Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,55

air, the heavy silence left in its wake underlined by the crack and pop of the fire blazing in the hearth.

Fabulous. Now he’d descended to the level of scaring children.

Heading over to the cupboard, he searched around and found the flask of whiskey he kept there.

“But you’re the best at running that prison, sir,” Lawrence whispered.

Straightening, he removed the cork and downed a long swallow, welcoming the slight burn as it ran down the back of his throat. It was a drink he despised, one that made him think of the miserable bastard who’d sired him. And yet, some situations just called for drink, and if this moment wasn’t one of them, well, then, Tynan couldn’t think of a single one that was.

Setting down the flask, he ran a tired hand over the side of his face. Yes, keeping order in that place that housed the most brutal and ruthless members of society had been the one damned thing that he’d mastered.

“Does this mean we’re going to have to leave, Finn?” Kevin’s whisper came loud enough for Tynan to hear.

The fact that Finn didn’t this time rush forward with confident promises was telling.

Tynan sighed. Neither pity nor drink was going to fix this mess he’d landed himself in. Registering the absolute silence among the boys, Tynan turned his focus on the six of them. “You are free to remain here. You’ll have food as you always did, and eventually there will be work.” There had to be.

He was wholly undeserving of the adoring looks that came his way.

“Is there anything we can do for ye in the meantime, sir?” Jack piped in hopefully.

“Only if you know how to go about handling proper English ladies,” he muttered under his breath. That, he’d welcome anyone’s help with. Because the years he’d spent dealing with them through his work hadn’t prepared him one goddamned bit for the likes of Faye Poplar.

“Sir?” Lawrence asked hesitantly.

Tynan scrubbed a hand over his forehead. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

Not even God himself could help him where Faye Poplar was concerned.

Chapter 13

The following day, with her chin in her hand, Faye stared absently out at the passing streets.

Once more, Tynan’s words whispered forward, her lone company in the dark, cramped conveyance.

Those thieves will line up multiples of those victims and cut them here and here. And they’ll wager on which rats are quicker to consume the innards of which corpse first.

He’d spoken with the surety possessed only by one who’d witnessed such acts, a vivid rendering of the Rookeries painted with a brush clearer than any words she’d ever read. They should have been reason alone for her to call all this off, as he’d been urging from the start.

And yet, having left him and taken those pieces he’d shared with her, Faye felt her resolve had only grown to visit these parts and speak to the men and women who could help share the complete stories of the evil done. Not the bits and pieces that had dripped out because powerful lord and ladies had manipulated the tellings to protect their reputations and lives.

Upon learning of her family’s role in the kidnapping of Lord Maxwell, Faye’s entire understanding about not only her family, but Polite Society on the whole, had changed exponentially.

Oh, she’d never believed her mother or father were remotely good or loving or caring people. Those same parents had lamented having three daughters and just one son and no spare—an obsessive fear that, given their role in making the rightful Lord Maxwell disappear, made even more sense now.

Her mother had been and remained a mercenary gossip. But neither could she, in all her girlish innocence, have ever foreseen the depth of their darkness and evil. She’d been forced to reexamine everything she thought she knew about humankind and resolve it with the level of depravity she’d come to find people were, in fact, capable of.

Upon learning about her own family’s complicity in evil, she’d consumed herself reading anything and everything she could about the stories of the Lost Lords of London.

At first, it had begun as a distraction. It had given her something to focus on, a morbid examination of sins and criminal activity that her family was now forever linked to. She’d come across true stories in her studies that had told the tales of acts and actions she’d been naïve of before. But ignorance didn’t pardon a person of complicity. It made them all the worse for having turned a blind eye