And as truly foolish as it was to have kissed his brother’s fiancée, he’d do it all over again if Lady Hero gave even the slightest sign of acquiescence.
Griffin cracked an eyelid and snorted under his breath. The lady was showing no such signs this morning. She sat ramrod straight in her seat—surely an uncomfortable pose as the carriage swayed—and her face was still averted. She gave every indication of loathing him.
Well, that was for the best, wasn’t it?
Griffin sighed. “Why have you decided to go back to St. Giles so soon?”
“Mr. Templeton has agreed to meet me at the site of the new home,” she said.
He raised his brows, waiting for more explanation, but it wasn’t forthcoming. Fine, two could play at that game. He tilted his hat over his eyes and settled back to regain some of the sleep he’d lost this morning.
The carriage shuddering to a stop woke Griffin some time later. He watched lazily as Lady Hero got up and left the carriage without a word to him. His lips twitched. That certainly put him in his place. He could stay in the carriage and await her return, but curiosity got the better of him. Griffin followed her out of the carriage, looking around.
They were in St. Giles, not far from his still, actually. The carriage was stopped at the end of a narrow lane, too wide to pass through. Griffin saw Lady Hero walking determinedly down the lane with her footman, George. Griffin jogged to catch up. By the time he made her side, she was already in conversation with Jonathan. The architect was all in black, a huge roll of papers under one arm. He turned to greet Griffin, but Lady Hero continued talking.
“… as you can see. Now we’re worried that the children will have to stay in their wretched temporary home for the winter. Can you give us any hope, Mr. Templeton?”
She drew breath and Griffin took advantage of the pause by sticking his hand out to his friend. “Good morning, Jonathan. How are you today?”
“Quite well, my lord, quite well indeed,” the architect replied, beaming. He glanced at Lady Hero and blinked at her gimlet stare. “Er… now, then, as to the progress of the foundling home, my lady. As you can see, the former architect barely laid the foundations. I’ve had a chance to inspect the site, and I’m afraid I’ve discovered several distressing points.”
Lady Hero frowned. “Yes?”
Jonathan nodded, pushing his spectacles up onto his forehead. “Most of the foundation is sound, but in places it has already settled and will need to be dug up, shored, and rebuilt. Further, the papers you sent me indicated that special stone, wood, et cetera were bought and stored here. I’m afraid I cannot find them.”
“Stolen?” Griffin asked.
“Yes, my lord, or perhaps never truly bought in the first place.” Jonathan looked troubled. “In any case, the materials will have to be purchased before further construction is done.”
Griffin glanced at Lady Hero and saw that she was biting her lip. “I… I will have to see about obtaining the monies necessary to purchase material. Last time it took weeks for the stone to be shipped.”
“Ah.” Mr. Templeton rocked back on his heels. “Here I think I have good news, then. I know of a supplier of fine granite who has some already sitting in his warehouse here in London. I have no doubt that he has enough to meet our needs. It isn’t the Italian marble that the original plans called for, but the granite stone is pretty enough. Cheaper, too. I believe I can persuade him to extend you the credit on the stone.”
Lady Hero seemed to relax. “Wonderful, Mr. Templeton! I shall rely upon you to arrange for the granite to be bought and moved here. Now, perhaps you can show me the problems you spoke of.”
Griffin sat on the stone foundation of Lady Hero’s home and waited for her to complete her tour with Jonathan. He tilted his head back, feeling the sun on his face. He’d have to take her home after this and then return again to St. Giles to consult with Nick about what to do with the Vicar. Griffin rubbed the back of his neck wearily. He couldn’t remain indefinitely in London guarding the still. Perhaps the Vicar could be bought off somehow. Except that Griffin balked at giving the man money. The only other means of eliminating the crime lord was assassination.
Griffin chuckled in disgust. He hadn’t sunk quite that low yet.
“My lord!”
He glanced up to see a footman trotting toward him.
Griffin straightened. “What is it?”
“There’s a lad at the carriage asking after you. Said to tell you that Nick sent him.”
Lady Hero had returned with Jonathan by this time. She looked at Griffin for the first time that day. “What is it?”
“A matter of business.” He glanced at Jonathan. “Are you done here?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then let’s go.” He took her arm and walked rapidly toward the carriage. He hated to take her along, but he couldn’t very well let her wander alone in St. Giles. “Damnation.”
She arched her eyebrow at him but kept pace with his stride. The youth waiting beside the carriage was one of Nick’s crew. He doffed his hat at the sight of Lady Hero, his eyes widening. He’d probably never seen an aristocratic lady in his life.
“What is it?” Griffin demanded.
The lad jumped, tearing his gaze from Lady Hero. “Nick wants to talk to you, m’lord. Quick like, if’n you can.”
Griffin nodded. “Hop on the back of the carriage.”
He gave the coachman directions and then helped Lady Hero in before pounding on the roof.
She watched him as he threw himself on the squabs. “How did your messenger find you?”
“I sent word where I’d be,” he said absently.
Thankfully she didn’t ask any more questions. The carriage was already pulling up in front of the distillery’s wall.
“Stay here,” he ordered her before leaping from the carriage.
