Catherine fought to keep her head steady, when it kept lolling to the side. “I didn’t owe you my body.”

“You thought you were too good for that. You wanted to avoid my downfall. You wanted a choice.” Althea paused, as if waiting for confirmation. When none was forthcoming, she continued with soft vehemence. “But why should you have one when I didn’t? My own mother came to my bedroom one night. She said she’d brought a nice gentleman to help tuck me in. But first he was going to show me some new games. After that night, there was no innocent part of me left. I was twelve.”

Another long inhalation through the hookah, another dizzying puff of smoke. There was no way for Catherine to avoid breathing in more. The room seemed to sway gently, as Catherine had imagined the deck of a ship would rock at sea. She floated on the waves, buoyant, listening to Althea’s seething. And she felt a stirring of sympathy, but like the rest of her emotions, it remained deep under the surface, drowning.

“I thought of running away,” Althea said. “I asked my brother—your father—to help me. He lived with us then, coming and going as he pleased. Using the whores for free any time he wanted, and they didn’t dare complain to Mother. ‘I need just a little money,’ I told him. ‘I’ll go far away to the country.’ But he went to Mother and told her what I’d asked. I wasn’t let out of the house for months afterward.”

From what little Catherine remembered of her father, a brusque and pitiless individual, this story was easy to believe. But she found herself asking distantly, “Why didn’t he help you?”

“My brother liked the situation as it was—he had the best of everything without lifting a finger. Mother gave him whatever he wanted. And the selfish pig didn’t mind sacrificing me to keep himself comfortable. He was a man, you see.” She paused. “So I became a whore. And for years I prayed for rescue. But God doesn’t hear the prayers of women. He cares only for those He made in His own image.”

Befuddled and squinting, Catherine labored to keep her thoughts in order. “Aunt,” she said carefully, “why did you bring me here? If that was done to you … why must it be done to me?”

“Why should you escape when I couldn’t? I want you to become me. Just as I became Mother.”

Yes … this was one of Catherine’s fears, the worst one. That if she were put in the wrong situation, the wickedness in her own nature would take over all the rest.

Except … it wouldn’t.

Catherine’s foggy brain seized on the idea and turned it over, examining it. The past was not the future. “I’m not like you,” she said slowly. “Won’t ever be. I grieve for what was done to you, Aunt. But I didn’t make the same choice.”

“I have a choice for you now.”

Despite Catherine’s opiated detachment, Althea’s caressing tone made her flesh creep.

“You will either make good on that long-ago arrangement with Lord Latimer,” Althea continued, “or you will service customers in the brothel, as I did. Which shall it be?”

Catherine refused to choose. “Doesn’t matter what you do,” she said, drugged but intractable. “Nothing will change who I am.”

“And who are you?” Althea’s voice dripped with contempt. “A decent woman? Too good for the likes of this place?”

Catherine’s head became too heavy for her to hold up any longer. She lowered herself to the settee, resting her head on the arm. “A woman who is loved.”

It was the worst, most hurtful answer she could have given Althea. And it was the truth.

Unable to open her eyes, Catherine was aware of a bustling movement nearby, of Althea’s tentaclelike grip on her face, of the leather hose from the hookah shoved between her lips. Her nose was pinched shut, and she breathed in helplessly. A flood of cool, pungent smoke entered her lungs. She coughed, and was forced to draw it in again, and then she wilted into a placid and near-insensible heap.

“Take her upstairs, William,” Althea said. “To her old bedroom. Later we’ll move her to the brothel.”

“Yes, ma’am.” William gathered Catherine up carefully. “Ma’am … may I undo her wrists?”

Althea shrugged. “She certainly won’t go anywhere under her own power.”

William carried Catherine upstairs, settled her on the small, musty bed of her old room, and untied her hands. He arranged her arms with her hands touching at her middle, in the position of a body in a casket. “Sorry, miss,” he murmured, looking into her half-open, unseeing eyes. “She’s all I ’ave. I ’as to do what she says.”

Chapter Thirty

Guy, Lord Latimer, lived in a newer section of London on the west side, with a picturesque and peaceful common, and a row of stucco-fronted houses built in a deeply wooded hollow. Leo had visited the house on more than one occasion, several years earlier. Although the street and the house were neatly kept, the place was littered with distasteful memories that would have made an East End slum look like a rectory by comparison.

