Earl of Scandal (London Lords) (17 page)

“Yes?” A small window opened in the door, and Merissa could see the harsh, distorted features of a man glaring out at her. “What do you want? Have you a delivery? They go around in back at the servants’ entrance.”

“A delivery? Certainly not,” Merissa answered. “I’ve come to speak to Mr. Crockett.”

The beady eyes peering at her narrowed even more. “What do you want with Crockett?”

“It’s a private business matter.” She made her voice as quelling as possible.

“Go away. The boss don’t entertain visitors this time o’ day.”

The window slammed shut. Merissa exhaled an exasperated sigh. She’d not thought it would be easy. Obviously this Mr. Crockett had no manners and no sense of propriety.

She knocked again, harder. After a moment, she paused, listening. The door remained shut.

“Mr. Crockett!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “I know you’re in there! I must see you! It’s a matter of utmost urgency!”

The window opened again. “Quit that caterwauling or I’ll have you thrown into the street!”

“Just try it!” Merissa snapped. “And I’ll inform all of London society that Mr. Crockett is a fiend who attacks women! I’ll come back tonight and stand on the curb and tell every one of your deep-pocketed clients exactly how I was abused. I believe there are as yet a few gentlemen left in this city. I’ll make certain they know what sort of establishment this is.”

The man at the window used some words Merissa had never heard before. Then the heavy door creaked open. “Come in then,” he growled. “You’ve about ten bloody seconds to state your business before I make good on my threat.”

Merissa took a deep breath and entered the foyer. It was lavishly decorated with a plush crimson carpet on the floor, cream and gold silk wallpaper and gleaming brass lamps.

“Well?” the man demanded. His features were even more battered and distorted than she had imagined. His nose was crooked in two places, one of his eyelids drooped alarmingly and both of his ears were lumpy and misshapen. The overall effect was very fierce and frightening. Merissa decided that he was well-suited to his role of guard dog.

But she was not afraid of him, not much. She drew herself up to her full height, glad for once that she was a “gawky meg,” as Mrs. Hammond referred to her, and could face him eye-to-eye. With as much composure as she could muster, she said, “I’ve come to speak to Mr. Crockett. Although. I’m unwilling to divulge the nature of my business with a stranger, but I can tell you that it involves a debt to be paid to him.”

The brute’s expression altered instantly. “Why didn’t you say so?” he grumbled. “You could o’ saved us both a bit o’ trouble.”

“I hardly think it would be wise for me to announce on the street that I am in possession of a sizeable amount of money. Although this area appears to be reasonably safe, at least during the daytime, I’m certain there are footpads and thieves about.”

The man raised his brows at this then said tersely, “I’ll go announce you.”

He started down the hall, leaving Merissa to glance curiously around the foyer. She was on the verge of examining some gilt-framed pictures hung along one wall, when the man returned. “Here now, you come with me,” he said. “This is no place for a young lady. Besides, it wouldn’t do for any of our regulars to see you here.”

“Why not?” Merissa asked as she followed him down a, narrow side corridor,

He shook his head. “Bad for business. Gentlemen come here to escape sour-tongued lasses like you. No tellin’ what you might say to them.”

Merissa repressed a small smile of satisfaction.

Her tension returned as they reached a closed door at the end of the hall. The man went inside, and as she stood there waiting, all her anxieties returned. The porter might be easy to manipulate, but she did not think his employer would be so susceptible to her will. Would Mr. Crockett accept the fifty pounds she’d brought and agree to allow Charles to pay the rest off gradually?

What was to keep him from taking the money and then continuing to harass Charles? Did a man like Crockett have any honor she could appeal to? Or was he, as Charles said, an unscrupulous thief who’s already driven several young men to suicide and felt no remorse for his terrible deeds?

Panic threatened. She should never have come here alone. At the very least, she should have brought Bob, or paid the burly driver who’d brought her here to accompany her in. She felt like a defenseless coney facing down a wolf. At the thought, her hands went to her throat in a gesture of dread.

A few muffled words floated through the door:  “Damn plucky wench... stood right up to me.” Incredibly, the doorman appeared to be arguing her case. What had worked with him, might work with Crockett. Show no fear. Remind him that she was a gently bred lady. Argue Charles’s cause as persuasively as she could.

