Chapter Thirty #2
It wouldn’t work. She would be expelled within minutes. But he would never live down the shame of it, especially since she would come back day after day until he killed her out of frustration.
He stood up, making sure his movements were slow. At his full height, he intimidated most people, including his mother. Or so he hoped. “You will sell me your buildings, Mother. Or I will see you ruined.”
She spread her hands wide. “Then do it. Destroy me.” She leaned forward. “I know how your piety works. That holy soul of yours would forbid you to cast your mother out in the street, no matter how much you loathe her.”
It was true, but such was his fury at this moment, that he didn’t care. “Agree, Mother. Now. Or I will do that and so much worse to you. I know how. I know what you value, I know the ways of the ton. There is no love left in me for anyone, least of all you.”
She looked at him a long time. She must have seen how implacable his will was, how dark the hatred that painted his soul. And so she switched tactics. Instead of arrogant royalty, she crumpled into a wounded bird.
“How has this happened?” she cried. “You are my son! How could you threaten me—”
“Call your man of affairs.” He pulled out a quill and set out an inkpot. He turned the pages to where she and her man would place her mark. If she would not take the feather from his hand, he would set it between her fingers and force her signature.
But before he could, she folded her arms across her chest and leaned back.
“No.”
What? Good God, he was giving her a fair deal.
Better than fair, truth be told because of the repairs required to her buildings.
If nothing else, he thought she would see reason.
When all the artifice was boiled away, she had always acted according to her own best self-interest. And this offer gave her what she most cared about.
Or so he thought.
“No, Gabriel, I will not sign.”
“Then I will destroy you.”
“Perhaps.” She shrugged. “Probably. But that will take time, won’t it? And you want this finished now, don’t you? Why else would you appear at my door with papers in hand?”
Because he wanted to be rid of her. The sooner the better. “Because I have other tasks this day. Do you think England runs on its own? Do you think Napoleon was defeated without—”
“Yes, yes. You’re soooo important.” She rolled her eyes, and he felt a push toward violence.
How dare she—his own mother—make fun of his life’s work?
To think he had once wanted her to be proud of him.
He’d even come to see her after returning from Spain.
He’d shown her his medals and tried to talk about the people who came to him for advice.
Earls, dukes, even the Regent himself wanted his opinion.
She’d wandered away the moment she’d consumed his sausages.
He shook his head, hating his next words even though he meant every single one.
“Ruination, then. Very well.” But damn it, it would take so much time!
He knew he could afford to be patient. Janelle had waited this long for her dreams, she would abide a while longer.
Years even. But he wanted to give it to her now.
He wanted to work night and day to make the place what it could be.
For her. With her. And he couldn’t do that as long as his mother stood in the way.
He gathered the papers, the quill, and the inkpot and turned to leave. She waited until he was nearly at the door before calling him back. But she didn’t speak with fear in her voice. Her words came as a silky kind of enticement. And damn him for pausing at the tone.
“I will give you what you want,” she said. “But I have conditions.”
He knew she would. He had funds in reserve to offer. A few other minor ways to sweeten the pot.
“Yes?” he said, satisfaction coloring his tone.
“You may have the Rose Garden, but not the Apothecary.”
“No. It must be both.”
“But I shall allow your Miss Caddick to run the upstairs rooms how she wishes. I shall even give her a portion of the profits.”
“There will be no profits when that building falls down.”
“That will take some time yet, I should think.”
Years. Decades most like, because the bones were good. He crossed his arms. “It must be both places or none.”
She quirked a brow. “If it must be both, then I shall tell you my conditions.”
He grunted. “Then get on with it.”
“Do you know how hard it is to have your own son despise you? You’re a bastard, my boy, and yet you curl your lip at the way I fed and clothed you.”
What boy wanted to hear his mother spreading her legs for coin? He knew more about his mother’s activities than any boy ought. And he’d seen more than any child should.
“Your father wanted nothing to do with you. I gave you everything. You are nothing without me.”
“I am what I have made of myself despite you. I am a man of honor. I am respected and employed in honest work.”
“Yes, I know about the honest work of war. Killing, destroying. How many did you rape? What did you pillage?”
“None. Nothing.” His voice was cutting because in his heart of hearts, he knew he lied.
