Tempted by His Touch: A Limited Edition Boxed Set of Dukes, Rogues, & Alpha Heroes Historical Romance Novels

by Darcy Burke

  He needed Morgan’s journal if he wanted a solid case. Atlas could decode it with little difficulty. He could get Atlas to steal the ledger. Kate had made her choice—she protected her father’s memory over him. Shouldn’t he choose his own sanity as well?

  But he couldn’t.

  For no matter how she had hurt him, she was still his Kate. So he stared at a dingy wall in a rundown flat in Ratcliffe. He drummed his fingers against the desk in time to the drubbing of his head because he didn’t know how to continue on without her or his freedom.

  On the foolscap before him, he had scrawled “I will return home soon.” There was nothing left for him in London, nothing but his pathetic visions of justice for a man he had only met twice before finding him dying in that damn alley. This was a crusade for another dead man, where he was as trapped in the past as Kate.

  But if he didn’t clear his name, he returned a failure, the exact same man he’d been before he left. Only now he could not console himself with an illusion. Kate had not married into a perfect life. She haunted the rookeries like she haunted his dreams.

  Crumbling the parchment in his hands, he threw the balled up paper against the wall. He’d been a stalwart shipping assistant with a taste for drink, an alcohol-abusing blackguard, and a sober man with no reason to continue. Out of the three, he’d choose the one that allowed him to function. He would be careful this time. Watch his intake; only use it to cease the dreams. Then when he’d cleared his name, he’d come off of it again and he’d be better.

  ***

  “Pretty ring,” Jane said, as Kate passed her a steaming mug of coffee. “The boys brought it to you, I presume.”

  Kate took a seat on the edge of her bed. Her pinky finger curled delicately around the edge of her mug; some habits died hard no matter how long she lived in Ratcliffe. She brought the mug up, swishing the hot liquid around in her mouth. The coffee was bitter and in desperate need of sugar, yet that would have exceeded her monthly budget. She swallowed it down, grateful for the heat that swum in her stomach and the excuse it gave her to not speak.

  “Kate.” Jane tapped the gold ring on her friend’s finger twice, her tiny index finger the width of the heart. “Did you think I wouldn’t recall?”

  “I hoped you wouldn’t.” Kate nibbled at her lower lip, setting the mug down on the table.

  Jane smiled ruefully. “I can tell you the favored drink of every single member of Chapman Street, and I don’t even like the majority of them. I should hope I could remember the ring that your betrothed gave you. It meant something to you.”

  “Once it did.” Wincing, Kate flipped the ring around so that only the gold band showed. Out of sight, out of mind—or so she’d thought. But the bloody ring had called to her from inside the secret compartment in her flat. Wear me, it said, wear me and remember all you gave up because you made the wrong choice.

  “He’ll come back. He loves you. I could see it in his eyes.” From any other woman, such a proclamation would have sounded maudlin, but with Jane it became certain fact.

  Kate exhaled a shaky breath. “He’d be a fool to want me now.”

  “Those in love generally are.” Jane shrugged.

  “My father—my father did those horrible things, Jane, and I stood like a bloody addle-pate rambling on about how virtuous he was.” Kate’s thumb pressed against the engraving on the ring, tracing the contours of the heart. My heart will always be yours, Daniel had said when he gave it to her.

  She didn’t deserve his heart. She didn’t deserve any damn part of him. All this time she had been the unseeing daughter of a man who sold corpses to be chopped up like slabs of cattle. How could she have never noticed this? Papa had been away at night often, but she had considered that part of his job. He had functions to attend, investors to speak with about new opportunities. She had never cared, especially in the last year when his absence had made it easier to sneak Daniel in and out of the townhouse.

  “You’re loyal. Why do you think I like you so?” Jane tilted her head thoughtfully. “Loyalty is a rare quality here. People come and go. Alliances are forged with no more reasoning than ‘he’s got the bigger knife, so I shall support him.’ But not with you, Kate. You choose because your heart tells you to believe in someone.”

  “Every single time I’ve been wrong.” Kate sighed. “Papa, Owen…I should have believed in Daniel more. Should have written letters to him in Dorking.”

