Duke of Desire

by Elizabeth Hoyt

  Then he groaned—a rumbling sound she felt in the fingertips on his nape—and tried to pull her closer. She ducked away and out of reach, skipping back, and then turned and ran down a little alley. She found a stack of barrels and scrambled up them. Pulled herself onto a leaning balcony and from there shinnied up to the roof. She bent low and tiptoed across rotten tiles, some broken, until she was nearly to the edge of the roof, and then lay flat to peer over.

  He was still staring down the alley where she’d disappeared, daft man.

  Oh, he was a big one, was Kyle. Broad shoulders, long legs. A mouth that made her remember she was a woman beneath her men’s clothing. He’d lost his hat and white wig somewhere during his mad dash away from the footpads. He stood bareheaded, his coat torn and bloodied, and in the moonlight she could almost mistake him for a man who belonged in St Giles.

  But he wasn’t.

  He turned finally and limped in the direction of Covent Garden. She rose and followed him—just to make sure he made it out of St Giles.

  The one and only time she’d met Kyle before this, she’d been dressed in her daytime disguise as Alf, the boy who made his living as an informant. Except Kyle had wanted information on the Duke of Montgomery, who had been employing Alf at the time.

  She snorted under her breath as she ran along the ridge of a rooftop, keeping Kyle’s shorn black head in sight. Insulting, that had been—him thinking she’d inform on the man paying her. She might not be a lady, but she had her honor. She’d waited until he’d bought her dinner and outlined what he wanted to hire her for—and then she’d turned the table over into his lap. She’d run from the tavern, but not before thumbing her nose at him.

  She grinned as she leaped silently from one rooftop to another.

  The last time she’d seen Kyle, he’d worn potatoes and gravy on his costly cloak and an angry expression on his handsome face.

  Down below, his stride was increasing as they neared the outskirts of St Giles, his boot heels echoing off the cobblestones. She paused, leaning on a chimney. There were more lanterns set out here by the shopkeepers. She watched as Kyle crossed the street, looking warily around, his sword still in his hand.

  He didn’t have need of her to see him home to whatever grand house he lived in. He was a man well able to look after himself.

  Still, she crouched there until he disappeared into the shadows.

  Ah, well. Time to go home to her own little nest, then.

  She turned and ran over the shingles, quick and light.

  When she’d been a child and first learned to scale buildings, she’d thought of London as her forest, St Giles her wood, the roofs her treetops.

  Truth be told, she’d never seen a forest, a wood, nor even treetops. She’d never been out of London, for that matter. The farthest east she’d ever traveled in her life was to Wapping—where the air held the faintest hint of sea salt, tickling the nose. The farthest west, to Tyburn, to witness Charming Mickey O’Connor being hanged. Except he hadn’t been, to the surprise of all that day. He’d disappeared from the gallows and into legend like the wondrous river pirate he was. But wild birds—free birds—were supposed to live in forests and woods and treetops.

  And she’d imagined herself a bird as a child on the rooftops, free and flying.

  Sometimes, even as a world-weary woman of one and twenty, she still did.

  If she were a bird, the roofs were her home, her place, where she felt the safest.

  Down below was the dark woods, and she knew all about the woods from the fairy tales that her friend Ned had told her when she’d been a wee thing. In the fairy-tale dark woods were witches and ghouls and trolls, all ready to eat you up.

  In the woods of St Giles the monsters were far, far worse.

  Tonight she’d fought monsters.

  She flew over the roofs of St Giles. Her booted feet were swift and sure on the shingles, and the moon was a big guiding lantern above, lighting the way for her patrol as the Ghost of St Giles. She’d been following the Scarlet Throat gang—a nasty bunch of footpads who’d do anything up to and including murder for the right price—and wondering why they were out in such force, when she’d realized they were chasing Kyle.

  In her daytime guise as Alf, she had a bad history with the Scarlet Throats. Most recently they’d taken a dislike to her because she refused to either join them or pay them to be “protected.” On the whole they left her alone—she stayed out of their way and they pretended not to notice her. But she shuddered to think what they would do if they ever found out her true sex.