Griffin strode through the gate. Nick was in the courtyard.
“In here.” Nick jerked his head toward the distillery, leading the way.
Inside, the fires illuminated the cavernous building like something out of Hades. A small knot of his men was gathered over something that lay on the warehouse floor. As Griffin drew nearer, he saw it was a man.
Or what was left of a man.
The body was tangled, the limbs at angles the joints weren’t meant to bear naturally. Griffin took one look at the face and glanced away.
“Tommy Reese,” Nick said, and spat into the straw. “Went out for a tankard of beer yesterday afternoon and was thrown over the wall just ’alf an hour ago, lookin’ like that.”
Griffin fisted his hands. He remembered Tommy; he couldn’t have been more than twenty. “Did he say anything?”
Nick shook his head. “Already dead.” He glanced sharply at the silent men and gestured Griffin to the side. “Tortured, I’m thinkin’, m’lord.”
“No doubt.” Griffin grimaced. “Was Reese party to any particular secret of our business?”
“Nah, just started.”
“Then the Vicar did this as a warning.”
“And to scare the men.” Nick lowered his voice. “Already two ’ave run off. Couldn’t stop them, though I told the buggers right enough they’d be safer in here.”
“Fuck.” Griffin rolled his head on his shoulders to stretch his neck, then swiveled to the men. “Well, this is first shot. From now on, no one goes out at night, and during the day you go in pairs. Is that clear?”
The men nodded, though none would meet his eyes.
Griffin smiled widely, though he felt more like howling. “And your pay has just doubled, right? Any man still here by tomorrow gets a fistful of coins. You go out tonight and you’ll get that instead.” He jerked his chin at the corpse.
One by one, he stared at each man until they all met his eyes and nodded.
Finally, Griffin jerked his chin. “Get on with it.”
The men went back to work. No one smiled or looked particularly cheerful, but at least they weren’t whispering
mutiny among themselves anymore. Nick pulled two of the men aside and gave them instructions in low tones. A moment more and the two men had lifted Reese’s poor body between them and taken it out to the courtyard. Griffin turned back to watch broodingly as the stills were stoked.
“My God,” came a feminine voice behind Griffin.
He turned and met Lady Hero’s accusing eyes. “You’re running a gin still!”
Chapter Seven
Early the next morning, the queen greeted her suitors in her throne room. She wore a gown of silver and gold, her midnight-black hair was coiled and twisted beneath a golden crown, and every man in that room was amazed by her beauty and bearing.
The queen looked at her suitors and asked them this question: “What is the foundation of my kingdom? You have until midnight tonight to bring me your answer.”
Well, Prince Eastsun looked at Prince Westmoon, and Prince Westmoon looked at Prince Northwind, and then all three princes hurried from the room.
But when the stable master heard the question, he merely smiled to himself….
—from Queen Ravenhair
Hero couldn’t believe it, but the evidence was right before her eyes—and nose. The great warehouse held huge copper barrels set over smoldering fires, and the air smelled of alcohol and juniper berries. This was a gin distillery—most probably an illegal one.
And Reading wasn’t at all perturbed to be found out.
“What is going on? Was that a dead man I saw in the courtyard?” She looked at him, waiting for an explanation, but he turned his back on her.
Actually, it was the large, burly man by his side who seemed the most embarrassed. “M’lord, the lady—”
“The lady can wait,” Reading said quite clearly.
Hero felt her face heat. Never had she been so cavalierly dismissed. And to think she’d let this cad kiss her just last night!
She swiveled to leave the awful building, but suddenly he was there beside her, his hard hands holding her arms.
“Let me go,” she hissed through gritted teeth.
His face held absolutely no compassion. “I have business here. When I am done, I’ll escort you home—”
She wrenched her arms free and turned.
“Hero,” he said quietly, then louder to someone else, “See that her carriage doesn’t leave without me.”
“M’lord.” Two men darted past her and out the door, no doubt to help keep her prisoner while Reading did his disreputable “business.” She continued sedately to her carriage—she’d not let him see her in a hysterical flurry. Once outside the wall and at her carriage, she ignored Reading’s guards and climbed in.
Her wait was short, but even so, she was not in the best of spirits when the carriage rocked and Reading climbed inside. He knocked on the roof and then sat down, gazing out the window. They rolled along for a few minutes until Hero couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Aren’t you going to tell me what that was about?”
“I wasn’t planning to,” he drawled—expressly, she was sure, to enrage her.
“That was a distillery.”
“Yes, it was.”
“For gin.”
“Indeed.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, feeling anger pounding in her breast. She was perilously close to losing her facade—again. Hero fought to control her voice, but even so the words seemed to scrape against her throat. “Do you have any idea the amount and depth of misery that gin brings to the people who live here in St. Giles?”
He was silent.
She leaned forward and slapped him on the knee. “Do you? Is this some kind of lark for you?”
He sighed and turned toward her finally, and she was shocked to see the exhaustion lining his face. “No, not a lark.”
Tears bit at the corner of her eyes, and she found to her horror that her voice trembled. “Haven’t you seen the babies starving while their mothers drink gin? Haven’t you stumbled over the bodies of broken men, mere skeletons from drink? My God, haven’t you wept at the corruption that drink brings?”
