by Rose Lerner
The bell over the door to the shop jangled. Gideon was there, blocking the door before it opened fully.
“Dangerous chemicals,” he told a man carrying a small, abundantly furred dog. “Spilled all over the place. Fumes. Probably be a fire any minute. Come back later.” He slammed the door, threw the bolt, and turned the sign to “closed”.
He stalked back to the counter. “Fill the order.”
“Of course. Yes. At once.” Plumley appeared to remember the sort of man she was likely to associate with. “I was just about to do that, sir.” Plumley gave a nervous smile. “Mr. Lazarus is a valued customer. Valued. His friends, too, of course. Anything you’d like, sir, just ask. We have a wide selection of goods suited to a discriminating man like yourself.”
Gideon glowered and looked like someone who dealt with Lazarus every day. Like a man with enemies to murder and destruction to wreak and a tight schedule for both. He looked, in fact, like what he was.
Quickly, Plumley fetched a small empty bottle from under the counter. He wrote Nitric Acid on the label and blew on it to dry the ink. He took out the glue pot and applied the label to the bottle, twitching it straight. Even under Gideon’s glower he was talkative.
“You must avoid breathing the fumes,” he told her. “Any drop on the skin, wash it away at once.” He was quiet only while he poured from the great bottle into the small, holding his breath the whole time. He wiped the lip of both bottles with a rag and went to put the master bottle of acid back on the shelf.
Gideon crossed the shop to interest himself in a cabinet tucked back in the corner, a fortress of many square drawers. He opened and closed them one after another, revealing untidy bundles of twigs, seeds, fluff, and what looked like nutshells. He didn’t touch any of what was inside.
“Those are for special orders.” Plumley looked down from the step ladder. “Powerful medicines, to be used with care.”
“So I see.” Gideon continued his explorations, opening some of the labeled drawers, passing others by.
Plumley watched with tight lips but didn’t object. Wise shopkeepers didn’t object to anything Lazarus’s inner circle chose to do.
They also didn’t let themselves learn too much about the activities of the Brotherhood. As Gideon explored the contents of the cabinet, Plumley hurried back to the counter, picked up her basket and the small bottle, and said, “I’ll pack this for you, shall I? I’ll only be a minute.” He disappeared into the back room and the door swung closed behind him.
“You’ve scared him,” she said, “looking at the poisons.”
“It’s interesting stock they keep for their special customers.” Gideon slid a drawer closed. “Hemlock root in that one. Strychnos nux-vomica over here. They call that ‘poison nut’ out East. Castor bean next to it. Then Belladonna root. There’s enough poison in these drawers to wipe out a platoon. And you buy strong acid.”
“Not a poison. Or not one anybody’d use. It’s for assaying precious metals. I value goods for pawnshops and art dealers all over the city. Lazarus sells my services. It’s legitimate work. The world is full of forgeries.”
They were alone in the shop. Faint sounds of puttering filtered from the back room, proof Plumley didn’t have his ear pressed to the door. The street in front was filled with the rumble of the city, voices rising and falling, and the clatter of a horse and wagon.
Gideon stopped examining the poisons and came over to study her instead. He was subtly different here. The man she’d met in the padding ken had been of a single and absolute purpose—every thought, every action, every decision focused toward his goal. It had made him easy to understand.
Now his goal was less clear. Hers as well. It had seemed entirely logical to meet him. She was no longer sure why she’d done it.
Gideon leaned his hip against the counter and crossed his arms. “If there’s a fight between Lazarus and the other man, Bent Thomas, will you get hurt? Is the fight about you?”
“No.” She’d leave it at that.
“I think it is. I think whatever’s going on, you’re in the middle of it.”
“But I won’t get hurt, except by accident. I’m not…” How to put it? “I’m not a target. I’m not dangerous to anyone.” She didn't know why she added the next words. “Hawker is.”
“You don’t want a fight. Lazarus has to recover from whatever injury he’s picked up.”
She said nothing. It took her breath away how much Gideon knew that he shouldn’t know.
“He’s injured, rather than sick.” Gideon moved from conclusion to conclusion. “You’re carrying bandage material and he’s been favoring his right side both times I saw him. Was he shot or stabbed? No. You don’t have to answer. It doesn’t matter. If he can’t win a fight, any wound will do.”
So. One of her secrets was no secret at all. This soldier of fortune had travelled in many lands. He saw things too clearly. He understood the world of the Brotherhood of Thieves far too well.
“I’m glad you got Daffy out of our midst before that fight comes. I don’t have to worry about protecting her. It also means you won’t toss a hand grenade through the door and kill a dozen of us taking her back by force.” She turned to look out the front window. Men passed on the street and cast shadows on the blinds. “You would have if Lazarus hadn’t finished with her and given her back.”
She had discovered a new vulnerability in herself. She wanted something from Gideon. She wanted to be someone he’d blast a few doors in for. Someone he’d rescue by force.
He said, “I prefer words to bullets.”
“Persuasion is good. It lets everybody think twice, and then three times.”
When she turned to him again, he’d taken one step closer. There was suddenly no distance between them.
