Vanquished (38 page)

Had Callie been standing rather than seated, the fist-grip on her heart would have sufficed to drop her to her knees. Sinking hard fingers into the sofa arm, she managed to choke out, "I'm not entirely certain he did cry off."

Turning to her, Lottie's face formed a question mark. "What do you mean, Callie? I thought you said--"

Dropping her head into her hands, Callie felt the sobs she'd struggled so hard to keep down pushing up the back of her throat. "Oh, Auntie, when I'd said I'd been a bloody fool before, I didn't know how true a statement that was."

It was coming on dark when Hadrian made his way to Dandridge's house in Hanover Square. The brass front doorknocker, aptly cast in the form of a serpent, was turned up, indicating that the MP was within and "at home" to callers. Dressed in all black, with boot blacking on his face, Hadrian slipped around to the back alley. Crouching behind the low stone wall, as yet unlit lantern in hand, he bided the time for full darkness to descend.

While he waited out in the cold, recollections of Callie invaded his thoughts. That soft smile, those gentle hands, the habit she had of lifting her chin just so, the way her eyes lit up when she laughed. Odd how he hadn't fully realized just how much she'd come to mean to him, just how much he loved her, until now when she was as good as lost to him. Even so, the time they'd had together would always be a sweet gift to be treasured throughout the long barren years ahead.

In the interim there was one last gift he could give her and that was the retrieval of the photograph. Stamping frozen feet, he waited for the last upstairs light to dim before heading for the tradesmen's entrance. The lock pick he pulled from his pocket was a rudimentary tool but one that had served him well in the past when, driven by hunger, he'd broken into a grocer's shop and gorged himself on raw vegetables and uncooked meats. That had been more than fifteen years before, and yet he trusted the touch hadn't left him entirely. A few tweaks had the door giving weigh, gaining him admittance to the slate-floored kitchen.

Loud snores greeted him when he stepped inside, paralyzing him in place. He fell back into the shadowed corner, narrowly missing banging up against a peg from which a great many copper cook pots hung. Holding his breath, he craned his neck to see the source of the din, a fat woman in a stained apron slouched over the table, an overturned cup set by her dimpled elbow. The cook, he surmised, and relaxing fractionally, stepped softly past.

Dandridge's study would be the most reasonable hiding place for a photograph or indeed anything else. Coming out into the front hall, he turned right, guessing that the MP's sanctum would be on the main floor.

His hunch proved to be on the mark. He found the wood paneled room without incident, the door standing wide open. Darting a quick glance behind him, he slipped inside and pulled the door quietly closed.

Lifting the lantern aloft, he glimpsed the outline of twin built-in bookcases flanking a wide desk. The bookshelves alone presented innumerable hiding places though he rather suspected Dandridge would have the photograph sequestered in some sort of safe. If so, his lock pick would be put to true test.

"Looking for something, Mr. Stone?"

The now familiar voice had him halting in his tracks. Garbed in a dressing gown Dandridge rose from behind the desk, his rail thin figure casting ghoulish silhouette on the paneled wall behind. In the dim light, Hadrian took note of the bandage dressing the MP's swollen nose and wondered if that meant it was broken.

Heartily hoping that were the case, he lifted the lantern so that the cone of light hit the MP square on the face. "You tell me."

The MP only laughed. "You've got balls, I'll grant you that. A pity you lack the brains to go with them."

"You had my flat turned over."

Dandridge did not deny it. "For that, you've only yourself to thank. Were it not for your ill-conceived allusion to having proof of my past, I would never have thought to do so. Instead, we stumbled upon that deliciously damning photograph of the Rivers whore hanging out to dry in your studio's darkroom. Very fortuitous, don't you think?"

"I want it back, Dandridge."

"Even if you had anything to barter with, which you don't, it is too late, my friend."

Staring into Dandridge's reptilian eyes, Hadrian felt a sick foreboding sinking his stomach. "What do you mean?"

The MP shrugged his narrow shoulders. "The delightful image of Miss Rivers toying with her cunt is even now in the hands of the Fleet Street press. If all goes well, it should make the front page of every London daily newspaper by tomorrow morning, suitably censored, of course. Public morality is no trifling matter, after all."

Hadrian felt as if the room were spinning like a top.
Callie, what have I done to you?
To Dandridge, he said, "You bastard." With nothing more to lose, he launched himself across the study floor. Grabbing Dandridge by his lapels, he slammed his right fist into the old man's face, catching him in the jaw and sending saliva spurting.

He hauled back to hit him again, landing a second blow in the solar plexus that had Dandridge doubled over the desk, flailing hands clawing for the bell rope. Between wracking coughs, he said, "You'll pay for that, Stone."

"I've been paying all my life, Dandridge. It's high time you and your lot anted up."

Hadrian started to go for him again when hard hands grabbed him from behind. Fists raised, he spun about, the lantern crashing to the floor amidst three pairs of booted male feet. Ratcheting his gaze upward, he stared into the grotesquely smiling faces of Sam Sykes and Jimmie Deans.

Looking like a guard dog salivating in anticipation of the kill, Sykes said, "Good eve, St. Claire. Fancy meeting you 'ere."

