The Telltale Heart

by

Melanie Thompson

TORRID BOOKS
www.torridbooks.com

Published by
TORRID BOOKS
www.torridbooks.com
An Imprint of Whiskey Creek Press LLC

Copyright © 2016 by
Melanie Thompson

Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-68146-483-1

Credits
Cover Artist: Kris Norris
Editor: Fran Mathieson

Printed in the United States of America

Torrid Books

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Werewolf for Hire Series

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Secrets Series

Book I: The Secret, the Shifter, and the Sex-Slave Shanghai
Book II: The Secret of the Bloodstones

Drexel Rayne, the Eighth Duke of Severn, reclined on his mound of pillows and opened his brocade dressing gown. The young lady hired for his pleasure knelt between his legs and took his flaccid cock into her mouth. As soon as her tongue began circling the sensitive tip, he moaned with pleasure. It had been so long. His doctor had expressly forbidden any kind of sexual activity. His heart had been judged too weak for the excitement.

But Lord Rayne had gone long enough without release. He was desperate. The young woman's red hair spread across his thighs as she licked his engorged organ and drew its entire length into her mouth. Drex's heart pounded as his cock throbbed. He was close to exploding but put off the moment by grabbing the girl's hair and lifting her head. “Show me your teats, girl.”

With a coy smile on her swollen lips, she slid her full breasts out of the tight top of her corset. She held them in her hands, so white, so perfect, the tips erect, full and pink. The sight of them made his heart pound even harder. He reached down and pulled one turgid point and then groaned. “Suck.”

“Whatever you say, guvenor,” she said with a smirk as she dropped her head to finish her task.

He was almost there, his blood pounding through his body, every nerve ending in his cock screaming with excitement, when the pain hit. He sat up at once, pushed the girl away and grabbed his chest. “Call Marston,” he gasped.

“Who?”

“My valet. Call him now.”

Frightened, the girl leaped to her feet and ran out of the room screaming for his valet. Marston flew into the room, cordial ready in hand. He held his master's head tenderly and helped Drex sip the revivifying drink.

The cordial was a concoction brewed from foxglove, dog bane and willow bark prescribed by his physician. As he drank it, his heart stopped its erratic palpitations and steadied. “I'm done for, Marston. If I don't find some kind of miracle cure, your master is going to die.”

“There must be something we can do, Master Drexel. Too many of us depend on you. What would we do if that nodcock Sir Nugent inherited? Why if he was to fall into your shoes, all of us would be out in the cold in the wink of a lamb's tail.”

Drex leaned back against the bank of pillows. “I'll think of something. You're right. Nugent Templecombe can never be the Duke of Severn.”

Marston fingered his chin. “Mayhap, I heard about someone who might have a cure for a bad ticker, my lord. I'll look into it for you.”

“Better hurry,” Drex gasped. “I don't think I have long.”

* * * *

Deep in the Old Nichol, the most notorious slum in the city of London, Camille Torrington tightened the last screw in a special vest she was constructing. Her laboratory was deep under the slum in three cellars she leased from a disreputable old crook name Jeremy Scrooby. Scrooby owned two blocks on Boundary Street, renting them out to families of Irish immigrants and anyone else who was desperate enough to want to live in the poorly-maintained, falling-down, brick buildings. As yet, Cam had only set fire to the three-cellar lab once.

Her assistant was her cousin, Edmund. The Torringtons were a good family, an old family who had fallen on hard times. Her mother, now sadly deceased, had married a soldier who died in a war far from home, leaving them destitute. Edmund was the family's last surviving son of her father's younger brother. His family was from Northumberland. Her mother had told Cam before she died to go to them, but there was no way Cam was going that far from London, the hub of the scientific universe. Besides, she was all that remained of her mother's family who were from Hertfordshire. London was her home. It was the center of the civilized world. All she cared about were her experiments and being independent. There was no way she'd allow herself to become subservient to anyone, much less an unknown bunch of relatives from the north of nowhere.

She and Edmund took care of themselves. He had his own friends and was a very talented cutpurse. She, on the other hand, was a second-story thief. Nimble as a goat, she could scamper up the side of any building quiet as a mouse and dub any lock. Between them, they managed to pay the rent on their roomy cellar digs, buy all the tools and equipment she needed for her experiments, and Cam had even managed to put away quite a nest egg just in case they had to pike on the bean.

“I say, Cam, do you think this thing will actually work?” Edmund held up her invention. It looked like a chain mail vest, but under it wires and leads sprouted from a device that was cunningly fit into the inside of the vest.

“It's hard to say. It should work, but so far, I've had no subjects to experiment upon. Find me someone dying of heart failure, and we'll give it a go.”

Edmund fit the vest over a dress form in the corner of the lab, shoved a pile of papers off a high stool and sat down. “I could ask around.”

Cam shoved the special goggles she wore when she worked onto the top of her head. Her hair, a mass of golden curls, was tightly contained in a leather cap. She wore a man's white linen shirt, the finest of linen because whenever she cracked the house of a particularly rich pigeon, she always checked for shirts that would fit her along with breeches and boots. Why buy clothing when it could be had for free? Most of the nobs living in Grosvenor Square or west of Charing Cross were out in the evenings at parties or gaming hells. It was a simple matter for someone with her skills to enter their mansions through third story windows.

