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I’m done.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HENRY
The sound of the papers slapping the desk in front of me is barely audible over the “Ghost Song” playing on the gramophone behind me. The piano and violin entrance me, but all I can think about is Eve. How beautiful she looked with all her rage flushing her cheeks. How good she felt in my choking hold. I could kill her for her smart mouth. But the incessant need in me wants her.
My cock is still hard. My blood is still hot. But my rage is morphing into something I’ve never felt. Something magnificent. An uncontrollable disease. A sickness that craves her beyond all sense and reason. My darling Eve—she has no mind of the beast she’s awoken or the devil she’s baited. People like her don’t survive monsters like me.
“Are you listening?” Julian asks, his voice crackling with an irate gravel.
“Who’s going to tell him?”
All eyes flash to me. Percival. Julian. Simon. The prime minister, Benedict Gladstone—our ally, if not by want, then by necessity and loyalty to his youngest daughter. Georgina married Lord Emsworth, the king’s first nephew by his outcast sister, the late Princess Alice. If we burn, he and his family burn with us.
“It’s not our business to tell the Prince of Wales that his father is dying. It’s for us to stop the press from leaking the information before we’re ready for the country to know.” Benedict is right, but the Wolfsden Society doesn’t have secrets. “Do we know where they got the information from?”
“It’s not the kind of information that’s easily accessible,” Percival tells him, topping up his water. “In fact, it’s not accessible at all. All documents relating to the monarch’s health are in writing only and kept by his physicians.”
Fuck, my father’s briefcase.
It makes sense now why my mother wouldn’t tell me what was inside it to make the fact that it’s missing a dire prospect.
“It will destroy us,” she said. Pity, she didn’t say why.
Percival glances at me. I know what he’s thinking because it’s his job to know everything that’s happening in these walls and those within them.
“My father knew,” I state. There’s no point in beating around the bush or trying to pretend that the blame doesn’t lie somewhere at his feet—now my feet because, like his title and everything else, I’ve inherited that too. “His briefcase is missing. I think it was taken when he was killed.”
“You think?” Simon asks with a dubious cock of his brow.
“I know. It’s not in his office at home or at the university.”
“Hospital?” Julian chips in.
“He hasn’t been to the hospital in a while, not that I’m aware of, and my mother would have told me if she thought it was there.”
Simon laughs at the absurdity of my mother knowing something we don’t. He might be her favourite godson, but her loyalty is to her cousin, the king. “What does your mother have to do with it?”
“Nothing, but she noticed the briefcase was gone first. I think she knows too, and she was told not to inform us.”
“Right now, none of that matters.” Benedict checks through his phone. “We need to address this problem.” He gestures down at the draft printouts of the front-page headlines for tomorrow morning. “Priorities first, gentlemen.”
“I could put an embargo together, but we’d need to move quickly.” Julian starts making notes in his Moleskine journal. “Once they start printing, we’re fucked. Get press relations on the phone, and I’ll handle it.”
“They’ll want a trade,” Simon states.
“Well, the press relations people at the palace need to figure that one out. Or…” Julian releases a long hiss before he suggests, “Make it an embargo. Give them a date to print that gives us time to iron out what we want the public to know, and Arthur a chance to deal with it.”
“If you think he’s going to deal with it, you’re living in la-la land.” My own remark throws me back to Eve’s outburst. She doesn’t know shit about anything. All she knows is what she sees—the barest of minimums. “He’s going to go off the fucking rails.”
“Then it’s up to us to stop that from happening or cover it up.” Benedict stands, checking his watch at the same time as his phone rings. “I have to go, but keep me abreast of the situation, and for the love of God, make sure it doesn’t get outed before we have a way of spinning this with some level of reassurance and sensitivity all round.”
“We’re on it,” Percival reassures him. “But we can count on you to help navigate the situation?”
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise. It’s probably wise to line up a distraction for the prince.”
“We have plenty of distractions here.”
