Page 70 of Tempting the Scoundrel
She let out a long breath. “I thought you should know . . . there was never anyone else for me either.”
When she left the room, Thorne shut his eyes. She had let him see the light beyond the high walls of her tower.
Chapter 22
The account books were a failed distraction.
Thorne stared at the columns and numbers in his ledger, the scribbles of corrected sums—seven, by his count. Scratched out and re-tallied, mars on otherwise perfect rows of orderly numbers. Thorne did not make mistakes in his accountings; he knew the value of every bet, every pack of playing cards, every debt owed, and every last bit of quid the Brimstone earned right down to the last fucking farthing. Those neat tallies required no interpretation or doubt; mathematics had a single answer.
His wife was another matter. Alex hadn’t left her room in three days.
On the first day, Thorne saw the value in leaving her to think. When he came up from the club at night, he heard her pacing from one end of her room to another—back and forth, back and forth. Her mind was working again, he knew. Coming to terms with what happened between them, formulating conclusions, rejecting those conclusions, drawing up different ones. She’d paused at their connecting door, and he had held his breath waiting for her to turn the knob and step through.
But in the end, she only resumed her pacing.
The second day, Thorne risked knocking and asking after her welfare. “I’m busy,” she’d called through the door. The maid, Morag, had mentioned new clusters of paper on the floor. Alex’s hands covered in ink. Her pen tapping the desk in an agitated rhythm—he’d heard that one, all right. Just before dawn.
Then, that morning, a letter came for her. This time, Alex had opened the door. Her golden hair had escaped its various pins, and a smudge of ink marred her cheek. When her blue eyes touched his, Thorne wanted to push her against the wall, tear off her clothes. Fuck her until she was so replete that she didn’t leave his bed for days.
As if she read his mind, Alex bit her lip and reached out—so close to touching him—but aborted the gesture. Her fingers curled into her palm. “Who is the letter from?”
Thorne held back a sigh and glanced down at it. “A Miss Annabel Dawes. Sound familiar?”
She froze for a moment, then grasped the letter from his hand. “It’s my solicitor—well, officially her brother is my solicitor. But she’s my —” She cleared her throat. “Anyway. If you’ll please excuse me.”
Then she’d shut the door in his face.
So he had gone to seek a distraction. He’d been at the sums for hours now, and only succeeded in making a hash of his accounts. A knock sounded at his office door, making Thorne look up and hope.
But it was only O’Sullivan. The factotum came in with a raised eyebrow look that clearly said,You, Nicholas Thorne, are a pathetic sod.O’Sullivan’s keen gaze swept the ledger in front of his boss, noting each mistake, but he only said, “Busy?”
“Please tell me I have the pleasure of breaking a cheating toff’s face,” Thorne said, shutting his ledger.
O’Sullivan smirked. “Not a toff. Guess who the lads saw loitering around his favorite watering hole tonight? Sean Gibbons. Looks like Whelan’s been contacting old allies.”
Gibbons was one of Whelan’s few surviving loyalists. Once word got around that Thorne had murdered Whelan and marked every last one of his men for death, they scattered like vermin and went into hiding outside London. Rudderless and stripped of power, those men showed themselves to be cowards. It was easy to terrorize boys, after all. To force them to do unspeakable things.
None of them had a single thought for what happened when abused boys trained in the art of murder became men.
Thorne shoved away from his desk. “Tell Clements I’m going out. Unfinished business.”
O’Sullivan blocked the door. “No.”
“No?” Thorne drawled the word. Gave the other man a chance to amend it.
But O’Sullivan did not. “You heard me. I told you about Gibbons as a courtesy, but I will go alone.”
“Say again?” Thorne never had to use such a voice with O’Sullivan; he’d saved it for men who disrespected him. It promised violence.
O’Sullivan shoved past Thorne and strode over to the desk. He threw open the ledger and jabbed a finger at the page. “You’re so unfocused that you missedtwo additional mistakes.”
“It’s a fucking ledger, O’Sullivan,” Thorne snapped.
“And out there”—O’Sullivan pointed to the window—“it’s yourfuckinglife. You’ve had your mind elsewhere for days, and if Whelan is alive, it’s going to get you killed. Five years ago, it almost did.”
“Won us the war, didn’t I?” he asked.
The months after Stratfield Saye were muddy, obscured in his mind by guilt and anger. Guilt at having betrayed Alex, at taking her money and using it to destroy his enemies. Anger at Whelan and his men for everything they had done. Thorne had come back and battled for control of the East End.
