Starving?
Nathan knew those days. Had lived them.
Damn it. Why now? Why think of those days?
Because you’ve come home.
No. No, he hadn’t. Home was no longer England. Home was San Francisco, where he’d carved out a new life. A new him. Nathaniel Hawk, street urchin, starving, abandoned child and thief whose alias had been the Raven, was long gone. Eradicated.
Today, he was Nathan Hawk, engineer of locks and co-owner of Steel Hawk Locks, and about to take London’s Great Exhibition by storm.
Without warning, the boy lunged forward and shoved hard against Nathan’s chest. He stumbled back, reached out for the lad, but missed him as he darted past, ducked under his arm and raced into the middle of the room.
“It doesn’t matter who either of you are.” The boy stood behind one of the chairs, using it as a barrier between him and Nathan and Ben.
Nathan recognized the haze of fear. “What do you want? If it’s money…”
Fury twisted the lad’s expression, at least what little Nathan could see beneath the cap. “I don’t want your money. I’ve come to stop you.”
Nathan cast a glance in Ben’s direction and then refocused on the boy. “From doing what, precisely?”
“You can’t display the Pasha Star.”
Those words changed everything. Nathan stepped away from the door, closing in on the boy. The lad barely reached his shoulder, and Nathan struggled to stem the fleeting concern at how starvation had curtailed the boy’s growth. “What do you know about the Star?”
“Only that you must not display it.” The boy shoved out a crumpled piece of newspaper, the same paper that displayed the headline about Steel Hawk.
Ben noticed it too and came alongside Nathan. “Look, young man, if you’ve come here to try to blackmail us, you’ve failed. Now I suggest you go home to your mama.”
The lad seemed to shrink then, his shoulders slumped. “That is impossible. She’s dead.”
“Ah…” Nathan rubbed a hand across his jaw, suddenly uncomfortable at seeing such distress. He had long fought emotion. Emotion and caring got you into trouble. Instead, he shoved a hand deep into his trouser pocket, brought out a couple of shillings and held them out to the boy.
The boy’s defiance reignited. “I told you I don’t want your money.”
“You look like you could do with feeding.”
“I eat. So will you do it?”
“What you’ve asked us is impossible. The royal family of Zarrenburg has requested the diamond be on show.”
“But it’s imperative that it be taken out. Make it possible.”
Imperative. That didn’t sound like the language of a boy who appeared to have spent most of his life on the streets. Nathan stared hard at him, trying to gauge what the hell was going on here. Violet eyes, soft and…
Forget those days. They’re over.
“Why is it so important to you?”
“It…it just is. Besides, that’s not something you need to know.”
A gruff chuckle came from Ben. “You want us to do something but won’t tell us why.”
“I…can’t.”
Nathan’s ears pricked up as he recognized the desperation in the boy’s hesitation. “The Pasha Star is already on display.”
Within the blink of an eye, all color drained from the lad’s face, his knees buckling beneath him. Nathan made a grab for him and snatched at his shoulders as he tumbled toward the ground.
“Don’t touch me. Leave me.” The lad flicked out an arm, catching Nathan on the jaw.
“Why you little…”
Behind him, Ben chuckled, and Nathan cast him a scathing glance. “You’re not much bloody help.”
“I’m having too much fun watching you. The pint size versus the giant.”
Nathan swore under his breath. He was more than six feet to the lad’s diminutive barely five foot frame. “Right, me laddo.” Surprise cut off his words for a moment as he unnervingly recognized he’d reverted to the dialect of his youth.
The boy held up both hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you.”
“That may be, but you’re asking us to do something we cannot.”
“But you must; otherwise, it will be stolen.”
“Rubbish. The lock is unbreakable.” But even as he denied the boy’s assertion, disquiet soured in his gut. The theft of the diamond would be a disaster of immense proportions.
Nathan lowered his tone to a menacing warning. “If you’re trying to plot something…” He made a grab for the lad, but again the boy dodged capture and scooted beneath Nathan’s outstretched arm.
He pivoted to face Nathan, the door at his back. He rested his hands on his hips, head held high, violet eyes darkening. “I’m not plotting anything. I’m warning you. Take it out. You have to, or someone else will.”
Chapter Two
Head down, one hand holding her cap to her head to prevent her hair from falling loose, the other clasping her father’s far too large jacket to her chest, Rose Valetta ran as if the devil were at her heels.
She had failed.
She could not tell them the real reason why she wanted the Pasha Star taken out of the exhibition.
Born in Zarrenburg, her father, Alex, had escaped under a cloud of secrecy before Rose was born. That was all she knew of her father’s past life. A secret.
Once settled in England, he’d met Charlotte and married her, and had quickly integrated into the English way of life. He was English now, was all he would say. His life in Zarrenburg was over.
And then those men had turned up, threatening to destroy everything. The past had caught up with her father.
But why had they wanted him to replicate the diamond?
Despite sweat pouring down her face, she shivered. She clutched the threadbare jacket even closer as she jumped down the last few steps of the hotel’s rear stairway and came to a grinding halt at the exit to the back alley.
