by Candace Camp
Whatever she was doing, she was clever about it. And that, too, roused his interest in the woman. He’d been sorely tempted to remain and talk to her again. He could, after all, use a false name, but for some reason he found himself reluctant to lie to her. And there was really no benefit in a conversation. So after an hour or so, he made himself leave the casino and return to the carriage to wait.
And think.
Desiree, the man had called her. The name suited her. Exotic. Evocative. Like the scent that clung to her. Tom murmured the name; he liked the way it felt on his tongue.
Who was the man who had interrupted their conversation? Obviously he was someone close enough to her that he addressed her by her first name. But what exactly was he to her? Husband? Lover? Tom’s chest tightened at that thought.
Perhaps he was her employer. Perhaps he was the Australian “bruiser” Pike had said owned the club. Though he walked with a bit of a limp, he certainly looked well able to take care of himself in a brawl. Employers often used the first names of their employees. It could have been not closeness but status. Perhaps he hadn’t liked her wasting time rather than disliking her talking to another man.
Tom liked that idea better—though obviously that was even more foolish than talking to her had been. Desiree was the thief; she had to be. Standing next to him, she was the right height, the right size. And it went far beyond coincidence to have two women who were connected to the Farrington Club and also wore the same distinctive perfume. She was his quarry, nothing more.
And his quarry had just appeared.
Tom straightened, every sense on the alert. Desiree paused just outside the doorway, casting her gaze around. Tom waited, hand on the door, ready to slip out and follow her as soon as she walked away. But she didn’t leave, simply chatted with the two outside guards.
A carriage pulled out of the line of waiting hackneys and town carriages and rolled up to the entrance. One of the doormen jumped to open the door of the carriage and give Desiree a hand up into the vehicle. He closed the door after her, and the carriage rattled off.
“Follow them, Jenkins,” Tom told the driver on high seat in front of him. “Not too closely.”
“Aye, sir.” Jenkins was used to the peculiar actions of the Morelands and didn’t question Tom’s instructions.
As they rolled through the night, a discreet distance behind Desiree’s carriage, Tom mulled over the implications. The carriage was an elegant equipage, with an equally fine matched pair pulling it. Obviously a private vehicle, not to mention an expensive one, which indicated that the owner was wealthy.
If it was hers, she must be raking in quite a bit from her thieving and card playing. At least enough to hire a carriage to pick her up every night from work. Or perhaps her employer provided the safety and comfort of such a ride for a valuable employee? Certainly Desiree was enough of a draw to the business that it would be reasonable for him to not let her walk home through the dark city streets.
Even more likely was the possibility that it was provided by a husband or lover. Who could very well be the owner of the Farrington Club, as well. Tom’s hope was that it was none of these things but instead belonged to whoever had hired Desiree to search the office and that it would now take her to that person.
Her trail led into an area of elegant homes. Not as imposing as the Moreland neighborhood, of course, but still, the houses were large and attractive, with small green areas scattered throughout and the streets lit by ample streetlamps.
Her carriage pulled to a stop in front of a redbrick house, and Jenkins stopped, as well, pulling over close to the curb some distance away. As Tom watched, Desiree exited the carriage, looked up to say a few words to the driver, then went straight into the home without knocking.
Obviously she lived here. It made the wealthy husband far more likely; it was rather a large place for a mistress. Either that or she actually belonged to the social class of the Farrington’s patrons, which was ridiculous. Even the Morelands, as free and eccentric as they were, would not let a daughter go running about alone in the middle of the night, playing cards at a casino. Equally unlikely was the idea that the place belonged to whoever had hired her to thieve for him; she wouldn’t have just walked into his home without knocking.
“Shall we wait, sir?” Jenkins’s voice came through the filigreed screen between them.
“Yes, for a bit. It’s odd that the carriage is still sitting in front of the house.”
“That it is. Someone’s going to be leaving the place soon.”
“Let’s see who leaves and where they go. Sorry to keep you up so late.”
The coachman let out a brief laugh. “I don’t mind. It’s always interesting working for the Morelands.”
Tom settled back to once again take up watch through the sliver of window not hidden by the curtain. His suspicion was that the man at the casino was also an occupant of the house—who else would be so permissive about her visiting the casino alone? But then why was the carriage waiting instead of turning around and heading back to the Farrington Club to bring the owner home after the club closed?
He didn’t have to wait long before the front door opened again and Desiree emerged. She was no longer wearing the stylish red evening gown but a plain dark dress of the sort the duchess usually wore when she went out to one of her protests. Sensible dress, she called it, or practical dress, something like that. Rational dress—that was it.
So, clearly Desiree didn’t wish to be encumbered by numerous petticoats, corset, and the ludicrously puffed sleeves that were coming into style. But she wasn’t wearing the costume she had on last night, so it seemed unlikely she was going back to burgle someplace—perhaps his office again. It raised his hopes that she was about to lead him to the man who wanted something in the agency’s office.
