Page 108 of Seduced

She sat there in the cold and worked in peace for a few hours. Then a cat came, licking its paws on the snow.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Poppy said to it, not that the cat paid her any attention. Poppy thought she recognized the cat’s orange stripes, and buried her fingers in the soft fur. The cat purred, arching under her touch. “Did you escape from the club? Have you followed me here and stayed hidden in the garden for weeks?”

She turned around to start getting up from the frozen ground, when someone grabbed her from behind. She wasn’t scared: the hands around her waist were a bit rougher than they had been yesterday, but she only smiled.

“Not now, Alexei,” she murmured, “I am actually in the middle of something.”

“It’s not Alexei, sweetheart,” a rough, unfamiliar voice said. “He shall be along soon, never you fear. Of course, you’ll be long dead by then.”

And then a large hand covered her mouth and nose, cutting off her oxygen.

twenty-eight

Alexei

Alexei floated all the way back to the club.

The euphoric feeling made his recovery speed up quite spectacularly, according to Peter, who had stayed behind when everyone else had left. But the next day, he too left, to attend to business that could not wait.

Alexei was completely recovered and completely delirious with hope.

And then, Poppy’s brother showed up at the Hell Club.

Wilder showed him into Alexei’s study, a green look of disgust and hatred twisting his usually calm face.

“What can I do for you, Wyatt?” Alexei asked him without looking up from the letter he had been writing.

He had seen the man plenty of times at the card rooms, and knew what he looked like: a bald, middle-aged, weak-chinned, sunken sort of person, quite unremarkable, who walked along with his shoulders stooped. Whenever he had sat in one of the card tables, his eyes had taken on that greedy sheen to them, giving him something of the look of a rat.

How Alexei did not leap up from his seat and plant his fist directly in the man’s face, he never knew.

“It is Reverend Wyatt, actually,” Poppy’s brother drew himself up.

“It is nothing of the kind,” Alexei murmured. “I find myself unable to revere you. Or, indeed, to respect you in the slightest. I should think that you must be thankful you do not find yourself flattened by my fist, as it were.”

“My…my lord,” the vicar stuttered.

“It’s ‘Your Highness’, actually.” No, he couldn’t hold it in any longer. Violence was emanating from Alexei’s every pore.Give me strength not to kill him here and now.

“Well, Your Highness,” the man sounded nervous now. Out of his mind with fear, actually. Good. “I am sure I’m obliged to you for not hitting me, but I…”

“The night is still young,” Alexei interrupted. “Do not consider yourself safe. Tell me then, what has brought you to my door this time, if not game and frivolity, as per usual? Have another sister to sell like a bloody thing, mayhap?”

Poppy’s brother swallowed with an audible gulp.

“Persephone seems to have gone missing again,” he said, and Alexei sat up, immediately alert, forgetting everythingelse. “Is she here, by any chance? I wondered that she might have come back to…”

“She what?” Alexei spat.

“I can’t find her anywhere,” the vicar continued, cowering now. “Have you taken her again, Your Highness?”

“Let’s see, have you lost her to me again?”

“I…I…”

Alexei stood up, looming over the man, and that was enough for the whole story to come out. Apparently, Poppy had gone out to work in her garden in the morning, and her brother had not checked on her until noon, whereupon he found her missing. Her garden tools were on the ground, as if she had been forced to abandon them quickly, without properly putting them away.

And her shawl was on the ground.

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