Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,4
hurried into the room.
Immaculate, elegantly arranged, with Chippendale furnishings and flawless mahogany floors. She might as well have stepped into the office of any proper gentleman. Faye availed herself to one of the oak wing chairs. The oddly cut, uncomfortable seating was at odds with the formal décor of the remainder of Hinton’s offices.
Hinton took up a place behind the functional, meticulously organized mahogany desk. Catching his chin in his palm, he studied her. Suddenly, he let his hands fall to the surface of the desk. “Is he your lover?” he asked bluntly, without preamble.
“I have no lover.” Nor would she ever. Nor a suitor. Nor a husband. But then, her mother had oft lamented before their family’s scandal about the struggle it would be to find any man for Faye.
“Your brother?”
“No.” Her brother was otherwise occupied looking after their sister Christina.
Hinton drummed his fingertips in a grating rhythm. All the while, he studied her. “Why do you wish for his release so badly?” he mused aloud, and she’d wager that question was as much for himself as for her.
“The question is, Mr. Hinton, why don’t you?” she returned.
The warden at last stopped that tap-tap-tapping of his glove-encased digits.
Faye moved to the edge of her seat, her black, muslin skirts rustling as she settled in. “I expect having the former head of this institution about is not altogether… easy,” she murmured, drawing from that suggestion made to her by a stranger.
Hinton remained motionless, the slight tic at the corner of his right eye proving, however, that the older man in the shadows had provided Faye with the very ammunition she’d been previously without.
“I trust as long as he remains here, his leadership also looms. And that doesn’t have to be the case, Mr. Hinton. You can be free to run this institution, shaping it into what you would have it be.” Whatever that was exactly. “And I? I could take him off your hands for you.”
“Take him off my hands,” he echoed. A slow understanding dawned in the warden’s eyes. “He has wronged you. Of course.”
Faye opened her mouth to disabuse him of that erroneous assumption, but something held her back, some instinctive understanding deep inside that came from the iced glint there in his gaze. He was too riddled with his hatred and resentment for the man Faye sought to free and, as such, could not see clearly beyond that. It clouded him into thinking he’d identified the reason for her being here.
“It is mutually beneficial to the both of us, Mr. Hinton, if you release him to me.” In that roundabout way, she answered him, offering the truth and not lying about his mistake.
He continued to study her. “And tell me, what exactly do you intend to do if I allow him to go with you?”
Gripping the arms of the chair, Faye arched forward. “I trust it is better for you not to know, Mr. Hinton,” she whispered, her deliberate, ominous vagueness meant to fuel the opinion he’d already reached pertaining to her dealings with Mr. Hinton.
Hinton froze. She saw his thoughts turning in his eyes as he considered that which he wished for most, being free of Wylie, versus that which he clearly strived so hard to be, an honorable, respectable gentleman in charge of this prison.
Suddenly, he came to his feet, and Faye’s heart sank, as with his dismissal came the last hope she had of putting Mr. Wylie to work for her and her endeavor.
She made to rise.
But then he turned and headed for the bell-pull at the wall behind him, setting the chimes ajingle, once again presenting this place as an incongruity of gentility among the seediest dark sides of England.
One of the guards who’d been with Mr. Hinton earlier entered. “You rang?”
“Fetch Wylie and bring him to me.” He paused, slicing a glance in Faye’s direction. “And before you release him from his cell, see that you relieve him of his knife and any other weapons he may have collected in his time here.”
As the guard dropped a hasty bow and rushed off, Faye stared wide-eyed after the young man. For this time, the organ in her chest pounded harder, climbing to her throat.
Relieve him of his knife and any other weapons he may have collected in his time here.
In that moment, with her impending first face-to-face meeting with the notoriously ruthless former warden of Newgate, whom she was single-handedly responsible for getting out of this place, her plans became real.