When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,157

She crept through the gloom, her weapons ready in her hands, coming to stand in the shadows just beyond the edge of the harness room.

Marstowe was still slumped against the wall, a sheen of perspiration across his forehead. “Where is it?” he was demanding.

“Where is what?” King asked.

“My goddamn money. I know you took it. You’re a goddamn criminal who sells stolen art and smuggled liquor and God knows what else. And I know you stole my money.”

“You sound sure.”

“You know too much about my family.”

“Lots of people know about your family.”

“Do you think I’m stupid? You’re wearing my brother’s goddamn ring!” Marstowe shouted before sagging back against the wall. “I need a doctor,” he groaned.

“Mmm.” King wandered to the wall opposite the baron. With the toe of his boot, he brushed aside a mouse-eaten rug. He bent, pulling open a small hatch door that was set into the floor. Adeline frowned. How would he have known that that was there—?

“It’s been a while since I was here,” King said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Marstowe rasped. “Get me a goddamn doctor.” He lifted his hand briefly before clapping it back over the wound as blood pulsed. He made another pathetic sound.

“Evan and I used to hide all of our treasures here,” King said. “We played in the stables all the time. And it was where you brought Evan.”

The use of Evan’s name seemed to have caught Marstowe’s attention.

From the hidden recess, King withdrew a faded peacock feather, a slingshot, a skull that might once have belonged to a deer, and a carved deity that looked as though it had traveled from a land far to the east. “The baroness forbade dirty, impure things in her house. Me included, though I was more difficult to dispose of. After Evan died, they couldn’t keep me, as immoral as I was, not without admitting that they had sired such wickedness. So they quietly put me away in a place where no one knew who I was and no one believed a word I said.”

Adeline fingered the handle of her knife uneasily, a strange awareness stirring deep in her subconscious. Because it sounded as if he was saying—

“Do you know who I am?” King asked, putting the feather and the skull back and holding the carved deity in his palm.

Marstowe’s breathing was becoming ragged. “You’re a goddamn criminal.”

“When required,” King agreed.

“A goddamn criminal who thought he was entitled to a piece of my fortune.”

“It’s not just a piece of your fortune I’m entitled to,” King said so quietly Adeline almost didn’t hear. “In truth, I’m entitled to all of it.”

Adeline grasped the edge of the stall door as comprehension crashed through her subconscious and into the forefront of her mind. It had all been there before her, had she only chosen to see. His speech, his education, his knowledge, his memories, and the intense power those memories held. God, she had censured this man for making assumptions while she had been unforgivably guilty of the same. King hadn’t been a street urchin or an unlikely best friend.

He had been Evan Westerleigh’s brother.

Marstowe seemed to have reached the same realization. “Joshua Westerleigh died of fever when he was eleven. He’s buried at St James’s. Everyone knows that.” His words were belligerent, but Adeline could hear the underlying fear.

“They do, don’t they?” King shrugged and tucked the little carving into his pocket. “It was very well done, really. How else to explain a child who simply…ceased to be?”

“You’re lying.”

Adeline had stepped out of the shadows and crossed the floor to stand beside King. He didn’t glance at her, but if he was surprised at her presence, he didn’t show it.

“Who th’ ’ell are you?” Marstowe wheezed. His face had taken on a gray pallor in the low light, and his words had started to run together.

Adeline simply gazed back. “At the moment, Judith’s maid.”

King exhaled, his eyes closing briefly.

“G’me a doctor, girl,” Marstowe demanded, perspiration still beading on his forehead.

Adeline only sheathed her blades.

King bent again, this time picking up a smith’s hammer from a jumble of tools tossed into a bucket.

“You’ll remember this, I think, Uncle,” he said, hefting the hammer in his hands. “It’s what you used to kill Evan when he tried to pull you off me. Because he knew what you were going to do to me. Because you’d been doing the same thing to him for years, until he became too long in the tooth and I became the