“Thanks,” he replied, taking the shirt and turning back toward the stairs to find Belle gone.
He wasn’t overly worried she’d flee into the night. Bear manned the only entrance into and out of this club, and Bear may have allowed her entrance, but he wouldn’t let her out given the state she was in. His doorman had a protective nature longer than the Thames River, which was one of the main reasons Gabe had hired him in the first place.
He pounded up the stairs as he yanked on his shirt and set himself into a semblance of order, but he slowed as he turned the handle of the door to the gaming hell. The noise of the club, as well as the light from the chandeliers, washed over him. He stepped into the hall that contained only two men engaged in what appeared to be a serious conversation, and Gabe tipped his head to them as a swish of red skirts at the end of the hall caught his eye. That had to be Belle. She’d had red on.
“Beckford!” one of the men cried. Gabe frowned, irritated not to immediately be able to put a name to the face of a man who apparently knew him and more than slightly annoyed that he was going to be detained for a moment. There were a few rules he lived by that he would swear had helped him rise from homeless street orphan to a man who owned three clubs and a stake in a shipping empire, and the first rule, the main rule, was to treat every person he met as if they were important, because they were. People mattered. He could recall the burn of shame he’d once felt when dismissed by others just as clearly as he could recall the taste of the scone he’d eaten for breakfast that morning.
“I apologize,” Gabe said, casting a glance over his shoulder in the direction Belle had been headed. He faced the man who now stood before him. He was tall, nearly eye to eye with Gabe, and though Gabe was sure he didn’t know the man, something about him did strike him as familiar. “I was departing, but I’d love to—”
“Meet me?” the man said with a friendly chuckle. “My eldest sister Guinevere is wed to your partner, Carrington. I think I may have been the last in the family to know the duke was in business with you.”
“Yes,” Gabe said, his mind touching briefly on the fact that Carrington had recently decided to tell Guinevere’s whole family of their partnership. He also knew that Carrington intended to let it out to thetonas general knowledge soon. His old friend had said that in staying a silent partner, he was supporting the ridiculous idea that men of Society should not work to earn a living. Gabe agreed.
He had to find Belle, and yet, he lingered for a moment, thinking of Lady Frederica, whom he’d worked hard to forget. And that was after only one face-to-face meeting with the unusual chit. He pushed the ridiculous impulse aside. He couldn’t stop himself from dreaming about her, but he could damn well stop himself from asking how she was and if she’d been getting up to anymore trouble. It was none of his concern.Shewas not his concern. “Pleasure to meet you, Lord Huntley.”
“Huntley will do. You must call on me sometime.”
“At Mayfair?” Gabe blurted out like a fool. He wasn’t a blurter—ever. What the devil was wrong with him?
Huntley’s brows dipped together. “No, I don’t live there anymore. I’m on Clairbourne Street. Have you been to my parents’ home with Carrington?”
“No.” He’d been there because he’d followed Lady Frederica the night he’d met her, but he couldn’t say that. Nor could he reveal that his attraction to Huntley’s sister had been instantaneous and ferocious. It had, in fact, unsettled him. He couldn’t ever let a woman close, and it wasn’t just the vow Hawk had made four years earlier that stopped Gabe. It was Gabe himself. Letting people too close brought pain when you lost them, and he damn sure didn’t need to see a chit home who’d managed to intrigue him after one brief encounter. So instead, he’d had his coachman do so. But he’d no more than returned to his own home, where Blythe had cared for the lady’s injuries, when the nagging need to ensure she had made it home safely had begun. And try as he might to ignore it, it had grown until it was all he could think about.
It was just a habit to keep people safe, nothing more. And after his talk with her about not returning to the rookery, he’d been left with a hefty dose of doubt that she’d heed him. She was headstrong, that one. He could see it in the set of her jaw, the tilt of her chin, and the determination in her eyes. So he’d gone to the address he’d overheard her give his coachman, and he’d watched her house. Not just that one night, either. Oh no. He’d been there a dozen times. One had to be thorough, or so he’d told himself, until he finally admitted he was lusting after a chit he had no business lusting after.
