by Laura Landon
BEHOLD THE THIEF by Laura Landon
Chapter One
IT WAS NOT QUITE NINE, too early to get into her disguise.
Lily McGregor entered her brother’s library and marveled at the massive selection of books on his shelves. Although the town house Liam McGregor and his wife Lady Millicent had purchased wasn’t in the middle of Mayfair, it was still in the fashionable part of London. The well-kept part of London. The part where baskets bloomed beneath windows and carriages rolled across smoothed stone.
All these things sang of the cultured part of the city that she had now claimed as home.
Lily ran her finger across the leather spines of the books and selected one before settling into a wingback chair. She couldn’t be more proud of her brother and what he had accomplished, especially considering where he’d come from. He’d escaped the slums of London and along with his partner, Blake Edison, had built a small empire. Now her brother and Lady Millicent were happily ensconced on Goswell Road. They were a perfect couple and it wouldn’t be long before the babe Millie was expecting would come into the world and truly make them a family.
“Watkins said we’d find you here,” Millie called as she swept into the library and bent to give Lily a kiss. Liam followed with his own greeting, never willing to allow more distance than absolutely necessary from his lovely wife.
“So,” Liam said after he’d served each of his ladies a glass of Madeira. “How are you adjusting, Lily? You’ve been here nearly a month and seem to have fit in perfectly. I must say that Millie and I are thrilled to have you with us.”
“How could I not have adjusted?” Lily answered. “You and Millie have made me feel most welcome.”
“That’s because you are welcome,” Millie said with a smile. “I can’t tell you how happy we are that you’re here. I’m especially glad that you’ll be close when our babe arrives. And so happy to know that Liam has family, even if he didn’t know it until a few months ago.”
Lily didn’t miss the glance that passed between the two and realized the time had come. They wanted to know more about this secret sister who had shown up on their doorstep, as was their right.
“I haven’t asked you too many questions as yet, Lily,” Liam said, “because I wanted to let you get settled in before I brought up our pasts. But I’m curious about so many things.”
The mantel clock chimed the quarter hour. Plenty of time to spare yet. There was no reason not to address their questions.
“As am I,” Lily said. And she was curious. There were so many things about Liam’s past that she didn’t understand. So many things about Liam’s relationship with their father that concerned her. “I’ll let you go first, Liam, as I imagine you have more questions than I do.”
Lily noticed that Millie reached over and twined her fingers with Liam’s. Her sign of support warmed Lily’s heart.
“Yes, I suppose I do,” Liam answered. “So tell me, when did you become aware that you had a brother?”
“I didn’t know about you until after Gunner’s death, Liam. His solicitor found me and told me about you. If I had known before then, I would certainly have searched you out.”
“As I would have searched for you had I known that I had a sister.”
“From occasional comments Gunner made when he was in his cups, I was fairly suspicious that perhaps I had a sibling. But every time I asked our father directly, he denied that there was anyone.”
“Did you always know that Gunner was your father?”
Liam’s question surprised Lily. “I don’t ever remember a time when I didn’t know he was my father.” Lily shook her head. “I can’t believe he never told you.”
“Why do you think he didn’t tell me?”
“I can’t imagine,” Lily answered. “Especially since he left everything he owned to you.”
“And to you,” Liam corrected.
Lily watched her brother try and fail to hide a steely gray look filled with hostility as it overtook his expression.
“I have no intention of keeping anything he left me,” her brother answered with a firmness that told Lily he meant what he said. “When we meet with the solicitor, I’m going to deed everything over to you.”
“No, you mustn’t,” Lily said when the magnitude of Liam’s words sank in. She wasn’t sure she wanted to take responsibility for what Gunner had left her, let alone what he’d left Liam.
“You don’t look pleased,” Liam said.
“Oh Liam, it’s just that I’m not sure I want ties to Whitechapel.”
“I don’t blame you.”
