Page 27 of A Kiss Gone Wylde
“We’ll see how wretched you find me once I’ve bedded you!” The threat was uttered so vehemently, bits of spittle flew from his lips. “You may find you like me very well, after all.”
Benny lifted her eyebrows and laughed mockingly. “Bedded? Bedded implies some willingness on my part, and I can assure you that could not be further from the truth. I am most unwilling. Indeed, I am disgusted at the very prospect.”
“As will your husband be… Once I’ve had you,Lady Davenport,” he sneered as he bit out her title almost like an insult,“He’ll never be able to look at you again. That’s the part of the sport. Ruining the lot of you for your handsome, upright husbands. I can’t abide prigs like him.”
“You make presumptions, sir, about the character of others based on your own failings. Payne is a better man on his worst day than you could even aspire to be… even on your best.” Those words rang somewhat hollowly. Not because she didn’t believe every word she had said about her husband, but because she feared that he was right. Payne wouldn’t be able to look at her again. But it wouldn’t be disgust with her. It would be guilt and self recrimination. He would feel that he had failed her and would punish himself for it.
He turned toward the window ever so slightly, a smug smile pulling at his lips. With the small amount of light coming in, it revealed yellowed teeth that were terribly crooked. Despite being unusually small, they still gave the appearance of crowding. They had begun to darken with rot where they overlapped and likely where he failed to clean them adequately.
“Do I? Perhaps you should ask him how he felt after learning that I’d taken Miss Bardwell to my bed? She was a sweet little thing. Cried piteously and begged me not to hurt her,” he crowed. “Or has he not mentioned his former betrothed to you?”
She’d died tragically. That was all Payne’s mother had said. But this wasn’t simply a tragedy. It was a crime. It was too hideous for words. Why had no one made him pay for such?Almost immediately, the answer came to her. Scandal. Everything that had been done had been done to mitigate the fallout of a scandal.
More questions swirled in her mind. Had he murdered her? Had she taken her own life? Why had Payne hidden it from her? Given how they’d met at Vauxhall, it seemed he would have felt compelled to warn her about Wainwright. But perhaps his memories of his sainted Anne were too painful to share, even if it meant jeopardizing her safety in the process of keeping his secrets.
“Theirs was an actual love match… not something created for the benefit of society gossip,” Wainwright continued. “Of course, if he’d loved her so much, he ought to have married her instead of abandoning her to my mercies and then leaving her to birth her bastard child alone before she bled to death in a charity hospital.”
Benny felt positively gutted by those words. So that was how she had died. Birthing the child of the monster before her. Had Payne lied by omission because he didn’t wish to frighten her with the ugliness of the poor girl’s fate? Or had he lied because she still held his affections so firmly he could not bear to speak of her? Everything Wainwright said, and everything her mother-in-law had said, only intensified every doubt and fear that she had. They offered shrouded facts without offering any real answers. The only person who had those answers was Payne and he was also the only person who seemed not to want to speak to her about Miss Anne Bardwell.
“Why do you hate him so?” Benny asked. “What is it about my husband that makes you so jealous and so spiteful that you must target the women he cares so deeply for?”
“Does he?” Wainwright asked. “Care, that is. One has to wonder. You are practically strangers, after all. Society might buy that nonsense about your prior acquaintance before the scandalous encounter on the Dark Walk, but you and I know better. Don’t we?”
Benny would not answer. She would not allow him to bait her any further. It had occurred to her that everything she said simply gave him ammunition. Remaining quiet was the wisest of decisions, though it was hardly an activity she had ever excelled at.
After a long moment of silence, Wainwright’s palm connected sharply with the wall of the carriage. “Answer me!”
Benny simply turned her head to stare out the window of the carriage, further ignoring him. The more she did, the angrier he would become. And if he were angry enough, he might make a mistake—one that would allow her to escape. But there was another reason to look at her passing surroundings. If she did manage to escape him, acclimating herself to her position in the massive network of neighborhoods and rookeries that comprised London would be key to finding her way home.
