“Where is she?”
“Mrs. Tate is in her rooms,” the man said sourly—and he dropped the “my lord,” Thomas noted.
Thomas ran up the stairs without another word. Damn the man anyway; he was but a mere servant. Thomas was determined to have a word with Lavinia about her staff, but when he reached her rooms, he stopped dead instead. Every drawer was opened in her bureau, and her wardrobe was flung wide. Dresses, petticoats, stockings, shoes, chemises, and other female odds and ends were strewn on every available surface. And in the midst of all this chaos, Lavinia was directing two maids as they packed the clothes into boxes.
“What are you about?” he asked sharply.
She looked up at his voice, and her face went completely blank.
Something in the vicinity of his heart constricted. “Lavinia?”
“Martha, Maisie, please help the footmen in the downstairs sitting rooms,” Lavinia said.
The maids bobbed curtsies and left the room, shooting him curious looks.
He didn’t care what was going through their pea brains. “What are you doing?”
She lifted her chin. “I’m packing to leave of course.”
She wore a simple gray dress today—not at all her usual style—and against her bright wine-red hair, it gave her a severe look.
He had a savage urge to tear it from her body.
“I thought…” He had to stop and swallow past a sudden swelling in his throat. He had a wrenching, horrifying notion that he might weep. “I thought you would stay with me.”
“Because I let you bed me?”
“Yes, damn you!”
She sighed. “But I told you already that I will not be your mistress while you are married to another woman, Thomas. I never changed my mind.”
She turned back to the bed, but he grabbed her arm roughly. “You love me.”
“Yes, I do.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at him, sadly it seemed. “But you know love has very little to do with it.”
“Damn you,” he whispered, and because he was in despair, he took her mouth.
She let him. She stood silent and complacent, made no move to struggle, as he ground her lips beneath his. She tasted of mint and tea, and he groaned, growing erect. She’d always done this to him, since the very first time he’d seen her, laughing at some other man in a ballroom. She brought out the animal side of him, made him forget he was a peer, a respected member of parliament, and a gentleman who owned vast amounts of land.
She made him into a man, only a man, and in the past he’d hated her for it: reminding him that beneath the ermine robes he was merely blood and bone like any other wretch who scrabbled for a living in London. But here, now, he no longer cared. He was going to lose her, once and for all. She would simply walk away, wine-red hair, maddening laugh, and those plain brown eyes that saw all of his most shameful secrets and loved him anyway.
And in the end, when he finally took his mouth from hers, she simply looked at him and turned away. She picked up a stocking and began carefully rolling it. “Good-bye, Thomas.”
He sank to his knees, there in her room on the carpet that was worn in spots, and said the first thing that popped into his mind. “Please marry me, Lavinia.”
“YOU LOOK LIKE you’ve died, been buried for three days, and then been dug up,” Deedle greeted Griffin cordially that evening in St. Giles. Deedle tilted his head and took a closer look. “And been to ’ell in the meantime, too.”
“Thank you, I have,” Griffin growled as he filled a nosebag for Rambler.
He’d not sufficiently trusted any of the men at the still to put them in charge, so he’d been forced to press Deedle into service. His valet stood, armed like a buccaneer, two pistols in his belt and a sword as well. Griffin looked up at the sky. The day was fleeing fast as night cast long shadows in St. Giles.
Deedle pushed his tongue through the hole in the front of his teeth. “What’s ’appened to you, m’lord?”
Griffin shook his head, then stopped as it throbbed in warning. “Nothing to worry yourself over.”
Deedle snorted. “If you say so.”
“Take it or leave it, I don’t give a damn.” Griffin strode into the dim interior of the still warehouse. He hadn’t the patience to argue semantics with Deedle this evening.
“Then I’ll leave it,” Deedle said, skipping to keep up with him.
“What’s happened since I was here last?” Griffin asked.
Deedle sighed. “We’ve lost two more men overnight. That brings us to five, not including we two.”
“You doubled their pay again?”
Deedle nodded. “Just like you said to. Didn’t keep those two fellows from doin’ a runner.”
“I don’t suppose it matters much anymore anyway,” Griffin said. He watched dispassionately as his remaining men filled oaken barrels with gin. “The whole thing’ll be over after tonight.”
Deedle came around to face him. “Then it’s tonight?”
“Yes.” Griffin gazed at the big copper kettles, the barrels of waiting gin, the fires, and the huge warehouse itself. Everything he and Nick had worked so hard to build. “Yes, tonight.”
“Jesus,” Deedle breathed. “Are you sure? We’ve less than a dozen men and not all the supplies you wanted. M’lord, it’ll be near suicide.”
Griffin stared back at Deedle, his gaze level, his head pounding, his mouth tasting of blood and bile. He’d lost Hero, would lose his mother to London, never had a chance of reconciling with Thomas in the first place, and Nick, his dear friend, was dead and buried. The bloody still was the last thing he had left in London.
“Tonight or never. I’m not waiting any longer. I want this over with.” He turned and picked up one of the wicked-looking swords his men used and then glared back at Deedle. “Are you with me or not?”
Deedle swallowed and gripped his pistol. “Aye, m’lord, I am.”
Chapter Eighteen
Tears filled Queen Ravenhair’s eyes at the simplicity and beauty of the tiny mirror’s message.
She held the bird in the hollow of her palms. “What shall I do?” she whispered into the downy feathers. “Who shall I take as husband?”
She let the bird go and he flew away. But instead of disappearing for the night as usual, it was back again within minutes. It alighted and opened its beak to sing.
Let the heart of the heart decide….