“Follow her,” he told Jenkins. “Very carefully.”
Jenkins waited until the carriage was some distance ahead, then pulled out into the street and rumbled off after it. The quarry left the pleasant neighborhood behind, and the surroundings grew progressively seedier as they went, until it seemed they were heading into the sort of area that Tom had been so fortunate to get out of.
Dark cramped buildings huddled together and the streets grew ever more narrow until they were little more than paths, twisting and confusing to any outsider. Streetlights were few and far between, all too likely to have been smashed, leaving large areas of dark shadows.
What the devil was the matter with the woman? This place was dangerous, even if one was in a carriage. She was nimble and as fast as a rabbit, not to mention capable of landing a few hard blows of her own, but she would be easily overcome by a man bent on robbery, or worse.
It was becoming harder to follow her vehicle without being noticed, for there was very little traffic here and it was easy to lose sight on the twisting lanes. Ahead of them, the carriage slowed, then came to a stop, and Jenkins pulled up short, as well. The door opened, and Desiree jumped down and walked purposefully away.
“I’ll follow her on foot,” Tom told Jenkins, slipping out the door. “Go home. I’ll manage on my own.”
The carriage they had followed had driven off, leaving an empty and quiet street. Tom didn’t like being out and about in these clothes. His blond hair was too noticeable, but he’d be damned if he’d stroll around here wearing a top hat.
He rounded the corner, keeping his steps quiet. He spotted her in the distance as she passed under a streetlight. Tom trailed after her. She turned the corner at a tavern, and Tom used the noise of the place to pick up his pace without her hearing him.
Tom turned where she had and came to a halt. She had disappeared. He hurried forward, thinking she must have turned again at the next available lane. Had she spotted him? Just as he reached that corner, he heard a thump behind him. Before he could turn around, he felt the barrel of a pistol jammed into his ribs.
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CHAPTER SIX
TOM FROZE IN PLACE.
“Raise your hands.” It was her voice.
He did as she commanded, torn between relief that it was Desiree, irritation that she had spotted him and a reluctance for her to see who he was.
“Turn around.” With a sigh, he obeyed. Her eyes widened. “You?” She recovered quickly. “Who are you? Why are you following me?”
He didn’t bother to deny it. Instead, he said, “How in the blazes did you get behind me?”
The corner of her mouth quirked up, her eyes sparkling in amusement. “Like most people, you never think to look up.”
“Damn,” he said more in admiration than annoyance. She hadn’t run around the corner. She’d clambered up a building and followed him, dropping down to ambush him from behind. “I’ve never met anyone who could do the things you do.”
“You never will,” she retorted. “Now, answer my questions. Who are you? What do you want?”
“I want to ask you a few questions,” he replied. “My name is Tom Quick.”
He saw recognition hit her eyes, but she said only, “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“Why did you break into my office last night? What were you after?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Desiree said airily.
“No? Then I guess you’re not interested in what the thief left behind.” He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, noting that she hadn’t even warned him not to pull out a weapon. She might be a superlative burglar, but she wasn’t all that good at holding a gun on someone.
Tom held up the token he’d found under his desk. Her eyes lit, and she grabbed for the charm. He let her take it, instead reaching out and wresting her gun away from her. “Now. Let’s have a conversation.”
“I’m not saying anything to you.” Desiree clenched the token in her fist. “You going to shoot me?” She whipped around and started to walk away.
Tom reached out and gripped her wrist, whirling her back around to face him. “No, but I’m going to bloody well find out what you’re up to.”
Her eyes went past his shoulder, and to his surprise, she began to scream. “Help! Help me!”
He jerked his head around and saw a policeman running toward them, baton in hand. Desiree seized the opportunity to jerk her hand away, and she took off running, leaving Tom with the gun and the bobby.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered as a beefy hand closed on his shoulder. She had outwitted him again.
* * *
DESIREE DARTED BACK the way she’d come, anger fueling her feet. The wretched man had lied to her!
A drunk lurched out of the tavern as she passed it. He reached for her, but Desiree avoided him easily. The companion right behind him let out a hoot and started after her, obviously less drunk than his friend. Desiree increased her speed. Frankly, she was in the mood for a chase tonight.
As she ran, she cast her mind out around her, and the faint outlines of buildings unfolded in her head. Ahead of her on the right was a wall, but its match in her head was only a thick smudge of darkness, warning her away.
But across the next intersection, light glimmered. And though the area was shadowed and murky, in her mind light spread across the side of the building, illuminating the empty cart beside it. The men following her laughed as she sprinted straight toward the wall. Desiree pulled up her skirts as she ran and tucked the ends into her belt, freeing her legs. She took a running leap into the cart, continuing to the higher end without pause and springing up from it to grab the sign above the shop. From there, she scrambled up to the top of the sign and climbed the wall, her feet and hands finding the holes and misaligned bricks.
Grinning at the roar from the men far beneath her, she reached the top of the building and pulled herself up and over onto the roof.
