by Gaelen Foley
“Do you mind?” she clipped out suddenly with a fine, cultured accent like frosted glass.
His gaze flicked up from her chest to her blazing eyes. “So, you can talk.”
“Obviously.”
“Too bad,” he drawled. “I thought I just found the perfect woman.”
She narrowed her eyes at his chauvinistic jest, all bristling long lashes.
His lips twisted sardonically. Glancing at his rejected hand, he winced with chagrin and wiped the dirt and blood off of it onto his black drill trousers, then, quite fearlessly, he thought, offered it again. “On your feet, princess.”
“Thank you, but I shall remain where I am.”
“In the garbage heap?”
“Yes. Good evening,” she added in a haughty attempt to dismiss him, as though he were some errand boy.
His men exchanged an uneasy glance at her foolhardy disrespect, but Blade stroked his jaw for a second and decided to forgive her, well aware that she was probably scared out of her wits behind her show of bravado. “You don’t look very comfortable in there.”
“I am perfectly comfortable—not that it’s any of your affair!”
“Oh, but it is, love,” he said silkily.
“How’s that?”
“You’re on my turf.”
The silence after his quiet statement was deafening.
“I see,” she said in a small, tight, angry voice, no doubt realizing that she was trapped, but trying nonetheless to stall for time. “So, this is your alley, then. Your garbage heap.”
“That’s right,” he answered, matching her sarcastic tone.
“You must be so proud.”
His men brayed with laughter, but Blade’s eyes narrowed to angry slits. That does it. He reached into her hiding place with both hands and seized her, dragging her out by her waist, kicking and screaming.
“Damn it, girl, be still!” he yelled as she swiped at his face with her nails.
His men laughed uproariously at the row. The minute Blade set her on her feet, she clubbed him with her satchel and tore free, running only a step or two down the alley before Flaherty, ever helpful, grabbed her by her arm. Without the slightest hesitation, the little blonde spun and smashed him a facer.
Blade laughed aloud in astonishment. Flaherty cursed in surprise, losing his grip on her arm, but Sarge stepped into her path before she could flee, blocking her escape.
Blade swooped up behind her with one large stride and wrapped his arms around her waist with a brash laugh, holding her fast from behind.
“Get your filthy hands off me, you swine!”
“Not a chance, love. You’re comin’ with us. You’ve seen things tonight you ’ad no business seein’. I can’t have you goin’ to Bow Street to make a report.”
“I have no intention of doing any such thing!”
“So you say. Why should I believe you? I don’t know you. Maybe you’ve got some trick up your sleeve. The thief-takers consider me big game, y’see. Sendin’ Billy Blade to the hangman could make a man’s career—”
“Billy Blade?” she gasped, freezing in his arms. Her gaze flew to his face with what he could have sworn was recognition.
Flaherty raised his eyebrows and grinned at him. “Looks like your fame goes before you, mate.”
Without warning, the girl tried again to escape, driving her elbow into his stomach and stomping on his foot with her heel. Swinging her satchel over her shoulder, she nearly clocked him in the face, but he turned his head and took the blow on his ear.
Blade couldn’t stop laughing, rather flattered that she had heard of his misdeeds. She had probably read about him in the papers. In all, her assault had little effect on him, like an attack from some incensed fairy queen, but it forced him to shift his hold on her, and the second his grip loosened, she tore free of his arms and started running.
Flaherty, still rubbing his cheek where she had punched him, spitefully stuck out his foot in the darkness and tripped her. The blonde fell, sailing earthward, and landed hard on her hands and knees. She looked up through her tangled mop of gold curls, wild fear in her fiery dark eyes.
Blade sent Flaherty a look of blistering disapproval for tripping her, but a pang of guilt stabbed him as well for having made sport of the little hellcat. In truth, her fight had earned a measure of his admiration.
He went to the girl, intending only to help her up. It did not occur to him that, as he approached, he must have appeared to loom threateningly over her. When her glance flicked to the dagger sheathed at his side, her big brown eyes filled with an angry rush of tears that rendered him instantly powerless.
