Alistair paced up and down around the filing cabinets and tried not to look.
Philip had no such compunction. He’d seen it all before in prison, on the transport ships, in the penal colony in Sydney. He twiddled the cane to evoke the reaction Sebastian needed.
Castlereagh didn’t put up much of a struggle. Still, Sebastian berated him as he proceeded. "How could you?" he growled. "Miranda did nothing to you. You let a woman of her class, distinction and breeding be treated like a dog, nearly murdered?"
Philip added, "And what about my wife and children last year? I know it was the Home Office spies, but you knew exactly what they were up to! You allowed Sebastian to help us at the end. Help Viola when she would have been killed. Why, so you could hold it over Alistair’s head at some later date? Is that all we are to you, pieces on a chess board? Is everyone expendable, or liable to be killed if they happen to be in your way?"
Miranda moved so that her back was to Sebastian, and she looked into Castlereagh’s arrogant face, watched his fascinated horror.
"George and I fell in love. Why on earth did you think that that threatened you, the security of this country? Did you really trust him so little that it was necessary to buy his loyalty for so long with the false promise that his brothers would one day be returned to him? He’s always been loyal, God help the poor, decent fool. Did you think him falling in love with me was such a huge danger that you had to have me tricked, assaulted and raped?"
Castlereagh shook his head, his eyes wide, straining against the gag. She risked removing it again.
"It wasn’t supposed to be like that, I swear! Oxnard acted as though he loved you. I didn’t know who you really were at first, and neither did he! I didn’t know he was still married! I give you my word, I didn’t know about his degenerate proclivities. I thought you’d turn up a decent wife to another man, effectively out of George’s reach. I had no idea that he would make you suffer."
"Forgive me if I don’t believe your protestations of shocked innocence. Even after I came back, still you toyed with us. How many people nearly died in the fire the other night? For what? Now George hates and resents you even more. The fire was the last straw. George feels like he has nothing to lose. You of all people ought to know that a person with nothing to lose can be the most dangerous of all.
"Sebastian and I have nothing to lose thanks to you. We’ve had things taken from us which can never be replaced. And now you shall as well. Unless you tell me where Simon is."
"No, I can’t, no—"
She resisted the temptation to spit in his face and hissed instead, "You disgust me. Your kind despoils everything you touch."
"And your kind don’t?" he barked back.
"Are you referring to women, or Radicals?" Miranda asked with a haughty lift of her brow.
"Both!" he hissed. "Despoiling and uprooting..."
"Yes, speaking of root," Sebastian said with an evil grin.
"Sebastian, really." Miranda rolled her eyes as Castlereagh yowled and panted. "Not too loud."
"I say let him have it hard," Philip argued, his face livid. "He’s skewered all of us for years. Debtor’s prisons, overcrowding, making people pay for the merest scrap of comfort like a blanket. You should try surviving in one of those places with your virtue intact. That's if you ever had any to begin with. Why should we fear exposure? It’s high time it all came out into the light."
Sebastian nodded. "Do you think if Philip and I had had a choice we’d have become queans? But you enjoy it, Castlereagh. You sell yourself every day for the power you think you wield. Well, you have no power over George any more. We have power over you. You’re all witnesses to the act of sodomy. He’s ejaculated, more than once, and you can all offer the eyewitness testimony required by law in cases such as this. He can now be tried and hung, can't he, Alistair."
Castlereagh squirmed and shrieked in terror, knowing the law well enough himself to know that every word Sebastian had said was true.
"Aye, hung in front of all London for everyone to jeer at," Alistair confirmed with a nod.
"So listen well, mate," Sebastian drawled. "If you ever come near George or his family and friends again, we will come forward. And so will all the other witnesses who are about to arrive at your kind invitation. We’ll make you wish that someone would just put you out of your misery. And that hell will all be of your own making. Philip, the cane again, please."
"You can’t possibly blame me for—"
Miranda nodded. "I do blame you, Castlereagh. You deserve it. You have the power to make a better world. Instead you choose to use that power for sick games and vendettas. Choose to act like a vicious cat toying with so many mice.
"Well, this little country mouse has chosen to bite, and I’m rabid. You’ve made us this way and brought about your own downfall. Just be thankful George isn’t here. He’s soiled and damaged enough without getting involved in this."
She brought her riding crop down on the desk hard, and he flinched. She could almost feel sorry for the little worm. "Tell me where Simon is or I’m going to have Philip turn that cane around and do to you what Oxnard did to me! Such a pretty ornamental handle, but what damage it can do in a small space with just the right force."
The two-fingered gesture she made set Castlereagh aquiver with terror.
"Oh God, he didn’t—"
Her eyes never altered.
Castlereagh gasped, "They’re in a drawer. Behind the secret panel. Bloody hell, no, please!" he shrieked when Philip brought it even closer.
Miranda immediately went over to the ornate plaster molding. She tapped. It was indeed hollow. Why had they never looked...
"It’s all right, you can gag him again." She felt the wall, and then her eye lit up. "Cupid, the blond little god of love. I might have known you would have a sick sense of humor."
