“Back home, to the Midlands.” Matthew removed his spectacles and set to wiping the lenses with his napkin.
“All is well with your family, I pray?” Hudgill asked.
“Oh yes. It was just a quick visit, obligatory sort of thing.”
“Obligatory?” the Scot pressed.
Matthew frowned. He didn’t wish to speak of this to anyone, certainly not to the motley crew of Transom Club members who took their evening meal at such a late hour.
“A poor trip, was it?” Mordaunt chimed in, loath to be left out if bad news was to be had.
Matthew drew a breath, then smiled. “No, not at all. Just uneventful.”
Suddenly he recalled the look Lady Caplin had given him in front of the hotel, just outside of Euston Station. He felt the back of his neck prickle.
“Uneventful, he says,” Mordaunt chortled. “Look at him, he’s about to go as red as a beetroot.”
Matthew shoved the last bite of sparling into his mouth. He’d made a mistake coming here, thinking a convivial atmosphere might put him in better spirits. No, he needed to go, to someplace where he could be in control, someplace he could feel a different person altogether. Someone brutal and unshakable.
It’d been ages since Matthew had allowed himself any sort of excitement.
He left his holdall with the hall porter, with instructions to send it along to his house. Unfortunately, Pantler was on duty, yawning into the back of his hand, so Matthew resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn’t see his effects until the following evening.
With a silent apology to Aunt Albertine, who’d done her best to set him on the moral and righteous path, Matthew set off into the dark with one goal in mind: to find a beastly low house and make a killing. For a moment he wondered if, after the misery of the morning and the agony of the afternoon, he wasn’t in the right state of mind for it. But he quickly quashed the notion. Already he had begun to feel lighter. Anticipation skittered across his skin as he walked briskly eastward.
Soon the streets grew even darker, the miasma fouler. A woman called to him from a street corner, her language blue and her tone ribald. A couple of dark figures emerged from a doorway several paces ahead, then quickly retreated as he approached, abandoning any thoughts of jiggery-pokery when Matthew’s brawn became apparent. This was another city entirely, nothing like the pristine buildings of St. James’s Square. Hell, even the middling Transom Club and its members occupied a London worlds apart from here.
The last gambling house he’d plundered a couple months prior appeared to be shuttered; the windows were dark and the door shut tight, the sign proclaiming pie and mash indicating nothing but an honest business.
No matter; he had all night. Matthew flexed his hand, his palms itching for a game. He continued on.
Finally, several blocks farther ahead, he found what he was looking for.
As with the previous business, there was no outward hint of gambling; in fact, it seemed the last thing they’d know anything about.Charles Sharples, Chops and Steaks at the Ready, the sign and windows proclaimed. However, this dodgy butcher was fraudulent to its core.
For what butcher kept such hours? The door was flung open, the low light from within spilling out into the street along with the spindly, dancing shadows of the men who milled about before it.
This was not a butcher, but a spieler. A small gambling club catering to—and preying upon—the lower classes. And Matthew, when the fancy struck. There was something thrilling about these low houses, with the threat of the Met crashing in and taking the lot of them into custody hanging over every moment.
It made him feel alive, gaming in these types of places. He could feel his heart pounding; his veins pulsed with excitement.
How easily he’d fallen into a lonely routine upon his return from the war. The past twenty years had eroded him, leaving behind a nameless, mild-mannered doctor in spectacles. Not the Matthew Collier who had been orphaned and thrust into the care of two cold and elderly relatives, desperate for a kind word and a gentle hand, who had grown into a young man bursting with curiosity and desperate for adventure, for life beyond the gray, barren streets of Wolverhampton.
That version of Matthew had joined up as a surgeon, which gave him his fill of adventure, danger, and death. After going through that, life as a mild-mannered physician had seemed awfully appealing.
But every now and then, there were nights like this, when he needed to forget who he’d become, and recall who he’d once wished to be.
Nights when he wanted to grasp Harriet by the arms and fervently kiss her all over… but while before he wouldn’t dare, now he knew for sure he would never.
And so he sought out trouble of this kind, the illegal kind.
The gaming kind.
Chapter Three
Inside the front doorwas a long counter in front of walls of empty shelves. No sign of any meats or provisions, no scent beyond a general unpleasant odor. No people beyond those lingering at the front. But behind the counter, another door stood ajar.
Matthew headed for it.
