Page 8 of Lie Down With a Lyon (The Lyon’s Den)

S he sipped the very good whisky he’d poured into a pewter cup. “Don’t you like whisky?”

“I do.”

“But you refrain? Why? You wish to be clearheaded if I try to run?”

He gave her a quelling look. “You can jump from a speeding carriage?”

“Ba! You haven’t seen all my skills.”

“No.” He rubbed his left thigh. “But I’ve felt the power of your kick. And I’ve seen how you made Winthrop bleed.”

She preened. “Good, wasn’t I?”

“Helped me take you from him, yes.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Glad you brought good spirits. In the hamper, I mean.”

“The only kind to have. One drink eases cares, and two always brightens the day.”

She took another drink. “And three?”

“Like much in life, too much of one temptation can bring ruin.”

She nestled back into the corner shelter of the squabs, ignoring her approval of his prudence. “Like gin, sugar, and power.”

“Exactly.” He dropped the whisky back in the wicker hamper and let the flap close. “May I now explain more?”

“Let me think.” She moved the last drop of whisky over her tongue—and noted, damn her soul, that his gaze absorbed her movement with sensual need. She had to ignore it and press her case. “You carried me away because the man I was to marry did not appear. He was abducted by my father’s men this morning. And the fellow who appeared, that swarthy creature who ran after me, was the substitute for Mercer. Somehow you learned that it was my father who did all this. Yet you have no proof of this, only your conjecture.”

“Not entirely correct.” He nodded, his mellow eyes locked on hers. “I know of the men who took away Mr. Mercer this morning. I also know that that fellow who suddenly appeared would have married you. He is an associate of your father.”

She looked out the window, watching scenery fly past. She knew not where she was. Only this man did. He seemed to know so much more than the average human. How could that be?

“You say you learned that Henry Mercer was abducted this morning.”

“I did. At eight fifteen, gunmen forced their way into his house, found him, and pushed him into a carriage at the back of his house, then made off with him.”

“Do you know if he is well?”

“Not yet.”

She took that answer with a shudder, even as she heard a promise within it to save Mercer. Years ago, she had warned her father to never interfere with her friends or their families. He had agreed, although she often wondered if he had been disruptive whenever she learned of something awful happening to her friends or their families. “When will you know? How?”

“I have men who are skilled at tracking others.”

“Why would you do that? You don’t know Henry Mercer…or do you?”

“No. I have never met him.”

She heard a note of caution in his voice. “ How do you know of him? Why?”

“How? Because I have men and women who work for me who know how to investigate others.”

“That costs time and money.” She rolled a shoulder, uneasy at her next thought. “So since you do not know Mr. Mercer personally, you had your staff investigate him because…I was to marry him?”

“Aye,” he said with some remorse.

“You knew about my business deal with Mrs. Dove-Lyon?”

“I did.”

“Which also costs time and money.”

He said nothing.

She sat, astonished…and to her dismay, a bit complimented, too. “I am worth that much?”

“You are.”

“To my father, obviously, but…”

His gaze bored into her. “To me, Blanche. You are worth that much to me.”

“Why would you be interested in taking me from any man?”

He set his jaw, gazed out the window, then faced her. “I care for you.”

Her heart soared. Her guts rebelled. She scoffed at him. “Really? How wonderful.” She leaned forward. “You didn’t seem to be so caring when I told you along the river that I was to be married.”

“I thought all would go well. Mrs. Dove-Lyon runs a respectable matchmaking business. She makes mistakes sometimes, I know. Mercer was not a terrible mistake for you…”

“But not good either, eh?” Oh, he fried her reason to a crisp!

“You should have the best.”

“Do you know what that is?” And do I? “No answer? Well, tell me this. Did Mercer know who he really was to marry?” She had wondered for days about that.

He shook his head. “I have no knowledge of that.”

“Yet Blanche Delacourt was to arrive at the church,” she said with sarcasm as she admitted to herself for the first time the truth of that matter, “but only Blanche Rivers could sign the registry.”

“Aye, because that is the way your birth was initially recorded in the St. Pancras church rolls.”

“Charming,” she said with bitterness. “The poor man may have learned of my real name at the altar.”

“If not before.”

She snorted. “Was the vicar really a clergyman?”

“The one who was supposed to appear was.”

“But you are not certain about the one who did?”

“No. If you wish, I can have my men find out.”

