Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
A couple of days later, a carriage pulled up outside a seedy tavern at the edge of the city.
Vagrants and urchins scurried away in its wake as a man stepped out, his body covered with a heavy cloak, a hat covering his face.
He entered the tavern without fanfare, his blue eyes darting around the gloom, smoke heavy in the air, a miserable fire spitting in the hearth.
“Can I help you, sir?” asked a toothless man from behind the bar, hobbling over to him, black soot beneath his gnarled fingernails.
“I am seeking a man of my acquaintance. I need no assistance. Be about your business and leave me to mine.”
The owner paused, nodded his head and asked no further questions. Adam raised his eyebrows.
There is no protection amongst thieves and criminals, it would seem.
He glanced around the room, but his quarry was nowhere in sight.
Instead, he walked slowly up the stairs as he reached the landing and the door of the first room.
He opened it without knocking, caring little for who he would disturb. There was an elderly man asleep on the floor, slumped against the bedpost, a bottle in his right hand, but no one else present in the room.
Adam moved on.
Four rooms later he sensed something as he approached the last door at the end of the hall.
Someone as slippery as Claridge would favor such a place—close to the back stairs, and the privy.
He paused, drawing in a deep breath, conjuring an image of his beautiful wife to mind and letting the white-hot fury course through him again.
Then he kicked down the door.
Claridge was asleep, the early hour clearly not having suited him and he shouted in alarm, tumbling to the floor as he leaped from the bed.
Adam walked inside, discarding his hat onto a chair and waited for Claridge to stand.
The man was huffing and puffing, dressed only in his nightshirt as he scrambled for his breeches. He pulled them on, his hair in disarray.
“Good morning, Lord Claridge,” Adam said conversationally. “What a welcome sight you are.”
He pushed the door, now hanging on one hinge, back against the frame, giving them relative privacy.
Claridge made no attempt to mask his anger, stepping around the end of his bed and glaring at Adam as though he might strike him.
“How dare you come in here?—?”
“How dare I ?” Adam roared, throwing his cloak aside and onto a chair.
He advanced on Claridge, as the man cowered before him, dwarfed by both Adam’s rage and his height.
“I will do whatever I please around you, sir. I owe you nothing, you deserve nothing from anyone, and I will see you pay for your crimes.”
“Crimes?” Claridge spluttered. “What crimes?”
Adam had to begrudgingly give him credit—lies tripped off this man’s tongue like silk.
“You deny it?”
“I do not know of what you are speaking!”
Adam took a menacing step forward, as Claridge retreated to the window. Adam was in two minds as to whether he would throw him out of it.
“I know what you did to my wife.”
Claridge scoffed. “I have done nothing to Rosaline. What happens to her is not my affair. She is your problem now.”
Adam leaned back a little, spearing him with a long stare.
“I did not give you enough credit before,” he said as Claridge seemed to relax just a fraction. “I would not have expected you to have such excellent taste in brandy.”
The man’s eyes widened as color crept up his neck.
“What brandy?” But the man’s bluster was failing him. “I know nothing of what you speak, if you are accusing me of anything you would have to have proof?—”
“What a shame there are six witnesses willing to corroborate my story then,” Adam snapped and Claridge’s face paled as his back hit the window ledge.
The sound of the street outside was dulled here but Adam could hear the clopping of a horse’s hooves and the heavy march of footsteps approaching.
He was looking forward to never having to see this man’s smug countenance ever again.
“Witnesses? Some half-bred ingrates from the back of beyond will not be believed over an earl.”
“And what about a duke?”
Claridge ran his teeth over his bottom lip, his muscles tense, and in the next moment he had flung himself to the side and around Adam and was running to the door, but Adam was too fast for him.
His hand shot out, gripping Claridge’s wrist in a vice and pulling his arm behind his back so sharply that Claridge cried out in pain.
Adam shoved him hard against the bed post as the breath burst from Claridge’s lungs and Adam used his full weight to pin him in place.
“You will go to prison for this,” he snarled, his hand tightened as Claridge whimpered. “You will sit in your cell day after day, thinking of the man who put you there. I hope that Rosaline’s face haunts your dreams whenever you consider double-crossing anyone again.”
He let him go, knowing that Claridge would instantly try to run again and when the man attempted it Adam spun him around and landed another punch to his jaw before following it up with another to his nose.
Blood spurted over the wooden floorboards beneath their feet as Claridge wailed in pain, collapsing to the floor.
Adam could already hear the heavy tramp of footsteps ascending the stairs, and knew that the second part of his plan was moving into place.
“You will think of me and my wife every day, sir. You will wish that you had groveled at my feet to make amends for the pain you have put her through. But, from this day forth, we will never think of you again.”
The door burst open as a number of constables barged into the room.
The lead officer nodded to Adam, as he indicated Claridge was their man, and they lifted his prone figure from the floor, blood running down his face, his shirt untied, no shoes on his feet.
A pathetic man, meeting a pathetic end.
Adam watched them drag him out as he released a long, relieved breath.
A few minutes later Adam walked out into the hustle and bustle of the London streets, breathing in the city air without a care in the world.
He was finally free, and there was only one person he wished to celebrate with.
Rosaline heard the soft snick of the door as she sat reading her book in the library at Oldstone.
She glanced up at the clock, surprised that Adam had already returned.
She stood as he walked into the room, taking in the calm demeanor and confident stride of a man who had succeeded in his task.
“You found him?” she asked.
“I did.”
“Is it all over?”
He took her into his arms, his lips lifting up at the edges.
“Oh yes. Claridge will never trouble you again.”
Rosaline felt an infuriating mixture of relief and guilt at the news.
“Are you all right?” Adam asked with a frown. “I expected you to be jumping for joy that he was gone.”
“Oh I am. Truly. I am very grateful to you for?—”
“You do not need to be grateful to me,” he said firmly. “Not ever. I did this for us . We are united in all things, or have I not made that plain enough?” he asked with a smirk lowering his head to her neck and kissing along it, making her shudder.
“You have made it very plain,” she said breathlessly as he pushed her back toward the chair before the fire. “But I still pity him.”
Adam’s tongue touched the skin of her neck as a low moan burst from her throat.
“Lord Claridge does not deserve another moment of your time. Do not waste your pity on him—he has made his choices in life, and he will pay for them.”
He lowered her into the seat as he moved slowly down her body, his hands running reverently over the folds of her gown.
“You look very beautiful today,” he said, his fingers deliberately tracing the scars across her arms as he said it.
“So you say every day,” she said with a laugh.
“I sometimes think you need reminding,” he said as his hands moved to the hem of her gown and began to move it upward toward her knees.
“Adam, we are in the library, anyone could enter and see us!” she said, feeling scandalized, and yet she made no move to stop him.
“Then I suggest, my exquisite duchess, that you remain very quiet while I attend to you.”
With that, he pushed her skirts to her thighs and lowered his head between them, and there was no more talking, save for rushed breaths and soft sighs as her body came undone for her duke.