Vanquished (36 page)

"On the contrary, it is personal, Callie, personal indeed. You might even say it's a vendetta."

That got her attention. "Hadrian, what are you saying?"

Knowing the moment of truth was upon him, he steeled himself to say, "Josiah Dandridge paid a call to my shop three weeks ago just a few hours after you and I met by chance in Parliament Square." He reached across the seat, took both her hands in his. "Callie, you have to understand I was desperate, beyond desperate really. I'd got myself into a rare scrape, ran up a large debt at a gaming hell in Bow. The proprietor sent on two of his thugs to collect, but I hadn't anywhere close to the tin to repay him. I managed to wrangle another week's grace period but after that they'd be coming for me and when they did, they'd collect their debt in blood. I was at my wit's end as to what to do when Dandridge presented himself."

She pulled her hands free of his and sat back against the seat. "What's any of this to do with me?"

"Dandridge hates you Callie, personally because you cried off the engagement to his son and politically because of the power you wield in bringing the suffrage issue to the forefront of the public's conscience. He means to see you ruined, shamed to the point that you'd have no choice but to retire from public life entirely. But to create scandal on that par, he needs evidence, tangible evidence he can take to the Fleet Street press."

"Such as a photograph, you mean?" She stared at him, expression not so much horrified as frozen . . . blank.

He nodded. "He offered me five thousand pounds, a small fortune. To earn it, all I need do was deliver a compromising photograph of you into his hands before your bill came before Parliament a final time. He paid me money to ruin you, vanquish you as he likes to call it, and until a few days ago I'd agreed to go along with his scheme."

Turning away from him, she flung open the carriage window. Icy air rushed the interior. She stuck her head out the opening and rapped sharp knuckles against the coach's lacquered side. "Driver, pull over just there. Stop, I say. Stop!"

"But I can't just yet, miss," he called down from the box. "We're in terrible traffic, mind you."

"Just do as I say." She pulled back inside and, a hand braced to the leather-covered wall, started to rise.

Alarmed that she meant to leap out while they were moving, Hadrian reached and grabbed hold of her wrist. Pulling her back down into her seat, he said, "Callie, what the devil do you think you're about?"

She jerked free as though his touch had scorched her. "Don't you dare lay a hand on me. Not now and not ever again."

The coach lurched to a halt on the side of the road. Casting a quick look out the window, Hadrian saw they had just turned the corner onto Regent Street, still a fair distance from their destination.

Seeing her eyeing the door handle, he moved to block her. "You never let me finish. I saw Dandridge the day before last and told him our deal was off."

"Really, how noble of you. Was that before or after you fucked me, Mr. Stone?" He thought he'd prepared himself for her inevitable anger, but the venom in her voice stung more than he might have imagined.

Hands shaking she opened her reticule and fumbled inside. Above them, the driver barked, "In or out, what's it to be?"

"In," Hadrian shouted. To Callie, he said in a high whisper, "There's nothing to be gained by catching your death walking home in the cold. Calm yourself and let me see you home at least."

Ignoring him, she called, "Out."

She had the purse open now, a fistful of paper notes in hand. Without counting it out, she threw the money at Hadrian.

He scarcely glanced at the bills scattered across his lap, the leather seat, and the dirty floor. "Callie, what the devil? I'll pay the fare, for God's sake." He tried to hand it back, but she only shook her head.

"The money's not for the driver, it's for you, payment for your services of last night and the time before. If it's not enough, you've only to send your bill 'round with that of the other tradesmen."

Stunned as much by her hard-eyed stare as her words, this time when she reached for the door handle, Hadrian didn't make a move to stop her.

After Callie stalked off, Hadrian couldn't bear facing his empty flat, where the intimate signs and scents of her recent presence would be certain to haunt him. Instead he directed the disgruntled driver to one of his old haunts, a tavern at Mile End. Only there didn't seem to be enough gin in the world to make him drunk, let alone to cut the pain knifing through him. Callie as he'd last seen her, eyes bright with held-back tears and mouth trembling, haunted him no matter how many drinks he downed.

Eventually he left and just started walking. With no particular destination in mind, he somehow found himself standing outside the entrance to the former Madame Dottie's, the brothel he'd once called home. Now that Sally ran the place, it had a far friendlier feel. Oh, the infamous two-way mirrors were still there for those who fancied that sort of thing . . . but Sally saw to it her girls were well fed, decently clothed, and received the regular care of a physician. Anyone who wished to leave knew she might do so freely and without fear.

He knocked on the door. Three sharp raps, the old signal. Wearing a peach-colored peignoir and with her hair still in curling papers, Sally answered it. "Why Harry, this is a surprise."

He saw at once by her painted and powdered countenance that this was a working night and stepped back to go. "I shouldn't have come."

She looked him up and down. "Whatever's the matter, love? You look like death warmed over and stink like a gin palace."

Meeting that keen-eyed gaze, he knew there was no point in dissembling. "Oh hell, Sal, you might better ask me what could possibly be right."

