Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,41
responsibility for her sins. She escaped blame, and all the sins were laid upon my late father. Someone in my family needed to take responsibility.”—And so she’d stepped forward to right her family’s failings. It made sense, now.—Her eyes hardened. “I don’t doubt that she and others have escaped paying for their crimes, just as I don’t doubt that there are others who were ripped away from their existence because of people like my mother and father.” Her piercing stare went through him, and it was as though she no longer saw him; as though she saw only the demons that haunted her. “When my family rushed off to Dartmoor to put the scandal behind us,” she murmured. “with a complicit mother who saw nothing wrong with her actions…I could not sleep. I lay awake all night tortured with thoughts about the missing and possibly dead. We still had so much, while those children remained without.” And he knew the moment she’d returned to the moment; her gaze found his once more with a directness. “Diggory may be dead but did someone step in to fill that void?” She answered her own question. “I’m sure someone did. And I want the names of people who can shed light on all those who were involved in the children’s disappearance. If there were some children, there has to be more. And they need to be found, and the ones who’ve hurt them, brought to justice.”
My God. She really intended to do this. She intended to go against her own kind. Any of the people whom she’d managed to maintain social dealings with over the years would certainly cut her. Faye’s reputation would be completely ruined, and every door closed.
He couldn’t sort out whether she was mad or… honorable.
Honorable, when he didn’t even know people could be.
For that reason alone, Tynan wanted to deny her the information she sought. The lady had pluck… and an outcome that saw one such as Faye Poplar ruined, was the last scheme he wished to take part in. Wonder of wonders…Tynan did have a conscience. And yet the set of her shoulders, and the glint in her eyes revealed a steely determination. She’d not be deterred.
“So there was a ring,” he began. “Run by a gang leader. A man named Diggory. A cruel bastard. Would cut a child as easily as he would a grown man.”
Faye’s features trembled. “And… were you…”
“One of the children harmed by him?” he finished for her. “Pfft. Diggory had a fascination with the nobility, and I…” Had lived in a workhouse with a mother who’d loved him more than he’d proven himself deserving of. “He’d enough homeless boys without a ma or da to look after them that he wouldn’t bother with me. They answered to him like some king. Did his work. His network was wide. Everyone knew him and knew of his obsession with the peerage. Bought himself any number of children from lords and ladies. Bastards. Full-blooded.”
Faye sat absolutely motionless. Her already pale cheeks leached even more color, leaving her skin with a sickly pallor, heightening the crimson hue of her lips.
He smiled. “Too much for you, kitten?”
She gave her head a terse shake. “No. I need to hear this.” She said as much, but her words emerged weaker than he’d ever heard from her, even when she’d been walking through the halls of Newgate and out onto some of the deadliest streets in London.
Nor did her choice of words escape him either. I need to hear this.
Not want.
Rather, need.
Again, he noted her peculiar commitment to exploring a side of humanity and society no high-born lord or lady would ever willingly subject themselves to. And yet, Faye did.
“Some were men who wanted a higher-up place in Polite Society,” he went on to explain. “Some wanted the coin and wealth that came from displacing those children. And those children were used for all number of sins. Picking pockets. Little girls forced to whore themselves. Boys and girls taking part in a fight ring, where these children were forced to fight to the death for the pleasure of the peerage.”
Her breath caught on a quick intake. “How awful.”
“Aye,” he said quietly. How awful indeed. Diggory was an evil many degrees darker than even Tynan. He, however, had been spared, struggling in his own ways, but not in the same ways as those less fortunate children who’d been forced into whatever crimes Diggory had used them for.