  “And I should have prevented Penn from going on the job that got him collared.” Jane squeezed her hand. “Life is full of regrets, dear. You decide what to keep and what to toss into the rubbish.”

  “How can I possibly accept the idea of my father as a…resurrection man?” She hissed the last words out, the term as dirty to her as the cemeteries they dug into. She couldn’t picture Papa with a spade in his hand, bent over a grave and plundering the soil.

  “Sin is sin,” Jane said. “Pithy, perhaps, but I don’t know a single soul who has not committed some despicable wrongdoing. Penn is not an honorable man, yet I love him because he’s family and I don’t know how to do anything else.”

  “I won’t forgive Papa.” Stubbornly, she clung to that, as if she could punish him for what he’d done.

  “That’s the choice you make then,” Jane frowned, concern creasing her brows. “But I hope for your sake you learn to come to peace with it.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Daniel lingered outside the dram shop. “Dram hole in the wall” was a better term, for it took up no more width than that of the door. One unmarked, heavy door in the middle of Wapping, known only to those who sought the strongest of spirits sold within. Every gin distillery of London was represented inside, from the bootlegger’s poison that would leave one blacked out for days, to the well-known manufacturers. Bottles were sold, or single shots for those with less blunt but who needed a hit to get by.

  Today, he would rejoin those ranks. Kate would never want him back, but he could pretend that it didn’t matter.

  His first stop had been to the Prospect of Whitby. He’d had a mind to reunite with his old drinking friends, if they were still there. Yet that was a place too visible and frequented by the Bobbies. The threat of discovery loomed as long as he was in London. He’d lingered at the door and then left.

  It was better this way. His return to vice would be less public. The little bit of pride he possessed wanted to hide his failure, to be alone when he got so rousing drunk that the world became nothing but mottled images.

  He doubted the proprietor would recognize him, but he remembered this place well. On the route from Emporia’s old warehouses to his prior tenement, he’d visited weekly; sometimes two or three times a week if the shipments had not come in on time and Morgan was in a rage.

  The gin staunched the pain, every time. Until it was gone and reality crashed down upon him with the weight of all his inferiorities.

  He’d been lied to by Morgan, by Kate. Yet the worst lie of them all was the one he told himself: he didn’t need the crank. He could get by without it, even as his head swam anytime he smelled it. Even as he was surrounded by it in the public houses he’d visited with Kate.

  He did want it, and he needed it.

  He needed it like he needed Kate to keep him sane.

  His hand wrapped around the tarnished doorknob. No gloves today. No more pretending to be a gentleman. The metal was cool under his fingers, a reminder that he was unfortunately alive.

  He turned the knob and pulled the door open. The cylindrical shop was lit by three oil lanterns, strategically positioned around a counter that stretched the full length. The counter had a glass front, displaying at least one hundred different bottles of gin. There were no shelves; thus the bottles were crammed behind one another and set on top of each other hectically. The ceiling hung so low that Daniel had to stoop once he entered.

  Behind the counter, a skeletal man stood, shoulders hunched and elbows perched on the glass. Stringy gray hair streamed from underneath hi
s floppy, crushed top hat. He peered down his hook nose at Daniel through wire-rimmed glasses.

  “O’Reilly,” he said, his thick Irish tones containing no surprise at Daniel’s return. No one escaped the lure of gin.

  “Mathias.” Daniel nodded crisply. He dropped a brass watch-fob on the countertop. It had arrived on his doorstep the other day, brought by one of the grubby children Atlas kept in his employ to run errands. He’d meant to pawn it to buy Kate something special.

  “Been long time, lad.” Mathias palmed the fob, deposited it swiftly into the scrap of cheesecloth he used as an apron.

  “Took off to Sussex. Now I’ve returned.”

  “What say ye? My Lady’s Eye Water?” Mathias ran his index finger over the bottles, snickering as he stopped on a dark amber tub. “Or Cuckold’s Comfort? That suits, cub.”

  Daniel stiffened. The dram owner most likely used that insult on everyone. It stung nonetheless, a pinprick to the exposed sore of Kate’s betrayal.

  “Lady’s Delight. Can you use the fob or shall I take it elsewhere?” He stuffed his hands into his pockets, pulling his greatcoat tighter around him.

