Instead of a late luncheon, he found himself in a street fight, however brief, and then the heroic rescuer of a damsel in distress.
Sir Lancelot, my mother jested. Kenneth rather liked the sound of that.
Kenneth slumped into the grand desk chair and kicked it round with his feet so that he could stare through the great window, lit up in all of the moon's brightness.
It seemed the storm has passed, or at least remained over London. Here, on the Worthington estate, the moon shone fiercely over the rolling hills and clusters of trees. It was serene, he thought, and he was glad to be here rather than the hustle of London at this hour.
It was not that he disliked the city, rather that he just thoroughly enjoyed the country. Kenneth would appear happy in either situation, but he would be happiest atop a horse riding through a glen.
He thought about what that crook Nash had spat at him. “There'll be lots more pain coming her way because of you. Might as well just gut her now.”
It was those words he replayed over and over. Those were the words that stood out to him and bore great significance. They meant that the crime was not random; they meant that she had been targeted by those thugs for a reason other than convenience or drunken rage. There was a conspiracy afoot, and he wanted to know the truth of it.
He began to imagine a multitude of possibilities, ranging from the far side of ridiculous to fairly plausible. Still, none of them seemed to fit this strangely-charismatic character he had conversed within the coach. She had real style and wit about her, a true sense of self that he could not find in the ladies of his society, and indeed was a bit envious of.
It was sometimes jested about Kenneth that he had invented himself as an adventurer, for before he went to the army, he had been a timid boy about town. When he had returned from the battle of Paris, he had been a changed man, and when he returned from America, where he took part in the burning of the White House, he had grown even bolder. Then after Waterloo, he had truly realized his own adventurous spirit.
With this Leah Benson, there was no detectable falsehood about her. She was a vividly-clear person, and from their limited exchange he had grown fascinated by her. Her piercing green eyes floated in and out of his mind's eye, and he shook his head as he took another drink.
In the end, although he could manufacture countless rambling theories on the reason for her attack, he realized the only way he would uncover the truth was to ask her. It was a frustrating epiphany, for he craved the truth so intensely, yet he could not go to her chambers. Not only was she sleeping, but it would be wildly inappropriate.
The more he thought on it, the more it wracked at him, driving deeper and deeper into his brain so that he was forced to take drink after drink, dizzying himself into a whirlwind of drunken thought. The who, what and why bounced off of each other, slamming between the walls of his skull; driving down another drink he let out a growl, tossing spittle from his lips.
He felt like a caged beast, so full of pent-up interest that it turned him physically hot. This was what people talked about when they referred to issues with his temper, and talk they loved to.
There was an animalistic rage that dwelt within that shell of liquor. It was not a violent one in nature; Kenneth would not get foxed and beat on poor souls. Instead he would grow so alive, so hot in the head, and so ready to spring out into the world, that he would often do something ridiculous.
In the army this had kept him alive several times, but now it was a thing he had to mind. The loss of control in public had, indeed, cost him a courtship.
But here in his own home, he cared not, and so he embraced his own wild nature. He tore at the upper buttons on his shirt, freeing his neck, and downed another drink. He laughed out for the world to hear, although the sound was trapped in the large, empty room.
He flung open the glass doors leading outside. Embracing the nipping air, he flung up his arms and took the breeze with gladness. He let out a wild yip, like an excited wolf pup, and laughed at himself before calming down a touch, and turning back inside. He was glowing, and he felt alive.
This is what life is.
* * *
Leah had never been in a bed so comfortable. It is a common misconception that upon laying in the most comfortable bed in one's life, that one will receive the best night of sleep in one's life.
This could not be further from the truth for those such as Leah, whom all their lives have bounced between floor, moldy hammock, a penny house, or beneath a bench.
At first, after she had been settled in the room, she had basked in the comfort of the feather pillows. She had laughed to herself about her turn of fortune, winced at the pain in her ribs, and fallen promptly asleep.
That sleep had not lasted, however. Instead she began to wake regularly in ten-minute intervals, unable to become comfortable because of both the unbelievable softness of the bed and the many bruises she sported.
Normally when one cannot fall asleep, one will adjust the way that they are sleeping incrementally until sleep can be achieved. In Leah's case, this proved monstrously difficult because three of her ribs had sustained fractures, her left eye was black and blue, and her ankle had been badly sprained.
She weathered the pain and discomfort with each slight adjustment, trying to find the right way to lay in the bed that seemed to suck her down into it like demonic quicksand.
She struggled on and on, sweating with the effort, grunting against the feather pillows as they flopped across her.
Why is this so hard?
She began to despair, clawing at the blankets she felt like she could not control, sinking further into the fluffy bed, trying to sit upwards but recoiling from the pain in her ribs.
