by Gaelen Foley
At last, they approached the end of the dark tunnel, where another giant henchman was stationed in front of the locked door to Lowell’s office.
The bodyguard pushed away from the wall, studying them with interest as they approached. “What’s this?”
“They want to see him.”
“Mr. Lowell is not accepting visitors.”
“He’ll see me. Tell him it’s Nick Forrester.”
The oxlike man shook his head. “You’ll have to make an appointment. Come back some other time.”
“He’s from the Order,” the door guard confided to his colleague. “If we turn him away, the boss might not like it. At least let him know he’s here.”
The other one eyed them skeptically for a moment, then gave a dismissive shrug. “I’ll ask. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” he advised, his tone edged ever so faintly with sarcasm. “He’s in a mood tonight. The chicken’s too dry.”
The guard gave a deferential rap on the door before stepping into Lowell’s office to inquire.
Nick and Virginia exchanged a dubious look as they waited. He had no doubt that Lowell would see him. Lowering his lips toward her ear, he whispered, “Wait out here for me.”
“No chance!” she whispered back. “I’m coming with you.”
“The hell you are.” He glanced back at the door guard to make sure he wasn’t eavesdropping. “It’s bad enough you even came into the gambling hell.”
“I already told you I want to speak with him personally. You agreed. Care to go back to prison?”
“You’re not going to send me back,” he whispered, a knowing smile tugging at his lips. “Not after what just happened outside. I’m not stupid, darling.”
She stared straight ahead at the closed door. “I told you it meant nothing.”
The guard returned while Nick was still struggling against the urge to kiss the hoyden senseless.
The other giant looked surprised by the answer he brought back. “Mr. Lowell will give you five minutes,” he announced. Then he nodded to his mate. “Search ’em.” He looked at Nick. “Turn, hands on the wall.”
Nick rolled his eyes with impatience but complied. While the larger of the two guards patted him down, removing from his person all the weapons that he found, the other fellow examined Virginia.
Nick watched his every move, glowering.
After pulling the little pistol out of her reticule, he ordered her to take off her hat and show that there was nothing hidden in it.
“Watch it!” Nick suddenly exclaimed as the muscled hulk groped his crotch with a little too much interest, then leered at him when Nick turned to scowl.
But he was more concerned about the other fellow, who had just ordered Virgil’s daughter to hike up her skirts so he might check for an ankle holster or one strapped around her thigh.
“Do you want to die?” he asked the man, stepping toward him.
“I have to check her!”
“You put your hands on her, I’ll break them for you, have you got that?”
Nick stared at him. He did not want to have to kill anyone tonight, but this man was dangerously close to stepping over the line.
Still, even he was a bit surprised at the savagery of his own reaction.
But this was Virgil’s daughter.
The guard lifted his hands instinctively, backing away. “No disrespect—sir.”
She, meanwhile, had arched a brow at him.
Bloody hell. She was gazing at him with a wicked sparkle in her eyes.
He refused to look at her.
For his part, Nick was torn. He did not want her coming into the office with him, getting any closer to this nasty corner of the underworld than she already was.
On the other hand, after seeing the guard groping her, he was not about to leave her out here in the hallway with these two.
In any case, having been disarmed, they were now permitted in. The larger guard opened the door for them, leering at Nick again as he passed. After running his hands all over his body, he seemed to have taken a liking to him. “Five minutes,” he reminded them.
Nick brushed off his annoyance, took Virginia’s hand firmly, and led her into the dim, shadowy office of the underworld king.
The fetid smell that hit them just over the threshold was foul beyond description.
Dimly lit, the room itself was choking, airless, close; overwarm and full of clutter; with only one small, high window that had been painted shut. Straight ahead, amid the gloom, sat the hulking, bloated Tick at his desk.
All five hundred pounds of him.
The owner of the establishment was, himself, the main source of the smell. Stale sweat. Greasy body odor: the stench of a man too large around to wash himself properly and too disgusted by his own grotesque form to bother changing clothes as often as he should.
The front of his shirt and waistcoat were splashed with dried stains and drippings from several recent meals.
Everywhere, surrounding him in arm’s reach, were different plates of food, some with courses half-devoured, others waiting for him to grab a handful of this or that and gobble it down, which he did as they walked forward slowly.
Good God. Nick knew that Lowell did not believe in wasting food, but there was no telling how long some of those dishes had been sitting there.
Long enough to attract the roaches scuttling over the half-gnawed hambone and crawling up the cake.
This strange sight, the embodiment of gluttony, was quite shocking, even to Nick, who had known what to expect.
He felt Virginia falter by his side and could not help but gloat a little at her revulsion. Well, he had warned her to stay outside in the boat. Then he frowned. She had better not faint.
For his part, it took everything in him not to pull out his handkerchief and cover his nose and mouth rather than breathe the dank, stinking air.
Even Lowell would take that as an insult.
Nick resigned himself to breathing as little as possible. But, really, he mused, instead of calling him the Tick, he ought to have nicknamed Lowell after the creature he most resembled physically: one of those huge, tusked wild hogs that roamed the scrub plains of Spain and grew to the most enormous sizes, hundreds and hundreds of pounds of porcine belligerence, like the wild boar of Greek myth, which had gored Adonis.