Liam studied his whiskey tumbler and walked to a nearby table that contained several decanters of liquor to refresh his drink. “I want nothing from the man who claimed to be my father. Consider the money and the properties yours.”
“Claimed to be your father? Do you doubt that Gunner was your father?”
Liam shook his head. “Not really. What I doubt is that I’ll ever be able to think of him as my father.” Liam lifted the glass of liquor to his lips and drank. “Every single day, Lily, I woke up certain in the belief that Gunner wanted me dead. I was terrified each morning that this would be the day Gunner or Razor or one of their blokes would find me and kill me.”
Lily blanched. It was difficult enough to contemplate such a thing as an adult. What must a poor child have felt?
“I can’t imagine what that must have been like,” Lily admitted.
“It made my life a living hell,” Liam answered. After a short silence, Liam lifted his gaze and it locked with hers. “Did you ever feel as if Gunner loved you?”
“Loved me?” Lily asked, struggling to resurrect a feeling of love from the man who’d been her father. It didn’t take her long to come to a conclusion. “No, I never felt as if Gunner loved me. I’m not sure he was capable of loving anyone.”
“Oh, how sad,” Millie whispered.
Lily turned her focus on Millie and caught a wetness in her eyes. “I suspect your father was much the same,” Lily said softly. She’d heard from Liam how violently cruel Millie’s father had been, and how he’d died.
Millie nodded. “And he paid for his inability to love. The same as Gunner did.” Millie swiped at a stray tear that spilled down her cheek, then reached for Lily’s hand and held it. “Did you have anyone who loved you?”
Lily unleashed a burst of laughter that bubbled up. “Oh, yes. I always felt loved. When my mother died, Gunner took me to live with a friend of his.”
“How old were you?”
“I must have been four or five.”
“And she became your mother?”
“In the loose definition of a mother. Her name was Desdemona Ravishham. She was a passionate dispenser of hugs.”
“That sounds like a perfect name for an actress, or a—”
Millie stopped herself from saying what she thought and Lily couldn’t help but laugh even harder. “That’s because she was. Both actress and courtesan.”
Liam rolled his eyes, but there was a broad smile on his face. “One can only imagine she must have provided you with quite an extraordinary education.”
“Oh, she did indeed! One moment she’d be scolding me to walk and speak like a lady, and in the next breath she’d be coaching me how to jabber like a guttersnipe,” Lily said in her most unrefined voice. “She was a remarkable actress.”
The laughter that erupted from Liam and Millie gave evidence to their shock and surprise.
“Mona taught me equally how to dress like a lady, and how to dress to convince everyone that I’d just crawled from the depths of Whitechapel. By the time I was eight she had me using chloride of bismuth an
d French chalk on my face to keep my complexion so clear and unblemished it gave me the look of an angel. Then she’d have some escapade cooked up where she needed a little old woman with her, so she’d wash off the French chalk and brush on a mixture of ginger honey and sugar so my skin wrinkled up like an ancient hag. Of course, in four to six hours the wrinkles fade and I might be exposed, so whenever I use it, timing is critical.”
Lily cast a glance to see if they’d caught her slip. She hadn’t meant to let on that she still had reason to use the disguising mixtures.
Millie and Liam watched her with quiet amazement. Perhaps she was revealing too much too soon.
Lily realized her hands had been fluttering about, adding their own punctuation to her explanation, and she dropped them to her lap.
Millie uttered a quiet tsk. “I can’t imagine the kind of life you led.”
Liam’s face told Lily that her brother had many more questions he wanted to ask, even if he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers.
“Out with it, brother.”
He grinned sheepishly, then blurted his next question. “Did Gunner pay Miss Ravishham for taking care of you?”
Lily huffed, wondering how much of her own wealth she should disclose.
“Not only did he pay for Mona to look out for me, but he gave me a substantial allowance as well. I lacked for nothing. He was always surprising me with a new gown, or bonnet, or parasol. He even kept a carriage at my disposal so I could go anywhere I wanted. And he paid Murk Matthews to look after me wherever I went.”
