Curse all women to hell, and his sister to the deepest of the fiery pits. He should never have trusted the evil bitch. Never.
The Beast strode up and down the tiny room that he’d rented in a respectable boarding house in Southwark, too angry to sleep or even to sit still. Elspeth had double-crossed him. She had argued against his manifold stratagems to punish the two ducal families who had opposed him, and had then disappeared. The very next day he found his schemes collapsing around his ears as one ally after another was arrested.
Her betrayal was the only explanation, though he could not find out where she was. Just as well, perhaps, since his need to punish the ugly cow might have tempted him to risk his own escape for the pleasure of choking her to death with his own hands.
Instead, he had escaped before the Runners came to his own door, taking all the wealth he had in cash and portable objects, disguising himself in the salesman identity he had prepared for this very eventuality.
At least Elspeth knew nothing about Stephen Wheeler, manufacturer of fine buttons, nor about the plump and juicy bank accounts and investments the Beast had in that name. He even had a house in the Midlands, where Wheeler would be welcomed when he returned from a prolonged overseas trip.
Which would be within the next few weeks. Only one thing still kept him in London, trusting in his disguise to keep him from arrest. He waited for word that the men he had hired had carried out the Beast’s final commission.
His last piece of unfinished business was the boy Tony. He had people watching the house to try another kidnapping as soon as the boy left it, but if that was out of the question, the sharpshooter he had hired would ensure that, if the Beast could not have Tony, neither would that prissy arrogant ass Aldridge.