by kc
The husband narrowed his eyes on Ethan’s face. Ethan swiped a hand over his cheek. “Oh, bloody hell,” he said wearily. “She scratched me when I wanted to leave.” Though Ethan was still drunk, even he recognized how ridiculous that sounded.
“Sylvie, are you injured?”The husband’s grasping for this like a lifeline.
“You canna be serious. Can you no’ see she’s lying?” Ethan made a disgusted sound. “The witch asked me here, I vow it—”
“No,” she wailed loud enough to crack glass. “He tried to rape me, but I fought him. Do you see his face?”
Ethan gave her a look of pure fury, staring at her while telling the man, “Ask at the inn, ask anyone there. She invited me.” But she had been circumspect. Would any of the patrons have seen them together in that hallway for the brief moments when she’d approached him?
The woman shook her head fiercely. “My maid was with me at the inn and when we came home. Ask Flora! Ask her!” Touching the back of her hand against her forehead, she sank to the edge of the bed. “Oh, God,” she whispered, “I was so afraid.”
Ethan gaped in amazement.Christ, she’s good —
With a bellow, the old man charged for Ethan. Habit took over. Ethan threw a fist, breaking his nose—blood spurted.
“I’ll see you in Newgate for this!” the husband roared, cupping his face.
It was important for Ethan to remember something. What was it? “Goddamn it, I did nothing to this woman…and she instigated it all.”
“Get him!” the old man thickly commanded his men.
At that instant, the answer Ethan sought came to him, and he lunged for his jacket.
A blow crashed against the back of his skull. His face pounded the floor. Fists rained down again and again, kicks to the gut…. He fought the blackness for as long as he could; he had to explain, had to defend himself.
He dimly heard the bitch crying to her husband, worrying about the scandal if this were to go to trial…their reputations, their standing…other husbands with his power would take care of this themselves.
Ethan knew that in this isolated part of the country the lords were their own entities, laws unto themselves if they chose, always with henchmen willing to do black deeds. And they hated strangers, much less foreigners.
The note, his deliverance, was stowed in his jacket pocket just feet from him. He tried to speak but could only grunt in pain. An attempt to reach for it earned him a booted kick to the chest.
Forcing his eyes open, he saw that she was crying hysterically, seeming to believe her own lies. “With you and Brymer gone, I was an easy target.”
The cuckold was soothing her, wrapping her in his coat. “I should never have left you—”
“Th-that fiend was in the house with me, withMaddy !” she added significantly. Whoever this Maddy was, the mere mention of her in this context made the old man swing his gaze on Ethan. Seeming dumb with rage, eyes glazed over with it, he assured her they’d take care of this on their own—no one would have to know. Ethan felt true fear rippling through him.
They’d make sure the Scottish bastard never raped another woman as long as he lived.
Castration.Cold sweat broke out over Ethan’s body; they were going to take a knife to him.
The old man hesitated, then gave a nod. “Brymer, take him out back. See it done.”
This Brymer was the giant with the killing look in his eyes. “It will be a pleasure.” He hauled Ethan up, dealing a punishing blow to his jaw. Ethan tried to shake it off, but blackness consumed him….
He woke to the bite of a rope cinched around his wrists. A bone-deep ache radiated from his shoulders up to his clenched fingers. He tried to open his eyes—only one swollen lid would crack enough for him to see—and found himself strung up to the rafter of some type of stable. A blood-soaked gag filled his mouth.
Ethan saw a tall, burly man sitting on the edge of a stool that was about to buckle under his great weight. His meaty leg bounced with nervous energy as he cast Ethan furtive, guilty glances. The man knew. He knew Ethan was being wronged. Of course, the wife would have done things like this before. Ethan yelled behind his gag and grappled against his bonds, frenzied to tell him about the note.
From behind him, he heard a door creak open. Brymer asked, “Is he awake yet, Tully?”
“Only just,” Tully said, heaving his big frame to his feet. “I was thinking…m-maybe one of us should ride to the inn, and just ask a few questions.”
“Van Rowen wants us to do a job on him,” Brymer said. “So that’s what we’re going to do.” Brymer was eager for it.
Van Rowen. Why did the name sound familiar? When Ethan got out of this, he would kill Van Rowen, ripping him apart with his bare hands. The man had no idea what he’d just brought down on himself and his entire family—
Ethan heard the unmistakable sound of a blade being unsheathed, and he fought to free his hands.
“But, Brymer, what would it hurt to ride—”
“I just returned from the inn. No one saw anything untoward.” Brymer moved into Ethan’s field of vision. “They just saw Mrs. Van Rowen eating a meal with Flora for about an hour before they left.” He picked his teeth with the knifepoint. “Coachman swears he saw no one else and drove them home alone, as does Flora.”
“But sometimes…it seems Mrs. Van Rowen might—”
“On the other hand,” Brymer continued, ignoring Tully’s words, “this one here’s aforeigner , swilling spirits. The barmaid said he’s a mean drunk and a Scottish brute.”
