by Shirl Henke
“You done as you said, he’d be the one thankin’ me!” O’Keefe replied with a broad grin, helping the baronet to his feet. Both of them followed the chase up the stairway.
Coulter and Boxer with the rest of the men came pouring into the Goat just in time to see three street toughs running down the hallway from the back of the building, each one as large and battle scarred as the doorman. Former pugilists employed for their brute strength, they wielded truncheons and knives, but were no match for the sabers of trained cavalrymen.
None of the combatants saw two slight, ragged figures slip into the dimly lit hallway and race up the stairs after Burleigh and O’Keefe. “The children must be up here somewhere,” Amber whispered to Jenette, who had drawn her knife.
Amber stopped at the landing where a small table sat with a heavy long-necked vase on top. Grabbing the fresh flowers from it, she threw them on the polished oak floor and picked up the vase. “This ought to serve,” she muttered, following her friend to the top of the steps where the clang of steel echoed from down the long hallway.
Rob was at the end of it, engaged with a tall figure improbably dressed in a stylish red jacket and brandishing a sword with considerable skill. The earl’s saber was awkward in close quarters but he had the advantage of a heavier blade. With a few well-placed strokes, he broke the slender sword near its hilt, then backed the man against the wall, the business end of his weapon pressing into the man’s throat. “Now, where is the young blonde girl you intended to auction tonight?”
Molly’s paramour rasped out, “Behind you. That door.”
Overhearing, Chipperfield turned the knob and entered, then said in a soft voice, “Millicent, do not be afraid. Grandpa’s here to bring you home, dear child.” The terrified little girl was bound to the bed with ropes. Hands trembling, he began to unfasten them, silently cursing human depravity and praying in gratitude at the same time.
“Down on your knees,” Rob commanded the pretty-faced whoremaster outside the door, forcing him to kneel, then raising his saber. He used the butt of the hilt to smash the fellow on his head.
Cooper backed a huge brute against a wall with his saber while O’Keefe clubbed him unconscious. Neither soldier saw another denizen of the Goat slip from a door behind them, a gun aimed at the Irishman’s back. Before he could pull the trigger, Jenette seized hold of his long greasy hair with her left hand and jabbed the tip of her blade into the side of his throat with her right, drawing a trickle of blood. “Lower the pistol, s’il vous plait,” she whispered in a deadly voice.
His gun clattered across the floor.
Both soldiers looked at the “boy” in surprise. “We owe ye, boyo,” O’Keefe said as Cooper dealt with the unconscious pugilist. The Irishman shoved the second attacker down. They rolled both men over and started to bind their hands.
Giving a low grunt, Jenette stooped down to pick up the pistol, not seeing Molly slide open the door to her quarters. The bawd, too, had armed herself. Taking in the situation, she prepared to shoot the youth who blocked her pathway to escape.
Amber sprang forward and swung the vase in a backhanded stroke just as the bawd heard her and whirled around. The pottery caught Molly full in the face. She crumpled to the floor in a puddle of blue satin and red blood. A huge gash opened across her forehead and ran in a jagged line down to her jaw. “A tiny bit of my debt is paid, my friend,” Amber said to Jenette.
“Blimey, there be two of ’em,” Cooper said, rubbing his eyes. “Ain’t ye the lady from the House of Dreams?” O’Keefe asked Amber.
Before she could reply, Rob answered for her. “Yes, the disobedient chit is.” As he spoke, he scanned the hallway doors, expecting more armed men to appear, but none did.
“We have no time to waste. You dispose of these…creatures,” Amber said. “Jeni and I shall free the children.” She opened the first door and slipped inside with the Frenchwoman following close.
“Cooper, O’Keefe, drag these men to the top of the stairs and roll them down,” Rob commanded, hearing Boxer’s and Coulter’s voices from below. They obviously had the situation there well in hand and were binding their captives according to plan. Just then Molly moaned and stirred. “Tie her up, gag her, and while you’re at it, find something to cover her face so she doesn’t frighten the children.” With that, he walked quickly to the door the two women had entered.
