Kitabı oku: «The Bride of the Unicorn», sayfa 2

Lord James paused for a moment, then smiled. “I hold the key to that man’s destruction, nevvy,” he continued quietly, liking the hint of menace in his voice. “Would you like it? What would you and your patient revenge do with the perfect tool for that man’s destruction? Shall that key be my parting gift to you, your legacy?” He lifted one skeletal hand, indicating the bedchamber and all of the house. “Along with this decrepit pile, of course.”

“You’re lying,” Morgan said, his hand on the door latch, his back still turned toward the bed. “You have nothing I want. You were a most deplorable traitor, Uncle, barely worth the effort it took to ferret you out. You say you knew my identity, yet you seemed surprised to learn that I, in turn, had caught you out. But I will admit your dramatics are interesting, if a trifle lacking in style—especially that little bit about Jeremy. Perhaps you should have devoted yourself instead to penny press fiction.”

His nephew didn’t believe him! He was going to leave!

Sudden panic lent Lord James new strength. “I’m not lying, damn you! Think, nevvy. As the twig is bent! Willy can tell you. I was always what I am now, capable of anything for the sake of a few gold pieces. Trading in secrets was my only mistake, a miscalculation of old age and greed, but not my only source of income. I was better when I was younger, sharper.”

“Hence this splendor in which you live, Uncle,” Morgan taunted, spreading his hands as if to encompass the faded ugliness of the bedchamber before opening the door. “I’ll ask one of the servants to come sit with you. Obviously you are now slipping toward delirium.”

“No! I’m telling the truth. I swear it.” James clawed his way to the side of the bed, the better to see his nephew, the better to allow his nephew to see him. “You cannot know all the things I’ve done, the vile, dastardly crimes I’ve committed.”

“Cannot and do not care to know.”

Lord James sneered. “Oh, nevvy, how far you have to fall from that perfidious pinnacle of indifference you perch on. You do care. You will care, because I hold all the cards now, all the answers to your schemes that you still do not admit to, even to yourself. You want revenge, nevvy. Damnation, man, you may even deserve it!”

“Perhaps you’re right. But it will be in my own time, Uncle, and in my own way.”

“Of course. I should have realized that you wouldn’t wish my help, even if I am trying, in this feeble way, to atone for any indirect connection I might have had with dear Jeremy’s death. I understand, nevvy.” Lord James began to pick at the coverlet, his eyes averted from Morgan. “But then, there is still the matter of the child.”

Lord James held his breath as Morgan let go of the latch and turned, his dark eyes narrowed as he stared straight into his uncle’s grinning face. “Child? What child?”

“What? Did you say something, nevvy? I cannot hear you very well, and the room grows dim. Come closer, nevvy. Come close so that I can give you my last confession.”

He heard Morgan’s footsteps and smiled into the frayed collar of his nightshirt. He counted to ten, slowly, then began to speak once more. “Once upon a time,” he began, then chuckled at his own wit, the laughter turning into a wet cough that left bits of blood on his already soiled handkerchief.

“Once upon a time, nevvy,” he continued, “there was a man like me, a man who found himself where he should not be, while another man, a lesser man, usurped his rightful place. We met, this man and I, no more than once or twice, and we bemoaned our fate together over several bottles of wine. Perhaps more than several bottles.”

“Go on,” Morgan urged, pulling the chair back over beside the bed. “Continue your fairy tale.”

Lord James shot his nephew a searing look, reveling in the lack of necessity to hood his dislike for the younger man. “I have every intention of continuing,” he said shortly. “We chatted idly, without real purpose—until the day the man’s circumstances changed and it became imperative for him to take steps to protect himself. He tried to enlist my help, but I refused. Why should I do for him what I might have done for myself?” He shook his head. “I only wonder why I never did it for myself when I was younger…when we all were younger. I only wonder….”

Morgan stood. “And I can only wonder, Uncle, why I am allowing a perfectly good roasted chicken to continue to lie downstairs untasted in my dinner basket.”

“No! Don’t go! You must hear the rest. I did not help the man, but I know what he did.” Lord James lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I followed after and watched—then fired my pistol to scare them off before they’d finished. He was even so stupid as to lift his mask and show his face, to crow about his success, so that he knew I saw him plain. That was a great help to me, almost as great a help as the child. After all, nevvy, what good is it to know something if you cannot turn a profit from it, hmm?”

