didn’t trust him. In truth, she did not trust any man. Yet, she believed with her whole heart that he was not the sort to simply lie without cause. But finding his Mary—for that cause there was nothing he would not do, and that meant she’d have to guard her heart and her more amorous feelings very well against him lest she fail in her duty to protect Lady Vale.
*
Fenton Hardwick stood before the man he feared and loathed beyond anything in this world. He’d been summoned, brought by carriage with a hood pulled low over his face, same as it was every time he was brought before his master. His whole life had been spent in servitude to the monster before him. Dressed in fine clothes and moving through the highest levels of society didn’t hide the evil in him. Fenton could see it. Had seen it plain as day the very first time he’d laid eyes on the man. It was a pocket he wished he’d never picked.
“Where is the girl?” the man asked. He paused in sipping brandy from a cut glass snifter to brush an imaginary speck of lint from his finely tailored coat. The words were uttered softly, but they were no less menacing for it.
“We didn’t get her,” Fenton admitted. He didn’t question that the man already knew, that he’d known from the outset of sending for him. He had eyes and ears everywhere. If the bastard didn’t know, he wouldn’t have bothered having Fenton fetched like a misbehaving schoolboy.
Fenton had tried to run from him once, to escape it all. It had been a woman, of course, who prompted such hopefulness within him. It had been quashed easily enough and he’d learned, as he’d watched her walk away from him to become the mistress of a wealthy and powerful man his employer had sold her to, that loving anyone, caring for anyone while in his employee would only see them destroyed.
The man cocked his head to one side. He still wore the wigs that had been popular a generation before. The elaborately-coifed curls brushed against the gold embroidery that bedecked his frock coat. “But I paid you to get her, Hardwick. I pay you to get all of them. That is your job, is it not?” Despite his seemingly civil tone, there was a wealth of menace in his voice. Fenton had seen him kill men for less.
“There was a gentleman there… hiding, watching us, I think. He intervened. We had no choice but to abandon the whole operation before the watch came,” Fenton explained. “We can still get her. But we’ll need help from the mystic and her pretty boy.”
An elegant hand slammed down on the top of the table, his ornate ring smacking against the wood with a sharp crack. “You will get her and you will not tell me how it is to be done! I know what is required. Have I not been issuing your orders for nigh on two decades? Was it not your own botched attempt to retrieve my property from Vale that spawned this entire scheme?”
Fenton ducked his head. “Yes, it was, sir.”
A soft chuckle escaped him, the sound echoing in the library and sending a chill up Fenton’s spine. It was like hearing the devil himself.
“Selling off that little towheaded brat was the most brilliant idea you’ve ever had in your life… you managed to show me just how profitable it could be to trade in human flesh,” he reflected. “It’s been, I daresay, as lucrative as blackmail ever was. Of course, it helps that if we sell to the right sort of individual, blackmail can still be a nice secondary income. Now can’t it?”
And he would burn in hell for it. “Yes, sir.”
“Where are your compatriots?”
“Albert is dead. I had to shoot him. Henry took off in another direction. We’ll meet up soon enough and plan our next attack.” He hoped Henry, for once in his life, had the sense to run and keep running. The big oaf had been roped into this mess the same as the rest of them, but Fenton knew it pressed more heavily on the soft-hearted giant of a man. It had always had.
“Meet up with Henry and get rid of him. He’s a liability and always has been. Too much brawn and not nearly enough brain. Do nothing else until you hear from the Irishman. I will be paying him and my dear Zella a visit. They may be required to take a more active role in this. It is very rare, after all, that we are asked to obtain a specific female rather than simply a type. Blond, brunette, redhead. They’re all the same in the dark, aren’t they?”
“Yes, sir,” Fenton agreed. His disgust was something he was long used to hiding. He agreed to save his own skin, because it was expected of him.
“I do like it when they have a bit of fight in them… not too much, but a little. Adds sport, doesn’t it?” the man asked, sipping his drink once more. He chuckled softly as he lowered the glass again, clearly amused by his own humor.
“That it does, sir,” Fenton agreed, the lie bitter on his tongue. He’d done a lot of things in his life that he wasn’t proud of, things that he’d pay dearly for in the next world, but he’d never stooped to raping women or, God help him, children. But that didn’t remove the stains from his soul, because he’d put many a woman and child into the hands of monsters who bought them for just that purpose. Might as well be guilty of it himself, he thought.
His employer picked up a letter opener from the desk. It was thin bladed with an ornate handle, a replica of a rapier. “It’s a fine piece isn’t it?”
“It is, sir,” Fenton agreed. He wasn’t oblivious to the only barely veiled threat of the man holding a wicked-looking blade in his hand. But acknowledging it or showing fear would only make matters worse for him. Despite his bravado, Fenton couldn’t prevent a flinch as his employer stopped before him, blade in hand, and pressed the tip of it to his gut.
“If you fail again, I’ll see you dead. Do you hear me? If you’re not of use to me, there’s no point in keeping you around… and given what you know, I can’t exactly just release you from service, can I? It’s hardly like pensioning off the butler! Remember that, Hardwick. You work for me and you work well or you die. The choice is yours. Dull as this blade may be, I’ll gut you with it. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Fenton agreed.
“Go back to your hovel, Hardwick… I’ll send word when you are needed again.”
Fenton bowed stiffly and moved toward the door. But as he touched the handle, the man called out again. Fenton stopped, turned back and faced him. “Yes, sir?”
“Your little light o’love… what was her name, again? Margaret?”
Gooseflesh raised on Fenton’s skin, prickling against the rough fabric of his clothes. “It’s been so long I can’t remember,” he lied.
His employer laughed. “I remember. I never forget. She’s no longer with Cavendish… he grew tired of her I believe. Lost her in a card game to Buckley. I remember, Fenton. And pretend as you might, I know you still yearn for her. I know that you’ve also been writing to her for the last decade. It’d be a pity if, now that she’s with a relatively kind man, her life were to abruptly end, now wouldn’t it?”
“I’ll do what you ask, as I’ve always done,” Fenton agreed. “But leave her out of it. She’s suffered enough for having had the misfortune to be tangled up with the likes of me.”
His employer shrugged. “She’s a tool, Hardwick. Something I can always use as a threat against your life to keep you in line. I’ll use her as I see fit. Remember that. Now get out of my sight.”
I could kill him, Fenton thought. He’d hang for it, but Margaret would be safe, or as safe as she could ever be. But even as the thought entered his mind, he shrugged it off. It required more courage than he possessed after years under the bastard’s thumb. Instead, Fenton nodded again, and walked out the door.