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

by Darcy Burke

  Her saucy wink had him hard, ready to push up her skirts and take her on the bed again. He gulped.

  “I wouldn’t feel right giving orders to a servant now.” She shrugged. “Not when I’ve been lesser in class than they are.”

  “So you’re content with your station? Your life?” He eyed her skeptically.

  She laughed, wrapping her hand around his. “Do I enjoy being bloody poor? Of course not. But this—fencing, going out on my own, being something more than a prim society maiden—I wouldn’t exchange for anything. You’ll have to pry the flintlock from my cold, dead hands.”

  He winced.

  “I quiz you, Daniel.” Kate squeezed his hand. “Although I will say my loyalty to my flintlock might be fading. When Finn cornered me, I tried to shoot the bastard but the Forsyth backfired.”

  “Bloody bastard.”

  “More like bloody Forsyth. The powder may have been bad. I didn’t think to check it this morning. But the nerve of that gun!” Her nose wrinkled in annoyance, lips pulled down in a grimace.

  “I love that it’s not the fact that you needed to shoot Finn, but that the gun failed that is troubling you.” He hid behind sarcasm, for the reality of their predicament was far more troublesome.

  Daniel ran his thumb along the juncture between her index finger and thumb, mindlessly stroking her skin. They should get up and seek shelter somewhere else. The more he moved, the less likely it was that Finn’s men could track him. Kate leaned on him, shoulder against his.

  Where would he go from here? Another tenement house, most likely, in a deeper and more obscure part of the rookeries that wouldn’t be as easy to find. No one had time to care about their neighbors. It took fourteen hour days for a menial laborer to earn enough to pay the rent on a tiny one-room flat with broken windows and walls that let in the cold.

  “We should go. The rain may provide some cover from Finn’s men.” He didn’t pull away from Kate, loathe to separate from her. Lift up the trunk, hail the hackney, and locate a safer place.

  “I know.” She covered her mouth with her hand, yawning.

  He tilted his head toward her, winking. They’d gotten little sleep last night, too caught up in their reunion to stop. She’d had him begging for release at least three times; after a while he started to lose track of anything other than her hands and lips on him.

  She laughed, winking back at him in shared secret. He pulled her close to him.

  “I love you.” He kissed the top of her head.

  “As I love you.” Backing out of his hold, she kissed him.

  Several minutes later, when they emerged breathless, she sat up straighter. Her lips pressed together in resignation. “What are we going to do about Papa?”

  Daniel sighed. “The ledger had the proof in it, then?”

  “Lists and lists of bodies and the amounts received for them. Daniel—” She bit at her bottom lip. “I’m not sure how to equate the man who would strike a business deal with Finn with the man I knew as my father.”

  Her fingers fiddled with the lace trim on her dress. “I believed in him. I defended him when the rest of society blamed him for Emporia’s collapse. If the company was already in the red before his illness, it really was his mismanagement. I’ve been a fool all along.”

  “Don’t think that way,” he cautioned. “You were doing what you thought was right, and holding true to the memory of your father. Your loyalty is to be admired, not thought of as a weakness. I should have given you more time to process this before.”

  She shook her head, her unbound hair flying about her face. “How can you say that? He didn’t care about me enough to set aside funds, and I’ve made excuses for that this entire time.”

  Gently, he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Because I know he loved you. We all have sins we’ve paid for, Kate. Emporia was a huge company. Whatever mistakes Morgan made, I can hope that he made them thinking he was saving you and his workers. He can’t explain what he did now and I choose to believe he was not a monster.”

  “But his dealings with Finn cost you your old life.”

  The empty bottle of gin stood on the table. So many nights wasted when he could have been with Kate. From now on, he vowed, he would live life fully. “I didn’t deserve that life before. If we’d gotten married, you would have been getting half a man.”

  She followed his gaze. “So you’re truly done with it?”

  He would not lie to her. “I’ll always be struggling with the need to drink. It is a disease that if left untreated will fester until the need becomes too much. So I’ll remain vigilant, aware that it might strike me in the quietest moments. But I can manage it now, I think.”