“You’re a haughty bitch. I’ll give you that,” he said in disgust. “But I’ll break you before it’s done. I should have done the same to your sow of a cousin when I caught her with Merrick that night at Hadley’s.”
At the mention of Felicity, Benny’s head whipped around, her eyes blazing with protective rage. “You didn’t do a thing that night because you feared Phinneas,” she said. “But if you think you have nothing to fear from Payne, you underestimate him greatly.”
“Merrick is a man one ought to fear. He’s the size of a bloody mountain. But I am not underestimating your husband. He will do the same thing this time that he did last time… Nothing.”
He leaned across the expanse of the carriage and snatched her wrist up, twisting it painfully. But that wasn’t what prompted her gasp. The light fell over him, fully revealing his face for the first time. She understood then why he tried to keep to the shadows. Perhaps in candle or lamp light, he might hide his marks more successfully. But with the natural light filtering through the carriage window, even with the heavy rain, the lesions on his nose and near his ears were impossible to miss. She’d heard maids whispering about it in the past.The pox.While she didn’t know precisely what it was, she knew that it was the direct result of his dissipated lifestyle. She knew it was often contracted through congress with prostitutes which implied that it would be transmitted via certain activities.
“Your husband will want naught to do with you when I have had my fill… He will leave you to your misery just as he did Anne Bardwell. And you’ll watch the mirror every day of your life, waiting for this wretched disease to rob you of the small bit of beauty you can claim.”
Whatever it took, Benny vowed to herself, she would not give in to him.Whatever the cost.
16
The Rose and Ivy Inn was not at all what one would expect given the name of the establishment. There were no roses or ivy in sight. It was an odd building, too wide for its height. Built in the Tudor style with the upper floors cantilevered over the ground floor, it gave the impression of a squatting toad. That would surely have been a better name for it, Benny thought.The Squatting Toad Inn.That almost made her laugh and she realized that she was far closer to hysteria than she ever had been in her life. Though, surely, if any situation warranted such a response it was her present one.
A glance at Lord Wainwright, bent over in the carriage to retrieve the pistol he kept under the seat, showed him to be constructed in much the same way the inn was. His waistcoat strained from the pressure of his large belly, not necessarily fat but certainly distended, likely from copious amounts of spirits. His legs appeared far too spindle-like to support his girth.
It was apparent to Benny that the man was grotesquely unhealthy. Not simply because of the pox, but because of the many vices he indulged. At present, if she tried to flee, he would give chase, and so would the large footmen (who were likely not footmen at all) who rode on the back of the coach. But if she let him get her inside, get her into whatever room it was he wished to take her into—where it would be only him— her chances would be better. He would still have more strength than she did, but there was no doubt in Benny’s mind that she would have more stamina. If she could simply hold him at bay for a while, his own ill health would tire him to the point that she could likely escape. Not to mention she’d have far greater chance for a successful escape against one man than against three.
When he grabbed her wrist, hauling her forcefully from the carriage, she uttered a token protest. When he dragged her through the inn yard and into the building, not a soul in the taproom even bothered to look at them. That made it abundantly clear to Benny that no one there would offer aid. She was well and truly on her own.
Benny refused to let that thought undermine her determination. He would not succeed in his efforts. He would take nothing from her… or he would take everything. Because the only way she would stop fighting him was if he were to actually kill her.
He glanced back at her, the light from one of the inn’s dirty windows striking his face. Even beneath the layers of powder and paint on his face, the rot of the disease ravaging his body was impossible to disguise.
The very idea of him touching her, putting his hands on her—or heaven forbid, any other part of his body— left her feeling physically ill. There were some things, Benny thought, that might be worse than death. Living every day, infected with disease he had foisted upon her, and being reminded of how that disease had been contracted? It would be hell on earth.
As they reached the narrow staircase that led to the rooms above, Benny allowed him to drag her up them. Near the top, she began to resist, causing him to stumble. Furiously, he turned, hauling her up and then shoving her forward so that she landed at the head of the stairwell. Immediately, Benny rolled to her back and drew her legs up. With all the force she could muster, she kicked out.