“Go on, do it!” she wrenched out, the icy hauteur cracking to show an innocent girlish misery beneath. “I’d probably be better off!”
He stared at her for a second, taken aback by the note of genuine despair in her wail, then realized abruptly that the little simpleton actually thought he was going to kill her. Lord, what were they writing about him in the serials these days? He didn’t kill helpless women.
His men were still laughing.
“Shut up,” he growled at them. He scowled, insulted, yet vaguely ashamed of their jovial crudity. And his own.
“I don’t care anymore what happens to me,” she went on. “Make it a clean blow; that’s all I ask.”
“Oh, leave off the dramatics, you daft chit. Get up.” He grasped her by the scruff of her coat’s fur-lined collar and hoisted her none too gently to her feet.
She huffed in regal affront at being thus manhandled, but recovered her dignity quickly enough. Once righted, she glared at him over her shoulder as he thrust her ahead of him at arm’s length. Loath to be clubbed in the head again, he relieved her of her satchel and tossed it to Sarge.
“Give that back!”
He ignored her frantic efforts to grab it and turned to the scarred ex-army sergeant. “Carry it for her, but if you take tuppence from that purse, you’ll answer to me.”
Sarge grunted in acquiescence; then he and Flaherty went back to heave Riley’s body up off the cold ground once more.
Blade wrapped his hand in a possessive grip around the girl’s slender arm above her elbow and gave her a flat look that dared her to protest. “Now walk.”
Oh, yes, she remembered him now. Jacinda trembled a bit as Blade marched her down the alley, his sculpted face grim, his hard-eyed glance forever scanning the shadows. Occasionally, he looked over his shoulder.
Taken captive by the outlaw gang, she subsided into tight-lipped docility, but her head reeled with recognition. She struggled to recall the particulars of that bright, snowy afternoon when the outlaw captain, Billy Blade, had come to Knight House looking for her middle brothers, the twins, Lucien and Damien.
The details were sketchy in her mind, for it had happened nearly a year and a half ago, when her war-hero brother, Damien, had brought his then-ward, now his wife, Miranda, to spend Christmas with the family. Someone had been trying to hurt Miranda, and the twins had combined their efforts to protect her. Jacinda had crossed paths fleetingly with Blade in the entrance hall of Knight House. How could she ever forget? She had been on her way out, bundled up for a brisk constitutional in the park when he had sauntered past her, startling her and the butler alike. He had trailed a leisurely stare over her and had slid her a scoundrelly smile that had caused her brother, Damien, to growl at him in warning, “Blade.” That was how she had learned his name.
She had never seen anything like him before, with his black leather trousers and his long, dirty-blond hair. She still recalled the insolent swagger of his walk, his garish purple waistcoat that she had glimpsed beneath his black velvet coat, and the red carnation he had worn in the boutonniere. She had been half appalled, half mesmerized, then had run to the window to watch him leave. She knew he was every bit as bad as he looked, for the twins had been angry at him for daring to come to the house.
Since the twins would tell her nothing about the rough, bold, mysterious, young cutthroat
, Jacinda and her best friend, Lizzie, had come to the half-joking conclusion that “Billy Blade” had been one of Lucien’s informers about the goings-on in London’s criminal underworld, and had come to bring the twins information about the villain who was after Miranda. Since the war’s end, her spy-brother, Lord Lucien Knight, a diplomat and former operative for the Foreign Office, had occasionally lent his intelligence-gathering skills to Bow Street to help them solve crimes. Lucien was wont to consort with all manner of shady characters to obtain information. Now Jacinda could not help but think that her and Lizzie’s wild guess about Blade had been right; thus, she found herself in a dangerous quandary.
She had seen the lustful way Blade had looked at her in the alley. The man was a violent criminal. If he began making advances on her when they reached whatever place he was taking her to, her only sure means of warding him off would be to tell him that she was Lucien and Damien’s sister. But if she did that, he would probably take her straight back to her brothers. Not only would her one chance at freedom be foiled, she would also be in huge trouble for trying to run away, only giving Robert all the more reason to force her to marry Lord Griffith.
