Page 5 of Greed: The Savage
When he’d finished, he brought the session to a close by standing. “We’re done here, Snap.”
His meaning couldn’t be clearer. She’d either do the job or leave the club, and they both knew that wasn’t an option. Not only would he distance her from Roy—the only man, aside from Dynevor, that was—whom she’d ever felt comfortable with, but he’d stick her with that silk-swaddled parasite marquess. It wasn’t enough Thornwick had been born with a title, lands, and a fortune to his name, he had to come to the Dials and take work from hardworking men in the streets.
Addien growled. “Your Lordship,” she said tersely and excused herself. Who’d have known there were different kinds of hangman’s nooses?
Chapter 2
Malric Mauley, Marquess of Thornwick, came from one of the oldest families in the kingdom. His father, the Duke of Calderay, dated back to 1066 when William the Conqueror made his Norman conquest over Anglo-Saxon England.
Even with his highborn designation, he’d never been one to look down on his social inferiors. Nor was it because he’d spent his adult life employed at the Home Office.
Following one of the old vengeful duke’s many lofty dinner parties, the noble guests retired for brandies and cigars. It was Calderay’s favorite time—when lesser gentlemen gathered around and hung on his every word, like the Lord himself had come to earth to read the sacred word aloud to his most devout followers.
Sipping a glass of brandy, Thornwick listened as long as he could to the pompous bastard pontificate about Edmund Burke’s brilliant views on hierarchy and social order, until Thornwick could take no more.
In short order, Thornwick took up a position of support for Rousseau. He’d been so effective in his rebuttal, by the time he’d finished, the duke’s cheeks were florid and his esteemed guests were all nodding their support of natural rights, equality, and social reform.
It was that moment he, who’d savored his years as a student at Oxford, had been forced out by his father and forcedintoa role of secretary at the Home Office. That relegation had come as a punishment, meant to inflict maximum hurt upon Thornwick.
That’d been just one of many ways the duke tried to hammer into Thornwick who held the real power in their family and in the world.
Thornwick favored equality and social reform? Then, he’d enjoy time being aworkingman. The duke had seen to it.
Naturally, Thornwick loved his role in an instant.
With the Duke of Calderay puffed up grander than any peacock, the bastard didn’t rub shoulders with anyone outside the rank of marquess, with rare exceptions shown for earls whose titles were no less than two and a half centuries old.
As for Thornwick? Any person who could help Thornwick benefit and in the ways that mattered most to him—wealth, power, and more importantly, his career advancement in the Home Office—held value to him.
Which was obviously why, after his younger brother got himself into trouble with not only the Home Office but the proprietors of the notorious Forbidden Pleasures, Thornwick found himself guilty of treason by association.
The duke thought his bloody obstinate son, as he referred to Thornwick, more than by his name or title, would return to Polite Society, take up his rightful place, andmore importantly, take some limpid, simpering, pale-skinned debutante for his future duchess.
So Thornwick sought employment at London’s seediest, most debauched club that catered to the nobility, self-made men, and street roughs.
The Devil’s Den, with its penchant for danger and violence, was more of a home than where Thornwick grew up—the aptly named, Woburn Park, belonging to the duke. With one key difference being that Thornwick didn’t find himself beaten and bloodied and jeered the way he—and his late mother and siblings—had been when he was a lad living under Calderay’s cruel thumb.
No, this time, ironically enough, the mockery came in the form of his name, “Mauley” being used in favor of his title. The members spoke of him as Thornwick. The staff and servantshere all referred to Thornwick as Mauley to point out he was “playing at working class poor.” Or that is how a handful of servants referred to what he was doing, when he’d come upon them at dinner.
Seated at the Earl of Dynevor’s desk, Thornwick accepted the expensive French brandy his unpolished employer always proffered. As was customary, they went about discussing the club’s business as it pertained to Thornwick’s role in the sin-blackened hell.
The two of them silently passed pages back and forth to examine.
The young proprietor didn’t bother filling the silence. They were alike in that way. Just as their roots as working noblemen also cemented an understanding between them—it was as close to friendship as a man like Thornwick or, for that matter, Dynevor, got.
Thornwick wasn’t stupid or naive to believe that bespoke any lifelong loyalty. People were disposable. They all stood to gain something from someone.
Thornwick’s role of second-in-command to the guards, behind only Lachlan Latimer—one of the three owners of the Devil’s Den—had landed him with full access to the proprietors and all the same information in their hands.
“This looks good,” Dynevor said, shuffling the sheets together.
This being the new schedule and placements of guards throughout the access points of the Devil’s Den.
Thornwick didn’t acknowledge that praise. He knew it was good. Ensuring people’s safety and security was what he excelled at—it’s what he’d done the majority of his life.
From when he’d protected his mother from canings at her abusive husband’s cruel hand, or took a beating on behalf of hisbrothers, to his entire career at the Home Office, looking after others was something at which he was skilled.
It proved even easier now that he was free from the burdens that came with caring for his family.