Lily became aware of the uncomfortable silence that hovered between her and her brother. While he had been scraping a living on the docks, fearful of a man who seemed to wish him dead, she was choosing hair ribbons at London’s finest establishments.
“I don’t know why he treated the two of us so differently, Liam. I wish I did. I know that you received nothing from him, while I was showered with gifts. I grew up feeling safe and secure while you grew up frightened that each day might be your last.”
She watched her confession work to soften his face.
“That no longer matters, Lily,” Liam said, and Lily could see he truly meant it. She studied the man who was her brother and saw what a good, kind person he’d become. And she realized how lacking she was by comparison. She may have the most fashionable clothes and appear a lady on the outside, but her soul was a mucked up mess.
Before the clock struck ten, the household began to quiet. Liam and Millie retired for the night, leaving Lily to contemplate her evening’s mission. She let the maid undress her and turn down the bed, then rested until the upstairs hall clock chimed half eleven. Only then did she leave her bed to don her disguise.
Minutes later she took a long look at the mirror to check her appearance. Satisfied that her raggedy muslin was suitably rumpled, she expertly brushed the mixture of gingered honey and sugar on her face and neck. When her complexion was wrinkled beyond recognition, she flung on her tousled gray wig, then plopped a ratty old black felt hat on her head and crept out the door.
She tiptoed down the back stairs and left the kitchen by the servants’ door. The costermonger’s cart was waiting for her in the alley. Plunkett sat atop the rickety cart as if it were a coach and four. It was his dilapidated conveyance that would keep her disguise convincing as she entered Whitechapel. When she approached the familiar wagon, he reached a hand down to help her take a seat beside him.
“Are you sure you want to go tonight, Miss Lily?”
“Yes, Plunkett. I’ve ignored my work too long as it is. I can’t miss another night.”
“All right,” Plunkett said when Lily was safely aboard.
The cart lurched forward when he slapped the horse’s rump with the reins. Lily counted the blocks as they traveled eastward. The streets became rougher the further east they traveled, and by the time they reached Whitechapel the stench of the slums was nearly intolerable.
Lily tried to take in shallow breaths until her nose became accustomed to the smell of rotten garbage and the contents of chamber pots that had been emptied in the streets. She had stayed with Liam and Millie enough days now that the air from the slums seemed even more putrid than she remembered.
At last, Plunkett pulled up behind the Devil’s Rest, the rundown gin house she maintained as a base of operations. “Won’t be long, Plunkett,” she muttered, feeling the familiar rough voice skitter across her tongue. It was as if the disguise itself molded her voice into the crusty tone that fit her character.
She paused in front of the door that opened into the one-room bar area and smoothly assumed a character much different from Lily McGregor. When she stood behind the bar at the Devil’s Rest, she was Bonnie, the least bonny and the most uncouth female one might wish to meet.
Bonnie was one of three characters Lily changed to whenever the need arose. When she paid calls on the merchants and stall owners of Thrawl and Wentworth Streets to discover their needs or concerns, she was matronly Mrs. Downey with ample bosom and small eyeglasses perched on her nose.
And in the semi-respectable halls of Whitechapel Road, she was Miss Calista Cavendish, daughter of a deceased captain in the Queen’s Army and heiress of a distant cousin’s Welsh estate.
Lily recalled the conversation she’d had with Liam just that evening when he’d mentioned the numerous pieces of property Gunner had willed them, as well as the vast amount of money. Liam was adamant that since Gunner hadn’t given him one penny when he was growing up, he sure as hell wasn’t going to take any of the man’s fortune now. He told her he didn’t need it. That he was a wealthy man in his own right and that Lily could have whatever money Gunner had left him.
What Liam didn’t know was that Lily already had more money than she could spend in two lifetimes. Nor did he know she was using it to support a mission to which she was wholly devoted.
