Jade Lee - [Bridal Favors 03] (28 page)

Irene took a deep breath, then immediately regretted it, as the foul odors of the East End assaulted her senses. Then she nodded at Grant. He stepped forward and rapped sharply on the door of the second-story flat where little Carol’s family lived.

There was noise inside, and then a small boy pulled open the door. Carol’s little brother. A moment later, Carol’s exhausted mother appeared. Her eyes widened when she saw them, her mouth going slack before she stepped back.

“My lady!” She bobbed a curtsy even as she spun around. “Carol! Lady Irene is here. And…” She glanced back.

“Lord Crowle, ma’am,” Grant said a little coldly.

The woman nodded, bobbing another curtsy. Then Carol came stumbling out from a back corner.

The room was nothing more than that—a square room with a fireplace. One corner had what appeared to be bedding. Table, cooking pot, chamber pot. That was about all this little family owned. Carol stumbled forward from the bedroll, her eyes wide and rimmed in red.

“Carol,” Irene said softly, her heart sinking into her belly for what she was about to do. “Carol, I’ve a couple questions.”

The girl swallowed but straightened, rubbing her hands awkwardly on her skirt. Meanwhile, her mother stepped back and gestured them inside.

“Thank you,” Grant said, his tone hard. “We won’t take up much of your time.”

Irene took a breath, hating what she was about to do. Samuel had worked out that somehow, Hank Bagley had gotten Irene’s schedule. How else would he have known to attack along that route?

In the last three weeks, only two items on Irene’s schedule had been for sure: the date and time of Penny’s wedding and the wedding breakfast afterward. Somehow Bagley had learned of that. Somehow he had worked out that the one place Irene would surely be is on the route between wedding and breakfast. And the most likely suspect for sharing Irene’s schedule was little Carol.

Irene stepped forward, crouching to look the girl in the eye. “Did someone ask you for my schedule, Carol? Did you give it to someone?”

The girl visibly flinched, and her lip began to tremble. Irene could see that she was about to cry, even as the girl glanced to her mother and brother. Irene didn’t need to look. She knew the family was desperate. She even guessed what had happened.

“Someone came to you—a man, probably. He offered you money if you told him when and where I’d be in the last few weeks. Is that true?”

The girl nodded, misery in every line of her body. To the side, her mother gasped and sunk onto her knees, pulling her son close. She reached for her daughter, but the girl was too far away. And Grant was blocking her anyway.

“How often?” Grant asked. “What did you tell him?”

It took three tries until Carol got the words out. And when she finally did, the sound was nearly inaudible. “Every week. Sunday after mass. He asks what your plans are for the week and…”

“And you told him,” Grant finished for the girl.

“I didn’t know it was wrong!” Carol cried. “I swear, I didn’t know—”

“That’s a lie,” Irene snapped. “You are the smartest girl I’ve ever met. And you’ve lived all your life here.” She gestured vaguely at the crime-ridden East End. “You knew no one would pay for my schedule, unless they meant some sort of harm.”

Tears were flowing hard now, and the child sniffed. But she didn’t lie anymore. She simply nodded miserably.

“You had to know it was wrong, Carol,” Irene continued. “Dangerous to me, and wrong for you. I can’t employ someone I can’t trust.”

The girl didn’t answer, but to the side, her mother cried out. “Oh no, my lady. Please. She’s a good girl—”

The woman was silenced by a hard glare from Grant. Meanwhile, Irene held the girl’s gaze, trying to gauge if she could trust the child at all. “How much money did he give you?”

“Two coppers, each week.”

Two coppers. Her life had been sold for two coppers a week. And yet, looking around this hovel, Irene knew that even so small a sum would be a vast help.

“I won’t do it again, my lady! Please! I swear!”

Irene grimaced and looked at Grant. She’d already made the decision long before coming here, and nothing she’d seen had dissuaded her from her course. So with a nod, she straightened, leaving it to Grant, the harder and scarier one, to make the next bargain.