Bending double, she sucked in lungsful of oxygen, desperate to slow her racing heart and clear her brain.
What now?
Where to?
Home?
Her father hadn’t known she’d been going to beg help from the Steel Hawk owners. Little helper, he’d called her after she’d begun to look after him when her mother had died. She had her father. He had her.
That was how it was. How it would always be…but…but now she’d failed.
Rose yanked open the door to the alley, grateful for the fresh air. That surely would clear her brain of hopes and dreams and what-ifs that wouldn’t happen. She needed to concentrate on how to protect her father, not on some whimsical dream.
Peering left and right along the dank alley, all she saw were the piles of empty boxes waiting to be carted away and a few crates overloaded with wasted food.
She shook her head. Didn’t they know people could make meals out of those leftovers?
A cat sauntered past, grazing alongside one of the bins, purring loudly. It swished its tail back and forth, and then snagged the remains of a fish, hooking it with its claw, then shooting off with the carcass clasped in its jaw.
Down the alley and back out onto the main thoroughfare, Rose melded into the now-crowded street. London had come alive, even more so with the commencement of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition less than twenty-four hours away.
Twenty-four hours, and it would be too late to do anything about the diamond.
Frustrated she’d failed and having no idea what to do, Rose slowly made her way home. Home was a few small rooms above her father’s workshop where Alex Valetta used his superb skills to craft paste jewelry for the wealthy.
There was just the two of them now, though a long time ago there had been an apprentice. Nathaniel. She’d only been twelve the day he’d arrived. H
e’d been sixteen. She’d never let on, but she’d mooned over him, a girl crush it was, though the stupid boy never noticed her, calling her squirt just to annoy her, which he’d done on far too many occasions.
And then after working with her father for four years, he’d disappeared, never to return, and the sixteen-year-old young woman she’d been had realized that love was rather fickle.
She turned into Pickle Street, named because of the pickle factory at the end.
“Hey, Rose.” Mary-Beth Sullivan sidled up to her, her face shining with a happy glow. “Paulie has asked me to walk with him and…” She leaned forward, her words coming in an excited rush. “Ma says if I play it right, he might ask for my hand.”
“But you hardly know him.”
“I’m sixteen next week. Time I got hitched afore I end up on the shelf and too old.”
“Sixteen! Lordy, Mary-Beth if that’s too old, what does that make me?”
“Well, you coulda accept Hank Parker.”
Rose shuddered. “Hank Parker has bad breath that makes my nose twitch and my stomach rebel any time he gets too close.”
Mary-Beth’s titter escalated.
“Marriage to him? I think not.”
“But what about Clifford Eadie and Floyd Hadfield, the blacksmith? You can’t say you haven’t had plenty of chances.”
Rose shrugged. “I suppose, but all I can see if I married Floyd is a life of washing his blackened clothes. I’ll not be any man’s skivvy.”
“Then you’ll end up an old maid.”
“I think it’s too late. I’m already an old maid.”
“Is it any wonder? Look at you. You dress like a man.”
“It’s easier to get about.”
“But what will everyone say?”
Rose shrugged her indifference. “Tough. I do what I need to do, and besides, it means I don’t get hassled.”
“But no beau will want to kiss you when you’re wearing trousers.” Mary-Beth’s gaze roamed the length of Rose, her assessment quite clear in her pretty brown eyes. “A man likes a woman to look…well…” She ran a worn hand down her silky blonde hair. “Pretty.”
Rose glanced down at her attire. True. Mary-Beth was pretty, while she…she was…
She shook her head, her cap finally tumbling off and her hair unraveling down her back.
“If you only tried a bit harder, you could look almost pretty.”
Almost? “I don’t have time for pretty.”
A few doorsteps away, she spied two men elbowing open the door to her father’s downstairs workshop. She recognized them in an instant and her fear reignited.
Pretty could wait.
Rose burst into a run, feet sliding across the uneven cobbled road. “Papa. Papa!” Dear God. Pretty. She worried about being pretty when her father…
Breathing labored, she reached the entrance. He wasn’t there.
She raced upstairs and came to a dead halt.
The two mean-looking hooligans from yesterday towered over her father, his face already battered, blood seeping along one eyebrow, his eye beneath swollen and turning purple. For a split second, they didn’t see her, and she lunged at the man who held her father by the throat. She tore at his back, nails digging into the man’s flesh. “Leave him alone. Get out. You have no right to be here!”
He swatted her off as if she were a pesky insect, and Rose tumbled to the ground.
She kicked out at the man, her foot connecting with his shin.
“Bitch.”
Back on her feet, she went to attack again, but the other man caught her and yanked her arms viciously behind her back.
The giant loosened his hold on her father, turning to her with an inebriated sneer. “Told ya we’d be back. He didn’t give us what we wanted, so we’re making up his mind for him, and he’s coming to stay with us for a while.”
“Stay? What for?” She tried to wrench free of her captor, kicking out at him. “No! Leave him alone. Leave us alone.”
The man’s hold on her tightened.
“Why are you doing this?”
“There’s a little job to be done.”
