Tempting the Scoundrel (Private Arrangements) by Katrina Kendrick

Author:Katrina Kendrick [Kendrick, Katrina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781837930999
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2023-08-02T18:30:00+00:00

17

Alex was not in her room, and no guards were at her door.

Thorne tried to calm his surge of panic. Whelan’s return had him frayed at the edges. The memories of that old, musty cellar haunted him, so vivid he could practically taste the cigar smoke clogging his lungs. Thorne had jolted awake in a cold sweat, barely reaching the water closet before he vomited up his guts. He’d lurched back to his bed, curled up in a ball, and sucked in deep, heaving breaths.

When Dot and Lottie had stumbled upon him like that, he’d been too sharp with them. Lottie, bless her, had given his shoulder a pat, taken her sister’s hand, and left him be.

Hours later, Thorne had cleaned himself up, dressed, and gone to check on his wife.

Empty chamber. Scattered papers. Alex’s mess, or someone else’s?

Thorne pounded down the hall, finally spotting one of his men. “Clements,” he said sharply, aware that he must have appeared half-mad. At that moment, he didn’t bloody well give a damn. “Lady Alexandra isn’t in her room.” The other man spluttered some response that was more like a panicked gurgle. “Spit it out. Where is she?”

“She’s at the orphanage,” another voice said wryly.

Thorne whirled to see O’Sullivan coming out of his offices. The factotum looked at Clements and dismissed him with a nod.

“Someone is supposed to be guarding her,” Thorne said. “At all times.”

Thorne had searched throughout the night for any sign of Whelan’s whereabouts, but to no avail. He’d scoured Whelan’s favoured pubs, gin palaces, and gaming dens – everywhere except for the only place Thorne feared to tread: the cellar where he had endured his tormented childhood. He’d bought the decrepit building from the landlord, paying whatever it took, and left it to rot. He wished he had burned it to the ground. Salted the earth. Let the pigeons shit on its ashes.

But over the years, all he’d wanted to do was forget.

O’Sullivan removed his spectacles and rubbed them on his shirt. “If you intended to keep her locked in there, you should have informed me. I wasn’t aware we were keeping her captive.”

Thorne felt a stirring of irritation. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“Stop threatening Clements as if he were a gaoler and not an employee,” O’Sullivan snapped, adjusting his glasses on his nose. “Your piece is safe. She’s with Sofia and a merry band of ecstatic children.”

Sofia was the sole reason O’Sullivan was breathing and not rotting in a ditch. Thorne recalled the day Whelan lined up all his lads for some fancy gent to pick out his favourite from the pack. Thorne was a young fourteen, and O’Sullivan was two years his junior, with a pretty face that caught the attention of the wrong crowd.

On that day, Whelan had sold O’Sullivan.

Thorne spent three years searching for the toff who had bought his friend. Fortune smiled on him when a girl approached him in the Nichol and revealed the earl’s identity. O’Sullivan had been locked up and kept like a caged animal in the earl’s London residence for the entire time.

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