Page 9 of To Tame the Wild Rake
“What part of this is personal?” Prue asked. When the other turned to look at her, she explained, “Aldridge said the matter was both professional and personal.”
“Ah.” Aldridge nodded, his lips pursed. “Lady Charlotte tells me that young Tony looks very similar to my own portrait aged eleven, the one in my mother’s sitting room.”
“I know the one,” Prue agreed. “A Fitzgrenford, you think?” She addressed the question to Charlotte, who was looking from Aldridge to David.
“His eyes are identical in shape and similar in colour,” Charlotte observed.
Prue also looked at one brother and then the other. Their colouring differed, as did their build, and Aldridge was a good half a head taller, but they shared their hazel eyes with the duke their father.
“A likely motive,” David suggested.
Aldridge nodded. Stanley Wharton had been at Eton with him, a senior classman in his final year when Aldridge’s younger brother, barely eleven and young for his age, had arrived at school and been assigned to do chores for Wharton. “Wharton is obsessed with my brother Gren.”
Even as a young man, Wharton had been known for pressing his attentions on unprotected boys from the junior classes. Gren had come to Aldridge in distress after Wharton had made advances. Wharton soon found that a Grenford was never unprotected. “He hates me and David,” he told Charlotte. “That may well be his motive for going after your young Tony.”
He turned to David. “How does that help us?”
“It doesn’t change what we do next,” David said. “We need to get into Heaven and Hell. Not you, Lady Charlotte. Me and Aldridge, I think.”
“Wharton will know us,” Aldridge warned.
“Wharton will know you, but he won’t know you know him. And I’ll be in disguise.”
Aldridge nodded. “No one would believe David Wakefield was brothel crawling. Or gambling, for that matter.” They would believe it of Aldridge, though he hadn’t darkened the door of a brothel since his salad days. His damnable reputation.
Prue, bless her, acknowledged his pain, though with a sting in the tale. “Those who know you are aware you are not so promiscuous now, Aldridge. And you know perfectly well that you’ve maintained the reputation to keep matchmaking Mamas at bay.”
Charlotte looked as if she was bursting to share how she had found him not an hour ago, but mercifully kept her opinion to herself.
“We are agreed?” David asked. “Lady Charlotte, Yahzak Beg, my wife will explain where you’ll need to wait. If we find the boy, we’ll break out, and we may need help to escape. I’ll go and change. Aldridge, if you’ll come with me, we can plan our strategy while I get ready.”
5
From behind the goat’s head mask he wore as master of Hell, the Beast’s mind seethed with plans and hatred as he watched the Marquis of Aldridge.Look at him, surveying the room with that curl to his lip, his nose in the air. Thinks he is better than me, just because he is wealthy, and the son of a duke.
The whoreson golden boy had always been the same, always interfering with the Beast’s pleasures, since they first met at school. The Beast had hated him for two decades. Aldridge rejected the Beast’s overtures of friendship, showed disdain for the group the Beast gathered around him, and insisted on standing between the Beast and those who attracted his anger or his desire.
The beautiful Lord Jonathan Grenford could have been Wharton’s, but for Aldridge. The Beast’s mind darkened at the memory. Lord Jonathan Grenford had been a lovely child when he arrived at Eton, and was assigned to do chores for Wharton. Wharton had so many plans. They would have been happy together; he just knew it. Gren—it had been Wharton who had given him that name—was a little jumpy, but Wharton was working on him, and he would have surrendered in the end. Wharton would have taken care of him after that, made him happy.
Then Aldridge had Gren assigned to another senior classman. Worse. He sent someone—a grown man—to growl threats in the dark, threats reinforced with a dagger to Wharton’s throat. Cowardly bastard.
Aldridge had interfered, too, a decade later, sending his base-born brother to destroy Wharton’s fledging export business. And surely it was not coincidence that the man who cut off the supply of girls for that business was Aldridge’s cousin, another sodding peer?
The boy tucked away in the Beast’s private chambers would not be a full replacement for the lost Gren, though the appearance was uncannily like. Gren at eleven had been a pampered princeling, all softness, humour, and charm. The boy Tony was a slum brat, gristle and sinew, sharp of tongue and wit.
Good food would put some weight on him, and a few beatings would teach him to obey. The Beast would smooth off Tony’s rough edges and recreate him in the image of the boy he had never been able to have or to forget.
Is Aldridge here to stop me?
Panic jagged sharp shards through the roiling bitterness. Almost, the Beast gestured to his bully boys to seize his enemy and throw him into the street, but sanity prevailed. Aldridge couldn’t possibly know about Tony. The boy had been taken from the garden of the Winderfield mansion, and the Winderfields and Haverfords did not speak.
Rumour had it the Duke of Haverford and the Duke of Winshire had been rivals for the same woman. Haverford had married her and Winshire—only a third son then—had been sent away overseas and declared dead to his family. Haverford’s duchess must have preferred the exiled suitor, for all these years later, Haverford still hated Winshire. Indeed, he’d hired slum assassins to kill the man, as the Beast knew full well, since he’d been the one to procure them.
Aldridge’s presence here could have nothing to do with the Beast’s new pet. Aldridge needed—deserved—to be dealt with. However, the Beast could not attack a man of Aldridge’s rank in the midst of the high-bred crowd who thronged his Hell.
Wait until he is alone.
Yes. That was the way. If he stayed here in Hell, the Beast would make sure he was fleeced of a few thousand pounds and then followed once he left and beaten. Him and the man with him. The Beast had barely noticed the companion, but examined him now. No one the Beast knew: a plump fellow with grey hair and thick-rimmed glasses, somewhat older, quietly dressed. A secretary, perhaps.
