Page 11 of Claimed by Her Forbidden Duke (Forbidden Lords #6)

Chapter Eleven

“D o stop your incessant fidgeting, Pen,” Finley grumbled, frowning at Penelope as she once again tugged on her collar. “You are making me look untidy with your lack of stillness.”

Penelope scowled at her brother, giving one last sigh of annoyance at him for making her wear yet another uncomfortable, stifling dress.

She rolled her eyes, looking away from him. Heavens, but he made her feel like a petulant child, and she was far from it.

The neckline of her dress crawled up her throat, a suffocating grip that may as well have been Finley’s fingers.

Instead of the gown, she tried to focus on the opera house below her, the theater spreading out in rows and rows of beautiful seats. They were all filled with ladies in their finest gowns and men in their sleek, pressed tailcoats, having taken off their top hats. Feathers billowed atop headpieces, and Galilean binoculars were lifted despite the currently empty stage.

“Are you looking forward to listening to La Ballade ?” Finley asked. “I pay good money for us to keep this box.”

“Of course!” Penelope said. “I love the opera, as you well know. I have always dreamed of being accompanied here by a suitor.”

“Well,” her brother drawled, chuckling, “think of me as one if it pleases you.”

She winced around a smile and squirmed in her dress again, but as she took in the theater below once more, eagerly awaiting the moment the lights turned down, her gaze landed on a familiar head of dark hair in the box opposite hers.

Despite the distance, the Duke of Blackstone’s eyes meeting hers had her pinned to her seat, the only thing able to keep her still all evening.

Next to him, Lady Arabella was talking animatedly, and there was something insatiably attractive about how he answered her while not taking his eyes off Penelope.

She could barely look away, her breathing quickening, not even aware of her brother pawing at her to watch the singer come onto the stage.

Her head spun, and she blamed it on the tightness of her dress rather than the intensity of the man watching her in a way that had pleasure tingling down her spine.

The lights went down, yet the Duke’s eyes did not leave hers.

Penelope looked away first right as the overture began to play out over the theater.

Though she tried to focus on the music that reverberated through the auditorium, making her shiver in that way sorrowful cellos always had, she found that this evening, she could not.

Her dress was too uncomfortable, her upper arms clamped in fabric, her neckline stifling. The skirt was heavy and clinging to her legs in a way that had sweat slicking the back of her thighs. She tried not to squirm, tried her best to be good and dutiful, but it was unbearable.

As the opera descended into its tragic tale, Penelope fidgeted terribly. Finley threw her looks that silently warned her to behave.

How could she, when her ability to breathe lessened and lessened?

She pressed a hand to her chest, rubbing up her throat, trying to relieve the tension, but it wouldn’t budge.

The first act passed in dizzying sweeps of instruments and heart-shattering falsettos, stunning duets from the leads. Penelope desperately wanted to enjoy it, but she struggled to. She did not want to draw attention to herself more than she already had, but her discomfort deepened.

Her ears were ringing, her blood pounding with the start of a faint, until she gasped and rose to her feet, dizzy and unsteady.

“ Sit d?—”

She cut off her brother with a rushed, “I must powder my nose. I will not be long.”

She half feared he would insist on chaperoning her, but he only waved her away, likely glad to be rid of her fidgeting for a moment.

Penelope rushed out of their box and picked her way through the auditorium aisle in the dim light, one hand still on her neck, rubbing as if she might get the air back into her lungs that way.

Her vision blurred as she broke out of the main theater, emerging into an empty corridor.

A light breeze drifted from one direction, granting her relief as it enticed her deeper down the hallway. She followed it, smiling at the attendants that lined the corridors, on hand to aid with anything.

She followed the ribbon of breeze until she came to a pair of French doors, with translucent white curtains billowing in front of them. One door was open a small crack, and no attendants were there.

Slipping through the doors, Penelope stepped out onto a small balcony, inhaling deeply. It didn’t release all of her tension, not yet, but fresh air filled her lungs, and his eyes were finally off her.

For the first time in several days of heavy, modest dresses and her brother’s watchful eye, Penelope could breathe.

She bowed over the balcony rail, sucking in lungfuls of air. She closed her eyes, basking in the peace, but the dress was still too confining, and she clawed at it, her panic and trapped anxiety building inside her sternum.