  “And I’ll be here to help.” She leaned forward and laid a kiss against his scruffy cheek.

  “Aye, I shall be unstoppable.” He tweaked her nose.

  Quizzically she tilted her head toward the window. He didn’t see anything of interest outside, other than the droplets of water that pebbled on the glass.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She held up her hand so he would not speak again. He sat in absolute silence, not daring to breathe.

  “I thought I heard something,” she said finally. “But I suppose it was just the rain.”

  Exhaling, he turned back around so that he was opposite the door. The armchair held fast; it had not budged since they had positioned it. No one had tried to seek entrance to the room.

  For now at least, they were safe, forgotten about by Finn’s men in the relentless weather.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Lulled by the sense of relative normalcy, Daniel clung to Kate and what it was like to exist in this state of bliss.

  The night before, they had sent Madame Tousat’s errand boy for fresh gunpowder for Kate’s flintlock. The boy delivered it mid-morning, awaking them from slumber. Daniel set the gunpowder down on the desk and pulled Kate into his arms for a quick embrace. One last kiss, one last touch, and then they’d leave for a new tenement house. The rain had slowed enough that they could finally travel.

  He broke away from her, patting his hands against his breeches to smooth out the wrinkles. They had tarried long enough. Departure could no longer be avoided. He picked up the bottle to chuck it into the rubbish receptacle.

  Then in a blur it all changed. A scratch to the window cut through the noiseless room. The movement happened too quickly for him to react—the glass was already removed. An instant later, a man’s head occupied the space where the window had been.

  The flintlock lay on the table by the bed.

  “The gun!” he shouted at Kate, thoughts stirred to action. She vaulted off the bed, toward the gun.

  He took a step forward to the door, where his truncheon had been leaning up against the closest wall. It was too far away from his current position for him to grab quickly.

  The man shimmied further into the room. Daniel recognized Ezekiel as he rolled once, executing a quick flip that popped him up into a standing position. Chest tightened, heart pounding, Daniel scanned the room for something he could use as a weapon, a sharp implement or a bludgeoning tool. Only the bottle of gin struck him.

  Daniel smashed the bottom of the bottle against the table. The clay broke into jagged pieces. He grasped the base of the bottle, crouched in a fighter’s stance.

  Ezekiel faced him with a malicious leer. The notched blade in his hand was rusted. Panic welled in Daniel’s throat, threatened to seize hold of him and transfix him to this spot.

  He would die in the very room that had begun to feel like home.

  He searched for Kate. She knelt on the ground by the bedside table, unable to see the top of the table without sitting up and alerting attention. She’d made it to the gun. But she was too close to Ezekiel for his comfort.

  As she reached up, her hand smacked the candlestick holder. The metal and wax clunked to the ground. Furiously, she kept patting at the table as Ezekiel twitched. He turned around, no longer focused on Daniel. T
he flintlock fell, landing outside of Kate’s reach.

  “You came for me. She’s nothing to you.” Daniel took a step forward and another, but Ezekiel was too near to her. He thrust out with the knife and Kate threw herself downward, the knife barely missing her ear.

  Ezekiel’s boot connected with her chest in a sickening thud. She coughed, gasping for air. Another kick like that and he’d fracture her ribs.

  God, Kate had been hurt for him again. He hadn’t protected her.

  Daniel bolted forward, so focused on Ezekiel that he didn’t register the second head in the window until the man was already in the room. The other exhumator launched himself at Daniel, blocking his way to Kate.

  He heard Kate groan in agony as Ezekiel’s foot rammed into her rib cage once more, but the second resurrectionist jabbed at his side. Daniel staggered back. Pain throbbed through him, for the man had hit his earlier injuries from the explosion.

  Finn’s man took advantage of his distraction, moving toward Kate and Ezekiel. Forcing the pain down, Daniel ran towards the man.

  He had to get to Kate before the other man did.

  Skidding on the floor, Daniel collided with the brute. The force of the impact threw both men back against the wall. Daniel elbowed the resurrectionist, and he groaned in protest. For a second Daniel thought he’d gotten the upper hand.