  “Aye, still a classic man.” Mathias’s beady eyes flicked from Daniel to the door and back. “Ye’ve got a ladybird fence. Don’t ye know what’ll ’appen to me if I go a-stealin’ ’er payday?”

  Damnation. Was there a soul in Christendom that didn’t know he’d been back with Kate? He needn’t worry about smashing his brains out on gin, if the Peelers would soon be at Madame Tousat’s.

  Daniel blinked. One wretched problem at a time. First the gin, then a plan to leave town. Dubious statement of criminal loyalty aside, he sincerely doubted Mathias would refuse to serve him. “You ought to demand a refund from whatever snitch you paid, as he’s fed you nothing but deceptions. I’ve barely been back in town long enough to see the Gentleman Thief. How’d I get a fence too?”

  “As if I be a-needin’ a snitch to be doin’ my business. Insultin’ me ’onor.” The receiver’s sharp nostrils flared.

  “And you apparently don’t need blunt either, since you won’t take the fob. It’s worth three times a bottle of Lady’s Delight. Hand it back and I’ll take it to someone with the balls to move it.”

  Mathias’s lips curled back, bearing his teeth. Daniel half-expected him to lunge forward and sink those yellowed, decayed canines into the flesh of his neck.

  Perhaps today was the day he finally died from poking a bear with a flaming baton.

  “’Ere’s a-warnin’, O’Reilly. I’ll take yer paltry an’ a-give ye some ruin, but if ye come back again—”

  “Come now. Do you think the Gentleman Thief would like it if you threatened me?” Daniel leaned back on one foot, hands shoved into his pockets, a picture of nonchalance. “Lest you forget, the constable thinks I murdered a man. Care to see if I’m innocent?”

  The dram shop owner’s teeth gnashed. “Ye’s a spoiled sop, bloody Irish. I liked ye better when yer ’ands were a-shakin.’”

  “Just give me the crank.”

  Mathias knelt. His crushed hat bobbed in the window glass as he poked at the various bottles with long, bony fingers.

  Daniel waited with bated breath. He didn’t have more than the fob on him to pay. If Mathias demanded more he’d be royally tupped. The dram shop owner had already put it in his apron. He’d be hard pressed to get it back from him—the counter Mathias stood behind stretched the width of the room, with singular access to the inside through a padlocked section in the gate.

  Mathias stood back up, a sick little smile twisting his thin lips. “This what yer lookin’ for?” He held the dingy bottle up in two fingers, precariously balanced. In a second, the gin might tip to the counter and splash out.

  Daniel’s throat tightened. He managed to nod. His gaze never wavered from the bottle.

  Readjusting the bottle so that his right hand clenched it, Mathias tapped a finger against the wart on his cleft chin. Daniel’s hands gripped the counter, as hard as he wanted to wrest the bottle from Mathias’s spidery fingers.

  “Fob’ll do.” Mathias set the gin on the counter.

  Releasing his held breath, Daniel snatched the bottle up.

  Mathias’s leathery voice reached him as he left the shop. “Welcome back, O’Reilly.”

  ***

  “Miss, I didn’t think I’d see ye ’ere again.” Sally Fletcher perched on a straw mat, her back to the wall.

  I hadn’t thought to come back. Hadn’t wanted to, for being in the bordello reminded her of the girl Mei that she’d left in that hellhole. Reminded her of telling Daniel her secret and falling asleep in his arms.

  Rigidly, Kate leaned against the door-frame. “Here,” she said, thrusting a sack toward Sally. “I brought you these things.”

  Sally smiled impishly, her pale cheeks flushed with joy. “My thanks, miss.” She tipped the sack over next to her. A loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese spilled out.

  “Please, call me Kate.” She didn’t deserve a title of respect, not after what she’d done.

  Sally spread out across her lap an amber dress with a full skirt and lace across the bodice. “This—this ’ere’s quality. Ye certain ye want me to ’ave it?”

  Kate nodded.

  Tilting her head to the side, Sally fixed Kate with a quizzical look. “Why ye bein’ so nice to me?”

  “Because I believe you should have niceness.” Kate dropped down on the mattress next to her, sighing. While Sally’s feet tucked nicely underneath her, Kate felt like an Amazon in the cramped room.