“Lady Penelope.”

She stilled at the sound of the Duke’s voice.

Whirling around, she knew her eyes were too wide to feign composure, knew her face was likely too flushed and her hair had fallen loose from its impeccable knot.

“Lady Penelope, all you all right?”

Her lungs tight, she answered, “Please leave me alone.”

I cannot endure you right now—not with your gazes across auditoriums, and your knowing amusement, and your gifts, and your words .

Not when she already teetered on a precarious edge of unraveling in several ways.

“You are not all right,” he noted.

She turned back, dismissing him.

But he caught her wrist, exactly as she had imagined he had in the dressmaker’s, and spun her back to face him.

She stumbled back, her tailbone hitting the rail. To her surprise, the Duke was there, not quite caging her in, but as close as he had been to her the night they met.

Once again, cornered with nowhere to go.

So why did she not feel as panicked anymore?

“I am fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “I was powdering my nose.”

Wrong lie.

“The bathrooms are further down the corridor,” he told her, smirking. “And forgive me, but I do not believe there is a powder thick enough to cover your flushed cheeks. Are you warm, Lady Penelope?”

“I am quite fine,” she insisted. “It is none of your business.”

“How differently you speak in private to when we were around your very outspoken friend,” he murmured, his eyes roaming over her face.

A lock of dark blonde hair fell into her eyes, and she did not even bother to push it back. She’d asked to be alone; it was no longer her fault if he watched her slowly come undone.

“If a lady cannot catch her breath in peace, Your Grace, then I fear I do not know what she can do,” Penelope muttered, averting her gaze from him—from the darkness in his eyes that had met hers across the theater, from that all-seeing way he regarded her, as if all he had to do was wait and she would spill everything he wanted to know.

“She can,” he told her. “But when a woman looks troubled, it is only polite to inquire about her well-being.”

Penelope couldn’t hold back her scoff quickly enough. “You did not ask such things the night we met.”

“I did, in a way. I told you that you did not belong outside Julian Gray’s house.”

“No,” she answered. “But you suggested I go to you, so do you think I belong outside your townhouse? Waiting on your doorstep for a night of pleasure?”

“If it will make you as flushed as this infernal dress of yours does, then yes.”

The boldness of his statement made the hazy aura surrounding her grow hotter, and she fought the urge to fan herself.

“My dress is not the?—”

“Of course, it is the problem,” he snapped. “It is clearly causing you discomfort.”

“Oh, should I wear the dress you so improperly bought for me, then, Your Grace? Tell me, where exactly did you envision me wearing it? To a beautiful dinner at your estate? Dined perfectly, only to be taken to your sheets and stripped of the dress?”

The words spilled out of her, emboldened by her frazzled panic from earlier.

Before he could say anything, Penelope continued, stepping into his personal space. “ You are the problem, Your Grace. Always there, always watching in that manner?—”

“What manner?”

“As though—as though I am a woman you want,” she spat out, exasperated. “And it is exhausting.”

“Why, Lady Penelope?”

“Oh, you infernal man,” she hissed. “Because I could never hope to believe that a duke such as yourself would want a spinster like me.”

Her claim left her in a tight rush, but she quickly was quietened when the Duke came onto her, bracing his arms against the rail behind her. He had her trapped, and yet she did not feel it.

She refused to meet his eyes, but suddenly her chin was pinched between his fingers, and he tilted her head up to finally look at him.

“Is it so hard to believe?” the Duke asked, his voice lower but no less rough. “You are no spinster, Penelope.”

His use of her name without her title made her shiver in his embrace as his hand slid down to cup her waist, as it had when they’d danced.

“Then what am I?” she dared to ask.

“You are… a woman draped in desire I cannot let myself have. A woman who has haunted my thoughts since the night we met,” he muttered, as if he was reluctant to admit it. As if it was a weakness. Yet he gazed at her with equal amounts of vulnerability and heavy desire.

Penelope’s breath caught. “Your Grace,” she whispered.

“Call me Edmund,” he told her, and then he kissed her.

The kiss took her by surprise, and for a moment, Penelope froze, feeling his body press against hers.

