He took a last drink before setting the bottle to the side.
Ellie was right about a few things; he did know more about her than she would ever know about him. She didn’t know—and would never have an inkling—that Dorian’s spies had alerted him to Sterling meeting with gentry. That alone had piqued his interest.
Discreet inquiries had given him a full dossier on the Langfords, Evelina’s relatives. The uncle, Patrick, was a solicitor with a failing practice, the only thing keeping his family afloat was the stock he’d invested in merchandise ships.
His wife, Constance, had come from a decent stock, but as the younger sister to Peregrine Frampton, Ellie’s father, she had left the house with her dowry.
The problem was, she’d been brought up needing nothing, and though she had married into money and status, she had only found herself just above the line of the lower class. Her aunt was a bitter one, especially since her brother had grown wealthy while she’d married into barely-there.
But Evelina did not know about her relatives’ resentments, and he did not want to tell her about it—not yet.
Rising from his perch, Dorian barely managed to kick his boots off, change his pants, and, after donning a loose trouser, got back into bed. The moment his head hit the pillow, he was dead to the world.
The hard bangs on the door had Dorian ready to shout a line of curses that would make a sailor blush. It was then that he realized the banging was coming from the front door of the house and not his inner door.
Pausing for a moment to rinse his mouth out, he pressed his fingertips into his skull, hoping the pressure would counteract the pounding from within—it did not. Nor did swallowing multiple times offset the sour feeling in the pit of his throat.
Throwing on a robe, he padded barefoot to the door and yanked the door in—only to stop short.
Sterling and two of his footmen were on his doorstep. Garbed in an impeccable suit of charcoal superfine and with a patterned brown waistcoat, he looked like the poisonous adder he truly was.
“Carrington,” he greeted, wincing at the sunlight jabbing knives into his pupils. “What are you doing here?”
“I was just visiting the Langfords, as we are all at a loss how their niece can vanish into thin air,” Carrington said.
Dorian’s brow ticked up while he stifled his irritation. “Is that all, or did you hear whispers about a dust-up in Whitechapel?”
“That too,” Sterling replied. “May we come in?”
“No,” Dorian cut in. “I am not in the mood to have company or entertain. We can talk later tonight if you want to come by the club.”
“I know what you are doing, Beaumont,” Sterling muttered.
“And what the bloody blazes do you think that is,” Dorian argued.
“Aside from the fact that you are avoiding me—”
His temper surged. “I got shot last night and I came home to drink my pain away in a bottle of brandy. The damn sun is turning my eye into hotplates and my brain into porridge.”
“You’re trying to unseat me, and if you were anyone else other than my protégé, I would have applauded you in moving up the ladder,” Sterling said calmly, but Dorian heard the sharp steel behind his words. “But this is treason in my book.”
“Business competition is hardly treason,” Dorian replied with equal equanimity.
“I gave you the rulebook for overthrowing giants,” Sterling snapped back.
“I rewrote your damned rules,” Dorian finished, “Now, if you will exc—”
Sterling’s eyes flickered over Dorian’s shoulder just as he heard hurried footsteps dashing away from the front room. Fear flared up his spine.
“You have a lady friend,” Sterling’s gaze shifted back to Dorian. “You forgot to mention that.”
“Do you name the whores you sleep with?” Dorian lied smoothly. His heart lurched as Evelina was the furthest thing from a whore, but he had to shift Sterling’s mind away from her. “But back to the matter at hand. Even lions know when it is time to quietly retire to the pasture.”
“This lion is not going anywhere,” Sterling snarled.
His throbbing head couldn’t take this; Dorian replied, “Suit yourself. Are you done here?”
“I’d still like to come in,” Sterling nodded. “Maybe we can share your lady friend.”