The blood in her veins ceased to pump, dread heavy in the pit of her stomach.
“He owes us something.”
“The diamond?”
The man smiled but cast an ice-cold glance in her father’s direction. “So she knows, does she?”
“She knows nothing about it. Leave her alone. She’s innocent.”
“I tried to get it for you.” Not quite the truth, but it might buy her time.
Despite her father’s injuries, his gaze widened. “You shouldn’t have.”
“I failed. They would not do as I asked.” Taking the Pasha Star out of the exhibition was a first step. The second step…well, she hadn’t planned that far.
The bully yanked her father to his feet. “Nice try, but too late, missy. Now, old man, it’s time for a journey.”
“Stop. You cannot do this!”
“Can’t I?” He raised a fist, holding it close to her father’s face. “I can do what I like, because your papa here knows he has no choice.”
Alex shook his head. “All right. All right. I’ll come with you. Just leave my daughter alone. She is not part of this. I’ll…I’ll come, as long as you promise to leave her alone.”
The bully straightened, fixed his bloodshot eyes on her father. “You are a master craftsman. Many say they do not know the real from the fake.”
Shock pitted her stomach. “You want to replace the diamond. To steal it.”
The man’s eyes widened. “She’s a smart girl.”
“You’re from Zarrenburg.”
“See. Very smart.” He wagged a finger at her. “Perhaps too smart.” His expression remained brutal, eyes steely as he finally spoke in the unusual dialect that was native to her father’s small landlocked European country.
Though Rose had been bilingual in her early years, as she grew older, her father had stopped speaking to her in that lilting tongue she had come to recognize so well. “We are English,” he would say. “We must speak the language like an Englishman.” Years had passed since they’d conversed in her father’s native tongue, and Rose could not quite understand what the man said.
“Please, it is impossible. Such work will take days, weeks.” Alex said.
Rose stared hard at her father, knowing intuitively that he was trying to buy time.
“I need my tools,” he added.
“Shut up, old man.” The flat of the brute’s palm viciously connected with her father’s jaw. Fresh blood spurted from her father’s split lip.
“Stop! Stop!” Rose lunged for the bully, but the other man grabbed her by the collar of her jacket and hauled her backward, his free hand fumbling liberally across her chest.
She shrank from his touch but could put barely any distance between them and was forced to tolerate his mauling.
The leader leaned close to her father. “Just do what you’re told, old man, and then you can come home to her. Go get your bloody tools, but be quick about it, or maybe I’ll need a bit of entertainment.” He offered Rose a sly look, taking in her men’s clothing.
Bile pitched in her throat.
Her father stumbled down the few stairs to his workshop, then back up a moment later, his precious tools clasped to his chest.
“Let’s get going.” The man reached for her father and frog-marched him back down the stairs.
Rose stumbled behind them. “Don’t. Please don’t. He can do it here.”
The men ignored her, stepping out onto the pavement, the leader holding her father close to his side.
It was then that she saw the pistol held directly to her father’s back, and ice slithered in her veins.
“Stay where you are, missy, or this pisto
l might just go off.”
“But you need him, so you won’t shoot him.”
A thin, knowing smile leered across his face. “We do, but we don’t need you.” The pistol swiveled in her direction, and she stiffened, her gazed fixed on the weapon.
Would he shoot her?
One look at his eyes, cold and lifeless, holding not one ounce of emotion, and she knew he would shoot her in a heartbeat.
“How do I know you’ll return him?”
The man chuckled, the raucous rasp of a man who’d drunk hard liquor in excess. “You don’t. But this way we get his cooperation, don’t we, Valetta?”
Her father nodded. He shifted his gaze toward her. “Do not worry, my sweet child.”
Rose went to move closer, but her father held a hand up to stall her. “I must do this, to protect her, to protect the country.”
“Who? What country? England? Zarrenburg? I don’t understand.”
“Don’t worry your sweet little head about it, missy. As soon as we get what we want, then we might just let him go.” The man’s smile dissolved. “But then again, it might be fun to see how long he lasts.”
Oh, dear God. “You are brutes. You are…” But Rose didn’t get a chance to finish, as they dragged her father along, then shoved him into a horse-drawn cart across the other side of the road. “Papa. Papa!”
“Stay safe, child. Remember, your mother is at rest.”
Chapter Three
Rose hunched over the workbench she shared with her father, refusing to slacken her pace. Each paste jewel she crafted filled her with the pride that she carried on an art dating back to the Romans. They were known to be very skillful in producing colored-glass pastes, particularly emerald and lapis lazuli.
Her father had trained with the best, even a descendant of the Viennese goldsmith Joseph Strasser, whose technique gave the world the colorless glass paste that could barely be differentiated from the sparkle of a true diamond.
Now she put aside the two molded stones and began to work on a paste model. This was by far the better product, but it took time, and time was not something she had in abundance.
It had already past midnight, and she had to finish; otherwise, it would be too late to save her father. But even if she managed to steal the real diamond, replacing it with a fake—what then? How could she find those men who had her father? They could be anywhere.
To Love a Thief (Steel Hawk) Page 2