She climbed up the slant of the roof to the top and stood up, looping her arm around the chimney and looking all around her, orienting herself and giving her a moment to catch her breath. Clearly, she was no longer accustomed to running this much. Indeed, she wasn’t as good in any way as she had been at fourteen. She’d been caught twice by Quick. And then she hadn’t even sensed that his intentions toward her were bad. It was galling.
Knowing she had lost the gambling chip, she ought to have stayed home for a few days. She shouldn’t have taken the chance that she’d lost it on the street instead of inside the office. Perhaps Wells was right; she should have taken her brother with her. Wells had always been the more careful of the two of them.
The two men, thwarted of their prize, walked away, complaining. Desiree could have climbed back down to the street, but she did not. This was her territory, and she loved moving across the rooftops, as familiar to her as the streets below. She turned and walked along the center beam of the roof to the other end.
The building behind this one was flush against it, and it was a short drop down to the roof below, which shone like a beacon, calling her. She swung down and made her way across the buildings crowded up against one another. Her mind was still attuned to her extra sense for guidance; it had been years, after all, since she’d used these routes, and things deteriorated. Darkness bloomed along the edge of the one roof and over a patched spot on another, so she avoided both. She came to a gap of a few feet between buildings. A sparkling line stretched out in front of her across the span, and she took a running jump to land lithely on the other side.
Desiree came to a stop when she reached her favorite place, and she sat down on the ledge edging the roof. The street below was blanketed by fog, and it was as if she were sitting on a cloud. There had always been peace and solitude here. Freedom.
During the day, one could see the dome of Saint Paul’s from here, poking up through the haze, as well as the steeples of other churches and the tops of the Houses of Parliament. But now the view was only fog and darkness, everything hidden and still. It was the perfect place to think. She thought about what she’d found at the office of Moreland & Quick and what she was going to do about it. She thought about her mistakes. And she thought about Tom Quick.
That smoldering gaze, the faintly suggestive banter, the whole pretense of liking her had been an act. And she had fallen for it, lured by a pair of bright blue eyes and a charming smile. It was galling. He had deceived her. She’d been as gullible as any mark.
How could her instincts have been so wrong? She hadn’t felt the danger in him, hadn’t sensed the lack of integrity in his motives; she’d felt only her own excitement. Maybe Wells was right, and she was too quick to assume a moment’s perception was reliable. She knew a practiced flirt often glossed over a corrupt intention, yet she hadn’t tried to look deeper. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to find it in Tom. Clearly she should have focused her talent, sought out his intentions, been more suspicious of his interest in her. Instead, she had let herself be led astray by the sizzle of attraction.
Not only that, she hadn’t even noticed that he was shadowing her. It had been the coachman who had alerted her to that fact. Quick must have been behind her since she’d left the club. He’d followed her home and had sat there, waiting. He’d followed her into the East End. And she hadn’t seen it, hadn’t even looked. She’d been too occupied wondering why he left the club early.
It was some compensation that she had outwitted him tonight. Desiree smiled to herself at the memory of his irritated face. No doubt he’d been equally frustrated when she left him to explain to the peeler why he’d been holding a gun on a woman.
Tom Quick would still come after her, of course. Well, she welcomed the chance to go head-to-head against him. She could hold her own. She wouldn’t be stunned at seeing his face, as she had been tonight, and she would deny his charges. There was nothing he could prove. He’d get nowhere with the police.
She was no longer a street urchin. She was now a genteel woman, a woman who could look and
sound the part and the sister of a man who was wealthy and not without power. Brock would never be accepted by society any more than Desiree herself, but he had more than one member of the police in his pay, as well as a couple of aristocrats who were in his debt.
On that pleasant thought, she left her perch on the ledge and made her way to the next roof, where she could climb down the drainpipe and cross the street to Falk’s place. Falk had moved on from being a kidsman. After his success with Desiree and Wells breaking into houses, the man had gradually transformed his business into the more lucrative field of burglary, as well as adding a bit of extortion to round things out. Street urchins required too much effort and expense—after all, he had to go out and watch the little pickpockets and beggars to make sure they were doing their jobs, as well as give them a bit of food and a floor to sleep on.
Desiree was glad. She would never have come here if she’d had to face children suffering the same life she once had. It gave her a degree of pleasure knowing that the Malones had over the years made sure that Falk’s operation running children became more and more difficult.
She went up the stairs, and one of Falk’s men let her through to his office. Falk was bent over a ledger on his desk, and he looked up at the sound of her entrance. His clothes and his place were a bit nicer than of old, his hair liberally streaked with gray and his girth more fat than muscle now, but he was still the same Falk—same dark flat gaze and bitter slash of a mouth. So full of lies that she barely had to tap her power to see all the black outlines overlying Falk again and again. As if she was looking at his image in a refracting prism.
“Desiree!” he said in a false tone of good cheer, his lips twisting into a smile. “Ready to come back yet? Lots of money to be made.”