by Gaelen Foley
“If it’s all the same to you, monsieur, I prefer to keep my own counsel.”
He tilted his head slightly, a speculative gleam in his eyes. “I have a theory. Care to hear it?”
She did not answer, but that did not stop him.
“I say you’re eloping. To Paris.”
“What?”
“I hear it’s all the rage these days among you fine young ladies.”
“Don’t be absurd! I am doing nothing of the kind.”
“No? It’s the only explanation that makes sense. I don’t know who you are, but you’re no common sort. Aye, I’m not such an ignorant brute that I don’t know this much—respectable young misses don’t set foot outside the house without their servants to protect them. Back at the coaching inn, where was your chaperon, footman, maid?”
She stood there awkwardly, no ready answer springing to mind.
“I can only conclude that either you are not respectable, which is absurd—your manner is too fine—or your family hasn’t sanctioned your choice of paramours.”
“How shockingly narrow-minded of you, Mr. Blade,” she replied with a toss of her chin. “Do you really think that all a lady’s actions can only revolve around love?”
“Don’t know. You’re the only lady I’ve ever talked to.” He gave her a reckless, haphazard grin that made her heart flutter.
She gazed at him, quite at a loss. “Well, I assure you, you are the first gang leader I have ever talked to.”
“Good! Then we will forgive each other if we make mistakes,” he said with sudden, sardonic cheer, sauntering into the room. Pulling a slim metal case out of his breast pocket, he took out a cheroot. As he bent over the candle and lit it, she did not have the heart to tell him that a gentleman did not smoke in front of a lady.
He straightened up again and turned to her, looking irresistibly dangerous with the thin cheroot dangling from his lips. “So, where’s the lucky bridegroom, eh, Miss Smith? Are you to meet him at the coast, or were you waiting for him at the Bull’s Head?” He paused, let out a stream of smoke, and added prosaically, “Was he late?”
“Blade, please. Just let me go. I have no intention of reporting you to Bow Street. Can’t you just take my word for it and return me to the coaching inn? I will be on my way, and we need never think of each other again.”
“I am not sure that is possible.” His smoldering gaze inched down her body, as shocking and tangible as touch. “Your fiancé must be quite a man to have turned your head.”
Rattled and blushing at his leisurely appraisal, she blurted out a protest, too fevered to think first. “Did it ever occur to you that my going to Paris might be to avoid a betrothal rather than to fulfill one—blast you!” she cried as he lifted his eyebrow with a knowing smirk. Abominable man. She snapped her jaw shut and scowled, for the beast had just tricked her into admitting her destination.
“I see. In other words—” He sauntered toward her with an intense stare. “—you’re running away from home.”
“So what if I am? I don’t see how that’s any affair of yours.” She pointed impatiently at his waist. “You know, you’re bleeding.”
“You’ll never survive. You’ll never make it to France in one piece.”
“Oh, yes, I will.”
“You were duped by a nine-year-old pickpocket, then chased him into the rookery like a damned fool. Did you even pay attention to where he was leading you? You never chase a thief who robs you. That’s the way most of the murders in this city happen. Look at you.” The cheroot between his fingers, he swept a gesture from her feet to her head, scowling crossly. “You’re dressed like a princess, walking around with enough gold in your purse to get you killed thrice over, never mind the diamonds. That boy could have gutted you like a fish if he had wanted to, and—good God, woman!—do you know what would’ve happened to you if it had been O’Dell who had found you instead of me?”
“Go on, rail away.” She folded her arms over her chest and studied the wall. “You’re bound to pass out soon enough from loss of blood.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, then bent his head and moved his black leather coat aside to examine his wound. His long, tangled blond hair fell forward, veiling his face.
No wonder Lucien liked him, she thought. The brute was as domineering as any of her brothers. She winced at the sight of his bloodied shirt. “I think you had better send for the surgeon.”
“I’ll tend it myself,” he grumbled, clamping the cheroot between his teeth as he shrugged off his jacket. He nodded toward the hearth. “There’s hot water in that pot on the fire. Pour it into the washbasin over on the chest of drawers—if the task isn’t too far beneath you.”
