"He was beating my mother, she was bleeding, and I was terrified. I tried to scream at him to stop, but he wouldn't listen."
"What did you do?" Dread and anxiety filled his voice.
"My...my mother fell to the floor, and she wasn't breathing, so I took a vase from a nearby table and broke it over his head."
Obadiah fell silent. When he finally spoke, he whispered low. "How did you escape?"
"Captain El." Those were the only words she could bear to whisper back to the man who'd tried to keep her safe ever since. He deserved to know the truth before Ormonde's hired footpads finally succeeded in killing her, or her aristocratic nemesis made sure she met her fate at Old Bailey.
Obadiah's arms were like iron bands wrapped in warm fur when he forced her away from her spy post. She struggled at first but then accompanied him docilely until they were several streets away from the Marquess's town estate. "What are doing?" She bit out.
"I'm saving you from yourself. The men who attacked you may have had nothing to do with the Marquess."
"How do you know?" She wrenched out of his grip and glared at him.
"I'm not supposed to tell anyone, but I suppose I'll have to make an exception." His dark eyes blazed with worry. "I can't let anything happen to you."
"I'm not your responsibility anymore," she argued and tried to walk away.
He pulled her back and leaned down close to her ear. "Someone is blackmailing the earl, and the nameless bastard has vowed to prey upon you and all the earl's other mistresses on Grosvenor Street unless Framlingwood pays him what he wants."
Adrienne jerked away from his grip and gave him a defiant glare. "Do you think I'm afraid of this mealy-mouthed blackmailer who's afraid to show his face?"
He said nothing, but turned his glance behind them to make sure they weren't being followed.
"Wait a minute." She pulled at his tight footman's jacket to force him to face her again. "How do you know the earl has other women?"
He gave her an exaggerated eye roll. "Please. Give me a little credit for intelligence. I've been watching your little group of Grosvenor Street regulars for days. What the Earl of Framlingwood doesn't know about your coven of connivers could fill a book."
"Are you going to tell on us?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On what you're prepared to give in exchange for my silence."
It was Adrienne's turn to give him an exasperated eye roll.
5
5 SEPTEMBER, 1826
ST. JAMES SQUARE TOWNHOUSE
Lady Camilla's Drawing Room
Derek, normally confident and comfortable in his own skin as the Earl of Framlingwood, now tried to shrivel back into the chair cushions. He was in the midst of a tongue-lashing from Aunt Camilla so severe, he feared to utter a word in his own defense.
"You must stop living in the past and grow up. It's long past time you quit simpering around town with one vapid diamond after another on your arm, season after season."
When she took a deep breath, he feared the verbal beating would go on endlessly. He was never so happy to see a butler intrude into a conversation in his life when after a brief tap at the door, Lady Camilla's eternally fit butler Raines appeared in the doorway and announced the arrival of Lady Honoria Atherton.
She swept into the sitting room, pushing past Raines who deftly stepped out of her way, and conveyed her considerably pregnant person to the comfortably cushioned chair where Derek now struggled to shrink away from the fury of Lady Camilla, C.B.'s cantankerous aunt.
"I require your chair," Honoria insisted without preamble. "Get out." She pointed toward a hard-backed settee against the wall. As soon as Derek hastily vacated the chair he'd been using as a refuge from Aunt Camilla's punishing lecture, a footman rushed to Lady Honoria's side with a small footstool.
With a deep sigh, she sank into the chair and raised her feet onto the stool. "Continue the inquisition, Aunt Camilla, if you please," she ordered, whilst at the same time giving the footman an imperious wave. "I'm famished. Please bring three of everything from that tea tray...and, ooh, have Cook make some of her cinnamon-infused cocoa for me."