“Uncle, I haven’t the faintest notion what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t,” Lord James agreed, feeling very satisfied with himself. “As one of those Greeks scribbled so long ago, nevvy, ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one great thing.’ You look surprised. Did you think I was a total barbarian? I know something of the classics. You, nevvy, are like the fox, but I am the hedgehog. Blackmail, which depends on knowing a single great thing, would never occur to you. But it occurred to me.”

Lord James rubbed his palms together, gleefully remembering the long-ago night of his greatest brilliance. He could see it as clearly as he could see his nephew’s strained features. Maybe more clearly. “I waited until after the shot that silenced the woman before I fired my own pistol, frightening them off. And then I waited longer still, until I was sure they had gone, before riding in. I found the child on the ground—muddy, her mother’s blood mixing with the mud and rainwater on her face and little dress. The father was half sunk in the mud—back shot! But I digress. Bit me, the little hellion did, when I pulled her away from the bodies just as her mother breathed her last. I could have killed the child then—snapped her neck like a dried goose bone—but I didn’t. I needed her, you see.”

“The child?” Morgan’s voice was hushed, as if he wished to ask the question but did not want to interrupt. Which was as it should have been. It was time the boy paid his uncle a little respect.

“Yes, of course, the child. I put her in a safe place. Not a very nice place, I suppose, but you must remember—I could just as easily have disposed of her. Suddenly I had all the money I needed, although the fool never knew it was his occasional drinking companion who was taking a share of his new wealth. All the money I could ever want, delivered to a safe address at the beginning of each new quarter. Such a gentlemanly, civilized arrangement—for a time.”

He stopped his story once more, to cough, and to contemplate the injustices of his life.

“The payments stopped a few years ago,” he continued swiftly, not caring for this part of the story, “when the man demanded more proof and ordered me to produce her. I couldn’t, for they told me she had reached her teens and left the orphanage where I had so gladly deposited her that first night. That was careless of me, wasn’t it, nevvy? Misplacing the brat like that, if in truth she had left the orphanage. Luckily I already had Thorndyke—or unluckily, depending upon how you consider the thing. But this is the chit’s house by rights, not yours as is stated in my will, considering that the blunt I got from blackmailing her parents’ killer is what kept this place going for so long. This hulking money-eater and several grand estates scattered all over England that were deeded in her name by her father—all are hers. She’s a rich orphan, this missing heiress I spared in my generosity.”

“You have proof of this dastardly crime, I imagine?”

“Proof? Imbecile! You demand proof from a dying man?” Lord James could not hide his elation, sure all his hooks had sunk home with deadly accuracy. Now, at last, his little play was falling out as he had planned. It almost made his dying worthwhile, to be able to leave the noble Morgan behind to ruin his life trying desperately to right his uncle’s wrong.

Now it was time to reel out the line a few feet before hauling his newly caught fish in once more. “Never mind, Morgan. I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” he said, pressing back against the pillows. “Obviously you’re not interested in my heartfelt confession. Why would you want to help me atone, in this the house of my death?”

Morgan rose from the chair, his cool composure discarded, his eyes flashing fire. Grabbing hold of his uncle’s nightshirt with both hands, he half dragged him up from the bed so that Lord James had to turn his head to hide a triumphant smile. “Enough of this nonsense! This is no game we’re playing, not anymore. No more dancing around the facts, Uncle. I need to hear you say the name. I need to hear the proof from your own lips. Damn you, man, answer me!”

Now, Lord James thought. Now is the time to take my exit—now, while he believes me. He began to cough, racking coughs that had him spitting small specks of blood that tasted of rust and maybe even the dirt that would soon cover his mortal shell. There were two Morgans hovering above him, menacing him with their flashing dark eyes. Defiance flashed in Lord James’s own eyes. “You—you’re the smart one, nevvy. You already know the names!”

Morgan’s desire to kill was apparent, but Lord James knew his nephew’s need for information would take priority, leashing his bloodlust, at least for the moment. “The child? Is she still alive? Surely you must know something. Where could she have gone?”

