by Sharon Page
But he’d been to brothels like this. He’d gone for pleasure, while for Anne this had been hell. He had come to places like this because he’d been raised by his libertine grandfather to believe he should. To prove his manhood. Now he saw what an idiot he’d been. His father had told him once that any idiot could sate his lust. It took a clever man, his father had said, to fall in love and delight in having a wife as a partner, in bed and out.
He walked into the salon, trying to look like a rich lord with nothing on his mind but the pursuit of pleasure. Strange, he had no idea how to look the part now.
Men lounged on the sofas in the large salon. Most had a glass of liquor in hand and an attentive half-naked woman draped over them.
Anne. His heart hadn’t ached like this since he’d lost Rosalind.
Something touched his waist, startling him. He looked down to see two hands sliding around his body. “Aren’t you a handsome one?” a woman cooed. One hand dove down and clamped on his crotch. “Want to go up to me bed?”
He hauled her hand away and turned. She was so close, he smacked into her breasts. The urge to curtly send her away was overwhelming. He forced a lazy drawl. “Perhaps later. I was interested in a particular lady tonight. I believe her name is Anne?”
The woman drew back. “Annie? Oh, sir, you see …” She floundered a bit, and he watched her. “Annie isn’t here anymore.”
“I didn’t think she would be.” He drew out a note—five pounds. A fortune for a woman who likely never saw any of the money she earned for her madam. “Since she is wanted for a murder she didn’t commit. I would like information about that.”
The woman glanced around with swift, fearful eyes. “How … how did you know? At Bow Street, do they know?”
“Not yet. But soon they will. Can you tell me exactly what happened here that night? If you can, my dear, I promise to give you enough money to leave this place. To start again, do whatever you want. My offer stands for any of the other women here. Anyone who can help me find the real killer of Mrs. Meadows will be amply rewarded.”
Her deep breath pushed her breasts almost over her low neckline. “Are you a Runner?”
“No, my dear. I’m a duke.”
She gasped. “Then come with me to my bedchamber, Your Grace. There’s another girl who knows what happened. She saw it. If you’ll give us that reward, I’ll get her to tell you the truth.”
The bosomy prostitute propelled a slender girl into the bedroom, glanced behind her, then shut the door. “Your Grace, this is my daughter, Sukey.”
Dear God, the girl quivering in front of him looked barely sixteen years of age. “Why is your daughter here?”
“What else is she to do? She’s been working here since she was thirteen years old.”
Devon shuddered. No wonder Anne had been driven to save those young innocents. No wonder she had risked everything to do it. Anne Beddington humbled him. To Sukey, he smiled gently. “Your mother tells me you saw Madame Sin’s murder.”
“Go on, Sukey,” her mother urged. “You can tell His Grace everything. He’s going to take care of us. There’s a reward—enough for us to leave here and do anything we wish.”
He took the girl’s hand and guided her to sit on the side of the bed. She clambered onto its edge and perched. She wore only a shift. “I heard someone shouting in Madame Sin’s rooms, so I peeked in. I saw Annie hit Madame with the poker. Then she pushed three little girls out the window and jumped out herself. Mick came toward the door after that, so I got scared and I ran away.” The girl paused. “You just want me to talk? You don’t want me to play with you?”
“No.” God, no. He launched up, pulled the counterpane off the bed, and draped it around her. “Cover yourself, my dear child. You’ll catch your death of cold.” Without hope, he asked, “Did you see anything else, Sukey?”
She nodded vigorously. “Mick went out to chase after Annie. I went back to Madame’s room, to see if she was dead, but Madame was moving on the floor, moaning. Then her eyes opened, and she saw me.”
“What did you do?” he asked softly. Inside, he was soaring with relief.
“I thought if I helped her, Madame might be kind to me. She gave rewards to the girls who served her well.”
Devon saw that the poor creature had thought there might be no other life than this one. Neither she nor her mother would have escaped. Not like his courageous Anne.
