Page 76 of Unbound Duchess

As he asked, he darted a quick, curious look to the fit, dark-featured man Solomon had brought along.

“Laurence, I would like to introduce you to Godric Donnet, the Duke of Hungate,” Solomon said, waving a hand at the man. “Godric, may I introduce you to my oldest friend? Laurence Curtis, Duke of Blackford.”

“How do you do?” Laurence said, extending his hand. “I have heard of you in investment circles. You seem to know very well what you are doing.”

“I have heard of you as well, Your Grace,” Godric replied, accepting Laurence’s handshake with a firm nod. “But more about your efforts to tear apart this awful auction.”

Caught off guard, Laurence looked from Godric to Solomon.

“That is why I have decided that you two should meet,” Solomon explained, exchanging glances with both men. “Godric here and his friend Cedric Redwyne, the Duke of Calder, have recently been able to have an investor in the auction dealt with. I thought we could use his help.”

“Cedric Redwyne?” Laurence asked with surprise as he waved Godric and Solomon toward the two chairs facing his desk. “As in the infamous rake, Redwyne the Divine? Goodness, with his reputation, I assumed he would adore a place like the auction, not want to destroy it.”

“Your assumption would be very wrong then, Your Grace,” Godric answered, his tone gruff but polite as he took a seat. “Much like you, Cedric acquired his wife at the auction under very peculiar circumstances. He is also no longer a rake and in fact is more the yearning puppy that chases after his wife.”

Godric’s smile was instant and rueful, and Laurence suddenly had no doubt that such a man did not smile often.

“Deborah has changed many things about my old friend,” Godric went on.

Again, Laurence’s brows rose in surprise as he heard Cedric’s wife’s name. His wife, he realized, was the very woman who had stopped him from destroying any chance of getting Ellen out safely the night he and Solomon went to spy on the place.

“This sounds like a very interesting tale,” Laurence said as he poured them each a whisky. “One, at another time, I would be most eager to hear.”

“I am sure if you spoke to Cedric he would be happy to tell you, as he is now quite obsessed with his wife and loves any opportunity to speak highly of her,” Godric answered, as he accepted his drink with a nod of thanks. “However, tonight, I come bearing information regarding the auction runners themselves, not the women who have been victims of it.”

He swallowed the whisky in his glass in one gulp, not even wincing as the expensive liquor no doubt burned a line from his throat to his stomach, and set it down so he could open the portfolio he had brought along.

“Deborah had a reason for being at the auction,” Godric said, getting right down to it. “A few years before she entered as a bidder herself and was won by Cedric, her sister had entered the auction in an attempt to help her family make some much-needed money. Her sister, Hester, was sold to one Sylvester Fairborne, the Earl of Whitford. Hester found herself falling in love with her bidder, and was wooed by his promises of marriage.”

“I take it those promises were false,” Laurence interjected dryly.

Godric gave a curt nod.

“Not only were they false, but when he released Hester, he went a step further and ruined her reputation very publicly,” Godric explained. “It was so bad that Hester had to leave her family, leave London, and her societal rank behind.”

Laurence’s stomach tightened as he noted the similarities between Hester’s and Ellen’s struggles.

“Deborah was determined to exact vengeance for her sister, find a way to redeem her reputation, and allow her the ability to come back. So, she disguised herself as a commoner woman and found employment at the auction. There, she waited for her opportunity to take down Sylvester and make him pay. As she and Cedric had reached a deal, he was more than happy to help,” Godric explained, holding a few sheets of paper.

“Like your Benedict, we were trying to tie Sylvester to the involvement of the auction,” he went on. “As you can see, we were able to find no such proof, except that he was buying women to force them into his own sort of sale—one where the women had no choice but to participate.”

“So, he is in prison now?” Laurence asked, looking over the papers.

“No,” Godric said gruffly, a sneer of disgust drawing up on his face, “There were too many authority figures who liked what he was doing to make a proper arrest. However, with such proof, the attendees, and actual investors of the auction that Deborah and Hester went through, sought their own sort of revenge. Sylvester is now in hiding, too afraid for his life to ever return to England, let alone London.

“In looking for evidence to tie Sylvester to the auction, however, we found that bit of information out on your boy, Benedict.”

Laurence swept his gaze once more down the papers Godric had handed him, looking more like bills of sale than anything else. It took him a moment to decipher the abbreviations, but when he did, he realized that the bills were of women. That Benedict had been receiving a percentage of the funds raised for each woman he had smooth-talked into participating in the auction.

His mind flashed back to the night he’d won Ellen’s bid and how Benedict had confronted Nigel afterward. He remembered how Ellen insisted that she had entered the auction herself, so that the funds would go solely to the auction. It had not only provided a reason for Nigel to allow the sale to go through, Laurence realized, but had also stopped Benedict from making his usual percentage. Ellen, without realizing it, had burned her cousin twice in that moment, depriving him not only of the satisfaction of her fear, but of his usual cut, too.

A bit of pride seethed through Laurence’s rage as he thought about that. His wife was far more clever and resourceful than even she realized.

“Laurence,” Solomon said, his tone quiet and serious.

Laurence lifted his gaze to his friend and Godric, and only then realized that he had been quiet for quite some time.

“So, Benedict does not actually have ties to the auction owner,” he said, handing the papers to Solomon.