Night of the Scoundrel

by Kelly Bowen

  Adeline and King reached the end of the stable as Elliot scrambled back, only to fall to his knees again. For the first time, Adeline noticed the chains affixed around the boy’s ankles, secured to a heavy iron hook set deep into the wall near the center of the room. The child’s face and clothes were filthy, his livery jacket torn. He had a large lump at his left temple with dried blood crusted on the broken skin and staining his fair hair. Fresh blood trickled down his chin from a split lip that was swollen and bruised.

  Across the room the baron had collapsed against the wall, still gripping his thigh and making mewling sounds. Marstowe was coatless, and his shirt was untucked and bunched around his waist, the top buttons at the fall of his trousers open. Blood was pulsing steadily through his fingers and pooling beneath his leg, turning his buff breeches dark.

  “He stabbed me,” he keened. “Dear God, he stabbed me. The scaly bastard attacked me. Tried to rob me. I’ll see him hanged.”

  Elliot climbed to his feet unsteadily, the chains clanking. He shook his head, his complexion waxy, his eyes bright with panic. “No, no,” he croaked. “That’s not—” His hand was shaking where it still gripped the knife. “His Lordship toppered me senseless, and when I woke, it was dark and I was chained like this. And he was going to…and he was trying to—” Elliot stopped. “I was only defending myself.”

  “He’s lying, the little vermin,” Marstowe shrilled.

  “I’m not lying.” Elliot’s small voice cracked.

  King walked into the room and retrieved Marstowe’s coat from where it had been hung high on a peg. With unhurried movements, he rifled the coat’s pockets until he found what he wanted. He let the coat drop to the floor and tossed a key to Adeline.

  “Unlock the boy.”

  Adeline crouched and released the fetters, and Elliot scrambled back.

  “You chained a child to the wall,” King commented in a tone so chilling that it sent shivers down Adeline’s spine.

  “I had to,” Marstowe wheezed. “He deserved it. He’s a thief—”

  “No.” Elliot was shaking his head miserably. “I didn’t steal anything. Honest, I didn’t—”

  “I believe you, Elliot,” said King. “And I know exactly what the baron tried to do.”

  Elliot’s eyes went wide.

  “I believe you,” King repeated. He had returned to the wide entrance of the room and was looking around him, almost absently, as if trying to remember if he had misplaced something in its confines. “Go with Adrestia now, Elliot,” he said.

  Adeline stared at King, though he did not meet her gaze.

  “Should I fetch a doctor, sir?” Elliot asked.

  King gently extracted the knife from the small boy’s fingers. “You will find my horse in the square in front of this townhome,” he said. “Take it and go to the Lion’s Paw. Do you know where the tavern is?”

  Elliot nodded.

  “Good. When you get there, ask for the Darling brothers and tell them that I require them to attend me at this address.”

  “How d’you know they’ll be there?”

  “They are always there at this time of night when they are in London.”

  “Are they doctors, sir?” The child was still shaking.

  “This man is not going to need a doctor,” King murmured to Elliot. He crouched in front of the boy and straightened his jacket, brushing a stray piece of straw and dust from his shoulder. “I am going to take care of this so that what this man tried to do to you, he will not do to anyone else. Ever. Do you understand?”

  Elliot nodded.

  “Good. Now wash your hands and face in the snow before you go out front,” King instructed.

  Adeline’s throat tightened at the careful gentleness of his words and actions.

  He straightened and guided Elliot out of the room, pointing him down the alley toward the wide stable door. “Your instructions, Elliot,” he said. “What are they?”

  “Go with Adrestia. Wash. Then horses. Then the tavern and the Darlings. Tell them to come here.” His voice was stronger, some of his color returning.

  “Very good. But I do not want you to come back in these stables under any circumstance. Do you understand?”

  “Yessir.” He started toward the stable door.

  King finally met her eyes.

  “You’re sending him on a fool’s errand,” she whispered. “Marstowe will be dead long before anyone can be fetched. He is bleeding from a major vessel in his leg.”

  “I know. The Darlings will be counting on that.”

  “Oh.” Adeline bit her lip.

  He put a hand to her face, touching her cheek. “Take care of Elliot. Please.”

  Had he said anything else, Adeline would have fought him. Instead she nodded. “Of course.”

  She caught up to the boy at the end of the alleyway, stepping out into the night air, the wind biting at her exposed skin.

  “You need to go back,” Elliot said the second the door closed behind them. “You can’t leave him.”

  “He asked—”

  “He sent me away, and we both know why. What he’s gonna do.” The child who suddenly didn’t sound like a child at all was looking up at her, his expression fierce. “But he asked you to stay.”

  “No, he asked—”

  “Not right now,” Elliot blurted, sounding almost impatient. “Before. At Helmsdale. He’s never asked anyone to stay.” He poked her in the chest with a small finger. “Ever.”

  Adeline stared at the boy.

  “You can’t leave him now.”

  Slowly Adeline nodded. “You’re right.”

  Elliot jerked his head. “I know. ’Sides, I don’t need no damn nanny to ride a horse to the Lion’s Paw.” He spun and vanished into the night, heading across the gardens toward the townhome.

