London Ladies (The Complete Series)

by Eaton, Jillian

  She gasped and sputtered, sucking in air and crying out when her chest burned as though on fire. “I’ll give you whatever you want.” The plea tasted sour in her mouth, but she had no other option than to beg for her life. “Please don’t hurt me. I swear on my mother’s life I will not tell Gavin.”

  “Hurt you? I am not going to hurt you.” Dobson rose to his full height. Wiping his sweating palms on his vest, he straightened the lapels on his jacket and leered down at her. “Well, no more than I already have. But this will be child’s play compared to what the Duke of Paine has in store for you.” The butler made a tsking sound and wagged his finger at her. “You never should have tried to run from him. He’s giving me a fortune for your return. I’ll never have to open another door for the likes of you and your husband again.”

  “No,” Charlotte gasped. “No.”

  She thought she had been afraid before. But it was nothing compared to the terror that consumed her now. Her blood turned to ice, chilling her to the bone. All of the color drained from her face. She felt as if she was going to be sick, and her fingers trembled violently when she raised them to her lips.

  Paine had already seen two wives dead and buried. He wanted a third by fair means or foul. What was he going to do with her? What was he going to do to her?

  Months and months had passed since that day in his garden when she spurned his advances and he laughed in her face. A sane man would have moved on. A reasonable man would have forgotten, if not forgiven. But the duke was neither sane nor reasonable, and Charlotte shuddered to think what fate awaited her if she were to be delivered into his hands.

  “You can’t do this, Dobson. Whatever he’s paying you I’ll double it. I’ll triple it,” she said wildly. Reeling onto her elbows she scrambled back and bumped into a chair. With Dobson standing between her and the door there was nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to run.

  But she would be damned if she surrendered willingly.

  “Get up.” Dobson nudged her leg with the toe of his boot. “The carriage is waiting. We can do this the hard way or the easy way. I would prefer the former, but I do have orders to bring you to him in”–he smacked his lips together suggestively–“working condition.”

  “Please don’t do this,” she begged, blinking fast enough to bring tears to her eyes. “I’ll give you anything you want.”

  He kicked her. “I said get UP.”

  “I can’t. I… I feel like I am going to be ill. You have to help me.” Curling one hand over her stomach, she hunched forward and extended the other. She heard Dobson sigh, grumble something unintelligible under his breath, and tried not to cringe when she felt his cold, clammy skin slide against hers.

  Taking a deep, even breath she allowed Dobson to pull her to her feet. He released her hand and she swayed back and forth, bracing her fingers to her temple as though dizzy.

  “There is no time for this,” he growled impatiently. When he reached to jerk her towards the door, she attacked.

  Gavin knew something was wrong.

  The feeling hung over his head all day. It followed him like a dark, heavy cloud threatening rain. He may not have felt the drops, but he knew the cloud was there nevertheless, and his wariness grew by the hour until he finally stood up and excused himself in the middle of one of most important business mergers of his life.

  The lord with whom he had been attempting to negotiate an alliance with jumped to his feet, his jowls quivering in indignation when Gavin gathered his coat.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  “My solicitor will handle the rest of the details.” Gavin paused at the door to look pointedly at Mr. Thompson, a tall, slightly built man in his forties with a nervous tick and a mind just shy of genius. “I will return tomorrow to sign the contracts.”

  But Lord Hansel Burns, an earl of considerable wealth who was accustomed to getting exactly what he wanted when he wanted it, was not satisfied in the least. “Now see here, Graystone. It’s you I am doing this deal with and it bloody well better be you I get, not your lackey. Now kindly take off from the door and sit yourself down so we can settle this like gentlemen.”

  “Ah, see, that is where you are wrong.”

  “Wrong?” The earl’s forehead creased.

