“I’ve always admired your taste,” Honoria said approvingly.
Amanda leaned in closer. “Lady Westlawn told me he brought her to completion twice in one night. In fact, he was so skilled, she gave him one of her coveted diamonds.” The sound Amanda made was laced with enough licentiousness to bring about a biblical plague.
Pru gaped. They weren’t speculating about horseflesh at all. But the men astride!
“To the Stags of St. James.” Amanda lifted her lemonade for a “cheers” in the fashion of a bawdy sailor at a public house. “Are you certain you won’t try one?”
Honoria clinked her glass with Amanda’s but set it down at her elbow. “As tempted as I am, William has me on a tight leash.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t come and look,” Amanda offered. “That’s nothing more than window-shopping, really.”
“No. I suppose it doesn’t.” Honoria stood and drifted toward the Row, a trailing Amanda in her wake.
Pru couldn’t stand any more. She’d fled home and immediately begged her father to break their engagement.
He’d blustered through his stately beard. “You and your sisters are beautiful enough to tempt men away from their mistresses, Pru. I dare say Honoria did, and you’re almost her equal.” He patted her head with the sort of fond deference he showed his hounds. “Sutherland is an Earl, a vital man of true English blue blood and the…passions and tempers to match.”
“But, Papa,” she’d sobbed. “He’ll humiliate me. He’ll make me a laughingstock.”
“Nonsense. Sutherland has always been a discreet man. This marriage is your duty to your family, so don’t let your doddle-headed fancies of romance get in the way of that, do you hear me? You will say nothing of this to Sutherland and when he next comes to court you, you’ll keep a civil tongue in your head, or I’ll not be responsible for what I do!”
A distraught and sodden Pru had then taken her shattered soul to her mother, asking her to mend it. Begging her to intervene.
“It is the practice of men to have mistresses, dear. And you’ll find it’s a blessing in the end…” With that crisp reply, she’d nailed the coffin shut on any hope Pru had of reclaiming a sense of herself.
Something had hardened in her then. A fist of rebellious anger clenched around the last glowing shard of her heart.
The very next day, she had called upon Lady Westlawn and not-so-discreetly inquired about the Stags of St. James.
Which was how she’d ended up here. At the garden gate to Miss Henrietta’s School for Cultured Young Ladies.
St. James, she was told, was not a reference to the park or buildings, but to the patron saint of riding.
Of all the vulgar things.
As she stared at the gate, Pru gathered her resolve. She wouldn’t be like George. Nor would she be like Amanda. Once she’d taken a wedding vow, she’d keep it, regardless of what George decided to do. And if any children resulted from their marriage, she’d teach them to do the same.
One deceit did not merit another.
But tonight, she’d take a lover. A man who was nothing like the Earl of Sutherland in all his dark, brutish glory.
She’d claim a night of pleasure for her very own. One night she controlled with her desires and whims, and where her satisfaction was the object of the deed.
Because from what she’d heard, she’d live without it for the rest of her life.
Pru pulled the hood of her cloak down to shadow her face from the gaslights perched atop the wrought iron gate and tapped on the third bar three times.
A footman melted from the shadows, a pretty lad, barely old enough to shave.
He gave her a curt nod. “Do you have an appointment, madam?”
What had Lady Westlawn told her to say if she hadn’t made prior arrangements at Hyde Park? Oh yes.
“I’m here to peruse the night-blooming jasmine.”
The gate swung open on silent hinges and she took in a shaking breath. Thresholds, she’d heard were dangerous. Places of in-between, where fairy folk and demons could meddle with the living.
Or so superstitious ancestors once believed.
Tonight, she could believe it. Out on this street, she’d done nothing to speak of. She was no one of great importance. Prudence Goode. A second daughter of second-rate nobility.
A virgin.
To cross this threshold, was to be forever altered. Did a night like this always seem so monumental? Did the specter of fate seem to hover above every woman’s head upon making such a decision?
Something intangible drifted above the lamplight but below the stars. Something sentient and dark. Perhaps a bit dangerous and wrathful, though she somehow wasn’t afraid.
Destiny was on the other side of that gate, it told her. More than her virginity would be taken tonight.
No. Prudence shook her head. No, not destiny. What whimsical tripe.
She wasn’t here to court fate…only fantasy.
It took two tries to swallow her nerves before she picked up her skirts, stepped over the threshold, and lost her breath to a marvel.
For a moment, she wondered if she had, indeed, been snatched by the Fae.
The gardens at Miss Henrietta’s School for Cultured Young Ladies might have been a fairy patch. Strings of beads and ribbon flowed from curious shaped hedges and foreign willows with lush, wilting limbs. They glimmered and sparkled in the dim lamplight along lustrous cobbles, illuminating paths to dark places.
More importantly, they created concealing shadows, some of which were already full of revelry. The grounds were vast for the city, and the manor house glowed gaily on the other side of the garden.
She was not to approach the house, she was told. The ironically named school for cultured young ladies was anything but. Miss Henrietta’s was one of London’s most exclusive and expensive brothels where men took their pleasure among a menagerie of women.