“A whorehouse, if she was smart,” Lord James answered, feebly trying to push his nephew’s hands away. “Chopping turnips in someone’s kitchen if she was stupid. Unless she’s dead. You know the way of orphanages. It’s a hard life. Even harder than mine has been. Maybe that’s why I lost touch. Or maybe I was lied to. Maybe the little brat is feeding worms. What were you hoping for, Unicorn—to lay your head in the lap of a virgin? I’d like that too, for you’d have to die to do it.”

Morgan released his grip on the nightshirt, which allowed James to slump back against the pillows, gasping for breath. “You’re lying, old man. Your story is full of holes. I don’t believe a word you’re saying. You’ve just taken bits of well-known truth and conveniently twisted them around for your own evil motives.”

Was he lying? Lord James couldn’t remember. He had told so many lies. Was this the truth? Yes. Yes, of course it was the truth. He hadn’t made this story up, designed it from bits of truth woven together with clever lies, to fashion a tapestry of revenge against his brother’s son. Had he? Oh, Christ—had he?

But wait. He remembered now. He had proof!

Lord James dragged himself to the edge of the bed, knocking over a candlestick as he groped on the nightstand for the proof that would seal his nephew’s fate, the one piece of evidence that would start him on what Lord James sincerely hoped would prove to be the path to his destruction. The path to destruction for all of them—and the revenge Lord James longed to see, if only from the other side of the grave.

His fingers closed over the pendant, and he fell back against the pillows, holding it out so that the long gold chain swung free. “Here! Here is your proof! I found it around the child’s throat. Take it, nevvy. And then think, damn you. Think!”

Morgan ripped the pendant from his uncle’s hand and held it up so that its gold chain twinkled dully in the candlelight. “It can’t be. I won’t believe it. You could have commissioned a copy. It would be just like you, for you’ve never done one genuine thing in your life. Uncle. Uncle? Do you hear me?”

Lord James was scarcely able to speak. Everything was suddenly moving too fast. Morgan was confusing him. He had wanted to enjoy this moment, draw it out, savor Morgan’s frustration, then leave him with the Gordian knot of the puzzle he had set him. But now he could barely think clearly, and his ears were full of the sound of rushing water.

Fear invaded his senses, washing away the elation, the thirst for revenge. This was real. His death—so long contemplated but never really believed in, never before comprehended for what it represented—was upon him. The pain in his chest was suffocating, pushing him down into a yawning blackness, a total nothingness that terrified him by its absence of recognizable reality.

This was all wrong. He had been wrong. Nothing was playing out as it should. The play was not the thing. Revenge wasn’t sweet. Not at this cost. Never at such a cost. He wanted to live. Longer. A second more. A minute more. Forever. Why? Why should he die?

Oh, God, but he was frightened. More frightened than he had ever been in his life. God? Why had he thought of God? Why had that well-hated name popped into his head? Could there really be a God? Could there be an alternative to nothingness, a substitute for hell? No wonder they had cried, those people he’d killed over the years. It was the terror that had made them cry! The terror of the unknown, the fear of the God he had sworn did not exist.

It was all so real now.

He had been wrong. His revenge against his brother and Morgan wasn’t worth this agony. He didn’t want to go to hell. If there was a hell there had to be a heaven. Why hadn’t he seen that? Morgan was the smart one. Why hadn’t he seen that?

Lord James didn’t want to spend the rest of eternity burning, burning, burning….

Morgan had to find the girl for him! He had to seek redemption for his poor uncle’s most terrible sin, save him from the demons. He’d tell Morgan everything he wanted to hear, tell him now. Tell him the chit’s name; tell him everything he wanted to know; hold nothing back. Confession. He’d give his genuine confession. Confession was good for the soul.

He grabbed at his nephew’s sleeve, trying to anchor himself to life for just a while longer. “Morgan? Could we be wrong? Is there a God? Oh, what if Willy’s right? What if there is a God? What if there is? What if I’m telling the truth? Am I lying? I can’t remember anymore. Help me, Morgan! I can’t remember the truth!”

“Not now, old man,” Morgan said, his voice tight. “Truth or lie, you have to tell me the rest of it, and then I’ll judge for myself.”

“Judge? We’ll all be judged! Save me, Morgan! Save my immortal soul! You already know the name. Check—check the orphanage in Glynde,” Lord James rasped, vainly trying to pull Morgan closer. “In Glynde,” he repeated, his eyes growing wider and wider as he stared up at the ceiling in horror. The demons had migrated, to circle just above him. They were grinning in avid expectation, their long, pointed fangs glinting in the candlelight, the unearthly whoop-whoop-whoop of their black bat wings sucking the air from his lungs.