She thrust her legs out angrily, and her ankle struck one of the bedposts, sending a shock of hurt through that leg.
Leah cried, submitting to the bed's impossible frame. She lay there, defeated, alone, in a strange place, and she could not even manage a blanket. Never had she felt so beaten, so passed over by the world. Leah cried and cried into the pillows, letting all her rage and frustration with Riphook and Nash and Teller seep into the sheets.
She cried until it felt as if she had spent every tear she had, and she found that she suddenly felt a slight better.
How long has it been since I allowed myself to cry? I cannot remember the last time.
Leah grunted and rolled to the other side, accepting that everything she did would hurt, and that she would have to cope. She could manage. It was by no means the first time she had taken a beating, but she meant for it to be the last. She touched her breast gingerly, discovering further bruising all across her torso.
“Bastards bruised my tit.” she chuckled softly with herself, cradling the tear-soaked pillow for comfort. At least there, in that moment, she was safe. She had gambled that they wouldn't follow her through St. James’s Square, and she had lost that bet. Some would say it is foolish to double down, and place trust again in the security of aristocracy, but the manor house of a Duke was far safer than an array of street shops.
As she contemplated how bold Riphook might be in retrieving her, she glanced out of the second-story window. The grounds were brilliantly lit by the moon, and she could feel the radiance of the silver disk.
She caught sight of something then that caused her to look twice. It was the Duke – the man who had saved her – and he was running out into the grass, arms above him.
She heard him make a yip of a noise, and he ran back into the house, swinging his arms widely around him.
Leah smiled to see such a youthful expression of exuberance from the Duke, who was clearly on the other side of five and twenty.
She wondered if he had a wife, and what she made of all this. Likely not, she decided, for that woman before had been his mother.
What does she think of me? What do I think of her, for that matter?
Leah was uncertain of how she should proceed. On the one hand, she realized that she was too hurt to trav
el on her own. The Duke was right about her ribs; they would take time and rest to heal. The same could be said of her ankle.
On the other hand, there was an absurd amount of wealth in this house from what Leah had seen so far.
In the city, she knew who had the richest houses, and how much to take at a time to not arouse suspicion. Here, there seemed to not be any rules. She doubted anybody had ever stolen a thing from this place, as it was so removed in the country.
Just how far is it? Leah realized she truly had no clue of her whereabouts besides the name Worthington. Where the devil is Worthington?
Much information, she knew, would come in time. For now, at least, the sun had to rise before she had answers. In the meantime, she constructed an initial plan. It had two routes and was fairly simple.
She would rest here, recover her strength, and then, if by chance she could enchant the Duke accordingly, garner passage to France. That was a long shot, but it did not seem impossible since he had come so gallantly to her rescue. Perhaps passage over the channel was not too much to ask. She deserved a decent rest, after all, and a Duke's mansion was quite the place to stay.
If anything were to occur beforehand, anything that should make her feel threatened, or if Riphook caught wind of her, she would plunder the home for its wealthiest possessions, and she would be gone.
Chapter 5
Riphook, although most considered him to be a heartless, calculated killer and crook, had a great deal of emotional capacity. Indeed, he was a criminal, that he could not deny; he embraced it as a staple of his character. Yet he was capable of forming deep emotional attachments with people, especially those subordinate to him, for it was rare that Riphook ever enjoyed the company of someone he could not boss around.
The years had not been kind to the outlaw's face; he had broken his nose at least a half-a-dozen times. It seemed so out of place that his whole face was askew if you looked at him without squinting a bit.
His eyes were a dazzling gray, and in them one could walk for hours among cheerful friendship, or the depths of violent hatred. Beneath them were dark rings from his sleepless nights, and an old brand was visible ducking down from beneath his hair line.
Along his wrists and forearms were scattered foreign-looking tattoos, picked up from his naval circuits in Polynesia. The middle finger on his left hand stopped at the first knuckle, and one of his scattered teeth glittered, made of a solid ruby.
In short, Riphook had the credible appearance of a career criminal, and a successful one at that. He behaved as if he were a king, and in a way, he was.
In any regard, Riphook had deep emotional capacity. The bonds he formed with his gang members rivaled that of a brother or close friend. He grieved for their losses, shared in their hardships, and basked in their glory.
Perhaps it was because Riphook never had a proper family of his own, a fact he kept shrouded in secret, that he formed such close attachments with his hirelings. For in the end that was all they were: underlings in a criminal network based mainly on grand theft.
But to Riphook, and to many of them, the partnership grew into a near familial company. Included in that family was Leah Benson, the little spitfire from White Chapel.