  “I’m no gentleman. And with all due respect, if you believe my signature underneath yours means I will be taking orders, then you can take that pipe you have not stopped smoking for the past two hours and shove it up your arse. Good day to you, Lord Burns. Mr. Thompson, please see to it that everything is handled accordingly.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The earl’s eyes threatened to bulge out his head when Gavin slammed the door behind him. “Is he always like this?” he demanded of the solicitor.

  “I’m afraid so,” Mr. Thompson said apologetically.

  “Well, where the bloody hell is he off to in such a rush?”

  “Home, I believe. He’s a newlywed and is quite taken with his wife.”

  “Is he now?” Leaning back in his chair, Lord Burns rubbed his chin and grinned. Having been more or less happily married to the same woman for twenty-two years, the earl fancied himself a knowledgeable man where matrimony was concerned. Even so, it had taken him quite a while to figure out that to keep his wife happy, he always need to prioritize her over his business. It spoke to Gavin’s intelligence that he’d already figured that little fact out. And the earl liked working with intelligent men.

  “Go on then,” said Lord Burns, nodding to papers scattered across the desk between them. “I do not have all day. Draw up the next contract. Does Graystone want an eight or ten percent commission on this one?”

  “Twenty,” Mr. Thompson said without hesitation. “Mr. Graystone takes twenty percent across the board and not a shilling less.”

  “Cunning bastard. No wonder he’s going to end up richer than the rest of us combined, devil take him. Very well. Fifteen it is.”

  Mr. Thompson didn’t blink. “Twenty.”

  “Eighteen.”

  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Lord Burns.”

  “Oh, sit down,” the earl grumbled when the solicitor began to gather his papers, “and have a glass of scotch. If you and Graystone are going to insist on robbing me blind you might as well be civil about it.”

  Hiding a grin of his own, Mr. Thompson sat down. He had only come to work for Gavin three weeks ago, but in that short amount of time his respect and admiration for his employer had grown exponentially. People often asked him why he thought Gavin was so successful. The answer, to his mind, was simple enough.

  Gavin was not afraid of failure.

  He was a man who knew what it was like to go hungry. He had done it before, and was prepared to do it again. He carried that nonchalance with him into every meeting. It frightened and intimidated far more than any words or actions ever could, and as a result he almost always got exactly what he wanted.

  Only Mr. Thompson and Ernie, Gavin’s valet, knew that Gavin was beginning to dictate more of his responsibilities. This was not the first meeting he had left early, nor would it be the last. Mr. Thompson would often catch him staring off into space, a vague smile on his lips, and knew he was not thinking of the business at hand but rather of his wife.

  Gavin would never hand over the reins completely–of that the solicitor was certain–but there was a shift taking place. An unspoken rearranging of priorities. Mr. Thompson only hoped that one day he would find someone who put the same light in his eyes that he saw in Gavin’s. Until then business would be his mistress, a mistress he had willingly inherited from his employer.

  Pulling a contract from beneath the pile of papers, he pushed it across the desk towards the earl and offered a quill freshly dipped in ink. “Your signature, my lord.”

  Releasing a long, suffering sigh, Lord Burns bent his head and signed.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Charlotte went for Dobson’s eyes.

  Curling her fingers into claws, she scratched merciles
sly at his face, stabbing and digging at the soft, doughy flesh until blood trickled down her wrists and stained her gloves in stains of dark, ugly crimson.

  Dobson howled in agony. He tried to throw her off, but Charlotte clung to him with all the tenacity of a feral dog, letting him go only when he managed to get a fist between them and plowed it into her stomach.

  “My eyes!” He staggered blindly away, upending a small wooden table. It crashed to its side, splintering on impact. “You bitch! You’ve blinded me.”

  Ignoring the pain in her abdomen, Charlotte darted forward, wrapped her hands around one of the spindly legs jutting out from the broken table, and wrenched it free. She tripped over the hem of her skirts and stumbled, but managed to right herself without falling. Holding the table leg in front of her like a club, she waved it at the butler’s mangled face. Tears streamed down her cheeks, mixing with the blood splatter from the long, vicious gouges in Dobson’s cheeks to create a gruesome watercolor.

