“No, but there is always a first time. And in your case, the first time could be fatal.”
“Believe me, I am as fond of my neck as you are of yours and I won’t be agreeing to anything unless I am convinced the profits are worth the risk.”
Dudley snorted. “Aye, now if we could only agree on our definitions of the word ’risk.’”
Tyrone only laughed. “Risk, my good man, is what keeps the blood flowing hot and fast through the veins.”
His companion did not sound convinced. “How did you leave it with her?”
“I told her I had to think about her proposition. That we would meet in three days, as planned, and I would give her my decision then.”
“Three days … it isn’t a lot of time.”
“She also told Roth about the meeting, so we can expect him to be there as well.”
“Of course,” Dudley said wryly. “Why would I even doubt it?”
“If I altered the arrangements in any way, and if Roth is watching her, then he would know something is amiss. That fine pointed nose of his would start twitching like a bloodhound in heat and we might lose the advantage.”
“We have an advantage?”
Tyrone leaned over and slapped Dudley on the arm. “We have you. In three days’ time, you could find out why the king’s piss is blue and if the queen’s lover dresses to the right or the left. In this case, all you have to do is find out everything you can about the girl, what hold Roth has over her, and how we can turn it around to use it against them.”
Dudley glared. “Is that all?”
“Since you asked: you might want to post a discreet question or two about the rubies. She called them the Dragon’s Blood suite and implied there were exiles from Louis’ court who would pay an exorbitant amount to keep them from falling into the hands of a London fishmonger. That should keep you busy for a day or two anyway. Meanwhile”—Hart settled back and looked thoughtfully out over the darkness—“a visit to Doris Riley might be in order. If anyone knows anything about Edgar Vincent’s upcoming nuptials, it would be the madam of his favorite whorehouse.”
“You to a brothel and me to the town gossips? It hardly seems a fair apportioning of tasks.”
Tyrone laughed. “Fine. You call on Doris and I will ride back to Priory Lane and explain to the very pregnant lass waiting in your bed for you that you are in Berkswell gathering information.”
“Aye.” Dudley crammed his hat back on his head. “I see your point.”
“The point Robbie, is not to let a woman get so far under your skin that you feel guilty looking at another pair of ankles.”
“My fondest wish is to be able to quote those words to you one day.”
“It will never happen. My skin is far too thick and I enjoy the view too much.”
As soon as they were clear of the trees, Tyrone gave Ares his head and they streaked away across the open fields like a bolt of dark lightning. In less time than it took for either of them to become winded, low clusters of outlying cottages came into view, marking the approach to the village of Berkswell. Hart veered east, careful to keep a line of trees and hedgerows between himself and the winding ribbon of road, circling well around the town itself until he reached the westerly limits and came upon a tall, stately home set back a ways and surrounded by a low stone wall.
To a casual visitor, it looked like any one of a dozen elegant homes situated along the riverbank. To the local residents—the men in particular—it was one of the most exclusive brothels between Coventry and Birmingham.
It was not an unusual sight to see men coming and going from the house at all hours and Tyrone was cautious enough to keep to the trees. Doris had four girls working for her at the moment—Laura, Cathy, and two Judys—and Tyrone was no stranger to any of them. They were beautiful and energetic and only too happy to provide him with an evening’s diversion when it was warranted.
At twenty-nine years of age Doris was the matriarch, the Queen as her girls called her. She entertained who she wanted and did not give a fig how many black-busked matrons flared their nostrils and crossed the street to give her a wide berth. For that matter, if it ever came to a spitting match, she was quite capable of telling the rich and noble ladies of the parish exactly what they deserved to know, for she knew by name how many of their husbands were faithful and how many of them lavished expensive gifts on their mistresses. She was mature, sinfully uninhibited, and shared Tyrone’s need, every once in a while, not to seduce or flirt, not to plead, cajole, or make excuses. Not to talk at all. Just to strip and soak the bed-sheets with sweat and waken in the morning with a clear head and a fine sense of accomplishment.
