Page 42 of The No Good Irresistible Viscount Tipton
TEN
“Hold him still,” Rayne ordered, concentrating on pulling the last stitch through and knotting it. His patient had been the unlucky recipient of a jagged piece of crockery to his temple. The man would walk away with a nasty scar, but he would survive if the hemp did not catch him in a stranglehold.
“Strange business last evening,” one of the trusted prisoners said while he held the flinching patient.
Rayne reached for a piece of linen to dress the wound. “A small riot, I hear.” It had been more than that according to another guard. At least fifty inmates had gotten their hands on files, the source of which no one was exactly certain. Although a small charity blamed for providing numerous barrels of beer to several wards was under suspicion. The ones who were not happy with getting pleasantly drunk and busting chamber pots were busy cutting their way through the rusting iron bars. One very productive ward managed to cut a large enough opening for several prisoners to escape. Two had been captured immediately; five others were still missing. Rayne shook his head. The way Devona’s mind worked fascinated him. He could not be certain if she was trying to free Newgate’s population single-handedly or if it had been her ruse to cause confusion so Claeg could escape.
Rayne had to stitch up a half-dozen other patients and help a fourteen-year-old girl give birth to her stillborn child before he was free to seek out Claeg. It might have been simpler to have allowed him to escape as Devona had planned. However, Claeg’s early release would have messed up Rayne’s own plans. Cold bastard that he was, he intended to use the man’s dire predicament to gain Devona for his own.
Rayne could still see her expression when he had bartered the release of Claeg in return for her hand. He had never seen such a reluctant acceptance in her. Devona had appeared almost disappointed in him. He stalked down the dim corridor, nodding to the passing turnkey. What had she expected from the man everyone called Le Cadavre Raffiné? As far as he was concerned he was just living up to the name.
“I am Tipton. Is Doran Claeg waiting for me?” he asked the two gatesmen braced against the wall, passing a bottle between them. He had made certain Claeg would be isolated for their conversation.
“Inside. Is he ill?” one of the men asked, but he did not seem truly interested in the response.
Rayne stepped aside so the door could be unlocked and opened. “That’s what I’m here to take care of.” He was standing in the same room in which Devona had tried to execute her half-baked scheme. Walking over to the prone figure on the floor, he nudged him with his foot. “Wake up, Claeg.”
He set the lantern down on the floor near the man’s head. Claeg rolled over; his arm covered his eyes as if the light hurt. “Too much liquor to lessen your disappointment of last eve.”
“Go to Hades, Tipton,” Doran mumbled, groaning when he tried to sit up.
“If this isn’t hell, it is at least the entrance hall. I heard that thanks to our mutual friend several prisoners escaped last evening. A pity you were not among the counted.”
“No thanks to you!” Doran glared, then ruined the effect by rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “I could not believe you called the guards in on our gathering.”
Rayne reached over and dragged the small bench closer to the light before sitting down. He rested his forearms on his knees and studied his rival. He may have been raised as part of the upper crust; nonetheless, the man had grown a little stale in his present surroundings. “Claeg, I would not pay a shilling for your pathetic hide unless I could find a use, like the patronage of my dissecting table.”
Glorp!Doran reached for the sop bucket and vomited. Once his stomach settled he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sadistic butchering madman. I wager you kill more than you heal.”
Rayne, able to appreciate the grim humor of the situation, laughed. “It is my abilities in the former rather than the latter which bring me to your side today.”
Doran jerked himself upright, prepared to combat the dark specter of theton.“My death would—”
“Not make the papers, nor stir the gossips’ tongues. You are invisible,” he said, not without some unwanted sympathy.
Denial flared in his young, defiant face. “Not to Devona. Last night proves that she would do anything for me, even risk her own life.”
Rayne tapped down the rage he felt when he considered the great risk she had taken to save her friend. Jealousy rose to take its place at the thought of her feelings for this unworthy fool. “All last evening proved was that Devona broke under the strain of your family’s desire to blame her for your misdeeds.”
Doran shook his head. “I never have blamed her.”
A cynical curve turned Rayne’s mouth upward. “Not aloud. You just reminded her every time she visited that everything you did, you did to win her affection and her father’s approval. Then there is that bitch you call a mother. She has told everyone who bends an ear that Devona was the tart who seduced her poor hapless son down the road of sin. I even witnessed her striking Devona in public for defending herself.” And maybe a bit more, Rayne thought, recalling the chunks of statuary at Devona’s feet when he discovered her in the conservatory.
“No. I—” Doran pressed his fists to his temples. “My mother. She has never tolerated the Bedegraynes.”
The helpless pleading in his eyes did not move Rayne. Devona had been hurt because of this man. Whether she wanted it or not, Rayne would protect her.
“Devona never told me of these incidents,” Doran weakly protested.
“Knowing your mother, you could have guessed what price she would pay for supporting you. It is now time to return the favor.”
The younger man snorted. “Not much I can do from here.”
“Perhaps not,” Rayne agreed. “Devona once begged my services to revive your body once the hangman was satisfied.”
Doran touched his throat, distinctly appearing sick again. “The stories about you, they are true?”
He did not care to share his own personal torments with this man. “True enough that I survived my own burial,” he said so nonchalantly as to diminish its importance. “I have decided to help you after all, Claeg.”