  Sally blinked, unconvinced. She fell upon the bread, devouring hunks at a time and barely pausing to chew. In a minute, the bread was gone and she’d latched onto the wheel of cheese.

  Kate’s voice softened. “I do think that you warrant better treatment, Sally. No one should be treated as an object.”

  “’Tis not so bad. Got me a bed and the rain don’t come through the ceilin’. If I were a flower girl, I’d not be sayin’ that, now would I?” Sally shrugged. The horsehair pad stuffed into the puffy caps of her dress showed through a rip on her right sleeve. The hair was rough and matted, speckled with dirt.

  “That is certainly one way to look at it,” Kate mused.

  “Pardon, for ye’ve been awfully kind, but why are ye ’ere, miss? We don’t get charity. Not ’ere on Jacob’s.”

  Kate opened her mouth, and then promptly shut it. She swallowed. No other convenient reason came to mind. For the first time since her father had passed, she’d choose the truth, ripping apart her old wounds and bleeding red. “I had a plan once. A plan inside a plan, and then another inside of that, to cover for all contingencies. Work with the putter-uppers and thieves, fence their goods, stay alive. It was a sound plan.”

  “Then ye met Mr. O’Reilly,” Sally said, with the all-knowing air of one far older.

  “Met him again, if one can say that when we’ve both changed.” Kate’s sad smile didn’t reach her eyes. “We are nothing now, and all I’ve got is this blasted journal of my father’s.” Kate pulled out the notebook from her petticoat pocket, handing it to Sally. The decoded foolscap stuck out of the bindings.

  Sally flipped through the ledger, her brows furrowed. She lingered on one page too long, turning another over so quickly there was no way she could have seen the contents. She didn’t bother with the foolscap pages. A few minutes later, she pushed the journal back to Kate without comment.

  “You can’t read,” Kate observed.

  Spine stiffened, Sally drew herself up to her full petite height. “’Tis not a skill needed ’ere.”

  “No, I suppose it’s not. It’s not a failure on your part, Sally. One can’t be expected to know things unless you are taught them.” Kate’s fondest memories of her childhood involved curling up in the over-sized leather armchair in her father’s office, reading a book from Ackermann’s Repository while he worked. He’d scribble away in a journal like the one on her lap now.

  How could father, who had t
aught her to read when the governess insisted she was far too young to comprehend, be the same person who assisted in the robbing of graves? How could Papa allow the only man she’d ever loved to be accused of murder?

  Kate pocketed the leather book. She felt suddenly lighter once it was away, as if by keeping her father’s words hidden away she could somehow make them not exist.

  I’m going to do the right thing. She heard Daniel’s voice, the catch in his throat.

  In one breath, Kate explained to Sally the death of her father, Emporia’s closing, and the contents of the journal. Sally kept silent, her expression blank. Her gaze remained fastened on Kate, yet her ocean blue eyes showed no indication of recognition. She seemed to have retreated somewhere inside herself. Her toes curled around the side of the mattress.

  Maybe she had erred in telling this to Sally. But the girl had loved Dalton. She deserved to know why he had died.

  Finally, Sally spoke. “Ye say yer father was in league with Finn?”

  “So it appears.” Kate scrubbed at her face, pinching the bridge of her nose.

  Sally followed her hands, worry lines writ into her forehead. She drew back from Kate, tentatively tracing her own brow to mirror. “Yer head—who struck ye?”

  “An errant block of wood. There was an explosion and I was in the middle of it.” Kate touched two fingers to the scratch gingerly, wincing when soreness flowed through her. The cut had not healed yet.

  Sally grabbed for the dress, clutching it to her chest. Her fingers dug into the fine muslin, creasing it. Eyes wide, mouth half-open, she seemed small and helpless. She could not have been more than nineteen, a victim of circumstances who knew no better life.

  “Miss, a bomb’s more than I care to be riskin’.” She pushed herself up from the mattress.

  “I am here under an assumed name, and I paid the fee as anyone else would. I held to the schedule of Wilkes’s appearances and came when he wasn’t present. You’re not in any danger..” Kate forced false certainty into her voice.