by Gaelen Foley
“Oh, you men,” she whispered bitterly. “You roll women under your wheels like great millstones grinding wheat. I shall never forgive you for this.”
“Well, it hardly matters, dear.” Insolently, he lit a cheroot to distract himself from the guilt. “It’s not as though we move in the same circles.”
“Hardly.” She fell silent for a moment. “So, that is all, then. It’s over. Now I shall have to marry Lord Griffith.”
“Is he so bad?”
She gave him a lost look that pricked at Blade’s feeble conscience.
“If you don’t want him, you must tell your family flat-out,” he said hotly.
“You don’t understand. Robert won’t listen—”
“Make him listen! Stand up for yourself, girl.”
“You don’t know very much about dukes, do you?”
He could not help but smile slightly at her quelling tone. “No, but I do know that your brothers would do anything for you, and that you can’t just run away from your problems.”
“You did.”
“It’s different with me.”
“Because you’re a man?”
“Because I had no choice. My father would have eventually ended up killing me if I had stayed.”
She stared at him for a moment in the darkness, then looked away.
They were silent just long enough for Blade to begin regretting his admission. He shifted self-consciously in his seat, crossing his ankle over the opposite knee. His injured side hurt.
“What about my things? You know I cannot do without my pretty baubles and material comforts,” she said in cool, cutting irony. “I left my traveling trunks at the inn.”
“Your brother can send for them.”
“How do you know Lucien, anyway?”
“It’s of no consequence.”
“Ah, but, of course. It would no doubt tax my poor female brain too much to be told the truth. It’s so good of you men to be always protecting me. Fortunately, I’m able to figure things out for myself. Lucien pays you for information about the criminal world, no?” In the darkness, he could just make out the sparks of derision in her eyes; then she turned away and stared out the window again. “I daresay you will do anything for a few pieces of silver. How much do you think you’ll get for ruining my life?”
Already uneasy with his confession about his father’s violence, he went on the defensive, losing patience. “I am not ruining your life, you daft chit. I am saving your neck.”
“You are not. I know why you’re doing this. Because you’re afraid of my brothers—”
“I’m not afraid of anyone,” he warned.
“They don’t have to know,” she said tautly. “You can still let me go.”
“Sorry, can’t do that.”
“Sorry? You will be. If I tell my brothers what you did to me—”
“You mean what you begged me to do to you?”
“You’re life won’t be worth a farthing.”
“Go ahead and tell them.” He sat back and gave her a flat look. “They’ll put you in a bloody convent.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you ever stop swearing?”
He smiled and blew smoke gently at her from his cheroot. She waved it away with an indignant cough and opened the window by its strap, then looked askance at him with a crafty gleam coming into her eyes. He watched her warily as she got up, crossed the small space of the coach, and slid into the seat beside him. He went very still as she laid her hand on his leg, but his pulse quickened at her touch.
“Billy,” she cajoled prettily, walking her gloved fingers up his thigh, “you’ll let me go if I pleasure you, as you did me, won’t you?”
He lifted his eyebrow. “You really do want to go to France.”
“Show me how.” With a wild, vixenish smile, she took him off guard with a warm caress all the way up to his still-aching cock. He flinched with need, but somehow found the strength to pluck her hand off his groin.
“You little hussy,” he said pleasantly.
“Come, you need it,” she whispered.
“There’s always Carlotta.”
“Ugh!” Cursing him under her breath in French, she flounced back to her seat with a huff, folded her arms across her chest, and glared at him.
He grinned, his cheroot clamped between his teeth. There was another embattled silence as the coach carried them into Lucien’s elegant neighborhood. In moments they would reach his handsomely appointed townhouse in Upper Brooke Street.
“Well,” she said, “you learned my real name. I think it’s only fair you tell me yours.”
He looked at her without comment.
“No one is really called ‘Billy Blade.’ What is your real name? Is it William?”
He didn’t answer.
