He brought his face close to Argent’s. “Either ye help me, or get the fuck out of my way.”
A cruel mask settled over his Viking features as he glared at Liam. “That’s why we’ve come.” Argent stepped aside and swept his hand at the hallway. “To settle a debt.”
Dorian fell into step with Liam as he surged forward and in the direction of the hospital exit.
“First,” the Blackheart of Ben More suggested, “let’s find you a bloody shirt and those goddamned boots you were bellowing for.”
* * *
The hour approached midnight when Ravencroft, Argent, and Blackwell advanced through the terrace like reapers in search of the damned.
The house still belonged to Gordon St. Vincent’s father, some earl or other. The Viscount Benchley resided like a bachelor in a handsome town house in Knightsbridge, though it was set back from Hyde Park in a less fashionable neighborhood. A slight but telling concession to the St. Vincent family’s dwindling circumstances.
Blessed little household staff slumbered below stairs where they’d picked the service door lock, lurked through the kitchens, and crept up to the main floor. What was once a handsome and stately home had fallen into shocking disrepair. All was dark but for a faint glow of lantern light creeping from a grand room at the front of the house.
Liam found himself alone in the hall as the once-plush rugs muffled the sound of his heavy footfalls. Soft masculine conversation drifted to him, followed by a feminine reply. It took a moment for Liam to process the false, high pitch of the woman’s tone and recognize that it was not Mena’s. His shoulder burned like the very devil, and his head still ached, but he’d lived through more dire circumstances than this … he’d killed through them, as well.
Lord Benchley’s voice was unmistakable, as was the sickeningly sweet aroma of the cloying smoke filtering from the room.
Opium.
Blackwell and Argent advised serpentine stealth to achieve their objective, but try as he might, Liam had never warmed to that particular method. Fingers curling into fists, as though he already held the viscount’s neck in his hands, Liam kicked the door to the study open with such force, it shattered.
He’d have thought the sound Gordon made had come from the woman if he hadn’t seen evidence to the contrary.
Both occupants of the room were slow and unsteady, even in their panicked state. The effects of the opium exacerbated now, as fear pumped the substance more hastily through their veins. They were locked in a passionate embrace, halfway toward congress on a dingy couch of indeterminate color. On the table in front of them, various mysterious forms of paraphernalia sprawled between half-empty bottles of liquor and uneaten food.
The woman, an exotic beauty, rolled off Gordon St. Vincent’s lap and sagged onto the couch, her breasts exposed by her drooping bodice. She was in such a stupor, she didn’t even move to cover herself.
“What is the meaning of this, Ravencroft?” Lord Benchley slurred more than demanded. “I saw you shot.” He wore the same fine suit he’d sported at the rail station, but now it was disheveled and soiled with God only knew what substances. His hair, fashionably curly with long sideburns, was rumpled in the extreme and slick with some sort of pomade, or maybe with his own oily filth. It was too dark to tell.
That this reprobate, this disgusting, pathetic fuck, had ever put his hands on Mena evaporated the last of Liam’s scruples, and left the acid taste of dread and hatred in his mouth.
“Where is she?” Liam snarled, fortifying himself against the stench of opium smoke, unwashed bodies, and sex hanging in a pall over the dim room like a toxic cloud.
“You mean, my wife?” the viscount sneered.
“I mean, yer widow.” Liam stalked toward the shabby couch upon which the two were draped like limp and dirty linens.
The sight of the wan lamplight gleaming golden off the sharp blade seemed to clear some of the murky smoke from their eyes.
Gordon rose unsteadily, and instead of retreating around the sparse furniture, he scrambled over the back of it, placing the couch and the woman between him and the murder etched on Liam’s features. He fled toward the door on the far wall and flung it open, uncovering the still, cruel form of Dorian Blackwell.
His cowardice allowed him to recover quickly, and attempt a hasty escape to the French doors that opened onto a veranda. Wrestling them open with fingers made clumsy with drink, vice, and fear, he screamed again as Argent slithered from the darkness beyond and crowded him back inside.
“All this over Philomena?” Gordon said as though he couldn’t keep his thoughts and his speech separated. “That sallow, barren, miserable bitch?”
“I’ll use this blade to dig the answer from your throat before I end your life,” Liam threatened darkly. “Where. Is. She?”
A faded dressing robe hung limply from Benchley’s shoulders, and his trousers were unbuttoned, but remained aloft around the beginnings of a swollen belly brought on by too much ale and other excess.
“S-she’s not here.” Gordon stumbled back to the couch and gripped it as though it were the only thing holding him aloft as the three lethal men converged on him and the sloe-eyed, trembling woman. “I had the men Father hired take her back to the asylum.”
Liam advanced, ready to strike him dead and race for the asylum when the hooker cried out. Apparently, she’d finally gathered her wits enough to pull her gaping bodice over her breasts. “Don’t ’urt me,” she begged. “Let me go, and I dinn’t see no’fing.”
Dorian took a coin from his jacket and pressed it into the hooker’s hands. “Fly away, little bird,” he commanded gently. “But if I hear of any chirping…”
“Everyone knows better than to sing a word about the Black’eart of Ben More.” Her fist closed over the coin, and she didn’t even pause to collect her shoes as she shuffled away as fast as her muddled limbs would allow, another wraith lost to the night.