  She swung the leg with all her might. Dobson tried to jump back, but with his eyesight compromised he moved clumsily. She brought her makeshift weapon down across the arm he raised to protect his face, and the impact of wood against flesh sang through her entire body.

  Dobson cried out in pain.

  Charlotte felt only grim satisfaction.

  “Bastard,” she hissed. Raising the leg she waved it menacingly in the air. The butler cringed, tumbling over his own feet in his haste to get away. He landed sprawled in a heap, pinned between an antique dresser and the wall. He didn’t try to get up, and Charlotte was not surprised by his cowardice.

  It took a coward to attack an unarmed woman. A coward to plan something so devious. A coward to attempt to carry it through. She tried not to think of what would have happened if he had managed to get her out of the house and into the carriage. Instead she thought of why Dobson would ever do such a thing. Of what might drive an otherwise sane man to madness.

  “What did I do to make you hate me so?” she demanded, holding the club over his head. “I have done you no wrong. I have never been unkind to you.”

  Dobson squinted at her. “Your husband never should have purchased Shire House to begin with. If not for him, none of this would have been necessary!”

  “But why?” she persisted. Her hands unconsciously tightened on table leg, her knuckles turning white. “Without Gavin, you would have been out of a job. Without Gavin, the house would have fallen into complete ruin.”

  “Because it was not his to buy!” Dobson’s face darkened to a deep, incensed red. “It should have been mine. It all should have been mine.”

  Charlotte shook her head. Devoid of pins, her hair tumbled in a long tangle of curls down her back. With her torn and bloodied dress, bruised throat, and swollen eyes she imagined she looked quite a fright. Her body ached. Her chest burned. She wanted nothing more than to soak in a hot bath for the next three days straight, but she couldn’t leave Dobson here to escape. Not after what he’d done. Not after what he’d tried to do.

  What made it all worse was that nothing he said made sense. As butler, Dobson had a comfortable salary. Esteem within the ranks of the household. An entire staff beneath his command. Why would he risk all of that?

  “I still don’t understand,” she said.

  “Of course you don’t.” Turning his head to the side, Dobson spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor. “You’re a woman. As weak and spineless as the rest of them.”

  She tapped the end of the club against her palm. “You were saying?”

  Dobson flushed. “You caught me off guard, that’s all. Underneath that pretty face you’re just like my mother. A helpless, pitiful excuse of a whore who couldn’t give her son what he deserved! What was rightfully his!”

  She stared at him in amazement. “You believe Shire House should belong to you?”

  “I know it should!” he shouted. “It’s mine.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said when he started to get to his feet.

  “It is mine,” he repeated in a sullen tone of a child whose toy had been taken away. “It was always meant for me since the moment I was born. I was the eldest. I was the first. I was the heir!”

  Charlotte nearly dropped her club. “The late Lord Manheim was your father. You…you are his son.”

  “His illegitimate son,” Dobson said scornfully. “My mother could have made him claim me, but no. I was an accident, she told me. A mistake made after Lord Manheim went up to the servant’s quarters after dark. To cover it up, she married the butler before she began to show. He’d had his eye on her for years, never knowing what kind of a slut she really was. Shire House should have belonged to me! I grew up here. I cared for the manor when I came of age. I loved it as no one else ever did, and what is my reward? Bowing and scraping to the likes of your husband, a man without an ounce of blue blood in his veins!”

  So much hate, Charlotte thought dazedly. It had festered inside of Dobson all of his life. Hate for his mother. Hate for his father. Hate for those who had what he could not. It was a wonder he managed to hold onto his sanity for as long as he did, and despite the pain of what he had put her through she could not help but feel a stirring of pity.

  “I am certain your mother provided for you the best she—”

  “What do you know of it? You, a lady who married a commoner! Your husband is nothing.”

