“I say, she must be ruined and made to look like a scandalous piece who couldn’t wait to give her virtue away,” the man explained. “We must make it seem as if she’s a tempting little minx, and that it was she who tried to trap us. All will believe quite happily that her perfect veneer is merely a cover for a wanton whore.”
Tom ground his teeth.
He’d known men like this all his life. Men who didn’t see women as people or even as humans. Women were merely sport and entertainment and broodmares. These sort of men gained their sense of power from dominating women.
For his part, he couldn’t understand it. He had borne witness to it from his smallest years but he had spent the vast majority of his life now combatting it.
Once he’d been strong enough, powerful enough he’d begun building women up whenever possible, and in his club, women were as important as men. He had never felt the need to make ladies less than, and in his establishment, women were given special attention by his servants to ensure that they were never in any danger.
Though he saw them as equals, sometimes other men simply did not.
Much to his grim disappointment, when drinking too much wine or brandy, lesser behavior could often appear.
And when the darker nature was revealed? Those gentlemen were never allowed back.
Of that he made certain.
There was only one thing to do.
He was going to have to come to the aid of Lady Elizabeth, because these gentlemen were about to start a series of events that she would not be able to escape if she did not have foreknowledge.
Men like these? They hungered for such a wager. They were like hounds, hungering for the taste of blood, for the taste of power.
They would go to all extremes to get her into a corner, to ruin her and to leave her as refuse. That’s what they wanted. To take something perfect, something that they envied, something that they wished that they could have, and destroy it.
After all, it was better destroyed if they could not own it.
Tom was fairly certain not one of those four gentlemen could approach perfection. Oh, they might have money, they might have titles, but he was certain that even those men knew in their hearts that they were dark and twisted inside. That they were bound for hell’s door and not anywhere near heaven’s gate.
They might deny it and cling to their birth… but they secretly suffered.
And he had a sneaking suspicion that that was the lure of Lady Elizabeth. The temptation to tear off her wings, to take off her crown and stomp it beneath their feet, and to sully anything good about her so that she would be torn down to their level and never able to lift her chin, or square her shoulders, or walk into a room as if she was a diamond again.
Just as Tom was about to take a step into the chamber and have a good view of the nefarious roués, a hand reached out and touched his should.
Tom flinched but did not jump. Slowly, he turned.
His man stood there.
How the devil had he approached so quietly? Or had Tom simply been so focused on the drama enfolding before him?
“You are needed immediately,” Tom’s man whispered.
He tensed, more than aware he would not be approached thus unless it was dire, “What is it?”
His man’s face tightened. “We think a lady has taken laudanum with her wine. She’s unresponsive and we must fetch a physician immediately.”
Tom gave a tight nod, even as his heart sank for the lady who may have inadvertently endangered her life. He was no friend of opiates. The poppy’s flower symbolized death to him. “I’ll see to it.”
And he would.
Every circumstance such as this was seen to by him personally. For no one in his club was allowed to be harmed. No one could be on death’s door. Whether sorrow, or the inner devils, or mere mistake brought them to that dark threshold, he would hold the hand of whomever it was trying to make an exit. He understood how one, suffering from the darkest sorrows, could hope a few moments of pleasure might transport them away from that pain only to discover that the thing which they hoped would alleviate it only made them more miserable.
For he knew such feelings and sensations well, and he would do all in his power to make certain that whoever was in pain was on the path to being well.
“I want you to go into that room.” A muscled tightened in his jaw. “I want you to offer more brandy and I want you to get the name of every single one of them.”
His man’s brows rose.