“Will. William. Willy.”
“Do you ever shut up?”
“Yes, William,” she taunted. Baby sister of her clan, she had obviously perfected her skills for annoying a male on her army of elder brothers.
He grumbled about her under his breath, then looked away as the hackney coach turned into Upper Brooke Street. In moments, he would hand her over and would probably never see her again. He glanced over and found her studying him. They stared at each other as the coach rolled to a halt in front of her brother’s house.
“Blade, please,” she whispered.
“Don’t,” he muttered brusquely, weakened by the frantic distress in her big, dark eyes. At once, he shoved open the door and jumped out of the carriage.
“Mind ’er, Jimmy. Don’t let her run off,” he ordered the driver as he shut the carriage door behind him. He braced himself to face her brother as he strode toward the entrance.
All sophisticated understatement, much like its owner, Lord Lucien Knight’s town house had a flat front with small wrought-iron balconies off the upper windows. Brass lanterns burned on either side of the elaborately carved door. In an upper window, where light beamed through the shade, he could see the slim silhouette of Lucien’s young wife brushing her long hair. Reaching the front door, he knocked loudly, then waited. He could feel Jacinda watching him from the coach. An elderly butler answered the door. He asked for Lord Lucien.
“Tell him it’s Blade.”
The thin old fellow gave him a guarded look and closed the door in his face. Again, he waited and smoked in restless silence, hooking his thumb idly in the waistband of his trousers. A few minutes later, the door opened again, and a tall, black-haired man stood in the doorway.
“Blade?” Lord Lucien Knight stepped out of his house, pulling the door closed silently behind him. Though his cravat hung untied around his neck, he was dressed in formal black and white, as though he had just come back from the same ball his sister had fled.
Blade suddenly wondered if anyone had even realized yet that Jacinda was missing. Maybe she had guessed correctly when she had said that her note might not yet have been found.
“What’s afoot?” Lucien asked, his silvery eyes glowing keenly in the moonlight.
“I found something of yours. Thought you might like to have it back.”
Lucien regarded him curiously. Blade nodded toward the coach, then told him everything that had happened. Well—not quite everything. He wasn’t suicidal.
“Good God! Is she hurt?”
“Only her pride,” Blade muttered, but Lucien was already striding toward the carriage.
“Jas?” He hauled open the carriage door as Blade came sauntering up behind him. “Sweeting, are you all right?”
“Yes, Lucien, I am perfectly well,” she drawled in a bored, long-suffering voice from inside the coach.
Reassured by her insolent tone, anger flooded Lucien’s aquiline face. “Perdition, girl, have you lost your mind? Get into the house this instant! You have some explaining to do!”
Glowering, the young beauty emerged from the shadows inside the vehicle, thrust her satchel into Lucien’s hands, then hopped out of the coach with an air of bristling defiance.
&nbs
p; “And no temper tantrums,” her brother warned. “If you wake the baby, I’ll throttle you.”
Without a word, Jacinda took her bag back from him and turned to Blade, regarding him in silence for one final, excruciating moment with a look of bitter regret. She needed no words to express her disgust; her slight shaking of her head said it all. Shrugging her satchel up higher onto her shoulder, she walked into the house and closed the door behind her without looking back.
“What a piece of work!” Lucien exploded when she had shut the door, but Blade could only stand there feeling like an utter Judas.
“Ah, I had a feeling something like this was coming, but I didn’t think she’d really do it. I don’t know what we’ll do with her. The sooner she’s safely married off, the better—it is her second Season.”
Blade hesitated, knowing it was none of his business—nor did he really care—but he had to say something to try to help her. “Whoever it is you want her to marry,” he blurted out, “she really hates the notion.”
“She told you that?”
He nodded. “Who is the chap, and what’s wrong with him?” he asked cautiously.
