Chapter Nineteen
Damian heard Scarlett’s scream as he stood at Lady Rathbone’s door, about to storm past the snooty butler when he refused to grant him entrance. His blood ran cold. Flannery was right. Why the bloody hell had he let Scarlett come alone?
“Had I been born a gentleman, I might have said excuse me.” Damian pushed the butler aside, knocking him back into the console table. “But I’m a bastard by name and nature.”
The butler straightened his periwig. “Stop, else I shall send for the night constable.” He dashed towards Damian and grabbed the sleeve of his coat.
Damian growled, and the terrified servant let go.
“Send for the damn constable,” Damian shouted as he raced along the hall as if the devil were at his heels. “Though I suspect it will be your mistress carted off to a cell.”
As Damian burst into the dining room, it took him a moment to absorb the shocking scene.
Fear rendered him frozen.
Scarlett lay sprawled on the Persian rug, pale and lifeless. Her eyes were closed, as if she had already taken her last breath, already said goodbye to the world. Blood? Thankfully, no sign of blood. Lady Rathbone loomed over the body, her mouth twisted in a wry grin. Lord Rathbone sobbed as he knelt at Scarlett’s side, his frantic hands patting her arms and chest.
The burning need to murder the one responsible saw Damian charge at the lord, grab him by the scruff of his coat and drag him backwards. “That is not how you check for a pulse.”
Damian dropped to his knees and captured Scarlett’s wrist. Trembling fingers made it impossible to feel the beat of life. He silently cursed and tried again. Coldness seeped into his bones. A cavernous emptiness consumed him to the point he struggled to breathe, too.
“T-try the base of her throat,” Lord Rathbone said in a grave tone as he came to his feet. “Sometimes the p-pulse is stronger there.”
Damian tugged at the high collar of Scarlett’s dress and pressed the pads of his fingers to the delicate skin on her neck. The weak yet rhythmical pulsing of her heartbeat tore a relieved gasp from his lips. He stared at her chest, trying to focus on the light rise and fall that confirmed she was alive and breathing.
The thought that the only person he treasured might have been taken from him, too, made him lean forward and touch his forehead to hers. A terror like nothing he had experienced before clawed at his mind, concocting horror stories of her waking with impaired memories, with a mind that no longer recalled all they had shared.
Anger surfaced then.
The devil’s fury made him jump to his feet and turn on Lord Rathbone. “What the hell did you do to her? Did she spurn your advances? Did she tell you her affections lay elsewhere?”
The lord gaped and raised his hands in surrender. He was about to speak when Lady Rathbone said sharply, “She choked on a fishbone and fainted. Now, get out of my house and let me send for a doctor.” The matron glanced over Wycliff’s shoulder to the door. “Osmond! Osmond! Throw this miscreant out.”
“A choking woman cannot scream.”
“Not that I need answer to you, but Lady Steele screamed when Percival thumped her on the back. And it’s a good job he did, for the bone might still be lodged in her throat.” She sucked in a breath. “Now, remove yourself at once. Osmond! Oh, where is the fool?”
Damian squared his shoulders. “Fear not, I am leaving and taking Lady Steele with me. Then I shall return to discuss the matter of how Christopher Rathbone repaid his debt to Jack Jewell.”
The blood drained from the matron’s face. Guilt lay in every line and crease. Her arrogance faltered for a few seconds as her eyes flicked nervously back and forth in their sockets.
“My son died four years ago, having spent more than a decade abroad.” Lady Rathbone composed herself and stared down her patrician nose. “How might he have run up debts in London when he lived in Paris?”
Few aristocratic ladies knew the name Jack Jewell let alone that he ran a gaming hell in London. “You seem remarkably informed. And Christopher Rathbone’s debt to Jack Jewell was repaid before he left for the Continent.”
“That was twenty-two years ago! Gossip is twisted to ridiculous lengths over the course of an hour let alone decades. Though I’m surprised a man of your inferior breeding would take notice of tales.”
Possessed of a desperate urge to take Scarlett to a doctor, Damian knelt down and scooped her up into his arms. “Tales? I am a man who deals in truths, not petty lies.”
“That is hard to believe knowing both your parents,” Lady Rathbone countered.
Her reply gnawed at his insides. And yet his father had never lied about his involvement with Maria Alvarez. “You are hardly one to claim the crown for bearing respectable offspring. And your point is moot. I hold proof of the transaction, a transaction that bears your son’s signature.”
Damian wasn’t entirely sure what the term cargo meant. Fear had led him to bang on Lady Rathbone’s door and demand to speak to Lady Steele. Instinct told him that the woman in his arms was the only thing of value Christopher Rathbone had to sell.
“Selling a person for money is immoral,” Damian continued, hoping to draw the truth from the matron. “Selling one’s daughter to pay a gambling debt is downright despicable. What would your friends say, Lady Rathbone, if they discovered your son had lied about his daughter’s death? The scandal would ruin your good name, tarnish your pristine reputation.”
“Be quiet, mongrel!”