  He reeled back to punch him but before he could draw his cork, the Burker’s hand wrapped around the back of his skull. A cloth slammed against his mouth, and suddenly he was sliding downward.

  The last sound he heard was Kate screaming as he slipped out of consciousness.

  ***

  Kate doubled over, her breath wrenched from her body. Sprawled out on the floor behind the bed, Ezekiel leered over the top of her, his short, stocky frame suddenly gigantic. His foot connected again with her midsection, sending searing pain through her body.

  Her rib must have been broken. That pain laced over the ache of her other injuries, a bright, bitter layer.

  She couldn’t stop screaming.

  He leaned down, snatching up the fallen flintlock. “Quiet, bitch.” He hit her with the butt of the gun.

  She didn’t cry again, even as the gun smashed into her cheek. Sputtering, she tasted blood in her mouth from where she’d bitten her own tongue. She saw spots where the wall had been before, flashes dimmed by the blackness that crept over her eyes.

  No, fight it, get Daniel. The resurrection men would kill him; she had to save him. If she could only move…

  “Got what we came for,” Ezekiel said to the other man.

  “Get ’is ’ands, would ye?” The other man called. His voice sounded further away, like he was closer to the door.

  “I finish the whore off first, ye know the rules, Templeton. No witnesses.” Ezekiel stepped near to her. “Besides, I been wantin’ to slit a bitch. Wilkes got to do the last one.”

  She didn’t risk looking up to confirm what she knew she heard: a blade being sharpened. They meant to slit her throat like they’d done to Bartleby, and likely blame Daniel for it too. She huddled on the ground, not even daring to breathe.

  “Finn’ll be ’oppin’ if you make ’im wait.” The man named Templeton tapped his foot impatiently. “’Tis already mad ye botched the last attempt.”

  There was a loud thump, as if Templeton had dropped something heavy.

  Did they have Daniel?

  Footsteps sounded. Templeton was coming to survey Ezekiel’s conquest. “Bitch is almost dead, Zeke. Ye gotta take the bogger to Sepulchre’s. Ye really wanna make ’im wait?”

  “Bloody ’ell.” Ezekiel scoffed. He came toward her but then backed off, instead approaching his cohort. “All right. We can come back for ’er. Where’s she gonna go? She’s so beat up, won’t last long.”

  “Can’t think of why Finn wants ’im alive,” Templeton grumbled. “’Tis a damn waste. ’E learned nothin’ from Bishop’s arrest.”

  “I say, ye sell the corpse and pay the cutter to slice it. Ye don’t bury it.”

  “Bollocks, all of it,” Templeton grunted. “Lift, ye bleeder!”

  From her place on the floor, she couldn’t see their exit, but she heard a sliding motion as though someone was being dragged. They’d done something to Daniel to subdue him. She wanted to scream, to bolt after them. If she screamed, she’d lose all chance of helping Daniel. They’d come back and kill her.

  Kate struggled to get up. Against her chest, her left wrist bent at a nearly impossible angle, the outline of a tall boot imprinted onto her palm.

  Her breaths were shallow, each exhale sending an echo of pain through her. Leaning heavily on her right wrist, she leveraged herself up from the ground, using the bedframe as support.

  When my men get done with him, he’ll be unrecognizable.

  There was no doubt in her mind that Finn would keep his promise. But the men hadn’t killed Daniel outright, which gave her a smidgen of hope. Already, he’d escaped the immediate fate of Dalton and Bartleby. If all they had wanted was Daniel’s death, they wouldn’t have taken him with them.

  Finn feared being tied to May, Bishop, and Williams—feasibly, he intended to set up Daniel for his resurrection crimes as well as Dalton’s murder. Without the attention on him, Finn could return to the resurrection game in peace.

  Kate twisted the blanket in her hands, gingerly scooting across the bed. She had to stand on her own two feet, breathe through the pain.

  Any chance Daniel had of survival depended on her.

  A sob escaped, followed soon by another. Her father had brought them into this mess, and Daniel’s life would be paid as penalty. A torrent of tears streamed down her cheeks, but she was standing and that, at least, was something.