His mouth was hot on hers, not demanding but seeking , a silent ask, and when she was too stunned to reciprocate, he began to pull away. But before he could even put a full inch between them, she moved, following that desire that had sparked within her ever since she had first laid eyes on him.

His eyes met hers for a brief moment before she kissed him fervently, knowing that she had very little skill in such things, but a desire burned within her and she chased it like it might incinerate her whole if she let it.

Edmund’s lips were searing against hers, a small groan caught in the back of his throat as his hand inched up her waist. This time, it continued its ascent.

Penelope was quickly lost in the feel of his hands on her, his mouth coaxing more and more.

His teeth nipped her lower lip, and she made a sound between a moan and a gasp. Her fingers curled into his dark hair, brushing it back from his face.

The hand Edmund kept on the rail inched closer, barely brushing her hipbone, and her body came alive, singing a song she had not yet heard but had been told the magic of.

Desire shot through her, and she chased the Duke’s mouth over and over, drowning in the breathy kisses. His palm slid higher up her body, his thumb brushing the underside of her breast but not daring to go higher, and then he moved his hand back down as if realizing the daring touch.

“I would tear this suffocating gown off you with my teeth if I could,” he growled, kissing his way to her neck, snarling again when he only met that high, choking collar. Impatiently, he tugged at it, as if wanting— needing —more of her skin bared. “I thought of you wearing the gown I bought. I do not think you realize how much you—how much you made me desire you.”

“How much?” Her voice was thin and breathy as he kissed what part of her throat he could access.

He tangled with her dress, and Penelope swore she heard a small tear. But with her head tilted back, her eyelashes fluttering with pleasure that the Duke delivered with more touches and hot kisses, she could not know for sure.

“Incessantly,” he told her, his voice low and rough.

Edmund kissed his way back to her mouth before he cupped her face in his hands, drawing her to him. And— oh . Penelope could feel very much how incessantly that desire roved through the composed Duke, poking the skirt of her dress, a need that strained against his clothing.

Her breath mingled with his, and her eyes closed, feeling the hitch of his breath as his tongue swept over her lower lip, hesitant for entry that she granted immediately.

She was lost in him, the rising panic from earlier settled because she was in his embrace, the focal point of his intensity again.

Curiously, she shifted her hips just so, and the noise he made in response sent more heat through her. Shakily, she pressed closer to him, hungrily taking what she had been so deprived of for such a long time—but it was with a man who held her as though she was meant to be there, with him.

They kissed one another as if they were answers they had long sought and could not bear to part.

Edmund pawed at her dress, a mirror of her frantic actions before, but in a different way. As her skirts rustled and a breeze snaked between her legs, Penelope let out a soft moan she had only let herself press, shamefully, into her pillow late at night.

“Make that noise again,” Edmund groaned, pulling back only to speak for a moment before his mouth met hers again with more urgency.

And Penelope could not help the series of noises that came forth, whether he had requested it or not, for when he pressed himself against her so that she felt the hard line of his desire, she could not avoid her spinning thoughts.

“Edmund, are you out—oh. Oh, Heavens, I?—”

Penelope had never seen anybody move as fast as Edmund did, wrenching away from her when Lady Arabella’s voice came from the open doorway.

Lady Arabella hovered between the curtains, looking at the two of them with wide eyes.

“I… I did not mean to interrupt,” she said, her cheeks flushing.

Edmund cleared his throat, adjusting something on his tailcoat, distracting Penelope before she realized what he attempted to conceal. Her face burned, but his expression swiftly shifted into a frown as he turned to his sister.

He opened his mouth, likely to scold her for the interruption, but the young lady was quicker.

“I was worried about you,” she said quickly. “I came looking.”

Her eyes sheepishly met Penelope’s, who moved closer to the French doors, ready to run away or to try and look as though she had not just been kissed within an inch of insanity.

But before either of them could say a word, footsteps thundered down the corridor, and Penelope knew it was Finley from listening out for his gait for many years, knowing his shadow filled every angle as it fell over doorways.

“Penelope?” he called, getting closer to the balcony.

Edmund moved further away from her as her brother stepped into the doorway, behind Lady Arabella.

His eyes fell on Penelope, narrowing. “What on earth is going on?”

