“There now, my darling. Get it out. You’ll feel better.”
“Livy?” he croaked.
Through his stinging eyes, he saw that it was her. She was sitting by his side, her hair hanging loose over her shoulders. She was clad in a tunic and set of trousers that looked too big on her. He was lying on a bed in a Spartan room that was familiar…Chen’s clinic?
“What am I…how did I get here?” Ben asked in confusion.
“You nearly drowned last night in the Thames. We brought you here so that Mr. Chen could tend to you,” she said gently. “You’ve been unconscious for several hours.”
Memories returned in flashes. The party. Playing billiards with Thorne. Drinking the whisky…whisky that had been laced with the Devil’s Bliss. He remembered the rush, his inability to fight off the drug, that hopeless, euphoric weakness he’d sworn never to feel again.
Now he felt the drug withdrawing from his system, bringing with it that despicable low. The cancerous emptiness for which the cure was more poison. Soon weakness would take over, make him chase relief from the craving, even as he hated himself more. His stomach roiled, and he was sick again, this time into a bucket that Livy hastily shoved toward him.
When he was finished, he took the towel she handed to him. His face burned with humiliation as she used another to wipe up the mess he’d made on the floor. He felt like shite, his head pounding like the devil. He didn’t want her to see him like this. Didn’t want to be near her in his present state. A state to which he’d vowed never to return…and yet here he was again.
A leopard never changes its spots.
“Do you know who did this to you?”
It took Ben a moment to focus on Livy’s question. To his everlasting shame, he realized that he didn’t know who the villain was. He’d been too far gone, soaring so high on the Devil’s Bliss that he couldn’t be sure who had been speaking to him. Or if he’d imagined it all.
Arabella and my babe are dead because of you…and now you will pay the price…
He saw the vinaigrette swinging like a pendulum. The glittering of peacock feathers. Felt himself moving in darkness, rough hands shoving him into a carriage.
Make it look like a suicide.
Had any of that happened…or had he been hallucinating? It wouldn’t be the first time that a drug twisted his mind, mixed reality with fantasy, and this Devil’s Bliss had been ten times more potent than opium.
Realizing that Livy was watching him, waiting for an answer, he said gruffly, “I think I was drugged, but I do not know who did it.” Even as he cursed his own ineptitude, a thought occurred to him. “How did you find me?”
Livy bit her lip. Strangely, she remained silent.
“Livy?” he prodded.
She drew a breath, as if she’d come to some internal decision. “We were following a lead that brought us to the lair of Master Fong. It turns out Fong is a façade: there is no Chinese mastermind. We believe the villain is one of your ex-cronies…and he was having an affair with your wife. I’m sorry, Ben.” She paused, then went on, “We found a letter that Arabella wrote to him. She, um, wanted to run away with him, and she…she intimated that the child she was carrying was his. Knowing that whoever was posing as Fong might have an axe to grind with you, we came to warn you. At Bollinger’s, we saw you being loaded into a carriage by brutes, and we followed you to Waterloo Bridge. They threw you into the water—to make it look like a suicide or accident, most likely—and I went in after you. Luckily, I found you, and we brought you here to Mr. Chen.”
As Ben tried to comprehend the astonishing summary, questions proliferated like weeds.
“By we, who are you referring to?” he asked in confusion.
She took another breath. “The Society of Angels.”
“Lady Fayne’s charity?” His brain felt thick and overgrown, slowing his ability to take in the information. “I…I don’t understand.”
“It is not a charity. At least, not in the traditional sense.” She averted her gaze, fiddling nervously with the folds of her tunic. “We do help people but not through the usual benevolent means. Our approach is, um, more investigative in nature. Charlie has been training us to…to do detection work.”
Suddenly, he understood. The suspicions he’d had…the gut feeling that Livy was hiding something from him. He’d convinced himself that the problem lay with him: that his past with Arabella had made him distrustful. Now the truth blazed, igniting a scorching rage.
“You have been lying to me this entire time?” he bit out.
Livy’s silence was damning.
“The Black Lion Inn, Cremorne Gardens…bloody hell, the Hellfire Club.” He pinned her with a stare, daring her to lie to him. “You were there, weren’t you? Spying on me?”
She gave a small nod. He didn’t know why that pushed him over the edge, but it did. The guilt he’d harbored, the shame…and she’d seen him at his goddamned worst. When he shoved aside the blankets, surging from the bed, she jumped up with a startled gasp. A wave of dizziness overcame him, and he had to steady himself against a wall.
“Be careful, my love. You’ve only just recovered—”
“I am not your love,” he snarled. “If you loved me, you would not have lied to me for the entire length of our relationship.”
She looked as if he’d struck her, her eyes wide in her pale face. “Of course I love you. It is because I love you that I had to hide the truth. I knew you wouldn’t understand my desire to be an investigator because you’re always trying to protect me. I didn’t want to give you up…but I couldn’t give up my work either. And when I joined the Angels, I took an oath of secrecy.
“Ultimately,