Dismounting from his horse before it had even halted, Leo raced up to the front door and pounded on it with his fists. All his thoughts had diverted into parallel currents, one occupied with the anguished desperation to find Catherine before harm could come to her. Or, if something already had befallen her—please, God, no—how to make her well again.

The other current was directed toward the one goal of turning Latimer into butcher’s refuse.

There was no sign of Harry yet—Leo was certain that he was not far behind, but Leo had no inclination to wait for him.

A perturbed-looking butler opened the door, and Leo shouldered his way in. “Sir—”

“Where is your master?” Leo asked brusquely.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but he is not—” The butler broke off with an astonished yelp as Leo grabbed him by the coat and shoved him against the nearest wall. “Good God. Sir, I beg you—”

“Tell me where he is.”

“The … the library … but he’s not well…”

Leo’s lips curled in an evil smile. “I have just the cure for him.”

A footman came into the hall, and the butler began to sputter for help, but Leo had already released him. In a matter of seconds he had reached the library. It was dark and overheated, an unseasonably large fire blazing in the hearth. Latimer was slumped in a chair, his chin on his chest, a half-empty bottle in one hand. With his bloated face lit by tongues of yellow and red flame, he looked like a damned soul. His incurious gaze lifted to the harsh contours of Leo’s face, and Leo saw from his difficulty in focusing that he was sow-drunk. Too bloody drunk to see a hole in a ladder. It would have taken hours of steady imbibing to arrive at this state.

The realization filled Leo with furious despair. Because the one thing worse than finding Catherine with Latimer was not finding her there. He leaped on the bastard, clenched his hands around Latimer’s thick, clammy throat, and hauled him to a standing position. The bottle dropped to the floor. Latimer’s eyes bulged, and he choked and spat as he tried to pry Leo’s hands free.

“Where is she?” Leo demanded, giving him a hard shake. “What have you done with Catherine Marks?” He loosened his bruising grip just enough to allow Latimer to speak.

The bastard coughed and wheezed, and stared at him incredulously. “Sodding lunatic! What the bloody hell are you talking about?”

“She’s disappeared.”

“And you think I have her?” Latimer let out a disbelieving bark of laughter.

“Convince me that you don’t,” Leo said, clenching his neck more tightly, “and I may let you live.”

Latimer’s bloated face turned dark. “I have no use for that woman, or any other harlot, because of the … the stew you’ve put me in! You are tearing my life apart! Investigations, questions from Bow Street … allies threatening to turn on me. D’ you know how many enemies you’re making?”

“Not nearly as many as you.”

Latimer writhed in his merciless grasp. “They want me dead, damn you.”

“What a coincidence,” Leo said through clenched teeth. “So do I.”

“What has become of you?” Latimer demanded. “She’s only a woman. ”

“If anything happens to her, I’ll have nothing left to lose. And if I don’t find her within the next hour, you’ll pay with your life.”

Something in his tone caused Latimer’s eyes to widen in panic. “I have nothing to do with it.”

“Tell me, or I’ll garrot you until you swell up like a toad.”

“Ramsay.” Harry Rutledge’s voice sliced through the air like a sword.

“He says she’s not here,” Leo muttered, not taking his gaze from Latimer.

A few metallic clicks, and then Harry placed the muzzle of a flintlock in the center of Latimer’s forehead. “Let go of him, Ramsay.”

Leo complied.

Latimer made an incoherent sound in the sepulchral quiet of the room. His gaze locked with Harry’s.

“Remember me?” Harry asked softly. “I should have done this eight years ago.”

It appeared that Harry’s ice-cold eyes frightened Latimer even more than Leo’s murderous ones. “Please,” Latimer whispered, his mouth shaking.

“Give me information about my sister’s whereabouts in the next five seconds, or I’ll put a hole in your head. Five.”

“I don’t know anything,” Latimer pleaded.

“Four.”

“I swear it on my life!” Tears sprang from his eyes.

“Three. Two.”

“Please, I’ll do anything!”

