Hoffman set his legs apart and his hands behind his back in the fashion of a military man, which was what he had been before an injury had forced him out of service and heavy drinking had nearly killed him. When War left him over ten years ago, Jack had found Hoffman, hauled him out of the gutter, sobered him up and eventually put him in charge. He’d never regretted that decision. Hoffman had saved his ass more than once and the men in the gang respected him as much as Jack. Probably more, honestly.
But Hoffman wasn’t War. That fact was always bitter.
“Aston was our main rival. Everyone knew that,” Hoffman began.
“Yes,” Jack said, steepling his fingers in front of him on the desk. Jonathon Aston had been a thorn in his side for years. The man had wanted to take Jack’s place ruling the underground, and he’d been willing to steal and destroy to do so. He’d also nearly murdered War, though that was over Claire, not a territorial dispute.
Putting a bullet between Aston’s eyes had been no difficult task for Jack.
“Now that he’s dead,” Hoffman continued, “it leaves a hole that almost half a dozen criminals have rushed to fill. They are doing exactly as we expected they would, Jack.”
“Attacking from all sides,” Jack finished for Hoffman with a purse of his lips. “And unlike when it was mainly Aston on the attack, with so many contenders involved, it makes defense much more difficult. What’s the damage?”
“Four men dead in the past two weeks,” Hoffman said. “Two more deserted, as far as we can tell. The road crew up north was disrupted and the goods they’d intercepted were stolen. And I believe there is at least one spy in our midst.”
“There’s always at least one spy in our midst,” Jack muttered. “Shakespeare warned about honor amongst thieves, didn’t he?”
Hoffman grunted. “Don’t know nothing about Shakespeare.”
“You should. He predicts all.” Jack pushed from his desk and paced his small office to the fire. He stared at the flames for a moment. “Who are the ones after us? At last count it was Richards, Pox and Warren.”
“One is Keller.”
“Keller?” Jack repeated with a laugh. “He’s not more than a pup. I can’t believe he’s threatening me.”
“You weren’t more than a pup when you got started,” Hoffman reminded him softly.
Jack turned. “Are you comparing Keller to me?”
Hoffman rewarded him with a rare chuckle. “You’re a pompous bastard, Jack.”
“It’s why you like me,” Jack said with a tilt of his head.
Hoffman shrugged. “Either way, even a pup can be dangerous when he joins forces with bigger dogs.”
Jack sighed. “So Keller is jumping his loyalty around to the others, perhaps hoping to land on whoever wins my crown.”
“Yes. But he ain’t my main concern. It’s the fifth villain I don’t know. Can’t place anything about him except that he exists.”
Jack lifted his brows. “A mystery, then. I’ve never liked a mystery.”
“Me neither.” Hoffman folded his arms. “I have a few feelers out, checking up on other petty criminals who might be big for their britches and think they can come after the Captain.”
“Excellent. I’ll read the reports in more detail and think on my long list of enemies, myself. We’ll rat him out yet, Hoffman.” Jack smiled, though this subject made him anything but happy. After so many years on top of the heap of shit that was the criminal underground, he was tiring of the machinations it took to remain there.
But what else did he have? He’d been a thief since he was hardly more than a boy. He wasn’t like his brother, who had turned a natural talent with horses into a thriving legitimate business. He was Captain Jack, nothing more.
Hoffman shifted with discomfort and Jack frowned. He was clearly showing some of his emotion on his face. He turned away. “If that is all…”
“Yes.” Hoffman moved toward the door to leave, but before he could exit, the door opened and revealed two of Jack’s men with another man in their grips.
Jack’s eyes went wide. The man they held was Griffin Merrick, Lady Seagate’s younger brother. He’d never thought he’d see the boy again, and yet here he was.
“What is this?” Hoffman asked, annoyance clear in his harsh tone. Hoffman was a large man and intimidating when he turned an angry glare on a person. Griffin’s wince made it clear he was not immune.
“Found him lurking about outside,” one of the men said, shoving Griffin forward. The boy staggered, but managed to stay on his feet.
“What the hell are you about, boy?” Hoffman growled, catching Griffin’s lapels and giving him a hard shake.
“Enough,” Jack said softly, his gaze firmly focused on Merrick. He was shaking, but he didn’t make a move to escape and he hadn’t started to blubber or beg, like some men of his ilk would do. “I know him.”
Hoffman turned on him. “You do?”
Jack understood his surprise. Merrick reeked of respectability and privilege. He was not the normal visitor to the rank hideout where Jack spent most of his days. He could fix up a room or two to make them more palatable, but this place wasn’t fit for dogs, let alone fops.
“Friend of a friend,” he explained, waving off the connection with one hand. “But I never told Mr. Merrick where to find me. I’m rather impressed he could, though I wouldn’t say I’m pleased. Won’t you run along, Hoffman, and find out exactly how he accomplished that feat?”
Hoffman glared at the boy once more and then stomped to the door. “I will.”
The others followed him out, shutting the door behind them and leaving Jack alone with Griffin. Jack returned to his seat at his desk and motioned for the young man to sit across from him.
“How did you manage to find me?” he asked.