Extremely uneasy over her dilemma, she ordered herself to remain calm, stay alert, and keep her mouth shut until she saw how this was going to unfold. She decided only to reveal her true identity as a last resort.
Suddenly, more male voices floated to them from the darkness, approaching from the intersecting alley. Fearing another milling match with O’Dell, she instinctively moved nearer to her tall, brawny captor.
“Ho, Nate!” Blade called down the alley.
A tall, lean fellow with curly black hair and an amiable grin led his band of weary thugs out of the shadows. There were about a dozen others with him. The men greeted each other, expressed their gruff regrets about Riley’s demise, and discussed the particulars of the battle in their incomprehensible Cockney jargon as the whole group continued walking in a northwesterly direction. Jacinda had no choice but to go with them, though she had no idea where they were bound.
Blade’s men eyed her curiously, but he offered them no explanation, and it seemed they didn’t dare question him. Draping his arm around her shoulders, he sent the message loud and clear that she was under his protection. Jacinda deemed it best, this once, not to argue.
At length, they came out to a deserted crossroads where the man called Nate waved to a hackney that had been waiting in the shadows. Apparently one of their own, the driver had been stationed there to bear away the wounded. Riley’s corpse was hefted into the coach; then the more seriously injured men climbed aboard. When the ragtag carriage had gone, the rest of the men broke up into twos and threes—to avoid attracting attention, Blade explained—taking different routes back to their gang headquarters in Bainbridge Street.
Nate joined Blade and her as they walked through the streets. “Whew!” the lanky Yorkshireman exclaimed, fanning his hand before his nose. “What the hell stinks?”
From the corner of her eye, Jacinda noticed Blade shoot him a discreet look as though to hush him; then it dawned on her that the unpleasant smell she had noticed in the air was coming from her! Her fine velvet redingote had absorbed the infernal odor of the garbage heap. The humiliation of it was the crowning blow of this night. She could almost hear her nemesis, Daphne Taylor, cackling with glee.
“I’m afraid, sir, that the unpleasantness you are referring to is emanating from my coat,” she forced out stiffly, trying to hide her misery and the fact that her pride was in shreds.
Nate blanched, looking genuinely embarrassed. “Oh, gracious, miss, I didn’t realize. Beg your pardon!”
Blade laughed softly at her discomfiture, his green eyes dancing. “There, there, darlin,’ you still look as pretty as a rose, even if you don’t exactly smell like one. You can have my coat, if you want. It’s a bit bloody, but you’re welcome—” He started pulling it off.
“Not necessary, thank you.” Scowling, she shoved off his loose half embrace.
They laughed at her.
“Plucky little thing,” Nate said with a chuckle to his friend. “Where’d you find her?”
While Blade explained what had transpired, Jacinda glanced this way and that, noticing that their surroundings were becoming increasingly grim. The dirty streets narrowed, crooking past rows of ramshackle shops and lodging houses of dubious character. Every corner flapped with the remnants of old faded posters, deteriorating like ancient burial shrouds. The few people they saw either fled from the sight of Blade or bowed to him with a reverence she doubted they would have shown to the regent. Meanwhile, Blade concluded his story of finding her in the junk heap. She noticed he treated the good-natured Yorkshireman more like an equal than he had the others.
“She was there all the time,” he finished, sending her a mystified glance.
“Well, hang me,” Nate said. “She got a name?”
“Deuced if I know. You ask her, Nate. She doesn’t like me.”
She gave Blade a flat look in answer to his taunting bid for a denial from her on that point. She did not deign to indulge him.
“Aye, I’ll do the introductions,” Nate agreed, turning to her. With an air of fun, he gave her a small bow. “Nathaniel Hawkins at your service, ma’am, and who might I have the pleasure of addressin’?”
“Smith,” she lied coolly, using the same alias she had given the booking agent. “I am Jane Smith.”
Blade’s stare homed in on her—sharp, piercing, alarmingly intelligent. “Bullocks,” he said softly.
“You accuse me of lying?” she cried. Good God, how did he know?
