“Son?”
He closed his eyes, feeling his heartbeat throb out of rhythm with a pain more searing than anything he’d known in his life. “Yes?”
“You promised you would never leave me.” Muffled cries. “A mother needs her sons. You know that, do you not?”
“All I know is that Eliza Gillingham may die because of you.” He dragged an arm across his wet eyes. “I curse the name I share with you and Papa both.”
Bowles pulled on his wool box coat and flipped the short capes over his shoulder. He glanced out the window again.
In the moonlight, Breage was climbing to the coach box, and the pair of black horses pranced as he pulled on the reins.
Almost time.
He started back through the house, elation working through him, fighting back the smile that kept trying to resurface. He little knew himself the plans he held for Eliza.
He only knew she would crumble.
She was attempting bravery now. She knew his game, and like all worthy victims was fighting against it. But before he was through with her, she would remember. She would look at him the same way she’d looked at him as a child.
Helpless.
Pleading.
Then he would kill her. No one had to tell him when or how the job needed to be done. Not his dead father, with his slaps to David’s face and his shouts that it hadn’t been done right. Or his sister, with her condescending stare and her never-ending letters he was forced to obey.
He was under no one now. Not since he had learned to kill.
Everyone was under him.
From the shadowed doorway to the cellar, Miss Reay stood waiting for him, her thin hands wrung before the apron.
“What are you doing?”
“Sir, I—”
“Speak up, woman. What do you want? Have you been down there against my orders?”
“Oh no, sir.” She blanched. “I n–never went down there, sir, only I—” Fearsome, rounded eyes met his. Her hands entwined at her chest. “Don’t be killing her, Mr. Bowles. P–please don’t be h–hurting her. She be so young and l–lovely and—”
“This little matter of mine must be of great importance to you.” He raised both brows. “Indeed. I have never known you to ask for anything. What courage must have gone into the request.”
Her throat bobbed up and down. “Please, sir, I—I just can’t stand to know she—”
“You are disgusting, Miss Reay.” He snatched her jaw, felt the frantic pulse beneath her skin. “You are slime I would detest to get on my boots, and I think I am finished with you.”
“Oh no, sir! Please, I—”
“You belong on the streets.”
“No, I—”
“Or perhaps back in that Durham workhouse where I found you—picking oakum until your fingers bled every day and eating so little you once told me the maggots tasted good. Or perhaps you miss a certain warden, who locked you in the chapel at night, had his way with you, and beat you nigh to death if you spoke of it? Should you like to go back to him, Miss Reay?”
“Please, please, please.”
He slung her away from the door, until she banged into the opposite wall and crashed into a rosewood stand. The vase banged to the floor. Glass shards scattered.
“You realize, of course, that shall come from your wages.”