It had happened almost four years ago, after a particularly close call with a patrol of militiamen, that Tyrone had found himself at the Berkswell house, badly winded and bleeding from a saber wound. Doris had asked no questions. She had simply peeled off his clothes, ushered him into bed, and when the lobsterbacks demanded to search the premises, they found Tyrone and Doris engaged in activities that had sent them away red-faced and sweating.
In the intervening years, she had become one of his best sources of information. Among her own personal clientele she numbered army officers, local magistrates, bankers, and merchants who were not above bragging how much money they had, how much they carried to and from their places of business, and what manner of precautions they used to safeguard it. Periodically, she would send a card or a note inviting Tyrone to dine and over the course of the evening, would let slip a remark pertaining to what so and so might be carrying on his person when he left for London the next day, or where, sneaky devil that he was, the burgher hid his tax collections. Sometimes she would elude to one of her own evening entertainments, and in whose company she might be found, and at the call to stand and deliver, she acted suitably surprised and indignant, never revealing by a glance or a gesture that she knew who might be behind the collar and tricorn.
On one such occasion, when he had followed her advice to stop a certain conveyance on the Narborough turnpike, it was Tyrone who’d had difficulty controlling his expression, for Doris Riley had emerged from the coach wearing nothing but a blush and a diamond pendant. Her male companion, prompted by the threat of the snaphaunces, had stumbled into the moonlight in a similar state of flagrante delicto, his only accessory a festoon of red ribbons knotted around his nether region.
Tyrone had recognized Edgar Vincent at once, despite his ridiculous appearance. A tall, bull-necked man in his mid-thirties, he had the solid upper body of a wrestler and the belligerent nature of someone not accustomed to having either his privacy or his personal possessions violated. A wise thief, upon discovering who he had inadvertently chosen to rob, would have apologized profusely, hastened them back into the coach, and ridden away, not stopping until he had put half of Britain’s width and dust behind him.
Tyrone had only laughed.
In truth, he laughed every time he thought of the burly fishmonger standing there too drunk to utter anything more coherent than threats, too tightly bound in his silken torment to allow for any noticeable decrease in the pain or size of his tumescence. Vincent had vowed to bring ten kinds of hellfire down on Tyrone’s head but so far only one had taken shape. Colonel Bertrand Roth had arrived in Coventry within a week of the robbery, and in that time, had trebled the patrols on the roads at night, had issued standing orders to stop and question any lone horsemen out on the roads after dark and if they refused to comply or attempted to run, they were to be shot out of hand. It was a nuisance and an inconvenience, but, so far, he had not had any more success than his predecessor, Colonel Lewis, who had been quite happy to turn the task of capturing the elusive Captain Starlight over to Roth.
It was lucrative work, and exciting. There were nights Tyrone felt like throwing his head back and howling at the moon. Nights when every moment was crystal-clear perfection, when drawing each mist-laden breath was a deliberate and conscious act, when the effect was felt deep and cold in the lungs
and his entire body vibrated with the thrill of being alive.
Those were the nights he had no regrets, no pangs of guilt for the course he had chosen to take through life, nothing but complete and absolute acceptance of who and what he was: a thief, a scoundrel, a rogue. It was better than anything fate might have had in store for him had he kept on a straight path and followed a preordained destiny as his father and his grandfather had before him. Both had been game wardens, descended from a proud line of foresters dating back to a time when nine tenths of England was greenwood and a man could lose his hands and his life for daring to raise a bow against a royal deer.
Tyrone would not have had much hope of rising to anything grander in life had sheer luck not brought him into the world the same week a son and heir was born to the lord of the manor. Because his mother had shared her milk as a wet-nurse, Tyrone had spent his first few years as playmate and companion to the fat young Reginald Braithwaite, a spoiled and truculent child given to tantrums and fits of foaming apoplexy if he did not get his way. Reginald hated school and insisted he would only agree to tolerate a tutor if Tyrone shared the classroom with him. Although he sat ignored in a back corner for the most part, Hart learned from watching and listening. He possessed a quick wit and a keen intelligence and once he realized the symbols on a page could be transformed into knowledge and adventure and romance, he would steal into the big library at night and read, devouring as many words as he could cram into his hungry mind. While the little lord cursed and spit over endless rounds of deciphering and translations, Tyrone learned French and Latin and Greek. He proved to be a fine mimic with an ear for accents and provided no end of amusement for the Braithwaite heir by strutting about the classroom imitating the speech patterns of the latest Oxford dean sent to drum knowledge into his head.
