"What are you doing?" Tully asked.

"If you take the strip from the middle, it will never heal right when he gets sewn up."

The desperate need to fight was there, burning in him, but his leaden body wouldn't cooperate. When Brymer was at last done, Tully released Ethan, and his head lolled forward.

Brymer took him by the hair, yanking him up to smile at his handiwork. "Come look, Tully."

The man did. His eyes went wide, and he retched repeatedly before he lunged away, vomiting in the hay.

When Ethan saw the strip of skin lying in the dirt, blackness dotted his vision. He silently vowed,I'm going to destroy you. You're all going to die as slowly as you've done this to me…. Then his eyes slid closed.

He was roused by an anguished bellow sounding from the manor house. The bitch began screaming as well, a series of shrieks growing louder in succession.

A door slammed…someone ran toward them…seconds later a servant burst through the doorway of the stable, gasping, "Stop! Let him free!"

In a flash of clarity, Ethan comprehended what had happened. Another of the bitch's screams rent the quiet of the night, then sudden silence.

Ethan laughed behind his gag, crazed. Wetness leaked from his eyes.

Van Rowen had found the note.

Chapter One

London

Summer 1856

Ethan had long grown used to the sinking expressions people cast him when they realized it was he who darkened their doorsteps—but in the East End rookeries this tendency seemed even more pronounced.

Many saw Ethan and ran.

The sound of his boots booming across wet cobblestones was all Ethan heard as he chased a drunken cockney—one among many of his sources of information.

Lunging forward, Ethan clamped the cockney's shoulders, tossing him headfirst into the side of a tenement building. The man collapsed into a stunned heap.

Hauling him to his feet, Ethan drew his pistol, pressing the muzzle against the man's temple. "Where's Davis Grey?"

"I 'aven't seen 'im." He hissed in a breath between the copious gaps in his teeth. "I swear to ye, MacCarrick!"

Ethan casually cocked his gun. The drunk knew of his reputation, knew Ethan would just as easily shoot him as not back in this dark alley. "Then why did you run?"

"B-because ye scare the piss out o' me."

Understandable.

"I 'eard Grey was in Portugal, with an 'unger for opium. And that 'e might be returnin'. That's all. I swear it!"

After a hesitation, Ethan released him, deciding to believe him. The information meshed with his own, and this man likely wouldn't court Ethan's wrath by lying. "You know what to do if you see Grey. And you know what I'll do if you doona notify me."

The cockney muttered thanks for his mercy, then scurried off into the night.

For the last several hours, Ethan had combed the slums, using all his resources to track Davis Grey, a onetime compatriot and family friend—and now Ethan's target.

Though all his reports indicated that Grey wasn't in England, Ethan had wanted to make certain. Tonight he'd chased every lead he'd been able to think of in London. Tomorrow he would leave the city to hunt for Grey elsewhere.

As Ethan strode down the winding, narrow streets back to his mount, a surprisingly comely whore smiled and dropped her shawl, revealing her heavy breasts to him.

And he felt nothing.

When he passed under a flickering gaslight, he showed the woman the other side of his face. She turned away in disgust, yanking her shawl to her neck. It was because of women like her that he'd stopped seeking sex entirely.

At twenty-three, he'd still been in bandages when he'd fully comprehended he wouldn't be having any woman he didn't have to pay. He'd already vowed never to drink again after that night in Buxton. And for a young man suddenly deprived of drinking and women—two of his routine follies—a profession in the Network, one of the Crown's clandestine organizations, had held definite appeal. Along with his brother Hugh, Ethan had signed on, but only after he'd delivered a subtle, but absolute, revenge against his enemies.

Whereas Hugh was an assassin in the Network, cleanly completing his assignments, Ethan would kill, spy, and extort to get a job done. Ethan was skilled at what he did, successful doing the jobs no one else wanted to do. His brothers called him a jack of all lethal trades.

Once he'd returned to his horse—a fine gelding with a strong and unwavering dislike for him—Ethan mounted up and decided to ride by the London town house of Edward Weyland, Ethan and Hugh's superior. More news might have come in. Besides, what else did he have to do?

When he arrived, he caught Quin Weyland just climbing into his saddle. "Is your uncle in?" Ethan asked. Quin also worked in the Network and was being groomed to eventually take over his uncle's role.

"No, he's out of town. But I saw Hugh just a few minutes ago."

"Just Hugh? No' Court?"

Quin absently shook his head.

Damn it, Hugh was supposed to be with Court, their younger brother, making sure he returned to London from the Continent.

In an irritated tone, Quin said, "I thought you told us Hugh was going to be able to handle this situation with Davis Grey."

"Aye, he will."

"You should have seen the look on his face when I apprised him of the threat."

"He should react that way," Ethan said impatiently. "Grey's a dangerous killer with an agenda." Grey had worked in the Network as an assassin—in fact, he'd trained Hugh.

"No, I meant when I told him it wasJane in danger." Jane Weyland, the fair daughter of Edward Weyland.

They'd heard word that Grey sought to kill Jane for revenge against Weyland because she was what Weyland treasured most in the world. To protect her, Weyland planned for Ethan to hunt and destroy Grey and for Hugh to act as Jane's bodyguard, trailing her.

Shouldn't be a problem. Where Jane went, Hugh yearned to follow.

Quin added, "Grey told me Hugh loved her."

Ethan quirked a brow. "We're talkin' to Grey now?"

"Years ago, before he turned."

Turned madman.Grey was known to wear a jovial expression, his demeanor complimentary and amenable, even while he was slitting his targets' throats.

"Well, is it true?" Quin asked.

"Hugh might have had an infatuation when they were younger," Ethan lied. Hugh was likely still in love with Jane to an unspeakable—anembarrassing —degree. "He hasn't even seen her in years." And had never told her how he felt.

"He rode off after her tonight quickly enough."

"Where's she gone at this hour?" Ethan asked.

"She sneaked out her window to meet my sisters and their young friend from out of town."

"To go where?"

"Haymarket Street," Quin finally answered. "I'm on my way there right now."

"Gin palaces and prostitutes." The rookeries were squalid, but Haymarket was seamy. "What's there to tempt them?"

Quin admitted, "The Hive."

"They dinna go there," Ethan bit out incredulously. The Hive, a warehouse converted into an unlicensed dance hall, was infamous for debauchery. "How do the women in your family evenfind these things?" Quin's two sisters and his six female first cousins comprised the Weyland Eight, as society called them. They were progressives, loving all things modern, and had dubbed themselves "sensation seekers."

Ethan called them "spoiled chits with too much coin and too much freedom."

Quin shook his head. "I wish I bloody knew."

"I canna believe they're voluntarily going into that place. You ken your sisters will no' come out in the same shape as they went in."

"Go to hell, Kavanagh—"

"Doona call me that," Ethan snapped. He hated being reminded of his title, of that life. "Why do you no' drag them home by their ears?"