A second man stepped out of the shadows, carrying Thomas’s cane, which he twirled easily with one hand. “Of course he does. Bloke like him, that’s what they always gonna think.” This man was smaller, leaner, with the look of a gambler. What had once been a well-made middle class suit looked tattered and filthy.
Behind him, Max shifted nervously, obviously feeling Thomas’s tension, smelling the fear that speared his master’s spine. “So you’re working for Bentley.”
The two men paused, glancing at each other. The smaller one stopped twirling the cane and shifted his grip, holding it near the base as if it were a cricket bat. “Nah,” he said. “We’re here from your girl Rose.”
The words stunned Thomas. “What did you say?”
“You know her. Crazy bitch from hell who takes on all the ne’er-do-wells among you people.” He tested his swing, the wolf’s head making a sickening whistle as he sliced it through the air. “You didn’t know? When she can’t do it her way, she hires us to do it our way.”
Thomas’s brain kicked into gear. “Liar. Exactly what someone from Bentley’s crew would say.”
Another swing, then a shrug. “Don’t care what you believe. Just know who’s paying us to take care of you.”
“Shut it, Marty. Let’s get on.” Docker stepped closer.
Thomas tensed, bracing for a swing of the cane and a fist from Docker. Instead, the cane came down on Max’s rump. The horse screamed and reared, shoving Thomas toward Docker. Thomas danced to keep his balance and got off a right cross, which jarred the big man’s head, but a second swing of the cane landed across his shoulders, a spike of blistering pain blasting down his back. He twisted, stepping backwards, trying to face them both.
Docker pulled a pistol from behind his back.
“No!” Marty shouted.
Thomas saw the puff of ignited powder in the same instant fire sheared through his right shoulder and into his lungs. He heard a scream he knew must be his own, but the world around him spun. For a moment he seemed to be floating, strangely weightless and painless. Then he jolted to a halt, jarring every muscle and bone, and pain erupted throughout his body, blinding him to everything else.
He faintly heard his name being called and what seemed like a sea of green wavered in his vision before a frigid darkness consumed him.
Chapter Fourteen
Rose had succeededin avoiding her father all day. When he had requested to see her, she had sent word by Davis that the aftermath of the soiree required too much of her. Which was, in essence, quite true. Rose worked with Davis and Mrs. Williams to make sure all the rented equipment was safely removed and packed in the wagons sent by the vendors. She checked that the servants hired for the evening had been paid, and the excess food had been sent to two orphanages her family helped support. Wrapping herself in a cloak and donning a simple straw bonnet, she had gone with the footmen to deliver the food, relishing the snap of the chilled April wind on her face.
Rose had also wanted to avoid her office, but knew that was impossible, since the bills of lading for the vendors and other paperwork involved with the soiree had been among the sheets that had been sent flying when Thomas had pushed her rump onto the desk. So, after taking breakfast in her bedchamber, she went to the office, locked the door behind her, and slowly picked up the pieces of her life.
She had only cried once.
Perhaps because she had shed so many tears the night before.
Her rage had sustained her through the remainder of the soiree, but as soon as Sarah left her for the final time, alone, her hair in its nightly braid and her night rail clinging to her exhausted body, the tears arrived. The rage had dissipated, leaving Rose’s shattered heart in its wake, and her sobs had left both pillows sodden and lumpy. Athena, watching her mistress grieve unrelentingly through the night, had retreated to a chair near the bed.
Shame consumed Rose. She had let down her guard with the very man she should have been most wary of. She knew his reputation, but her own infatuation with the boy of her childhood and the headiness that he wanted her had blinded her to his real motive. That infatuation had allowed her to embrace, for a fleeting moment, the true desires of her heart, desires she had long known were impossible for Lady Rose Timmons—a man to touch her with tenderness, to make love to her with his whole being, to give her a family. For a few scarce moments, she had indulged in long-abandoned fantasies—fantasies once again blown to flinders by a man she had trusted.
She had believed he wanted her heart, when that was—as she saw now—an impossibility. Of course he didn’t care that Bentley had damaged her. Not because he saw her as more than the sum of her parts but precisely because of the flaw in those parts. Like the others who had come to her after the news had first spread, he wanted her most for precisely what she couldnotgive him: an unwanted child.
“‘In a special place of your own.’”
Rose had repeated the phrase a dozen times. “What? An apartment?” How foolish to let him know she was ready to leave her family home to find her own way. That had just encouraged him that she would embrace his suggestion. A warm and safe apartment in London would be preferable to a drafty Yorkshire country house, would it not? “Would it be near you and the wife you would eventually marry? Or would you be done with me at that point?” A question that had set off even more rounds of tears.
By dawn, Rose had become numb, barely breathing. But the tears had stopped, and she reached deep into her well for one more day of determination. She blew her nose, washed, and dressed, ringing for breakfast before anyone else in the family was up.
Shattered hearts healed eventually, especially in the face of a mountain of work. So she worked. Occasionally she would see her father watching her from down a hallway or across the ballroom, but he left her alone.
Until the final pudding of the day was served. Dinner had been late because of calls her mother had made that afternoon, and by the time the footmen appeared with the pudding, the grandfather clock in their hall had chimed nine. But the jam and custard tart was one of Rose’s favorites, and she had been relishing the last bite when Edmund spoke.
“Rose, please meet me in my study after the meal.”
She fought a spike of panic and put down her spoon. “Papa, I still have so much—”
“No.”
The sharpness of his tone startled Rose and drew the attention of her mother, Cecily, and all of the footmen.
