Page 20 of The Duke's Wicked Widow
“I shall be attending to my correspondence. Later I will visit with Merida.”
The butler frowned. “The nursery maid informed me you have already dined with her once today.”
“And I will do so again,” Ellie announced stiffly, hating the fact she wasarguingwith a servant. Father had never argued with servants, and she’d wager Georgia never did, either.
You are too weak! You will never be a grand lady, not with your inadequacies!
Father’s words still hurt, after all these years. When she’d made the match with Rufus, Father had been so proud of her, but he hadn’t realized she was still a failure.
“My lady—”
“See to it that I am not disturbed.” She tried for a haughty air. “This afternoon, Merida and I will walk in the square.”
Ellie didn’t wait to hear what objection the butler would have tothat. She lifted her chin and marched to her private study, resisting the urge to slam the door behind her.
There were dozens of condolence notes, between Father’s death and Rufus’s. But Ellie didn’twantto have to sit here in the uncomfortable chair and read each and respond. She wanted to sprawl on the chaise and try to puzzle through the coded messages, trying yet again to see what she’d missed.
Angry, yet again, at Father for outsmarting her.
No.
No, what shereallywanted was to have Matthews sneak her across town to Fawkes’s flat once more. She wanted to throw herself into his arms, she wanted to get down on her knees again and take him into her mouth.
She wanted to feel that explosion again, that incredible burst of pleasure she’d never before experienced.
Standing there in her study, papers clenched in her hand, Ellie stared unseeingly at the wallpaper and made up her mind.
Tonight.
Chapter 4
The clockacross the hall in his bedroom ticked quietly in the late-night silence as Fawkes carefully maneuvered the pipette over the simmering liquid.
This was the trickiest part of the process, adding the distilled pennyroyal to the alcohol which had already leeched the rue of its medicinal properties, and even that wasn’t particularly taxing. This mixture was a variation of one he’d learned long ago to help ease his mother’s pains.
This was a simple concoction, honestly, and one he enjoyed creating. His potions and poisons had earned him a reputation in London’s East End over the last decade, one he’d always been pleased his mother had never heard.
The Duke of Death.
He hadn’t been the one to choose that sobriquet; it had been chosen to remind him of a very real threat.
A reminder that all it would take would be one letter to his father and to the law, and Fawkes and Mother would be in serious trouble.
But his fatherwouldn’thear about Fawkes’s life, or the roles he’d been forced to play since Blackrose had found him. Because Fawkes would keep Mother safe, no matter what.
He could distill poisons that could make a man keel over with one whiff, or those which caused crippling pain, or those which took an age to go into effect and then all evidence would be masked by other symptoms—like the way foxglove could cause the heart spasms which had killed his father’s wife so many years before.
Butthisconcoction was much simpler; a draught to prevent conception. There were plenty of women in the East End—working women, women who did what they could to get by, mothers with more than enough mouths to feed already—who didn’t need a bairn ruining their livelihoods.
Fawkes had standing orders from several of the more popular brothels, and a few…independent contractors, as well.
This is what he’d always wanted to do; help people. Aye, perhaps, in his idealistic younger years, he hadn’t imagined those people beingwhores, exactly, but…he was helping them. And others, who came to him in need or in pain.
Hehelpedthem, which is more than he could say for what Blackrose had forced him to do over the years…
When the dripping slowed to a stop, he tapped the side of the jar and wriggled it free from its stand. When he’d chosen this flat, he’d recognized that the smaller bedroom would make a fine laboratory of sorts and it had served him well. The window was easy to reach when one of his experiments went wrong, and on more than one occasion he’d needed to rush to the washroom to clean his hands.
But this one was a success.