The Stags of St. James, however, made discreet house calls.
And in the summer on certain clear nights…they rutted out-of-doors.
Except, Prudence realized as she ventured onto the grounds, the out-of-doors was not so rustic as one might assume. The gardens at Versailles might weep for the luxury here, and if one wanted to find a place to feel ensconced in privacy, one needn’t look too far.
“Approach any stag you like, madam, so long as he is not engaged by another,” the young footman startled her by appearing at her elbow. She’d quite forgotten he was there. He leaned down to whisper, “They’ll lock horns for the likes of you.”
“Who—who would you recommend?” she murmured, instantly regretting the ridiculous question.
The footman didn’t even break his perfect form. He might have been engaged by a Duke, not a derelict debutant looking to debauch herself.
“Adam is in the orchard, seeking his Eve,” he proffered, gesturing toward a copse of trees, as if he directed her to pluck an apple, rather than the original sin. “Let’s see…Daniel is bound in his den in anticipation of devouring, if you are feeling the role of lioness tonight.” He pointed at a dark shadow in a glass enclosure covered by ivy.
“There’s Goliath, the barbarian who might be tamed by the right gentle hand. Or David, if you prefer someone…younger. More eager.”
Prudence stopped, suddenly seized by indecision and a not little fear of lightning, even on such a clear and cloudless night. “I’m sorry but are all of the—er—stags given religious names?” she queried. “Seems rather blasphemous, doesn’t it?”
He gave her a mockingly chiding look. “Go to a church if you want to judge, Madam, we’re all here to commit a cardinal sin, maybe several.”
A decent point, that. She nodded and mumbled an apology, suddenly feeling very itchy and out of her element.
With a jovial wink that told her all was forgiven, he bowed. “If you’re feeling indecisive, I encourage you to take a turn around the garden, let it dazzle your senses, and see what entices your…vigor.”
That see
med like an excellent idea. She’d come here for a thing. An experience. Why the devil hadn’t it occurred to her that what she was coming here for…was a person?
A man.
A man of her own choosing.
How very novel. She’d only ever thought to be chosen. Women were always waiting, hoping to be picked or plucked by the right man. Selected like a trinket in a shop, to be taken home and trotted out at expensive gatherings.
Tonight, she was the shopper. She would pick the man she wanted and pay him to do what she desired.
But who? Did she want David or Goliath, Adam or Daniel?
A hero or a heretic.
A saint or a sinner…
Venturing deeper into the fairy garden, she allowed her senses to take it all in. The gentle breeze ruffling at the ribbons and drapes of chiffon and silk along the path. The slight sound of running water in the distance. A giggle from that dark corner. A groan from that Bedouin tent over there.
She refused to look too far into the dark, and so she kept her eyes often skyward, up to the stars.
Which was why she never saw the dark shadow crouched behind a hedgerow by the fountain.
Chapter Two
Chief Inspector Carlton Morley stalked his latest villain from the putrid slag pots of industrial East London all the way to Mayfair. Three young men had been slaughtered, and no one had connected their murders until today.
Until him.
The victims had been from several different boroughs of London and none of them had known each other, but their deaths were identical. No one had noticed the connection until the files had made their way to his desk, because detective inspectors from differing stations rarely had cause to collaborate with each other.
But they all answered to him.
The cases had been closed. Deemed unsolvable or without enough evidence to proceed through lawful means.
But Morley had other means at his disposal… and there were many forms of law and justice. The Queen’s Justice. The law of the land. Divine justice. The laws of nature.
And the justice of the streets. The laws of which were unwritten but universally heeded.
The laws of the land were necessary to uphold, and he’d devoted his entire career to doing so.
But the laws of the streets afforded him the means to mete out justice where the system had failed.
And they’d failed these murdered men. Strapping, handsome lads, well-liked by their families and communities, all employed among the working class. And yet none of them seemed to be struggling to get by. Each of them lived above their station, kept family members fed and comfortable in clean and respectable dwellings on pittance a day.
The question was how?
The answer had led him here.
Miss Henrietta’s School for Cultured Young Ladies, of all the unimaginable places.
And since he’d obtained the information that’d led him here by means not strictly legal, he couldn’t very well walk through the front door, let alone obtain a warrant.
So, he’d taken to the dark, as he’d done with alarming frequency these days, disguising himself every now and again with a simple black mask he’d had lying around from one of the Duchess of Trenwyth’s multitude of endless charity functions.
His view to the garden was impeded by impenetrable hedges or stockades of ivy around wrought iron, if not a full stone wall on the west side. He ultimately decided to circumvent the locked gate by scaling a nearby wych elm. He balanced out on a limb until he feared it would no longer hold his weight, and vaulted over the gate, expertly avoiding impalement on the iron spikes.
Morley landed in silence among the shadows and kept to them as he stalked along the circumference of the property. He waited and watched, his entire body attuned to danger, to a possible threat. A villain or a murderer.
A couple strode nearby, and he melded with the dark as a tall and elegantly handsome man bent to whisper something scandalous into the ear of a woman ten years his senior and two stone his heft.