Griffin’s gaze darted away. “A-asked the right questions, I guess.”
Jack narrowed his eyes at the uneasy boy. That answer gave him little solace. If Griffin had indeed found the information from simple questions, that likely meant someone in his organization had loose lips. A deadly failing.
But Hoffman would take care of that. Jack was more interested now in why the young man before him had come. And what his sister thought of his visit.
Though he could well guess the latter.
“However you came to know my whereabouts, it seems you managed to get the information and get to me without pissing yourself.” He leaned back in his chair. “What in the world could you want with me?”
Griffin’s eyes went wide. “Do you truly not know? Even after our talk at my cousin’s wedding ball a few days ago?”
Jack pressed his lips together. He’d given this man so little thought since that night.
“Spell it out,” he suggested. “I’ve little time for games.”
“I-I want to work for you, Jack,” Griffin said, his tone breathless.
Jack stared for a moment, then tilted back his head and laughed. The boy’s eager smile fell at the sound. “You work for me? What an entertaining notion, indeed.”
Griffin jumped up, his cheeks darkening with color and his eyes flashing. “Don’t mock me!”
“How can I not?” Jack asked, though he readied himself in case the foolish boy decided to fly at him. “How can you truly suggest that a person like yourself has any place in a world like mine?”
“I could learn!” Griffin insisted.
Jack took a long breath. He had to admire the boy’s spirit. Many would have slunk out the moment he challenged them. Griffin’s shoulders were back, his hands fisted, his eyes clear and certain. He truly believed he wanted this life.
“Look at you,” Jack said. “Dressed in your finery, probably with a wad of blunt in your pocket and a shiny gold pocket watch.” He could see by the way Griffin shifted that he’d hit the mark. With a shake of his head, he continued, “You’ve grown up with everything you ever wanted spoon fed to you. You don’t know want, you don’t know desperation, you don�
��t know desire. And without that fire in your gut that yearning creates, you wouldn’t last a week amongst my men. You’d go home crying to your papa.”
Griffin pushed back from his seat and leaned on the desk. “You don’t know me. I do know want and desperation and desire. I was born into the life I lead, but I never chose it. Do you think I want to sit idly by, getting fat and bored? To never live? To do what everyone expects of me without ever being my own man?”
Jack looked him up and down. He was impressed by Griffin’s determination. The light of interest in his eyes, the faith that he could make it in this grimy world…all those things were real. The young man truly wanted to make this choice, even if he didn’t fully understand it.
But Jack couldn’t picture Griffin being happy with that decision in the end. And he’d lost too many earnest, excited upstarts in his day to risk losing another, especially right now, when there was so much danger around every corner.
He shook his head, watching how Griffin’s face fell. “Look, boy, I like you. And I appreciate your enthusiasm. But I can’t use you. Your sister made it clear you are not available.”
He hoped the reminder of Griffin’s humiliation a few days ago would shut this conversation down. Instead, Griffin lifted his chin in pride and said, “My sister isn’t my keeper, Jack. She and my parents have no say in what I do now that I’m grown.”
“Be that as it may, I don’t think I want to risk her wrath.”
The boy’s face grew red as a plum and Jack swore that tears filled his eyes. But he said nothing else. He merely turned and stomped out the room, slamming the door behind him.
Jack sighed as he slumped down in his chair. At least he’d put the boy off. It was probably for the best. Not just for the boy, who was too green for such a dangerous world, but for Jack too. After all, with thoughts of Griffin Merrick came dreams of Letitia and the fire in her eyes when she approached him a few nights before. And the last thing he needed as present was the distraction of an utterly inappropriate woman.
Letty picked up the needlepoint she’d been ignoring for days and stared at the pretty pattern. Normally she enjoyed a quiet afternoon where she could sew. Time alone didn’t have to be unpleasant time.
But recently her mind had been more restless. Actually, more than just recently. Her marriage and its disastrous end, the run-in with the charlatan Jonathon Aston six months ago and this recent interaction with Jack Blackwood had all set her on her head more and more until now she felt the world spinning wildly. Her focus was gone, her nerves were frayed and the calm and quiet future she had long ago determined was her destiny now felt…threatened.
“Men,” she muttered, throwing the sewing back onto the chair. She covered her eyes, willing her mind to clear of these tangled thoughts.
“My lady?”
She lifted her hand away to find her butler standing in the parlor door. “Yes, Crosby?”
“Mr. Griffin Merrick is here,” he said. “Are you at home?”
“I bloody well know she’s at home,” came her brother’s voice from the hall. As Letty rose, Griffin stormed past the startled servant and into the chamber. “What did you do?”
“My lady?” Crosby asked.
Letty examined her brother’s red face, his wild eyes, his shaking hands, and slowly nodded to the servant. “That’s all right, Crosby. Leave us. And shut the door.”
The servant pinched his lips with displeasure but did as he had been told. Once they were alone, Letty stepped toward Griffin, a hand outstretched. “What is it?”
He jerked away from the comfort and paced across the floor. “What is it? What is it?”
Letty tracked him as he walked back and forth in front of her window, glaring at her with every step. He was clearly very upset, though she had no idea why. Normally he vented to her about their parents. She didn’t think he’d ever come to her because of something he believed she had done.
