Page 68 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl
“Various circumstances drive every person. Maybe the lady landing in your bed doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with you specifically. Perhaps the lady is in some other kind of trouble. Perhaps there’s a villainous family member whom she’s trying to escape from. Who the hell knows? But again, all you need do is put out discrete feelers, and you’ll have every last answer.”
Wakefield stared at him, continuing to thread the needle to land the investigator. “Thisis what you’ve come up with?” Wakefield gave a rueful chuckle. “I’d not taken you for the fanciful sort who’d peddle me some melodramatic, gothic tale.”
For a flash, Markham’s mouth flattened and then returned to neutral.
“What do you want?” Wakefield asked bluntly.
“What doIwant?” Lord Markham sounded positively amused at the idea Wakefield could offer him anything.
Men like Markham and Rothesby had underestimated Wakefield his entire life. He knew what they said about him: a good, dutiful peer, without a cynical bone in his body. Both failed to realize Wakefield was just as jaded as each of them, maybe more so. Certainly more than anyone gave him credit for being.
Wakefield slashed a hand Markham’s way. “Everyone wants something. You know so much about me already. No doubt, you know my background and even what I might be coming to you to ask about.”
His previously impressive patience became increasingly frayed as this day went. “You most likely knew why I was here before I even opened my mouth.”
The impressively stoic investigator neither confirmed nor denied.
Wakefield continued, “You provided a thorough enough assessment of me that you unequivocally knew I’d never bring a case you’d be interested in, and yet…here we are, still talking.”
Done with this man’s games, done with all of it, Wakefield narrowed his eyes. “So let us—what did you say?—cut to it. Stop beating about the proverbial bush, and tell me what exactly it is you want from me.”
Surprise and something else—admiration?—glinted briefly in Lord Markham’s eyes and then was gone. It wasn’t an unfamiliar reaction men had when dealing with Wakefield.
Finally, Lord Markham drawled, “You’re giving me an indication that it might not be such a chore to work with you after all.”
All business, the investigator leaned across the gold leather surface of the walnut partner’s desk that dominated the office. “All right, I’ll get to it. Your assignment is an easy one. I’ll have answers in a day or two, at most.”
“And in return?” After all, it wasn’t a sudden newfound friendship or altruism that drove the mercenary gentleman.
Markham steepled his large hands together. They were unblemished, meticulous fingers, kept that way to conceal the blood upon them. “You have connections in Parliament—”
“You’re interested in the passage of certain bills?” Wakefield scoffed. “Is it my parliamentary connections you seek or those I have with the Home Office, Markham?”
That appeared to break a wall between them. For the first time since Wakefield stepped inside his office, Markham didn’t consider him the same way Wakefield considered the drunkards and scapegraces losing fortunes and forgetting their families.
“I don’t want this work.” Markham held himself still like movement would betray him, when it was his lips that currently did. “I don’t want nobles coming in and asking me to pay off their mistresses or hide their bastards or whatever else.”
Wakefield peered long at the other man. All thetonknew about the Markhams. Lord Adam Markham, who’d been an officer at the Home Office, imprisoned by a traitor to the Crown, and saved by the man’s daughter.
Wakefield narrowed his eyes. “You believe I can do for you something that your own family and connections can’t do for you?” he asked, but they both well knew Markham had influence enough through his family.
“I’m nearly thirty years old and I have a father determined to,” Markham’s ice-hard lips twisted in a sneer, “protect me from encounters and experiences he suffered during his time at the Home Office.”
Ah, so Lord Markham was forced into this role of private investigator because his powerful sire sought to protect him.
How strange, each of them, chafed at the circumstances their fathers created for them. And yet for Wakefield’s case, his ire came from the fact the late Earl of Wakefield hadn’t cared enough about his own family.
For the first time, Wakefield found himself with something he hadn’t since this morning started, leverage, power over situation and he relished the feeling—now and always. “Tell me who you want me to speak with at the Home Office and what you want. It will be done.”
Markham took that in and then slowly nodded his head.
At the same time, they stretched a hand across the desk and cemented their partnership.
The flinty-eyed investigator remained just as aloof. “What do you want me to do?”
Wakefield tapped the desk. “I want everything you can find about Cressida Smith. My partners at The Devil’s Den, Latimer and Dynevor. I want to know about my new partners at The Devil’s Den. I want everything. I want to know how the club finds the women to be part of their auction. Who sets thoseterms. I want to know the inside outs of the club and how it is run.”
“I take it all this has already been provided for you by your brother-in-law and new business partner,” the other man aptly assumed. “And that you are now just verifying how truthful they’ve been about their circumstances and the new business you’ve signed on for.”