“I tried to help her, but she got up and slapped me. She was in a rage. First she wanted me to help her tidy her hair and put ice to her bruise, because she had a client coming, but instead she shoved me out of the room. I went downstairs and I passed a man in the hallway. I didn’t see his face. I was going to try to entice him, but he went to Madame’s room.”
“Do you know who he was?”
Vehemently, the girl shook her head. “No, Your Grace. I heard Madame call him ‘My Lord.’ He was angry at her. Then I heard Madame say my name, so I crept to the door again.”
“Did you see his face?”
She nodded. “He turned around. He scared me! I thought he was a monster, then I saw he had on a mask. One of those ones like in Venice, and it was all white.”
“Why did Mrs. Meadows use your name, my dear?”
“She wanted to sell me to him. She was trying to tell him I was a virgin. That made him even angrier. He said he had paid for Anne and he expected Madame to give him what he’d paid for. Madame had to admit Anne had run away. He didn’t believe her. He picked up the poker and threatened to kill her if she didn’t give him Anne. Madame started to cry. Then he hit her. He hit her so hard, there was an awful crack. She fell down. This time, she didn’t move at all.”
“Thank you, Sukey.” Impetuously, Devon made a decision. “You aren’t to stay here anymore. This is no place for a young woman like you.”
“Do you mean …” She gaped at him, slack jawed. “Do you want me to be your mistress?”
He remembered Anne, so determined to rescue herself by doing that very thing. To think that becoming his mistress represented survival and salvation. “No, not my mistress.” He looked to her mother. “Sukey is a witness to a crime, and I would like to ensure she is safe. Will you come with me now? I will find a place for you to stay—perhaps a small town house?”
“A town house.” The mother appeared stunned. “Yes, of course, Your Grace.”
Sukey glanced from him to her mother, confused. “Is this what you meant, Mama, when you said that someday a gentleman would come and want me and would take us away to a life of luxury?”
Chapter Twenty-one
HE WAS ONLY a few feet from freedom. Why did her legs no longer wish to move?
Her ship, the Saucy Wench, bobbed on the waves, tugging at its mooring ropes. Anne took a deep breath. The ship smelled the way she imagined India would—as if the aromas of exotic spices were sunk into the timbers.
Here was the escape she’d yearned for, ever since she and her mother had been forced to live in squalor. Here was the ship that would take her away from imprisonment and give her the freedom she’d dreamed of for years. Yet she was not running toward it when she knew she must.
Why was it so hard to leave England, leave Devon, when she knew it was the only thing she could do? She turned away from the ship for one last look at England, at the crowded, noisy world that didn’t feel like home. The stews had never been a home. The brothel hadn’t. Longsworth was so far in the past, she could only think of it like a remembered dream. India would have to become her home. Or perhaps she would never have a place again that would have all the special elements of home. Love, safety, family—
Then she saw him. A gentleman in a blue superfine coat, black trousers, and towering beaver hat strode through the crowd. People retreated. Anyone would know, at once, he was a duke.
“Anne!” He began to run, his strides swallowing up the pier as he came toward her.
She snatched up her bag and ran with stumbling haste toward the end of the dock, where a rowb
oat would take her to the ship. No—Devon would catch her before she reached Captain Rogers’s boatman. Whirling around, she raced like a chased fox over the uneven boards of the dock. She careened around barrels and coils of rope, stumbled past sailors and women. Everything was jiggling up and down as she ran; she could barely see.
She had to lure him away from the ship, get him lost on the teeming piers. Once she had him tangled up in the maze that was the London docks, she could come back.
She prayed the ship wouldn’t have left by then.
He was not going to lose her. As desperate as she was, Anne was encumbered by skirts and a valise, and he was tearing across the crowded dock as if his life depended on catching her.
Devon shoved his way through a throng of smoking sailors. He vaulted over a pile of crates. Danced around a line of men carrying barrels. He lengthened his strides, his boots pounding the deck. Then a group of burly men turned and made a human wall, blocking his way. Hell. What had she said as she ran past to coax them to help? Or did sailors always come to the rescue of beautiful, fleeing women?