  Letting a lone boy defy them was one thing. Letting a woman do the same?

  There were rumors of girls ending up in the river for less.

  But when she’d seen the Scarlet Throats chasing Kyle like a pack of feral dogs, she’d not thought twice about helping him. He’d been running for his life and fighting as he went, never giving up, though he’d been far outnumbered from the start.

  The man was stubborn, if nothing else.

  And afterward, when their enemies lay at their feet, groaning and beaten, and her heart was thumping so hard with the sheer joy of victory and being alive, it’d seemed natural to pull his pretty, pretty lips down to hers and kiss him.

  She’d never kissed a man before.

  Oh, there’d been some who’d tried to kiss her—tried and succeeded—especially when she’d been younger and smaller and not so fast, nor so swift with a kick to the soft bits of a man. Even then no one had gotten much beyond a mash of foul tongue in her mouth. She’d been good at running even when little.

  No one had touched her in years. She’d made sure of it.

  But the kiss with Kyle hadn’t been like that—she’d kissed him.

  She leaped from one roof to another, landing silently on her toes. Kyle’s lips had been firm, and he’d tasted sharp, like wine. She’d felt the muscles in his neck and chest and arms get hard and tight as he’d made ready to grab her.

  She’d hadn’t been afraid, though.

  She grinned at the moon and the rooftops and the molls walking home in the lane far below.

  Kissing Kyle had made her feel wild and free.

  Like flying over the roofs of St Giles.

  She ran and leaped again, landing this time on a rickety old half-timbered tenement. It was all but fallen down, the top story overhanging the courtyard like an ancient crone bent under a big bundle of used clothes. She thrust her legs over the edge of the roof, slipped her feet blind onto one of the timbers on the face of the building, and climbed down into the attic window.

  If St Giles was the dark wood, this was her secret hidey-hole nest: half the attic of this building. The sole door to the room was nailed firmly shut, the only way in by the window.

  She was safe here.

  No one but she could get in or out.

  Alf sighed and stretched her arms over her head before taking off her hat and mask. Muscles she hadn’t even realized were tensed began to loosen now that she was home.

  Home and safe.

  Her nest was one big room—big enough for an entire family to live in, really—but only she lived here. On one wall was a row of wooden pegs, and she hung up her hat and mask there. Across from the window was a brick chimney where she’d left the fire carefully banked. She crossed to it and squatted in front of the tiny hearth—a half moon not much bigger than her head, the brick blackened and crumbling. But this high up it drew well enough, and that was the important thing. She stirred the red eyes of the embers with a broken iron rod and stuck some straw on top, then blew gently until the straw smoked and lit. Then she added five pieces of coal, one at a time. When her little fire was burning nicely, she lit a candle and stood it on the rough shelf above the fireplace.

  The half-burned candle gave a happy little glow. Alf touched her fingertip to the candlestick’s base and then to the little round mirror next to it. The mirror reflected the tiny candle flame. She tapped her tin cup, a yellow pottery jug she’d found years ago, an
d her ivory comb. Ned had given her the comb the day before he’d disappeared, and it was perhaps her most precious possession.

  Then she picked up a bottle of oil and a rag from the end of the shelf and sat on a three-legged stool by the pile of blankets she used as a bed.

  Her long sword was mostly clean. She stroked the oiled cloth along the blade and then tilted it to the candlelight to check for nicks in the edge. The two swords had cost most of her savings and she made sure to keep them clean and razor sharp, both because they were her pride and because in the dark woods they were her main weapons as the Ghost. The long sword’s edge looked good, so she resheathed it and set it aside.

  Her short blade was bloodied. That she worked on for a bit with the cloth, humming to herself under her breath. The cloth turned rust red and the sword turned mirror bright.

  The sky outside her attic window turned pale pink.

  She hung up her swords in their scabbards on the row of pegs. She unbuttoned her padded and quilted tunic, patterned all over in black and red diamonds. Underneath was a plain man’s shirt and she took that off as well, hanging them both up as she shivered in the winter-morning air. Her boots she stood underneath the pegs. Her leggings, also covered in black and red diamonds, hung neatly next to the shirt.