That spiteful bitch…just because I passed her over…
“His die is cast, Tully. But as for you, you’ll either follow your orders—or you’ll take yourself off Van Rowen lands tonight.”
No, no.Ethan could pay him a fortunenot to do this.
Tully’s shoulders slumped.
No, goddamn it, no!
“Hold his head,” Brymer ordered.
Tully did as he was told, taking Ethan’s head in his thick arms. Ethan fought against the grip, spitting curses behind the gag.
“Wh-what do you plan to do?”
“First off, I’m going to finish what Mrs. Van Rowen started,” Brymer said with a nod at the marks on Ethan’s face. “I bet the ladies fancy his looks. They won’t ever again after tonight. Of course, that’ll be the least of his worries.”
When Ethan felt the cold blade against the heated skin on his right cheek, he twisted, using all his remaining strength to break free. Nothing.
The knife sliced cleanly; Ethan roared in pain.
“Hold him still!” Brymer snapped.
“I’m trying!” Tully clenched harder. “He’s a big bastard!”
Brymer cut and cut until blood coated Ethan’s neck. Soon Ethan was numb all over, barely conscious.
“What are you doing?” Tully asked.
“If you take the strip from the middle, it will never heal right when he gets sewn up.”
The desperate need to fight was there, burning in him, but his leaden body wouldn’t cooperate. When Brymer was at last done, Tully released Ethan, and his head lolled forward.
Brymer took him by the hair, yanking him up to smile at his handiwork. “Come look, Tully.”
The man did. His eyes went wide, and he retched repeatedly before he lunged away, vomiting in the hay.
When Ethan saw the strip of skin lying in the dirt, blackness dotted his vision. He silently vowed,I’m going to destroy you. You’re all going to die as slowly as you’ve done this to me…. Then his eyes slid closed.
He was roused by an anguished bellow sounding from the manor house. The bitch began screaming as well, a series of shrieks growing louder in succession.
A door slammed…someone ran toward them…seconds later a servant burst through the doorway of the stable, gasping, “Stop! Let him free!”
In a flash of clarity, Ethan comprehended what had happened. Another of the bitch’s screams rent the quiet of the night, then sudden silence.
Ethan laughed behind his gag, crazed. Wetness leaked from his eyes.
Van Rowen had found the note.
One
London
Summer 1856
Ethan had long grown used to the sinking expressions people cast him when they realized it was he who darkened their doorsteps—but in the East End rookeries this tendency seemed even more pronounced.
Many saw Ethan and ran.
The sound of his boots booming across wet cobblestones was all Ethan heard as he chased a drunken cockney—one among many of his sources of information.
Lunging forward, Ethan clamped the cockney’s shoulders, tossing him headfirst into the side of a tenement building. The man collapsed into a stunned heap.
Hauling him to his feet, Ethan drew his pistol, pressing the muzzle against the man’s temple. “Where’s Davis Grey?”
“I ’aven’t seen ’im.” He hissed in a breath between the copious gaps in his teeth. “I swear to ye, MacCarrick!”
Ethan casually cocked his gun. The drunk knew of his reputation, knew Ethan would just as easily shoot him as not back in this dark alley. “Then why did you run?”
“B-because ye scare the piss out o’ me.”
Understandable.
“I ’eard Grey was in Portugal, with an ’unger for opium. And that ’e might be returnin’. That’s all. I swear it!”
After a hesitation, Ethan released him, deciding to believe him. The information meshed with his own, and this man likely wouldn’t court Ethan’s wrath by lying. “You know what to do if you see Grey. And you know what I’ll do if you doona notify me.”
The cockney muttered thanks for his mercy, then scurried off into the night.
For the last several hours, Ethan had combed the slums, using all his resources to track Davis Grey, a onetime compatriot and family friend—and now Ethan’s target.
Though all his reports indicated that Grey wasn’t in England, Ethan had wanted to make certain. Tonight he’d chased every lead he’d been able to think of in London. Tomorrow he would leave the city to hunt for Grey elsewhere.
As Ethan strode down the winding, narrow streets back to his mount, a surprisingly comely whore smiled and dropped her shawl, revealing her heavy breasts to him.
And he felt nothing.
When he passed under a flickering gaslight, he showed the woman the other side of his face. She turned away in disgust, yanking her shawl to her neck. It was because of women like her that he’d stopped seeking sex entirely.
At twenty-three, he’d still been in bandages when he’d fully comprehended he wouldn’t be having any woman he didn’t have to pay. He’d already vowed never to drink again after that night in Buxton. And for a young man suddenly deprived of drinking and women—two of his routine follies—a profession in the Network, one of the Crown’s clandestine organizations, had held definite appeal. Along with his brother Hugh, Ethan had signed on, but only after he’d delivered a subtle, but absolute, revenge against his enemies.
