Chapter Thirty-Five #2
Frustration burned at the comment, said with the same condescending inflection Wells used with everyone.
“Damn it, Jonathan. I know!” The infuriating man only arched an eyebrow at his given name.
“I am not doing this to win her. Were you not just listening to a word I said? I have no hope of winning her. I love her too much to win her!”
He stopped at that, and Wells merely nodded, as if he was further confirming a conclusion he had already reached.
“I do not know what you hope to gain from hunting a dying man. No—” He held up a ducal hand to stop Benjamin’s retort.
“I understand your motivation, but I disagree with your reasoning. This is no longer about the crimes of the Deering family—though there are many. You cannot run from your fear of love. I do not think it fair to Lady Charlotte for you to deny her the opportunity to return your love—that is really what you are doing. You are using your past and your vendetta against this man to wedge a shield between you and happiness. After all these years, all the wrongs done to you and losses you have suffered, it terrifies you to face true love. And trust me, that is what she offers you.”
Benjamin could only sputter. Never in their lives had he known Wells to deliver such a monologue.
Despite his ducal arrogance, or maybe because of it, Wells had always allowed others to talk and try to fill the space in their desperation to impress him.
It was even more galling that his insight rang true.
Benjamin felt scraped raw by the arrow burrowing through flesh to hit its target.
Benjamin sagged. “I like you better when you do not speak.” His words were shaky, and the attempt at levity fell flat.
Wells merely quirked his lips in his self-satisfied way and leaned back against the chair, sipping whisky from a tumbler he seemed to have conjured out of nowhere. “As do I.”
A crash in the hall outside his apartment had both men turning to the door. After a moment of scrambling, the knob turned, and a red-faced Boyd entered the room.
“He has left!” He was panting hard as if he had run all the way through Elysium’s maze of corridors and up every flight of stairs at breakneck speed.
“What? Who?” The words were out of Benjamin’s mouth before he could think. There was only one man Boyd would be talking about.
“Laurens was snooping around the back of the house—”
Benjamin exploded from his seat. “What! He knows he is not supposed to leave his post. This is not a game. Snooping around is dangerous. He has no idea what might happen to him.”
Boyd gulped but admirably soldiered on, with only a slight tremor in his voice.
“Aye, he knows. But he had a friend once who knew a boy who worked inna toff’s house and said there was secret passages.
Tunnels the toff used to sneak out and see his ladybird with no one the wiser.
” The boy kept babbling on as Benjamin’s eyes grew wider.
“So he says to himself, maybe this toff has got something too. Maybe them’s why we ain’t seen hide nor hair of him the last week. ”
Benjamin might have laughed at Boyd’s use of the plural.
He had made sure to keep the younger boys, such as Boyd, out of this investigation, using only the help of the older boys he knew had a good grasp of the intricacies of surveillance and would not be at risk out on the streets at night, even in the relative safety of Bloomsbury.
Still, all the younger boys employed in Elysium had been following with rapt attention—excited by the boss’s clandestine mission, and every time an older footman returned from a watch, he was swamped by curious urchins scrambling for every exciting detail.
“He’d climbed back through the mews and, sure enough, there is a cellar door that don’t lead to no cellar. He left and got Conway—since he is so much smaller and a legend climber—to scurry up the back trellis and peek in the toff’s room. Sure as salt, there’s not a soul in there!”
Benjamin could only stare down at the boy with his jaw slack.
How had this ragtag group of street youths figured this out before he did?
He was torn between pride and fury that they would risk their necks like that.
Fury won. They had deliberately disobeyed his orders to keep a low profile and only watch.
“I will deal with you lot later,” Benjamin growled, and Boyd only swelled with barely concealed, delighted pride.
It sparkled in his dark eyes, and Benjamin resisted the urge to ruffle his hair. God, when had he gone this soft?
Still, the sense of dread gnawing at his gut spurred him into action. “Come along, Wells. Even after your gorgeous pontificating, you must admit this is suspicious behaviour. There is something else going on, and I mean to get to the bottom of it.”
Wells merely sighed, drained his glass, and followed Benjamin out the door, ruffling the young footman’s spiky black hair when he passed. “Good work, lad.”
∞∞∞
As Benjamin and Wells raced through the streets, stopping at seemingly arbitrary corners and alleys to consult with Benjamin's network of informants, they slowly pieced together a path of Deering’s movements.
He had been slipping out of his townhouse at night—overly paranoid or perhaps knowing he was being watched—according to multiple accounts.
Either was just as likely, as the man had gone visibly mad.
“French disease, it is. Can spot it a mile away,” a beer maid shouted up at them as she dumped a pot of dubious contents down the alley gutter. “Rots away the good bits until there is nothing left but madness—not that there was many good bits to begin with with that one.”
She spat away from their mounts as she hefted the pot back on her hip. From their interactions thus far, her poor opinion of the baron was not uncommon amongst the working class of the city. It seemed the Deering name had been soured for more than just Benjamin.
“Have you seen him recently? In the last days, to be precise?” The buxom maid smiled up at Wells with unmistakable favour.
“Can’t say as I have. But a cousin o’ mine works as a kitchen maid up at one o’ them big houses in Mayfair. Said she thought she saw him the other night.”
Benjamin had always prided himself on his underground network of informants and his singular ability to get information from nothing, but he had to admit, having a handsome duke by his side seemed to grease the wheels substantially.
“Where in Mayfair?”
“Up on Mount Street, she works.” Benjamin’s blood ran cold. The Aston house was on Mount Street.
“Thank you for your assistance, Miss.” Wells flipped a coin down to her, and she plucked it from the air, smiling prettily as she tucked it into her generous bodice. “No trouble at all, m’lord. Do not hesitate to find me if you need more.”
Benjamin was already turning his mount towards Mayfair, his pulse hammering in his ears.
“Easy, Scarsdale, we cannot just go charging in there with no plan. A madman is not one to be underestimated. They are even more dangerous than the sane ones.” His grave tone brooked no argument, and Benjamin wondered if he spoke from experience.
Benjamin only nodded and followed Wells’ lead.
The only thought keeping the panic at bay was that he knew no one was in the Aston house.
Freddie had fled to seedy bachelor lodgings, and Charlotte was safely tucked away in Scotland, where Elkington’s family and Benjamin’s street network were keeping an eye on her.
No one else had any reason to be in the home.
Benjamin was sure of this because he had leased the property himself.
No, there was no reason to believe Deering could do any harm if he was indeed secreted away in the Aston’s vacant townhouse.
They would go in, look around, and if the madman was hiding there, they would drag him out and bring him to the authorities at Bow Street—or Bedlam, whichever institution took him first.