Burleigh finished freeing Millicent, then helped her sit up. “Wait here, child, while I see if ′tis safe to come out,” he said gently.
Before he could stand up, she threw her arms around his neck, begging, “Please don’t leave me, Grandpapa!”
He patted her back and held her, uttering a prayer of thanks as he heard Rob issuing orders down the hallway. At last, the nightmare was over! He lifted his granddaughter into his arms and carried her swiftly down the hall and out the door to his waiting carriage.
In the first room they entered, Amber and Jenette found two little girls tied to beds, one about Millicent’s age, the other slightly older. Both recoiled in terror until the women removed their caps and let their hair fall around their shoulders as they approached, speaking soft, soothing words.
Rob watched as Jenette sliced away the cruel ropes binding them and Fantasia comforted them, rubbing their abraded arms gently. She is as natural at this as my mother would be. Rather than voice that startling thought aloud, he said, “I’ll check the next room.”
Amber turned to the elder of the two girls. “Are there more children held here?”
“Yes,” she said, gulping in air as if drowning. “Me two twin brothers is next door, I think. Our ma, she couldn’t feed us…” Her voice faded away in misery.
The younger girl asked, “What ’appened to that mean witch with the white ’air?”
“I broke her broomstick—and her head,” Amber replied with a smile.
The child returned it shyly. “Good,” she said quietly.
Rob and Jenette made a systematic check of every room on the floor and found six more children including the twin boys. As they guided all of them down the hall, Amber whispered to Rob, “What makes men so utterly evil that they will buy six-year-old boys to abuse?” She shuddered in revulsion as their charges filed down the steps.
“I saw things during the war…” His voice faded as he recalled all the senseless bestiality he had witnessed and described to Gaby. Shaking his head, he vowed that he would never speak of that brutal part of his life again.
“That was war. This is…London,” she replied as they helped the little ones into the coaches. “When first I came here, I hoped for better, but it took a while to find it,” she said.
Rob wanted to ask her where she had come from, what she had fled before she ended up at the House of Dreams, but Sergeant Coulter interrupted. “No alarms raised. Got ’em all trussed up tight as Christmas geese, Captain.” He waited expectantly.
Rob nodded. “Do it,” was all he said.
Amber looked at him, puzzled. “What are they doing?” she asked as Coulter, Boxer, and four of their men filed resolutely back into the house.
“Meting out justice, eh, Capitaine?” Jenette said with a knowing look. “What of the bawd?”
“She will have scars enough from Fantasia’s hand, I think, to serve as a reminder,” he replied.
Amber realized what they meant. “They’re going to flog them,” she said, nodding her approval. “I have never enjoyed seeing anyone bleed as much as I did Molly Chub. But will it deter her from selling children?”
“I believe the message might require a bit of reinforcement,” Jenette said, exchanging a look with Amber.
“Molly will be scarred for life,” Rob said. “Lesson enough.”
“And what of the children? What scars has she inflicted on all those we were too late to rescue?”
Jenette slipped her blade from its sheath. “I will deliver a message that she will remember.” When he started to refuse, she raised her hand. “A threat, not a killing. I can be�
��most convincing.” At his nod she walked quickly inside.
“Miss, where will ye take us?” the girl with the twin brothers asked Amber from the coach door.
“To a very kind woman who will see that you all find good places to stay. Her name is Mrs. Winston,” Amber replied.
“Me brothers be fearful hungry. W-will she feed us?” she asked.
Tears gleamed in Amber’s eyes. “Not only feed you, but give you warm, clean beds. You shall go to school and learn to read and write.”
As she asked the girl’s name and those of her brothers and the other children huddled inside the coach, Rob looked on, amazed at her way with them. Within moments, the men and Jenette returned. As she passed Rob to climb into the second coach, the Frenchwoman murmured to him, “Molly will never deal in children again—and, non, she has no further marks on her. I only made her a…promise.”
“I take it she believed you,” he said dryly.
