With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “At that age, they’ll pay you for another go in five minutes!” said Bess.

  “And, what they lack in skill they make up for in eagerness,” added another.

  Dark Sally’s eyes turned from kind to malevolent as she speared the boys with a hatred they weren’t yet old enough to understand or to have earned. “Don’t no man ‘round here bother with skill,” she sneered. “They’ll grow to be no different.”

  A roar of laughter followed the lads out into the yard as they escaped the loud and bawdy women only to be swallowed by the crowded din of the streets.

  A bitter autumn wind reached icy fingers through their threadbare clothes, and Cutter snapped the collar of his jacket higher, though it did little good. He rubbed at the back of his neck, and again at the empty ache in his chest.

  Something was fucking wrong. Off. Missing.

  “Fleas at you again?” Dorian ribbed.

  “No, I just…” Cutter could think of nothing to describe what he was experiencing. “I’m cold is all.”

  “Where’s the coat you got from the Ladies’ Aid Society this spring?” Dorian asked, shoving his hands into his pockets. “That jacket you’ve on wouldn’t warm a fleeced sheep.”

  “The sleeves barely came past me elbows anymore,” he answered, giving his newly elongated limbs a wry stretch. “Besides, Caroline’s was swiped from a doss house while back, so I gave it her.”

  Dorian nodded.

  A tepid humiliation lodged next to the demon dogging Cutter, and he glanced over at Dorian to suss his friend’s thoughts. “Caro’s not like them whores in there,” he rushed to explain. “She’s just…well she won’t let me spend me rifleman money on a room while it’s still above freezing, so she does what she’s got to.”

  “I know.” Dorian gave a sober nod, his shoulders hunching forward a little more. “She wants out as bad as we do.”

  “Maybe worse.”

  “We’ve almost enough, Cutter.” A thread of steel hardened his friend’s voice and worked at his jaw as he looked so far ahead, he might squint into the future. “I bet our haul today will cover at least one of us.”

  “But we go together,” Cutter reiterated.

  “Together,” Dorian nodded, and they knocked their forearms.

  A few months past, Cutter had hatched a scheme on the day the royals had paraded through High Street to celebrate the betrothal of a princess.

  Dazzled by the accompanying regimentals in their crimson coats and rifles, he’d decided that in the space of a year, he and Dorian would be tall enough to lie about their ages and join Her Majesty’s Army whereupon they’d be paid a penny a day. Enough to keep Caroline in rooms, and even send her to the regimental school. Enough to get medicine for Jane Blackwell’s deteriorating health.

  Enough to buy a future that didn’t end in an early grave or worse, prison.

  But that took papers…documents of birth they didn’t have, and forging papers took money. So, they all kept whatever savings they could scrimp together in a tin hidden in Dorian’s wall, waiting for the day they’d have enough.

  “All’s we have to do is evade the coppers until then.” Dorian shoved his chin toward a pair on their beat, cudgels already out though there was no disturbance. “They’ll give you nickel in Newgate for just about anything these days.”

  “You’ll still marry her, won’t you?” Cutter’s soft question was almost lost to the din. “Even after the watchmaker. Even after—”

  A rough punch landed on his shoulder. “’Course I will, you toad. Caro’s me first kiss and everything, and…we all gotta do what needs doing to survive.”

  Dorian less than some, Cutter didn’t say.

  Because it wasn’t his fault he had a mum, a roof over his head, or at least one or two guaranteed meals a day. Besides, Dorian and Mrs. Blackwell were generous whenever they could be.

  “Maybe, if I’m going to marry Caroline, Mum would let her sleep in my corner with me.”

  Cutter’s head snapped up as he speared Dorian with a glare.

  “Not like that.” Dorian lifted his hands in a defensive gesture. “I won’t touch her or nothing. Just… so she wouldn’t have to sleep somewhere else. With…anyone else.”

  Cutter had to swallow around a thickening throat before he could reply.

  “You would do that?”

  “’Course. We’re family.” Dorian shrugged him off. “I’d ask for you both if Mum didn’t rent out every inch of space we own at a premium.”