She pushed hard on the each of the putti until eventually one of them released the catch and the secret portal leapt open. She wasted no time and soon located what they had been looking for.
"It’s all here. D’Ambois. Jason, Simon and Georges," she said, using the correct French pronunciation of her beloved's name for the first time. She gave a small smile.
Her hands trembled with excitement and fear. Oh God, please let them both be alive and well, she prayed. She flicked through the folder on Simon first.
Her eyed rounded. "Good God in Heaven," she gasped involuntarily. "You monster!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"What is it?" Philip and Alistair asked, clustering around Miranda to read the secret files over her shoulder.
Philip’s eyes glittered with fury, and he gave Castlereagh a resounding plunge with the cane that echoed all over the room.
"Oh God, and look," Miranda said a moment later.
Alistair lost his temper then. Wielding the second cane, he slammed it across Castlereagh’s shoulders, winding him. "You filthy bastard. I ought to ram this one up you too—"
Miranda had heard and seen all she could take, and was so relieved and distressed she began to cry. She wiped the tears away and concentrated on Jason’s folder.
"The information is old," she said at last, "but there’s enough here to prove he didn’t die during the war. He was in Ireland in the winter of 1814 to 1815. In any case, we pretty much know all we need to about him. It is indeed our Rakehell friend with the poor memory."
She turned back to the drawers and began to flick through hurriedly. "Look, Eltham, cross-referenced with Ellesmere. Avenel, cross-referenced with Hazelmere. Michael Avenel too, Jonathan Deveril. Matthew Dane. Philip Marshal. Alistair Grant. Clifford Stone, and his brother Henry." She gasped again, and fury lit her eyes. "And all sorts of interesting notes in handwriting I’ve become a bit familiar with."
Miranda showed it to Philip. "Bloody hell!" he exclaimed himself. "I’m going to kill—"
She gripped his arm hard. "You can’t. But that singing canary's spying days are going to be well and truly over as of right now."
/> "What do we do with all of this stuff? There’s tons of it." Alistair grimaced in disgust.
"Take all of the things pertaining to us, including the Rakehells. Sebastian, grab anything you can see that looks like a familiar name. Also take anything belonging to any of your old colleagues. Castlereagh has probably been hanging all sorts of things over their heads as well."
"Mmmmm!!" Castlereagh shouted through the gag and began to struggle more desperately than ever before. Whatever he was trying to protect, it was big.
"Oh, I think we can. Don’t you? Alistair ripped apart the Home Office spies and you triumphed. You like to be top dog. Well, now you’re going to be the underdog. Please gentlemen, let’s keep these proceedings dignified," she said in response to their laugh as Sebastian gave him a resounding thwack with his hand, while Alistair hit him with his cane.
"And that was just a love tap, pet," she said chillingly. "Just try to imagine a strong man doing it full force. Or two men alternating. Then you might have some idea of what you set up to happen to me. Your biggest mistake after trying to make George’s life miserable was in letting Oxnard leave me alive, for I swear to you—"
Sebastian hissed now, "I think they’re coming. We need to make this look as depraved as possible."
Alistair snorted. "No fear there. God, I thought I had seen it all when I rescued your niece Patrice, and from living in London." He shook his head.
Castlereagh’s eyes widened and he looked at her imploringly. The noise he was making sounded like, "I never—"
Miranda interpreted it correctly. "Oh, I see, so that wasn’t the plan, to kill me. Though he damn near slit my throat."
Castlereagh’s eyes widened as she showed him the scar.
"Well, I did escape when I had the chance, didn’t I. And more fool you for not telling him who I really was. Or did you slip up and not know?"
Miranda yanked the gag out of his mouth and rammed an orange into it. Trussed up as he was, he looked as though he were about to be served for dinner. Sebastian went to work again with Castlereagh’s loins, Miranda knelt over his face with the riding crop, and Philip took grim satisfaction from wielding the cane in a most unseemly manner.
Alistair hid in behind the secret portal and rifled through the papers as fast has he could. He tried to close his ears to the stream of filth Sebastian was uttering, and decided to ask his colleague and friend for a translation of many of the words some time when they were less busy.
He grabbed every single file he could find, including a few he had always wondered about from his old cases, and tried not to laugh as he heard Sidmouth and several other cabinet members enter the room and gasp in absolute horror and dismay.
The door swung shut behind them, but not so fast that several of the servants and a visiting dignitary hadn’t seen the Foreign Office Secretary being swived in every way humanly possible.
"What — What is the meaning of this!"
"Oh I think it’s perfectly clear," Sebastian said suavely as Castlereagh climaxed again. "Perfect timing. Your friend here is fucked. Or is it fucking? Either way, what he’s doing carries a capital sentence. How does it feel to have the shadow of the gallows hanging over your head now, you swine?"
Castlereagh struggled and screamed. Sebastian climbed down off him and took great pride in showing everyone his bare backside.