  She crept toward the door. Finn’s gang had left it wide open, the armchair pushed out of the way as though it weighed as much as a pence. The pouch of gun powder had fallen from the desk and she collected it, reloading her flintlock.

  Skidding into the hall, Kate took off, ignoring the throbbing pain in her side that begged her to slow down.

  She continued on, down cramped alleys and past street signs with colloquial names like Cat’s Paw and Dead Man’s Door. Noise poured out from the Three Boars public house, but she didn’t stop. Where would Finn have taken Daniel?

  She gasped for breath as she rounded the corner. Her chest heaved.

  Stopping—she’d stop for a minute and go again—she leaned against the side of a building. The most logical conclusion was that Finn had a base of operations somewhere near Ratcliffe, for he’d wanted to use Papa’s warehouses and most of the entries had come from around East London. The less distance the carters needed to carry the resurrection baskets the better. Chance of exposure would be higher if they carted over a longer distance.

  Take the bogger to Sepulchre. Kate couldn’t be certain she’d heard Templeton right over the noise in her ears, but she knew that name. Her father’s journal mentioned the workhouse cemetery of St. Sepulchre’s-within, located on Chick Lane in the heart of the Saffron Hill rookery. The parish had built two workhouses, which they sectioned as Sepulchre’s-within and Sepulchre’s-without. Chick Lane was also close to Smithfield and the Fortune of War public house, which Finn had been known to frequent.

  She had to assume then that they would take Daniel to the burial grounds. What was Finn’s plan? Ezekiel had spoken of selling the corpse, but if they intended to trade him to a hospital like St. Thomas, it would have been easier to kill him in the flat. She had to believe that Daniel would be safe, at least for the present. One didn’t transport a body simply to kill it upon arrival without fanfare, and fanfare took time.

  There was only one man she knew of that could quickly ascertain Finn’s motives.

  Kate started forward again, fighting the fatigue threatening to take hold of her body. She was so tired, tired of running and fighting only to have her happiness ripped from her.

  A child skipped by, bare-footed and in rags. She snagged the edge of
his coat, the sudden motion stabbing her ribs with pain. The child skidded to a stop, dirt flying up onto her skirt.

  She searched her pocket for a coin, sandwiched between the twine and her load pouch. Her breathing was jagged. “If I give you a tuppence, would you take a message to the Gentleman Thief for me? I don’t think I have to tell you twice what will happen to you and yours if he does not receive the message.”

  “’E’ll make it ’ard for me kin.” The boy rubbed at his running nose.

  Kate nodded crisply. “Precisely.”

  “I’ll take yer message.” He snatched the coinage from her fingers.

  “Tell him that Finn has taken Daniel to St. Sepulchre’s-within at Chick Lane.” She repeated it two more times before she was satisfied the boy had it down. “Remember, if anyone can find a small boy in the middle of Ratcliffe, it’s the Gentleman Thief.”

  The boy’s face whitened. As soon as she released his sleeve, he took off down the road. The message was a last resort, for in the current traffic the boy would not reach Atlas’s for some time. She would have been better off with a carriage messenger, yet she didn’t trust that the driver would deliver the message. A boy was easier to intimidate, though not easier to find when there were thousands of child thieves in London alone.

  She palmed the remaining coins in her pocket. Enough to get her to Saffron Hill, but not back. She’d worry about the return journey later.

  Lord hope she was not too late.

  ***

  Daniel came to slowly. He knew without opening his eyes that he was no longer at his flat in Madame Tousat’s, for nothing felt right. This place didn’t smell of rotting wood and burnt boxty. A soft surface was behind his back, and that too was wrong, as his mattress at the lodging house had been regrettably stiff and uncomfortable.

  More concerning was the taste in his mouth, not of gin or tea; in its place was something sickeningly sweet he could not identify. His tongue lolled at the roof of his mouth, uselessly thick.

  In such a state, he could not call out for help, if he’d dared to chance it. Instinctively, he sensed that he should not draw attention to himself. He drew in another breath and sniffed the air. Dank, musty, thick with pungent dirt. He was all too aware of the numbness in his limbs, gradually receding with each waking moment, but not completely gone.