“Dearest,” she began, hoping to soothe him, “I can see you are very upset and I want to help if I can. But I truly don’t know what you’re talking about. Explain it to me and we can move forward together.”
He shook his head. “You mean to pretend that you don’t know you humiliated me and ruined all my hopes?”
“How could I have done either of those things, Griffin? I haven’t even seen you since Claire and Warrick’s wedding!”
The moment the words escaped her lips, she saw the truth in her brother’s face. Even before he spoke, she recognized exactly why he was angry.
“Yes, the wedding. Where you interrupted my private conversation with Jack Blackwood,” he said, his tone suddenly low. “And as if that wasn’t bad enough, it seems the conversation you had with him after I left was enough to make him think I can’t handle his life. Like you were my nursemaid!”
She stared at her brother, caught between man and boy. His drive to push himself headlong into one world terrified her.
“What did you do, Griffin?” she asked, trying to rein in the terror that accompanied his statement.
“I went to see him.” He said the words so simply. Almost like he was talking about going to the club or the bookshop.
“As if anyone just drops in on the biggest criminal in London,” she said with a shake of her head. “If the papers are to be believed, no one even knows where he stays.”
“Well, I was clever enough to find out,” Griffin said, his chest puffing a bit as if he were proud of that fact. “That alone might have been enough to convince Jack to give me a chance, only he said you had convinced him to leave me be.”
Letty covered her mouth with her hand as she tried not to picture her brother going into whatever horrible hole Jack Blackwood called home. Griffin could have easily been injured by his men, or even worse.
And then the bastard told her brother she had warned him off. Jack had to know what the reaction to that statement would be. As if his forward behavior at the ball hadn’t been bad enough.
“The first thing I want to say to you is that I know you are struggling,” she said, gathering herself as best she could to reason with her brother.
He lifted his brows. “Do you intend to patronize me, Letty?”
“No, of course not. Papa is hard on you, I know. And you want something more than to merely follow in his footsteps and live a gentleman’s life, one you consider boring.”
“It is boring,” Griffin barked. “The most exciting thing he does it to go over figures about livestock on the estate.”
She nodded. “I cannot disagree. I am sorry that you are disappointed in Mr. Blackwood’s dismissal of you, but you must know it is for the best.”
Griffin’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you told him? That to dismiss me was best?”
“Griffin,” she said, wishing he would let her touch him, though she could see he wouldn’t. “I am not your enemy.”
“If you went behind my back, thwarted me like I am a child, it is hard not to feel that you are,” he said. “Do not interfere with my plans again, Letitia. I am a man and I demand to be respected.”
He turned away from her then, stomping from her parlor. She raced after him. “Griffin!”
But he ignored her calls and simply exited the house, swinging up on his horse before he thundered from her drive, leaving her standing in her doorway to stare after him.
Her eyes welled with tears, but she blinked them away. She was too angry to cry. Angry with herself for how she had handled the exchange, angry with Griffin for putting himself in a dangerous position and angry with Jack Blackwood. She had no idea what he had said to her brother, but he had caused enormous trouble between them.
She went back into the parlor, her mind and heart racing. She needed to speak to that man, to have it out with him over whatever it was he had led Griffin to believe. At the wedding ball, she had overheard someone say that Jack now joined his brother and Claire for supper each Sunday. She had to assume the Sunday that was just a few days
away would be included in that ritual.
So all she had to do now was get herself invited along and find a way to confront Jack Blackwood. She would close the door between him and her brother once and for all.
Her hands shook as she made that decision, but she pushed the nervous reaction away. She was not going to be put off by such a frustrating man. Such a frustrating, handsome, seductive man. No, she was not.
She would just have to find the strength to not let him fluster her.
Chapter Four
Jack swung down from his horse and looked up at Warrick’s townhouse. His brother had bought and paid for this place with money made from his horse-breeding venture. It was a fine home, far finer than any they’d grown up in. Which made Jack uncomfortable every time he stepped through the door. But he kept coming here because War and Claire would be leaving London soon to return to her family’s country estate. Jack wanted to suck up every moment he could while he was still allowed in War’s life.
Even if that life was so very different from Jack’s own. He smiled at the boy who took his horse, and was about to move to the front door when a carriage rolled through the gate and stopped just in front of him. The door flew open and he tensed, his hand straying to the pistol he kept in his waistband.
But to his shock, instead of a rival leaning from the vehicle to do him harm, Lady Seagate was the one who appeared in the doorway, her face drawn taut with emotion.
“Get in.”
His eyes went wide at the unexpected order. “I beg your pardon?”
“Get. In,” she repeated, her voice low and irritated.
Her gaze darted around like she was waiting to be caught. She looked very fetching in a pale green gown that once again accentuated those remarkably lovely breasts of hers. He got a good look at the smooth tops of them when she leaned toward him.
He doubted she knew what a temptation she created.
“Just get in!” she burst out at last, and there was that flash of fire goddess again. The one that drew him in.
He smiled, inclined his head and did as he had been told, sliding into the carriage and situating himself across from her as she slammed the vehicle door.
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