Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)

Mr. Bell dressed in unremarkable though well-tailored attire. He parted his black hair severely and combed it with pomade until it lay flat against his scalp. “Fastidious,” some might have described him. The less charitable might have said, “Dull as toast.” Rarely was he observed going out-of-doors without a hat, and he wore spectacles at all times.

There was only plain glass in the lenses, of course. Julian didn’t wear them to see. He wore them so he would not be seen.

And the disguise had worked quite well for several years.

It was midafternoon when he came down the back stairs today and entered the offices from the rear. As usual, he found his eight clerks hunched over two neat rows of desks that ran the length of the room. They all hastened to their feet with a chorus of “Good day, Mr. Bell.”

He nodded in reply.

The errand boys threw him guilty looks from a corner, where they no doubt had been dicing until a few moments ago. Julian decided to overlook the infraction. For now. He’d provide tasks enough to keep them hopping the rest of the day.

“As you were,” he said, retreating into his office—a partitioned section at the back with a glass window for supervisory purposes and drapes he could pull when privacy was desired. The frosted pane set in the door was lettered in gilt: “J. Bell. Manager, Aegis Investments.”

So far as his employees understood, Mr. Bell managed the interests of several wealthy investors. These unnamed investors—aristocrats, it was presumed, who could not be seen sullying their hands with trade—had pooled their money toward various business endeavors: in particular, several wool and linen mills to the North, and commercial real estate holdings in most of England’s larger cities. Mr. Bell oversaw the operations and management of these investments with the assistance of his clerks and a personal secretary, and he reported to his superiors regularly.

In reality, Mr. Bell had no superiors, and there was but one investor: Julian himself. He not only owned the mills in the North and the buildings in Bristol, Oxford, York, and beyond—but he in fact owned most of this very block, including the mercantile building that housed the Aegis Investments offices and the residential row to the rear. He was, by any standard, a man of great wealth. And key to all of this was maintaining his status as a man of many secrets.

If certain powerful men learned just how he’d amassed this fortune and just what he intended to do with it …

Well, he already knew the completion of that thought, didn’t he? Those certain men would arrange to have him waylaid in a darkened alleyway, pummeled to death.

He shuddered, thinking of Leo and his broken face.

His secretary, Thatcher, followed him into his private office, waving a clutch of papers. “The morning post, sir.”

“What’s in it?”

Thatcher riffled through the papers. “A report on the fluctuating price of indigo. A letter from the Benevolence Society for the Deserving Poor, requesting the renewal of the investors’ generous subscription. The contract for lease of the Dover property. Your express from the mills.”

“Give it here. The express, I mean. Leave the rest on the blotter, and you may go.”

Thatcher did as asked, as always.

Julian broke the wax seal and quickly scanned the letter in his hands. He now demanded twice-weekly expresses from the mills, and he always read them first thing. Worker morale remained high, his agent reported, and production was steady.

Good, all good. After the flare of labor riots earlier that year, he’d been keeping close watch on his mills. Outside efforts to mobilize dissent amongst his workers had so far met with little success. And little wonder—his laborers were the best paid of any textile workers in the region, and he took pains to make them feel secure in their posts. He’d even gone so far as to visit each mill personally and assure the workers no jobs would be lost to the new machines.

It wasn’t such a radical formula to Julian: Invest a measure of good will in the workers, reap benefits in the form of steady production. He’d never understand why the other mill owners didn’t grasp the concept. But then, their loss was his gain. His mills’ reputation for consistent, high-quality production was the source of many lucrative military contracts. Over the course of the past decade, more than half the enlisted men in the British Army had marched into the fray wearing Aegis wool on their backs. When they fell in battle, their wounds were bound with Aegis flannel.

Now, with the wars over, England’s economy was depressed. But the wealthy still had coin to spend. Mr. James Bell made certain the country’s finest mercers, drapers, and upholsterers all carried Aegis cloth in their shops. Meanwhile, Julian Bellamy set the fashions, assuring those shops of a steady trade.

He called Thatcher back in. “Here,” he said, hastily scrawling his signature on the lease before passing it across the desk. “This is done. Tell the Benevolence Society we’ll renew the subscription, and direct the warehouse to send over any surplus bolts of cloth for their use.”

“Yes, sir. And if you please, sir, the tailors are here.”