Demon of Mine (33 page)

“
Just finished? You ‘ave ‘ad hours to compose a simple letter.
What ‘ave you been doing while I was gone?”

“
Funny that you should ask me that when you’ve just spent the
same amount of time buying a simple herb.” His discomposure had
quickly given way to apparent irritation.

“
I
told you – zee streets were busy.”

“
Oh? You didn’t happen to cut the hearts out of any
particularly annoying pedestrians, did you?”

Floorboards
rattled above as someone stamped their foot. “’Ow dare
you?”

“
Well after the way you carved up that actress, I thought that
perhaps—”

“
You are zee one who told me to kill her!”

“
Kill her
discreetly
,
not butcher her and leave her mutilated corpse for the papers to
run wild with. But you botched the job, didn’t you? Not to mention
the other two you murdered!”

“
I
killed them on purpose,” she snapped, as if the grisly murders
might have been mistaken for a simple accident or slip of hand, “to
send a message.”

“
Well, consider that done,” he replied with a snort.

“
It
got Damon out of ’is new wife’s arms and into zee streets, didn’t
it?”

“
He
goes out nearly every night anyway. At least, that’s what you
said.”

“
Usually he does – I only ’ad to ask a few questions to
determine that much, and I ’ave it on the authority of several
other immortals. But clearly you do not know what eet eez like to
be a newlywed,” Véronique said in a victorious tone, as if she were
sure she’d just won the argument. “He would not ’ave left her at
night for at least a week if I ’ad not lured him back to zee
streets.”

The man
muttered something under his breath that Jenny couldn’t quite make
out.

“
Besides, this eez a lot of talk coming from someone who
murdered his own brother.”

“
Yes well, the difference is that no one knows I did it. You,
on the other hand, were so flamboyant that any immortal within
England’s borders probably suspects that another of their kind
committed those murders.”

Véronique
would not be robbed of her victory. “People do not realize that you
killed your brother because zey are idiots. It could not be more
obvious, if you ask me. You ’ad everything to gain: your family’s
money, zee privileges of being zee eldest son…” She kept going,
ticking off the benefits of fratricide.

Jenny slowly
crept away, slipping around the side of the house as quietly as she
could. She’d heard enough. She had to find Damon. As she reached
the street and broke into a brisk stride, she cast one last look
over her shoulder at the townhouse. Elsie was inside – she’d bet
anything on it.

****

Jenny pulled
aside the first maid she saw. “Damon – I mean, young Master
Remington – have you seen him?”

The girl
stared at her with wide, red-rimmed eyes and shook her head,
punctuating her answer with a sniffle.

Jenny sighed
and moved on, careless, for once, of propriety as she gathered her
skirts in her fists and lifted them well past her ankles,
sprinting. Running was nasty business, thanks to her breathless
sojourn from the townhouse in a shabby part of town that was much
too far away for comfort. A stitch in her side took away what
little breath she had left, eventually forcing her to slow to a
purposeful march. She was panting anyway by the time she reached
the open area in front of the foyer, where the staircase landed and
wide halls stretched to either side, one leading to the servants’
wing and the other to a series of large rooms, most of them used
for entertaining. She headed toward those. Damon would not be
sulking in bed. If he was at home, he was probably somewhere on the
first floor.

Mercifully,
Lucinda was perched on the sofa in the very first room Jenny came
to – the sitting room. She wasn’t Damon, but she was probably the
next best person she could have come across. “I’m looking for your
brother,” Jenny explained bluntly, finally dropping her
skirts.

Lucinda arched
a finely-shaped brow. “He left about an hour ago. I am here in his
place, awaiting word from any of the men he’s hired for the
search.”

“
Never mind them. I think I’ve found Elsie.”

Lucinda was up
from the sofa in a flash, her cool composure suddenly gone.
“Where?” She was by Jenny’s side quicker than a flash of
lightning.

“
She’s being held in a house in the city, a good distance from
here. I was out for a walk when – oh, never mind! I must tell
Damon. Where has he gone?”

Lucinda
frowned. “I don’t know. He left without pausing to say so much as a
word to me. I had to interrogate several servants just to discover
who he’d left with and when. Judging by the fact that you’re
looking for him, it seems safe to say that he wasn’t at the place
where you believe Elsie to be.”

“
Quite.” Jenny buried her fists in her skirts again, clutching
and twisting the fabric. “What shall I do?”

Lucinda placed
a hand on Jenny’s shoulder and steered her toward the sofa. “First,
you shall tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out – even the
smallest detail may be important.”

****

Damon reached
for the door handle at the servants’ entrance, resisting the urge
to simply kick his way inside. The thief taker’s lead had been
useless. He’d wasted valuable time traipsing around a lackluster
part of the city only to discover that the arguing couple from the
night before had been – well, he couldn’t remember their names, but
the woman hadn’t been Elsie, and that was all that mattered. What
if another of the men had come for him while he’d been gone? The
thought hung over him like a storm cloud, leaving a bitter taste in
his mouth. He shouldn’t have left in such a rush, especially not
without even pausing to appoint someone to sit in his place on the
sofa in the living room, waiting for news. Yet even as he chastised
himself, he knew that he’d do it all over again – would leave the
house as fast as he could if given even the smallest clue as to
where Elsie might be. Finding her was all that mattered, and he
wanted it so badly that even the faintest hint seemed like a
promise.

The soft snap
and rustle of wind-blown parchment snapped him out of his desperate
thoughts. Looking up from his mud-crusted boots, he turned his
attention to a bit of paper tacked to the door with what appeared
to be a farrier’s nail. He plucked the fluttering square, frowning
as he unfolded it. An irrepressible sense of hope seized him when
he revealed the greeting, where his name was inked onto the paper
in a tidy scrawl. Perhaps one of the thief-takers or Bow Street
Runners had left him a note. Perhaps Elsie had been found. He
whetted his suddenly dry mouth, touching the tip of his tongue to
lips that were cracked in anticipation.