Alistair came out from behind the portal now. "And not a single one of you will ever be able to testify on his behalf without perjuring yourselves. Now, if you fancy the same treatment yourselves, just try to cross me or harm any of my friends in any way ever again.
"One foot wrong, any of you," he said pointing to each one of them menacingly with the largest ivory phallus Philip had been able to obtain at short notice, "and we’ll make what you see here look like a Sunday school picnic. The scandal will bring all of you tumbling into the gutter where you belong, even if it doesn’t send you to Newgate to be hung."
"You won’t get away with this!" Sidmouth barked, though his expression of horror diminished his menace considerably.
"Castlereagh brought it on himself when he allowed the earl of Oxnard to rape this poor girl," Alistair growled. "When he allowed my supposedly illustrious colleague to run his own Hellfire club in Enfield, the very same group of men who sodomised my friend Matthew’s wife Althea and kidnap Philip’s cousin Patrice. He knew about it all. Everything. It’s all here in the files." He flourished them under the Home Secretary's nose.
Sidmouth gaped like a beached whale.
"And as if that weren't bad enough, he's also responsible for locking up George Davenant’s poor innocent brother Simon in Bedlam for years, turning him into an opium addict like Althea also, and like they tried to do to Patrice.
"As for this young man here, Castlereagh saved Sebastian from the gallows only to make him into a molly so he could spy for him during the war. Murder, rape, prostitution, extortion, drugs." He counted each one off on the fingers of one hand. "The entire British system of justice. You disgust me, Sidmouth. Even if you weren’t party to all this, you should have asked questions. This man is a scandal to you all. The sooner you’re rid of him, the better."
Castlereagh was thrashing about in the throes of full fury. Miranda took the orange out of his mouth at last.
"But you don’t understand! The last French emigre cell! They’re trying to bring Bonaparte back. I had to do something! Simon D’Ambois was the bait. We needed him!"
"Bait?" Miranda gasped. "What sort of bait, exactly?"
"Let them think he was willing to go over to the other side. He’s the most dangerous man in the kingdom!"
"Who, Simon? But why?" Alistair demanded. "What is it--"
"He knows every single code we ever used in the war by heart. He would be able to send the right message. They were coming to—"
They all stared at him, aghast.
"Do you mean to say you've allowed Napoleon to escape in order to weed out the rest of the traitors?" Philip gasped.
Put that way, Castlereagh blinked and began to look sheepish, as if realising at last that he had indeed gone too far. They all stared at him as if he belonged in Bedlam. "Not escape, exactly, but-"
"God in Heaven, Robert, have you lost your mind?" Sidmouth exploded. "You, stop that," he barked to Sebastian, still tiddling Castlereagh to make him writhe with the most passionate torture.
"You’ve made your point, all of you, and caused enough scandal in this office to last a lifetime. Let him go. And get some clothes on! I give you my personal guarantee that none of you shall be harmed."
"None of us, or the Rakehells," Miranda bargained. "And especially not my husband George."
"None of you. And I shall give you a paper to get Simon D’Ambois released from the Bethlehem Hospital. In turn you will not tell the other Rakehells, and most certainly not your husband, what has taken place here."
Miranda looked at Sebastian. Then she nodded. "We can keep it quiet. I’ll just tell him we found a lead on Simon. In the meantime, what do you want to do about Napoleon?"
Sidmouth said in clipped tones, "We’ll take care of it. A ship from Gibraltar should be able to intercept the one from St. Helena. You really have gone too far this time, Castlereagh."
"Where is the harm? Nappy is only an old lion with no teeth. The problem will at last be solved and I'll be a hero—"
"Pah. Hero, my arse," Sidmouth snapped. "As long as he’s alive, people will flock to him like he's the Saviour himself. We saw it during the Hundred Days in 1815, and look what it led to. It was only by the grace of God that we prevailed. I am not going to take that risk ever again. The butcher’s bill at Waterloo was far too high. If one single English drop of blood is spilled because of you, Robert, I shall take that ornate cane and use it on you myself. Much harder than your, er, friend is doing now. And sideways as well. Then I shall turn you in as the sodomite you are, and will be in the front row when they hang you."
His eyes widened. "But I never meant to—"
Sidmouth's foggy-like mouth thinned to a fine line. "Oh, please, spare me. Lie to yourself if you want to, but the gallows awaits you if you ever overstep your bounds of power, or ever dare lie to me again. You disgust me."
The older man turned to face the tall, silver-haired Rakehell, while the other ministers covered their eyes or enjoyed the lewd spectacle of the Foreign Office Secretary so discomfited.
"Round two to you, Alistair Grant," Sidmouth conceded with grudging resignation. "Castlereagh will be dealt with. But just stay out of my way in future, and try not to consort with such, er, riff-raff."
Miranda laughed then. "Riff-raff? I’m Lady Pemberton’s niece," she said proudly, jutting out her breasts in the tightly-laced corset just to taunt them all, and wiggling her bottom over Castlereagh’s face once more as she at last rose to allow him up off the desk.
The Rakehell Regency Romance Collection 6 Page 77