  Adeline watched him go for a moment before she turned and silently let herself back into the stable. She crept through the gloom, her weapons ready in her hands, coming to stand in the shadows just beyond the edge of the harness room.

  Marstowe was still slumped against the wall, a sheen of perspiration across his forehead. “Where is it?” he was demanding.

  “Where is what?” King asked.

  “My goddamn money. I know you took it. You’re a goddamn criminal who sells stolen art and smuggled liquor and God knows what else. And I know you stole my money.”

  “You sound sure.”

  “You know too much about my family.”

  “Lots of people know about your family.”

  “Do you think I’m stupid? You’re wearing my brother’s goddamn ring!” Marstowe shouted before sagging back against the wall. “I need a doctor,” he groaned.

  “Mmm.” King wandered to the wall opposite the baron. With the toe of his boot, he brushed aside a mouse-eaten rug. He bent, pulling open a small hatch door that was set into the floor. Adeline frowned. How would he have known that that was there—?

  “It’s been a while since I was here,” King said.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Marstowe rasped. “Get me a goddamn doctor.” He lifted his hand briefly before clapping it back over the wound as blood pulsed. He made another pathetic sound.

  “Evan and I used to hide all of our treasures here,” King said. “We played in the stables all the time. And it was where you brought Evan.”

  The use of Evan’s name seemed to have caught Marstowe’s attention.

  From the hidden recess, King withdrew a faded peacock feather, a slingshot, a skull that might once have belonged to a deer, and a carved deity that looked as though it had traveled from a land far to the east. “The baroness forbade dirty, impure things in her house. Me included, though I was more difficult to dispose of. After Evan died, they couldn’t keep me, as immoral as I was, not without admitting that they had sired such wickedness. So they quietly put me away in a place where no one knew who I was and no one believed a word I said.”

  Adeline fingered the handle of her knife uneasily, a stran
ge awareness stirring deep in her subconscious. Because it sounded as if he was saying—

  “Do you know who I am?” King asked, putting the feather and the skull back and holding the carved deity in his palm.

  Marstowe’s breathing was becoming ragged. “You’re a goddamn criminal.”

  “When required,” King agreed.

  “A goddamn criminal who thought he was entitled to a piece of my fortune.”

  “It’s not just a piece of your fortune I’m entitled to,” King said so quietly Adeline almost didn’t hear. “In truth, I’m entitled to all of it.”

  Adeline grasped the edge of the stall door as comprehension crashed through her subconscious and into the forefront of her mind. It had all been there before her, had she only chosen to see. His speech, his education, his knowledge, his memories, and the intense power those memories held. God, she had censured this man for making assumptions while she had been unforgivably guilty of the same. King hadn’t been a street urchin or an unlikely best friend.

  He had been Evan Westerleigh’s brother.

  Marstowe seemed to have reached the same realization. “Joshua Westerleigh died of fever when he was eleven. He’s buried at St James’s. Everyone knows that.” His words were belligerent, but Adeline could hear the underlying fear.

  “They do, don’t they?” King shrugged and tucked the little carving into his pocket. “It was very well done, really. How else to explain a child who simply…ceased to be?”

  “You’re lying.”

  Adeline had stepped out of the shadows and crossed the floor to stand beside King. He didn’t glance at her, but if he was surprised at her presence, he didn’t show it.

  “Who th’ ’ell are you?” Marstowe wheezed. His face had taken on a gray pallor in the low light, and his words had started to run together.

  Adeline simply gazed back. “At the moment, Judith’s maid.”

  King exhaled, his eyes closing briefly.

  “G’me a doctor, girl,” Marstowe demanded, perspiration still beading on his forehead.

  Adeline only sheathed her blades.

  King bent again, this time picking up a smith’s hammer from a jumble of tools tossed into a bucket.

  “You’ll remember this, I think, Uncle,” he said, hefting the hammer in his hands. “It’s what you used to kill Evan when he tried to pull you off me. Because he knew what you were going to do to me. Because you’d been doing the same thing to him for years, until he became too long in the tooth and I became the more tempting of the two.”

  The baron swayed as he tried to focus on King. “Devil spawn,” he slurred. “Tempting the unwary with your evil ways.” He shifted against the wall. There was a wide pool of blood beneath his leg now. “You can’t prove I did any of that.”

  “I suppose I can’t. Any more than I could prove my innocence back then either,” King said. “In the breath it took for you to utter a handful of words, I became an unnatural killer.” He stepped closer to the baron and stopped in front of him. “And against your word, mine was powerless.”

  “Then what? You’re goin’ t’kill me now?”

  “That ship has long sailed,” King said. “Or at least, that is what my smugglers in Dover would say in a situation like this.” King tossed the smith’s hammer to the side with a deafening clatter.

  “I shoulda killed y’too,” the baron garbled.

  “Perhaps you should have. But you didn’t.”

  “Y’can’t leave m’like this,” Marstowe panted.

  “Alone, you mean? The way I was left after you killed my brother? After you told my father and my mother that it was I who had wielded that hammer in a fit of jealousy?” King stepped back and extended his arm to Adeline.