Soon her network would be in place and her carefully chosen escape routes secured. But for the moment, she must shrug off the responsibility of being so wealthy and assume the character of crude and crusty Bonnie as she pushed the door open and swaggered into the Devil’s Rest.
A rousing cheer went up when the patrons saw her.
“Bonnie, old girl,” one of the loudest of the blokes yelled from across the room. “We was thinkun you be dead, you be gone so long.”
“Ha!” Lily answered. “I’ll have you know I was takin’ tea in Mayfair.”
“Mayfair!” Rousing guffaws and denials echoed in the small tavern. “You got no tea-tippin’ friends in Mayfair,” several of the men bellowed. “None that would claim knowing you, leastways.”
“Ha!” Bonnie retorted. “Lot you know!”
More guffaws echoed in the Devil’s Rest. Lily gave the patrons a rude gesture, then reached to the back of a shelf under the pub counter and grabbed a bottle of brandy. No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t tolerate the gin the Devil’s Rest served. She filled herself a glass and took an unladylike swallow, savoring the fumes that muted the stench of the place, then called for a free round on the house.
A riotous cheer erupted from the fifteen or so patrons scattered throughout the room, ensuring they’d stay put awhile longer. “You see that no one weasels you out of an extra free drink,” she told the barman who ran the Devil’s Rest when she wasn’t there.
While the hue and cry for a free drink kept everyone occupied, Lily gave the man sitting at the far end of the pub a nod before walking into the back room. She didn’t have long to wait before the large shadow she was expecting spilled through the doorway.
Murk Matthews had kept watch over her as long as she could remember. She always thought that Gunner had hired him as a bodyguard to make sure nothing happened to her. But somewhere along the line, Murk shifted from bodyguard to friend, then to being the father figure that Gunner wasn’t. Lily had always relied on Murk and he’d never failed her.
“I’m glad to see you,” Murk said after he’d searched the room to make certain they w
ere alone.
“I wish I could say I missed the Devil’s Rest and am glad to be back, but…”
“I know,” Murk said on a laugh that quickly faded.
“Has there been trouble?”
Lily listened intently for the man’s answer, knowing he would get right to the heart of whatever mission would be next in store for Lily. Or Bonnie. Or whatever personality this predicament required her to assume.
“Not trouble exactly. It’s Jeremy Clatter. I ran into his wife this morning and she was wearing a nasty set of bruises and her one eye was swollen shut.”
A weight fell to the pit of Lily’s stomach. She and Murk had made it their mission to protect as many women as they could from the fists of their brutal husbands.
“Bloody blighter. Is he back on the grog?”
“I’m not sure how much, but rumor has it he’s missed several days’ work because of his drinking. His dock foreman has put him on notice. I think he needs a stern talking to.”
Lily nodded, grateful that Murk seemed to feel the man was redeemable.
“I’ll take Willy and Zeb with me,” he continued. “The man needs to know what his wife feels like when he beats on her,” Murk growled, watching for her approval as he spoke.
“What about Yardie? Has he stopped beating his wife?”
Murk’s expression turned hard and he shook his head. “He came home drunk out of his mind three nights ago and beat Hildie, then threw her out of the house. When she tried to get up he kicked her unconscious. Hildie lost the babe she was carrying.”
“Damn the man!” Lily lifted the brandy glass to her mouth and took a long swallow. She thought for several moments before she spoke. “He’s pure meanness and we’ve given him enough chances. Pretty soon he’s going to kill Hildie, or worse, another one of his children.”
“One of our ships sails tomorrow,” Murk suggested. “Bound for Nairobi. I could make sure Yardie’s aboard it.”
He waited for Lily to agree. Blast it all, anyway. Was her need for sympathetic ship’s captains never going to end? Lily clenched her hands at her middle, repulsed at how some men abused their weaker womenfolk.