“Too many people started requesting services. I couldn’t keep up and didn’t trust others enough to bring them into the fold. So I keep to a referral basis. The whole thing works better in secret, just under the eyes of the watchful.”
“How did you know Rockwood had referred me?”
“Each card is different. Subtle differences, but that is the best way to avoid forgery and to verify the identity of the sender.”
“You enjoy it too, the intrigue, the suspense.”
He smiled faintly. “I do.”
“What will you do when you want to retire?”
“I’ll turn it over to Jeremy.” He hesitated. “Or one of Jeremy’s children, should he have any.”
“What about your own children?”
“Jeremy seems more inclined to marry, doesn’t he?” Gabriel rolled over so he was looking down at her.
“I suppose that is true.”
He reached into her hair, tipping her head back on the pillow, pressing a kiss at her throat. “Is that all you wanted to know, Marietta?”
She wanted to know everything. It was hard to imagine the man ever being taken advantage of. She hadn’t known the boy. That he wasn’t interested in marriage was no surprise, so why did she feel a pit in her heart?
Her fingers curled into the coverlet as he rained kisses down her neck. “I want to—I want to know what happened…before?”
He leaned back against the pillows, tugging her over so her cheek pressed to his chest, her eyes facing away from his. His chest rose, fell and rose again. “What do you want to know?”
“How did they—how did they get you involved?”
His finger moved in an agitated pattern along her hip. “The attention was flattering at first. I thought Lady Dentry had the softest cloud of blond hair. A diamond of the first water.”
Marietta focused on her mousy brown hair. Vines of moss across his chest.
“I had some experience with women, though having the house butler as a father limited interaction. The maids were all willing, always batting their eyes, but father was strict and didn’t condone relationships beneath the stairs.” His tone changed. “There was nothing he could do abovestairs, of course.”
She moved her cheek along his chest.
His fingers continued their tattoo of her hip. “Lady Dentry started her venture in the same way I later did, I suppose. With a smile. She started with willing villagers, visiting men. But revenge, power, and control are hardly to be found with the willing.” The tattoo became frenzied and his fingers withdrew to the coverlet.
“Willing conquests became subservient men, and offered no challenge. But Lady Dentry realized her key one day with a young boy who wanted to marry a village girl so badly that he rebuffed her advance. She had to have him. She broke him, broke the girl, and moved on, salacious in her new quest. She wanted strong boys, ones who didn’t have a choice in the situation in which she placed them, just like she didn’t have a choice in her marriage. Under her complete power, the more subjugated and unhappy, the better.”
She rubbed her cheek along his chest.
“She enlisted a few other women with similar interests, vain or vicious women, and formed a little club.”
“And then you…”
His chest surged beneath her cheek a few times. “I wasn’t the first.” The clock ticked in the background, the only sound in the room for thirty ticks.
“But my fate was sealed the day I denied her, though she later said she would have kept me regardless. Jeremy visited for a week. Staying for a sennight while Mother went to town to visit friends. I saw the way Lady Dentry looked at him—only eight at the time—and then back to me. Predatory and all too sure. I knew at that moment that I’d never have anything to do with her after she looked at my brother that way.” He laughed, an ugly laugh. “Naive. As soon as my father was out of the picture, traveling with Lord Dentry to his various estates, she made a…deal…with me.”
“Deal?”
“Blackmail.”
She didn’t say anything else, waiting for him to continue instead of continuing to prod.
“Jeremy was safe. That is what mattered. Still is.”