  “It’s all right. I can fend for meself.”

  They skipped, dodged, and slithered through the masses toward the docks, answering the calls of the other street lads, most of whom either feared or venerated them. Dorian, because he was strong as a cart horse with a punishing temper to match, and Cutter because of his aforementioned dead eyed aim and his sharp fists.

  Cutter threw them convivial retorts out of habit alone. For some reason, the worse he felt the more stalwart he was at maintaining a pretense of normality.

  If anyone knew you were down, they’d kick you for it.

  So he did his best to conceal the devil of dread riding him today.

  They arrived at Hangman’s Dock the same time the coroner’s cart did, so they had to act quickly before the police scattered the crowd.

  “Look,” Cutter pointed above. “There’s a landlord charging a fee to get a glimpse from his fire escape. I’ll wager there’s at least a handful of shillings in that box.”

  “He’s our mark.” Dorian made a quick assessment of the buildings and boathouses above the river. “Think you can climb that drainpipe there, and get to the roof above him? I’ll create a diversion and lead them away while you swipe what you can from the box.”

  “I’ll swipe the whole bloody box, see if I don’t.” Cutter nodded and spit in his hands before raking them through the dry bank silt and rubbing them together. They’d just have to get to the other side of the crowd and then, he’d grasp the drainpipe, shimmy hand over hand until he’d scaled the two stories, and scoot onto the roof poised to drop into the spot the blighter would abandon once he tore off after Dorian.

  This was one of his favorite ruses.

  Cutter didn’t care about the corpse. Hell, he’d seen his fill of death after the last typhus epidemic raged through the East End, what was one bloated river find?

  Boring, was what.

  He followed his friend as they shouldered and shoved and jostled as many people as they could, their enterprising hands dipping into every place and coming up with coin more often than not.

  When they broke through to the front and took a breath, they each fished out their finds and shared a grin when they counted almost two shillings’ worth between them, more than a day’s wages around these parts. Today might make them rich, if they played it right.

  They were about to scamper around the half-circled arc to dive back into the other side toward the building when the entire crowd made a collective gasp and took a step back, leaving them strangely exposed.

  He barely heard the disbelieving whispers, so intent was he on his mission.

  “She’s in shreds…

  “What sort of animal…?”

  “…no more than a child…”

  Cutter turned his back on the river and made to dive back into the safety of the throng when Dorian’s hand clutched his wrist with an iron grip.

  He said nothing, but he didn’t have to.

  The demon that had haunted him all day now roared.

  It scratched and clawed and cut deep enough to sever a limb. That was truly what it felt like. Something had been cut out of him. Off of him. Something vital and dear. Gone.

  Amputated.

  He already knew before he turned to look.

  Before he saw the strands of identical golden hair sullied with river filth waving like soft reeds in the little dam created by a concrete dock. Before he registered the red abrasions at her wrists and bare ankles, or the ridiculous pattern of last spring’s coat, the
one he’d given her, only one arm haphazardly shoved into the sleeve.

  Before it dawned on him that even such polluted water was never so red.

  The coin in Cutter’s hands fell to the earth. He stepped on them as he lunged forward, her name released to the sky by the devil who’d stalked him. Surely it had to be. Because no human creature could have made such an inhuman scream.

  Caroline.

  Chapter One

  London, 1880, Twenty-Five years later

  Prudence no longer desired to be good.

  Or, rather, to be a Goode.

  It was why she stood at the gate to Miss Henrietta’s School for Cultured Young Ladies at midnight, her chest heaving and her resolve crumbling. She’d come all this way. And she wanted this. Didn’t she?

  Just one last night of freedom. One night of her own making. Her own choosing.

  One night of pleasure before her father foisted her off on the highest-ranking noble desperate enough to have her at nine and twenty.

  Three months. Three months until her life was irreparably ruined, and she’d have to love, honor, and obey the most notorious spirit-swilling, mistress-having, loud-mouthed, and fractious idiot in all Blighty.