“I suppose, this once, I can make an exception,” she said sweetly, cursing his arrogance under her breath.
Grateful for any topic to divert him from his interrogation, Jacinda did as he bid her with a handy cooperation that would have shocked her beleaguered governess, Miss Hood. She collected the empty basin on the chest of drawers and stole a closer glance at the Canaletto. The painting was bizarrely out of place in this thieves’ den, but it was truly exquisite. She turned around with the washbowl in her hands just as Blade lifted his thin white shirt off over his head.
She stopped in her tracks, nearly dropping the bowl. Firelight played across the broad, muscled splendor of his chest, powerful shoulders, and ironlike abdomen. His untamed beauty was somehow terrible to behold, smeared with the blood from the wound on his side, his lean waist still girded with an array of weapons in holsters and sheaths. Dropping his bloodstained shirt carelessly on the floor, he blotted his face with the knotted blue neckerchief loosely tied around his neck and went to the old, curve-topped trunk at the foot of his bed.
He undid the leather straps and opened it, but when he turned away, her jaw dropped at the heathenish tattoos that adorned his back and massive arms.
“Do you even speak French?” he asked without turning to her.
For a moment, she could not find her wits to reply. “O-of course,” she stammered, gazing at his fascinating body. Most of her education had been conducted in the French tongue, but at the moment, she could only recall that it was the traditional language of amour.
The smooth, bronzed satin of his skin had been etched with an array of swirling designs and colorful drawings that ranged from the fanciful to the humorous. Her marveling stare traveled over his painted warrior’s body. Oh, how deliciously horrid he was, she thought, utterly mesmerized. A crossed sword and pistol wrapped in a laurel wreath adorned his right biceps; a fire-breathing dragon coiled around his left. A Union Jack rode his left shoulder, while a big-breasted mermaid posed prettily on a rock near his right hip, but the largest picture, spanning the center of his back, showed a dark phoenix rising from flames, its wings outspread.
The dragon on his left arm stretched sinuously as he reached into the trunk and pulled out a wooden medicine box. As he straightened up again, she belatedly remembered her task. Turning away, her cheeks crimson, she hurried to fill the washbasin with warm water from the kettle, but his low, rich, pirate laughter followed her.
“Want to pet my dragon, sweetheart?”
“You really are too crude for words,” she said hotly as he passed behind her with an easy stealth in his walk, like a great, golden leopard covered in his fantastic markings.
Chuckling, he set the medicine box on the chest of drawers. “You’re the one who was staring.”
“No. I wasn’t.” Doing her best to ignore him, she found a small towel on the mantel and folded it to protect her hand from the heat. Gingerly reaching toward the fire, she was acutely aware of him coming up behind her. Her fingers curled around the handle.
“Liar.”
Her heart pounding foolishly at his whisper, she lifted the pot out with care, the steam rising in tendrils to moisten her chest and throat and cheeks in wet swirling warmth like a lover’s breath upon her skin. Mere inches behind her, his overwhelming magnetism and the sudden wave of heat
as she poured the water into the basin made her head faint. “It’s all right, you know. I don’t mind if you look at me. I’ve been looking at you.” He reached over her arm, lingering dangerously near as he took the pot out of her trembling hold; her stomach flip-flopped when their hands touched.
“Keep your distance!” she ordered, dismayed when her voice came out breathlessly. “That is—I will thank you to behave with a bit more decorum.”
“Decorum? Right.” He flicked a wary glance over her. “Look at milady, hard at work in her ball gown,” he taunted softly, his warm breath tickling her ear. “You weren’t made for doin’ chores, princess. Allow me.”
To her vexation, she quivered even as he mocked her. Sending her a knowing little smile, he set the pot back on the fire and took the large bowl of water from her.
He went over to set it on the chest of drawers and put it down, then pulled the wooden chair over, twirled it about-face, and straddled it, draping his elbow across the top slat. “Never seen tattoos on a man before?”
