by Darcy Burke
The Hoydens
The Danger in Daring a Lady
The Importance of Being a Scoundrel
The Hazards of Loving a Rogue
Acknowledgments
I wouldn’t have come up with the idea for Seduction without Lupe and Beth. One day we were single girls taking the town and the next day we were…so, so not. Now I know what it looks like when your life upends for the better. I wish you both many happy Mother’s Days and refrigerator doors covered in crayon hearts!
Special thanks to a couple who really took one for the team: Kimberly and Paul. Without your adorable kid, Oliver would still be a figment of my imagination. Thanks for getting around to the business of procreating, and then letting me babysit once in a while.
More baby help came from the lovely Leigh LaValle, who beta read Seduction between moments cuddling her new son. Martha Trachtenberg went the extra mile in her copy edits to give mom feedback (in addition to finding my many mistakes). And a surprise contribution came from my boyfriend, who has been wrapped around his nephew’s little thumb since day one. I’ve never seen anything as charming as Chris with a baby.
My amazing critique partners and fellow romance authors Darcy Burke, Erica Ridley and Janice Goodfellow keep me going every day. I can’t express enough appreciation for the distracting emails, soul-crushing critiques, forward-thinking business planning and enduring friendship you provide. You’re my best friends and my muse, rolled into one. Like a delicious jelly donut of inspiration.
Courtney Milan helped plotstorm the ending of Seduction and kept me company while I wrote it. And, as always, Máire Claremont cheered me on every step of the way. Go, THE DARK LADY, go! (Seriously, go buy this book now.)
I would still be mulling the idea of writing this book without my Plot Sisters Dona Sarkar, Kelli Estes and Lillian Fogg. When I tried to explain to them after The Trouble with Being Wicked why I couldn’t write Elizabeth’s story, they overpowered my excuses and made me do it anyway. I loved every minute of writing this book. I hope you enjoy reading it!
Morgan Sneed, my trusty beta reader, has decided to take my excellent advice and write a book of her own. You’re welcome, World.
Lastly, I adore my cover designer Carrie Divine at Seductive Designs. You are divine, darling. I can’t wait to make three more beautiful covers with you.
About the Author
Emma Locke is a writer and engineer living in the Pacific Northwest, where she loves hiking with her dog, hot yoga and every one of the annual 330 days of rain. Hiking and yoga give her time to plot, the lack of sun makes for perfect writing weather, and as for her day job, the dichotomy seems to work: her analytic side ensures her passionate, satisfying love stories don’t mulch under her bed, and her author side forces her to keep writing more.
You can Like Emma on Facebook at Facebook.com/AuthorEmmaLocke, follow her on Twitter @EmmaLockeAuthor or check out her books and appearances at www.emmalocke.com
A Dangerous Invitation
The Rookery Rogues
Book 1
ERICA MONROE
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
A DANGEROUS INVITATION
Copyright © 2013 by Erica McFarland
Excerpt from Secrets in Scarlet copyright 2013 by Erica McFarland
Cover design by Amber Shah from Book Beautiful
Cover photo by Jenn LeBlanc at Studio Smexy
Quillfire Publishing
All rights reserved. The author has provided this book for personal use only. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-0-990-02290-9
For information, address Erica Monroe at http://www.ericamonroe.com .
Dedication
For my husband, Kevin, who still tells me I’m beautiful in yoga pants and glasses.
Thanks for putting up with me always. I love you.
A DANGEROUS INVITATION
Torn from her life of privilege by her father’s death, Kate Morgan relies on her knowledge of fine things as a fence for stolen goods in one of London’s dark and depraved rookeries. The last man she ever expects, or wants, to see again is Daniel O’Reilly, the man who promised to love, honor and protect her, but who instead fled amidst accusations of murder.
One drunken night cost Daniel O’Reilly the woman he loved and the life he’d worked so hard to create. If he ever wants to reclaim that life—and Kate—he’ll not only have to prove he’s innocent of murder, but convince the pistol-wielding beauty to forgive his many sins.
With a killer on the loose, time is running out for them…
Chapter One
London, 1832
Kate Morgan’s neck prickled with awareness. Someone was following her.
It was not an unusual occurrence. As a fence for stolen goods living east of the City in tenement housing with more thieves than honest men, Kate had grown accustomed to being followed. They approached slowly, until she crossed the alley that divided Upper Shadwell from Broad Street, where the light from the lamps grew dim.
There they met her, thinking the darkness would give them sufficient cover to filch her valuables. That was their grave mistake.
She had nothing of value left.
Her pace was steady as she neared the alley, but her hand clenched around the worn wood handle of a Forsyth flintlock pistol. She breathed in deep, instantly regretting it when the sick smells of excrement and bodily fluids assaulted her senses.
She glanced over her shoulder discreetly and saw the tall, muscular frame of a man with a hat pulled down low on his brow. Without a lantern, she could not distinguish his exact features. She moved her finger to the trigger. The pistol was fully cocked and loaded.
