Page 36 of Beneath the Devil’s Mask (The Hidden Hearts Collection #4)

Twelve

The storm abated long before the one that raged within Mandell’s soul. The night was still young when he swept down the steps of White’s where he had taken his supper alone, his forbidding scowl for once keeping even Lancelot Briggs at a distance.

Mandell had eaten too little and drunk far too much, but he was sober enough to keep a steady pace as he stalked along the rain-wet pavement. The amount of brandy he had consumed had done nothing to dull the pain of old memories. It only gave a sharper edge to the tension coiling inside him.

The storm had kept many a more prudent person from venturing abroad tonight.

The usually bustling St. James was thin of traffic.

The wind tugged at the flaps of his greatcoat and disheveled his hair.

Mandell shoved back the straying locks and stepped off the pavement.

He was looking to summon a hackney cab when he heard someone hailing him by name.

He turned to see Lancelot Briggs hastening down the steps of White’s.

Mandell’s lip curled with disgust. Briggs’s plump frame appeared ridiculous swathed in a cloak with several capes.

It was an exact imitation of the one Mandell had swirled about Anne’s shoulders that night that now seemed too long ago.

Thoughts of the lady only drove the ache inside Mandell deeper. He awaited Briggs’s approach, fixing an expression on his face black enough to keep Briggs from bounding up in his usual exuberant manner.

“Excuse me, my lord,” Briggs said timidly as he held out a high-crowned beaver hat. “But you forgot this. It’s your hat. You left it back there. At White’s, remember? Where you had supper.”

Mandell yanked the hat from his grasp.

“My lord is making an early evening of it. You are going home?”

“No!” Turning on his heel, Mandell walked away. To his irritation Briggs followed. It was difficult for Briggs to keep pace with Mandell’s long legs, but he managed.

“You have another engagement? You are going somewhere else, my lord? I would be pleased to accompany you.”

Mandell came to an abrupt halt. “I am going to the devil.”

“Oh.” Briggs looked a little daunted. But he forced a smile. “What a coincidence,” he jested weakly. “I was just going there myself.”

“It is not a journey that requires company, especially not that of a spy.”

“A spy, my lord?”

“That is what you are, is it not? Forever hovering near me, watching what I do, only to go bruiting my affairs about half the city.”

“No, my lord. I assure you. I never speak of anything that you do.”

‘The incident between myself and Sir Lucien,” Mandell reminded him. Even in the darkened street, he could detect Briggs’s guilty flush.

“Oh, that. Perhaps I did tell just a few. It is only that it was such a noble thing you did, forcing Sir Lucien to return Lady Anne’s daughter.

You are too modest to ever speak of it yourself, so I could not help doing so myself.

” Briggs squirmed beneath Mandell’s glare.

“I am sorry, my lord. I am a rattle pated fool,”

“So you are. And a dead bore besides. Good night, sir.” Mandell set off again.

He was annoyed past bearing to discover Briggs still dogging his steps.

He drew in a sharp breath, but was forestalled by Briggs saying, “It will do you no good, my lord. You may insult me as you please. But I shan’t leave you. ”

“Indeed?” Mandell said with a dangerous softness.

Briggs looked a little frightened, but he held his ground. “I have been observing you. You do not seem yourself this evening. I would not be any kind of a friend if I let you go off alone in this state.”

“You are not my friend, you encroaching idiot. I don’t want your damned friendship.”

“I know that, my lord,” Briggs said quietly. “But the choice is not yours. I would not presume to ask what is troubling you—”

“How very wise of you.”

“But I do not think you should be wandering the streets this way when you are so distracted. It is not safe. The Hook was seen abroad again last night. He robbed two men near the Temple Bar.”

“And you mean to protect me from him and other such brigands. How touching.”

“I would do my best, my lord.”

“Go back to your club, Briggs, or go home or anywhere else you damn well choose. Just get the devil away from me.”

Mandell was thunderstruck when Briggs shook his head. “You may curse me or mill me down, but there is nothing you can do to prevent me following you.”

Briggs’s plump chin set into an attitude of amazing stubbornness, his brown eyes filled with unwavering devotion. Mandell took a menacing step forward, but Briggs did not flinch from the expected blow.

Mandell heaved an exasperated sigh but was unable to proceed further. He turned away with an angry shrug.

