Page 93 of One Night with a Rake

Fishwick had killed Dora Underhill and somehow spirited Georgette out of Yorkingham House without attracting anyone’s notice. Fury and fear battled in Nate’s chest.

“Lady Georgette is not hiding in the house someplace,” he said woodenly. “She’s been abducted. Notify Lord Yorkingham and send for the magistrate immediately. Order as many Bow Street runners as you can find to converge on the town house of Lord Roger Fishwick.”

Nate struck off toward the small stable behind Yorkingham House.

“Where are you going, milord?”

To the only other place that I know of where Fishwick might take her, he thought furiously but only said, “I’m going to steal the marquis’s horse.”

***

“Why are we going this way?” Georgette said when Roger turned the gig in the opposite direction from the more fashionable neighborhoods. “I thought your town house was in Mayfair.”

“It is.” He chirruped to the roan gelding and it broke into a mile-eating trot. “Like many gentlemen, I keep a pied-de-terre elsewhere in London as well.”

“And that’s where you think you left the note about Mercy?”

He nodded and urged the roan into more speed. Since there was little traffic, the gig rattled over the cobbled streets at a bone-jarring pace.

She supposed his story made sense. Nate kept that little place in Cheapside when he didn’t wish to stay at his family’s home. And she’d heard married men often kept mistresses in out-of-the-way love nests around the city. She pulled Roger’s garrick tighter around her shoulders against the cold and settled back into the tufted seat.

But Roger had no family living with whom he had to share his Mayfair residence. And as a single gentleman, he’d have no need to hide a mistress.

So why did he keep another home in London?

The chimes of St. Paul sounded a quarter to midnight.

She fingered the pearls at her throat. What if the jewels she wore weren’t enough to satisfy Mercy’s captors? And given the time, she doubted they’d be able to find Nate.

She stole a glance at Roger as the gig passed through a pool of yellow light thrown by a streetlamp. The night was chilly and the wind bit her cheeks, but a sheen of sweat glistened on Roger’s brow.

He was afraid.

Definitely not the sort of fellow Georgette wanted at her back if she had to venture into a spotty neighborhood.

They drove into a part of the city where no streetlamps glowed. Ordinances provided that householders must light their doorways, but only one in three of the slatternly houses seemed to be following that edict.

“This is Whitechapel,” Georgette said when she saw a placard hanging over one of the pubs she remembered from the night she and Nathaniel ventured into the area. “Never say you keep rooms here.”

“As a matter–of-fact, I do.”

They turned down the twisty way she recognized as the one on which Sadie O’Toole had set up her new establishment. Even though it was nearly midnight, there were plenty of people milling on the street, but none of them looked the least friendly.

Roger reined the horse to a stop, tossed the reins to a waiting street urchin, and climbed down from the gig. He leered up at Georgette and she was reminded of the sort of boy he’d been.

The sort who pulled wings from flies and drowned kittens in potato sacks.

“Whitechapel has much to commend it if one is not overly fastidious,” he said, offering a hand to help her down. She made no move to take it. “The rent is low. The entertainments I enjoy are close at hand. And people hereabouts generally mind their own business and allow me to go about mine.”

Georgette swallowed hard. “You didn’t really receive a note about Mercy this evening, did you?”

A smarmy, unpleasant smile stretched his cheeks and made her long for a bath. She realized he wasn’t sweating because he was afraid. He was…excited.

She feared she might be sick.

“Clever girl. You and I are going to have a good time together. I can tell.”

She lurched forward, hoping to grasp the reins that draped over the horse’s rump, but the street urchin snatched them to one side. The gelding shied and sidestepped, but didn’t bolt as she’d hoped. Even a runaway conveyance was preferable to remaining with Lord Fishwick.