Chapter Thirty

Richard stared at Victoria, seated across from him in the inconspicuous hackney they’d borrowed for their rescue operation. She was dressed as she’d been in the alley behind Bennington’s, and Verity and Honoria were dressed similarly. Love, on the other hand, was dressed as a longshoreman, complete with smudges on his face and a long, frayed coat. Beneath his coat he’d hidden a specially designed rifle, meant for shooting a target at long distance. It had a sight, a long barrel, and a grip designed specifically for Love’s hands. He’d spent months under the watchful eye of a military gunsmith, drawing, crafting early designs using alloys he and Verity had created, making, and remaking, until he had a rifle that was as beautiful as it was deadly.

Each of the Darings had their roles in the night’s mission. Love was surveillance and distance assistance. If he saw anyone sneaking in behind them, he would shoot them. Verity was to scout the south side of the building, removing any obstacles she came across. Honoria was to do the same to the north side. Richard would enter the building from the west side, facing the river, and Vic would come in through the east.

None of the Darings in the building was to make a move until Richard signaled that he needed assistance. They were to observe and step in when necessary.

Oh, God. Elizabeth. This is all my fault; I should have listened when Victoria told me of the danger. He’d allowed his attraction to her, his feelings for her, to blind him to the truth. And now Elizabeth was paying the price.

Elizabeth was his only cousin, born when he was a ten-year-old rapscallion. She’d been a plump ball of smiles and shining eyes, and he’d fallen for her little face in an instant. Since then, she’d grown into a sweet, kind, somewhat naive young woman. She always saw the best in every situation.

He shuddered to think what she was seeing now.

He was both relieved he did not have to go it alone and terrified; what if something went wrong? What if the man who had Elizabeth followed through on his threat to kill her and Victoria? He’d cut out his own heart, for it would be dead already if he lost either of them.

Elizabeth was an innocent, his aunt explaining that she’d been taken while she was returning from an outing with her maid. Why his aunt had let his cousin go alone he couldn’t fathom, but he knew that if she’d been with her daughter, she would have met a similar fate. Or worse.

Certainly, the Darings were formidable in their skill and determination to retrieve his cousin, but there were so many things that could go wrong.

The warehouse where he’d been ordered to go was a large one-story building, taking up several blocks along the docks. At one time, it would have held goods departing the country. But now…it held one of the seediest seraglios in the city.

“Hedo’s House…” Richard muttered. Victoria turned away from the window to stare at him.

“You’ve been here before?” she asked, her eyes wide.

He grunted, disgusted by the mere thought of the hell house. “Not by choice.”

Her slack-jawed gasp made him rush to continue. “That night of my attempted murder, this is where I’d gone to retrieve Benjamin Bennington. He was deep in his cups, incapable of standing on his own feet.”

“What was he doing in this place? What is Hedo’s House?” The naiveté on her lovely face was endearing, but he knew that beneath the expression was a sharp and analytical mind.

Biting back a laugh, he explained, “Hedo’s House is a seraglio, a pleasure palace, and not one of the better ones, according to my friends.”

“Friends? Like Benjamin Bennington?”

“Yes. He was one of the group of friends I saw here that night, but I’d only been sent to get Ben. I had just brought him home, got him settled with the physician, and left out the back door when the attack happened.”

She hummed, rubbing her chin, which was one of the few parts of her face not smeared in black greasepaint. Once she donned her mask, no one would be able to see her face, even through the tightly knitted lace over the eye holes.

“So what is the significance of this place?” she asked, her voice sounding as confused as he had been, but now…after that second note, he was beginning to wonder if the one behind all the agency’s current problems was a man he had counted as a friend.

“I suppose I’ll find out—”

“We’ll find out, Richard. You aren’t here alone.” Victoria reached out and slipped her hand in his. The warmth of her spread through his limbs and sank into his chest, like the embers of a bonfire. She offered a slight smile, her eyes shining with a gentleness he’d never seen on her before.

She was spectacular.

The driver had been instructed to pass the warehouse once, then continue on to the end of Montrose. They alighted the hackney three streets away. In the dark, beneath a shuttered moon, Richard took a slow, deep breath, and willed his heart to retreat from his throat. A hand squeezed his arm—a comforting, strengthening reminder of Victoria’s presence—but then she was gone.

He knew where she was going, that she would be watching him, watching over him. That sense of relief returned, and on its heels was the knowledge that he truly wasn’t alone: he had four Darings there with him, in the shadows…in his heart.

Squaring his shoulders, he continued on to Hedo’s House, a den of iniquity that had shocked him with how utterly shabby and dark it had been. No, he hadn’t spent much time in the more exclusive and expensive whorehouses, but he could remember that they were bright, warm, draped in color, and dripping in gold.

The building before him was none of that. Dark, smelly, drab, and writhing with drunkards and poppy eaters seeking release from their worldly troubles in oblivion.

The fact that Benjamin had attended a place such as this made Richard all the more uncertain about his friendship with the man. But Ben wasn’t the only one who’d sung the praises of Hedo’s House…

As he approached, the man at the door—a large man with a flat face and eyes too close together—stood from the stool he’d been sitting on and glared at Richard. Richard stopped before him, tipping his chin up and pinning the lout with a look that demanded his acquiescence.

“Allow me entrance. I am here to see someone,” Richard drawled, his voice tight and clipped.

The man furrowed his brow, which, because his brows were bushy and met in the middle of his forehead, made him look at though a caterpillar were crawling along his face.

