“You cannot threaten me,” the man hissed.
“Oh, I don’t intend to,” Mason assured him confidently. That was when he smiled. It was the smile of a wolf humoring a rabbit who believed it was a fox.
Mr. Reed, for all his bravado, had taken one visible step backward, and Mason found that encouraging. Fear, after all, was a far more effective deterrent than money.
He folded his hands behind his back and spoke in a voice so calm, it could have been mistaken for indifference. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Reed?”
Reed blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“It is not a difficult question,” Mason shrugged. “You asked me for a thousand pounds. I assume that is not your annual income. So, I wonder… how do you normally feed yourself? Do you work? Or do you simply peddle gossip to the highest bidder and hope no one ever takes the time to look at your own accounts?”
The man opened his mouth, but Mason did not wait for a response.
“Allow me to help you. You’ve spent time in Yorkshire these past three years. The reason? The failed mill venture. A questionable associate named Parsons—who is, rather inconveniently for you, currently awaiting trial in York on charges of fraud and misappropriation. I assume your name is not yet attached to that particular mess though I imagine it would not be difficult to change that.”
Reed paled.
“And your wife,” he said, almost conversationally. “Anne, wasn’t it? You married her young. Some would say too young. She is fond of lilacs. She writes letters to her sister on Mondays. Mary, I believe. Rather sweet, clever girl. I wonder if she knows about the woman in Lambeth.”
Reed went completely still.
Mason bared his teeth, but it was not a smile. “No, of course, she doesn’t. It would be difficult for a woman to hold onto her domestic optimism when she learns her husband has beenkeeping a mistress above a gin shop and paying her rent with money he’s not supposed to have.”
“You… how on earth do you know?—”
“I knoweverythingI care to know,” Mason said coldly. “You thought you were holding a secret over me, and perhaps you are. But if so much as a whisper of that secret ever reaches the public, if so much as a hint finds its way into the society columns, I will personally make it my business to ensure your entire life collapses in upon itself like a poorly built chimney.”
He stepped closer still until they were only inches apart.
“You will lose your wife,” he said. “You will lose your income. Your friends, few though they may be, will turn on you. I will have no need to lift a sword. Your own disgrace will do the cutting for me.”
Reed’s lips trembled.
“And make no mistake,” Mason added quietly, “there isnowherein the Commonwealth of Great Britain you could hide where I would not find you. And there are a few places outside of it I could reach faster than your breath could finish turning to frost.”
The man looked utterly ruined. His jaw opened once, then again, like a man trying to speak with no air left in his lungs.
“I… I didn’t mean—” he stammered.
“Of course you didn’t,” Mason agreed. “You meant to be clever. You meant to make an easy sum. You thought I would pay you and tremble. You were wrong.”
“I’m sorry… truly… I beg your pardon, Your Grace… I—I won’t say a word, please?—”
Mason did not move.
“Go,” he said.
Reed didn’t need to be told twice. He backed out of the room like a man leaving a chapel after desecrating it and then turned and bolted down the corridor like the rabbit that he was. The door shut behind him with a satisfying click.
Mason exhaled slowly. Then, as if nothing had happened at all, he turned back to his desk, brushed an invisible speck from the corner of a book, and allowed himself the smallest breath of stillness.
He hated threats. He hated what they required of him. But protecting what mattered, what must be kept safe at all cost, demanded a certain kind of ruthlessness, and he would wield it without hesitation.
Mason raked a hand through his hair and turned from the writing table. His shoulders ached. His thoughts were like caged hounds, restless and circling. He ought to go for a ride.Yes.The fresh air, the sharp rhythm of hooves on frost-hardened ground… these things brought clarity.
He crossed the room in a few strides, shrugging on his coat with mechanical precision. But just as his hand touched the door, a sound floated to him again, the sort of a sound his home had rarely heard since the incident.
Feminine laughter.