Dividing his gaze between the two henchmen, Hadrian asked himself if Boyle and his lackeys hadn't been part of the plot to entrap him all along. He had only a handful of seconds to contemplate that likelihood when a ham-sized fist planted itself in his midriff. A second set of hands jerked his arms behind his back, an unbreakable human shackle. More blows caught him in the face, eyes, and gut until he doubled over, head hanging and eyes squeezed shut against a waterfall of snot and blood. Apparently not done with torturing him, someone drove a knee into his crotch. A lightening streak of pain, stark as a camera's flare, had his legs folding beneath him. He heard a heavy groan, a sound of unadulterated agony, and belatedly realized it had come from him.

"That's enough; cease." Dandridge's muffled shout rose about the eddying pool of dizziness and pain. "He's bleeding all over my Aubusson carpet. Get him out of here--now!"

The hands holding him up relaxed their grip. Hadrian dropped to the floor, a knee-bruising thud.

"Where . . . where d'ye want us to take him?" Even with eyes closed, Hadrian could tell it was Deans, as slow-witted as ever.

"That's what I pay you to figure out. Only see that you take him out the back through the kitchen."

Hard hands grabbed him under the armpits, drawing him back onto his feet. "Come on with you, you filthy bugger, we 'aven't got all night."

Between them, they dragged him as Dandridge had hauled him across the brothel bedroom all those years before. The next few minutes flickered in and out, snatches of consciousness punctuated by spells of blissful blackness. The screech of a door opening on rusted hinges; a rush of icy air hitting him in the face like a fist; the tang of sweat pouring down his face, stinging his swollen eyes and salting his wounds. Coming to, he wondered where the devil they were taking him. The weight of his head felt enormous, the effort to hold it upright nothing short of Herculean. Cracking open an eye, he saw they were crossing the cobblestone alley to the mews. A black-lacquered carriage stood at the ready, team in harness and driver seated atop the box. One of the henchmen, Deans, released him and went behind the conveyance to lift the boot. The next thing Hadrian knew, he was being pulled along to follow like a balloon on a string. It was then that he understood they meant to fit him inside like a corpse in a coffin. Panic flared, granting him the strength to struggle. He kicked out, his foot connecting with what felt like a shinbone.

A kidney punch had him doubling over again, lungs choking on frigid air. "Get inside, you bloody fucker, or else." The speaker was Sykes, not that it mattered.

A blow struck him from behind at the base of his skull. Stunned, he felt himself falling forward into the dark well, his captured arms powerless to break his fall. He landed and scrabbled to climb out but several well-placed punches stole the last of his will. They were going to kill him, he was going to die, and his only real regret was that he wouldn't have the chance to see Callie once more. He would simply disappear and she would live out her days hating him as her betrayer.

"Ye're a stubborn fucker, St. Claire, I'll grant 'ee that."

The boot slammed closed, leaving him entombed in musty darkness, elbows and knees pinned to his chest. For a handful of seconds, he teetered on the edge of madness, the closeness stealing what little breath he might draw. Then a strange peace descended. His life, or the little that was left of it, was about to come full circle. Hadrian St. Claire had been born on a similar winter eve fifteen years before when climbing inside a prime minister's carriage had seemed the start of a bright new future. Yet all his grand plans, fine airs, and fancy clothes had come to naught.

Hadrian closed his eyes, giving himself up to the darkness. Not so bright now.

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."

--G
EORGE
E
LIOT

D
id you see that?" Rourke lifted his head from where he and Gavin hid behind the hedge bordering the mews behind Dandridge's townhouse. Their horses, let from the lending stable, were tethered nearby but out of sight. Turning back to Gavin, his breath came out in a puff of steam. "Come on with you, man, 'tis two against two, an even match. We can take 'em. Hell, I'm so bluidy mad, I can take 'em both myself if need be."

He would have launched himself forward, but Gavin grabbed his shoulder, forcing him back down. "Hold, for God's sake. Unless you want to see Harry dead, you'll curb that Scot's temper of yours and stay hidden for now. And
quiet."

"But you saw what they've done to him as well as I did. Christ, I've seen haggis in better form than he is. Now they've packed him into the boot like so much baggage."

Peering between the branches of hedge, Gavin watched as the bald henchman climbed onto the driver's box. The other, the bulkier of the two, stood outside the carriage, applying some substance, boot blacking he suspected, to cover Dandridge's crest.

Turning back to his impatient friend, he whispered, "For the present, he's alive and he'll stay that way until they get him to wherever it is they mean to finish him. If we make our move now, who knows how many more of Dandridge's bullies may pour out of that house to aid them. No, far better to follow and see where they take him, and then attack while the element of surprise is ours."

"Why, ladies, this is a lovely surprise, though it is rather late for a social call, do you not think?" Dropping the cloth-wrapped ice he'd been holding to his swollen face back in the champagne bucket, Dandridge rose to greet the two women his butler had just shown into his study. Thinking he'd got St. Claire cleared out and the blood cleaned up just in time, he gestured them toward chairs.