She didn’t cower, meeting his glare. “Please, do not be obtuse. I care to do nothing of the sort. Yes, I can work as a maid anywhere. But I cannot find my sister anywhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am here to ask for your help. My sister disappeared from the village of Knapton in Norfolk where we are living.”
“I do not see how I can help you, Lady Natalia.” Fletch took a step backward, his head shaking. “If your family situation is as dire as you say, maybe she just left to escape you and your mother.”
“Do not dare to utter a blasphemy such as that.” Her voice slipped low, vehement. “She would not have done so. Never. Someone took her. Another girl was taken at the same time. Another girl that returned to the village a week after they disappeared. She didn’t want to tell me anything—would not admit to anyone what happened—not until she saw how desperate I was.”
“Lady Natalia, I still fail to see how I can be of assistance.”
“The girl—she is the blacksmith’s daughter—she told me she was taken to a brothel here in London. They sold her. But the man they sold her to did not touch her. Instead, he delivered her to several women who then brought her home. Maybe you remember her? Her name is Valerie.” Lady Natalia’s arms unthreaded and her hand went to her chest height, palm down. “She is this short, rotund, black hair down to her waist.”
Damn.
Fletch bit down on letting the blasphemy slip from his lips. He had purchased a virgin from the Jolly Vassal two weeks prior with that very description. And this waif knew of it. Knew of him.
Damn.
The business of buying virgins to save them had apparently caught up with him. No one—not a soul could know what he was doing at the Jolly Vassal. Not when the whole operation of saving the girls hinged on secrecy. Hinged on him being nothing more than a sordid lecher with an insatiable need for the virgins.
Fletch’s eyes narrowed on Lady Natalia. “That is quite a tale, Lady Natalia, and I do sympathize with your plight, but I am not the man you seek.”
“No.” Her foot stomped, her hands balling to fists at her sides. “You are the man. Please, Lord Lockston, I have no one to turn to, no one to trust, and I have to find my sister.” Her head dropped forward, and she took a deep breath. He could see her struggling with her pride, but then she looked up at him, her soul bared in her eyes, begging. “I need help, Lord Lockston. Please. I cannot do this alone. I have looked so hard, done things I never thought I could and I…I have not a soul that can help me.”
Fletch looked to the front window, unable to watch the agony in her hazel eyes. Agony or not, he could not risk being discovered. There were too many innocent lives at stake. “I am not what you are looking for, Lady Natalia. You have approached the wrong man.”
She rounded him, jabbing her face into his line of sight. “No, I do not think I have. I think I have approached the one man—the only man—that can help me in my particular situation. You save the virgins. You are the one. My sister, she is my height, my build—she has blond hair and looks very similar to me. Maybe you have seen her—bought her?”
His eyes met hers and he forced his voice bland. “Again. I am not the one you seek, Lady Natalia. I cannot help you.”
“You cannot or you will not?”
“Either way, I must refuse you. You will not receive my assistance.”
Her lips curled into a snarl. “You are despicable.”
“Possibly. But that hardly gives you the right to come into my home and say as much to me.” His gaze settled on her tight lips. “Of course, what else should I expect from a lady turned brothel maid?”
“I saw what you did last night. I saw her scratch you.” Her fingers whipped out to snatch his left wrist, and she yanked his hand up. Brandy sloshed over the rim of the tumbler he almost dropped. “I see that very scratch now. It is you. You were the one.”
He clamped her wrist with his right hand, squeezing her sharp bones until she released his arm with a squeak. A flicker of pain crossed her face, and Fletch instantly dropped her wrist. But he did not let her escape him. He leaned down, his voice brutal. “Whatever you saw, Lady Natalia, you were mistaken. I am not in the business of saving virgins. You need to take your accusations and exit my home.”
Rubbing her wrist, she stared up at him, not cowed by his words. No. It was only fire that lit her hazel eyes. Fire brewing with annoyance. Yet just when she looked ready to speak again, she instead shook her head, a muttered whisper slipping from her lips. “You are all the same. I should have never expected anything from a bloody peer.” She stepped around him, quick to the door.
Within seconds, she had exited his townhouse.
Fletch spun, staring at the opening to the drawing room for long minutes, the cold blast of air from the door opening in the foyer dissipating around him.
The devil. He wanted to go after the brash chit. Wanted to help her. The urge was unmistakable—unexplainable, even as he attempted to deny it.
His heels dug into the thick maroon threads of the Axminster carpet. He couldn’t risk the countless girls he could save in the future for one lost sister that had most likely long-since been sold from the brothel. If the Jolly Vassal was even where Lady Natalia’s sister had been taken. No, he couldn’t risk it.
Yet the waif still pulled at him. What was it that made him want to admit the truth to her—to help her?
The cut of her mouth, the tilt of her chin? Her hazel eyes drawing him in, pleading with him? She was beautiful enough, especially if she ate some meat and filled out her cheeks. But beauty had never swayed him before.
His eyes closed, and her face flashed in his mind. The one moment when her soul was bared to him. It was the fire burning in her. Her vitality. Her spirit drawing him in.
Youth.
Youth against all odds.