They bypassed the parlor with its plush velvet settee and satin-covered wing chairs, heading through the mirror-lined hallway to the kitchen, their respite when they were children.

Sally poured two mugs of freshly brewed coffee, stirred in liberal quantities of sugar and cream, and handed one over to Hadrian. Taking her seat across the planked table from him, she said, "Out with it. I want to hear it all."

Hadrian stared into the well of his mug and admitted, "I don't know where to begin."

"At the beginning, of course, and then straight on through to what brings you here. It's Callie, isn't it?"

He shook his head, not in denial but in defeat. "Oh Christ, Sally, I've ruined everything, any chance of making things right between us."

"Why not let me be the judge of that? We women are a forgiving lot, you know."

"Not this time. Were I in her shoes, I don't think I could ever forgive me for what I've done."

"That bad is it? Best take a deep breath and let it out."

Hadrian took a bracing swallow of scalding coffee and then set it aside. These past weeks he'd been navigating such a web of lies, he scarcely knew where to begin.

Gathering his thoughts, he recounted his and Callie's unplanned and as-then entirely innocent meeting in the park, the encounter shortly thereafter with Boyle's henchmen, and finally his desperate acceptance of Dandridge's devil's bargain.

Heedless of the curling papers, Sally dragged a long-nailed hand through her hair. "Oh, Harry, why didn't you come to me? I've a bit set aside, not four hundred pounds surely, but enough to have gotten you out of London for a time until things blew over."

"My mate, Rourke said nearly the same thing only he's been out of the country, and I didn't know how to contact him. As for Gavin, I've already taken so much from him; I didn't know how I could possibly ask for more, especially when I'd brought the whole bloody mess on myself."

"So you agreed to ruin Caledonia instead. Oh, Harry."

He hung his head. "I know, I know. When I first agreed to Dandridge's terms I meant to see the thing through only . . ."

"You've gone and fallen in love with her, haven't you?"

No point in denying it. He scraped a hand through his hair. "Christ, Sally, I'd gladly trade my life for the chance to make things right for her, keep her safe only it's too late. I confessed everything to her, and she never wants to see me again, not that I blame her."

"Like as not that's the shock talking. Give her time. She'll come 'round."

"Time is the very thing I don't have. Now that Dandridge knows I won't be providing any photographs, it's only a matter of time before he sends one of his henchmen after me." He looked up from tracing the mug's rim to regard her. "So you see, I may just have to take you up on that offer of going into hiding, for the near future at least."

Expression thoughtful, she leaned in and dropping her voice said, "I've something for you. Something I meant to give you a long time ago but never got around to it."

"What is it?"

Rather than answer, she said, "Wait here. It's upstairs in my room. I'll just be a minute."

No longer able to sit still, Hadrian got up to pace the slate floor, the scene in the hansom playing back in his head. He was no stranger to insults or pain, either for that matter. He'd been born in a brothel, a whore's son, and then spent his early years as a beggar and a thief. Yet never had he felt so low in all his life as when Callie threw her money at him and as good as called him a Judas, a betrayer, a whore. Not that he blamed her. Likely letting her go on hating him was the kindest thing he could do, and still there was a part of him that wasn't prepared to entirely give up hope, not yet. She had said she loved him after all, and though that frantic utterance had come in the heat of passion, he couldn't think Callie would say such a thing lightly. God alone knew how he'd longed to clasp her to him and say those magical and oh-so-true words straight back.
I love you.
Yet knowing that he wasn't free, that he hadn't the right, he'd held back even as he'd given her everything his body could give.

Mired in his musings, he didn't hear Sally return until she cleared her throat. "Mind you don't wear out my floor."

Standing in the doorway, she handed him a small square swathed in cotton wool and smelling of cedar. "This is my gift to you and Callie." He started to unwrap it, but her hand on his arm stayed him. "No, not now." She darted a worried look to the open doorway. "Wait until you're alone. Better yet, open it with Callie. You'll know what to do then."

"Sally, is everything all right with you?"

"Right as rain, now go on with you." A hand on his shoulder, she steered him out the door.

Callie, he had to get to her, though what the devil he would say to her once--
if
--he got the chance was a mystery still. "But Sally, how can I begin to hope she'll forgive me, let alone take me back?"

Sally leveled him one of her good, long looks. "So long as a body's still breathing, there's always hope. If you're lucky she'll take you back today; and if not today, tomorrow; and if not tomorrow, maybe the day after." A single tear tracked through the cake of rouge and powder. "Just love her, Harry. The rest will follow."

"Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken."

--J
ANE
A
USTEN,
Emma,
1815

S
ince leaving Hadrian in the hansom and going it alone on foot, Callie had spent the better part of the afternoon crying in her room. Eventually the wellspring of tears had run dry, temporarily at least. She'd risen from her sopping pillow, wrapped her still thawing body in an old quilt, and migrated to the parlor where the recently replenished sherry decanter called to her like a siren to a sailor lost at sea. That had been three glasses ago . . . or was it four?