Chapter 20
Calum had faced down devils in the street. He’d shared a roof and answered to one of the most ruthless killers and gang leaders in both St. Giles and the Dials. But of all those monsters whose paths he’d crossed, none had he ever wanted to end more than he did Eve’s brother.
A short while later, features schooled into a comfortable mask, Calum entered his office.
The tall, elegantly clad Duke of Bedford reclined in the chair closest to Calum’s desk. Legs sprawled before him, hands resting on his slightly rounding belly, he personified ducal power. In his very repose, he was a man who acted as though the world was his due and he would expect nothing less.
He’d also been the bastard who’d dunked Eve under freezing water when she was a child and arranged to have her raped when she was a woman.
And Calum, who’d always prided himself on his control, was proved wholly inadequate in an altogether different way. A muscle twitched at the corner of his eye, and he fought to repress the growl stuck in his chest.
“Your Grace.” God how he hated using that proper form of address that elevated this man in any way. Feeling Bedford follow his movements, Calum casually collected a decanter of fine French brandy and a glass. “I understand you wished to speak with me.” He tipped the bottle, and the clink of crystal was inordinately loud, that mundane sound at odds with the tension thrumming inside this room. He composed himself and turned back. “A drink?” Calum had learned long ago the dirtiest tricks to upend one’s opponent. The drunks had always been the easiest to topple. He held the snifter aloft.
The duke’s bloodshot eyes went to that glass, and he eyed it the way a starving man did food. Lord Bedford smacked his lips loudly. “Indeed. All business meetings must be conducted over fine spirits.”
Carrying the glass over, he held it out. “Is that what this is? A business meeting?” He moved around the desk and settled himself in the familiar folds of his seat. Mayhap it was nothing more than a request for an extension in his credit.
Eve’s brother took a long, slurping swallow of his drink. His throat muscles moved loudly in a revolting display of his weakness. While he drank, Calum’s gaze went to the other man’s lily-white hands. Free of calluses and ink stains, and yet they were large. And those same long fingers had gripped Eve by the hair and yanked her through their home. The imagined sound of her screams pealed around Calum’s mind. Laying his hands on the arms of his chair, he curled his fingers, gripping the edge to keep from ripping Bedford’s entrails out through his bloody mouth. After he’d finished his drink, Eve’s brother released a sigh. He set his empty glass down on the arm of his chair.
“You have something that belongs to me.”
Alarm bells went off. Fighting the sudden unease pulsing through him, Calum leaned back in his seat. He tilted his lips up in one corner. “I have a whole number of things that belong to you,” he drawled. “Unentailed properties. Your debt. Your former funds.”
The duke flattened his lips into a hard line. Leaning forward, he thumped the surface of Calum’s desk. His abrupt movements sent his forgotten glass tumbling to the floor with a loud thwack. “Do not make light with me,” he snapped. “Where is she?”
There it was, the question he’d have sold his soul not to have heard from this man.
The same mind-numbing terror that had seized all rationale the night he’d been hurled into Newgate struck. He tipped his chin. “If this is about the serving girl you recently accosted,” he said coolly, “our establishment no longer deals in prostitution. You’ll have to take that manner of business up with Broderick Killoran at the Devil’s Den or some other hell. If you’ll excuse me,” he said curtly, rising.
The duke stared up at him and then broke out into a laugh. “Do you take me for a fool?” His icy smile withered. “My sister is here.” He glanced about Calum’s office. “You, a worthless guttersnipe, are harboring a lady inside your hell.” Eve’s brother slapped his fist against his open palm. “And I demand you return her to me.”
Folding his arms at his chest, Calum came ’round the desk and positioned himself over the smaller man. “If you lost your sister, those affairs are your own. Now if that is the only reason you’ve come, on some madcap belief that she is, in fact, here, then you’ve wasted your time.”
A knock sounded at the door.
Grateful for the interruption, he called out.
Adair opened the door. “I was advised by this man that he had business with you and Bedford,” he said tightly. At his side, a cloaked figure—a stranger—cowered and shook.
