Notorious Pleasures (Maiden Lane #2)(30)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

Well, Prince Eastsun looked at Prince Westmoon, and Prince Westmoon looked at Prince Northwind, and then all three princes hurried from the room.

But when the stable master heard the question, he merely smiled to himself….

—from Queen Ravenhair

Hero couldn’t believe it, but the evidence was right before her eyes—and nose. The great warehouse held huge copper barrels set over smoldering fires, and the air smelled of alcohol and juniper berries. This was a gin distillery—most probably an illegal one.

And Reading wasn’t at all perturbed to be found out.

“What is going on? Was that a dead man I saw in the courtyard?” She looked at him, waiting for an explanation, but he turned his back on her.

Actually, it was the large, burly man by his side who seemed the most embarrassed. “M’lord, the lady—”

“The lady can wait,” Reading said quite clearly.

Hero felt her face heat. Never had she been so cavalierly dismissed. And to think she’d let this cad kiss her just last night!

She swiveled to leave the awful building, but suddenly he was there beside her, his hard hands holding her arms.

“Let me go,” she hissed through gritted teeth.

His face held absolutely no compassion. “I have business here. When I am done, I’ll escort you home—”

She wrenched her arms free and turned.

“Hero,” he said quietly, then louder to someone else, “See that her carriage doesn’t leave without me.”

“M’lord.” Two men darted past her and out the door, no doubt to help keep her prisoner while Reading did his disreputable “business.” She continued sedately to her carriage—she’d not let him see her in a hysterical flurry. Once outside the wall and at her carriage, she ignored Reading’s guards and climbed in.

Her wait was short, but even so, she was not in the best of spirits when the carriage rocked and Reading climbed inside. He knocked on the roof and then sat down, gazing out the window. They rolled along for a few minutes until Hero couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Aren’t you going to tell me what that was about?”

“I wasn’t planning to,” he drawled—expressly, she was sure, to enrage her.

“That was a distillery.”

“Yes, it was.”

“For gin.”

“Indeed.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, feeling anger pounding in her breast. She was perilously close to losing her facade—again. Hero fought to control her voice, but even so the words seemed to scrape against her throat. “Do you have any idea the amount and depth of misery that gin brings to the people who live here in St. Giles?”

He was silent.

She leaned forward and slapped him on the knee. “Do you? Is this some kind of lark for you?”

He sighed and turned toward her finally, and she was shocked to see the exhaustion lining his face. “No, not a lark.”

Tears bit at the corner of her eyes, and she found to her horror that her voice trembled. “Haven’t you seen the babies starving while their mothers drink gin? Haven’t you stumbled over the bodies of broken men, mere skeletons from drink? My God, haven’t you wept at the corruption that drink brings?”

He closed his eyes.

“I have.” She bit her lip, struggled to control her emotions, to control herself. Reading wasn’t stupid. There must be some reason for his madness. “Explain it to me. Why? Why would you dabble in such a filthy trade?”

“That ‘filthy trade’ saved the Mandeville fortunes, my Lady Perfect.”

She shook her head sharply. “I don’t understand. I’ve never heard that the Mandeville fortune needed saving.”

His mouth twisted wryly. “Thank you. That means I did my job well.”

“Explain.”

“You know my father died some ten years ago?”

“Yes.” She remembered the conversation she’d had with Cousin Bathilda on her engagement night. “You immediately left Cambridge to go carouse about the town.”

His smile was genuine this time. “Yes, well, that tale was more palatable than the truth.”

“Which was?”

“Our pockets were to let. Yes”—he nodded at her incredulous expression—“my father had managed to lose the family fortune with a series of investments that were ill advised at best. I had no idea of the family’s finances. As I was the second son, Father and Thomas considered it none of my business. So when Mater told me at the funeral the straits we were in, you could’ve knocked me down with a feather.”

“And you left school to manage the family’s finances?” Hero asked skeptically.

He spread his hands and inclined his head.

“But why you? Wasn’t it Thomas’s job to find a financial manager?”

“One”—he ticked off his point on a long finger—“we couldn’t afford a financial manager, and two, Thomas’s head for money is about the same as our dear, late father’s. He spent the last of what we had in the week after Father died.”

“And money is the one thing you’re good at,” Hero said slowly. “That’s what you told me when you offered me a loan. When it comes to financial dealings, you can be relied on.” Did he think that was the only thing he could be relied upon to do correctly?

Griffin nodded. “Thank God my mother caught wind of what Thomas was doing. She had a small inheritance of her own that she’d kept hidden from Father. We lived for the first year or so on that bit of pin money until my distillery started bringing in money.”

That reminder snapped her attention back to her original concern. “But… gin distilling? Why that of all things?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You have to understand. I came home from university to my mother near prostrate with grief and worry, half the family furnishings sold to pay my father’s debts, bill collectors calling at all hours, and Thomas nattering on about how fine a new carriage with gilt trim would be. It was autumn and all I had was a rotten harvest of grain, mostly spoiled with damp. I could’ve sold it to a broker who would’ve then sold it again to a gin distiller, but I thought, wait a minute, why lose most of the profit? I bought a secondhand still and paid the old rascal I’d bought it from extra to show me how to use it.”

He sat back on the carriage seat and shrugged. “Two years later, we were able to afford Caro’s season.”