Lord James heard a sound coming to him as if from a distance. What was it? Oh, yes. Morgan. His dear nevvy was yelling, still asking for proof, his carefully constructed facade of civilization stripped away just as Lord James had foreseen it—yet he could not take pleasure in the sight. For one of the demons was on his chest now, resting on its bony, emaciated haunches, its birdlike legs folded at the knee as it dug razor-sharp talons into him, letting all the remaining air bubble out his mouth, to be followed by a rising river of blood.

“You know. You…must only remember,” Lord James whispered, his voice clogged with blood, with mounting terror. “The murders…our neighbors…the missing child…the searching…”

The play couldn’t be over; the finale had to be rewritten. Yet the curtain had come crashing down…too soon. Too soon. He couldn’t do anything right, even die.

“No one ever told me! I didn’t know!” Lord James shrieked, his voice suddenly strong in his last agony. He felt himself beginning to choke, drowning in the hot liquid that rushed from his ears, from the tin pots—from everywhere in the universe—to pour into his lungs. He clutched at Morgan with a strength born of impossible panic, tearing at the fine white linen of his shirtfront. It had to be the truth. There was a girl—there was! Wasn’t there? “Find her, nevvy—or I’m damned…or we’re both forever damned! Willy…brother…pray for me!”

CHAPTER TWO

Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings,

and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Voltaire

THE SUN SHONE BRIGHT as Morgan Blakely and his father, William, duke of Glynde, walked away from the family mausoleum at The Acres, the duke’s ancestral Sussex home. Each man was dressed in funereal black with an ebony satin armband, and each carried his hat while following behind the young minister who had conducted a mercifully short ceremony in the village church.

The duke appeared more than usually frail and wiped at his eyes with a large white handkerchief already banded on all four sides with a thin ribbon of black satin, as if his wardrobe was perpetually prepared for mourning—which, in a way, Morgan realized, it probably was. His father had buried his wife, both his sisters, one of his sons—and now his twin, James—in somewhat less than fifteen years.

Morgan though it must be a depressing way to live, surrounded by all that dying.

He sighed silently and glanced back up the hill at the impressive Italian marble structure that held all his relatives save the one at his side. How long would it be before he took this walk alone, leaving his father’s mortal remains locked behind those airless walls of veined pink stone?

Would his father forgive him—truly forgive him—before he died?

Would he, Morgan, forgive himself? Could he live with himself? Why did he live at all, with Jeremy dead? Were thoughts of revenge enough to keep a man alive? They hadn’t been enough for Uncle James.

But his father was speaking, and for once his tone held no censure, no pity. “It was quite a lovely service, wasn’t it? I had never supposed that the Reverend Mr. Sampson could discover so many pleasant things to say about our dearest brother James.”

“Indeed. I find it remarkable that anyone could summon up a single kind thing to say about the man, Father. And hauling his carcass here to The Acres for interment in the mausoleum is decidedly unnerving, as we have only succeeded in walling him up. Frankly, I would have much preferred to snuggle the bastard twelve or more feet belowground with a boulder or two piled atop his chest, on the off chance he should try to rise again.”

“Morgan! Keep a civil tongue in your head, if you please. We have just buried a man. My brother. My twin. The man with whom I shared our mother’s womb. Had it not been for the vagaries of the birth order, we might well have buried the duke this day.”

“Now, there’s an intriguing thought,” Morgan responded, putting on his hat even as he nodded his goodbye to the minister, who had earlier begged release from any refreshments being served to the mourners after the interment, citing the necessity of attending at the bedside of an ailing villager. “I can only wonder how The Acres would have fared once Uncle James reached his majority and transformed the place into a brothel.”

The duke looked at his son with rheumy blue eyes that had faded over the course of his three and sixty years, like curtains hung too long in the sun. “I will pray for you, Morgan,” he said, his voice tinged with sadness liberally mixed with resignation.

Morgan bristled, then swallowed down any hint of anger at his father’s words. Anger did no good in battle or when trying to reason with the unreasonable. That did not mean that Morgan Blakely, Marquis of Clayton, was not conversant with the tumultuous emotion. He simply chose to ignore it. “You do that, Father,” he said, deliberately stripping the black satin ribbon from his sleeve and stuffing it in his pocket. “You pray for me. Pray for Uncle James. Pray for Jeremy.”