He was also a tall and strappingly handsome youth, all sleek muscle and latent virility, which in turn amused the young lord’s vivacious older sister to no end. It was not always by accident she would appear in the stables when Tyrone was stripped to the waist helping his father birth a foal or train dogs for the hunt. And it was not without enthusiasm that she introduced him to the pleasures of a woman’s body at the tender age of fifteen.
When he was sixteen, the duke decided it was time for his son to take a tour of Europe. With a little sly persuasion and subtle goading, Reginald refused to even consider it without Tyrone to act as companion and bodyguard. They were away six months longer than originally planned, mainly because Tyrone had wanted to see the pyramids and the Parthenon and to hear the poets in Italy and to listen to piano concertos in Frankfurt. It was there, in the summer of his seventeenth year, that Reginald contracted the throat inflammation that forced the two weary travelers to return home. They were not back in England a week when the young lord died from an inability to swallow, and without preamble, Tyrone found himself back in the stables, sunk up to his ankles in ripe horse manure, mucking out the stalls.
Compounding his difficulties, when he offered a smile to the duke’s daughter as he helped her mount her horse, he was lashed across the face with a riding crop and accused of daring to make lewd advances to his betters. He was ordered off the estate at once and with no money, no true sense of where he belonged, he eventually found himself wandering along the London waterfront, where he signed on board the first vessel that looked as if its cannons were used for more than just hunting whales.
Life aboard a successful privateer had opened his eyes to the many wonders that lay beyond the far edge of the horizon. It had also opened the skin on his back on more occasions than he cared to remember, and he still bore a crisscross pattern of scars on his shoulders from a heavy-handed boatswain who decided a sailor had no business quoting from the Greek classics. Hart served three years as a gunner’s mate before a drunken dispute on shore with that same oafish boatswain fixed the first charge of murder on his head. Deciding he had had enough of the sea anyway, he headed north, into Scotland, where he joined a band of reivers and learned from those master thieves how to steal and rustle and outfox the British soldiers who had been keeping the Highlands under severe military rule since the failed rebellion of ’45.
That two-year escapade earned him more lash-marks and a stint in a British gaol. It was there he had met Robert Dudley, the victim of an unlucky tumble off a wagon running barrels of Scots liquid gold—uisque baugh—across the border into England. Robbie had been thrown into Tyrone’s cell with the broken bones of his left leg protruding out the skin, denied the services of a doctor because, according to the guards, he would likely be hung before they could justify the expense of needle and thread to stitch the wound closed.
Having learned a little about tending wounds on board the privateer, Tyrone set the bones as best he could and tore strips from his own clothes to bind it in a makeshift splint. Hart had not been in the best shape himself, for his gaolers were convinced he knew the location of the reivers’ hoard of stolen goods, and were as liberal with the lash as they were with their fists hoping to persuade him to reveal it. By the end of two weeks’ confinement, it was Robert Dudley who was dragging himself across the cell to tend the most recent battery of bruises and bloody flay-marks on Tyrone’s nearly lifeless body.
The night before Dudley was scheduled to hang, he badgered the guards to come and get Tyrone. Hart had suffered a particularly brutal beating the previous morning and he was, Dudley claimed, quite dead and beginning to stink, which, for a condemned man’s last night on this earth, was too much to have to endure. One of the guards, tired of listening to Dudley’s protests, came alone and unwisely into the cell, ostensibly to break Dudley’s other leg and shut him up until the hangmen came to fetch him at dawn. He got no farther than the initial threat before Tyrone, rising miraculously from his mouldy straw deathbed, lunged from behind and slammed the guard into the stone wall with such force, his skull cracked open like a ripe walnut.
