the gods, he would go easy! Harry nodded fast enough that the world began to swim again.
The large man lowered the club to his side and pulled the rag from Harry’s mouth. Harry coughed against the dryness left behind.
“Malcolm has some questions for you, Mr. Stillman,” said the man holding his arms, his breath hot in Harry’s ear. “Where was Lord Damion’s meeting place?”
“I-I don’t . . . Lord Damion?”
The man with the club moved faster than Harry would have guessed possible, cracking the weight against Harry’s ribs on the right side. Pain exploded through his body, but the other man covered Harry’s mouth to muffle the resulting scream.
“Let’s try this again, shall we, Mr. Stillman?” the man from behind asked. He moved his hand from Harry’s mouth, and Harry gasped, saliva dripping from his bottom lip.
The man with the club leaned close. “We know you was meeting with Lord Damion, don’t do no good to lie to us about that, and we know the meeting spot must be nearby. Where did you meet him?”
“Hoof and Groom,” Harry lied without hesitation, referencing a pub located near Covent Garden but reasonably close, he thought. There was an entrance through the kitchen of that club to a members-only gaming hell that Harry had once frequented. He wasn’t going to betray Lord Damion, the man who’d saved him. Except Lord Damion hadn’t saved him from this, had he? How did these men know that the meeting place was close by?
“M-Mal-colm w-will be p-paid,” Harry gasped. “T-today.”
“Who is Lord Damion?”
“I d-don’t know.” It was a relief not to have to lie about that.
Then his mouth was covered again, and the club whistled through the air, ending with a crack against Harry’s left thigh that buckled Harry’s legs. The man holding his arms kept Harry from falling, but the pressure on his popped shoulder split the pain into equally excruciating parts. Harry could no longer focus his eyes, and his stomach rolled with nausea.
“Don’t lie to us,” the man behind him said. “Who is Lord Damion?”
He moved his hand, and Harry gasped, unable to draw a full breath as vomit rose in his throat.
“Y-you have to . . . b-believe me. He was on the other side of a w-wall, and I never . . . s-saw him. No, don’t!” The club cracked against his right shin. Harry twisted hard to get away, sending him and the man holding him into the pile of crates. His head hit against something harder than the club, and his eyes rolled back as everything went dark.
Lady Sabrina flipped open the silver pocket watch—a man’s version rather than a woman’s because the larger face was easier to read. It was 8:06, and Mr. Stillman had been gone for an hour, which meant it was safe for her to leave the snuff shop that shared the wall with The Lost Tartan.
She owned both businesses, or, rather, Lord Damion did, and Jack worked as the manager. Jack also kept her up-to-date on information about the goings-on in Town that she didn’t hear about in drawing rooms. As expected, Mr. Stillman had tried to get her attention when he realized he’d been left alone in the pub, but he hadn’t tried for long before finding his way back to the alley. Jack had knocked three times on the door to the snuff shop some five minutes ago to assure her that all was clear.
Sabrina slipped the watch back into the sash of her charcoal-colored dress and stood, taking a few seconds to stretch her back, which was tight from four hours of sitting in an uncomfortable, straight-backed chair. She always arrived an hour early for her appointments with the foxes, and she always stayed an hour longer to make sure she did not accidentally cross paths with the client coming to or from their appointment.
An afternoon nap would certainly be in order before the Kirkhams’ ball tonight where she would dance most of the sets. Despite her advanced age of thirty-two, men of the ton enjoyed taking the floor with a woman rather than a girl of the Season more often than she would have guessed when she had been one of the young ones.
Sabrina closed the leather-bound notebook in front of her. She had used her hour waiting for Mr. Stillman to leave to finish organizing the seating chart for Nathan’s dinner party next week. At their weekly Monday breakfast this morning, she would show her brother the arrangement, guide him