He had only dubbed him the Tick because as a businessman, Hugh Lowell had no qualms whatever about bleeding luckless gamblers dry.
“Well, well.” He went on eating continuously, only pausing to swig a drink or pick something out of his teeth. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
“Nice to see you again, too,” Nick drawled.
Crumbs spewed out of his mouth as Lowell scoffed at him. “You’ve got a lot of nerve showin’ your face around here, Forrester. You owe me a load o’ loot.”
“Don’t worry, old friend, I haven’t forgotten.”
“Hmm. Where’ve you been?” he grunted.
“Here and there.”
“Figured I’d’ve seen you before now. Saved the Regent’s life, eh?”
Nick shrugged.
“Nice bit o’ muslin.”
“Isn’t she, though?”
“How do you do,” Gin managed.
“Sit if you want to.”
“No thanks.”
Lowell paused. “Something to eat?”
“God, no,” she whispered, placing her hand on her stomach, clearly fighting off a wave of nausea.
Nick suppressed a laugh.
“Well,” Lowell said, chewing, “hate to be a killjoy, Forrester, but you can’t play in my house anymore. Not until your debts is paid—with interest. Nothing personal. Just business. You know I always liked you, meself, but it’s the principle. If word got out that Hugh Lowell has gone soft, I’d be out of business. Rules is rul
es. I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course. But I’m not here to gamble.”
Lowell stopped chewing, going suddenly on his guard. “Then what do you want?” he asked through a mouthful of scalloped potatoes and God-knew-what else.
“I need a game piece for the Bacchus Bazaar,” Nick answered coolly.
Lowell’s eyes widened for a second, then he laughed, picked up a napkin, and wiped off his mouth. “Well, now,” he said at length, taking a brief break from his nonstop meal, “that’s goin’ to be expensive. Now you’re really upping the stakes, aren’t you? Good lad. Unfortunately, you can’t afford it. Unless you’ve brought me some sort o’ useful information?”
“None of that today,” Nick said serenely.
Lowell snorted and slogged down a mouthful of ale. “I could always let my bruisers beat it out of you.”
“You don’t want to do that,” Nick replied.
“You got to admit, it would be some entertainment, though! Fine pugilists like yourself, against as many of my hired apes as you care to take on. I pay those lads good money,” Lowell declared. “Would be a boon to me to find out if they’re worth it.”
“Sorry, I don’t have time for that tonight. I’m only here to get a game piece.”
Lowell shrugged. “Well, pay me for it, and we’ll see.”
Nick reached into his waistcoat pocket. Virginia glanced at him in surprise. No, he had no money. But he did have two items of value left.
He supposed the most intelligent thing to have done would have been to ask her to stop at Rundell and Bridge’s before coming here. Everyone knew the famed jewelers’ was the aristocracy’s favorite place in London to raise quick money by pawning the family jewels or other objects of value. But for his pride’s sake, Nick had not made that request.
He had thought he could get away with it by making her stay outside. Keep her from finding out.
No such luck.
Obviously, Lowell was not going to give him something as valuable as a game piece to the Bacchus Bazaar when he already owed the gull-groper a couple hundred quid.
Ah, well. Lady Burke’s opinion of him probably couldn’t get much worse, anyway.
Besides, Lowell would be quite tickled with the extremely rare item that Nick intended to use to cover his debts. Its rarity and its meaning made it valuable enough to pay for the game piece, too; and that, in turn, would allow Nick to help Virgil’s daughter and save those kidnapped girls, as well. Hell, it was for a good cause, and might just bring him his redemption.
Reaching into his breast pocket, Nick pulled out the most valuable possession he had left and placed it slowly on the table.
“This should cover it.”
Gin gasped, appalled at what he set down on the table. “Nicholas, no! You can’t let him have that! Nick, it’s your medal for the Order!”
“Is that what that is?” Lowell murmured, sounding impressed.
“It doesn’t matter,” Nick told her through gritted teeth.
But as Mr. Lowell reached for the ornate white Maltese cross, Gin snatched it off the table. “Give me that! You can’t have it,” she snapped at the gambling-hell owner. “We’ll pay with something else.”
“Virginia—”
“No,” she answered. “I refuse to let you part with this. It might not mean very much to you right now, but one day, it will.” She clutched it safely in her hand—the medal the Regent had personally placed around his neck in Westminster Abbey. “This is something you will pass down to your children! I’m not going to let you throw it away on a gambling debt.”
“Well, someone’s got to pay it,” Mr. Lowell pointed out, while Nick’s midnight eyes were full of storm as he glared at her.
“It’s all I have,” he forced out, obviously shamed.
She shook her head in exasperation and turned to the gambling-hell owner. “Mr. Lowell, would you be so good as to transfer Lord Forrester’s debt to me?”
Tucking her reticule under her arm, she took off the earrings she had worn tonight merely because they had matched her gown. “Please, take these. They are Indian rubies with diamond chips, in eighteen-karat gold. They are surely worth more than enough to cover both items, his debt and the game piece.”