Using the guard’s keys, and a confiscated blunderbuss, Hart and Dudley were able to escape, and, deciding Scotland had become too warm for both of them, rode south in search of good English ale again. It was on a dark stretch of road outside of Exeter that they came across a richly appointed coach waylaid with a broken axle. The owner of the coach had been in the process of collecting a stallion he had won as a wager, and when the axle broke, he had attempted to mount the stallion and ride it the rest of the way home. The beast, black as night with sparks of fury blazing out of his eyes, had refused to oblige and was being whipped so savagely by the young lord, his flanks were covered with blood.
Tyrone had ridden straight for the owner and knocked him half senseless on the first punch. While Dudley occupied the driver and the groomsmen’s attention with the blunderbuss, Tyrone had taken the leather whip and thrashed the young man’s flanks equally bloody. Leaving him screaming by the side of the road, they had ridden away with the stallion, a hefty purse full of gold, and a fine new sense of purpose.
That had been six years ago, and neither Dudley nor Hart had been given cause yet to regret the path they had taken. They chose their victims and their turnpikes with equal care, mapping out ten ways of escaping any particular stretch of road before they even ventured into the moonlight. Despite denying the fact to Renée d’Anton, they were careful never to rob from those who could not afford it, which meant they stayed away from the local post coaches and only stopped the smuggler’s wagons to purchase—at a fair price, negotiated with thieves’ honor—some of the black market goods. There were others, like Doris Riley, who were not reluctant to share information if a little profit was to be had, and innkeepers who thought it a fine joke to see the lobsterbacks chasing after their own shadows.
At the same time, Tyrone did not try to fool himself into believing he was infallible. He could make a mistake, or one of Roth’s tin soldiers could get lucky. That day might even be coming soon when the temptation of a two thousand pounds reward would prove to be too much for those innkeepers to resist. Even so, if the rope were to tighte
n around Tyrone’s throat on the morrow, he could still laugh and say he’d had a damn good run at life, beholden unto no one but himself, grudging himself nothing he wanted, nothing that might otherwise have been forbidden him because of his lowborn station in life.
A rare, boyish smile crept across Tyrone’s face as he stopped with his foot on Doris Riley’s porch and watched the last sliver of the waning moon sink below the distant treetops. In his mind’s eye, he could still see it riding high and swollen in the night sky, casting a luminous stream of light through an open window to render a scanty, damp chemise all but transparent around the curves of a silver-haired beauty. Renée d’Anton. Even her name was exotic and ethereal. Her eyes, when she had discovered him there in the shadows, had been positively luminous, and her mouth had simply proved to be too much of a temptation to stare at too long without doing something about it. Her lips had been warm and sleek, as velvety as he imagined the rest of her body would be, and he could not help but wonder, had he held that kiss a moment longer, or let his hand caress the provocative fullness of her breast … would he be standing on Doris’s doorstep contemplating the mist and the darkness?
The sliver of moon disappeared in a wink, leaving him with the image of a man and woman straining together in a crumple of satin bedsheets. He felt a pleasantly heated rush of blood to his extremities and was starting to climb the last few steps when his smile began to fade and the faces of the two imaginary lovers became clear. One of them was undoubtedly the French beauty, but the other belonged to Edgar Vincent, and Renée was not writhing beneath him in pleasure, but pain. He was forcing himself between her thighs and she could do nothing to stop him, for her wrists and ankles were bound to the bed with blood red ribbons.
Tyrone drew a deep, startled breath. At almost the same moment, a very real sound intruded on his thoughts and he melted quickly into the deeper shadows that flanked either side of the doorway. He reached instinctively for one of the snaphaunces, but remembered too late he had left them in his saddlebag. With scarcely a second to spare, he vaulted over the low wooden rail and crouched down beneath the level of the shrubbery, barely avoiding the wide swath of light that shattered the darkness as the door swung open to a tinkle of feminine laughter.
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