  Then she was just in her boys’ smallclothes and dark stockings and garters. Her shoulder-length hair was clubbed, but she took it down and ran her fingers through it, making it messy. She bound her hair back again with a bit of leather cord and let a few strands hang in her face. She took a length of soft cloth and wound it around her breasts, binding them flat, but not too tightly, because it was hard to draw a deep breath otherwise. Besides, her breasts weren’t that big to begin with.

  She pulled on a big man’s shirt, a stained brown waistcoat, a tattered pair of boys’ breeches, and a rusty black coat. She put a dagger in her coat pocket, another in the pocket of her waistcoat, and a tiny blade in a thin leather sheath under her right foot in her shoe. She smashed an old wide-brimmed hat on her head and she was Alf.

  A boy.

  Because this was what she was.

  At night she was the Ghost of St Giles. She protected the people of St Giles—her people, living in the big, dark woods. She ran out the monsters—the murderers and rapists and robbers. And she flew over the roofs of the city by moonlight, free and wild.

  During the day she was Alf, a boy. She made her living dealing in information. She listened and learned, and if you wanted to know who was running pickpocket boys and girls in Covent Gardens or which doxies had the clap or even what magistrate could be bought and for how much, she could tell you and would—for a price.

  But whether the Ghost or Alf, what she wasn’t and would never be, at least not in St Giles, was a woman.

  When had the Ghost of St Giles become a woman?

  Hugh hissed as one of his former soldiers, Jenkins, drew catgut thread through the cut on his forehead.

  Riley winced and silently offered him the bottle of brandy.

  Talbot cleared his throat and said, “Begging your pardon, sir, but are you sure the Ghost of St Giles was a woman?”

  Hugh eyed the big man—he’d once served as a grenadier. “Yes, I’m sure. She had tits.”

  “You searched her, did you, sir?” Riley asked politely in his Irish accent.

  Talbot snorted.

  Hugh instinctively turned to shoot a reproving glance at Riley—and Jenkins tsked as the thread pulled at his flesh. Damn that hurt.

  “Best if you hold still, sir,” Jenkins quietly chided.

  All three men had been under his command at one time or another out in India or on the Continent. When Hugh had received the letter telling him that Katherine, his wife, had died after falling off her horse in Hyde Park, he’d known his exile was at an end, and that he would need to sell his commission in the army and return. He’d offered Riley, Jenkins, and Talbot positions if they elected to return to England with him.

  All three had accepted his offer without a second thought.

  Now Riley leaned against the door of the big master bedroom in Kyle House, his arms folded and his shoulders hunched, his perpetually sad eyes fixed on the needle. The slight man was brave to a fault, but he hated surgery of any sort. Next to him Talbot was a towering presence, barrel-chested and brawny like most men chosen for the grenadiers.

  Jenkins pursed his lips, his one eye intent on the stitch he was placing. A black leather eye patch tied neatly over the man’s silver hair covered the other eye. “’Nother two, maybe three stitches, sir.”

  Hugh grunted and took a drink from the bottle of brandy, careful not to move his head. He was sitting on the edge of his four-poster bed, surrounded by candles so that Jenkins could see to stitch him up.

  The former army private could sew a wound closed with better precision than any educated physician. Jenkins was also capable of extracting teeth, letting blood, treating fevers, and, Hugh suspected, amputating limbs, though he’d never actually seen the older man do the last. Jenkins was a man of few words, but his hands were gentle and sure, his lined face calm and intelligent.

  Hugh winced at another stitch, his mind back on the woman who had moved so gracefully and yet so efficiently with her swords. “I thought our information was that the Ghost of St Giles was retired?”

  Riley shrugged. “That’s what we’d heard, sir. There hasn’t been a sighting of the Ghost for at least a year. Course there’s been more than one Ghost in the past. Jenkins thinks there were at least two at one point, maybe even three.”

  A hesitant voice piped up from a corner of the room. “Beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Riley, but what’s this Ghost you’re talking about?”