The thought hit him with uncharacteristic boldness, for he attempted at every turn to avoid self-examination. But there it was. Her youth was the thing drawing him in. Her youth was what he wanted to possess. Possess just a tiny bit of it while he still could, before death came for him.
Fletch shook his head, swallowing the last gulp of brandy in his tumbler.
Her hazel eyes were dangerous. And not at all simple. Complex blue strands twisted with brown in her irises, yet there was a modicum of innocence sprinkled into her intelligent gaze. A determined gaze that had pierced him with expectations that he be the man she needed—that he deliver the world for her, even though they had just met. Expectations he had no doubt he would disappoint.
He couldn’t get involved. And she would involve him. He had known her for little more than five minutes, and he already fully understood he could not throw her away like he did so many of his trysts.
There was a reason he liked the company of widows. He liked them not only for their easy lack of commitment, but also for their acquaintance—their comfort with death. Nothing was permanent. They knew that.
And he knew Lady Natalia was not one to be tossed aside.
He was not about to do that to her spirit.
He was a dead man, after all.
{ Chapter 2 }
Talia set her shoulder to the wall, head bowed to make herself small as she moved to the next tiny room on the second level of the Jolly Vassal.
Chamber pot after chamber pot she had emptied during the past three hours, but at least now she had finally been allowed upstairs in the brothel. After receiving a few propositions, the last maid assigned to this floor of rooms had decided she would be better off making her coin on her back. So the witch that ordered all the girls about and doled out the pittance of pay for labor had sent Talia to service this floor.
Progress. At least in the fact that Talia could search for Louise in all the rooms of this floor. The guards at the end of the hall ensured Talia didn’t move to the upper two floors of the brothel, where only the “experienced” maids worked. But if she kept her head down and emptied enough pots, Talia hoped she could fin
d just one moment when she could slip past them and search the rest of the upper rooms. If Louise wasn’t here, she needed to move onto the next brothel. She had already heard some patron’s downstairs talking about the auctions at the Robin’s Roost five blocks to the west.
Her knuckles hit the peeling paint on the door in the middle of the hallway, giving a quick knock. It took a moment before Talia heard a grunted “yes.”
She opened the door and stepped in, only to see a naked woman standing, bent over at the waist and staring at her. Talia froze in the doorway. A half-dressed man, his dark jacket hanging off from only one arm, was straining right behind the woman, his face to the ceiling and hands on her hips as he grunted, thrusting.
Talia ducked her head, her eyes on the floor as heat swamped her face. “Me ‘pologies, lady.” The working women all insisted the maids call them “lady.” Talia always adhered, even as she recognized the sheer ludicrousness of the hierarchy instilled in the most derelict of places.
Talia’s feet shuffled backward as she tried to silently back out of the room.
“Stop, ye wench. Yer ‘ere, take ‘e pot.”
Talia stilled, both horrified and humiliated. Without disengaging from the pumping man, the “lady” leaned to the side, grabbing the chamber pot. “Girl—’ere. Bloody litt’e idiot.”
Talia took a quick step forward, holding out her hands while trying to avert her eyes to the floor by her toes.
Not close enough to hand it to her, the woman grunted, flinging the pot at Talia. “Out with ye.”
The pot hit Talia in the stomach and she fumbled to catch it, the contents sloshing up and onto her chest. Talia swallowed instant bile, stumbling backward out of the room.
Clear of the doorway, she jumped sideways, kicking the door closed with her foot.
She could hear the guard at the end of the hall chuckling. Arse.
Her chin deep on her chest, the rancid smell of the pot filling her nose, Talia sped down the hall and past the guard. It wasn’t until she had made it to the darkness of the back alley that she took a full breath.
After dumping the chamber pot into the cesspit, she set it onto the squish of muck by her feet as she tried to scrub her hands clean on her apron. Lifting a mostly clean corner of her apron, she tilted her face high to the sliver of sky she could see between the rooftops, and she wiped the wetness that had splattered onto her neck, her tongue still deep in her throat to stay back the bile.
“Ain’t worth payin’ fer this bitch.”
The garbled words reached her ears only a second before she realized they were about her.
In the next second a brute was on her, shoving her against the far wall, his thick mitt of a hand wrapped around the back of her neck, choking her to the wall, her face smashed into the rough brick.
Rage sent her body into a frenzy. Twisting, her arms thrashed. No matter how small, how unattractive she had tried to make herself—she smelled like dung, for heaven’s sake—all these bastards saw was a hole to abuse.
Cold air hit the backs of her legs, her skirts lifting. She clawed against the brick, her throat crushed against the wall, cutting all sound. She tried to kick backward without losing her footing. No contact.
The struggle made his hand go tighter around her neck.
Breath left her.
No air. No air. No air.
Her skirts still moved behind her. But her arms had gone so heavy. No air. She thought she was still flailing her hands, but she looked down along the wall only to see her arm had slowed, no longer reacting to her panic.
Her body ignoring her.
Her body leaving her.
No air.
She fought to keep her eyes open as she felt her body slide down the wall, slumping into a heap, her cheek sinking into muck.
Boots. Shiny boots, the glare showing even in the dark. Boots half buried in dung directly in front of her eyes.