“Very well,” he snarled. “Follow me to hell if you choose. But I give you fair warning. You’d best be able to look out for yourself when we get there.”

Mandell strode away without another backward glance.

The Running Cat tavern near Covent Garden was not precisely hell, but close enough.

A haze of smoke blanketed the dingy taproom, half obscuring the group of coarse men dicing at one of the tables.

A buxom serving wench slapped away the hand of a bold customer while an old sailor slumped in a corner over his bottle of gin.

The pipe falling from his slack lips seemed in danger of setting the entire place afire.

But the den of noise, stifling heat, and stale beer made little impression upon Mandell, no more than did the scantily clad woman who had settled herself upon his knee.

She possessed a hardened kind of prettiness, her long black hair spilling about her half-bare shoulders, her expression as weary and jaded as Mandell himself.

She pressed kisses against his neck with a practiced skill and nibbled at his ear, but Mandell struggled to focus on the murky darkness beyond one of the tavern’s narrow windows.

How many more hours would it be until dawn, he wondered.

How long until he was exhausted or drunk enough to find the oblivion of dreamless sleep?

He sought to reach past the wench nuzzling him, groping toward the table to find his glass of whiskey again, but she stopped him, murmuring, “I’ve got a little room upstairs, m’lord, an’ it would please you to bear me company there.”

She began to undo the buttons of his shirt with a kind of rough impatience.

It was then that Mandell realized his frock coat and cravat were missing, but he had no notion what he had done with them over the course of the evening.

The girl slipped her hand inside his shirt and began to knead the hair-roughened flesh of his chest. Mandell attempted to conjure some stirring of response, but all he could think of was the gentle way Anne had touched him last night in his bed, her slender fingers skimming over him with a kind of wonder.

Would he never be able to get images of that lady out of his head?

He gritted his teeth, but the vision of Anne’s blue eyes persisted.

The cloying odor of the black-haired woman’s perfume repulsed him.

With an oath, he thrust the doxy off his knee.

She staggered a little but regained her balance. Her full lips curved into a sullen pout. “Did I do something wrong, milord?”

It was a painful echo of the same thing Anne had said to him.

“No!” Mandell snapped. He groped about for his purse. In this place, he was astonished he had not already been relieved of it.

“You aren’t the first man who ever got too drunk to perform,” the girl said. “But there are other things I could do to—”

Mandell cut off her suggestion by shoving a handful of guineas at her. “Go upstairs and try sleeping for a change.”

The girl regarded him with surprise, then shrugged and took the money. As she sashayed away from him, Mandell leaned his head back against the rim of his chair and closed his eyes.

He had no idea how he had got himself to this place or even what else he had been doing this evening.

He had foggy memories of White’s, lurching along in a hackney cab, frequenting some other gaming hells that all blurred into one.

He had stumbled along some refuse-strewn back street and rousted a shopkeeper from his bed to .

.. Mandell believed he had bought something, but that was absurd.

What would he have wanted to purchase at this hour of night?

Massaging the bridge of his nose with his fingertips, he frowned, beginning to feel the throbbing effects of the amount of spirits he had consumed.

He was drunk, but not drunk enough to blot out the things he most wanted to forget—Anne, his grandfather, the ages-old nightmare that still threatened to claim him if he dared to sleep.

Mandell forced his eyes open and realized someone was hovering over him. Lancelot Briggs, wearing that whipped puppy look that Mandell so despised.

“Damnation,” Mandell growled. “You still here? I thought I’d finally lost you back ... back in—well, somewhere.”

”No, my lord.” Briggs perched himself on the edge of the wooden chair opposite Mandell. He had Mandell’s frock coat and cravat draped over his arm.

Struggling to an upright position, Mandell demanded, “So what’re you about now? Applying for a post as my valet?”

“No, I am simply trying to make sure you leave here without misplacing anything.” Briggs regarded him hopefully. “My lord is ready to go home now, perhaps?”

“And perhaps not,” Mandell said, locating his whiskey glass. “What’s the matter, Briggs? Are you not enjoying yourself?”

“No, I don’t like it here.”

“Surely you are not afraid? The bold Sir Lancelot who once encountered the Hook himself, who has pledged to aid in that villain’s capture and eventual hanging?”