  She took it without hesitation, and he covered her hand with his other one, gripping it as if he was afraid she might disappear.

  “Goodbye, Uncle.”

  Chapter 13

  King knew when she had slipped into his rooms by the ghost of movement reflected in the dark windows.

  He didn’t stop playing, just let the music wash over him, his fingers moving of their own accord. While Evan had been the artist, King had been the musician, the notes flowing effortlessly from his mind to his hands. When he’d been four or five, the baron and baroness would trot him out from time to time to play for guests, the collection of people making all the right noises of approval as he dutifully executed a preselected piece. As he got a little older and his parents had become impatient with his frivolous obsession with music over more suitable pursuits like Latin and maths, riding and fencing, he’d been forced to sneak in time at the pianoforte whenever he could. And then after, when he’d been taken from his home in Hanover Square, there had been years and years when there had been no music at all.

  It was why, when he’d bought Helmsdale, he’d had a pianoforte installed in his bedroom. It was a Broadwood grand, enormously expensive, and King would have paid five times that amount for the luxury of playing whatever he wished whenever he wished, uncensored and undisturbed.

  Yet when Adeline sat down next to him on the long bench, he didn’t feel disturbed. He simply finished the sonata, drawing out the waning notes.

  He rested his fingers on the ivory keys. “I have locks on my door.”

  “That weren’t locked tonight.” She placed a finger on a key in front of her and pressed down, a single note reverberating through the room. She was wearing a loose, belted robe the color of the sapphire she had once tried to steal, the neck snug at her throat, the sleeves almost too long for her arms. The simplicity of the garment was more evocative than anything else she had ever worn.

  “No,” he agreed. “They weren’t.”

  She withdrew her fingers from the keys. “The Darling brothers departed with their cargo an hour ago for Edinburgh,” she said.

  King nodded. “There will be a rumor soon that the baron returned to Virginia, humiliated and defeated by his inability to find his missing fortune.” He traced the edge of a key with the pad of his finger. “I thought that this part would be easier. I thought that the rage and revulsion would be replaced with…satisfaction. Elation. But being back in those stables with him was like living everything all over again, and all I could feel—all I can feel now—is grief.”

  Adeline’s hand came to rest gently on his leg, but she didn’t speak.

  “It was my fault Evan died,” he said. “He died trying to spare me from what he had endured for years.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Adeline said fiercely. “You were a child. And you were betrayed by the very people who were supposed to keep you safe.”

  “I told them,” he said. “My mother and father. Told them what had happened when they found me with Evan, covered in his blood, my clothes torn, my breeches ripped.” He covered her hand with his. “They told me that I must be touched by the devil to make up such blasphemous lies. That if I didn’t recant, then I would sacrifice my soul and be denied salvation.”

  Adeline closed her eyes.

  “Perhaps I did. Sacrifice my soul,” he whispered. “Because I did not recant. And they cast me into hell.”

  “Bedlam.”

  “Yes. A never-ending nightmare of mad-doctors, purges, starvation, and torture.”

  “But you survived.”

  “No. Joshua Westerleigh died there,” he said. “The boy who once believed in the goodness of people died. King survived. A merciless man who does whatever awful things are necessary to keep surviving.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  King clenched his fist and brought it down on the keys. He was rewarded by a jarring jumble of notes.

  “What you did for Elliot tonight were not the actions of a merciless man. They were the actions of an honorable man.”

  “Jesus, I did nothing except send him to fetch men who could make the evidence of what happened disappear. I am everything Marstowe said I was. Don’t try and…redeem me, Adeline. I do not wish or deserve to be redeemed.”

 
“I’m not redeeming you,” Adeline said. “I’m seeing you. I saw a man who sent a child away so that he wouldn’t know that it was his blade that killed a man. Elliot doesn’t need to carry that with him. Not yet. Maybe not ever. You let him believe that you killed Marstowe for what he tried to do.”

  King looked away. “So? I’ve killed men before.”

  “So have I.”

  He turned slowly.

  “I’ve killed because I did not wish to die,” she said in a whisper. “I’ve stolen because I did not wish to starve. Will you punish me for those things the same way you’re punishing yourself? I am merely a survivor of circumstance and fate, the same as you.”

  King couldn’t look away from her.

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  Her words seared right through him, making his blood heat and stirring arousal instantly. “You don’t want this, Adeline. You don’t want me. In a fortnight you’ll be in France, where you’ll find a good man—”

  “Stop talking.”

  King’s mouth snapped shut.

  “You left your door unlocked for a reason.”

  “I left my door unlocked because locking it is pointless.” It sounded feeble even in his own ears. “You don’t want this. I don’t want this.” I can’t want this.

  Her hand settled on his chest, over the left side where his heart might once have been. “I don’t believe you.”

  His fingers fell from the piano keys.

  Adeline extricated herself from the bench and stood before him, the fire dancing across her features and putting flames into the darkness of her hair. She reached for the belt at her waist.

  “Stop.” He surged to his feet, the bench nearly tipping behind him. His blood was pounding in his ears, right in time to the throbbing in his cock.

  Her hand paused.