Cam preferred to dress like a man. Dresses were cumbersome and got in her way. Dressing as a male kept her safe from the procurers who were always trolling the Nichol for any unwary girls or women. Brothels and houses of ill repute were constantly in need of new recruits and she vowed she would never be one.

“Find me someone, Edmund. Any drunken bum will do. Check the street tonight. Maybe we shall get lucky and so shall our victim.” She grinned as Edmund pulled on his coat of superfine fabric tailored at one of the best shops. It fit him like a glove. “Your neck cloth is askew.”

He tugged at it with a crooked smiled. “Working for you is hell on my wardrobe which I need to be successful.”

“Where are you going this evening?” Every night, Edmund trolled the expensive clubs in the wealthy sections of town, prigging wasted gamblers of their purses. He was so slick they seldom even noticed he was there, much less that their purses were missing.

“I'm going to give the Hellfire Club a try. I've been invited by the abbot himself, Sir Nugent Templecombe, the honorable Marquis of Barrasford. I met him at White's last evening. We shared a rubber or two of whist and I refrained from removing his very fat purse, guessing, I hope correctly, that a trip into the Hellfire Club would prove the more profitable enterprise. He gave me a card which is supposed to be the only way of gaining entry.”

“Well, be careful. I have heard very disturbing stories of that club on the street and the honorable Sir Nugent's reputation is black to say the least.”

“Yes, so too have I heard; however I also heard only the wealthiest of the young bloods of the city are invited and while they are all partaking of the pleasures of the flesh, I shall be relieving them of their purses.”

“No entertainment there to your taste?”

“I should think not. Mostly whores hired off the street to play games and submit to any torture Sir Nugent's sick mind can devise.”

“No toothsome young men for you to play with?”

“Not that I've heard. If I chance to find a bird of my feather, I would rather play at home.”

He fit his curly beaver hat carefully on his artfully disheveled locks, picked up his Malacca cane and climbed out of the cellar.

Cam watched him go, wondering if he had bitten off more than he could chew. The Hellfire Club was filled with dandies and wild young men, but was reputed to have quite a crew of bruisers guarding it.

* * * *

Edmund Torrington twirled his cane and whistled as he sauntered through the darkest part of town. None of the filthy residents or the toughs who frequented the streets bothered him. Edmund was an excellent swordsman, his cane held a poniard inside of it, but he was also an expert fighter, having learned the art of stick fighting as a child from Cam's father, Robert Torrington, a soldier who traveled widely. Cam's father brought home a manservant from faraway China. The servant, Jinqua, was very loyal to Robert Torrington who had saved his life when he found him working in the coal mines of Behar, India. Jinqua, now an old man, lived in Cam's small flat above the cellars. He protected them still and had taught Edmund and Cam hand-to-hand combat techniques as children who would confound the most brutal of attackers. Many of Cam's crazy ideas for medical treatments and inventions had originated in Jinqua's fertile mind.

When Edmund reached Madam Fouchet's, a gaming house on Bennet Street, St. James, he did not knock on the front door or enter the Madam's establishment. Instead, he opened a gate, followed a stone path to the rear of the house and descended a steep flight of stairs. At the bottom, a red door—particularly appropriate in this instance—awaited him. The knocker hung under a bronze mask of a satyr complete with horns. He rapped once and the door was opened by a liveried servant dressed all in black. He presented the footman with the card he'd received from the Marquis and was immediately ushered inside.

The footman took his hat and cane and led him through a maze of corridors to another series of stairs. It seemed to Edmund they were descending straight into the bowels of hell itself. When they finally reached the bottom of four flights of stairs, the footman opened a door and stood back to allow Edmund to enter. Screaming echoed from deep inside what could only be a subterranean cave system. Edmund shot the footman a questioning glance which was received with a cold stare. Apparently, he was on his own. He entered the stone corridor, and with a great deal of hesitation, walked down it.

The corridor—the floor as well as the ceiling—was cut from solid rock. It gave Edmund the feeling of being entombed.
What,
he wondered
, have I gotten myself into this time?

Another red door greeted him at the end of the corridor. He opened it and was shocked at the opulence that greeted him. From bare stone, he entered a cave hung with brocade, silk and velvet hangings, all of the deepest crimson. Thick, blood-red carpets covered the rock floor. A large group of gentlemen wearing black loo masks—Edmund counted eight—sipped drinks and watched as a naked woman shackled to the wall was whipped by a man wearing a black hood.

Naked or nearly naked women walked through the room carrying trays with more drinks. A curvaceous blond stopped in front of Edmund and offered him a drink. He took it without glancing at her luscious breasts or exposed mons. All of his attention was on a young man also waiting on the gentlemen. He wore only a cloth bag which held his genitals. Edmund saw one gentleman stroke the young man's naked buttocks with a caressing hand and was immediately aroused. As though in a trance, sipping his drink, he walked toward the handsome young man whose glowing blond locks, classic profile and muscular body made him appear a Greek god.