Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [46]
He never should have kissed her. He’d let temptation overrun his better judgment, and he was paying the price for it now. Because he wanted to kiss her again with a need so strong it was almost a physical ache.
He wasn’t going to touch her. He hadn’t been reckless since he was a teenager at the tight-ass boarding school his mother had sent him to. All the Wimberley men had graced its hallowed halls, up to and including his grandfather, Dr. Wilton Wimberley, MBE. He was the one who’d seen to it that young Peter had the best education, one befitting the solid uppermiddle-class values so dear to his mother.
She’d married beneath her, and a day never passed when she didn’t regret it, which she made abundantly clear to her small family. He never could figure out what attracted a prissy, uptight creature like his sainted mother to a sullen bully like Richard Madsen. At least his father had found a natural outlet for his violent tendencies; when he wasn’t beating on his carping wife or his rebellious son, he could beat up criminals. He was a London policeman, with no pretensions or aspirations to anything higher, and to his mother’s fury he’d turned down promotion after promotion, just to spite her.
Emily Wimberley Madsen had done her best by her only child. She’d taught him to speak in a proper posh accent, though he would slip into his father’s rougher street tones just to annoy her. She’d cadged enough money from her father to send him to the best schools, never realizing that children could spot an outsider with unerring cruelty. He’d had to fight his way through school, and by the time they sent him off to Kent Hall, over his father’s objections, he was a danger to anyone who crossed him.
Most of the other students picked up on that as well, and gave him a wide berth. His mother could never understand why he was never invited to the country homes of his mates—she never understood that a misfit like Peter Madsen would have no mates.
He never bothered wondering what might have happened if things had gone differently at school. Daniel Conley should have known better, but his father was a Member of Parliament with too much money, and his son had an army of sycophants who followed his orders like good little soldiers. Daniel had been a big boy—heavy boned, leaning toward fat, whereas Peter didn’t reach his full height until he was out of school. At the age of seventeen he was wiry, small for his age and far more dangerous than hulking Daniel Conley would ever guess.
Daniel had outweighed him by forty pounds, and with two other boys holding him down there wasn’t much Peter could do but endure the pain and humiliation of Daniel’s assault.
He’d spent a week in the infirmary. No one asked any questions—Daniel’s father was a major contributor to the school—and he hadn’t offered any complaints. And the next time Daniel Conley tried to corner him in the third-floor washroom, he’d broken the bastard’s neck.
He’d wanted to kill him, and he would have if his rage hadn’t gotten in the way, making him careless. To this day Daniel Conley lived the plushest life a paraplegic could lead, supported by his father’s limitless wealth.
They’d hauled Peter away, covered with the blood of Daniel and a dozen of his cronies. He had no idea where they were taking him, and by the time the blood-red haze had left him he’d grown cold and still as ice, knowing that the huge sober men were taking him someplace quiet to kill him. Upstarts didn’t try to kill the privileged sons of MPs and face normal consequences. They’d bury him in some bog, and his parents would never know what had become of him.
He was right about the last part, if about nothing else. He never saw Emily and Richard Madsen