The door at the back of the shop opened. Plumley came out with the basket held in both hands. The bottle of acid was wrapped in a nest of straw and nestled between the cravats she’d bought.
Plumley’s eyes slid from her to Gideon, speculating.
She’d give him something to speculate about. “This is business of the Brotherhood. Go away, Mr. Plumley.” She hooked her thumb toward the front of the shop and the door. “Go to lunch. Take a long walk. Find a public house down the street. Come back when I leave.”
Gideon was smiling at her. Not with his lips, but deep in his eyes.
“I can’t leave the shop.” Plumley’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down convulsively. He was wary of Gideon. Who wouldn’t be wary of him? But he was more concerned with her, member of the Brotherhood, favorite of Lazarus, purchaser of lethal acid. Whatever he saw in her face sent him scurrying to the front door of the shop.
Plumley put his hand on the doorknob. It was typical of him that he delayed, dithering over a decision he’d already made.
She said, “You don’t want to overhear what we’re talking about. You don’t want to see anything.”
Plumley consulted his self-interest for three seconds before it told him what to do. “I’ll be at the Crown and Cup.” He closed the door behind him so softly the bell didn’t even rattle.
She was alone with Gideon.
Chapter 16
* * *
The door to the shop closed. Gideon was so close to her she could feel the warmth coming off his body. Or she imagined that she could.
There were only a few activities that needed such closeness.
All morning, through all her scattered errands, she had been possessed by the thought of him. Not the threat of chaos and disaster he presented, but by the memory of his body. She had been filled by a sensual awareness of him.
This was no mere intellectual appreciation. She’d examined her feelings carefully and there could be no mistake. She felt the simplicity and coercion of desire. Befuddling thoughts shouted over all the logic in her brain and would not be silenced. Distracting sensitivities roosted in her body, fluffed their feathers, and snuggled down for a long stay.
Yet nothing had happened betwe
en them last night. The encounter in that crowded dusty storage room had been made of no more than whispers in the dark. A warm male body holding her, a body cleverly made, sure and certain and knowledgeable. An experienced and appreciative male body.
She wanted him. She wanted to make love to him. She had come here almost planning it.
The logical part of her mind whispered, “You want this one man after passing so many others without a second glance? Then find a room in the inn across the road and become naked with him. You are a criminal and the companion of murderers and whores. Who do you save yourself for?”
That did not sound like wisdom, but she found it convincing.
Gideon put his hand onto the counter behind her. One way to look at that, he was holding himself up in case he should suffer a sudden bout of weakness in the next few minutes. Another way to see it was he’d blocked off the line of escape if she should think about leaving suddenly. Or he might just be setting his hand where he’d find it easily if he needed it.
She was the center of his attention. In turn, he filled every corner of her mind.
She put her fingers to his cheek. It seemed perfectly natural to do this, as if a fierce guard dog had come to stand tamely beside her and she laid her hand upon him.
He was warm to the touch, a little scratchy in the way men are. A little rough-skinned. His breath whispered into her hand. “You don’t have to go back to that place.”
She rubbed her thumb, an absent-minded habit. The scar ridge made an ‘L’, the sign she belonged to Lazarus, to this gang, to the Brotherhood. Everybody in his house wore the same sign, even the children.
She said, “I have no choice.”
“You can come with me. No conditions. No expectations. I won’t ask a thing of you and I’ll take you out of London where the past can’t touch you. Don’t go back to Lazarus.”
She didn't listen after the first words. She watched his lips shaping them. There was nothing he could do that did not set warmth glowing within her. Even speaking impossibilities, he grabbed her heart.
He was a hard, cynical man, but with her he had chosen to be knightly and gallant. She had seen him as a knight, a foolish one, the first time she laid eyes upon him.
He said, “I’ll buy you passage to anywhere in the world. Don’t go back.”
But she could not put herself in any man’s hands, not even Monsieur Gideon’s. She could not desert her friends. If ever any man could have tempted her, this was the one.
She would return to the Brotherhood and face whatever came to her. That decision was made, and it set her free to do as she pleased with Gideon.
How often is a woman free to choose the man she wants, even for a day or an hour? There was no one to know. No one to tell her to be wise. There would be no obligation between them but pleasure and a little fondness. In an hour or a day or two he would walk away from her and never look back. That was freeing also. She would not owe him loyalty or regret when this was ended.
She leaned toward him and kissed him.
He tasted of the sunlight he’d walked through today. But kissing him was not so much a taste as it was a complicated symphony of feelings that picked and plucked away at her body. His lips were softer than she’d expected. Like silk. The bones of his face were harder and sharper than she’d thought they would be.
He said, “No,” against her lips and moved away from her, perhaps an inch. Perhaps a thousand miles. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to pay me for safety.”
“I am doing nothing I don’t want to do.” Which was a complicated way of putting it when she could have so easily said that she hungered for him.
He wanted her as well. His body was drawn tight in every sinew as if he prepared for a fight. She could feel taut vibration dwelling in the small distance between them. His hands—they did not shake exactly—but they were deliberate and controlled to keep them so still. His cock was upright and huge beneath his clothes. The pupils of his eyes dilated. “I don’t want to force anything from you,” he said soberly. “Not a feather-weight of persuasion.”