  Bell hadn’t spoken since they’d entered the room and Hugh had all but forgotten the lad. He glanced now at Bell, sitting on a stool, his blue eyes alert, though his shoulders had begun to slump with weariness. The lad was only fifteen and the newest of his men, having joined Hugh’s service after the death of his father.

  Bell flushed as he drew the attention of the older men.

  Hugh nodded at the boy to reassure him. “Riley?”

  Riley uncrossed his arms and winked at Bell. “The Ghost of St Giles is a sort of legend in London. He dresses like a harlequin clown—motley leggings and tunic and a carved half mask—and is able to climb and dance on the rooftops of London. There are some who say he’s nothing but a bogeyman to scare children. Others whisper that the Ghost is a defender of the poor. He goes where soldiers and magistrates dare not and runs out the footpads, rapists, and petty thieves who prey on the most wretched of St Giles.”

  Bell’s brows drew together in confusion. “So … he’s not real, sir?”

  Hugh grunted, remembering soft flesh. “Oh, he—or rather she—is real enough.”

  “That’s just it,” Talbot interjected, looking intrigued. “I’ve spoken to people who have been helped by the Ghost in years past, but the Ghost has never been a woman before. Do you think she could be the wife of one of the former Ghosts, sir?”

  Hugh decided not to examine why he didn’t like that particular suggestion. “Whoever she was, she was a damned good swordswoman.”

  “More importantly,” Jenkins said softly as he placed another stitch, “who was behind the attack? Who wanted you dead, sir?”

  “Do you think it was the work of the Lords of Chaos?” Riley asked.

  “Maybe.” Hugh grimaced as Jenkins pulled the catgut. “But before I was ambushed I was at the Habsburg ambassador’s house. It was a large dinner party and a long one. I got up to piss at one point. I was coming back along the hall when I happened to overhear a bit of conversation.”

  “Happened, sir?” Riley said, his face expressionless.

  “Old habits die hard,” Hugh replied drily. “There were two men, huddled together in a dim corner of the hallway, speaking in French. One I recognized from the Russian embassy. No one official, you understand, but certainly he’s part of the Russians’ delegation. The other
man I didn’t know, but he looked like a servant, perhaps a valet. The Russian slipped a piece of paper into the servant’s hand and told him to take it quickly to the Prussian.”

  “The Prussian, sir?” Jenkins asked softly. “No name?”

  “No name,” Hugh replied.

  “Bloody buggering hell.” Talbot shook his head almost admiringly. “You have to admit, sir, that the man has bollocks to be passing secrets to the Prussians in the Habsburg ambassador’s house.”

  “If that’s what the Russian was doing,” Hugh said cautiously, though he had no real doubts himself.

  “Did he see you, sir?” Riley asked.

  “Oh yes,” Hugh said grimly. “One of the other guests bumbled up behind me calling my name. Drunken fool. The Russian couldn’t help but know that I’d heard everything.”

  “Still, there would be very little time to find and hire assassins to target you on your walk home from the dinner,” Talbot said.

  “Very true,” Hugh said. “Which brings us back to the Lords of Chaos.”

  Jenkins leaned a little closer now, his one brown eye intent, and snipped a thread before sitting back. “Done, sir. Do you want a bandage?”

  “No need.” The wound had mostly stopped bleeding anyway. “Thank you, Jenkins.” Hugh caught Bell trying to smother a yawn. “Best be off to bed, the lot of you. We’ll reconvene tomorrow morning after we get some sleep.”

  “Sir.” Riley straightened and came to attention.

  Talbot nodded respectfully. “Night, sir.”

  “Good night, Your Grace,” said Bell.

  Then all three were out the door.

  Hugh picked up a cloth, wet it, and wiped the remaining blood from his face, wincing as the movement reminded him of the bruises up and down his ribs.

  Jenkins silently packed his surgical tools into a worn black leather case.

  Hugh glanced at the window and saw to his surprise that light was glowing around the cracks of the curtains. Had it been so long since he’d staggered home from St Giles?

  He crossed to the window and jerked the curtain open.