“Ah, splendid,” the duke called out, his bravado firmly affixed. “Mattison, please enter. Enter,” he boomed, firmly in control and commanding as though this were his office.
Then the name he’d used registered.
Mattison.
Nurse Mattison is loyal and devoted. She is the one who suggested I go into hiding here, knowing Gerald would never look for me here. She would not betray me . . .
Oh, Christ in hell.
Adair gave Calum a probing, silent look. I’ve failed everyone. Eve. Adair. Ryker, Niall, Helena. All of them. Guilt sat like a boulder upon his chest. He gave his head an imperceptible half shake, that slight movement they’d adopted years earlier to signify danger.
Adair gave no outward show.
“Mrs. Mattison, don’t hover out there. Come in. You, as well, Mr. Thorne. The more the merrier.”
Shoving back her hood, the tall, blonde-haired woman entered the room. She bowed her head, but not before he caught the flash of grief in her eyes.
Adair followed behind and closed the door.
Eve’s brother pushed to his feet. “I’m not pleased with the Hell and Sin right now,” the duke chided. “Tsk. Tsk. Nor is most of the ton. You’ve earned quite the reputation, you bastards from the streets, of taking up with ladies of the ton.”
A pit formed in Calum’s belly as Adair threw him a sideways glance that demanded answers he’d deserved a week ago. “If you’ve come here because you’ve taken umbrage with whom our proprietors have married, then you can cease wasting either of our time and take your services elsewhere,” Adair said with a frostiness Ryker Black himself would have been hard-pressed to emulate.
“Pfft,” Eve’s brother scoffed. “I hardly cared about the ones spreading their legs for you . . . before now.” A glacial mask iced the duke’s features. “Your brother is bedding my sister.” All the air was sucked free of the room, with the only sound being Nurse Mattison’s gasp. Then, “My beloved sister, whom all Polite Society has been searching for . . . is here.” He jabbed his finger toward the floor. “She’s your bookkeeper.”
The color leached from his brother’s skin. I am so sorry. Those words, a futile apology, offered nothing. Adair instantly composed himself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, nor does my brother.”
“No?” The duke hooked his thumbs inside his waistband. “Know nothing, do you? Lady Evelina Pruitt?”
A vein throbbed at the corner of Adair’s left eye.
“There’s no one by that name here,” Calum said tersely.
“Mrs. Mattison?” the duke called out.
The woman gave her head a hard shake. “Your Grace,” she implored.
“Mrs. Mattison,” Eve’s brother demanded, ice in his command.
That nurse slid her eyes closed, and when she opened them, hatred burned from within. She directed that unveiled emotion at Eve’s brother. “I sent her here,” she said with remarkable cool. “Falsified papers. Arranged the post through the agency you used to find a person for the respective p-position.” Her composure cracked, revealing her turmoil. “She’s here.” That threadbare whisper contained barely a hint of sound, and yet it was enough.
Flummoxed, Adair looked to Calum.
Removing his gloves from inside his blue brocade jacket, the duke slapped them together. “Of course, this is no doubt a dreadful misunderstanding on your part. I expect my recalcitrant, half-mad sister has been passing herself off as a servant.” Half-mad.
When Gerald is bent on evil, not even Satan himself could stop him.
This is the danger Eve had faced. It was as perilous as any battle Calum or his siblings had known against Mac Diggory on the worst of days.
“What do you want?” Calum asked quietly.
“I want her back.” Calum had witnessed on the streets that death was preferable to some of the evil one might face. To turn Eve over to this man would consign her to a living hell. “As simple as that.” Lord Bedford tugged on first one, and then the other immaculate white glove with meticulous care. He made a show of wiggling his fingers and flexing his palm. Triumph glittered in the duke’s eyes. “You needn’t say anything now,” he said to his audience’s silence.
“What if I say no?” Calum shot back. Adair’s curse echoed around the room, and Calum continued over it.
“Why would you say no?”
