Chapter 3
Chapter three
Eric awoke in the late afternoon, parched and sore. As memories of the previous evening filtered in, he groaned into his pillow. Once again, he had concentrated more on preventing crimes than on finding the villain with missing fingers.
For years, Eric had thought his nemesis was named Marc Antony. When he was about fourteen, Flynn had filled him in on the story of the Roman general and Egyptian queen. Thank God, he’d kept Eric from making a fool of himself. Although Eric was stubborn, his friend always looked out for him.
“Stone, ye have to let go of this obsession, for your own good. ’Tis destroying you,” Flynn often told him.
“Not that it makes a difference, but I suspect he didn’t mean to hurt her.
Some men have a taste for things such as bondage and cutting off air flow.
Besides, ’tis been over twenty years. He probably died long ago. ”
Whether his mother’s death was accidental was not the issue.
Eric needed to know if this nameless man still lived.
If only he had started his search immediately, but having the ladies at The Pink Petal mothering him as a youth had hampered his ability to sneak out at night.
Once he was an adult, emotional numbness, as well as a few years working on the docks, prevented him from scouring the city.
Then, almost a year ago, his goal of becoming a champion pugilist came to fruition.
About that same time, he overheard a rumor about a man with mangled fingers breaking into a tenement in Whitechapel.
According to the tale, the man crawled into a woman’s bed while she was sleeping and wrapped his hands around her neck.
Her husband came home just in time and chased the reprobate into the night.
Although Eric hadn’t been able to verify the story or find the woman or her husband, he began searching for the monster who plagued his nightmares.
Instead of finding his nemesis, Eric discovered all manner of horrors thriving in the darkness.
For whatever reason, his conscience refused to ignore wrongdoings, so he single-handedly confronted these bullies and criminals.
Protecting individuals who needed immediate help took precedence over a twenty-year-old murder, thus slowing his personal quest.
A few days ago, Eric overheard another rumor.
“Lord Stanley forces himself on his maids,” a bloke in a pub said to the man sitting across from him. “Also has a penchant for prostitutes.”
“Guess he can’t find a willing chit due to his disfigured arm,” the other man said.
“Or due to the fact that he is a rotter of the worst sort.”
Both men chuckled.
A disfigured arm was a flimsy lead at best, but since Eric was desperate, he decided to expand his search to the West End, starting at Lord Stanley’s town house.
Last night, he snuck in through the servants’ entrance and stole through the hallways with the intention of checking out the lord’s arms and hands.
Unfortunately, he heard a woman’s cries coming from behind a closed door.
He barged into the bedchamber to find a shirtless man, small clothes exposed.
Angry burns covered one arm, as well as five of his ten fingers.
He had a young woman in a night rail cornered. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“What the bloody hell?” The man gritted his teeth. “I insist you leave this minute.”
This ginger-haired bloke looked nothing like the man in Eric’s memories. Another failed attempt to find his monster that led Eric to an unfortunate situation that he couldn’t ignore.
“Lord Stanley?” Eric asked as he retrieved the rope and dropped his bag onto the ground.
“Who wants to know?”
The fool had inadvertently confirmed his identity. Eric leaped upon him, easily wrestling him to the floor as the poor woman squealed and backed away from the tussle.
“You are safe now,” Eric told the shivering maid.
Stanley growled. “I can do whatever I want with my servants.”
Eric secured the bully’s arms behind his body, shoved a gag into his mouth, and hoisted him onto his feet.
An older man, he assumed was the butler, and a young woman—another maid perhaps—entered the room, their eyes wide with horror.
The maid he’d rescued, flung herself into the new female’s embrace.
Eric grabbed a lit candle from the nightstand, then secured his bag on his shoulder. “I suggest you find new positions,” he said to the women as he pushed his prisoner past the three of them.
Eric shoved Lord Stanley through the hall, and down the stairs. He didn’t let up until they were in the carriage house.
“Sit,” Eric demanded.
A teary-eyed Stanley obeyed.
Eric placed the candle on a bale of hay and searched his surroundings. Although it was a bit cold for a gig, it was the most practical of Stanley’s carriages.
Damnations. Eric hated this part. Even after a year of dealing with miscreants and pounding on his opponents, this type of violence never got easier.
