Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,6
he’d have to look under the clump of hay that had been fashioned as a bed.
“Let’s go,” Smithfield muttered and then jabbed Tynan with an unexpected strength between the shoulder blades, propelling him forward.
Inactivity, coupled with a nonexistent diet, had made him weaker.
He shot a dark look over his shoulder, the manner of look that had sent bigger, braver, and bolder men than the one before him scurrying off in fear. “Tsk, tsk. I’d have a care if I were you.”
Smithfield swallowed wildly. “Well, on with you, then,” he croaked. “You aren’t in charge here anymore. You heard Hinton.”
Aye, he’d heard the fop. The dandified warden went out of his way to mention it at any chance he could.
They started for Hinton, with Tynan setting the pace, moving at a slow stroll. He began to sing.
Abroad I was walking
One morning in the Spring,
I heard a maid in Bedlam
So sweetly she did sing;
Her chains she rattled in her hands,
And always so sang she.
I love my love
Because I know he first loved me.
As he walked, prisoners came forward and began to rattle their cages. Some men spit as he passed. Others called out words of support. Men whom he’d presided over, who still recognized him for what he was—one of them. Not this namby-pamby Hinton, a lord among them who, by his presence alone, reminded the prisoners of the resentment they’d long carried. For not having the opportunities. The food. The comforts. The vote.
Any of it.
“Would you quit your singing?” Smithfield muttered, prodding Tynan in the back once more.
This time, he didn’t so much as stumble.
They arrived outside Tynan’s off—
All his muscles bunched. Nay, not his offices. They weren’t his any longer. They’d been taken over by another. He’d been usurped. The taste of fury and hatred and resentment all soured his empty belly, tightening the muscles.
The other guard, Higgins, reached past Tynan and then shoved him in. “Get in there.”
He stumbled several feet.
“Tsk, tsk, Higgins. What I have said before?” Hinton asked coolly. “We aren’t uncouth. We aren’t…” The warden looked to Tynan and smiled coldly. “Them.”
The young man doffed a ridiculously clean and fancy cap. “My apologies, sir.”
Lifting his head as if he were some fine lord presiding over court and not one placed in charge of the greatest filth of London, Hinton dismissed the pair of guards.
“Come, come,” Hinton urged.
Tynan entered his former office, converted into more of a dandyish place than rooms befitting the head of this institution. Warily, he glanced about the room, his gaze going to the small, cloaked figure seated across from Hinton. His heart immediately thudded to a stop before resuming a frantic, panicked beat. “What the hell is this?” he demanded as the door was brought shut behind him.
Except…
The young woman sailed to her feet. Concealed as she was, her identity remained shrouded in mystery, and yet, she was a diminutive thing. An inch, mayhap two, past five feet, her height alone marked her different than the woman he’d taken her to be.
Relief ran strong through him.
“Hello, Mr. Wylie,” she said by greeting, her tones smooth, cultured. A lady’s tones. But also ones he could not place. But then, he’d had too many dealings with people of her station to ever truly be able to recall all of them.
Ignoring her, Tynan headed over to the other side of the desk, where Hinton remained seated. Wordlessly, the warden gestured to the available chair beside the woman.
“This one here wants you.”
Tynan stilled. Bringing his shoulders back, he made himself reassess the stranger in a new light. Suddenly, searching his mind to recall her identity proved inordinately important. “Indeed.” He stretched those two syllables out with a lethal slowness.
To the lady’s credit, she didn’t wilt.
She remained absolutely motionless, impressively so. He could no longer see her gaze, but he felt it intensely upon his person. “What Mr. Hinton means is that I’ve come to see you released.”
This woman, a stranger to him, was here to spring him out. He would have been born yesterday to believe there wasn’t more at play here.
Ignoring her, he looked to his jailer. “What is this about?”
“I have need of you,” she said quietly. Her lyrical tones held a haunting quality to them, almost otherworldly. Ones that were… oddly captivating.
And yet, he knew better than to be lured by any person, including a woman with that enthralling voice.
“For what end, Miss…?”
“Mrs. X,” Hinton supplied, his gaze gleeful. “She will be, as she put it, taking you off my hands.”