  George Hamby-Forsyth, the sixth Earl of Sutherland.

  He’d marry her because she’d an obscene enough dowry to cover his debts and still maintain a generation or two.

  Not because he loved her.

  God, what a fool she’d been!

  For the umpteenth time, the tragedy of her gullible nature slapped her until her cheeks burned. Had it only been yesterday she’d found out her happy engagement was a farce? That everyone around her knew she would be wretched and humiliated, and still expected her to go through with it?

  That the two people closest to her in the world hadn’t loved her enough to tell her.

  The scene forever tormented her, illuminated just as clearly as it had been in the brightness of the late afternoon sun the day before. Every decision she’d made a perfect mix of timing and luck until she’d stumbled upon her own tragedy.

  Pru had been pleasantly exhausted after spending a day with the seamstresses for her extensively fine wedding trousseau. Her sister Honoria had accompanied her, along with their oldest friend and neighbor, Mrs. Amanda Brighton of the Farley-Downs Brightons.

  “Do let’s go to Hyde Park,” Pru had gestured expansively toward the park in question, shaking Amanda’s arm in her eagerness. “I’m dying to sweep by Rotten Row and take a few turns on Oberon.”

  “I’m game for it.” Honoria, her eldest—already married—sister, had lifted her nose and squinted into the distance where the horse track colloquially known as Rotten Row bustled with the empire’s aristocracy, both human and equine.

  Amanda was more Honoria’s age than Pru’s—which was three years older—but she and Amanda shared a blithe and energetic nature that made them natural mischief-makers and thereby the swiftest of friends.

  Honoria, though a beauty, was born to be a dreary proper matron, and fulfilled her vocation with dreadful aplomb.

  “I wouldn’t at all mind examining the new stags on the market,” Amanda said with a sprightly grin lifting her myriad of freckles. She tucked one arm into Pru’s and the other into Honoria’s, and nearly dragged them both toward the square.

  Prudence’s ride along the row had been every bit as exhilarating and satisfying as she’d imagined. Friends and acquaintances had called out their hearty congratulations, which had produced the sort of smile that she felt with her entire self.

  It’d dimmed when she’d a brief encounter with Lady Jessica Morton, who was the reason everyone had called her “Prudunce” in finishing school. But even her spinster nemesis had gritted out her felicitations. Had Jessica’s smile been on a dog, it would have been called a snarl, and Prudence had to fight a spurt of victorious wickedness.

  Jealousy was such an unflattering color.

  Oh, it wasn’t her best quality, this, but it had felt indescribably good to “win,” for lack of a better word. Her entire life, she’d come in second. Second eldest and second prettiest of the four so-called, “Goode girls.”

  Second married, as well.

  But to an Earl! And not just any Earl, but one of the most marriageable bachelors in the realm. Her happy engagement was delicious any day but became pure truffled pleasure when trotted out in front of Jessica.

  Bidding a cheerful farewell to the retreating back of her childhood antagonist, Pru had handed Oberon to one of the grooms, and set off to meet the ladies for tea.

  Bouncing her riding crop off her thigh in high spirits, Pru had searched for them, eager to share her bit of gossip about her conversation with Jessica.

  She found Honoria and Amanda on a bench with their heads together. They admired a group of smartly dressed young men prancing about on thoroughbreds and sipped thin glasses of lemonade that sweated in the summer heat.

  She was about to call out to them when she fumbled her riding crop and dropped it, kicking it behind a tree.

  Cursing her constant clumsiness, she scampered after it, and was still stooping to retrieve it when Amanda had said, “How bold of Lady Jessica to approach Pru in public.”

  Honoria retrieved a compact mirror from her reticule and checked the hue of her perfect lips, the pallor of her dewy skin, and tucked a stray dark hair back beneath her hat before snapping it shut. “I detest Jessica Morton. She tormented Pru endlessly in school.”

  Amanda made a sour face, as if her lemonade had suddenly become too tart. “I’d thought her affair with Pru’s fiancé concluded, but now I’m not so certain.”

