Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,42

her notes and resumed writing, but not before he’d caught the sheen of tears that glazed her eyes.

Less fortunate…

Yes, he, however, had been spared…

Living in a workhouse and laboring over backbreaking work that had seen countless people dead.

“What happened to Diggory that ended his reign?” Faye’s softly spoken question brought him back to the moment.

“From what I understand, some of the children who grew up took him down.” It had been in the papers, but the details hadn’t mattered to him. “Since his death, there’s been a war in the streets between the old guards who were loyal to Diggory, and the men seeking to take his place of power.”

“Who are the men or women in possession of the identities of those who dealt with Diggory?”

The easiest way to be done with her would be to give her someone who would be all happy to offer her the information she sought. It would be the most roundabout way of getting her what she wanted and honoring his commitment enough that if—when—the peerage sought revenge, it wouldn’t be Tynan they’d come after.

But it would be… Faye. Faye, who insisted she knew but who had no idea the fire she was playing with. Why should that leave unease swirling in his belly? For her, a woman he barely knew and who grated on his every last nerve.

Did she, though? Did—

“Tynan?” she gently prodded.

“There’s a man named Colb. He knows everything there is to know about these parts of London.” As soon as that information left him, he was conflicted by the urge to call it back.

She was going to get herself killed… and he’d be, in part, to blame.

“Do you know how I might find him?”

“He doesn’t live in any parts that you belong. Or anyplace you’d be safe going.” Not alone. “The air stinks like shite.” Let her put that in her notes. “It’s all blind alleys and courts.” Determined to put her off once and for all, he gave her the whole ugly truth. “There’s thieves waiting in the corners to gut the unsuspecting and rob them of whatever they have. Which is nothing but the tattered rags on most of their backs. But before they do, those men will happily lift the skirts, or drop the trousers of their victim, and put it to them.”

Faye’s throat moved, and she dampened her mouth.

Good. She needed to hear it all, to know everything that she was risking each time she came here. “And then, when they’re done, do you know what they do with the dead bodies, Faye? Hmm? The ones that don’t get sold for people of science to cut up into parts?”

She gave her head a slight, uneven shake.

Was she asking him to stop? Confirming her ignorance? Or mayhap it was a combination of the two?

“Those thieves will line up multiples of those victims and cut them here and here.” He ran his fingertip in a vertical line from the point between her breasts to the place just below her navel. Her flat stomach trembled under his touch. “And they’ll wager on which rats are quicker to consume the innards of which corpse first.”

Her skin took on a sickening shade of green. The color was the same as the sick in the workhouse just before they’d begun casting up the contents of their stomach from whatever illness afflicted them and ultimately claimed their pathetic lives.

Faye scrabbled with her neck, merely accentuating the wild rolling of her throat muscles.

Good. Be afraid, Faye. Be afraid, as you should be. Give this up, and let that fear keep you safe.

“You’re trying to scare me.” It was a breathless statement.

Yes, in part he was. But not for the reasons she suspected or the reasons he should be, so that he was free of her. “You should be,” he said flatly.

She dragged her chair so close her knees brushed the side of his leg. “Can we go there now?”

She was unrelenting. “Don’t you have a family about?” he snapped. “People who will miss you?” People who knew she was wandering about, playing detective.

“No, my brother-in-law recently passed away, and my brother and mother have retired to the country to collect my sister and her children.”

My God, how free she was sharing of herself.

He stole a glance at the timepiece pinned to the middle of her neckline. That same piece that, in these parts, she’d find herself nicked of before she could even open her mouth in a scream. He could put her off for