His footsteps echoed in the alley. He made no pains to keep his presence unknown. When he was several yards away, Kate spun on her heel, lifting the gun upwards. She took a step back to lead him into the lamp glow that shone bright in a nearby window. If he would attack her, he must do it face to face, so that she could describe him to the Metropolitan Police. The Peelers had at least one use: there were more of them around than there had been of the old Watch.
No man would make a victim of her again.
She leveled the gun at the stranger’s chest. “I don’t want to shoot you.” Her voice was calm, even confident. In the past two and a half years, she’d learned to lie, to steal, and to brazen through the worst of situations. She’d had no other choice.
One more step forward, and she could see him clearly in the light.
The man stood his ground. Fear tightened her throat and she forced it down, until it was only a burning sensation in her stomach. Like every other useless emotion, fear was meant to be mastered.
He stood in front of the window, his damnably handsome features on display for her. Doffing his hat, he carded a hand through his short ginger hair, a gesture as familiar to her as the soothing weight of her pistol. His wide forehead was creased with worry, strong jaw set with determination. His straight nose led down to lips reddened from the cold.
“Kate.” His voice sent a shiver up her spine. A hint of a brogue, mottled with thicker country English, like he’d been raised by Irish immigrants.
It could not be Daniel.
He had fled London three years ago. Surely, he’d not be foolish enough to return. One hint of his whereabouts and the Peelers would be out for his blood.
“I won’t hold you accountable if you shot me.” His gaze never left her gun, green eyes wide.
Her heart pounded in her ears, every part of her body awakened by his presence. She didn’t meet his eyes, instead letting her gaze travel down from his face to his broad shoulders and narrow waist. He was lanky and well-built like a bar brawler, with powerful hands that had once brought
forth the most salacious of moans from her lips.
Powerful hands that an eyewitness claimed had been used to slit a man’s throat with such force that it ripped out his esophagus and severed his windpipe. Those hands were currently raised, unarmed, in supplication. But Kate knew better: a man could secret away many weapons on his body.
With Daniel, his greatest weapon had always been the destruction he wreaked upon her carefully ordered existence.
“Put down your barking iron, love. I’m not going to hurt you. I only want to talk.” He placed his hat back on his head.
She narrowed her eyes. “There is nothing you could do to me that you haven’t already done.” Her hold on the gun shook and she quickly steadied it.
“While shooting me might be justifiable, it’d make a hellish mess…” A small smile creased his lips, an attempt at a joke she didn’t appreciate.
Kate lowered the gun but left it cocked. Stubbornly, she held on to that last defense. She tried to make herself believe she would fire on him—if the need arose.
She should be furious. Enough to want to shoot him, for if anyone in England deserved shooting it was Daniel O’Reilly. She should want to do anything but fling herself in his arms, crush up against his chest, and press her lips to his to see if they still fit so wondrously against hers.
This, like everything else, was a situation that could be met with order and rationality.
Kate tapped the butt of the pistol against her leg. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m proving to you that I didn’t kill Tommy Dalton.”
So simple, so direct, she almost believed him. As if the years were nothing and losing him hadn’t torn her carefully arranged world apart. But things had changed, and she couldn’t stand across him from as the besotted girl she’d been, desperate for his love and willing to do anything for him.
“Three years I’ve waited for you to bloody come back,” she hissed. “I thought you’d died, Daniel. For so many nights, I imagined you lying in a ditch off Brighton Road, with nobody to identify your body. I can’t come back from that.”
“I’m sorry. I thought if I left—” He stopped. Bit his lip, like he’d done whenever he wasn’t certain of something.
He damn well better not be sure of what they were to each other. She’d gone through too much to get him out of her head, too much to let him back in only to hurt her again.
Her eyes narrowed. “You should have stayed if you were innocent.”
“I know.”
Was that guilt in his tone? He tugged on his hat brim, pulling it lower over his eyes until it was a mourning shroud. Did he grieve the time lost, the life he could have had with her if he hadn’t been so foxed? Maybe he would have remembered more about the murder and proven to the police he wasn’t guilty.
No, he couldn’t regret the past. Because a repentant man—a caring man—would have reached out to her again.
She sunk back into anger, her voice rising with each question. “If you knew you were wrong to leave, why didn’t you come back? How am I supposed to believe in your innocence when you escape transport to Newgate? When you don’t write?”
He held a hand up to stop her. “Please, quiet your voice.”
“Why should I? Because this isn’t good and proper for you?” She spat the words out, refusing to lessen her volume. “Because someone might find you? God forbid, you finally face the Met’s officers.”
“Do you truly believe I could have slit that man’s throat?” His voice broke.
No. The local constable had an eyewitness to the murder. But here she stood across from Daniel, and part of her wanted to fall back against him and never be alone again. Even if being with him meant she’d lose everything she’d worked for—a life where she answered to no one.