He’d never raped a soul, but he hadn’t been able to stop everyone under his command.
The perpetrators were thrown out in disgrace, but it had happened under his watch.
That, perhaps, wasn’t his fault, but the pillaging?
An army required supplies, and sometimes they had to get them in less than honorable ways.
He’d paid if he could. But sometimes he’d taken when there was no way to repay the debt.
He’d done what he could, but his first duty was to England and his men.
Guilt must have shown on his face because she saw it. She knew it.
“A man of honor,” she spat. “You come from me, Gabriel. You are mine.”
He shook his head. There was no point in speaking the denial, especially since he fought night and day to be the opposite of his manipulative whore of a mother.
“Here are my conditions,” she said. “You may have the Rose Garden and the Apothecary, but I own the land. You will pay me rent.”
He could work with that. “How much?”
“Not a single coin,” she said, her expression shifting to a smirk. “We will move the Rose Garden to your building, but we will call it Gabriel’s House. You will run it with Florina.”
“The hell I will.”
“I want everyone to know where you come from.” She tapped her chest. “Me. You grew from me, and you are just like me.”
“No.”
“You will run my whorehouse for me. You will care for my girls, cater to the vices that fill those rooms, and everyone will know that it comes from you.”
“I do not have time. I cannot—”
“You can hire whomever you want, manage it however you will, but your name will be on the door. Your face will be seen inside it. And if you do not run it to my satisfaction, then I will burn the apothecary to the ground. I will see the Rose Garden destroyed. I will tear down the walls just to spite you.”
“That would see you hung in Tyburn. No one can commit such a crime and escape justice.” That was a lie. Most crimes were never punished.
“It would be worth it,” she countered.
She meant it. She would do whatever it took to see him humiliated, even if it killed her.
He had spent his entire life showing himself to be a man of esteem despite his parentage.
A man who could be trusted, who had no vice, who would protect the innocent as a knight of old.
That was what he called himself in his secret thoughts, Sir Gabriel, Knight of the Round Table.
He was not Gabriel, owner of a whorehouse.
Nor Gabriel, the man who saw every vice fulfilled.
“What is she worth to you, this Miss Caddick?” his mother taunted. “I offered her everything she could want, if only she would give you up.”
“You asked her to abandon her family, her marriage.”
“That’s not what she wanted. She turned me down because of you.” His mother curled her lips. “I know what you did in the bath at the Rose Garden.”
“Nothing. Miss Caddick is still pure.”
She grinned. “She’s a virgin, of course. Your honor would demand as much. But pure?” She scoffed. “Decidedly not.” She rose to her feet. “I could ruin her too, you know. I could see that Betty Gill never worked again.”
“There will always be poor, pregnant women who need help. You cannot stop that or her.”
“But I can make it hard. I can fight her in ways you cannot even imagine.” She laughed cruelly. “You knew nothing of what went on in the Rose Garden, of the women who help each other, of the medicines or the priests who are there when a kind hand is needed.”
“You were not the one to create that.” He would stake his life on that.
“But I know of it. I know how it works. And I know how to make things hard.”
“You would destroy a good woman out of spite? Are you really that depraved?”
She shrugged. “I would destroy a son who has forgotten who he is.”
“And what is that?”
“My son.”
How could he argue that? She was right. For all that he had built himself up, for all that he cast himself as a man of honor, he had debauched his best friend’s fiancée. That was not his mother’s doing. It was his own.
He almost laughed. It made sense that lust would take him down. He was, after all, a whoreson.
And seeing him silent, his mother pressed her advantage. “Do you agree? Say yes and I will go to the solicitor with you now. I will sign the papers, and you will abide by them.” She chuckled. “Your honor will see to it.”
To do this would mean the end of his diplomatic career.
Though the men of government frequented whorehouses, they would never interact with one who owned it.
Not when his name was emblazoned upon the walls and his mother shouted his parentage to any soul who would listen.
To agree would destroy his career, but it would give Janelle what she wanted.
She could have the rooms above the apothecary shop and the building next door.
She could build whatever she dreamed for the benefit of all.
“Get dressed,” he snapped. “I will have this finished today.”
Four hours later, it was done. He was enslaved to his mother.