The door opened suddenly, and the porter came out and gestured for her to go in. Squaring her shoulders, Merissa entered the lion’s den.

A man stood by a large writing desk. His face was turned away from her but she could see that he was tall and almost as powerfully built as the doorman. He was impeccably dressed, his black tailcoat fashioned of glossy, tightly woven superfine, his pantaloons of gleaming gray serge.

She held her breath as he faced her.

“Miss.” He gave her the most sketchy of bows, curt and harsh, almost mocking. “Penrose said you wished to see me.”

His eyes were cold, like shards of gray ice. Merissa glanced away, thinking that this was how predators paralyzed their prey.

Her gaze roamed the lavish room, observing the carved walnut wainscoting, the deep brown leather furniture, the perfectly trimmed quill lying beside a pile of creamy white parchment. This was a man used to power and control. There was a pitiless sense of order surrounding him.

She dared another look at his face. Features nearly as blunt and crude as the doorman’s, except for his eyes, which were infused with a ruthless cunning.

“Yes,” she began. “My brother, Charles Cassell, I believe he is indebted to you for some gambling losses.” She fumbled with her reticule. “I’ve brought a portion of it.”

His eyes raked her, searching, assessing, hunting for weakness. Merissa bore his scrutiny as calmly as she could. She hoped the sound of her pounding heart wasn’t audible.

He moved to the writing desk. “Let me consult my records. Charles Cassell, you say?”

“Yes.”

His immaculately manicured hands examined several leather-bound ledgers, selected one and opened it. Within seconds he seemed to have found what he was looking for. “Indeed,” he said, “your brother owes me twenty thousand pounds.” His gaze returned to her, wolfish and avaricious. “How much have you brought?”

“Fifty pounds.” It sounded pathetic, even though it was a fortune to her. Probably not even enough to purchase the furnishings in the room.

Crockett’s eyebrows jerked upwards. “You’re jesting, aren’t you? Such a paltry sum is hardly worth my trouble. I operate a business, not a charity.”

“You have my word that he’ll pay you the rest,” Merissa said, although the idea of paying anything to this villain was becoming more and more distasteful.

“Your word?” Crockett’s voice had grown deadly soft, silky, and dangerous. His gaze roamed her person with rude interest. “You’ll have to do better than that, Miss Cassell.”

Outrage suffused her.  She pulled the bag of bank notes and coins out of her reticule and threw it on the desk. “Well, it’s going to have to do, Mr. Crockett! You’ll get nothing else from me—except a piece of my mind! I see that everything I’ve heard about you is true. You’re a shameless knave! A black-hearted blackguard! You lure innocent young men to your establishment and prey upon them! You ruin them, take everything—their self-respect, their sense of honor, their will to live. Then, like a spider, when you have sucked them dry, you go on to your next victim! Have you no shame, Mr. Crockett? Don’t you ever worry about your future in the Hereafter?”

Crockett laughed, a cold, sinister, utterly chilling sound. “You mean, do I worry I will go to hell for my sins?” He shook his head. “There is no hell. Nor heaven either. I do what I want. I answer to no one.”

He rose from the desk and moved towards her. Merissa held her reticule protectively in front of her. She’d done it now! Elizabeth always said her wretched tongue was going to be the undoing of her.

A squeak-like sound escaped her as Crockett put his hands on her arms. His demonic face was only a few inches away from hers. “My dear Miss Cassell. I must say I am impressed by your spirited nature. If your brother had half your pluck and fortitude, he would never have gotten himself in the sad state he’s in. Because of your stirring speech, because...” his fingers came up to brush her cheek. “Because you amuse me, I am disposed to be lenient.”

He withdrew his hand and stepped back. “I’ll give your brother a week to collect the funds. If, after that time, he’s not paid me, I’ll send one of my employees to find him. The thing is,” Crockett’s eyes grew cold as a snake’s, “Worth likes his work. He enjoys causing pain.”

Merissa could scarce draw a breath. The implication was that if they could not come up with the funds, Charles would be battered, tortured, perhaps killed. “I don’t see how that profits you,” she whispered. “If he’s dead or maimed, you’ll never be able to collect the money.”

