Page 28 of To Tame the Wild Rake
“I am coming with you,” Bentham stated. And he had a right. If Charlotte had fallen into their hands, as they intended, Aldridge would not leave the rescue to anyone else.
Lord Andrew came clattering back downstairs, buckling on a sword as he came. Behind him, Charlotte appeared at the balustrade wearing a housecoat, her hair in a plait over her shoulder, her face pale and drawn. “Little Potter’s Alley, off Mutton Lane, which leads off the northwest corner of Clerkenwell Green,” Lord Andrew reported.
“It is the fourth house on the right, the attic floor,” Charlotte told them. “The proprietor, Mrs Wilton, lives on the floor below the attic. This is my fault. I should have gone.”
“It is their fault, Charlotte,” Aldridge assured her. “We will bring her back.”
Bentham was already on his way out the door. “Come on, Aldridge.”
They were too late at the seamstresses’ workshop. Sarah had already been taken, though they arrived in time to prevent the murder of her footman and her guard. The workshop’s proprietor had betrayed Charlotte for money, handed over Sarah instead without a qualm, and—to save her own skin—was easily convinced to betray the client who purchased the trap and tell them where Sarah had been taken.
Another wild dash across London, this time to Whitechapel, took them to a backstreet brothel in a once fine townhouse. The duke had sent a couple of his men to the magistrate with a request for constables, but he did not plan to wait for them. Bentham was all for storming in the door immediately, but the duke proposed a bit of caution, since they had Sarah as a hostage.
Aldridge suggested that he, Bentham, and Lord Andrew enter as clients to do a reconnaissance. They were still discussing refinements to that plan when he felt something sting his cheek. Looking up, he saw Lady Sarah, waving to them from the roof.
Bentham was beside himself with joy. “She escaped from that window,” he insisted, pointing to one with bars on the lower half. Sure enough, she’d left scraps of lace or some such substance from her dress as she climbed the building. Aldridge was glad he hadn’t been there to watch the perilous climb!
“Find a way up through the building next door,” Winshire told Bentham. “Take your wife home. We’ll storm the building once you have her free and once the constables arrive. Meanwhile, Aldridge and Drew will go in and keep them entertained while we wait.”
Aldridge nodded.An even better plan. “Take my phaeton and pair,” he offered. Winshire sent one of his men with Bentham, and the rest split to fade to one side of the building or the other, while Lord Andrew hammered on the door, carolling in drunken tones, “I need a skirt. Open up, my lovelies. My friend and I have lots of lovely money.”
In the end, taking down the brothel-keeper was an anticlimax; just something that had to be done. The duty magistrate had arrived with the constables, and the Duke of Winshire stepped back to let the man make the arrests, but stayed close at hand to guide the questioning.
At first, the bawd argued that she’d merely been facilitating an elopement, but Winshire put a stop to that by repeating what the woman had said to his niece. “Lord Bentham took his wife back to Winshire House to have her injuries tended,” he told the magistrate. “She will be available to talk to you whenever you wish.”
After that, the magistrate had no problem with answers to his questions. The whole plot poured out of the bawd, who put all the blame on the gentleman who wanted Lady Charlotte for his wife, on the Beast, who had come up with the plan with Wilton as a tool to execute it, on the Winderfield twins, whose work in the slums interfered—so said the woman—with the private affairs of business people by giving their employees expectations beyond their station.
Aldridge interrupted to ask the identity of the gentleman. Lady Charlotte might still be at risk. The woman claimed not to know. Winshire said nothing, but when Aldridge declared that he was going to walk a couple of streets over to find a hire carriage, Winshire walked out with him.
“The Duke of Richport,” he said, as they stood in the brothel’s doorway. “How well do you know him?”
Aldridge examined the duke’s face, but his expression showed nothing beyond polite interest. “You suspect Richport, Your Grace?”
Winshire twitched his eyebrows upwards. Aldridge found himself answering the question. “We were friends when I was young and wild. Of a sort.” Not that Richport had friends. Tools, companions in debauchery, even allies, if it suited his purposes. Aldridge had never been the first, had become sickened by the second, and was not interested in the third.
“He withdrew from polite society a decade ago, and his path and mine diverged at least six years gone. He is capable of ordering such an abduction, if that is your question.” And Aldridge would call him on it, and damn the scandal.
As if Winshire heard the thought, he explained, “What I am about to tell you is in confidence, for I do not wish word of this to become public. Sarah is married, and therefore somewhat protected. If it had been Charlotte locked up in a brothel, her reputation would be shredded before we could make it back home.”
“You believe it was Richport.” Aldridge would kill him. Slowly.
The duke began to stroll down the alley. After a beat, Aldridge caught up to walk at his side. “He made an offer for Charlotte earlier this year,” the duke said. “He did not believe her, at first, when she refused him. Once we convinced him she meant it, he was offended, though he did his best to hide it.”
The anger burned higher. Arrogant, self-centred, conceited shit sack. “And that makes you think he decided to force her into marriage?”
“Not that alone. One of the men who locked Sarah up told the other man with him that he should leave Sarah alone or ‘his grace’ would slice out his gizzard. It could be a foreign duke, of course, or one of the royal dukes who thinks he might be able to get his father’s approval for marriage to a Winderfield. But if we assume it is an unmarried non-royal duke of this realm…?”
“Richport,” Aldridge agreed.
“Richport. Go and see him, Aldridge. Tell him what has happened. Tell him we know what he did, and that I and my sons will make it our personal mission in life to see that he pays for it.”
“Why warn him?” Aldridge asked. Just slam him with it. Take him apart piece by piece. He and Winshire between them could easily bribe the authorities to look the other way; even the Prince Regent. In fact, the Prince Regent was in debt to Richport, and would be pleased to see him brought down.
They had reached the end of the alley. The duke stopped and took Aldridge’s hands, looked him straight in the eyes. “I want no gossip, no scandal. When he asked for her hand, Richport said something that leads me to believe he has knowledge that would hurt Charlotte badly.”
The duke must have seen something in Aldridge’s face, for he nodded. “You know it, too. You know what happened to her six years ago, and you know it must never be made public. You want revenge, Aldridge, but you want Charlotte’s safety and happiness more. That is why I am trusting you with this. Tell Richport we are giving him one chance to leave England and to do so without further repercussions. If he does not, we’ll move to punishment.”
The man was right, dammit. They couldn’t take Richport down without giving him time to smear Charlotte. Not unless they killed him outright, before he knew they suspected him. Even in his rage, Aldridge knew he couldn’t order an assassination or kill the man himself in cold blood.