She had never seen a man’s naked torso before, tattooed or otherwise, but it hardly seemed worth mentioning. “Where did you get them?”
“Church Street.”
She blinked in surprise at his unexotic answer.
He smiled. “An old sea dog retired from the Navy keeps a parlor there. Supports himself nicely in his old age, I daresay. He learned his art from the natives of Tahiti while serving aboard one of His Majesty’s frigates.”
“Did it hurt much?”
“Don’t recall,” he said with a lazy grin, scratching his scruffy jaw. “I was stone drunk every time.”
With a snort of amused disdain, she looked away.
As he commenced tending his wound, she stood awkwardly a short distance away, trying to keep her gaze averted. She felt she really ought to help somehow—his injury looked dreadfully painful—but she barely dared glance at him, belatedly unnerved by the presence of a very large, virile, half-naked man in the room with her. What her brothers would have said of this, she did not wish to contemplate.
With so many people to answer to, she wondered in a sudden surge of rebellion what it was like to be Blade. He was a ruffian, to be sure; but he was as free as an eagle, and she was deuced certain that no one ever told him what to do. He would laugh in their faces.
Glancing at him, chagrined to find herself envious of the lovely brute, she let out a sudden exclamation. “Blade! You’re going to get water on the painting! For goodness’s sake, it’s a Canaletto—”
“I think I know what it is. Why else would I have bothered to steal it?”
“Then you shouldn’t leave it where it can get covered in water spots!”
He watched her curiously as she marched past him to the chest of drawers and whisked the masterpiece out of harm’s way. Carrying it over to his writing table where it would not suffer the indignity of stray splashes, she took her time fussing over placing it just so, relieved to have some small task to distract her from gawking at him.
Looking back on it, she couldn’t believe that her best friend and lady’s companion, Lizzie Carlisle, hadn’t thought that Billy Blade was handsome. She had called him “A Nasty Man” and had been scandalized by Jacinda’s interest.
She wanted to laugh at the thought. Only Mama would have understood, she thought with an inward sigh, stealing another wicked peek at him from across the dim chamber. What a gorgeous air of wildness and rebellion he had about him, with his dark gold mane flowing back from his forehead and those pagan tattoos adorning his finely honed body.
Still, though the vast gulf between Billy Blade and the fashionable dandies of her acquaintance was obvious, she could not escape the nagging intuition that the gang leader was not entirely what he seemed. Perhaps he was the product of some highborn rake’s dalliance with a tavern wench, for he had a bold, strong, sensual face with a fineness to his features that whispered of loftier bloodlines than his seeming Cockney origins. The princely lines of his thick, tawny eyebrows winged over his wary yet thoughtful eyes. He had austere, knife-hilt cheekbones; a square, determined chin; and a generous mouth that would have tempted a paragon, let alone the daughter of the Hawkscliffe Harlot.
Yet his face also bore the marks of his rough life on the streets. His aquiline nose crooked slightly to the right, and above the outer corner of his left eyebrow was a scar in the shape of a scraggly star. As he began binding his lacerated side with a length of clean linen and an air of practiced efficiency, she dragged her stare away from him by sheer dint of will.
“You’re awfully good at looking after yourself, aren’t you?” she remarked in a tone of studied idleness, running her fingertip along the dusty top of the Canaletto’s gilded frame.
“Have to be. No one else is goin’ to do it.” He got up and threw out the blood-tinged water, refilling the washbowl with fresh, cool water from the drinking pitcher. He leaned down and began splashing his face.
She fell silent, guiltily counting the number of servants who saw to her needs every hour of every day. She had never known any other kind of life. She was the daughter of a duke, after all. “Doesn’t your Gypsy girl look after you, at least?”
He sent her a hard-eyed glance over the water bowl. “I look after myself. Always have. Always will.”
She shrugged and looked away. “Of course.” He reminded her, she decided, of the little boy who had robbed her—too proud to take her offered charity, but desperate enough to steal. While Blade continued splashing his face and neck, she took off her diamond necklace and hung it gently over the corner of the Canaletto’s frame, then walked away so he would not notice what she had done.