“Wrong with him? Nothing. He’s the marquess of Griffith—only one of the ton’s most brilliant catches. He grew up with us in the North Country. She’s known him all her life. His wife died two years ago in childbirth, and we all think it’s time he rejoined the land of the living. They’d be good for each other.”
Blade stared at him in confusion. “He’s not an old wigsby?”
Lucien laughed. “Is that what she told you?”
Blade swiftly reviewed their conversation and shook his head as he realized. “It’s what she let me assume.”
Lucien gave him a wan smile. “She’s devious like that.” He sighed. “Who can fathom the mind of a woman? And that one’s as mad as her mother.”
Blade looked away uneasily, beginning to wonder all at once if he had done the wrong thing by bringing her back. She had confided in him; he had told her he would listen. But had he?
With a sigh, Lucien turned to him and extended his hand. “Thank you for bringing her back safely, Blade.” He shook his hand firmly. “God knows, anything might have happened to her out there. I owe you, truly. If there is anything I can do, you have but to name it.”
“It was nothing,” he said gruffly, remembering her icy taunting about his getting a reward for this. He turned to leave, his mood gone surly, then stopped himself halfway across the pavement. He rolled his eyes in self-disgust and turned around again.
“Lucien.”
“Yes?” The man paused, reaching for the doorknob.
He braced himself. “I kissed her, all right?”
Lucien’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“I didn’t know she was your sister! She refused to tell me her name until after I had already done it.”
The ex-spy held him in a grim stare. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Why the hell do you think? Because you’d find out anyway. And…because I want you to know, it wasn’t her fault. It was all my doing.”
He waited for a charge, a punch, possibly a bullet.
“Your fault?” Lucien echoed, sizing him up.
“Entirely.”
Both men knew it was a lie, the best kind—a chivalrous one.
“Well, I should say,” Lucien sputtered, “you’re damned right it was your fault!”
“That’s right, and I apologize.” Blade regarded him with a stare as deliberately obtuse as that of an ox.
Lucien studied him for a long moment in his piercing way. “Do not attempt to see her again, Rackford—at least, not until you are prepared to return to the life you left. She is the daughter of a duke.”
“I have no intention of it,” he answered coldly, “and the name is Blade.”
“As you prefer. If that is all, I will bid you good night.”
Blade tossed him an insolent nod.
“One more thing,” Lucien added, pausing in the doorway. “I was sorry to hear about your brother.”
Blade just looked at him. The man knew too damned much about everyone and everything.
With a cordial nod, Lucien went back inside and shut the door firmly behind him. Blade heard a series of locks sharply sliding home as he walked away, and he took insult even though he knew none was intended. He looked over his shoulder in scorn. Don’t worry, Lord Lucien. If I wanted to break into your house, I could do it in a trice.
Bloody aristocrats. His mood gone foul, he jumped up onto the driver’s bench and sat with Jimmy for the ride back to the rookery. He didn’t need to be driven around Town like a bloody prince.
As the coach wove through the dark, deserted streets, he looked down broodingly at his rough, callused hands resting loosely on his lap. They shook with anger and shame at the reminder of just how far he had fallen in life and with the cold, slightly nauseating uneasiness of a schoolboy who has just pinned the wings of a butterfly that he had thoughtlessly netted in a sunny meadow.
The last thing he had wanted was to hurt her.
Waiting for her brother in the darkened front parlor, Jacinda paced in restless agitation until she heard the front door close as Lucien came in. She rushed to the sofa and quickly sat down, smoothing her skirts. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, braced for battle. The diplomatic Lucien was her most broad-minded, lenient brother, but—still. This time she knew she was in for it.
He strode in a moment later and propped his fists on his waist, shaking his head at her. “You are in the suds, my girl.”
She clenched her jaw and looked away.
“Are you completely mad?”
“I have my reasons.”
“We will be most interested to hear them all, I assure you. Is there anything you wish to say for yourself before I take you over to Knight House to speak with the others?”