“Children, children—now, would that be a missus or miss, Jane Smith?”
“Miss.”
“Well, then,” Nate went on cheerfully. “Miss Smith, allow me to present my good friend, Billy Blade, the elected captain of the Fire Hawks of St. Giles.”
“And you accuse me of using a false name,” she scoffed, looking past Nate’s grinning face at her captor. “Billy Blade, indeed.”
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling us what exactly you were doing in that garbage heap, Miss Smith,” the brute said.
“For your information, I was robbed. I was at the Bull’s Head Inn waiting for a coach…” She told them the whole story of how the beggar boy had snatched her money-purse.
“What did this boy look like?” Nate asked, exchanging a dire look with his captain.
“Brown eyes, thin, about nine years old.”
“Eddie,” Blade muttered, shaking his head. “I’ll give him a wiggin’ for this.”
“You know that child?” she exclaimed.
“Eddie the Knuckler,” Nate said with a low laugh.
“He’s an orphan.”
“Knuckler?”
Blade merely humphed, looking quite perturbed by her story.
“That’s a rookery term for a pickpocket,” Nate told her with a cheery wink.
Just then, a male voice called down from somewhere above them in the darkness. “Who goes there?”
Jacinda looked up, startled.
“Stand down, Mikey; it’s us,” Nate called back, cupping his hands around his mouth.
Spotting men with rifles posted on the roofs of the surrounding buildings, Jacinda glanced at Blade in alarm.
“They’re just sentries,” he murmured.
“Blade! Nate!” the man called excitedly from the roof. “Did you get O’Dell?”
“No,” Blade yelled back in disgust.
“Next time,” Nate assured him as they walked on, entering the heart of Blade’s rookery stronghold.
Jacinda turned to him. “You really are at war, aren’t you?”
He nodded grimly.
“But why?”
“Blade hates bullies of every stripe,” Nate said.
“The Jackals have come onto my turf,” Blade murmured, keeping his implacable stare fixed down the dark street. “They’ve set fires, broken into shops, demanded protection money fro
m the shopkeepers. They’ve beaten civilians in the streets and harmed some of our women. I have promised to drive them out of London.”
“Promised whom?” she asked, rather humbled by the steely resolution carved into his profile.
“Them.” As they turned the corner, he nodded toward a crowd of perhaps forty people milling about in the street in front of a gin shop.
Some sort of rustic celebration appeared in progress, people standing around a blazing tar barrel, others cutting a reel to a rollicking tune on accordion accompanied by the shrill, fluid piping of a piccolo and the rousing beat of a bodhran. Bursts of laughter reached them over the music. She could smell a kettle of fish cooking. It was no doubt a rowdy, disreputable gathering, but it looked a hundred times gayer than Almack’s. As they went a little closer and the gang’s headquarters came more clearly into view, Jacinda paused, staring at it. What a strange place.
By the gleam of colored fairy lights hung here and there, the outlaws’ hideaway seemed patched together with bits and scraps like a boys’ tree house. It leaned at an odd angle against the dark sky and rang with merriment and activity on this moonlit night. Under a smoking pepper-pot chimney and a crenellated roof, it was of brick, with three stories and a curious assortment of oddly placed windows: round, square, and rectangular. It had a mousetrap of elaborate gutters and winding rainspouts that emptied into big barrels here and there, while a small wooden windlass secured with ropes and pulleys hung down the front of the building. As she watched, a man on the roof used the contraption to hoist up a load of something from a plump woman in a mob cap on the ground.
“Might as well face ’em and get it over with,” Blade muttered. “Come on.”
Falling under the mysterious enchantment of the place, Jacinda followed him.
“It’s Blade!” someone yelled as they neared the festivities. “Blade! Nate!”
Instantly, they were surrounded. People greeted Blade all around her, reaching out to touch him as though he were a good-luck talisman. They patted him on the back and eagerly shook his hand as he passed, as though he were their bold young king back from slaying the dragon; yet she detected a current of nervous anxiety beneath their joviality. She held onto his arm, rather leery of the gaudy, chaotic mob hemming them in.