She tutted, flirted, and then her companion swept her into his embrace, pressing her against the column of a gazebo. He kissed her passionately before he grappled with the latch of a small outbuilding and shoved her inside.
What the devil?
A tree branch snapped around the corner of a hedge. Morley drew his knife, took two readying breaths, and burst from around the corner, dropping into a fighting stance.
Only from this angle could he have seen the gagged and blindfolded woman beneath the tree, holding its lower branches for purchase as a man brutally thrust into her from behind.
Something in the muffled sounds she made froze him in place. They were yips and mewls of encouragement. Unmistakable in their ardor.
Bemused, Morley sheathed his knife and blinked rather doggedly at the fornicating couple until the man noticed him and made an impatient gesture for him to go.
His hips never lost their rhythm.
The woman was enjoying herself, but the gentleman checked his watch as though… he kept track of the time?
Morley backed away, turning to the garden and seeing it for what it truly was.
If someone had told him he’d already died and gone to Elysium, he might have believed them. For this resembled something of a pagan paradise. Friction and fornication hinted at everywhere, if not flagrantly happening.
No one exactly fucked in the open, but neither was a gazebo, a sheer tent, a hedge maze or a copse of carefully placed trees considered a proper place for a romp.
Even the air was sweeter here, whispering of lilacs and gardenias rather than the singular smells of the city. The garden sparkled like the very stars might visit to watch the debauchery. It was a dream crafted by honey-hued lighting and fluttering fabrics.
Of all the bastardly bacchanalian bullshit.
Morley retreated to a borderline pornographic fountain and crouched behind a hedgerow, grateful that the sound of the water covered the thinly veiled noises of carnal revelry.
A small mercy that, because his body was beginning to forget how exhausted he was and respond to the wickedness of the atmosphere.
It was how they got you, these places. Inundated one with sex and fantasy until instinct took over and a man forgot who he was. Became a needful, terrible creature, one led around by his cock rather than his reason, until he found his pocketbook emptied by his own weaknesses.
A brothel. He grimaced. He’d broken into a brothel of all places whilst searching for a killer. He must have taken a very wrong direction, or he’d stumbled upon another humungous clue.
Either way, he couldn’t exactly begin an interrogation at—he looked at his watch—half one in the morning. Tucking the watch away, he scrubbed at his face with both hands before adjusting the mask over his eyes.
God’s blood but he was tired.
He’d been waylaid on his way here by a contingent of the High Street Gang, who’d taken one look at his darkly elegant attire and decided he was an easy mark.
He’d kicked nine shades of shit out of four men and had left them tied to the corner for the next copper on his beat to find.
With a note, of course, as was courteous.
He’d broken up a domestic brawl that’d spilled out onto the streets, and gave a boy on the cusp of manhood a pence to sleep beneath a different roof than his ham-fisted father.
A man on Wapping High Street had mistaken a charwoman for a nightwalker and had been about to force his attentions upon her when Morley had picked up a palm-sized stone, and made a spinning slingshot of his cravat. The rock to the temple had felled the attacker, and Morley didn’t stay to check if he was even alive. He’d shrugged off the woman’s cries of gratitude and had been on his way.
He was no hero. These were just things he did, sweeping up small crimes while he chased nightmares through the night.
Back when he’d attempted to sleep, he’d been tortured by them. Eventually, those nightmares had seeped into the daylight, following him from the dark unti
l they filled every corner of every room. Shades and specters. The ghosts of those he’d killed, of those who’d endeavored to kill him. Of the souls he’d failed to save and the monsters who’d escaped justice.
For decades they’d haunted him, tormented him endlessly each time he dared close his eyes. Until he’d done something about it.
He became the thing from which nightmares ran.
He rid the night of monsters, so he could continue to be the man he was during the day without sinking into a miasma of slow and indelible madness. He was both the system of justice and the shadow of it.
Because the shadow could do what the system could not.
Because he still had a dead-eye, sharp fists, and even sharper blades.
Because he’d sold his soul to a demon for justice years ago, and every subsequent sin merely deepened the fathomless pit into which he’d been thrown.
Every time he’d thought he’d hit the bottom, he realized he was still falling.
That the depths could always be deeper. That the night could always be darker. That the world could always be colder.
That honor didn’t seem to mean much anymore, and he continued to fight a war that might have always been lost and for a cause that was nothing more than an illusion.
He’d been fighting for so long. For so many endless years, and for what? These days, every victory felt as though it made as much difference as a teardrop to the Thames.
And still he hunted, because what else could he do? Collect a wage until the inevitable forages of time and regret came for him as they did for everyone else?
A snap of a whip and a snarl came from the glasshouse covered in ivy. Morley squinted over at it, watching the shadows take shape, illuminated by one dim lantern inside.
If he wasn’t mistaken, a woman rode a man, but not his hips…Morley squinted…his face. Her pleasure sounds filtered through the fountain to him, hot and demanding.
They reverberated down his spine and landed in his loins.
God, it had been too long since he—
With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection Page 45