Her body felt strangely lighter, freed of her diamond collar. She clasped her hands loosely behind her back and waited for him to finish freshening up. Though she tried very hard not to keep staring at him, those strange pictures on his smooth skin seemed to beckon to her, teasing her, arcing and writhing sinuously over his muscles with his least, careless movement.
She turned her head just enough to see that each tattoo seemed specifically designed to cover up the traces of older scars. She furrowed her brow.
Dripping with water, Blade straightened up from leaning over the washbowl. Firelight tracked the gleaming beads of water that trickled down his chest as he slowly pushed his long hair back with his hands. Damp from his hasty ablutions, its color had darkened to sandy brown. She felt a shiver of awareness low in her belly and seized a longer gaze at him than she ought.
As though reading her thoughts, he opened his eyes slowly and looked into hers from across the room, tiny water droplets glistening on his spiky lashes. As their stares connected, Jacinda’s voice failed her. She swallowed hard, feeling flushed and feverish all of a sudden. She could not seem to look away.
Casting aside the hand towel, he sauntered toward her. “Don’t you think it’s time you confessed?”
“To what?” she asked faintly.
“The truth. Who are you?”
“I’ve already told you—”
“You can’t gull a lad from the rookery, love.”
“I’m not so sure you are from the rookery.” She lifted her chin to continue holding his gaze as he drifted closer.
“Hmm.” His murmur was husky, noncommittal.
“What if I threaten to kiss it out of you?”
She trembled at his words and hoped he had not seen it. “I don’t think your mistress would like that.”
“Ah, but the question is, would you?”
She held her breath, her heart pounding. His deep green eyes smoldered like emeralds on fire as he came to her with sure, unhurried strides—giving her time, perhaps, to run. Or scream. Or stop him.
She did neither.
Locked in the spell of her dark, sultry eyes, Blade could not look away. Once again, she defied his expectations. Instead of flying from him in scandalized dread like a genteel miss, she stayed where she was, an innocent temptress, waiting for him, her chest rising and falling i
n soft, rapid anticipation, her hands at her sides.
She dazzled him, like looking too long at the sun’s glitter on the sea, an image half forgotten from his boyhood, and like the tides, she drew him to her with a power that enthralled him, overcoming his survivor’s sense of caution and his will. Yet the closer he went, the more hopelessly lost he became, his heart pounding, his senses climbing toward some exalted bliss. She stood before him like a captive goddess, as ravishing and out of place in his rough chamber as the Canaletto. The firelight played over the exquisite gold embroidery of her white gown, which was made of such zephyr-fine silk that it seemed to float weightlessly about her legs.
As his gaze descended, his breath caught in his throat, for her skirts turned translucent by the fire’s glow, outlining her slender legs. She was slim and modestly proportioned, all elegance and demure charm. He stared at her body with a hunger that went beyond the physical. He lusted for her—God, yes—but as his gaze swept back up over every inch of her to her lovely face, her eyes whispered to him of the gentling influence—the elevating companionship—he had so long been starved for.
Someone to inspire him, teach him, make him think. Someone to hold her ground no matter how loudly he roared. To understand when he talked about the deepest questions that plagued his soul.
He had no hope of finding that here. He was too different from everyone else in the rookery. Unlike Nate or even O’Dell, he was an outsider; even as a boy-thief like Eddie, he had quickly seen that his only means of being accepted and allowed to stay was to make himself indispensable. Now he was their leader, but he had never really been one of them. He would have given his life for his friends, but they could not comprehend the puzzles that obsessed him. He had his books to comfort him, as well, but they could not listen, care. This girl, whoever she was, embodied all the beauty and grace he craved in his dark, brutal world.
She…sparkled, he thought dazedly. He stopped mere inches before her, and still she did not back away; nor did she tilt her head back to meet his gaze, but stared straight ahead at his bare chest. He could feel the warm, beguiling sweetness of her soft breath on his skin; he studied every intricate twist and whorl of her glorious golden curls.