“He’ll be an example, of course. I must make it clear that I insist on payment, else I would very shortly be out of business. You see, Miss Cassell, I’m not like Worth. I don’t particularly enjoy causing pain. But I don’t flinch from it either if it becomes necessary.”

Suddenly, Merissa saw him for what he was. Crockett used sinister methods to terrify his victims because he had some terrible need for control over those around him. She gazed at his scarred, harsh face, wondering what sort of childhood he’d had, what abuses he’d suffered to make him like this.

“I feel sorry for you,” she said softly. “No matter how much power you have, how much money you amass, you’ll never be happy. It’s love that gives life meaning, not wealth and might. You’re a fool if you don’t understand that.”

Crockett went to the door and opened it. “Good day, Miss Cassell.” He bowed. “It’s been  entertaining.”

She went out. Now what? she wondered. She’d met the enemy. The first battle seemed a draw. But she was not certain she would survive the next.

~ ~ ~

What a bloody goose chase, Christian thought wearily. He’d visited nearly every club in town. A Brooks, one of his erstwhile acquaintances had casually made reference to the rumor that Christian was bedding Honoria Averill. But he didn’t have time to think of that now.

Not until the last club had he a bit of luck. Fellow there had vaguely remembered the Cassell boy. Used to come in with a crowd from Cambridge, he said. Heard that they were staying at the New Arms Hotel. Christian went there immediately.

Yes, he remembered Charles Cassell, the clerk agreed. Blond, good-looking fellow. Nice bloke. Moved out a few weeks before. Pretty done up. Had trouble paying his bill.

“Where has he gone?” Christian inquired.

The man shook his head. “Somewhere on Rosemary Lane. Bad neighborhood. Sad to see it. I was hoping he’d go home to his family.”

Christian thanked the man and returned to the hackney he’d hired. “Rosemary Lane,” he told the driver.

“Sir?”

Christian withdrew a handful of coins from his pocket and handed them over. “It’s hardly my destination of choice, either,” he told the driver.

A back slum, a rookery, they called places like this. Crude, hovel-like buildings bunched together. Garbage and filth in the streets. Grim, blank-faced people.

Appalling to think that places like this existed only a few miles from Mayfair and Bond streets. Even more horrifying to think of Merissa here. Christian tensed at the thought. She no more belonged among this squalor than a butterfly belonged on a heap of dung. She possessed everything this place did not. Life and hope, grace and beauty.

The hackney drew to a halt in front of a row of ramshackle, two-story dwellings. “Where to now, sir?” the driver called over his shoulder. “Have you an address?”

Christian sighed. “I guess I’ll get out and search on foot.”

Disgusting odors assaulted his nose, and he had to step carefully as he started down the street, although, the muddy trackway hardly deserved the designation. It would be impossible to go to every dwelling and inquire after the Cassells. He’d have to find someone who worked out in the street who might have seen Merissa, or her brother.

He spied a fellow selling lumps of coal from a broken down, mule drawn cart. “I say, have you seen a young man around here?” Christian asked the coal man. “Blond Brutus, sort of a weak face, but respectable-looking?”

The man gaped at him, blue eyes red and rheumy in a smudged, weary countenance. Christian realized from the man’s astonished perusal that he must make a very unlikely sight for this locale. He was aware of how the snowy white of his cuffs and ascot contrasted almost obscenely with the man’s head-to-toe coating of coal dust. Cleanliness was a luxury few could afford in these places.

Slowly, the man shook his head.

“What about a young woman? Curly brown hair, spectacles, tall and pretty?”

Recognition sparked in the man’s eyes. “Aye, I’ve seen that one. Coming out of a house a ways down. Knew at once she didn’t belong here. Ask old Henry there.” He pointed to another coal dealer driving his cart a distance away. “We work different sides of the road, ye see. Split up the business.”

“Thank you.” Christian handed the man a shilling, and turned to pursue the other coal man.

The second coal man pointed out a dilapidated structure. Gazing at the rude hovel, Christian decided he was going to strangle Charles Cassell as soon as he found him. Whatever had possessed him to give his sister this address? Didn’t he know her well enough to realize she was bound to seek him out?

Jaw clenched, Christian went to the saggy door, opened it, and started up the stairs. “Charles Cassell?” he called loudly, then grimaced at the stench. “Cassell, are you up there?”