Harry hesitated, giving him an assessing stare. He read the truth in his eyes. “Damn it,” he said softly, and lowered the pistol. He looked at Leo, while Latimer collapsed in a sobbing drunken heap on the floor. “He doesn’t have her.”

They exchanged a quick, bleak glance. It was the first time Leo had ever felt a kinship with Harry, sharing this moment of despair over the same woman.

“Who else would want her?” Leo muttered. “There’s no one with a connection to her past … except the aunt.” He paused. “The night of the play, Cat happened to see a man who worked at the brothel. William. She knew him as a child.”

“The brothel is in Marylebone,” Harry said abruptly, heading for the door. He motioned for Leo to follow.

“Why would the aunt have taken Cat?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps she’s finally gone mad.”

The brothel was sagging and flat-breasted, with trim that had chipped and been painted a thousand times until someone had finally decided the effort was no longer worth it. The windows were soot-darkened, the front door askew like a lascivious half-smile. The house next door was far smaller, stoop-shouldered, a maltreated child standing next to its promiscuous older sister.

It was often the arrangement that when a brothel was a family business, the owners lived in a separate dwelling. Leo recognized the house from Catherine’s description. This was where she had lived as a naïve young girl, unaware that her future had already been stolen from her.

They rode through a cross-street to a fetid alley behind the brothel, a crumbling mews with tilting sides, one of many in the labyrinth of nooks and tiny streets concealed behind the main thoroughfare.

Two men lounged in the doorway of the larger building, the brothel, one of them possessing a massive physical stature that distinguished him as the Bully of the house. In the world of prostitution, the office of Bully was to keep order at a brothel and settle disputes between whores and clients. The other man was small and slight, a hawker of some manner, with a pocketed apron knotted around his waist and a small covered handchaise at the side of the alley.

Noting the attention the visitors paid to the back entrance of the brothel, the Bully spoke in an affable tone. “Sporting ladies aren’t working yet, guvnahs, you ’as to come back at nightfall.”

Leo summoned all his will to keep his tone pleasant as he spoke to the strongman. “I have business with the mistress of the house.”

“She won’t see you, I ’spect … but you can ask Willy.” The Bully gestured toward the dilapidated house with a meaty hand, his manner relaxed, his eyes sharp.

Leo and Harry went to the dilapidated entrance of the smaller house. A cluster of nail holes was all that remained of a long-gone door knocker. Leo struck the door with his knuckles in a controlled hammer, when he longed to kick it down with the full force of his impatience.

In a moment, the door creaked open, and Leo was faced with the pale and undernourished countenance of William. The young man’s eyes dilated in alarm as he recognized Leo. Had there been any color to his complexion, it would have leached out at once. He tried to close the door again, but Leo shouldered his way forward.

Grabbing William’s wrist, Leo forced it upward and surveyed the bloodstained bandage on his hand. Blood on the bed … the thought of what this man might have done to Cat ignited a rage so violent that it obliterated every other awareness. He stopped thinking altogether. A minute later, he found himself on the floor, straddling William’s body and battering him mercilessly. He was dimly aware of Harry shouting his name and endeavoring to pull him off.

Alerted by the fracas, the Bully stormed through the doorway and launched at him. Leo flipped the heavier, larger man over his head, causing his body to slam to the floor with an impetus that shook the house to its frame. The Bully lurched to his feet, and his fists, the size of Sunday roasts, whipped through the air with bone-crushing force. Leo leaped back, raising his guard, then jabbed forward with his right. The Bully blocked him easily. Leo, however, did not fight according to the London Prize Ring rules. He followed with a side kick to the kneecap. As the Bully bent over with a grunt of pain, Leo delivered a fouetté, or whip kick, to the head. The Bully toppled to the floor, right at Harry’s feet.

Reflecting that his brother-in-law was one of the dirtier fighters he’d ever seen, Harry gave him a short nod and headed into the empty receiving room.

The house was eerily vacant, quiet except for Leo’s and Harry’s shouts as they searched for Catherine. The place reeked of opium smoke, the windows filmed with such thick grime that curtains were entirely unnecessary. Every room was shrouded in filth. Dust upon dust. Corners clotted with webs, carpets blossomed with stains, wood floors scarred and buckled.