Because I love her. The earth dipped and swayed under his feet. I love her. Mayhap he always had. First as the girl who’d been a friend and pulled him from the precipice of complete and total darkness. And then as a woman whose strength, intelligence, and compassion had won all of his useless-until-her heart.
Bedford slashed the air with his gloved hand. “Your club is in shaky enough standings with Polite Society. What will they say if they discover you’re the latest of the Hell and Sin proprietors to be bedding a duke’s daughter?”
Calum already knew what they would say . . . it was the same thing the ton had been saying after Niall and Diana’s marriage. I need more time. “She’s not here,” he said quickly.
Adair threw him a sharp look.
“Where is she?” the duke challenged, taking a bold step toward him.
“She paid a visit to our vendors earlier, and then I provided her the afternoon off.”
Bedford pursed his mouth. “If I were to call for the constable, you would be found in the wrong. They’d turn your club upside down if I told them you were holding my sister here against her will.”
The bloody bastard.
He jutted his chin out. “If you did, then they’d find she is not inside the club.” Which in all truth she was not.
Both men went toe-to-toe in a silent battle for supremacy.
Gripping her skirts, Nurse Mattison glanced back and forth between them.
The duke sighed. “You have until tomorrow afternoon.” The wastrel lord had slept in the private suites here time enough that Calum knew the bastard would be too drunk to wake up in the morn. “I’ll return and gather her. If she’s not here, I’ll destroy your club.” On that, Eve’s brother stalked out.
Head bowed, the woman was left alone with Calum and Adair. Calum expected her to beat a hasty flight. Instead, with a remarkable and surprising resilience, she lingered.
As soon as he’d gone, Calum glowered. “You are the loyal friend Eve trusted.” Giving his head a disgusted shake, he pointed at the door. “Get out.”
Tears flooded her blue eyes. “You have to understand,” she pleaded, turning her palms up, “he came and had the hospital searched. The constable interviewed the children and threatened them. He vowed to see them thrown in Newgate if I d-didn’t tell him where she’d gone, and one of the boys . . .” Her voice cracked, and she continued through it. “Her l-ladyship demanded that they be protected above all others.” Even at the expense of her own self—that cryptic conversation Calum had picked up on the first time he’d found Eve at the foundling hospital at last made sense. He dragged a hand through his hair. “I am so sorry.” A sob burst from the nurse’s lips.
Seething, Adair stalked past him and thundered for a guard. Thomas, assigned to the main suites that evening, rushed forward. “Mr. Thorne?”
Calum stared, more an outside observer as Adair once again served the role of head proprietor while Calum stood completely useless, at sea. He dragged a hand through his hair while the other man barked out orders. Calum couldn’t hand Eve over to that man. Bedford would succeed in destroying her where she’d always survived in the past. His gut clenched painfully.
“Escort Mrs. Mattison back to the Salvation Foundling Hospital,” Adair was saying. “Remain behind in the event Bedford returns there. If he does, send word immediately.”
“Aye, Mr. Thorne.” Thomas caught her by the arm.
Still, the nurse lingered. “I tried everything within my power to help her ladyship. I naively believed I was a match for the duke.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “I was so very wrong.” Her voice caught. “Is . . . her l-ladyship well?”
He wanted to hate the woman. He wanted to turn her out with a cold order to see the Devil in hell. And yet . . . he’d been desperate, too. He knew what that terror did to a man. Calum sighed. He’d not, however, offer false assurances as to Eve’s well-being. “The children at the hospital need you,” Calum said quietly. “Thomas will escort you home.”
She hesitated and then went with Thomas. The burly guard led her from the room, closing the door behind them.
“You knew,” Adair whispered, the cryptic softness in his tone more ominous and threatening than his earlier shouts.
Calum pressed his fingertips into his temple, letting his silence stand as a confirmation.
“You knew and you let her remain anyway.” Adair stalked over. “With how our club has suffered after Niall and Diana and Ryker and Penelope, you not only let her remain but kept it a secret.” He slammed a hand into his chest. “From me?” he roared.
Guilt over his own duplicity turned inside him. “I could not have sent her back to Bedford. Surely you see that?”
