Chapter Eight
The vermilion-clad regiment that he intercepted outside Mount Runemor were no match for the Dragon’s might. He spat a lethal spray of deadly fire across the squadron attempting to overpower him from the rear, then pinned a fleeing soldier to the spot with a talon tip. “Who sent you?”
“The Red Wizard, Master of Vyranthrall!” came the reply. “You have captured something he desires!”
Qavox cocked his massive head, his eyes narrowing to slits. Amsonia? What did the Usurper want with her?
—The Dragon and the Blue Star by Analise Crewe
Lord Thomas Claridge was going to seed. His fair hair, thin and straggly, cheeks florid from drink, and blue eyes watery. Dex could barely make out his features through the red haze of rage cloaking his vision.
This was the man who had terrorized his ward. He was going to pay for that mistake. It wouldn’t do to accost him in public. Dex had shadowed him all afternoon, from club to restaurant, and now to his townhouse. Best to deal with him inside his home.
He didn’t even notice as Dex walked up behind him.
“Claridge,” Dex said loudly.
His target turned. “Er . . . do I know you?”
Dex turned his cheek and Claridge saw his scars. A spasm of distaste on his lips, quickly replaced by an oily smile. “It’s Warburton, is it not?”
“That’s right.”
“We’ve met on occasion.”
“We have.”
“Is there something I can do for you?”
“There is.” Dex waited, knowing that silence was a weapon he wielded with skill.
“Look, if I owe you money at the gaming hells and I’ve forgotten, it’s simply a mistake. I’ve come into an inheritance and I’m settling all my debts. You can talk to my man of—”
“I’ll talk to you. Let’s go inside.” Dex took his arm and led him up his own steps.
Claridge looked worried now, searching his memory for some offense he could have given to the duke.
He fumbled with his keys, his fingers trembling as he opened the lock.
He hesitated once the door was open, and Dex knew he was calculating the odds of being able to dart inside and slam the door shut safely behind himself.
It was a bet he would have undoubtedly lost, and Dex made sure he knew it by quickly reaching around him and shoving the door open.
Helped along by an unfriendly push from Dex, Claridge stumbled into the dim hall, which sported an air of neglect similar to his own.
Dust covered the artifacts from his aunt’s world travels, which populated the chamber.
Spiderwebs clung to the taxidermied ibex standing proudly on a mount in one corner and hung in swathes from the carved wooden masks on the wall, connecting them to various statues arranged beneath. Dex strode inside and closed the door.
Claridge collected himself with obvious effort and assumed a jaunty air. “So, how can I be of service to you, old chap?”
“You can disappear from my sight, and the sight of all respectable society.”
“Come again?” Claridge’s voice wavered.
“You heard me. Your time fouling up the general atmosphere of London is over. For the time being. Until I tell you otherwise.”
Claridge squared his shoulders, drawing himself up as tall as he could. The effect was ruined somewhat by the alcoholic undulations of his entire body, a drunken weaving that robbed him of any authority whatsoever.
“Now see here, Warburton. We’ve no common business to discuss, and you have no right to talk to me in this manner!
Kindly remove yourself from my abode and I shall endeavor to ignore your confounding and, frankly”—he fixed bleary eyes on Dex and jabbed a finger ineffectually in the general area of his chest—“blastedly insulting conduct.”
Dex caught his wrist in a fluid motion, bending it back with subtle pressure. “Claridge, we have more business in common than you realize, and you have every reason to listen to me.”
“Ow— How so? What exactly have we got in common?”
“For a start, you want to stay alive, and I have a way of making that happen. You will stay at your estate in Cornwall for the period of one year, lest the sight of you bring discomfort to my ward, Analise Crewe. You will never, ever attempt to force yourself on another woman. I will find out if you do. I have my ways. I will receive reports from those close to you, who were frighteningly easy to bribe, I might add. You aren’t exactly a popular man, Claridge.
And, finally, when Norwood publishes the next Clovercote novel, you will heartily endorse it as a welcome continuation of your aunt’s legacy. ”
“But my aunt’s dead, damn you! I fail to see—” And then tardy clarity dawned on Claridge’s blotchy countenance.
“Miss Crewe. That presumptuous little baggage. She’s still trying to take advantage of my dearest aunt’s largesse?
