Chapter 3
Even while asleep, Ellie could feel something soft under her head and a cold breeze flittering over her face. When she peeled her heavy lids open, her vision latched onto pale wooden walls and cream damask wallpaper.
Where am I?
A dull headache was thrumming at the base of her skull, and her mouth tasted incredibly foul, as if someone had stuck a soiled rag inside.
Her thoughts were muddled, but then pieces began to come back to her—Harriet leaving to talk to her parents… Victoria giving her a purse of money… a masked man appearing out of nowhere and kidnapping her.
“Oh god—” Frantically, her hands ran over her person, utterly afraid of what she would find.
Had he disrobed her? Had he—
“You’re fully dressed,” a smooth, dark voice said from the corner of the room.
Alarmed, Ellie shot up in the bed, only to groan at the dizzying sensation in her head. Cupping her forehead, she peered into the darkened corner, only to see a pair of booted legs and a shadowed but unmistakably male form.
“Who in God’s name are you!” she demanded. “Why did you abduct me, and where am I?”
“Who I am is not so consequential as of now,” he muttered lowly. “I took you to save you from the unspeakable horrors you would be forced to endure, married to Carrington. The man is the human equivalent of a dunghill, and you are in the countryside.”
While digesting those words—he knows who Carrington is—she asked, “Which countryside?”
“St. John’s Wood,” he answered dutifully.
Her jaw dropped. “You took me to St. John’s Wood! Why! What do you want with me?”
“Well, first, it is my home,” he began. “And second, it has everything to do with Carrington. You see, he and his men have some information that I want, and you can be the deciding piece if I get it or not.”
The little warmth that had birthed in her chest after he’d told her he’d taken her to save her from Carrington suddenly snuffed itself out.
Of course he hadn’t taken me from the goodness of his heart. I am simply a pawn to be used and discarded at the most convenient time.
The arrogance in his tone—as if this deal was a forgone conclusion and victory for him—curdled her stomach.
This man embodied everything she had come to know about the upper-class gentleman, this superiority and condescension.
A man such as this was guided not by morality or purpose but only by what he could gain at the expense of others.
Before she could unknot her tongue to give him a proper set down, he stood, and his body was uncloaked.
He was… utterly magnificent in the warm evening sunlight. The dimness of the study had hidden the richness of his dark brown hair; streaks of faded chestnut threaded through its thick waves.
His aquiline nose and firm jaw looked as if they had been chiseled by a master hand, and his eyes… they weren’t brown, but an extraordinary shade of honey-brown, almost like whisky. His beauty was… mesmerizing. His arrogance, not so.
“You plan to use me, and then what?” she said stiffly. “Toss me back to Carrington?”
His stony, impenetrable gaze felt as if it were penetrating her layer by layer. Shivers gripped her heart. No one had ever looked at her this way before, no one had ever made her feel bare and flayed apart—not in the best way.
“After I get what I want, what you do is none of my concern,” he replied.
Frustration smoldered in her chest. “I suppose I should not have expected any decency from a man like you.”
His brow cocked up. “Sweetling, there are no men like me.”
“There are always men like you,” she huffed. “Only out for yourself. You are a selfish, sanctimonious, jackanape.”
His mouth tilted down. “That is not even close to what I am.”
“What are you then?” she asked. “Who are you, and how do you know so much about me?
Leaning in, he, with deliberate impudence, tucked her hair behind her ear, his knuckles grazing her cheek. Ellie jerked her head away to mask the sudden shiver that wracked through her… but she could not hide the gooseflesh that peppered her skin.
His smirk told her he’d seen it. “There’s little I don’t know about you, little mouse,” he murmured. “The sooner you understand that, the better things will go for you.”
After the last customer had left the next morning, Dorian had planned on going over the books of the club, when Nathan waltzed through his doors, as easy as he pleased, opened the bottle of sherry at his bar, and poured a glass.
Dorian watched him with a cocked brow while twiddling his pen. When he turned, he said, “Please, step into my hallowed abode. If you would like, please make a drink for yourself and regale me with all your troubles.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Nathan chimed across from him and swirled his drink. “First, I would advise you to avoid Carrington for the next few days. The man is fit to be tied.”
“Really?” Dorian reached for that month’s reports. “And why is that? I thought he would be in wedded bliss with his new wife by now.”