He closed his eyes.
“I have.” She bit her lip, struggled to control her emotions, to control herself. Reading wasn’t stupid. There must be some reason for his madness. “Explain it to me. Why? Why would you dabble in such a filthy trade?”
“That ‘filthy trade’ saved the Mandeville fortunes, my Lady Perfect.”
She shook her head sharply. “I don’t understand. I’ve never heard that the Mandeville fortune needed saving.”
His mouth twisted wryly. “Thank you. That means I did my job well.”
“Explain.”
“You know my father died some ten years ago?”
“Yes.” She remembered the conversation she’d had with Cousin Bathilda on her engagement night. “You immediately left Cambridge to go carouse about the town.”
His smile was genuine this time. “Yes, well, that tale was more palatable than the truth.”
“Which was?”
“Our pockets were to let. Yes”—he nodded at her incredulous expression—“my father had managed to lose the family fortune with a series of investments that were ill advised at best. I had no idea of the family’s finances. As I was the second son, Father and Thomas considered it none of my business. So when Mater told me at the funeral the straits we were in, you could’ve knocked me down with a feather.”
“And you left school to manage the family’s finances?” Hero asked skeptically.
He spread his hands and inclined his head.
“But why you? Wasn’t it Thomas’s job to find a financial manager?”
“One”—he ticked off his point on a long finger—“we couldn’t afford a financial manager, and two, Thomas’s head for money is about the same as our dear, late father’s. He spent the last of what we had in the week after Father died.”
“And money is the one thing you’re good at,” Hero said slowly. “That’s what you told me when you offered me a loan. When it comes to financial dealings, you can be relied on.” Did he think that was the only thing he could be relied upon to do correctly?
Griffin nodded. “Thank God my mother caught wind of what Thomas was doing. She had a small inheritance of her own that she’d kept hidden from Father. We lived for the first year or so on that bit of pin money until my distillery started bringing in money.”
That reminder snapped her attention back to her original concern. “But… gin distilling? Why that of all things?”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You have to understand. I came home from university to my mother near prostrate with grief and worry, half the family furnishings sold to pay my father’s debts, bill collectors calling at all hours, and Thomas nattering on about how fine a new carriage with gilt trim would be. It was autumn and all I had was a rotten harvest of grain, mostly spoiled with damp. I could’ve sold it to a broker who would’ve then sold it again to a gin distiller, but I thought, wait a minute, why lose most of the profit? I bought a secondhand still and paid the old rascal I’d bought it from extra to show me how to use it.”
He sat back on the carriage seat and shrugged. “Two years later, we were able to afford Caro’s season.”
“And Mandeville?” she asked quietly. “Does he know what you do to support your family?”
“Never fear,” he said with deep and devastating cynicism. “Your fiancé’s hands are clean of all this. Thomas worries about far nobler things than where the money comes from to clothe him. His interests lie with parliament and such, not bill collectors.”
“But”—her brows knit as she tried to figure it out—“he must have some idea of where the money comes from. Hasn’t he ever asked?”
“No.” Reading shrugged. “Perhaps he does wonder, but if so, he’s never said a word about it to me.”
“And you’ve never tried to discuss it with him?”
“No.”
Troubled, she stared at her hands. What Reading did to make money was re
prehensible, but what of a man who enjoyed wealth without once asking how it was made? Wasn’t Mandeville in some ways just as much to be condemned as Reading? Perhaps more so—he had all the benefits without suffering any of the soul-shredding consequences of dealing in gin. There was a name for such a man, she knew.
Coward, a tiny voice whispered deep in her heart.
She pushed the thought aside and looked at Reading. “If my brother finds out what you do, he’ll not hesitate to have you brought before a magistrate. Maximus cannot be reasoned with when it comes to the subject of gin.”
“Even at the risk of embroiling his dear younger sister in scandal?” He arched an eyebrow. “I think not.”
She shook her head, turning to gaze out the window. They’d left St. Giles behind and were rolling through a much nicer area. “You don’t know him. He’s obsessed with gin and the effects it has on the poor of London—he has been ever since our parents’ murders. He believes that gin is to blame for their deaths. I don’t know that he would stay his hand, even if you’re soon to be my brother-in-law.”
He shrugged. “That’s a chance I have to take.”
She pursed her lips. “What were you discussing with that man at the distillery?”
He sighed. “I have a competitor—though that word is a bit refined for what he is—who is bent on driving me out of business.”
She glanced at him, alarmed. “What kind of competitor?”
“The kind who likes to smash stills and throw the mangled body of one of my men over the courtyard wall,” he said. “It’s the reason I came to London—well, that and your engagement to Thomas.”
“Dear God.” She shook her head. How could he joke about becoming mixed up with such criminals? “Then that man was—”
“His name was Reese, and his only sin appears to have been going out for a drink yesterday.”
She shuddered. “That poor man.”
“You needn’t worry,” he said. “As I’ve said, Thomas isn’t involved.”
She looked at him incredulously. Did he really think her so shallow?