“Ah, no. I think not. That is salt to a wound. We don’t need another travesty to add to this mess, do we?” She waggled a finger at the hamper. “Bring out that flask again. I need more.”

He poured.

She drank.

And pondered. The path her thoughts took suddenly took her away from her wedding, Mercer, and her father…to the man who sat beside her in this very plush and well-appointed coach.

“Why would I believe you?”

He pressed two fingers to his mouth and thought on that. “The scene at the church will be reported in the newspapers.”

She closed her eyes. “Wonderful. Just what I always wanted. Notoriety.”

He studied the passing scenery. “Perhaps not.”

She blew out a gust of air. “Do you always look on the bright side of things?”

“I try. So do you. Usually. Maybe this news can be tempered. Maybe no names will be listed in the papers.”

Was that possible? How? But then she recalled his men, his work. “You have many men who work for you. You, I assume, pay them well to learn such secrets. You also have connections up and down the social ladder.”

He sat silent, absorbing her words as if they were gospel, as if he wished to caress her and kiss her anger away.

She could not allow his alluring blue eyes to beguile her. Riding with him along the river had been an interlude, an escape. A brief set of moments wherein she thought she might be able to find a man whole enough, good enough, ethical enough, to marry. No, he had never flirted with her. Never intimated he was interested in her by word. Only by that kiss.

Yet after that one devastating action, she had yearned for him and what might have been if he had declared anything remotely like “I care for you.”

But he had not done any of that.

And she had gone to Mrs. Dove-Lyon. Accepted the man the lady had chosen for her, only to find herself foiled, lied to, betrayed by her own father, and now—now!—torn away from the only solution that mattered to her. And all by the one man she valued. The one she wished for. What irony!

To be free of her father, his name, his influence, his men, his hellishly criminal life, she found herself facing this man. This chivalrous mystery who “cared” for her and did extraordinary acts to prove it. “I want to know, sir, what do you do among the ton that you know so much about so very many?”

“I am not a leader in Society.”

“Yet you know many of them and much about them.”

“I will say I know of them. Some well. Others, not.”

She recalled their first conversations, in which he talked about “fixing” others’ problems.

He crossed one leg over the other, attempting to appear cool to her hot pursuit. “I make their lives easier.”

She tipped her head. Between confusion and lack of understanding, she shook her head. “How?”

“I learn what is wrong in their lives, what should occur for them, who has hurt them or intends to, and I make their problems go away.”

Her heart stopped. “You kill people?”

“Never.”

“You steal from them?”

“I help them see that they should return items they have stolen from another.”

She could not breathe, a hand to her heart. His careful wording stung her sense of right and wrong. “You arrange things. Abduct women. Bribe men.”

“No! You are the only woman I have abducted.”

“Oh, jolly thought.”

He fumed. “I arrange things. I help ladies escape from those who hurt them. I do use money to persuade certain people to act in the public’s best interest.”

He could coat with sugar what he did, couldn’t he? But the fact remained that… “You run a gang, just like my father.”

“No. I do not run a ring of criminals. I have men who are expert at following others, finding evidence, producing it so that it can be used, shall we say, to persuade people to stop their criminal activities.”

That was some salve for the open wound of her fears. “Tell me that you do not have houses of prostitution.”

“No women or children. No thieves, or smugglers. No blacklegs to break workers’ strikes. No cranksmen who rob people or shops or banks.”

“But you must know these types of people.”

“I do.”

She hooted. She shouldn’t be surprised or impressed. Yet what he said sounded benign…or, for some of his clients, beneficial. “You are a repairman.”

Her term made him frown. “I like to say I remedy improper situations.”

“Such as?”

“A man and woman who conspire to have the lady seduce government officials for information.”

“How would you… remedy that?”

“Make it public knowledge that the two are French spies.”

“So they run home in disgrace?” She rather liked that idea.

“If they can.”

Blanche throbbed with the intrigue his words conjured. She wasn’t sure yet if what he did was proper or legal, but she needed more information. “What else?”

“An East India man who bribes an MP to ease restrictions on sale of opium.”

“Because…why?”

“Opium is addictive. The member of Parliament already uses too much of it.”

“This…” She pointed at him as she searched her memory. “This I have heard of.”

Then she shrank from him. The realization of who he was flooded her. He had even told her that first day they spoke by using the word that defined him. But she hadn’t caught the implication. “You are known as the Fixer.”

He regarded her with wide, tormented eyes.

My God. A hand to her throat, she whispered, “You are Dáire O’Neill.”