“You the Lord Richard?” the man asked, and Richard felt a rush of anxiety. Obviously, whoever had Elizabeth had made sure to place a gatekeeper in his path.

“I am,” he replied, tense, waiting for the block of a man to strike at him.

But he didn’t. He only stood aside so that Richard could enter.

“He says to meet him in the Chapel.”

Richard didn’t miss the absurdity and blasphemy in that statement. That the word “chapel” was even spoken in a place like this made the whole of the Anglican Church seem seedier.

Entering the building, he was immediately struck by the darkness. It was nearly suffocating. But as his eyes began to adjust, he could make out the outline of the sparse furniture, the figures of people strewn about in the throes of whatever vice they were enjoying, and the haze of smoke that drifted overhead, rising into the high ceiling to dissipate—as Richard wished he could do right then.

The place smelled of sweat, sex, cheap liquor, and…there was a sickly-sweet scent he couldn’t recognize. He doubted it was dessert cakes or honeysuckle.

Searching the floor where he planted his feet, he made sure to sidestep the bodies haphazardly lying in his way. In the center of the space, he stopped.

Where would a chapel be?

From the corner of his eye, he caught movement and turned to see what it was. There was a woman standing there, her clothing hanging like rags from a decimated frame. Her eyes were hollow, her lips thin and chapped, and the whole of her seemed held together only by the strength of her will.

She waved him over. Hesitating only a moment, he strode to her, questions on the tip of his tongue.

“Where is the chapel?” he asked, his gaze landing on her collarbone that was protruding from her skin. She was a skeleton.

The woman tried to smile, and the blackened teeth in her mouth made him grimace.

“Ye lookin’ ta get married?” she purred, reaching out to drape a bony arm over his shoulder. She leaned into him; he leaned back, pushing her arm off his person. He shuddered.

“I am looking for a man. He would be with a finely dressed lady.” Elizabeth wouldn’t have left home without dressing to the nines. “Have you seen them?”

The woman pouted, clearly realizing she wasn’t getting “married” or paid for her less-than-desirous services.

“Aye, I seen ’em. Wot ye gonna give me fer talkin’?” Now that her wiles had no effect on him, she’d reverted to cold-hearted harlot in a blink. She planted a spidery-fingered hand on a hip and glared up at him.

“I don’t suppose they are in the chapel?” he asked, fighting back the urge to groan in frustration. “You speak, I’ll give you the sum of a usual night’s pay, plus another two sovereigns for food, and you can go home.”

She sneered. “Home? Ye think I’d be workin’ here if I had a home? Yer a daft git.”

He narrowed his eyes, standing straighter, taller. “Do we have a deal?”

Snapping her mouth shut, she stared up into his face, her gaze flicking from his eyes, to his clothes, to linger on his groin, then she met his gaze again.

“Aye.”

Richard let out a breath, then reached into his pocket to secure the crowns he always kept there.

Holding the money aloft, he demanded, “Speak.”

The woman reached up for the coins, dislodging the cloth from her shoulder, which bared a pale breast. He quickly looked away, allowing her to right herself.

“The chapel ain’t no real church. It’s wot the abbess calls the back room where the hoity toffs have their sex parties.” At the woman’s words, he snapped back to look at her. She pointed to a door in the corner.

“Orgies?” By God. Was his cousin, even now, being violated?

The woman grunted. “There’s no party in there now—don’t go blowin’ yer chimney. That’s where that man ye were askin’ about is, though. He came through here no more’n two hours ago, draggin’ that lady with the fancy clothes behind him. I thought it was peculiar that he’d trussed her up before they got to the chapel.” She shrugged. “But who am I to judge wot get ’em off?”

Dropping the coins into the woman’s outstretched hand, he wasted no time heading toward the door set into the back of the room.

Pausing at the door, his hand on the latch, he closed his eyes and dragged in a deep breath. Elizabeth was just behind the door. She could be hurt. The man who’d taken her could have set a trap. Most likely that’s what this all was: a crude trap to finally finish what he’d tried to accomplish behind Bennington’s. But why?

The hairs on the back of his neck stood erect, reaching out to whoever was watching him. But it wasn’t alarm that slammed through him; it was a sense of…rightness. He knew without looking that Victoria was somewhere in the building, hiding in the abundant shadows, her beautiful sapphire eyes watching him. Pushing him on, bracing him with invisible waves of encouragement.

In his darkest moment, she was there, a resplendent beacon of warmth and strength that called to him.

Pushing down the latch, he swung the door open. He had expected to find a garish mockery of an actual chapel, and he wasn’t disappointed.

Instead of rows of pews on which the repentant would sit, there were groups of chaises on which sinners would recline. Instead of an altar crowned with holy accoutrements for worship of the Lord, there was a large, low bed on a dais.

Elizabeth was tied to it.

“Elizabeth, dear heavens,” he choked out, his chest squeezing painfully.

All my fault…

He took off at a sprint, desperate to get to her, but the sound of a pistol cocking made him skid to a halt several yards from where Elizabeth lay, her head lifted as she struggled against her bonds. Her eyes were wide and wet with tears and her mouth gagged with what looking like a balled-up cravat.

“Richard,” a familiar voice called. “So good of you to come.”

His body trembling with rage, his fists aching with the pressure of holding himself still, he turned his head to find a masked man standing to his right, beneath a large stained-glass window depicting the fall of the archangel Lucifer.

How fitting.

“Ethan,” Richard ground out. “You have me here, now let Elizabeth go.”