Unfortunately, it was a necessary evil, and this aristocrat needed to be taught a lesson.
Just desserts and all. He grabbed the whimpering lord and hoisted him onto his feet.
“I will let you live if you promise never to force yourself on another woman,” Eric said.
The truth was, he had no intention of killing the man, but hopefully his threat was enough to scare him into behaving. But, if not, a bit of humiliation should do the trick.
Lord Stanley frantically nodded his agreement.
“I will be watching,” Eric said. He exhaled, then slammed an upper cut up and through the lord’s jaw.
The pathetic man toppled over. Eric tapped his supine body with the toe of his boot. Stanley didn’t move. As he hoped, he had knocked the man out, making him easier to deal with.
After Eric hitched the horse to the gig, he tied the lord’s legs together, hefted him into the carriage, and blew out the candle. The ride to the magistrate’s closed office took forever.
Since he wasn’t a thief, Eric returned the carriage and tried to check on the terrified woman, only to find everything locked up tight. This was for the best. He patted the horse and left the carriage on the street.
Tossing the lord onto the sidewalk in front of the magistrate’s office had seemed like a genius plan in the dark. Today, Eric knew he’d made a grave error.
No one gave a whit about a masked man combing the rookeries. However, people would notice him in places like Mayfair, Kensington, Chelsea, and Belgravia. There would be outrage that a half-naked aristocrat had been tied up and deposited at Number Four Bow Street.
Eric had been careless, forgetting to take off his mask as he journeyed home, consequently, unnerving a beautiful woman out for a walk. He had no idea aristocratic ladies were up at dawn. He was under the impression that they slept the day away. Not her.
Eric’s cock awoke, quickly growing hard.
The damnable appendage was a misbehaving nuisance, and all because he innocently touched this woman who wasn’t looking where she was going and crashed into him.
A woman who was as elegant and willowy as a golden-haired, hazel-eyed ballerina—until she’d crashed into him.
A woman who was so far out of his league that they might as well be different species.
And yet, when she looked up to meet his gaze, something powerful had crackled between them, and for a moment, thunderbolts of promise lit up his world.
Then she had glided away, disappearing into a lovely home on a fine street, and he’d begrudgingly accepted his fate; they were from different worlds, so their paths would never again cross.
Since self-flagellation did little to curb his carnal desires, lord knows he’d tried, numerous times, Eric rolled out of bed and sank into his restorative, cold bath.
’Twas early evening when Eric arrived at the gymnasium.
He bypassed the hanging sandbags and the pair of roped rings to make his way to the dumbbells.
A few blokes he recognized but didn’t personally know hefted about the weights as they spoke.
Not one for chatter, Eric grunted his hello.
He dropped his bag on the floor and took off his coat and shirt.
While performing Coach’s prescribed calisthenics routine, he watched with fascination as a pair of female pugilists sparred in the farthest ring.
Once Eric’s body was thoroughly pliant, he grabbed dumbbells and silently counted as he curled his biceps. Normally he could focus like a monk, but today his concentration was shite, so he couldn’t completely drown out the nearby conversation.
“Blah, blah old mask,” one of the men said. “Blah, blah, blah naked. Bloody hysterical.”
Old mask? Naked? They had to be talking about him. Tilting his ear toward the men, Eric focused on their animated discussion.
“Apparently, it was some peer or other,” one of the men said.
Another snorted. “His lordship will get no sympathy from me. Every one of those aristocratic fools should be hogtied, stripped naked, and left to rot.”
The trio chortled.
Stanley had on small clothes, but rumors often took on a life of their own. Let everyone think he was naked. The more humiliating, the better.
“I heard the magistrate offered a reward for any information that leads to the masked man’s capture.”
Eric hissed in a breath, then winced at his less-than-nonchalant reaction.
“To hell with capturing him. I say we let him run wild if he is willing to humiliate a few more bloated aristocrats.” The speaker tapped Eric’s shoulder. “What do you say, mate?”
Since he’d been caught eavesdropping. Eric winced. Hoping to buy himself time to come up with an appropriate response, Eric rested his dumbbells on the floor and stretched his arms to the ceiling. Unfortunately, “To hell with aristocrats,” was the best he could do.
The trio cheered.