Having spent his life in the gin alleys and back rooms of London, Hale had witnessed far worse in his twenty-eight years.
Hale finished his tour of the ground floor and caught no sight of Molly. A cold panic ran through his veins. His sister claimed to have heard some disturbing things. He hoped most of it was false, but a sick feeling in his gut told him to expect the worst.
Circling back around, he headed up the narrow stairway, intending to open every closed door if necessary.
Just as he got to the top of the stairs, he saw her. She was exiting a room and hadn’t seen him yet. On feet far swifter than most expected for a man his size, he swept down the hall and grasped her arm. Her gasp of surprise deteriorated into a whimper as he shoved her back into the room she had just vacated.
Gratefully, it was empty save for a bed, no larger than a cot, covered in stained and rumpled blankets. He shut the door behind him, locking them in with the scent of stale sex, sweat, and the sickening sweetness of opium smoke.
“What are you doing? You’ve no right.” Molly twisted her arm violently from his grip, nearly sending herself sprawling when she lost her balance.
He grasped her arm harder to keep her upright, knowing his grip would likely cause her bruising, and not particularly caring at the moment.
“I’ve got every bloody right, damn it,” he growled through clenched teeth. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were going to go back to my sister’s.”
“Your precious sister wouldn’t have me.” She twisted her arm again and this time he released her.
She took a few stumbling steps toward the bed and sat down. She was barely clad in a gown that had been trimmed back on the hem and bodice until little was left to cover her body. Her pale blond hair, which had once given her the look of an angel, was twisted into a messy knot atop her head with limp strands falling over her crystal-blue eyes. Those eyes were glossy, unfocused, and dragged down by dark circles as she looked up at him with a mixture of anger and wariness.
He was glad for the fear. People were much easier to manage when they feared what he might do.
“She’d take you if you left off the opium.”
Molly snorted in derision as her gaze rolled unnaturally about the room.
It was worse than he had thought. Molly was lost. But she wasn’t his main concern.
He took a menacing step forward. “Where is she?”
“Not here,” she replied with a sneer, pushing the dirty strands of hair out of her face.
He crossed his arms over his wide chest, fighting the nausea in his gut. “If she were, I would likely kill you. Where is she?”
“I’ve got a friend watching her.”
“Tell me where,” he growled, fury rising at her evasion.
Molly’s blue eyes lifted to him then and he saw a hardness there like cold flint. He could practically see the calculating thoughts tripping over themselves in her wasted mind. A chill raced down the back of his neck.
“I need money.”
“Of course you do,” he said coldly. “How much this time?”
Back when he had spent his waking hours trading blows in the ring, he would get a feeling just before a particularly hard hit. A swift drop in his stomach that told him to brace for the punch. He had that feeling now as his former lover licked her dry lips before speaking.
“Do you really want to help me, Mason?” she asked in a quiet voice. “Would you give me enough to get out of here? Find some real work?”
“You know I would.” He would do whatever it took. “I’ve told you to come stay with me.”
She shook her head. “Suzanne knows of a place we could rent together, near the milliners’ shops. I could get some work there. I used to know about such things.” She waved a hand through the air. “A lifetime ago, it seems.”
“It would be better to get out of town altogether. I could get you a place in Devonshire.”
She laughed. It was a shaky, unsteady sound. “I am not going back there, Mason. Not ever. God, what would I do in the barren wilds back home? No. I am staying in London, but you can still help me.”
“I will do whatever I can. Now tell me where she is. I have to see her.” He struggled with the hard knot in his throat.
Molly’s face hardened again, her glassy eyes frigid. “You can see your daughter when you bring me the money to get out of this hellhole.”
Twenty-one
Emma woke early—ridiculously early.
Even after she lay in bed for a while, trying to will herself back to sleep, dawn was just breaking over the city line when she rose to sit at her desk.
The state of the Chadwicks’ situation occupied her thoughts.
Her first week of earnings from the club had already been absorbed. Her forthcoming income might allow for the expenses needed to keep up their appearances in society, but they would not likely have an impact on the bigger problem: the debt to Mr. Hale.