“All right,” he murmured.
He lowered his arm, then he carefully placed the revolver on the floor. While he straightened and raised his hands behind his head, he took a small, seemingly incidental step toward the desk.
“What’s your plan, Matthews?” he asked. “A double murder?”
Matthews’s face was shiny like a pork rind. “It shan’t come to that as long as you are sensible,” he said, quite haughtily.
“Sensible,” Lucian repeated, nodding. “Sensible sounds good.”
His pulse was too high. Something needed to be between Harriet’s soft temple and the gun. A double-barreled pocket pistol. Two shots in total, one already in the ceiling. There’d be no double murder today. Only the justified killing of a rat.
“You seem to be in trouble,” he said to Matthews. “Care to explain?”
Matthews shook his head. “Just follow my orders—”
“I have experience with trouble,” Lucian said and shrugged, gaining another inch. “I might know a better way.”
An angry emotion flared in Matthews’s eyes. “Don’t treat me like a fool. As if you would let me walk from this.”
Correct, Lucian thought. He tsked. “I think I already know what your troubles are. You played too deep at Ritchie’s in Covent Garden.”
Matthews’s surprise quickly slid into a thin smile. “Of course,” he said. “You put spies onto your own spies. Watching the watchmen.”
“Nothing personal,” Lucien said mildly. “And I settled the accounts the first time round, but during my absence in Drummuir, you had little to do and no one to hold you accountable here. You returned to Ritchie’s, didn’t you, and played a losing hand.”
Matthews’s gaze flicked to the left, confirming the suspicion.
“Then I ordered you up north,” Lucian continued, “where you were held up, unexpectedly, due to the flooded tracks. Ritchie became impatient, since you hadn’t paid, and I wasn’t here to settle it for you.”
“That’s quite enough,” Matthews said, and yanked Hattie’s arm.
Lucian bored his gaze so deeply into the mind behind those bleary eyes that Matthews was hooked. “You returned to the den and thought to win your losses back,” he murmured, the shrug of his raised arms distracting from the advance of his feet. “Instead, it all spiraled deeper and deeper, toward the bottom pit of hell—”
“Stop,” Matthews snapped, and now the gun was pointing at Lucian’s chest.
A tension unfurled in him. Point-blank to the head, the Remington was deadly, but if shot from several yards away, a man might be lucky, might stand it long enough to attack and win.
Harriet made a sound of distress. He shut her out. Kept his mind cold and clear.
“What I cannot piece together is: Why ransack my study?” he asked. “Did you suspect I’d refuse to settle your debts forever? That would have been correct, but it wasn’t imminent. Did you think you could steal incriminating information from me?” He surveyed the chaos on the desk. “Yes, I think that was your plan: to run, and to then blackmail me to keep settling your bills from afar.”
Matthews blinked. Sweat was running into his eyes; it had to be burning him.
Lucian tilted his head. “And you searched Miss Byrne’s house, too, didn’t you? The question remains: Why now?”
“The truth?” Matthews snapped. “You were becoming too big for your boots. All my attempts to mold you into something other than an uncultured beast were failing, and I knew it was a lost cause when you married a Greenfield.” He wiped his sleeve across his brow. “And now you have killed Rutland. I would have refused another day in your service regardless of my pecuniary situation. I could not fathom taking a single order from a scoundrel like you.”
Two paces. The man was two paces away. So close, yet so far.
Cold and clear.
“Odd that you should have a fondness for Rutland. He left you to rot in the jail.”
“His lordship,” Matthews corrected, “would not support my vices; he was a morally upright man. You, however, are corrupted to the bone. You feed my weaknesses. All this,” he cried in sudden agitation and waved the pistol, “is your fault.” He pushed Harriet aside and took a step toward Lucian, the flicker of anger in his eyes flaring to a blaze. “Look at you,” he said. “A lowly upstart, playing God. Killing noblemen because you can. How dare you?”
“My sister, Sorcha, was eight years old when she drowned in a ventilation shaft,” Lucian said. Still a foot too far. If he lunged now, the answering bullet would be fatal. His heart beat a slow, labored rhythm. “My sister died thanks to your moral man Rutland not giving a damn about his workers.”