She groaned at the thought of a full-fledged family meeting. “Lucien, please—”
“I am not covering for you on this,” he said flatly. “It was a blasted foolish thing to do. I don’t know what possessed a cutthroat like Blade to show mercy, but thank God he did.”
She snorted and folded her arms across her chest.
Lucien sauntered closer. “Did he harm you, insult you in any way?”
“His arrogance is most insulting, yes.”
“You know what I mean,” he chided. “He admitted kissing you. If he did any more than that, one of us is going to have call him out.”
The blood drained from her face as she looked swiftly at him. “No! Good God, do not speak of dueling! He didn’t do anything like that. Lucien, it was my fault!”
“Your fault?”
“Entirely.” She gave an earnest nod as her cheeks turned red. “I rather…fancied him at first.”
He lifted his eyebrow.
“Well, I hate him now, of course. I meant to go to France, and that insolent peasant brute had to interfere!”
Lucien stroked his chin with a bemused expression.
“What did he want as his reward for bringing me back?” she asked in wary cynicism.
“Nothing. Perhaps your kiss was payment enough,” he added with a sardonic shrug.
“Are you going to tell Robert and the others that I kissed him? Please, don’t, Lucien, I beg you. This has all been humiliating enough.”
He considered for a moment, then gave a philosophical sigh. “You appear unharmed by your adventure, and God knows you’re already in hot-enough water without adding that bit of fuel to the fire. Besides, it wouldn’t do to have Damien or Alec rushing off to put a bullet in him. The blackguard has his uses.”
“Who is he, really?” She asked, leaning toward her brother confidentially.
“Why,” Lucien said with an opaque smile, “the leader of the Fire Hawks, of course. Come along, my dear. It is time to pay the piper.”
Eddie the Knuckler kept the hours of an alley cat. When most children his age were still safely tucked in their beds and d
reaming, he was ambling along through the predawn darkness toward Covent Garden Market to see what he could get from the vendors who would soon be setting up their stalls for the day’s business. The highborn rakes who came staggering out of the whorehouses off the piazza early each morning, sick with too much drink from the night before also made excellent targets for a lad ambitious to pinch a fine silk handkerchief or a gold watch.
As Eddie approached the junction of two narrow city streets not far from St. Giles’s Church, his thoughts turning industriously upon the coming morning’s adventures, he was suddenly seized by the shoulder and felt a large hand clamp down over his mouth, so big it nearly wrapped from ear to ear. He was yanked around the corner like a rag doll, where somebody slammed his back against the brick wall of the alley.
“Got him, O’Dell! Here’s the little whoreson.”
Looking up in terror, scarcely able to breathe past the giant hand over his mouth, Eddie found himself surrounded by several top members of the Jackals’ gang. These were the men, he realized, who had done unspeakable things to Mary Murphy, who was only a few years older than he.
Tyburn Tim was the one holding him, but Bloody Fred was there, fresh out of Bedlam and looking half rabid; Flash, striking a dandyish pose against the wall; and Baumer, who had a laugh like an earthquake and loomed half as big as a house. Eddie’s heart hammered against his ribs as the Jackals parted to admit their leader, the wiry, brown-haired Cullen O’Dell.
O’Dell prowled out of the deeper shadows of the alley past his henchmen. An ordinary child would have screamed outright, but hardy young Eddie managed to restrain himself to a large gulp when he saw what had become of O’Dell’s face.
The leader of the Jackals had long acted like a monster; now he looked like one, as well. The left side of O’Dell’s face looked normal, but the right was a swollen, shapeless, purple mass. His right eyelid was a horrifying bulge like a big, quivery blob of grape jam. A series of welts in a diagonal line bruised his cheek. Eddie thought the bruises resembled chain links.
“Well, if it isn’t Blade’s little mascot.” As O’Dell bent down slowly to Eddie’s height, his good eye, crazed and blue, swept the boy’s face with feverish intensity. “Top o’ the mornin’, little man. You’re not gonna scream like a girl, are you?”