“No,” Adair snapped, his long-legged strides eating away all the space between them until their toes touched. “I do not see.” Incredulity seeped from his street-hardened eyes. “I do not see,” he repeated in more even, crisp tones. No, he could not. Because even though they were brothers closer than had they shared blood, they’d never discussed what they felt, outside of the hell that had sustained them, whether or not they had dreams and what they dreamed of. Adair frantically searched his face. “My God, man, the duke had you hauled into Newgate, and you’d help his sister?”
“She’s no more responsible for Bedford’s crimes than we were for Diggory’s,” he said quietly, willing his brother to understand.
Adair was already shaking his head. “She cannot stay here.”
Calum’s body coiled tight like a serpent poised to strike. “It is not your decision.” He’d be damned to hell once again before he betrayed Eve.
“No.” Adair settled his hands on his hips and met his gaze in a primal stare. “It is all of our decision. In allowing her to remain, ya’ve put all of us at risk.” Adair’s outrage made him sloppy, and his Cockney slid in, replacing his long-practiced cultured tones.
“I love her.”
Voicing that admission aloud knocked him off balance.
Silence hung in the room.
Men of the streets didn’t talk of matters of the heart. Mayhap men of any station avoided those topics. Discussions of cards and spirits and business were always fair discourse. Now Calum had plunged them into a murky world that was foreign to them both.
“You love her,” Adair repeated, those three words as vacant as his eyes.
For the sliver of a moment he believed that would matter if not most, at least in some small way, to his brother.
“The men, women, an’ children who work here call this place home, and you’d threaten all of that. All of them.” Calum winced, and Adair pounced. “Ryker, Penny, the babe they’re now expecting. Niall, Diana, even ya,” he spat with icy condemnation. “Ya’ll all be foine . . . ya’ve your fancy ladies and your purses.”
Calum opened his mouth to deny it, but the words stuck there. For in this, Adair was correct. Restless, he stomped over to the window and stared out into those cold streets he’d spent too many years sleeping on. If Calum married Eve, they’d face society’s condemnation for the divide in their stations, but he had a fortune enough set aside to sustain them . . . just as Eve herself was in possession of significant monies. What would become of the rest of the members of the hell when—if—the club’s reputation was completely destroyed, and their membership disappeared?
“What do you want me to do?” he whispered angrily; his taut features stared back in the crystal pane.
“What do I expect you to do?” Adair scoffed. “You know the answer to that.”
Yes, he did. Calum, Ryker, Niall, Adair, Helena—they’d all made a vow to one another years ago. Their family would always come first, before all, and they’d let no person jeopardize one another’s security. Frustration and restless annoyance twisted at him, and for the first time, resentment sprang within. Niall had been permitted to love where and whom he would. Calum had supported him in that union unconditionally, and now he himself would be denied that choice?
But then . . . did you not expect Ryker to put the best interests of the club before all? That taunting reminder echoed in the chambers of his mind. It hadn’t mattered that Ryker had eventually fallen in love with Lady Penelope. It mattered that Calum, just as Niall and Adair, had expected Ryker to do what was best to preserve the club’s reputation. In the windowpane, he caught Adair’s retreating form.
He faced him just as he reached for the handle. “How can you expect me to turn her over to him?” he entreated, the question as much for himself as for Adair.
There was a slight softening in the other man’s scarred features. “Because if you don’t turn her over to Bedford, then you’re turning over three hundred and seventy-nine other people in her stead.”
Those words hit him like a gut punch.
Adair pulled the door open, and Eve spilled inside.
The only thing that stopped Eve from landing face-first in a damning heap on Calum’s entryway was Adair’s quick hands and reflexes.
Eve curled her toes into the soles of her boots. Calum had taught her better about listening at keyholes than this. “F-forgive me,” she stammered.
Both brothers stared silently back. Formidable in their silence, these two men before her were indeed fearless warriors of the streets.