The boots disappeared, blackness taking over.
~~~
Talia cracked her eyes open. The ball. She was going to make them late to the ball.
She had promised Mama she wouldn’t fall asleep in the tub again, and now they would be late. Mama hated tardiness. Disrespectful, Mama always said.
She would just have to smile with extra innocence at Papa. He would defend her. He always did and he knew exactly how to erase Mama’s sour moods. Papa would be her way out.
That meant she could sleep a little while longer. Her eyes slipped closed.
The warm water. So soothing. A wet bubble popped under her chin. Lavender.
Lavender?
Mama sneezed around lavender. They didn’t keep anything of lavender in any of their homes.
Talia’s eyes opened.
Panic wrapped her. Not her tub. Not her home.
Her body froze, even as her eyes flew about the room.
Do not panic. Do not panic. No sudden movements.
Memory shot through her mind.
She had no home. She had a nearly starved mother in Norfolk and a missing sister. She was a maid in a brothel. And she was in a tub?
The panic she was attempting to ignore turned into terror.
“You are awake.”
The voice came from behind her. Where did she recognize the voice from?
Lord Lockston.
She moved her chin up a sliver, truly taking in the room. Dark wainscoting covered the walls, rich sconces evenly spaced within the panels and lighting the room. A green marble fireplace with high flames to her right. Tall, hunter green drapes closed off a window to her left.
And Lord Lockston behind her. She glanced down. She could feel she still wore her thin chemise. But the few bubbles covering the surface of the water were quickly disintegrating.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
What was she doing in a tub?
She swallowed, a lump sticking just past her tongue where sharp pain cut around her throat. The choking. The bastard in the alley. She must have fallen unconscious.
Talia opened her mouth, hoping her words would make it past the painful clamp around her throat. “Why am I in a tub?”
She heard rustling behind her. Boots clicking on wood. Lord Lockston was standing, moving.
He appeared to her right, his thigh hitting the lip of the copper tub. A quick glance upward, and Talia gave a slight exhale of relief. He was fully clothed. Trousers, waistcoat, jacket—even his cravat was neatly in place. Not a drop of water on him. Someone set her into this tub, but it wasn’t him.
Or he had changed clothes.
She shifted uneasily.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Her eyes lifted to meet his and she was struck at the grey of them—so unique in their lack of color that she wasn’t able to read them.
“You are in the tub because you smelled like…shit. Please excuse my language, Lady Natalia, but there is no other proper word for it.”
Talia laughed at the absurdity, both of his words and her current situation—whatever this situation possibly was. “I was covered in it. Of course I smelled of it.”
His stony façade did not crack, nor did his eyes veer from her face, and for that, she gave him credit. He did have a madwoman sitting in his tub.
She glanced down at the water past the popped bubbles, verifying what she imagined—her soaked chemise had turned undoubtedly transparent. Her forearms slid over her chest. “Who stripped me and put me in here?”
“A maid helped me.”
She nodded, her chin tilting upward so she could meet his eyes—read them—read anything about why he had brought her here and plopped her into a bath. In her old life, she would have been ruined ten times over by merely imaging this current situation. Good thing she was now just a maid in a brothel. Yet her arms tightened instinctively above her breasts.
He stared down at her, his grey eyes now nearly vibrating. Vibrating with…outrage?
The credit she had given him a moment ago disappeared with his next words.
“Look at you, you stupi
d girl. Look at what you have done to yourself.”
“You have no right, Lord Lockston. No right at all to judge me.” She shifted in the tub, water sloshing as instant hostility burned through her veins. She looked up at him, the side of her lip pulling back. “I will go to any depth to find my sister. I have only myself to do so, if you recall. And being a damn maid is the only way I can get into these places. I will find her—I will not be stopped.”
“So you will heave shit and piss? Get buried in it? Have you no pride?”
Talia exhaled a seethed breath, shaking her head. A man of his station would never understand. “Pride will not find my sister, Lord Lockston. I have no other choice. Bring forth all your arrogant judgement, but there is no action beneath me when it comes to finding her.”
He leaned down, his face dangerously close to hers. “You will be raped?”
Her mouth clamped shut.
He straightened, pulling to his full height, but his glare did not leave her face.
She shook her head, meeting his stare. “I do not think you understand the depths to which I will go to find my sister. I will do anything—anything it requires of me to find her.”
“I am beginning to understand that.”
“There is nothing for you to understand. You have no desire to help me, Lord Lockston. You made that perfectly clear yesterday morning. Why do you feel the need to interfere now?”
“I would not come upon the scene that I did in that alley and not interfere, Lady Natalia.”
“Yes.” Her eyes narrowed at him. “But you could have very well left me in that brothel.”
A flicker flashed through his grey eyes, a flicker Talia didn’t understand, nor had the energy to even try to guess at.
He shrugged. “I have decided to help you. You were right about what you saw two nights ago when I bought that virgin. You did find the right man, and I will help you to find your sister.” He paused, his eyes leaving her face for the first time to look at something behind her head. His look dropped back to her. “But it will come at a price.”
Promise: A Lords of Action Novel Page 2