Vanquished by Hope Tarr Read Free Book Online Page B

Suffrage Societies, as well as Caledonia Rivers's mentor. The Fawcett woman recently embarked on a month-long lecture tour of the United States, which is all to the good, ours at any rate. This letter informs her protegee that she is to submit to you taking a series of photographic portraits for display as part of the planned march on Parliament. The march will coincide with the third and final reading of the suffrage bill."
    "So the letter is a forgery?" It was more statement than question.
    "Of course. Does that shock you?"
    Hadrian thought back to his bygone days of purse snitching and sundry forms of petty theft, and shook his head. Tossing the letter aside, he eyed the open case. "I assume a forged letter and reading material isn't all you've brought?"
    "Quite." Dandridge withdrew a wad of fifty-pound notes from the lambskin lining and handed the money over to Hadrian. "Half now, and half on delivery of the photograph."
    Hadrian hesitated.
Blood money,
he thought, and stretched out a stained hand to take it. Heart pounding, he flipped through the stack before tucking it inside his vest. "This is a great deal of tin, Dandridge. What makes you so certain I won't take it and disappear?"
    "Greed, for one. If twenty-five hundred pounds can improve your life, only think what transformation five thousand can bring about." Dandridge snapped the case closed and rose. "Of course there is the instinct to preserve life, in this case your own." He looked down at Hadrian, gaunt face granite hard. "Play me false, St. Claire, and yours will be but one more body that turns up in the Thames."
    His second death threat in as many hours--what the devil had he come to? Watching Dandridge cross to the door, it occurred to him that even Harry Stone, miserable little bugger that he'd been, hadn't been someone men had wanted to kill.
    "Wait." Hadrian shot up from the table.
    Dandridge turned around and for a handful of seconds Hadrian considered returning the money and calling the whole bloody business off. But it was too late for that. Whether or not he kept the money, he knew too much to be let off the snare.
    "Once I have the photograph, how shall I contact you?"
    Dandridge opened the door and cold air rushed the room, chilling the perspiration dampening Hadrian's brow. "When you have it, I'll know. And I'll be in touch."
    The shop bell knelled, signaling the MP's departure--and the sealing of their devil's bargain. Hadrian sank back into his seat. Staring out the frosted glass of his shop's window, he traced the bump on his left palm where years before a sliver of camera lens had embedded. He'd had to crawl on his hands and knees at the time. The scar served as a reminder of how far he'd risen in life--and how far he still might fall.
    Yet his agreement with Dandridge involved a great deal more than bedding a woman and taking risque photographs of her. He had just signed on to ruin her life. Despite his past as a whore's son, a beggar and a pickpocket, he'd never felt so low as when he'd felt the weight of Dandridge's money in his hand.
    The best he could hope for was that Caledonia Rivers wouldn't be someone he'd have to work too hard at hating. To harden himself, he mentally cataloged her more obvious faults. Foremost, she was a suffragist and not just any suffragist but one of their leaders. And then there was her privileged status. Dandridge had said she was "well-born," which, in a word, meant
rich.
Hadrian recalled the bored society females who'd set foot inside his studio since he'd opened. With the exception of Lady Katherine, they'd been uniformly pampered and petty, oblivious to the plight of those whose duty it was to serve up their suppers and tend to their toilette and sweat out their lifeblood in their husbands' factories so that madam might have a smart, new carriage-- and a brace of virile young footmen to go with it.
    Feeling marginally better, he glanced down to the pamphlet topping the pile. The title alone went a long way