We
have your wife…
the
words cut through his half-formed daydreams of reunion.
…
and intend to
hold her until due payment is rendered in the sum of ten thousand
pounds.
For a
moment he stared down at the note, marveling at the first sentence
as if it were some new, unfathomably obscene phrase he’d never
heard before. Then his mind began to work again, and rage gripped
him. He read on, committing every violent promise and twisted
requirement to memory. Finally, he knew what had happened to Elsie.
It almost felt worse than ignorance.

He pushed the
door open, storming inside. That someone had dared to steal his
wife away to exploit for ransom… He ground his teeth, regretting
that they were short and blunt, as they always were during the
daytime. He would have preferred wicked points, fangs that could
pierce and tear, drawing blood. He’d never felt more like using his
immortal strength to rip someone apart. For once, he relished the
thought of becoming the demon he was reputed to be.

A maid
wielding a broom leapt out of his way as he rounded a corner,
crushing the ransom note in one fist while he took long, angry
strides. The ten thousand pounds was nothing, of course. He would
gladly give up the world for Elsie, if that was what it took to get
her back. But the kidnapper who’d written the letter – the twisted
fool who’d come up with the entire plan – didn’t know him at all.
He’d sooner die than render payment and then lounge around his
house, pulling out his hair and twiddling his thumbs as he waited
for the kidnapper to make good on his end of the bargain. No, he
would not leave it to the criminal to decide whether or not to
mutilate and burn Elsie anyway after taking the money. He would
find her himself and bring her safely home – after he destroyed the
fool who’d taken her.

A particularly
strong odor met his nostrils as he passed by the kitchen door.
Normally he would have been indifferent to the aroma of roasting
meat, but today the cook had let it begin to burn. The smell of
searing flesh, animal or no, made his stomach turn. He could
remember the stench of charred human all too well – among his
memories of the night he’d saved Elsie from the house fire, the
stink of it all was most vivid. He’d managed to rescue her then,
had dragged her out of the flames’ reach. Now a stranger dared to
threaten to reduce her to ashes. Such an end would be kind in
comparison to what he’d do to the bastard when he caught him. With
thoughts of revenge fueling him, he left the stink of burning flesh
behind, hurrying down a corridor and emerging into the large open
area that spread out from the foyer. He turned toward the sitting
room. Maybe someone would be waiting for him there with
news.

“
Damon.” Lucinda rose from the sofa when he entered, her silken
skirts rustling. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

‘
We’ apparently included Lucinda and the maid by her side, a
red-haired young woman who rose to stand beside Lucy, looking every
bit as tense as she did.

Damon
tightened his fist, squeezing the ransom note into a hard ball. “Do
you have news?”

Lucinda
nodded. “We must speak somewhere private.”

“
Tell me now, and may privacy be damned.” There was no time for
secrecy. Let the servants gossip. What did it matter?

Lucinda glided
forward and laid a hand on his arm. “It will be well worth every
second if you come with me to the library, I promise. I believe I
know where Elsie is.”

Though it
hadn’t beaten since he was sixteen, his heart leapt in his
chest.

“
I
know more than just her location. Come.” She pulled gently on his
arm.

Damon glanced
askance at the maid who stood a few scant feet from his sister. The
girl was staring at him, her blue gaze bold and unabashed. Anger
boiled in the pit of his stomach as he looked at her pale,
unflinching face. How dare she watch and listen so shamelessly, as
if his misery were a private drama and she the only person in the
audience? “You are dismissed,” he said curtly.

“
She will come with us to the library,” Lucinda said, lowering
her voice. “She’s the one who found Elsie. Damon, she knows about
us.”

He spared the
maid another glance, this one incredulous. “She knows?” He sighed,
too anxious to contemplate what would have been a shocking
revelation, under normal circumstances. “Very well. Let us go to
the library. Quickly.”

“
Damon.”

Damon turned
toward the sound of the familiar voice and found himself a few
scant yards from his mother, who had appeared in the sitting room
doorway.  Her appearance was perfect, from her pristine,
unwrinkled gown to her elegantly arranged hair, but there was an
unusual look in her eyes – a hint of something – could it be pity?
Damon balked at the notion, sure that if she felt sorry for anyone,
it was him, not Elsie. He deserved his sorrow for being foolish
enough to abandon his wife with a killer on the loose. Elsie,
however, was innocent – a victim of his carelessness. “Yes,
mother?”

“
I
wanted you to know that your father has hired a detective. He’s the
best London has to offer.”

“
I
know.” Damon held his tongue, resisting the urge to say that he
hardly trusted a single man to find his wife. His father was
probably more concerned with whoever had forced their way into his
house than Elsie. A broken window had been discovered on the first
floor, where the person who’d killed the footman and abducted Elsie
had apparently entered.

“
We
will render justice, Damon. You needn’t fear that we will allow the
killer to escape punishment.”

“
It
is my hope that Elsie is not dead, and my intention to bring her
back alive.” He didn’t mention the letter – time was too precious
to waste explaining the situation to his mother, who wouldn’t be
any help. He stared at her, willing her to leave so that he could
rush to the secrecy of the library with Lucinda and the
housemaid.

“
Of
course.”

An
awkward moment of silence stretched between them, causing Damon to
fear that he might spontaneously combust with impatience if his
mother didn’t leave. Every second that ticked by was a moment
was
ted.

“
I
don’t know if it helps,” his mother said, opening her hand to
reveal a small object, “but I found this among the glass shards in
the corridor where the window was broken.”