“I was—” She dropped her gaze briefly to the floor. She’d already given this family enough lies that she’d not add one now explaining away her presence. She had been listening. Against Calum’s orders, she’d stolen abovestairs and sought out the adjoining office to listen in on that hated meeting. And though the thick plaster had muffled a good portion of Calum’s rebuttals to Gerald, her brother, in his typical boisterous fashion, had been as clear as the bells of St. George’s Cathedral.
“If you’ll excuse us,” Calum said tightly.
Coward that she was, relief took root. “Of course.” She dropped a curtsy and wheeled about.
“Adair, my lady. I was speaking to my brother,” Calum called out, halting her in her tracks.
My lady . . .
Adair looked back and forth between them, and her skin pricked with the fury emanating from him. Then, wordlessly, he stalked off.
“I told you to wait in the stables,” he snapped as soon as the door had closed.
The anger and frustration in those eight words were at odds with the tender lover who’d held her in his arms twenty minutes . . . twenty days . . . twenty years . . . a lifetime ago? How can you expect me to turn her over to him? “He’s my brother. It was my place to know what terms he’d set.” But how she wished she didn’t know the threats he’d made against Calum, his family, and the hell. “I took care to use the side entrances and only listened in from my office,” she assured him.
He brought his hand down in a wide arc. “Damn it, Eve. Had he ordered the club searched for you, he would have turned you out, proved me a damned liar, and seen you hauled off,” he shouted.
He was afraid. When she was a girl, she’d learned early on that Calum Dabney protected himself with blustery shows of temper. And the truth of his worrying ran her ragged inside. It mattered not whether that terror was for her, himself, or the whole of the Hell and Sin, but rather that he knew fear. I don’t want that for him . . . He’d already known so very much of it. Too much. She watched as he fetched himself a brandy, taking in his swift, uncharacteristically jerky movements while he poured. He is gone to me. In every way. Pain cleaved at her breast. “I told you he would not relent until I was returned,” she said quietly, when he finally faced her.
Calum flattened his mouth into a hard line. She drifted over. “You allowed yourself to believe that you could ultimately prevail over him, but the moment he learned I was here, nothing would have ever stopped Gerald.” She spoke with a quiet pragmatism that roused a rumbling in Calum’s chest.
“Do you doubt my ability to look after those in my care?” he put to her on a silken whisper coated in ice.
“No,” she said sadly. Because if you don’t turn her over to Bedford, then you’re turning over three hundred and seventy-nine other people in her stead. “But I’m not in your care. I was here of my own volition.”
He jerked, but otherwise made no attempt to counter that. And why should he? He’d already agreed that her time here was limited.
“You were only partially right,” she murmured, clasping her hands together. “About Nurse Mattison,” she clarified when Calum creased his brow. “All people are capable of betrayal, but some are forced to it. She was forced to do what she did to protect the children.” She’d not hold the woman who’d been like a sister to blame, just as she’d not force Calum to make a choice between her and his club.
He stared morosely into his drink. “You’d forgive her?”
“Forgive her?” She shook her head. “This from the same man who forgave me for my crime against you. And yet you believe me so selfish that I’d expect her to sacrifice the children inside that hospital?” Eve waited until he lifted his gaze. “Of course I don’t blame her, Calum. This is not her fault, and I would never, ever hold her responsible,” she said with a quiet insistence, willing him to hear that. Calum was no more to blame than Nurse Mattison.
His throat muscles worked. “If you’ll excuse me, Eve?” he said hollowly.
He’d turned her away. She flinched. “Of course. Forgive me.” She lingered. “Calum,” she called out, and he slowly lifted his head. “I—” Love you. Those words didn’t belong here now. Not when he fought himself over the decision he had to make. Poor Calum, always in charge of all, didn’t realize that ultimately this was and always had been only hers. “I’m so sorry.” Eve left him, closing the door softly in her wake. She started down the hall, past that library where she and Calum had made love, and reached her chambers. Eve touched a finger to the curved gold door handle. How odd to have been here but three weeks and to have known more happiness and peace here than she had in the other five and twenty years of her existence.