His sharp demand slammed Penelope back into a weighty, sober reality, and she avoided looking at Edmund, avoided his kiss-swollen lips, and could only hope her blush and bruised lips were not so obvious, or that her brother would only see it as her usual flusters from her dresses.

Lady Arabella’s fingers went to a fastening on her dress right before she faced Finley, greeting him loudly. “Lord Langwaite!”

She’s distracting him , Penelope realized.

Lady Arabella was giving them both another moment of composure.

Sending a silent prayer of gratitude, Penelope finally met Edmund’s eyes, but he quickly looked away.

“It is my fault, Lord Langwaite,” Lady Arabella said, her voice sweeping into a pretty, innocent note that had Cecilia’s name all over it. “You see, I saw Lady Penelope leave her seat. I had already complained to my brother about a problem with my dress, but it was not proper for him to help. I seized the opportunity to ask for assistance.”

“Why did you not encounter one another while powdering your nose, as you so claimed, Sister?” Finley’s question was aimed at Penelope, and she struggled for a response before Lady Arabella once again rescued her.

“Well, we did,” she lied. “We were already on our way. As you can see, we took a while, as I needed some air.”

The fabricated story loosened Penelope’s tightly wound nerves as her brother looked slow but sure to convince.

“I came looking for Lady Arabella,” Edmund said, startling Penelope with his voice, composed and back to a normal tone. Nothing at all like the low, sensual roughness he had spoken to her with. “As you have for Lady Penelope.”

Finley narrowed his eyes at the three of them before regarding Lady Arabella. “You should ensure that your dress is properly fastened, Lady Arabella. Your Grace, you should have more control over your sister. Lady Penelope acts very well in public, thanks to my guidance.”

“I am aware,” Edmund answered, his eyes meeting hers for a brief moment. “I am very aware.”

Penelope swallowed, recalling the feel of his lips on her neck, his hands fumbling with the tight fabric of her dress as if he wished to free her for her comfort and for his pleasure.

“Come, Pen,” Finley all but ordered, and she snapped back into propriety, reminding herself of where she was. “We must return to our seats. You have missed almost a whole act.”

“We should also return,” Edmund said. He paused, inclining his head to her. “Lady Penelope.”

“Your Grace,” she replied, but it was scarcely a whisper.

His eyes dropped below her mouth, and she wondered what he was looking at, but Finley was already steering her out of the balcony, back to the theater, in a different direction from the Duke and his sister.

As they took their seats, Finley frowned at her. “Pen, why on earth is your collar torn?”

Penelope barely heard him because of the blood roaring in her ears as she realized that the Duke truly had torn her dress.

In the dark theater, she tried not to be too obvious about looking out for the Duke’s return—until he was sitting down once again, pointedly not looking at her.

But he had, and he had kissed her, and she had felt every inch of his desire against her body. Even if he had not admitted it as verbally as he had, she would have known.

For the remainder of the opera, Penelope could hardly think of anything but the Duke’s mouth on hers, their kiss tangling her up in complications.

* * *

“Edmund! Do you take pleasure in startling my living, beating heart right out of my chest?”

Edmund smirked at his cousin, pushing off one of the decorative columns on the front porch of Benjamin’s townhouse. His cousin had a hand pressed to his chest, his back bowed as he clung to the doorframe for support.

“Warn a man next time, so he may call a doctor ahead to have his heart checked,” Benjamin sighed, straightening. “You are much better at sneaking than I.”

“As I have tried to tell you,” Edmund countered. “Since you are going to follow me tonight—I presume that you plan to leave your residence, anyway—I thought I might as well come over and pick you up. Save you the trouble of tracking me down.”

Benjamin’s face lit up with excitement before he scowled. “That takes away a lot of the mystery of actually following you. It ruins my whole appeal.”

“There is no mystery when I know you are there, Benjamin.”

“Yes, but… well, save a man some dignity,” he scoffed as the two headed down the path to the two horses Edmund had already prepared. “Picking me up—what do you take me for? Although, this is a beautiful horse. He will do most excellently for me?—”

“Altair is mine,” Edmund interrupted. “You may take Elizabeth.” He nodded to the other horse.

“Elizabeth?” Benjamin echoed, looking forlorn. “You ride a beautiful beast, and I am on the back of a mare?”