London was a hard place to grow up poor, and within London nowhere was harder than White Chapel. Yet, out of that muck Leah Benson had clawed her way, kicking and screaming, and he had taken her into his protection. She had learned to speak properly, so she could better make off with rich folks’ silver spoons. This was a feat that Riphook much respected.
For a time, Riphook had been the only thing that stood between her and the whole of the evil in the world that she had not already met.
But all of that was gone now. It was cast aside, thrown down from the mountain, washed clean away in the sea.
Now, Riphook was furious. There was nothing that hurt him more than the desertion of a family member. For Riphook's poor, neglected, sociopathic soul, this was the greatest of betrayals.
The money? It was the last of his priorities. However, in all fairness, he had only two priorities in this situation; kill the traitor and recover his wealth.
The bang of a heavy door caused him to look up from his doodle. Lately he had been sketching; a friend had recommended it to help with his anger flare ups. “Drawing is about patience,” he had said, “it will slow you down.”
“Who's that, Deaver?” he shouted up with his grizzly voice. He sat in what appeared to be a cellar, surrounded by barrels of an unknown origin, and leaned heavily on one as a makeshift drawing desk.
“It's me, Nash.” Nash called back. “Chrisake' lemme through, Deaver.”
“Let 'em down.” Riphook growled.
Nash and one of his thugs came lumbering down the creaky stairs. They looked beat up; one had his nose smashed in. They were coming down empty handed, and Riphook was resisting the urge to snap his pencil in two.
“Boss.” Nash began, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
“Let me stop you right there, Nash.” Riphook held up his hand and his missing finger demanded silence. “I don't see Leah. You didn't get her.”
“No boss, but –” Nash was cut off by Riphook slamming his fist down on the barrel lid.
“I told you to get her,” Riphook sneered. “and you didn't. Little girl was too much for you?”
“Not so little, boss.” the thug offered.
“I'm sorry?” Riphook blinked at the man stupid enough to question him.
“Almost twenty, so she isn't that little.” the thug said, fumbling. He was not the brightest lad about town.
“We got to beatin' her boss, but then she got away.” Nash tried to divert Riphook's attention, lest he lose another follower for no good reason.
“How?”
“A man in the alley came to save her, boss.” the thug went on, trying to smooth over his last blunder with a new one.
“So why did you not kill the man?” Riphook challenged. His face was growing red with discontent, and the pencil was quivering in his hand.
“Couldn't kill him, boss.” Nash was pale preparing for his next sentence. “We was over by St. James.”
“You bloody idiots!” Riphook burst out, lurching to his feet.
“It weren't out in the open or nothin'.” Nash went on. “Just the one man showed up and we had to split.”
“And you were beating her.”
“Sure, boss, beating her good.” the thug was truly trying to be helpful.
“You were beating a seemingly-defenseless woman, you, a group of grown men, in an alley by St. James’s Square, and a man saw you, so you ran away. Is that the sum of it?”
“Yes boss.” Nash whispered; his face betrayed his realization of truly just how bad it sounded. They had botched it.
Riphook put the pencil in his hand through the wall of one of the barrels, sending a spurt of molasses onto the floor. Riphook smashed the thug in the head with a nearby tankard, and he dropped to the floor.
“Did you just kill him?” Nash barked out, astonished by the sudden turn of events.
“I don't know.” Riphook snorted. “Nor do I care. What I care about, is Leah Benson. What I care about,” he leaned over the barrel to stare Nash in his own, rotting face. “is not making a fuss before all of London's high to-doers. Eh? Do you hear that there, laddie?”
“Yes, boss.” Nash whispered. Riphook knew that Nash was aware of how bad he had botched up. He was lucky to be alive. Riphook did not allow anything that could come back to him to exist.
“Good. Now go and get her, before she truly does board a ship over the channel.”
Not wanting to linger in a room where he had possibly killed a man, Riphook slowly gathered his drawing possessions and neatly arranged them in a pouch that he hung on his belt.
“I don't wish to see you without her, you hear me, street rat?” he called down from the top of the stairs.
“Yes, boss.” Nash announced, moving to his friend on the floor.
“Rig
ht then. Out we go, Deaver, we've got loads to get done tonight, don't we? A couple goods to get, some fools to rob, and our good Prince none the wiser!” Hoisting up a cane by the cellar door, he popped it into the air with glee as he crested the stairs to the landing.
“Sure, boss.” the doorman replied, and the two of them sloshed out into the night. As the door swung open the sound of pelting rain shot into the cellar accompanied by the howling wind of the ever-building storm.
* * *
Nash crouched down beside his oaf of a lackey.
The Ambiguous Enigma of the Hunted Lady: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 5
