Page 93 of Their Master

Smith took out the clean handkerchief Luke had just brought him and wiped the spittle from his chin. “I’ll take that as ayes.”

He turned back to her daughter. “If it seems a bit of a tangle, Moira, that’s because it is. You see, your mother had one purpose to send your brother Robert to London and Blois had quite another to sendyou. I’m afraid Robert was the victim of Mr. Onions, who killed Robert at the behest of one of his employers, the especially nasty owner of a smuggling organization that makes a hefty profit kidnapping unwary British girls and selling them on the Continent.” He turned an unpleasant look on Marie Bardot. “People are far more tractable when they find themselves stranded in a foreign country and cannot speak the language.”

As Smith knew from personal experience.

He turned back to Moira. “Your mother has been using them as suppliers for brothels she owns in Dijon, Marseille, and Lyon.”

Moira’s stunned expression told him volumes.

Smith had to admit at least one of the weights on his chest had been lifted; he would have hated to believe that Moira had known about those houses of misery but had done nothing to stop it.

“Your mother sent Robert over here with instructions to set up a new network—one that would cut out Mr. Onions’ employers. They took umbrage at her plan and your brother was their victim. As were you.”

Smith tilted his head to get a better look at the man who’d inflicted such a vicious whipping on Moira.

Onions recoiled from his stare and raised his tied hands. “Please, no more,” he begged in a voice made ragged by screaming.

Smith smiled. “Hush, now, Mr. Onions. What did I tell you about talking out of turn?”

Onions threw himself face down, blubbering and sobbing, and commenced to crawl toward Smith, likely to kiss his feet.

Thankfully Gideon stopped him.

The other man had been remarkably easy to break, not much of a challenge at all. When Smith was done with Onions—which he would be, soon—the other man would serve as an object lesson for what happened to a person who touched what belonged to him.

Smith turned back to the French madam and her lover, both of whom were staring at him with loathing and a pleasing amount of fear.

“Now, where was I?” he asked. “Oh, yes, Marie’s incursion intorun goods,” he said, using the street cant for selling virgins. “Blois would never dirty his hands with trade, although he has certainly enjoyed the fruits of your mother’s business for decades. No, what he really wanted was to get to me, but he is too much of a coward to do it himself. You aren’t the first person he used to do so, neither is Sandrine.” He smiled at Moira’s lovely, gentle sister. “He prefers to have others do his dirty work. Don’t you, my lord?”

Blois stared stonily, his gaze on something at Smith’s feet.

Smith bent down to pick up the revolver. He opened the chamber; four bullets, three more than necessary. He snapped it shut and turned back to Blois, who was now watching him with more than a touch of apprehension.

“I can only assume you’re here because you are desperate, my lord. I daresay the pounding your financial interests have been taking over the last two or three years might be behind your actions.”

Smith raised his eyebrows and grinned as horrible comprehension dawned in the other man’s eyes.

“You?” Blois gasped. “But…how?”

“You would be amazed by how much a desire for revenge can motivate a man to be inventive. Would you like to sit?” Smith offered, pushing the room’s only chair toward him. “No?” Smith said when the other man continued to stare. He shrugged. “Please yourself.”

“You are the devil,” Blois said in a voice that was a mere husk of his commanding baritone.

Smith closed the distance between them, until their faces were only inches apart. Blois tried to back away but was stopped by the wall behind him.

“Iamthe devil,” Smith agreed. “And you are the man who made me what I am today.”

He realized his breathing had begun to quicken and he was squeezing the pistol grip until it cut into his hand.

It was unlike him to allow his emotions to seize control.

But then this was an event that was decades in the making.

“Madame Bardot,” he said, not taking his eyes away from Blois. “You will take your son and go back to France. The next time I see either of you—or anyone you might think to send after me—I will come to Paris myself and kill you both.” Marie Bardot gasped, but Smith ignored her. “Gideon, take them to the docks and put them on the first ship to France.

Marie Bardot hesitated, stepping closer to the man who’d bred multiple children on her and didn’t give a tinker’s curse about any of them—or her, either probably.

“But what about Thibaut?” Marie said. “Can he not go back with us?”

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