Behind his spectacles, Colin opened one eye. “Shall I speak slower? Even you can understand simple words. Shut. Up.”
Elizabeth went totally still. Perhaps she was as completely baffled as Saffron, who was just realizing that they were not alone in the cab. The driver was driving, of course, but the other seat in the front was occupied, and the man had turned around in his seat to watch them.
Saffron swallowed. She recognized him from the gaming room. She nudged her friend. “Elizabeth.”
“Don’t interrupt me, Saff, I’m deciding how I want to kill this imbecile next to me.”
She jabbed her with her elbow. “Eliza.”
Elizabeth swung around to glare at Saffron, who pointed to the man watching them with a crooked grin. Elizabeth blanched, then scowled. “Damn you, Colin Smith.”
“Is my brother actually hurt,” Elizabeth said, turning back to Colin, “or was that merely a ruse?”
“Oh, no, he is definitely injured. Unfortunately, he is nowhere near a hospital.”
Her hands itched to hit him or close around his throat. “Where is he?”
“You ask so many questions, Elizabeth,” he drawled. “It makes you seem so simple. Better to hold your tongue until I want to make use of it.”
Red-hot anger flooded her, fueled by humiliation. This cad hadusedher, and in more ways than one. The suspicion had taken root while she’d dug out yet another set of files Colin had demanded the previous day, and now she’d seen his true colors, it blazed to full life.
“What does Alfie Tennison want with records about immigrants?” she demanded.
Colin’s eyes shot open, and he stared at her for a long moment before a cruel smile curled his lips. “What, brother dearest didn’t tell you? You’d think he’d crow it from the rooftops, all he’d discovered about me and my friends. He made such charming little comments about my preferred entertainments.”
“Like visiting the gaming room hidden in Le Curieux Cabaret’s back room,” Elizabeth cut him off. “You owe Alfie Tennison an exorbitant sum. That’s why you’re doing his bidding.”
Chagrin leaked through Colin’s sneer. “So Nick did tell you, then? That’s why you threw me over, I suppose. Not rich enough to bail your family out of their troubles.”
“I have no need for or interest in anything you might have offered me.”
“Oh, we both know that isn’t true.” His displeasure melted into a leer.
Elizabeth regarded him coolly. “I was passing time with you, Colin, nothing more.”
Colin placed a hand over his heart. “Oh, how that stings.”
“Of course, you decide to have a personality now,” Elizabeth grumbled, more to Saffron than Colin. Saffron gave her a worried look, angling her head toward the window. They were passing Willesden Junction. They were going out of the city, and Elizabeth was quite sure she knew where they were going.
She wished she could brazen this out, put Saff’s mind to rest, but they had no way out of this motorcar, save risking getting smashed up trying to jump from it as it sped further and further out of London.
Very well. Colin was at least talking. They could get some answers, even if he wouldn’t tell them what had happened to Nick. If anything had happened to him.
Frustration burned through her again, this time at herself. She was furious with Nick, and had told him she’d never speak to him again, yet the moment Colin had said he’d been hurt, everything had fled from her mind.
To make matters worse, Colin—Colin—was one of the villains in this drama. He’d not only tricked her into believing he was a respectable man but had apparently known her so well as to know the perfect way to trap her.
“What exactly are you doing, taking Saffron and me?” Elizabeth asked him. “You know we haven’t any money, and neither does my family. You’ll get nothing out of either of our families.”
“Don’t think so little of yourself, my dear. Besides,youare not the hostage.”
“Who is?” Saffron asked.
Colin smiled banally. “You’ll find out, soon enough. No use getting upset over it now.” He closed his eyes again.
Elizabeth turned her questions to the fellow in the front. “You, there. What is your part in all this? Certainly, they didn’t invite you along to brighten the place up.”
He was a great brute of a man, with enough dark hair to make it hard to distinguish him from a gorilla. He frowned, bringing his heavy brow low. “No need to be insultin’.”