She had outwitted him in the woods outside his hunting box. He refused to be bested again.
He ran at full speed toward the men, who rushed him. Accustomed to grappling on a battlefield, he clasped one of the beefy sailors’ shoulders, shoved the man to his knees, and hurdled over him. For seconds, the group of them stood stock-still, letting him put a few yards between them. Then they took up the chase. Every sailor on this dock could come at him—nothing would stop him from catching Anne.
Ahead by fifty yards, Anne ran toward a row of wooden barrels. He raced for her. As he thundered nearer, he saw her steps grow more panicked and clumsy. Her hat flew off. Her red waves tumbled down. In seconds, she was so close he could reach out and touch her flying hair. He sprinted full out toward her, grasped her by the waist.
“No,” she cried. She tried to wrench out of his grip.
He was watching her, not the deck, and at the same moment that she jerked away from him, he tripped on an uneven board. His momentum sent him flying forward, and he dragged her with him. Instinct screamed to protect her. With his arms wrapped around Anne’s struggling body, he twisted as they both fell. His back slammed against the unyielding planks of the dock. She landed on his chest, where her elbows jabbed mercilessly into his muscles and her bottom whacked his groin. Her head hit his chin hard enough to knock him cold.
But he was too damned angry to be felled so easily. He gritted his teeth and discovered he still had his arms clamped around her.
“Let me go!” She squirmed on him, her delectable derriere bouncing. It was madness, given he was bruised and exhausted, but arousal shot through him.
“Give it up,” he growled by her ear. “This time you are caught.” Keeping her captive in his embrace, Devon sat up with her on top of him, then he turned her to face him, and he kissed the tempestuous, frustrating woman.
For the first time, he saw her as he kissed her. Saw her ivy-green eyes widen, her pink lips part as his mouth slanted over hers. He kissed her, savoring the sight of her. His head ached from the impact, and for one moment he wondered if he could go blind again. He pulled back from the kiss, cupped her cheeks, and stared up at her pale face.
“Wh-what?” she gasped. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because I can,” he murmured. God, she was lovely. Maddening, but beautiful.
In his peripheral vision, he saw bodies massing in on the sides. Sailors, apparently ready to rescue Anne. He glared at the group with ducal hauteur. “My mistress,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “And therefore none of your concern.” Keeping one arm locked around Anne’s waist, he drew his tailcoat open to reveal the pistol tucked into his waistband.
The men retreated, disappearing into the crowd. A throng had stopped to stare. Now they slowly returned to their work, leaving Anne and him alone in the middle of the busy dock. “You might as well have shouted, ‘My property,’ ” she snapped. “Will you let me go?”
“I chased you all the way from London without stopping for food, with a bruised body and aching head. I spent the night scouring the stews for you. And, after all that, I still had to throw my body onto the dock to get you. Nothing will induce me to release you now.”
“I did not ask you to pursue me! I didn’t want you to suffer. You should not have been riding across the country after you struck your head.” She let out a fierce breath. “Don’t you understand, My Lord Duke, that I am doing this to protect you? What are you going to do with me now—take me to Bow Street?”
“Of course not, and don’t call me ‘My Lord Duke.’ After the trouble you’ve put me through, you will do as I ask. And I ask you to call me Devon.”
Her shoulders quaked. In fear? Or fury? “But you must take me to the magistrate. Anything else will get you in trouble. Dear God, it enrages and sickens and terrifies me to think I might hang for something I didn’t do. But I couldn’t face watching you be charged for helping me. I would admit to the crime before I’d let that happen.”
She was willing to sacrifice herself for him. When he’d been in battle, he was known as the Mad Lord Major, for the wild ways he’d fought to save others. To be willing to admit to a crime she hadn’t committed, to save him—that was true madness. He got to his feet, hauling her with him.
“You might have signed a contract with me,” she said fiercely, “but you didn’t buy my soul.”
