Chapter 98

"What do you mean she 'ain't' here?" Kendall demanded. "Where the hell is she, then? Well?"
Having descended from his carriage, presently being hammered by rain worse than the forty days and night's worth that had troubled Noah, and having battered for what seemed an eternity on this lantern-jawed harridan's door, 'ain't here' were not words Kendall had any desire whatsoever to hear. Mrs. Hanney folded her skinny arms across her scraggy breast.
"And I should know? It might be Timbuktu. It might be the North Pole. Ireland, where the leprechauns live."
Irritation swelled his veins, matching the water swelling around his best leather boots. Whatever accent that was-Birmingham, Liverpool-he recognized the tones.
Splendor might be upstairs for that matter, or lurking behind the door, she might be in hiding behind him, standing to his left, or his right, but nothing was going to be revealed unless he forked over thecontents of his wallet-in their entirety.
Why the hell should he? What was the blazes was it to him where she was right now? Especially when his boots were letting in? Probably because she'd blasted one and ruined it. His best boots at that.
"I asked you a question." He wasn't going without saying his piece though.
"And I answered it far as I know."
"Well, think, won't you?" he growled. In fact, he all but blasted her into the wall.
"I'd like to. But all this water coming down, getting in the old gray matter, does for a poor, humble woman's brain. See, I try, like you say, but it's gone clean away. Her brother now? Oh, what is his name again? Let me think? Bartholomew? Ernest? Or was it ..? Wait a minute, it will come. George?"
He swallowed the grimace. The damnable harridan wanted money; he wanted out of this equally damnable deluge before he caught a stinking cold.
"Here." He dug in his pocket then, finding it empty, his wallet. Her cheek in holding the guinea he handed her up to the paltry, straggling light, then biting it-twice--raised the hackles along the back of his neck. Or might have were his neck not wringing.
"There's no need to look at me like that. A poor, humble woman just needs to make sure. This could be a copper dud, Your Handsome Grace."
Heavens, his neck would not be the only one wringing if she didn't stop this. "Her brother, you said?"
"Oh, him?" The coin vanished into her cavernous apron pocket. "Nah. I don't know nothing about him. Never really did. I thought you wanted to know about her?"
"May I come in?" Not that he wanted to, but even he, with his penchant for doom and darkness, didn't want to stand out here feeling the water seeping through the soles of his boots, dripping from both the end of his nose and his hair. And really, it was time to assert himself on the situation.
"Hmm? Ye what? Come in?"
Obviously this was going to cost another guinea. Dutifully he dug in his wallet. "Of course, sir." She stepped aside, and he stepped over the threshold into the air that reeked of sweaty socks and days old gin. "Though you won't find her in here. No. She rushed off with that sister of hers, or whoever that was, about ...Hmm? Now let me just think how long ago it was. All this rain plays havoc with the old gray matter."
Jesus Christ, not another guinea?
"Sister?" He thrust his hand back into his greatcoat pocket. "What sister?" That woman she'd spoken of? Someone else she was impersonating? And why? Why couldn't he just have some answers about the blasted woman? Was it just too much to ask? "Well?"
"Sure I don't know, me lord, queer goings on that went on in that room of hers up there, including the night she shot me fender off, although it might be I could be persuaded to remember, if you know what I mean."
No. Enough was enough. This floozy could tap her nose as much as she liked.
Stand like a gypsy whose palm needed crossing with silver too. He was done emptying the contents of his wallet. Standing here too. Splendor couldn't be anywhere he couldn't find her for himself without parting with another penny.
"I could be wrong of course, I sometimes am. But Old Stumpy, now ...When you hire Old Stumpy to take you somewhere, well, way I see it is you don't do that if you're planning on coming back here this side of this year. Or next."
"Fine." He was unable to suppress the growl. "But I swear that's the very last guinea you're getting. Do you understand? Now-"
"That's what they all say, me lord."
It was perfectly ridiculous he had parted with all this money over a damned snit who had fled this tacky, gin-ridden coop. If she had gone, good riddance to her. It wasn't as if he'd wanted to do more than take her to the theater, then for dinner. But she had also fled him. Its effect on him and the thought he might never see her again were ridiculous-unquantifiable-for some very strange reason.
He knew the door was there and he should step away. But knowing it and doing it were two different things when it came to instructing his feet to move. What was it about him that women didn't like? When he looked back, back to Marietta, he had done everything to be the best of husbands. And this, this damnable whey-faced carthorse had plainly cleared off rather than spend five minutes in his company.
So actually he would pay that money. He would empty his wallet if need be.
Then he'd damn well find her to let her know it didn't bother him.
If it cost him every penny he had, he would. Then he'd decide exactly what to do about it too.