“I told Lady Irene she should sack you without a reference. Immediately.”

“Oh no!” cried her mother. Little Carol said nothing, though the tears were flowing steadily. Meanwhile, Grant continued, his voice cold and hard.

“She convinced me to make a new bargain.” That was a lie. It had all been Grant’s idea. “If anyone approaches you again, you’re to tell them
maybe
. Do you understand? You say maybe, and then you come immediately to me.”

The girl gulped, her eyes widening in fear.

“Yes, to
me
,” he said, his voice cold. “You tell me everything. I will pay you double whatever the bribe is. Double, do you hear me? Only if you come directly to me. Do you understand?”

“Y-yes,” the girl stammered.

“She does!” cried the girl’s mother. “She’s a good girl, my lord. She just didn’t know before.”

Grant nodded absently to the mother, his hard gaze never wavering from the girl. Carol needed to understand, and she needed to be frightened.

Eventually, he relented, straightening as he looked at Irene. “I think we’re done here.” Then he glanced at the girl, almost as an afterthought. “Mr. Bagley is dead. He’ll not be coming to you ever again.”

The girl frowned, and Irene felt a cold chill run down her spine as the child spoke. “Mr. Bagley? I don’t know ’im.”

“What?” Grant said. “Wasn’t that the man who paid you for Lady Irene’s schedule?”

“N-no, my lord.”

Irene reached out, her fingers going instinctively to Grant’s. “Then who paid you?”

“Demon Damon.”

***

Wendy clutched the small satchel to her stomach. She held it tight as Freddie pulled open the heavy office door. Then he gestured her inside, a smirk on his thick, flat face.

Wendy ignored it. She’d been coming to this gambling hell for months. Or was it more than a year now? It didn’t matter. Her time here was done, and she felt a surge of mixed feelings.

Part of her would miss the excitement of the gambling hell. The thick air, the turn of a card, and the rattle of dice had their own allure. Money, desperation, lust—all those intense emotions—had played out a nightly drama before her, enticing enough that she’d been tempted to play as well.

She never did. She was there to work and to pay back her idiot brother’s debts. But now, she had the money in hand.

She and Bernard were finally free of Demon Damon. Or, at least, they would be the moment she handed over her satchel of coins. So, with a surge of relief, she stepped into the luxurious office. Damon was there, his hair dark, his body languid, and his smile like a temptation from the devil himself.

Wendy wasted no time. “I’ve got it all, Demon,” she said clearly. “I’m here to pay back everything Bernard owes.”

If anything, the man’s smile widened, though there was something horribly feral about the look. “Really?” he drawled, and Wendy felt a shiver of excited fear skate down her spine.

“Yes. Right here.” She showed him the small stack of coins.

“Then by all means, my Wendy, come closer. Show me exactly what you have, and I shall tell you if it is enough.”

Read on for a peek at an original novella

From USA Today bestselling author Jade Lee

Available for download now.

Masochists were a sorry lot. And he, William Benton, second son of the useless Crowles, was the sorriest of them all. Why? Not for the usual reasons, but because he was smart enough to see his foolishness and yet was still unable to stop himself.

He was watching the girl.
Watching
, for God’s sake. When he was accounted as a man who
did
things. Not today, and never with her. Rather than act, he always stood in the shadows and watched like a damn Peeping Tom.

He’d been on the way to see her father, but then had seen a flash of color. Her bright reddish hair, of course, and her dress. Then he’d heard her laugh. It was unmistakable, that throaty combination of girlish delight and womanly seduction—flying free on the afternoon breeze. She was on the back lawn, and he had skirted the manor home so he could see her.

He wasn’t surprised to see her playing with the village children. She couldn’t have arrived from London more than a couple hours before, but the little ones always found her. That’s because she was more kin to them than the adults who watched criti- cally from the sidelines. She was playing tag, running around pell-mell and with her bonnet off, no less. Her hair was pulling free, of course. Nothing about her was ever restrained. The sun picked up the streaks of red in her auburn hair until she seemed crowned in fire.

