Freddy didn’t know, but the question had popped into her head and she’d asked it. It was one of the things Mama despised most about her. “Because it seems to me you should not have to sacrifice yourself.”
“Maybe I don’t consider it a sacrifice.” Freddy opened her mouth to ask about that, but Blythe put up a hand to silence her. “I’m not going to stand here on the street and spill the secrets of my heart to you, Freddy. So don’t ask again. And as for Gabe, well, he was wed before to Georgette, whom we grew up in the orphanage with. She died, and he still loves her desperately.”
Freddy plucked at a loose thread at the cuff of her gown while trying to keep the question bubbling to the surface of her mind silenced, but it burst out anyway. “What was Georgette like?” Freddy wanted to pinch herself when Blythe’s gaze narrowed further.
“Forget him, Freddy.”
This time heat swept Freddy’s whole body. “I never said—”
“You didn’t have to,” Blythe interrupted. “Most women fawn over Gabe and fall all over themselves to get him to notice them, and he’s never paid one of them a passing glance. And it’s been four years since Georgette’s death. He lives like a damned priest. And to answer your previous question, she was reserved, delicate, and sweet.”
All the things Freddy wasn’t. She did try to be nice, but her blunt speech often made her seem unthinking. An unbidden memory of Blythe’s brother came to her. His speech had slipped to a rough burr when he’d vowed to find who had stolen her carriage. “You know, I noted that your brother sounded as if he had a slight Scot’s accent the night he aided me when my carriage was stolen…”
Blythe’s eyes grew impossibly wide, and Freddy watched as the normally unflappable woman’s jaw slipped open. “Did it now? Well that’s a bit of shocking news. I’ve not heard that Scot’s burr from Gabe in years. He mostly buried it the day he buried our mama. He only ever let it out around Georgette and me, but when she died, it was as if a part of him—the part that let people really know him—died, too. I’ve not heard his burr since then.”
“How did he come to have a burr at all, though?” Freddy asked, curious.
Blythe made an impatient sound, but then took a deep breath, and said, “We came from Scotland. Our parents were Scots, and when our da died, our mama brought us here to find work, but she died not long after. Gabe had a heavier accent than me. I suppose because he was a year older.”
“Well that explains why you have an accent and why your brother represses it, but why do you?”
“Gabe trained me to speak in cultured English tones. He said the life he had planned for me required it, and honestly, my burr just seemed to fade more and more with the years.” Blythe grinned. “I do slip from time to time, eh?”
Freddy nodded, distracted by the memory of Mr. Beckford’s burr. It had tightened her stomach, but it was his calloused fingers gently threading into her hair as he’d checked her skull for bumps or cracks left by the ruffians that had unfurled a heat between her thighs and left her aching. He hadn’t seemed offended by her personality. Then again, he hadn’t been around her for very long.
Still, she had thought, possibly, by the sort of burning look in his eyes and the way he’d touched her, that he might desire her. It had been fairly thrilling, given the way he looked, and she was fairly certain she’d never inspired desire in a man before. In fact, it had been so thrilling that she had thought of him since—and not as a proper lady of thetonshould. She had wondered if he would be the sort of man who would be willing to ease her ache and introduce her to passion, but clearly the mutual desire had been in her imagination. Pity that. Just because she didn’t need a husband didn’t mean she never wanted to experience carnal pleasure.
Blythe pointed a finger in Freddy’s face. “I recognize that lustful look.”
Freddy blanched, and Blythe snorted, then said, “Forget him, Freddy. There’s no competing with the ghost of Georgette. Now, come on.” Her clipped tone and rapidly departing figure left no room to argue or question. They were just to the door of the townhome, Freddy raising her hand to knock, when the door flung open. Belle stumbled out and collided with Freddy. They went down hard, in a tangle of arms and legs, and Belle reacted like a cat faced with the prospect of being dipped in water.
She went wild, clawing at Freddy in an effort to scramble off her. She yowled so loudly that Freddy clenched her teeth as she growled at the woman to calm down, a plea that mingled with Blythe’s barked order for the woman to “cease her bawling.” Between Freddy pushing at the woman’s shoulders and Blythe grabbing the woman’s arms, they managed to get her off Freddy, but it was just in time to see what had made the woman run out the door in terror. A giant man raced toward them with a bleeding forehead and rage in his eyes.