“I am only teasing,” Edmund said. “That is Maverick.”

“Excellent. I am sure we shall get along splendidly.” Benjamin swung himself up into the saddle, as Edmund had already done. “I am rather honored you have invited me along to continue solving this mystery of yours.”

“Do not get too excited. I did have to save you last time.”

“Yes, and you have ignored every letter I’ve sent since.”

“I was angry with you,” Edmund said plainly, setting off down the street. “I warned you, and you still found trouble. Tonight will not be the same.”

Benjamin nodded, his expression grave as he finally understood the warning. “Where are we going?”

Edmund did not answer. He merely rode on, for his mind was sharpening into focus in a way he had not managed in several days.

Benjamin followed in silence for once, casting glances at Edmund now and then as they kept to the backstreets of London.

It wasn’t that Edmund wanted to avoid detection, but rather that he wanted to avoid the sight of the lady who had not left his mind. If he could not put her out of his mind, then he would at least keep her out of his sight.

Perhaps that was why he’d chosen tonight to visit Charles Thatcher’s residence—something concrete to distract him, Benjamin’s company to drive his thoughts from Lady Penelope, and a hunt to occupy his evening with until he hopefully became too exhausted to think when he collapsed into bed.

But his reprieve was cut short when they drew near the outskirts of London, only a short distance from Thatcher’s place.

“So, Cousin ,” Benjamin began, a smirk on his face that Edmund quickly looked away from. That smirk never meant anything good. “Word has it that you and a particular lady have been seen together several times. A lady that you denied looking at. Yet my sources say otherwise.”

Edmund’s hands clenched around Altair’s reigns. “What sources?”

“I am very well connected, thanks to my time as interim Duke of Blackstone. I am fortunate that those connections remained despite my return to Enthorpe. I have heard you were seen leaving the theater during one of the acts of the lavish La Ballade , as was Lady Penelope. Would you know anything about that?”

“No,” Edmund said defensively, too hastily, for he heard his cousin’s answering chuckle.

“You may deny it all you like, but I saw how you looked at her at the Townsend ball. How you later danced with her. And, apparently, how you stood rather close to her at a dressmaker’s recently.”

“Heavens, can a man not move through this city without being watched?” Edmund ground out.

Truly, he was more frustrated with himself—perhaps with Penelope as well, for enticing him without ever trying.

And he could see that. She lacked the boisterous, forward behavior most ladies of the ton had. If anything, her more reserved nature was what had drawn him in. He enjoyed watching how his words flustered her, how that delicious blush spread up her neck, how he had torn part of her dress and wished to have kept tearing it until?—

“You are blushing,” Benjamin noted.

“I am not,” Edmund snapped. “Your horse answers to me, and I can command him to buck you right off. Perhaps a muddy puddle will be nearby, so I can time it well.”

“And I will drag you down with me,” Benjamin countered. “And then we shall arrive at our mysterious destination muddy and make a terrible impression.”

Edmund only glowered at him, ignoring his taunts.

“Of course, it makes a lot of sense. You are thirty, and you have no wife or heir to speak of, and Lady Penelope is a spinster?—”

“Benjamin, I am starting to regret allowing you to come with me.” Edmund’s voice was a growl, his eyes narrowing on his cousin, who merely grinned at him as they rode towards the building that rose in the distance.

It was nestled before a borough of woodland, set back as if it did not quite want to leave London completely but was not committed to the countryside either.

Perhaps that matched Charles Thatcher’s preference, too. One foot in his old life, unable to fully escape, and one hand reaching for freedom, if Julian’s theory was correct. A paranoid recluse who had fallen out with a very powerful man, knowing that the man would have other powerful accomplices hunting for him—it all made sense.

“And stop saying Lady Penelope is a spinster,” Edmund muttered to Benjamin, trying to iron out his thoughts about Penelope—about that dreadful dress that had practically choked her.

He did not know why she had suddenly begun to wear such modest clothing, but it was not hard to guess, even if he did not want to outright accuse Finley on account of their old friendship.

“She is, though.”

“She is a very capable woman who the ton has not favored,” Edmund snapped. “That is no fault of her own. I am sure she would be blissfully married by now if Langwaite did not bat away every suitor. At the ball, he was raving about how nobody present was good enough for her.”