Chipperfield and Millicent had already departed in his coach. Now the other two, filled with children, took off, headed for the House of Dreams.
By the time the tall case clock struck ten, all the young ones had been fed and bathed and were sleeping on the spacious third floor of Grace Winston’s home. Amber came downstairs, exhausted but jubilant, her eyes gleaming in her stillsmudged face. She had taken no time to change from her stable boy’s clothes, so eager was she to help care for the little ones. None had been molested yet! Her relief in learning that made her cry with joy.
She found Rob sitting in her office, nursing a cup of coffee and a snifter of brandy. “I have received word from the Elijah Woodbridge School for indigent children,” he said. “They’ve offered to take all of the children.”
“Oh, Rob, that means they will receive an education and have a chance in life!” she said, launching herself at him as he stood up. She practically dragged him across the floor and yanked on the bellpull, then wrapped her arms around his neck and began raining light kisses all over his face.
Bonnie peeped her head inside the door, hearing the commotion even before being summoned. “Bring us champagne, Bonnie. We must celebrate!” The little maid grinned and nodded, closing the door to fetch it.
Rob returned Fantasia’s embrace and whirled her around in a circle, laughing as he said, “The children are clean but you still smell of manure!”
“I don’t care, I don’t care,” she practically shouted.
Rob had never seen the cool, controlled Lady Fantasia in such girlish high spirits. She was filthy and wearing rags, but she had never seemed more lovely, he thought as he looked down into her smiling face. When they stopped spinning across the room, he let go of her with one arm and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief. “Let me at least clean off the soot before we toast,” he murmured, wiping away the smudges marring her perfect features.
His gentle ministrations took away the makeup beneath the stable dirt. That was when he saw the small scar on her cheekbone.
Chapter Nineteen
His hand froze but he kept his other arm around her waist. He pressed her closer. Squeezing his eyes closed, he rested his chin on the top of her head, drawing her to melt against his body. Then he murmured in French, “My little one.”
Without being aware of what she did, Amber automatically replied, “My heart, my own,” also in French. She felt his whole body shudder and realized what had just happened. He dropped his arms to his sides and stepped back from her. Unconsciously, she raised her fingertips to the scar.
Watching her touch the scar made him blanch. “Perfect…Parisian…French. You’ve taken everything I had to give, every secret, every hope, dream.” His voice cracked. “What a fool I’ve been, Fantasia—or should I say Gaby? Amber?”
“Amber Leighigh is my name.” Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears. What could she say that would erase the pain and betrayal she read in his eyes? He looked physically ill. She raised her hand beseechingly, not knowing how to begin, what to confess first. “Rob—”
“I’ve given you no leave to use that name, only Gaby…and now I find that she does not even exist. Congratulations on your best fantasy yet. Please cash the banknote. You were a most excellent teacher. You’ve earned it.”
With that he turned and walked silently from the room. As she crumpled to the floor, she heard the rear door close softly and his great black horse’s hooves clatter across the cobblestones.
A moment later Jenette pushed open the door and walked in, her face alight as she held up an icy bottle of champagne. The instant she saw her friend, huddled sobbing on the carpet, she set the bottle down and took Amber in her arms. “What has happened, dear one?”
Grace, who had been following directly behind her, said softly, “The inevitable.” She looked at Jenette and said, “I believe we shall require something a bit more potent than champagne.”
Jenette poured three glasses of Lady Fantasia’s excellent cognac.
Rob rode through the night for hours, his mind in turmoil. Gaby, his sweet, gentle confidante, did not exist. He had stripped his soul bare before her, believed her tragic tale about being a victim of Napoleon’s tyranny. He had confessed the horrors of Spanish battlefields, described experiences in the war that he had vowed never to speak of. Worse yet, he had babbled about his sexual inadequacy, the intimate details of his first marriage, and the guilt he felt over Credelia’s death. How understanding she had been. How wise. How consoling.
How false!
