“But you always have me smash their important hand, their writing hand.”
“Use your head. He needs it to write.”
“Oh, I see. All right then.”
Two other men moved in. One wrapped his arm around Rafe’s neck and forced his chin up, while the other held his left wrist so his hand was splayed on the table. Rafe remembered the first time that Dimmick had told him to break someone’s hand.
“Break his hand or I’ll break your arm.”
Rafe had broken the man’s hand. He’d never forget the sound of cracking bone and the man’s painful wail. His hand had never healed properly, which made him one of the most ineffectual valets in all of London.
Rafe kept his gaze on Dimmick. If he managed to get out of this, he was going to see Dimmick hanged. Nice and legal. He wouldn’t be coming back from a hanging.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the hammer going up. He braced—
The immeasurable pain shot through him. He wanted to be stoic, but he couldn’t hold back the guttural cry. Both men released him. Breathing heavily, he glared at Dimmick, who was smiling with satisfaction.
“Now, write the will or I’ll have him hit your hand again until the bone is naught but tiny bits.”
“Gonna be ... a bit difficult. I’m left-handed, you see.”
He heard Dimmick’s roar, saw the hammer was now in his meaty hand, swinging down—
The pain carried him into the depths of darkness.
Evelyn thought that she should be hungry, especially as the dinner set before her was one of the finest she’d ever seen, but everything tasted of nothing. She ate tiny bites because it made things more palatable.
“Is it not to your liking?” Mary asked. “I can have Cook prepare something else.”
Evelyn smiled at her. “I have no appetite. That’s all. You’ve been so kind.” They’d taken her in the night she’d walked out on Rafe. She hadn’t known where else to go, but she’d learned early on that the duchess was an extremely compassionate sort. She’d held Evelyn while she wept and blubbered. She’d passed no judgments on Rafe except to say that Evelyn had been right to leave him.
But if that were the case, why did she hurt so badly? Why did she sit in her bedchamber and stare out the window at the residence across the way, hoping for a glimpse of Rafe? Was he well? Did he miss her at all?
Sometimes she considered returning to him, but she wanted so much more than he could give her. She yearned for the essentials that couldn’t be purchased: love, family, happiness.
She’d moped about long enough. It was time to move on.
“I can’t continue to take advantage. I thought tomorrow to start searching for employment.” How long had she been here now? Even the passing of days, nights held no meaning.
“We’ll help you find something. What are your skills?”
Before she could begin to list her limited talents, the door to the dining room burst open as though by a tempest and Tristan Easton strode in and, without preamble, announced, “I suspect Rafe might be in trouble.”
The duke was on his feet so fast, with such force, that the table shook. “Why do you think that?”
“He hasn’t been to his club or his residence in three days. No one knows of his whereabouts.”
A sense of dread and foreboding tore through Eve. “It’s not like him, to stay away from his club.”
“Have you a notion as to where he might be?”
She shook her head. “His club is the only thing about which he cares.”
“I very much doubt that,” the duke said, and the look in his gaze told her that he thought she was important to Rafe. She wasn’t going to argue the point. “Do you think he might have gone to Pembrook?”
“It seems unlikely to me,” she told him, “but then I don’t believe that I truly knew him very well.”
“I went there,” Tristan said. “When Anne and I had our parting of ways. It helped me to overcome the past but I’m not sure Rafe’s demons reside in Pembrook.”