His eyes never left her face, as if memorizing the contours. She fought the urge to cover her face with her hand. In the lamplight, every imperfection was on display. Time had not been kind to her. When he fled, she’d been on the cusp of the lowest levels of the ton, almost accepted but not quite. She had worn tailored silk, not a secondhand dress from the rag shops in Field Lane, originally made for a woman on a better diet than scraps.
Kate didn’t know who she hated most: the spoiled woman she had been then, the harridan she currently was, or Daniel.
She stepped back from him. “It doesn’t matter what I believe.”
“It matters to me,” he pleaded.
“You know, the Peelers interviewed me after you fled.” She ran her finger along the handle of her gun, tracing the inlaid roses. The pattern was familiar, but a comfortable familiar, one that did not fling her headfirst into a strange abyss like his presence. “They dredged up every bit of our past, told me all about finding you with that warehouse laborer’s corpse, and all I could think about was how we were supposed to be married. We were supposed to be happy.”
Happiness was illusive. It didn’t come to ruined women like her.
“I never lied to you. I’ve done many wretched things, but I never once lied to you.” His voice dipped lower, gentle and intimate, a caress to the tired parts of her soul that had ached to hear such confessions.
“What do you call telling me that you’d protect me? That we’d always be together? All you did was lie.” She flung each accusation at him with the same accuracy she shot her gun, knowing what weaknesses would hurt him most.
She hated every damn thing about him because he made her believe things that weren’t true. There was no haven in loving him. Devil take it, when laws defined women as property, there was no safe man.
She stepped back. On the edge of Upper Shadwell, a carriage clopped by, for at this late hour London didn’t sleep. Prostitutes lingered at the street corners, powder and rogue over skin stretched tight.
Daniel followed her out onto the street. He lingered too close. She wondered vaguely if he’d smell like bergamot and cloves, the scent that haunted her dreams. He’d obliterate the odor of rotting refuse of the rookeries, and make her believe she could go back into the past.
That woman didn’t exist any longer.
Kate retreated quickly, so fast that she didn’t notice the drunken sailor leaning against the doorway until she’d already backed into him. A hand brushed against her bottom, thankfully protected by her thick skirts. She tore away and turned to face the offender. His eyes were red-rimmed and a knife hung limply between his fingers, forgotten over the pursuit of her rump.
“’Ello, Merry bird, ye got somethin’ for me? Look at ’er, Jay, ’ave ye ever seen a better dimber mort?” The sailor gestured to a man hidden in the shadows of the doorway, his face clouded and barely visible in the darkness. “I tell ye, Jay, when we get ’em Things down by the Fortune—” The sailor’s knife twitched between his fingers.
Kate took another step back. The Fortune of War public house was a known haunt for grave robbers. Her fingers clenched around the handle of her fully cocked pistol. She could defend herself if it came to that.
The man in the shadows snapped something under his breath, and the sailor’s expression changed. Paleness swept over his yellow skin, his lower lip quivering. She felt the tension rise between them, thick and choking. A fight brewed.
She wanted to leave, but she wouldn’t turn her back on Daniel. Before she could form a plan of attack, Daniel grabbed hold of her arm and tugged. He kept moving until they had rounded one corner and then another, reluctantly releasing her when they entered a more populated area. In the distance, a low-pitched scream echoed from where they had been. It died off in the distance.
Another one killed, and no one to mourn him.
She doubted the sailor’s death would make the papers. He’d slip through the cracks like so many others. The warehouse laborer Tommy Dalton had only warranted a few broadsheets because of the gruesomeness of his murder and the connection to her father’s old company, Emporia Shipping.
Daniel had pulled her onto another part of Upper Shadwell. The road buzzed with activity,
from the influx of patrons who wandered in and out of the dram houses to the dockworkers on the prowl for a cheap whore. Their noise filled her ears, snippets of various conversations clouding her thoughts.
“It kills me to see you here,” Daniel murmured.
A lover’s tone, softer and warmer than she wanted. “If it hurts you so bad, leave again. This is where I live now.”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I couldn’t have known Emporia would go bankrupt. I thought your father’s company was insoluble, as did the rest of the shipping industry. You’ve got to believe me, Katiebelle.”
“Don’t call me that. You’ve got no right to call me that.” Her throat clenched at her father’s nickname for her, a sting of grief that had lessened but not dissipated in two and a half years.
“Once you liked it when I did.”
“Once I liked a lot of things you did.” She stepped out into the street, under the beam of the street lamp.
But now I don’t. If she told herself that enough times, she might start to believe it.
Daniel remained in the shadows, unwilling to risk the exposure offered by the lamp. He would always be in the dark: an accused murderer too scared to atone for past mistakes. He’d drag her down with him. She couldn’t risk tying herself to him, and the Peelers investigating her criminal activities.
She took one last look at him. He smiled at her, accepting her perusal as a sign of good will and not the goodbye it truly was.
When patrons came out of the nearby Three Boars public house, Kate took advantage of their exit, slipping in unnoticed by Daniel. From her vantage point at the door, she saw him turn slowly, first to the left and then the right. Eventually, he might follow her, but by the time he did she would be tucked away at a table far in the back.