“Do not make a mockery of your brother’s immortal soul!” The duke’s thin cheeks flushed with unhealthy color. Or righteous indignation. Or possibly even religious fervor. Morgan could never be sure. “Not when you were partially the instrument of his death.”

Morgan took one step backward, stung as sharply as he would have been if his father had just slapped his face. “You never tire of that song, do you, Father?” he asked after a moment. “Do you sing it every morning as you wake? Does its accusatory melody lull you to a dreamless sleep at night?”

“Now you’re being impertinent, Morgan,” The duke countered quickly, laying a hand on his son’s forearm. “I have forgiven you. In my heart I have forgiven you. My God demands it of me.”

“Really?” Morgan smoothly removed his arm from his father’s grasp even as he allowed his full lips to curve into an amused sneer. “Your God. Wasn’t that exceedingly accommodating of him? Promise me, Father, when next you speak with him—and I am quite convinced that you will—thank him for me. And pray don’t insult the fellow by reminding him of how damnably cold his charitable forgiveness is to us poor sinners. Ah, here is one of the grooms with your pony cart, Father. How thoughtful of the boy. I shall forgo a ride back to The Acres myself, as I wish to be alone a while longer—to mourn Uncle James, of course. I wouldn’t wish to distress you with my tears.”

The duke shook his head and sighed deeply, as if to acknowledge the impossibility of finding a way to communicate with his son. “If you wish it, Morgan. I will see you at the dinner table, I hope. And in time to help me lend a blessing to the meal, please. I do not ask much of you while you are at The Acres, but I must ask that you follow my wishes in such matters. Coming to table with a glass of Burgundy in your hand is offensive.”

Morgan assisted his father up onto the seat of the pony cart, then stepped back and bowed to the man. “I would rather cut off my own arm than offend you, sir,” he drawled softly, then motioned for the groom to drive on, leaving him behind to contemplate his uncle’s passing.

And to wonder why the sun was shining while Jeremy, and all of Jeremy’s older brother’s hopes for happiness, lay moldering in that pink marble mausoleum on the top of the hill.

THE SMALL ORPHANAGE at Glynde, a foundling home of indeterminate age and antiquated drains, was situated just outside the village proper, sunk in a small cutout of land and hidden behind a stout wall and a stand of trees. Good ladies and gentlemen riding in their carriages, farmers on their carts, and even people on foot could pass by the orphanage without fear of having their sensibilities offended by the sight of too-thin legs, too-large eyes, or the many tiny graves that lined a plot at the bottom of the kitchen garden.

The world, Morgan knew, was a hard, unforgiving place for an orphan in this land where wealth was too rare, where poverty and hunger already hung too close to home to be reminded of it daily, and where sympathy was reserved for the alms box at Christmas and Eastertide.

For all his newly discovered religion, even the very Christian duke of Glynde had not as yet extended his largesse past repairing the steeple of the Reverend Mr. Sampson’s church, to bestow his bounty on the unwanted, unloved children whose very existence cried out for compassion.

He should bring the duke here, Morgan thought. He should shake him out of his self-imposed religious limbo and back to the world of the living. Hell and damnation, just the smell emanating from the place should be enough to do that.

Or perhaps, like the rest of the county, his father simply hadn’t looked, hadn’t chosen to see past the walls and the trees.

Morgan knew he hadn’t seen past them either, except for a few times when, as a young, adventurous child, he had talked Jeremy into climbing over the high walls of the orphanage to steal apples from the single tree within the packed-dirt courtyard.

It wasn’t that there were not ample trees at The Acres or that the one within the orphanage wall was of a tastier variety. It was the thrill of the adventure itself that had intrigued Morgan. Just as the risk of the thing had led him to ride his father’s best hunter bareback at midnight, to steal away to watch a hanging in the village square, and to visit the local barmaid at the Spotted Pony at the tender age of fourteen.

Always dragging Jeremy, who was three years younger, along with him, of course, although he had allowed his brother to remain outside the first night he visited the Spotted Pony. There were limits, even to the debaucheries of headstrong youth.