Why had Fan—no, Amber, he corrected himself savagely—gone to such lengths? Why deceive him in such a cruel way? She had even deceived his mother, and Abigail St. John was no one’s fool. But he had been.
As dawn began to glimmer over the eastern rooftops of the city, he led his tired and sweating stallion into the mews at the back of his city house. The stableman took one look at the brooding expression on the earl’s face and accepted the reins, saying only, “I’ll see ’e’s rubbed down good and fed, m’lord.”
Rob made his way inside, handing his coat and weapons to his butler, Settles, without uttering a word. The discreet elderly servant knew something was badly amiss but accepted the articles, then followed the earl upstairs. Asking no questions, he merely said, “I shall have a bath drawn, and Cook will prepare a light repast since you missed supper last night.”
“Please do not bother Cook. All I require is the bath and a bottle of brandy. No, make that two bottles of brandy,” he corrected, yanking off his shirt and tossing it on the hall floor. He progressed into his bedroom, shedding his remaining articles of clothing and employing the jack to tug off his boots. As he slipped on a robe and belted it, Settles picked everything up. “Very good, m’lord.”
The butler bowed and left to do as he was bidden.
Within a half hour, Rob had sunk into a tub of warm water and sipped his third glass of brandy. He had gulped the first two as he paced back and forth across the large room, alone with his demons. “And they are legion,” he said, raising the cut crystal of amber liquid in a mocking toast. Amber. How ironic. Was it truly her name? Why should he care? He would never see her again.
But memories of her filled his mind. As Fantasia with her razor-sharp wit, so cool and elegant by day. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly to blot out the image of golden eyes and cherry-colored hair…and remembered Gabrielle, so passionate and sweet in darkness. He could smell her lilac scent. He muttered an oath and took another swallow of brandy.
Rob could not shut out the soft cadence of whispered words of love and passion uttered in that flawless French. He heard the magic of her rich laughter. He fought the desire to clamp his hands over his ears as if he could drown out the sounds. But they were inside his head, trapped there forever. “I will never forget you…either one of you…whoever the hell you are,” he slurred, finishing the brandy.
The bottle on the tub-side table was half-empty. He started to pour a refill, then changed his mind. Setting aside the glass, he drank directly from the bottle. How could he hav
e been so dense? So besotted with newly discovered sexual gratification that he dismissed the idea that they were one woman, especially after he danced with Fantasia at the Chitchester ball? Her English was far too good for her to be a French émigré. Her French was so authentic that she must have lived in Paris for some time. Jenette, he suspected, held the answer to that question. But there were many others.
Who wanted to kidnap her? Why did she hide her face and name? Why would a woman possessing such education and refinement live in a bordello, even the most elite one in London? Somehow he would have to explain to his mother that they had both been deceived. How the devil he would accomplish that without confessing his involvement with a courtesan, he had no idea. His head began to pound.
He let the now empty bottle slip from his fingers. It rolled across the floor while he hung his arms over the sides of the tub and fell into an exhausted sleep.
After Grace explained Amber’s masquerade as Gabrielle to Jenette, the Frenchwoman attempted to console her friend, insisting that the earl was in as much pain as she. Far from assuaging her guilt, that only intensified it. She suffered the well-meaning ministrations of her friends, forcing down the cognac, eating a few bites of bread and cheese, then taking a bath to scrub the filth of the stable boy disguise from her body. When she finally shooed everyone from her quarters, she started for her bedroom, only to see the bank draft Rob had written for Gabrielle lying on her desk.
Her eyes were blurry with unshed tears when she reached for it. “You earned it.” She blinked, letting the tears roll down her cheeks as she tore the draft into tiny pieces. She watched the bits of paper float to the carpet and felt as if her heart had been sundered the same way.
“Barrington spoke on kidnapping children and forcing them into prostitution in Lords yesterday,” Grace said to Amber as she folded that morning’s Chronicle and lay it aside. A week had passed since their bitter parting, yet Amber remained in her quarters, licking her wounds. “If he can recover himself and go back to his work, you must do likewise, my dear,” Grace admonished.