  Charlotte drew back her shoulders. “He means something to me, and that is all that matters. I am sorry your life did not turn out as you hoped, but we all have choices to make, and you will have to answer for yours.”

  Dobson glared at her. “I have no one to answer to, least of all—”

  “CHARLOTTE! CHARLOTTE, WHERE ARE YOU?”

  At the achingly familiar sound of Gavin’s voice, Charlotte forgot Dobson existed. At last, she thought. It is over at last. The chair leg clattered to the floor. Relief came in a sigh, one that threatened to turn into a sob before she choked it back and called out, “In here! Gavin, I am in here. The rear parlor.”

  She heard his pounding footsteps as he raced through the house. Then the door was thrown open so hard it bounced off the wall and the knob broke. Gavin did not even seem to notice. He had eyes only for Charlotte, and when he took in her disheveled appearance he released a vicious curse the likes of which she had never heard before.

  “Who did this to you?” His gaze wild, his face pale, he kicked aside what remained of the broken table and pulled her against the length of his hard body, cradling her as though she were made of delicate glass, which at the moment it felt as though she was. She wrapped her arms around him, clutching at the folds of his jacket as she inhaled his scent.

  “I am so glad you’re here,” she murmured, burrowing her face into his chest. “I was so frightened.”

  He touched her gently, his hands running down the length of her spine before traveling up her arms and across her ribcage as though to ensure himself she was all in one piece before he cupped her cheeks. She stared up at him, her eyes swimming with tears, and he swore again. “All of the blood—”

  “It isn’t mine. Well, most of it isn’t,” she amended.

  “Who?” he repeated harshly. “Tell me who did this to you.”

  Charlotte did not speak. She simply pointed.

  “Dobson?” The shock in Gavin’s voice was mirrored by the shock on his face. He gazed slack jawed at his trusted butler, seemingly unable to move, before Charlotte felt a hard shudder wrack his body and he released her to throw himself at Dobson.

  The butler screamed like a stuck pig and then there was only the sound of flesh hitting flesh, furious curses, and mewling whimpers.

  “Gavin, stop,” Charlotte cried in alarm. “You are going to kill him. Gavin, STOP!”

  Breathing heavily, Gavin whirled away from Dobson. Behind him the butler appeared unconscious, but alive. His nose was grotesquely broken, as well as his jaw. It hinged crookedly off to one side, and Charlotte averted her gaze to her husba
nd.

  A vein pulsed in Gavin’s forehead. His hands, streaked red with blood, were still curled into fists. His chest rose and fell in time with his raggedly drawn breaths, and the pain in his eyes reflected the pain she felt in her body.

  “He hurt you,” he said hoarsely.

  “Yes,” she acknowledged with a nod. “He did. Have him arrested. Have him sent away so I never have to see him again, but do not kill him. I do not want his death on your conscience.”

  Gavin swallowed with visible difficulty and Charlotte took his hand. How odd it felt, and yet how right at the same time, to be the one giving comfort. It steadied her, grounded her, and without speaking she leaned up on her tiptoes to press a soft kiss to his cheek. “I am going to have a bath drawn,” she whispered into his ear, “and go lay down in our bed. Will you come to me when you are done with this?”

  “I need to know why—” he began, but she silenced him by pressing a finger to his lips.

  “I will tell you everything,” she promised. “But first, I need to bathe and change and you need to have him taken away so he can never hurt us again.”

  Gavin gave a tense jerk of his head, which she took for a ‘yes’. Looping her arms around his neck she squeezed him tight, needing to reassure herself of his realness, before she left the room without sparing Dobson a second glance.

  Gavin waited until Charlotte had closed the door behind her to kneel over Dobson. Staring down at the bruised, battered face of his butler, he felt neither regret nor sympathy for the beating he had inflicted. Dobson’s wounds would heal with time; his nose would be worse for wear, his jaw would most likely never work quite right again, but he’d live.