No, he wouldn’t bring his father here. He couldn’t do that, any more than he could confide in the man about Uncle James’s unbelievable deathbed confession. William Blakely’s religious fervor—now doubled, thanks to his grief over Jeremy’s death—could not be corrupted by orphans and tales of foul murder.

After all, if the duke lost his devotion to religion, his only talisman in a world gone mad, there would be nothing left for him to live for. and Morgan would soon after be forced to make that solitary journey back from the mausoleum.

Now, unfashionably early in the morning the day after Lord James’s funeral, as the marquis alighted from his mount at the gates to the orphanage, gates that hung drunkenly from leather straps stretched long past their best effectiveness, he dismissed depressing thoughts of his father and of the lack of one single person in the world to whom he could confide his deepest hopes and thoughts. Instead, Morgan wondered silently if he had ever stolen food from the mouths of any of the foundlings, who must have viewed a ripe red apple as a prize beyond price.

But he didn’t wonder for long. There was no sense in condemning himself for the follies of his misspent youth, for he had long since outgrown them for the follies he had indulged himself in since becoming—in the eyes of the world, at least—a man grown.

He approached the gates purposefully, refusing to regard what he was doing as anything more than hunting mares’ nests because of a dying man’s insane blatherings, and pulled on the rope that set a bell to sounding tinnily on the other side of the wall. And then he waited, slowly realizing that, although there had to be at least thirty orphans in residence, he had not heard a single sound since the bell stopped ringing. Not a laugh. Not a cry. Nothing. He might as well have been standing outside a graveyard.

“Well, lookee here. Glory be ta God, and ain’t ye a fine-lookin’ creature ta see so early in the mornin’? And rigged out just loik a Lunnon gennelmun with it all, ain’t ye?”

Morgan turned about slowly to see a small, slight woman well past her youth—and most definitely years beyond any lingering hint of beauty she might ever have possessed—standing just behind him, a large bundle of freshly cut, still damp rushes tucked beneath her left arm.

He removed his curly-brimmed beaver and swept the woman an elegant leg, the distasteful aroma of unwashed female flesh assaulting his nostrils. “Good day, madam,” he said politely as he straightened, suppressing an urge to take out his scented handkerchief and press it to his nostrils. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Marquis of Clayton, here to see the person in charge of this charming institution.”

The small woman cackled—like an ancient hen with a sore throat, Morgan thought—then smiled, exposing her sad lack of teeth. She had some, for certain, but they were stuck into her gums at irregular intervals, as if she had stood at some distance while Mother Nature tossed them at her one by one, and she’d had to open her mouth to catch them as best she could.

“Mrs. Rivers? And what would ye be wantin’ with the likes of her, boyo? Drunk as a wheelbarrow the besom is, and has been ever since the quarter’s funds showed up here a fortnight ago, don’t ye know. Bring yerself back next month, when she’s murdered all the gin and can see ye straight. She’s always been one fer a well-turned leg.”

“I’m afraid my business can’t wait that long,” Morgan said as the woman moved to brush past him as if he—and his impressive title—didn’t exist. She was the rudest individual he had ever met—and yet she intrigued him. She had a look of cunning intelligence about her, well hidden by the grime on her face, but still noticeable.

He decided to give it another try. He’d use the name his uncle had not given him, a name he already knew. “I’ve come with a mission—to locate a child, a young lady by now, I suppose. Her name is Caroline. Blond hair, or at least it was when she was little. She would be about eighteen.”

The woman stopped abruptly, looking back at him slyly across one bony shoulder. “And is that a fact, boyo? And what, I’m askin’, would a fine upstandin’ gentrymort like yerself be doin’ pokin’ about for Caroline? Plenty of willin’ bodies at the Spotted Pony—iffen ye don’t mind a dose of the clap. Go there, why don’t ye? I’m past such tumblin’s now, even with a pretty un like yerself.”

Until the woman spoke the name aloud as if familiar with it, Morgan had been willing to believe that his uncle’s story was just as he had presented it—a fairy tale meant to send his nephew off to chase his own tail. Until this very moment he had refused to believe there was a grain of truth in James Blakely’s words, or a single reason to hope that he, Morgan Blakely, had at last found a fitting instrument of revenge against his enemy.

“Surely you jest. You are the very picture of feminine beauty. What’s your name, madam?” he asked now, extracting a single gold piece from his pocket and offering it to her.