Whereas Hugh was an assassin in the Network, cleanly completing his assignments, Ethan would kill, spy, and extort to get a job done. Ethan was skilled at what he did, successful doing the jobs no one else wanted to do. His brothers called him a jack of all lethal trades.
Once he’d returned to his horse—a fine gelding with a strong and unwavering dislike for him—Ethan mounted up and decided to ride by the London town house of Edward Weyland, Ethan and Hugh’s superior. More news might have come in. Besides, what else did he have to do?
When he arrived, he caught Quin Weyland just climbing into his saddle. “Is your uncle in?” Ethan asked. Quin also worked in the Network and was being groomed to eventually take over his uncle’s role.
“No, he’s out of town. But I saw Hugh just a few minutes ago.”
“Just Hugh? No’ Court?”
Quin absently shook his head.
Damn it, Hugh was supposed to be with Court, their younger brother, making sure he returned to London from the Continent.
In an irritated tone, Quin said, “I thought you told us Hugh was going to be able to handle this situation with Davis Grey.”
“Aye, he will.”
“You should have seen the look on his face when I apprised him of the threat.”
“He should react that way,” Ethan said impatiently. “Grey’s a dangerous killer with an agenda.” Grey had worked in the Network as an assassin—in fact, he’d trained Hugh.
“No, I meant when I told him it wasJane in danger.” Jane Weyland, the fair daughter of Edward Weyland.
They’d heard word that Grey sought to kill Jane for revenge against Weyland because she was what Weyland treasured most in the world. To protect her, Weyland planned for Ethan to hunt and destroy Grey and for Hugh to act as Jane’s bodyguard, trailing her.
Shouldn’t be a problem. Where Jane went, Hugh yearned to follow.
Quin added, “Grey told me Hugh loved her.”
Ethan quirked a brow. “We’re talkin’ to Grey now?”
“Years ago, before he turned.”
Turned madman.Grey was known to wear a jovial expression, his demeanor complimentary and amenable, even while he was slitting his targets’ throats.
“Well, is it true?” Quin asked.
“Hugh might have had an infatuation when they were younger,” Ethan lied. Hugh was likely still in love with Jane to an unspeakable—anembarrassing —degree. “He hasn’t even seen her in years.” And had never told her how he felt.
“He rode off after her tonight quickly enough.”
“Where’s she gone at this hour?” Ethan asked.
“She sneaked out her window to meet my sisters and their young friend from out of town.”
“To go where?”
“Haymarket Street,” Quin finally answered. “I’m on my way there right now.”
“Gin palaces and prostitutes.” The rookeries were squalid, but Haymarket was seamy. “What’s there to tempt them?”
Quin admitted, “The Hive.”
“They dinna go there,” Ethan bit out incredulously. The Hive, a warehouse converted into an unlicensed dance hall, was infamous for debauchery. “How do the women in your family evenfind these things?” Quin’s two sisters and his six female first cousins comprised the Weyland Eight, as society called them. They were progressives, loving all things modern, and had dubbed themselves “sensation seekers.”
Ethan called them “spoiled chits with too much coin and too much freedom.”
Quin shook his head. “I wish I bloody knew.”
“I canna believe they’re voluntarily going into that place. You ken your sisters will no’ come out in the same shape as they went in.”
“Go to hell, Kavanagh—”
“Doona call me that,” Ethan snapped. He hated being reminded of his title, of that life. “Why do you no’ drag them home by their ears?”
“And be forced to give Jane a reason why she suddenly has none of the freedom she’s accustomed to?”
“She does no’ know she’s in danger?”
Quin shook his head. “We are hoping you’ll take out Grey early enough that Jane never has to know about any of us.” He reined around when Ethan prodded his obstinate mount forward. “You’re going?”
“Aye, I need to see my brother.”And make sure he’s capable of the job at hand. “What’s the fare tonight at the Hive?”
Quin muttered, “An illegal courtesans’ ball.”
Ethan gave a humorless laugh. He could practically feel sorry for the unsuspecting “young friend from out of town.” The lass was about to get an eye-opening lesson in depravity.
Regrettably, Ethan had seen the love-struck look on his brother’s face before.
Though Hugh was an assassin—one of the most skilled and prolific in the world—his mind went blank when he was near Jane Weyland. He had difficulty speaking. His brow would bead with sweat like a green lad’s.
Just minutes ago, Ethan had found him in this state in an alleywa
y that crossed Haymarket Street. Hugh had been so engrossed as he watched Jane stroll up Haymarket with her entourage that he hadn’t even heard Ethan approach.
Hugh was never taken unaware; tonight a runaway dray cart could have slipped up on him.
The situation with Hugh and Jane was incomprehensible to a man like Ethan, who’d never felt even a casual regard for a woman. As Ethan often reminded his brothers, he himself remained immune to untidy entanglements like that.