“Did you feel insulted, Edmund?”

Benjamin’s teasing question only earned him a fierce glare. His thoughts were on what he had told Penelope moments before kissing her.

“You are… a woman draped in desire I cannot let myself have. A woman who has haunted my thoughts since the night we met.”

Had she felt his arousal, as he had been unable to keep it at bay while holding her in his arms? While feeling her mouth softening beneath his, returning every stroke of his tongue against hers.

Heavens, if Arabella had not interrupted them, how much further would he have been tempted to take their secluded moment?

A balcony was only private from the floor it was attached to. He did not know, or dare to wonder, if anybody might have seen them from a higher or lower level of the opera house. In that moment, he had not cared, for he would have taken far more than a kiss had he been given the opportunity.

Ignoring his cousin’s jab, Edmund nodded towards the long pathway ahead of them, snaking deeper into the estate beyond old, rusted gates.

The house at the end of the pathway did not fare much better than the overgrown shrubs and the gates. It loomed, large and old, as if somebody had painted it a dark, ashen gray.

“This is where we are going?” Benjamin asked, his voice cracking a little.

“Yes.” Edmund was already starting towards the gate.

“I have seen cemeteries look less haunted,” his cousin muttered under his breath.

Edmund rolled his eyes. “Focus, Cousin.”

At the end of the winding pathway, a servant already awaited them, having likely heard those rusted gates that had creaked upon their arrival.

Their horses were guided to rest in the stables for the duration of their visit—which Edmund truly hoped would last long enough to keep his mind from straying to the curve of Penelope’s breast that he had grazed ever so lightly before pulling away—and they were led into the main house.

Down a long corridor that was far more polished inside than the house suggested outside, Edmund and Benjamin were taken to the parlor, the servant bowing to them as they entered the room.

“Charles Thatcher,” Edmund drawled by way of greeting.

He regarded the man in the corner of the room, pressed into an armchair as if it might swallow him. He was frail and far grayer than Edmund had expected. His fingers tore into the velvet chair set before the window, as if he watched and watched and watched, a paranoid man never given rest.

“I-I, please—” Thatcher stammered, shrinking into the chair. “P-Please—mercy, have mercy! I can pay as soon as?—”

“Quiet,” Edmund cut him off. “We are not here to call in a debt.”

More paranoia flickered through the man. He paled, and his eyes widened as he took both Edmund and Benjamin in.

Edmund adjusted his riding gloves. Not enough to threaten the man and make him whimper into silence but enough to let him know that he was not dealing with a fool.

“Tell me all you know about James Logan.”

A pained whimper came from Thatcher as he looked between the two of them. “N-No.”

“Mr. Thatcher, we are not here to hurt you,” Edmund said. “I simply need answers. I, too, have suffered the wrath of James Logan, and I?—”

“No!” Thatcher shouted. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house? Begone with you! Do not come here asking such things!”

His hands shook no matter how tightly he gripped the armrests, his watery eyes flickering to the window as if afraid Edmund had hidden men on the grounds, waiting for him to let down his guard. He looked to the side, and Edmund followed his gaze, finding a pistol locked in a crystal cabinet.

Was it a threat or a safety precaution, he wondered?

Edmund sighed, digging into his riding coat and pulling out a bag of coins. He tossed it to Thatcher, not caring for the grunt he made as the bag heavily landed in his lap.

“Will that cover your debts?”

The older man’s face colored with embarrassment as he shook his head.

Edmund clenched his jaw and tossed another bag. He could hear the cogs in his cousin’s head whirring, as if Benjamin was wondering why Edmund was paying off so many people.

Thatcher grasped the two bags, weighing them heavily in his palms. After a moment, he nodded.

“All right,” he whispered. “But I must have a guarantee of my safety for speaking.”

“You have it,” Edmund said immediately, not wanting him to back out. “I will send some of my men to guard you. I assure you, no harm will come to you. You have my word. And you were close enough to Logan to know that I always keep my word.”

Another beat passed, and his heart began to pound with trepidation of not wanting another dead end.

So he pushed forward, taking a seat before it was offered. Thatcher flinched despite Edmund still being several feet away. Benjamin shuffled to Edmund’s side, behind the chair.

