Page 91 of Greed: The Savage
Another night the altercation would have been lost to the din. The lack of raucous cover made them a target of the crowd’s scrutiny.
That notice served to keep him moving for the very abrupt meeting coming with Dynevor.
His begrudging cooperation had no effect on Roy. The bloody bastard kept at Thornwick’s damned side. With each step, Thornwick was tormented by the reminder of where Addien’s affections lay.
He sucked in a sharp breath through his nose. The reflexive inhalation earned the guard’s impenetrable stare.
Thornwick didn’t look at him. To do so would mean remembering the man Addien had once gone soft for.
He was the first—the only—man to possess Addien’s exquisite playground of a body. That should have made him king of masculine satisfaction where Roy was concerned.
And yet…Roy was also the man she’d wanted. Not with mere physical hunger—God help him—but an emotional one. If Royhad offered her marriage after a night like theirs, she’d likely have leapt into the bastard’s arms—and onto his cock.
Jealousy rooted fast, growing into a thick, choking tangle.I had her first.And given the disdain and denial she’d shown before he left, that one night might be all he’d ever have.
By the time he reached the door, his hands were already curling into fists. The guard let him in, and—thank God—Roy left him there.
Dynevor stood with his arms clasped behind him, anger simmering under the surface. Thornwick didn’t waste time.
“Three households this morning. Three this afternoon. Coupled with the baroness yesterday, the pattern’s the same. The fourth—Lord Whitby—used his wife as a diversion, just as was done with Addien.” The words hit the back of his throat like poison, the memory of Addien in another man’s snare twisting the knife.
His fists tightened until nails bit skin and drew blood. The sting was the only thing that kept him from going off on the hunt for the rest of Dunworthy’s carcass.
“I had him just as he was about to make a go for Constance. She’s unharmed. It did not take much at all to get a name from the man.” In fact, it’d been pathetically easy to get thegentlemanto own up.
Unfortunately forWhitby, he’d given up a name he shouldn’t and paid the price in the middle of Mayfair’s finest for it.
Thornwick spoke dispassionately. “Meeting six was interrupted when word reached the residence of Whitby’s murder in the heart of Bond Street.”
The earl’s face remained implacable. “Diggory.”
Thornwick nodded. “The same.”
The younger man stared intently. “And…”
Thornwick growled in an indication of his impatience. It was one of the few telltale signs of his temper and that he didn’tpossess quite the self-control he believed he did, and that he’d convinced others he did.
Dynevor didn’t know after all.
Rather, he’d summoned Thornwick for some other reason.
Thornwick tensed.
Another man might have been given pause or had reservations in sharing the news Thornwick now came bearing. Not Thornwick. Thornwick excelled at blunt speech. He didn’t have qualms or feel anything about handing down the worst news. That skill had come to be from his time at the Home Office and thank God for that. Prior to his work, he’d been a lily-livered bastard. Sad about his mother and younger brother suffering at the hands of the duke. And it had become much easier after his mother died not to care, not to worry. By then his brother was already on to Eton and Oxford. There’d been no one else he had to bother looking after.
“As I said, my sixth meeting didn’t take place as scheduled today. Around that time, I received word from one of the guards left behind at Whitby’s residence, that he’d been killed.” No, not just killed. “Killed and marked.” Because the Earl of Dynevor would understand ritualistic markings weren’t a thread in the embroidery used by polite society.
“Given the mark, it’s safe to determine it wasn’t the effects of some blow that left him damaged inside,” Dynevor rightly surmised.
It was a detachment even Thornwick had to respect, though God knew how anyone could remain untouched by such a revelation.
Mac Diggory, the scourge of London, had been the one stealing noblemen’s children. Babes, boys, girls, it hadn’t mattered; he folded them into his gang, called them “family,” and bent them to his will. His obsession with the nobility was a sickness and none bore the mark of it more than the boyhe’d taken for his heir. The Earl of Dynevor, stolen by Diggory’s men while still in the Marquess of Maddock’s employ, had been raised under that madman’s hand—groomed to be the King of Arson in England.
The Devil’s Den had been Diggory’s kingdom once. Its walls still remembered him—and they’d been meant to belong forever to the man before Thornwick.
Possessed of an equally ruthless heart, caring for nothing and no one beyond his work, Dynevor feared nothing. That was, save the threat the old gang leader posed to his hold on the Devil’s Den.
There came a sharp rap at the door.