“Your scruples are admirable,” she said. “Complicated and unnecessary, but admirable.”
His hands had placed themselves upon her shoulders, tightening and loosening rhythmically. They courted her body, sliding the fabric of her dress against her skin. He stroked her with the soft linen of her shift. It was not calculation, only skill. He simply knew a great deal about women. It was reassuring to be in the hands of someone knowledgeable.
She said, “I am most simply willing. It is…” What? Curiosity? Friendship? A desire for warmth? A mad grasping at pleasure and closeness at this time when she was afraid. “It is what I want.”
He bowed over her and let his lips rest against her hair. “You’re virgin. I don’t have congress with virgins.”
She shook her head. “I am not. Or if I am, it is a small technicality.” She sighed, because this was difficult to speak of. “When my father was killed, on the ship, those years ago, I fought very hard. The smugglers knocked me with their fists down onto the deck and I hit my head. After that, it is confusing and I don’t remember very well. I know they mistreated me in many ways. I am far from innocent.”
His fingers gripped hard into her shoulders, then carefully loosened. “Remind me to kill somebody.”
“Hawker did that. Last year he found the smuggler captain in a tavern and killed him and brought me unmentionable parts from the body. It is the sort of thing he does for his friends.”
“He takes care of you. That’s good,” he said. “I’ll thank him sometime. That can wait. This can’t.” His hold on her tightened.
This kiss was wholly different from the last kiss. His lips were on her face everywhere. She had not known men kissed eyes and eyebrows and temples and explored a woman’s face and bit gently on her ear lobes. Perhaps it was a custom he brought back from the East. The whores she knew had not mentioned this in the many frank discussions she’d had with them.
She was surprised also by the gentleness of him. Men would be gentle with women they did not pay for, she supposed. This was seduction and not a commercial exchange.
She had to remind herself that she was not being seduced. She chose to do this. Everywhere inside, she shivered.
She nuzzled into the wool of his collar, into the linen of his cravat, and tried to explain one more truth about her.
“Gideon…” How to say what she wanted to say? “Once upon a time I was a girl in Paris, fifteen years old, in a world that has been destroyed altogether. I would go to the great mansions of the Marais quartier and dance with the sons of the merchant families. They were richer than many of the aristocrats who owed them money. My father was one of them.”
Gideon’s voice had a smile deep inside it. “When I was fifteen I danced with the daughters of country squires. Their mothers kept a close watch on me because I was a second son. Not husband material.”
“You will find the squires’ daughters more accessible these days, Monsieur. But we speak of me. For me there was a boy named Antoine. He was blond and nervous and endearingly foppish in his evening clothes. Sometimes I let him kiss me in a quiet corner. We were both awkward and ignorant and very young.”
“You’re not awkward anymore,” he said.
“What I want to tell you is that I am not that girl in Paris. I have not been her for a long time.” She stretched up to kiss him as he had kissed her. His forehead. His eyelids. The column of his throat with its long muscles and the valley on either side running upward, full of heartbeat. It was entirely right and proper that his skin prickled and rasped at her lips. The woman she had become in these last years did not want a man of smooth and pampered skin.
She said, “There is an inn across the road. I will go there with you.” Greed whimpered between her legs, oh, so indelicately. She wanted to become part of him. She wanted to lace herself to him and pull the strings tight.
She took the flavor and texture of his jacket i
nto her mouth. She could not bite through so many layers of clothing but she rested her teeth into the cloth, into the solidity of him. When they were naked in bed she would lick his skin, de pied en cap, from his toes to the top of his head. He would be better than food.
He wound his hands into her hair and held her head tilted up to him. He said, “I’ve wanted to do this since I first laid eyes on you.” His kiss searched deep into her mouth. Pulled emotions from her. Extinguished all thought. He was panting when he stopped. He whispered, “All last night, all this morning, I have wanted to do this.”
She circled her arms around his neck and lifted herself closer. Closer. “We will steal one hour of pleasure,” she said. “I have learned everything there is to know about stealing precious things.”
His teeth nipped at her lips. He sucked and tongued into her mouth. His hands were on her breast, brushing her nipples through the cloth, handling them till the rub and pinch of his fingers was half painful, half exquisite pleasure.
His cock was an insistent thrust at her belly. She pressed to him. Rubbed herself against him through the layers of clothing that separated them. She had seen this many times in the padding ken but had not known that to do it was shock after shock of aching and delight. Of madness. In the whirlwind of her mind, one twirling leaf of knowledge spun. I only have days, perhaps hours, to feel this.
She broke the kiss and gasped for air.
Gideon no longer held her against him. Gone. For an instant she mourned. Her body sought him.
Confusedly, she knew he knelt before her. He gathered the skirt of her dress into his fists and pulled it upward. Cool air swept across her thighs.
He caressed her skin, up her calves to the soft smooth back of her knees. To the inside of her thighs. Then his fingers stroked into the fur between her legs and he opened her there. His mouth touched her.
She braced herself against the counter, her palms flat on the wood behind her, gripping the edge. Her head fell back limply because she could no longer hold it up.