“I believe Carrington mentioned in passing that your family lives there,” Gabe said.
“Ah. Well—”
“I really have somewhere I need to be. I am sorry.”
“Yes, yes.” A nod came from the man. “Don’t let me hold you up.”
Gabe offered a smile, then strode toward the back-alley entrance, relieved to see Bear standing in front of the door at the end of the shadowy hall, arms crossed over his broad chest, and looking down at Belle, who stood before him. Her pleading to leave the club floated to him as he closed the distance between them. The woman was frantic to flee Brooke and to persuade Bear to return with her to the townhome Brooke provided for her.
“Bear won’t leave his post,” Gabe said, interrupting her. She sounded like she was getting wound up for a long story.
She swiveled toward him, swaying as if she might fall, and Gabe caught her by the elbow to steady her but quickly released her when she flinched. That had been unthinking. He knew not to touch a woman who’d suffered abuse at the hands of a man. His first experience with that had been Georgette, but there’d been many abused women since, unfortunately, that he’d tried to aid.
Gabe took in Belle’s injuries. A busted lip was the least of them. She was missing a tooth and another was chipped. “Did Brooke do this earlier or last night?” He motioned to her face.
“Some last night and some right before he left to fight you. He said this is what would h-h-happen if I ever tried to leave him.”
The desire to return to Brooke and treat him with the courtesy the man had treated Belle curled Gabe’s hands into fists. “Were you planning on leaving him?”
“Yes, and he got word. Your sister came to help me,” the woman said, tears filling her eyes.
“My sister?” Inside, it felt as if all his muscles had coiled into a tight ball. “Where’s Blythe?” He was simultaneously proud of his sister’s huge heart and angry at her impetuous nature. He’d told her time and again not to take risks.
“That’s what I was trying to tell him,” Belle said, pointing at Bear. “Your sister and Lady Frederica are at Brooke’s townhome.”
He frowned. “Lady Frederica?” Her image came to him. She was a plucky, tiny thing with a mass of unruly chestnut hair that slipped confining pins to curl about her slender neck and animated face. Her skin made him want to lick it to see if she tasted as creamy as her milky complexion hinted she would. Her eyes blazed with far too much confidence. The woman didn’t know she was a vase—a priceless, Song dynasty one. Some lord with gentle manners and a soft touch needed to wed her—or purchase her, as it went in the upper classes. That lord needed to keep her on a high shelf in his study under lock and key where she wouldn’t be at risk of being shattered by the harsh world in which she so obviously thought she could handily survive.
“What are they doing there?” Gabe asked. As the woman’s lower lip began to tremble, fear unfurled in his chest. He’d been his sister’s protector since he was old enough to remember. She was the only person he allowed soft feelings for because he’d been too young when they’d started to stop them, to know better. “Why are you here?”
“To…to fetch you. The men Brooke set to guard me dragged us all back in and locked us in a room, they said, for Brooke to deal with, b-but then one of the guards, Marco, came alone to the room and said, he…he wanted to see what a real lady was l-l-like under all her silk and f-finery. Your s-sister and Lady F-Frederica charged him, but he knocked Blythe out and dr-dragged Lady Frederica out of the room kicking and screaming. He forgot to lock the door again behind him, and when I couldn’t wake Blythe, I climbed out the window in the study on the first floor ’cause I couldn’t get out the front door. The other guard was standing in front of it, and I had to be quiet as a mouse so he didn’t take note of me and stop me.”
Gabe had known rage before. His temples had pounded with it on many occasions when his sister had been threatened, or he had, or someone he considered under his protection had. The rage of being treated lesser than simply because he’d been born a bastard had made his heart hammer in his chest until it had ached. The rage of being so poor there was no food to eat had seared his veins and clawed its way up his throat, leaving it raw and aching. But now all the different variations of the same emotion combined to sweep through him like a violent storm.