“Indeed I didn’t,” he retorted, but the fear in her eyes twisted his gut. It brought other nerve-racking thoughts to mind.
“What were you going to do in Bombay?” He tried to sound cool and calm, when his molars wanted to grind until he was left with stumps in the back of his jaw. “Were you planning to be a courtesan to some British officer? Or to a rich nabob involved in the East India Company?” He scruffed his hand over his jaw. “What did you have to do to get the money for the stage?”
All around them, the business of the port carried on—loud, raucous, industrious. But even though he could see it all, he felt locked in a void, waiting for her answer.
Why did the thought of her being a courtesan to another man make him so angry? Why did he feel so possessive of her? She wanted to leave, he was supposed to marry, and she had just reminded him she was not his possession. He’d vowed he wouldn’t keep a mistress after he wed.…
“I got my ticket for the stage by assisting an elderly woman—she had no maid and I acted as one for her. In exchange, she paid my way to London,” she finally said. “As for Bombay, I have enough money to begin a new life. An independent life. That’s what I want. What I dream of having.”
Which meant he was dashing her dreams. Damnation, how did she do this? How did she manage to make him feel the villain in this? “My carriage is waiting. You are not sailing away from me today, Anne. I have no intention of letting you go.”
He was furious with her.
Anne knew it. Devon’s expression was cold and hard, and he had looked away, out his windows, as though he might be driven to violence if he looked at her. His coach, a plain black one, rattled down Wapping High Street, making slow progress amid the crush of carts and teams, giving Anne far too long to be trapped with an angry man. Then she realized he was carefully checking behind them.
“You’re afraid someone is following us?”
“I went to Bow Street’s magistrate yesterday. To tell him I believed you innocent, to find out what evidence he has against you, find out if he has other suspects. He was a friend of my father.”
Oh, goodness. “You are betraying a family friend for me?”
Coolly, he said, “I assume he would have assigned Runners to watch me. I took care to ensure I wasn’t followed. I brought the plain carriage. We left before dawn and took a circuitous route to the docks. But I know not to be overconfident.”
She had forced him to be disloyal to a family friend who was also a magistrate. She’d abandoned him in the woods after he had been hurt. She ha
ted thinking of what she’d done to him. And she hated the icy frost in the carriage.
What would an angry duke do to her? He had told her he would not hand her over to Bow Street. Years in the stews had taught her to expect the very worst. What if he had another punishment in mind? No, this was Devon. He would not hurt her. All the time she’d lived in his house, he had been afraid he would hurt her by mistake. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Help you,” he muttered. “Apparently, even if it kills me.”
She had to break through this stubborn determination to help her. She had to make him see that the only thing she could do was run. The irony was laughable. She had to seduce him into letting her go. And, to start, she had to chip through the ice.
She let her shaky fingers brush along the edge of his thigh. Her fingers grazed rock-hard muscle. What would he do? Flinch? Pull away?
He didn’t move his leg, but he turned and watched her, his lids half lowered. His long lashes seemed to stand out for inches, sumptuously curved at the ends. She stroked him more deliberately. She skimmed her hand up his inner thigh, coasting over his snug trousers, her throat so tight she could hardly breathe.
Lightly, she tickled the juncture of his legs. He wasn’t stopping her, but he didn’t look aroused either. His face was impassive.
She wasn’t going to seduce him by barely grazing him with her fingers. She had to take the risk. She had been willing to sail to Bombay and leave him forever. But here, now, she was afraid she would do something wrong, she would make him angrier, she would lose him forever.
Gathering courage, she caressed his left thigh. She wriggled her hand beneath his hard derrière and the velvet seat and squeezed. Audaciously, she found the soft ridge of his cock and stroked it through the fine wool of his trousers. His breath hitched. His lids lowered again, and he didn’t push her away.
She should feel victorious. Instead, she felt empty.
The last time they had made love, it was wonderful. Precious. Spectacular. She had come for him, really and truly. Now she felt as she had when she’d first gone to seduce him—as if there was a void inside her, as if she was incapable of feeling anything.