Redheaded spindly pinch-faced thing, pah!
” He attempted to spit, but his lips were loosened by booze and fear and the spittle settled ineffectually on his own waistcoat.
Dex breathed in. Out. In. Out. Breaking every bone in Claridge’s body in the man’s own hallway would be a trifle difficult to explain, even for a man of his social standing. Spindly. He thought of Ana’s deceptively slight frame and smiled.
“I’d have a care what you say next. I’m about three breaths away from knocking your head against the wall.”
“You can’t simply order me about, Warburton! If you hurt me, I’ll have you brought up on assault charges! You don’t own me, and I’ll do what I want.”
“Oh but I do! I literally own you. I’ve purchased all your debts.
And they’re large ones. Largest I’ve seen, racked up in such a short amount of time, it’s almost impressive.
How you managed to squander your ‘dearest aunt’s’ legacy with such haste boggles the mind.
I am now the sole person you owe money to.
And I won’t let you default on payment. Your estate, this townhouse, even your horses—they will fall to me unless you follow my every instruction. ”
It paid to have friends who were lawyers, who were justice seekers and knew their way around the rougher gaming hells. It had been easy enough to obtain a list of the man’s staggering debts, easier still to purchase them from frustrated creditors.
He let go of Claridge’s wrist, certain by the man’s rapidly graying face that reality was sinking in. He gave him a gentle pat on the cheek.
“Don’t take too long thinking about it, old man. The city’s fairly clamoring to be rid of you. Do us all a favor and disappear.”
He left Claridge palpitating in the foyer, whey-colored and gasping. He had a feeling the man wouldn’t be a blight on the face of London for very much longer.
Another name crossed off the enemies list. On to the next.
The facade of Maggie Flanagan’s brothel was anything but subtle. Dex regarded it with a sort of horrified amazement as he approached.
He’d visited plenty of bawdy houses in his wild youth, filling the role of the young blood about town to the hilt.
He couldn’t recall, however, having seen anything remotely like “La Maison de Mme D’Oiseaux,” as the scarlet sign proclaimed in gold-edged script.
Every inch of its surface was crowded with architectural frippery, cornices and arches and florets crowding one another along the front, gawdy colors of paint that clashed violently with the blazingly orange velvet drapes hung in the windows.
It had obviously started its life as a much humbler business, but its plain bones fairly sagged now with added-on ornamentation.
She had been hard to find, this Maggie Flanagan, the woman who would have sold his ward’s innocence for a pittance.
He’d asked around at his club, but none of the younger set had heard of her or knew where her place of business was.
It wasn’t until his queries had been overheard by a group of older gentlemen that things fell into place.
“Maggie Flanagan?” a white-whiskered colonel had said with a snort of recognition.
“It’s been ages since I’ve heard that name.
She goes by something French now, something deucedly silly and fancified.
Marguerite D’Oiseaux, I think it is? Outfit’s totally different now.
Used to be one of those plain-and-simple places you visited if you weren’t feeling that particular about how you spent a quick quarter-hour. Girls were . . . an interesting lot.”
“And where is this Marguerite D’Oiseaux’s?” Dex had pressed, offering the talkative elder man a pour from his private decanter.
“Ahh thank you, this stuff’s divine. It’s near the Rose & Crown, off the docks, just look for the most overdone terrace on the block . . .”
An apt description, thought Dex, raising his hand to the bulbous knocker, made of two comely brass maidens pressing their lips together at the top and twining their bare legs together at the bottom.
A brutish lug with a brick wall of a face, fully as tall as Dex, opened the door and grunted a welcome.
After stating his intentions of meeting the famous Madame Marguerite D’Oiseaux, Dex was escorted into a salon so festooned with frills, drizzled with gilt, and dripping with draperies that he had the claustrophobic sensation of being on the inside of a ladies’ armoire.
The doorman lumbered away, leaving him to perch his tall frame on a rickety gold-and-fuchsia-striped divan.
He was offered libations by a buxom woman in an absolute mockery of a maid’s uniform, with a décolletage so plunging he wondered if the seamstress had simply forgotten to add that part of the dress.
He declined the drink and the smiling invitation that accompanied it.