“Do you know who Phoebe’s father is?” Cecelia queried, plucking the pins from her hair to shake it down.
“Another secret Henrietta took to her grave. Maybe it’s in that book there.” She motioned to the coded diary Cecelia had set on the counter.
“Perhaps.” Cecelia accepted the brush Genny handed over and tamed her mane as best she could, expertly knotting it and stabbing with pins to keep it in place. It would have to do for now. “Do you think he has anything to do with why Henrietta was killed?”
“Ramsay? Or the father?”
“Either.” Cecelia huffed out an anxious breath. “Both?”
“He might, at that,” Genny frowned, rubbing her forehead, her eyes glimmering with grief. “This establishment has long been a playground for the rich and the powerful. There are more transactions made here than poker and roulette. Business, trade, politics, and sometimes a criminal enterprise or two are struck at our tables. Fortunes won and lost. And perhaps lives bought and sold. None of us are safe until this puzzle Henrietta left for you is solved. If we can’t figure out who our enemy is, we won’t see them coming.”
“Well…” Cecelia stuck the final pin in her hair and accepted her spectacles from Genny, grateful for the world to be in focus once more. “We certainly know one of our enemies, and next time he comes at us, we won’t be caught unaware.”
“We most certainly will not,” Genny said vehemently.
“I want to find these missing girls.” Cecelia worried at her lip. “We need to help.”
“Oh honey,” Genny took her arm firmly. “You have to forget Katerina Milovic. It’s a tragedy, terrible to be sure, but that little girl is long gone. Young ones like her disappear all the time, taken by men with unthinkable desires. If they’re found, it’s usually their corpses, or worse, the shells of what is left of them after these men steal their souls. There isn’t anything we can do but protect our own.”
Helpless tears pricked Cecelia’s eyes. “That can’t be. There must be something that can be done.” She plucked up the book of codes and slipped it into the pocket of her skirts. First she’d hire more staff to put the residence and the business to rights, then she’d coax Phoebe out from beneath the desk by promising to take her to her flat in Chelsea, where men with chains would never find her.
Once the girl was safely in the care of Jean-Yves, Cecelia would be about her business.
In order to succeed in her endeavors, she would need to acquire a great deal more information about Sir Cassius Gerard Ramsay, as he seemed determined to bar her at every turn.
Luckily, she was invited to dinner at his sister-in-law’s house this very evening.
Which would be the perfect time to learn his weakness.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ramsay cursed his traitorous body to the outer reaches of hell and back as he let his head fall back against the carriage cushion.
That damnable book, the one with the depictions of every imaginable form of intercourse, had brought his cock to attention. Not the woman to whom it belonged. She had nothing to do with it.
He did not desire the Scarlet Lady.
He was a man. A Scotsman, no less. And the renderings of fornication woke within his body pulsating temptations to which he’d vowed never again to succumb. Memories of positions he’d preferred, longings for depravities he’d not yet tasted, and also for those he’d denied himself for so long.
Hortense Thistledown had casually turned the pages of said text, running her silk gloves over the pictures as though discovering them for the first time. Her manner had been cavalier, but her rouged lips parted as though the depictions of iniquity astonished her.
Or perhaps they’d a similar effect upon her as himself.
Perhaps she’d experienced a rush of desire.
He wished he could see what she hid under the mask, the wig, and the frippery. Was her skin truly pale under the white powder? What color was her hair? Was her figure as voluptuous as he’d imagined beneath the shapeless crimson cloak, or had she padded it for effect?
Even though Ramsay detested her ilk, the photos in the book had elicited unbidden thoughts. Had invaded his mind, threatening to rob him of his moral high ground.
Did the Scarlet Lady take famous, wealthy lovers as her predecessor had?
His fingers gripped the cushions of the carriage bench as he rejected the question slithering through his thoughts like a serpent in Eden.
He shouldn’t wonder such things. He shouldn’t want. Crave. Ache.
He must forget those lips. He must not imagine them wrapped around his cock, leaving rings of rouge and silken moisture behind.
His breath hitched as his body hardened further.
Nay, her mouth was, no doubt, too practiced to tempt him. A woman in her profession learned well and early the yearning of a man for such an act. In fact, she was arranged with artifice to fuck a man’s wits right out of his head.
Her scent, for example, not a French floral or an expensive musk, only a sweet vanilla with a tinge of something spiced. One meant to rouse several physical hungers at once.
Her makeup, the crimson color of sin, applied to articulate that talented mouth.
Her wit had made her all the more desirable. A sense of enjoyment hummed beneath his rage, plucked by their repartee. Her challenge had made him feel … awake. Alive.
She’s a viper, he reminded himself. A woman who’d possibly sold her soul to the devil, along with the innocence of young girls.
The prompt was enough to douse his desire.
He could not allow himself to become beguiled. Not like so many of the men with whom he operated.
Titled lords and wealthy judges, magistrates, and politicians were so often led about by their cocks just as easily as their purse strings.
Crafty old Henrietta Thistledown had held many of those purse strings in her own hand.
She’d chosen her successor wisely; he’d give her that. Hortense was a force to be reckoned with in her own right.
The death of Henrietta had seemed the perfect time to strike against the gambling hell. The old woman had always been so deucedly careful. Every time he thought he’d had her dead to rights, she seemed to reach out and pluck the strings of one of her powerful puppets, and yet again she’d be pulled out of the mire. It was as though the entire haute ton owed her favors.
For Christ’s sake, he’d taken down Afghani warlords and Barbary pirates in Algiers more easily than Henrietta, and he had to admit to some relief upon the news of her death.
The head of the snake had been severed, which he’d hoped meant fewer girls would disappear from his city.
When he’d garnered news of poor Katerina Milovic after Henrietta’s death, though, he knew he had to act. Because the kidnappings did not stop once she was in the ground.
He’d swarmed the establishment today, a Friday afternoon, when the working wealthy in the emerging merchant class struck out early in search of a good time at the sides of the idle rich.
They must have known he was coming, because there wasn’t a card sharp in sight and the place had been devoid of customers.
And then there had been belowstairs, which oddly enough resembled an actual school.
A stern butler named Winston had followed Ramsay and his constables around the bottom floor, insisting he leave the belowstairs tenants alone. These women had not all been glittering butterflies who ran the tables and the dice. Many of them had the hollowed eyes of refugees; some of them didn’t even speak English.