“I want to know about Logan’s dealings,” Edmund declared. “I want names, and I want information. As much of it as you have. You fell out with him—do not think you owe that man’s memory anything.”

His words rang with a tinge of desperation, needing to know about the man responsible for his years of captivity.

Thatcher bit his lip, wearily meeting Edmund’s eyes. “Indeed, Logan’s criminal activities spanned many faces and names. All wreathed in anonymity, but some people slipped up. You had to be there at the right moment to hear a whispered name before it was swallowed by an alias. Silly names— Tankard Corner , for example. It signified where Logan met a particular dealer or buyer. Hay Bale was another. Logan was ever-moving, never still for long.”

“Except for the Amber Lantern,” Edmund pressed, hoping to offer some bit of knowledge to keep the man talking. “I have been told he always went there.”

Thatcher nodded. “That was his main domain, yes, but I mean that he never anchored himself to one residence for long. He had multiple offices—here, in other English cities, in country houses, in other countries. He even had a boat to hold meetings on just so he did not have to stay rooted. I have worked with Logan in the past, but— please , please, have mercy, for I am trying to distance myself. I am trying to live out the rest of my life in safety. Logan’s protection had limits, and I have left the boundaries of them.”

“Speak,” Edmund pushed when Thatcher lapsed into a thoughtful silence, trying not to show how eager he was to receive every snatch of information and scare his most promising lead so far.

“Another coin bag, perhaps, might help my?—”

“ Speak ,” Edmund repeated, not snarling, but not as placating as before either.

He would get everything out of Thatcher by force if it came to it. He didn’t want it to; the man looked terrified out of his wits, and he didn’t know if Edmund wouldn’t run to one of Logan’s men, claiming Thatcher was spilling every secret.

For all Thatcher knew, Edmund himself could be one of Logan’s men, sent to test him.

But perhaps Thatcher heard the desperation in Edmund’s voice and decided to trust a little more because a name was uttered into the space between them.

“Cyrus Reed.”

Edmund leaned in closer, committing the name to memory.

Thatcher met his gaze hesitantly, trembling. When he spoke again, it was in a whisper.

“Cyrus Reed. Logan was always seen in his company. The two worked closely together, so much so that we all wondered if Reed was his true second-in-command. Nobody could confirm it, not when we were all so ready to turn on one another in the blink of an eye should we need to. Logan had a history of using the Poseidon warehouse down on the docks. Not its real name, of course, but?—”

“A code name for those looking to secure transport of something a little darker across the water,” Edmund finished, nodding.

He had already come across the name while researching Mr. Haddon.

“He used that warehouse for his operations. He would—he would often transport captives via that route.”

Edmund’s stomach lurched. He knew well enough about that.

Julian had mentioned a warehouse, but he hadn’t thought to connect the two. Slowly leaning back, Edmund nodded.

“The Poseidon warehouse has been taken under new ownership recently,” Edmund noted. “A Mr. Armond.”

“It is an alias,” Thatcher said. “Mr. Armond is Cyrus Reed. He owns the warehouse now. It used to be a gimmick—an offering for a good journey, borrowed from mythology. But it is now a front for Reed’s less-savory activities.”

“Give me more,” Edmund pressed.

“That is all I have,” Thatcher said firmly.

Edmund did not detect a lie in his claims.

After a moment, he nodded, standing to his feet. “Then I am grateful for what you have given, Mr. Thatcher. Do keep quiet about meeting me today. I have been generous and patient, do not forget that. However, if you do forget it, I will return, and there will be consequences. I am sure you can imagine what kind.”

He gave the man a menacing smile and bowed out of the room to his eager, pliant nod as he clutched the bags to his chest. “Wait!”

Edmund stopped, glancing over his shoulder, impatient.

“Be careful on this path, about digging into James Logan. It cannot end well if you dig too deeply, for you might find out that the only thing you have dug is your own grave.”

“I already came close to that once,” Edmund countered. “Seven years ago, Logan paid someone to have me kidnapped and shipped off to the Caribbean. Whoever that person was not only took me from my life but also took my very soul. So, no, I will not stop, and I will dig until every part of me bleeds if I have to.”

Without a backward glance, he left, motioning for Benjamin to follow him.