  Honoria’s excessively pretty features pinched into a frown of disapproval. “George and Jessica? Are you quite certain?”

  Heedless of her new wine velvet riding jacket, Prudence had pressed her back to the tree, less a furtive move than a collapse. She needed something to hold her up.

  George…Her George…and Jessica Morton?

  When? Why? And how? And how many times? And… When?

  Certainly, she’d never assumed he’d been a saint, not with his roguish good looks, but now that they were to marry, she’d thought he’d have no need for other women.

  That she’d be enough.

  That their love would contain all the passion he’d require.

  Amanda swatted at an insect with the fan previously hanging from her white-gloved wrist. “I heard about it at the Prescott Ball, Maureen Broadwell and Jessica Morton complained that Sutherland is a base and venal lover. She said, and I quote, ‘That man can read a woman’s body like a blind man can read music.’”

  Honoria’s breath hitched on her sip of lemonade and she hid a series of delicate coughs behind her handkerchief.

  Pru swallowed back her own sob. The Prescott Ball had been only a fortnight ago. George had been her escort…and these women had been discussing him in such a manner as he waltzed her on the tops of clouds.

  “Poor Pru,” Amanda tutted, waiting for Honoria to finish her coughing fit before adding, “Don’t you find it a bit disgusting how many bastards Pru’s dowry will keep up once George has his hands on all her money?” She sighed, then shrugged it off as if it were no more disappointing than a broken fingernail.

  Bastards?

  Pru had tugged at the high neck of her gown, fighting for breath.

  All she’d ever wanted was children.

  To tuck chubby little limbs into bed. Kiss scraped knees and tears. She wanted to hear the peals of laughter when their strong daddy would toss them in the air and allow them to climb on his back.

  George had been that man in her dreams. So dashing and virile.

  He already had children?

  Honoria had leaned forward, looking intently toward the track as if searching for Prudence’s form. “Poor Pru, indeed. George has convinced everyone that he loves her. Even William…even me. I suppose we should tell her.”

  William Mosby, Viscount Woodhaven, was George’s closest compatriot, and Honor
ia’s husband.

  Now that Pru thought about it, Honoria hadn’t seemed particularly pleased with the betrothal, and she’d always assumed it was because Pru was marrying an Earl when William was merely a Viscount, and thereby his social inferior.

  She’d been so absurdly blind.

  Amanda let out a disenchanted sigh. “Pru needs to learn how the world works, eventually. That it’s not all ponies and balls and butterfly nets.”

  Honoria sucked her lip between her teeth, a gesture she made whenever she was conflicted. “Though, I’d hate to ruin her wedding for her, and it’s not as if she can break the engagement now. I should have warned her off George ages ago, but William expressly forbade it.”

  Amanda nodded, smoothing the creases from her cream gown. “It’s kind of us, I think, to maintain her frivolous naiveté for a bit longer.”

  “Yes. Kind.” Honoria’s famous composure crumpled for the slightest moment, uncovering the features of a woman beset by abject misery. “She’s a lifetime to be disappointed by a husband.”

  Pru clapped two hands over her mouth to keep from saying anything. From screaming in the middle of the bustling park loud and long enough for all of London’s elite to hear. She couldn’t face them yet. She couldn’t sort through her hurt and anger and humiliation enough to land on a single thing to say.

  Frivolous naiveté? Was this really what they thought of her? Her best friend and her elder sister? Honoria… the woman she’d idolized for the whole of her life. The bastion of feminine perfection against which she’d been measured. The loveliest debutante to grace Her Majesty’s halls in decades.

  And Amanda? The naughty sprite who’d collected all her secrets and her sorrows. Who’d bounced and giggled through life with nary a care.

  “Speaking of disappointing husbands…mine will be back in town tomorrow night,” Amanda distracted Pru by saying. “And so, I think that one with the muscular legs will be my next acquisition.” Amanda pointed in the direction of the riders, and Pru blinked through gathering tears in confusion.

  Her friend had never expressed a great interest in horseflesh, and her husband was more interested in estate acquisitions than equine. He owned half of Cheshire.