Her dress was equally vibrant: a yellow so bright he wondered how the dye master had managed the color. And she was running in careening circles until the children finally caught her. He counted seven of them as they surrounded her until she had nowhere to run. Then in one mass, they jumped on her and she went down to the grass in squealing laughter.

For a woman on the hunt for a husband, she was completely undignified and he couldn’t have adored her more. No, he reminded himself, he despised her just as she despised him. It was a well-established feeling, their mutual dislike years in the making. It had begun during the midsummer festival nearly five years ago when he’d loudly and publicly tossed her aside. What he’d said to her still haunted him:
Don’t mistake things here, Miss Josephine. We all want you back in London, permanently. You don’t belong here and you never will.

He’d said the words and meant them because God knew having her here was like looking at a sparkling diamond that he could never have. Or worse, a meal to a starving man, but one held too far away for him to reach. So he wished her in London, and that sentiment would not change just because her laugh seemed to settle uncomfortably at the base of his spine.

He sighed, reminding himself that he needed to go see her father. And yet he didn’t move as he stood watching from the shadows. He was fresh from the ditch, covered in Yorkshire mud, and smelling of sweat or worse. The summons had come from her father—Lord Lawton—and he’d been told not to tarry. Those were the exact words: do not tarry. As if he spent his days sipping tea and reading the racing forms. He was a steward, for God’s sake, trying to build a canal while overseeing the crops.

So he had climbed out of the muck and ridden over to the manor house. A fit of pique had him appearing in his filth without more than a cursory mop of his brow. After all, he’d been told not to tarry. Let Lord Lawton suffer the consequences of his ridiculous order.

Except he
was
tarrying. Right here in the shadows as Miss Josephine Powel played chase and catch with the village children. With a grimace, he turned away. She was not for him, nor did he want her. So he tromped over to the servants’ entrance before stripping out of his boots to walk in stocking feet to visit his employer.

Lord Lawton looked up the moment Will was ushered into the library. “That was quicker than…” His voice trailed off as he took in his steward’s attire.

“You did say not to tarry,” Will responded, doing his best to keep his irritation out of his voice.

Lawton frowned. “No, actually I didn’t.” Then he glanced out at the hallway with a grimace. “Bloody butler. Loves issuing orders in my name, doesn’t he? Are you sure I can’t fire him?”

Will ducked his head. “You can, of course, do exactly as you please.” After all, that’s what his own forefathers had done. “But—”

Lawton waved him to silence. “I know. He’s the village’s bloody Rock of Gibraltar. Seems to me that would be you, but you northerners have your own rules.” The man leaned back in his chair in a huff. “I take it you were at the canal.”

Will nodded and settled more firmly into his stance. “Work is proceeding. It’s slow, dirty, and exhausting, but we’ve made good progress. We’ll have it all connected up next year for sure.”

“Think you can get it done by September? I’ll give the men a bonus.”

Will felt his jaw go slack in astonishment. “No bonus can make a miracle, my lord. Rain’s good for the crops, but we’re slogging through mud. If we get a drenching, we lose a week’s worth of work.”

Lord Lawton nodded. “But if the rains hold off. If the weather’s good—”

“We don’t have the men.”

“So I’ll bring in more.”

“Then you’ll get too much money flooding the village,” Will snapped. Then he flushed, moderating his tone as he ducked his head. “But it’s your choice, my lord.”

Lawton wasn’t fooled by Will’s attempt at humility. He frowned, but as he was a temperate man, that was the extent of his disapproval. “Wouldn’t a lot of money be a blessing?” he asked dryly.

Will tamped down his temper. This man didn’t deserve it, and Will couldn’t afford to release it. Besides, it didn’t matter what he said. The man would do what he intended no matter how Will tried to dissuade him. Such was the way with the titled.