“His new wife was secreted away before he arrived at the church.” Nathan lifted a nonchalant shoulder. “He is blaming the parents, and the parents are blaming her friends, while her friends are blaming him for trickery.”
Snorting, Dorian replied, “Maybe the lady realized life would be better off living without that bastard.”
Nathan set the drink to the side, his expression shifting to serious. “Beaumont, let’s get down to grass tacks. You are egging Sterling on, so he does something rash, and you have proper reason to tear him down. We all know it. Sterling does too.”
Giving up the pretense of working, Dorian leaned into his chair and drummed his fingertips on the edge of its armrest. “If I am that transparent, why doesn’t Sterling evict me from his presence already?”
“The same thing he drummed into your head when you were his running boy,” Nathan said. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Besides, your club is a contender, and he hates being overlooked or admitting to being outplayed.”
Pressing the tight knot at the back of his neck, Dorian replied, “In his bid to be accepted by the ton, Sterling has lost touch with those who have been around him for years. He has not stepped foot in the stews he once held with an iron fist, nor does he care to use proper management with his club.”
“As long as he is in the tooth, he is still the undisputed king of the underworld,” Nathan cautioned. “You might need to watch your step. He sees you pulling away from his club as a betrayal of the highest order, and I would not be astonished if he strikes back.”
“I’ve already prepared for that,” Dorian waved a hand.
Leaning forward, Nathan pinned Dorian with his sharp gaze, a look he reserved for the men in his solicitor’s office. “Why are you after him now?”
Be in control. See to your own interests. Reward loyalty… and punish betrayal.
At the thought of Sterling’s betrayal, a muscle ticked in his jaw. Maybe it was time to lay some of his cards on the table. “I know you, he and Portsmouth are the Three Serpents of London. You all control parts of the underground.”
“And you want in,” Nathan replied, unfazed as any trained lawyer would be.
“Yes,” Dorian replied. But only insomuch as to get information on Edgar Beaumont, my father’s thieving brother, who has conveniently disappeared in the last four years. I have no interest in controlling mudlarks or women of the night.
“And that is the reason for needling Sterling?” Nathan sat back in his chair.
“Partly,” Dorian replied. “There was an incident a few months ago when a convoy of expensive Spanish wine I’d imported for the lords who desire a taste of the continent disappeared and somehow ended up at The Crown.”
Nathan grimaced. “I did not know that.”
“I know you did not,” he replied. “Nor did you know about the spy he sent to be employed with me, so he could copy my business model, yet failed spectacularly when I stated that I specially employ children to count the silver. He was in a rage when half his silverware vanished.”
Tutting, Nathan threw back the rest of his drink, stood, and tugged his jacket down. “All I am saying is do not poke the bull too quickly or you will get the horns.”
As Nathan got to the double doors, Dorian asked, “What about the Serpents?”
“That is not up to me,” Nathan gave him a reluctant look. “And I suspect you know that already.”
When the door closed, Dorian slumped into his chair and rubbed his prickly jaw, three days in need of a shave. “That is what I was afraid of.”
It is very telling that he has not chained me to the room or tied me down.
“He is wordlessly telling me that if I were to choose to leave, the price of my blood will be on my own hands,” she muttered, pricked with temper. “The bounder.”
After her mysterious captor had left, she had explored her new home and found a three-bedroom cottage with washrooms, a large kitchen, a drawing room, and even a library. It was utterly bucolic, and if this was not what it was—a gilded cage—Ellie knew she would have loved to live there.
She had paced the bedroom he had laid her in, and found not only that her sack was intact, so was the purse of coin in her coat.
“Well, he is not a petty thief,” she muttered unhappily. “But that does not mean he isn’t a wicked man.”
Plopping down on a chair before a window, she folded her arms on the sill and dropped her chin on the cradle. The grounds surrounding the cottage had trimmed grass that went to the treeline.
Flowerbeds with well-tended wildflowers dotted either side of a walkway that led to a small gazebo. Its cheerful yellow paint and white lattice under-railing drew her eyes; it looked like a spot of sunshine against the dark wall of trees behind it.
Somehow, such gaiety did not mesh with the dark energy her captor—one she’d started to secretly call Hades—emanated. Frankly, it looked like something a woman would have commissioned.
Is he married? Does he have a wife hiding in the attic! Good god, what kind of game is he playing?