Chapter Two
Gabe danced around his opponent in the boxing ring, drawing out the fight with that conceited arse Lord Brooke. The patrons of Gabe’s club, who’d wagered on the fight, pressed closer as he delivered another hit to Brooke’s face—a nice, powerful right hook that sent the man reeling. The cheers erupted around them, making the damp air in the cellar of the Orcus Society a degree warmer with all the hot breath blowing out simultaneously.
Deep, rowdy voices vibrated Gabe’s eardrum, and after a moment, the merriness of the crowed morphed to jeering. Men didn’t much tolerate losers, and that’s what Brooke was at this moment, whether he was one of the richest nobs in London or not.
For one breath, Gabe considered ending the fight now and getting back upstairs to the gaming rooms. He liked to oversee things most nights, but when Brooke finally managed to come fully upright and glared as if he wanted to kill Gabe, he knew the man wasn’t properly remorseful yet for hitting Belle. Thankfully, Gabe had every confidence in the men who worked for him to watch things upstairs in his stead, so he had time to ensure this bastard never laid hands on a woman again in Covent Garden.
Brooke swiped the back of his hand across his face, smearing a red streak of blood over skin so pale it reminded Gabe of fish flesh, then he came at Gabe like any man would who’d foolishly let his anger take control of his head. Unthinking, he charged straight at Gabe, damn fists not raised high enough to protect Brooke’s long, aristocratic nose. Gabe took advantage. He shot out his arm and broke Brooke’s nose for him. Bone crunched, and the man’s eyes widened at the same moment the vessels burst and a river of red poured from his nostrils.
Gabe grabbed the man by his expensive linen shirt, no longer spotless white, and yanked him close. “I heard you hit Belle in Lovelett Theatre last night. Cracked her lip.”
“She deserved it,” Brooke said, trying to shove away, but Gabe gripped the man tighter, thinking of his own mother now. If she’d not died on that filthy cot in the dirty room they’d lived in long ago, she might have become desperate enough to sell her body like Belle, to put up with a so-called benefactor who hit her.
A hush had fallen over the cellar, and the even breathing of twenty men waiting to hear what would be said next hissed in the room. “No woman deserves to be hit, Brooke. And when you’re in Covent Garden, you’re in the place I call home. If I ever hear you’ve hit a woman in my home again, I’ll find you, even if I have to come to Mayfair to do so. And you won’t be able to use your arms and legs when I’m done with you.”
“Mr. Beckford! Mr. Beckford!” came the screech of a woman.
The high-pitched sound of frantic terror cut across the room with the precision of a bullet and pierced Gabe’s singular attention. He jerked his gaze to the stairs while shoving Brooke away from him. A woman wound her way down the stairs, and when she came fully into view, Gabe recognized Belle Whitehall by her long hair the color of a moonbeam. The men parted to let her pass as she moved off the last step, then paused, her hand coming to her disheveled hair before it fluttered to her face. Her cheeks turned red as she stood there, alternately patting at her hair and tugging at her dress, which was torn at the front to partially expose her breast and right shoulder, which had a dark purplish-yellow bruise on it. She had a fresh cut on her lip and wild eyes. Whatever had happened to her had only just occurred, and since Brooke had been in the ring with him, he knew it wasn’t the man directly, but he wouldn’t put it past Brooke to have given orders to deal with Belle.
Gabe started toward her in long strides, but he wasn’t halfway to her when she screamed. He glanced over his shoulder to find Brooke fast approaching behind him. Belle’s fearful sobs filled the silence and made Gabe’s jaw clench in reaction to her distress. He stepped toward the man and delivered a punch straight to his jaw that knocked him down and out.
Gabe let out a shrill whistle. Immediately, Lark and Norris, two of the club guardsmen, materialized. He pointed at Brooke. “Detain him until I return.”
He didn’t wait to ensure they obeyed his command. He didn’t need to. He didn’t trust many men, but the ones he did, he trusted implicitly to follow his orders. He had his hand on the railing of the stairwell before he remembered he’d taken off his shirt before the fight. He turned, and a patron was holding it out to him. “Nice work, Beckford.”