“Virginia, please don’t do this.”
“It does not signify. I have a vault full of such useless trinkets at home. I was married to a nabob, remember? Besides, I need your help anyway for the next leg of my quest,” she told him, then she offered the earrings to the rotund man.
Lowell took them skeptically and examined them for a moment. He gave one a small nibble with his teeth to test if it was paste, then he lifted his eyebrows. “Genuine article. Very nice. Very nice, indeed.” He glanced from Nick to her again with a bemused look. “I’d rather have the medal, of course, but I’m not made of stone. I can understand why he’d want to keep it.”
“I really don’t care about the stupid thing,” Nick said through gritted teeth.
“Well, I do,” Gin declared.
That medal was a symbol of all he had done for his country and his friends, the solid proof of his nobility. She was not going to let him throw it away, even if he could not see the value of it—or himself—right now.
Someday, he might.
“Why are you doing this? I am not a charity case,” he snarled at her in a quiet tone, glaring into her eyes.
She could see that he was burning up with shame. But somehow, in that moment, he had never been more dear to her.
How she wished she could just give his face a gentle caress to say she understood. It was just his pride talking. But she knew that if she showed any sign of tenderness, he’d take it as pity, and he’d never forgive her. So she kept her expression aloof. “Don’t worry, I intend to make you work for it. I’ll keep it as collateral until you’ve paid me back in full.”
“And how exactly am I to do that?” he bit out with a cynical stare.
Lowell’s husky laughter interrupted, full of innuendo. “Don’t you already have that sort of arrangement with Madame Angelique, Nick, old boy?” he asked dryly. “Wouldn’t want to cross her, lady.”
“Who’s Angelique?” Gin inquired.
Nick scowled at him for mentioning that name. “Never mind it. We came to get a game piece. Will that cover it or not?” he demanded.
“Oh, yes, yes,” said Lowell, watching them in fascination.
“That reminds me,” Gin spoke up, letting go the mystery of this Angelique woman. Whatever the name meant, she was not entirely sure she wanted to know. She turned again to Mr. Lowell. “Have you ever heard of a man called Rotgut?”
“Might have. Why? What’s he done?”
“I have reason to believe he is abducting young girls off the streets and means to auction them like cattle at the Bacchus Bazaar.”
Lowell’s frown deepened. “Abducting them, you say? Well, I’m no saint, but I don’t approve of that sort of thing. All my Jewels come work for me of their own free will. You going after him?” he asked Nick. “Because I don’t want any trouble. As one of only two dispensaries in England, it won’t be hard for certain people to track it back to me, if you go descending on the Bazaar and start wreaking destruction, as per usual. Those aren’t the sort of people I’m keen to cross.”
“What, you seem well prepared for any sort of conflict,” Nick muttered, nodding toward the door, beyond which Lowell’s giant guards waited.
“Nevertheless,” the large man replied as he picked up a chicken bone and fingered it nervously, “it ain’t good for business.” He took a large bite and sank his teeth in.
“Lowell, you may be many things, but a coward isn’t one of them,” Nick said. “She’s paid the debt, now give her the damn game piece.”
“With all due respect, I don’t know this woman!” he protested, spewing
bits of chicken. “If you really need to have it for these so-called kidnapped girls, I can give it to you, but not to her. Sorry, ma’am, no offense. This one may be a penniless bastard, but we go back a long time. You, I’ve never seen before in my life.” Then he looked Nick right in the eyes. “So are you in this with her or not?”
Nick clenched his jaw.
Gin folded her arms across her chest and turned to him, even more eager than Lowell was to hear his answer.
If Nick refused to continue on with her, she was out of luck.
She had the money for the undertaking—and her own personal reasons for being willing to spend it; Nick had no money, but he had years of experience in the field—and was approved for the game piece.
But he had wanted to wash his hands of this and be on his way after tonight to start his new life as anything but a spy.
He finally rolled his eyes. “Of course I’ll see it through! Just give me the damn thing.”
Gin exhaled slightly, eyeing him askance. He still refused to look at her.
“All right, then,” said Lowell. Tearing off a final bite of the chicken, he wiped his hands on a napkin, then undertook the taxing process of rising from his steel-reinforced chair with the help of a cane.
As he lurched his enormous bulk slowly upright, Gin winced in sympathy, watching the huge man shamble over to the vault on the far wall.
Mr. Lowell glanced over at them suspiciously before he started dialing in the combination.
While they waited, Gin wondered what to say to Nick after this. His posture was stiff, his face tense; he refused to meet her gaze.
She followed his stare back to the vault, where Lowell was opening a small mahogany box.
From out of it, he lifted an ivory chip carved in the shape of the diamond and engraved with back-to-back B’s for the Bacchus Bazaar.
This done, he shut the box and put it back in the vault. Leaning on his cane, he pushed the iron door closed and locked it up tightly once more.
After that came the painstaking process of his turning around again and hobbling back across the room. At last, he sank back into his chair with a sigh of relief.
“Here you are.” Slightly winded, he offered Nick the chip.