Undressed with the Marquess

by Caldwell, Christi

  And it wasn’t the first time that day he’d been properly chastised . . . and shamed. He looked past Avery’s shoulder to the marble bust the man had previously handled. For . . . Dare had bemoaned his state. He hadn’t given thought to what he’d gained, but had rather been solely focused on what he’d lost. “You’re right.”

  Avery chuckled. “I always am.”

  “What brings you here?” he asked, getting to the heart of it. He and Avery were partners, not friends; as such, he didn’t believe for one moment this was a social call.

  “Been looking into what happened with you. Asking questions . . . about our contacts.”

  All Dare’s senses went on alert, and he straightened in his chair. “And?”

  “And the woman who gave us the information about the earl you got caught stealing from?” He shook his head. “She’s gone.”

  She’d run. Or someone had silenced her. Dare cursed quietly. “And did you interview those who knew the woman?”

  “From what I’ve been able to discover, she was just a whore who came to you dressed up as something else.”

  Everyone had connections, though. Whoever had wanted him gone was still out there . . .

  “I’ll keep asking,” Avery vowed.

  And there was no doubting the other man would find out something.

  “What else have I missed in the Rookeries?” Since he’d been plunged into Polite Society.

  Avery shrugged. “Bartlett Nelson got caught filching a lord’s purse.”

  Dare cursed roundly. The other man would match that revelation with a damned shrug? “Since when did he begin picking pockets?”

  Avery lifted his shoulders once more. “All boys eventually find their way to thievery in the Rookeries.” He held Dare’s gaze. “You know that.”

  Yes, he did. But he’d also sought to position children as he could into roles where they weren’t on the other end of the law.

  Who, though, in his absence, had seen to that task? He frowned as a thought slipped in. “You didn’t take him under your wing?”

  “It was always too much for one person,” Avery said in slightly patronizing tones. “You’ve always known that, too.”

  He hadn’t, actually. Dare had believed himself singularly capable of saving those who’d needed saving. Only to acknowledge once more the truth of Avery’s words.

  “His mum was being pressed by Sparky.” Hatred filled Dare at the mention of the gang leader who’d stepped in to fill the void left by Diggory, the last bastard to rule the Rookeries. “He needed the money.”

  Dare lightly thumped his fist on his desk; the ledgers jumped under that movement. “And you had him steal to help himself?”

  Avery surged forward in his seat. “I’m doing the best I can . . .” With you gone. It hung there between them. “I’m working with Wylie and freeing those as I’m able.”

  As he was able . . .

  Avery had been the best until he’d trained Dare in his methods. Dare, however, had taken theft to a level the other man had never attempted—by invading the homes of the nobility and racking up a fortune greater than anything they’d found before in the streets. It had been a risk Avery had later attempted and adopted with some skill.

  “What have you found?”

  His partner’s expression was pained. “You don’t want to do this. More importantly, Grey? You don’t have to. Not anymore. Let me handle this. You’re free.”

  Free. This was freedom? He’d traded true freedom for a life of chains. “Who are the latest?” he demanded for a third time.

  Cursing to himself, Avery fished into his pocket and withdrew a small notepad. He tossed it over, and as Dare picked it up and flipped through the other man’s sloppier notes, Avery went on. “Earl of Moray. Baron Wentnick. And the Marquess of Ashcroft. The last fellow I heard is particularly evil. He and his wife had their own son killed,” Avery said matter-of-factly, and not as though he’d spoken of the evil act of filicide. “There’s also Baron Bolingbroke on my list.”

  Dare flipped the page and scanned the names there. “What’s his story?”

  “He and his parents saw another noble boy kidnapped so they could secure an earldom for him. Goes by the name Maxwell now.”

  Tension snapped through Dare’s frame. There’d been another nobleman who’d traded one life for another. Nay, that wasn’t altogether true. As Avery had said, that man had been forced into an existence on the streets. Dare? He’d chosen it.

  “You aren’t the only Lost Lord. Surely you heard of it?” Avery asked.

  “I . . . hadn’t,” he said, managing measured tones. He closed Avery’s sloppy notepad and made to hand it over, but then stopped. “Which one?”

  “I’m torn between Ashcroft and Bolingbroke.”

  It was not flawed logic.

  Dare’s gaze went to the columns of names he’d assembled of people in the Rookeries requiring help. “I can do one and leave you the other,” he said quietly. “I can help.”

  Avery eyed him like he’d sprung another limb. “You? Thieving still? You’re mad.” The other man chuckled. “Whyever would you want to do that?”

  Dare’s jaw clenched reflexively. Of course, because the expectation would be that Dare had found his way out and wouldn’t need . . . or want . . . to join in those same activities—stealing from society’s worst reprobates and giving to those who were truly deserving. “Whyever would I not take part?” he countered.

  “Because you’re rich,” Avery said flatly.

  “I’m not, though. Not really.” Dare went on to explain the state of the finances he’d inherited and the agreement the duke had laid out.

  Whistling, Avery reclined in his seat. “Well, either way, as I see it? You’ve plenty of stuff here that you don’t need to risk your neck to save another. Sell your properties. Sell their fancy things. That’ll be enough to last you.”

  “I’ll give it some thought,” Dare murmured. Ultimately, however, it wasn’t about him. That had long been a distinction between him and his mentor: Dare had been determined to give it all away. Avery had given away only just enough to afford him some power in the Rookeries, and the rest he’d hoarded and held on to for his own security. Having lived the same precarious existence as the other man, Dare would never pass judgment on what anyone did to survive.

  Avery came to his feet. “I have to go if I want to be in The Window.”

  Dare glanced to the clock. “Yes,” he said, unable to tamp down envy at the freedom permitted Avery to go out.

  The Window, as the other man had called it, referred to the safest hours in which to conduct one’s most precarious thefts: the early-morn hours when lords and ladies had returned drunk and tired from their night’s pleasures and passed out in their beds. It was at that time when servants stole their all-too-brief rest. And then the household was most unguarded.

  Once again a restlessness filled him. A hungering to take part.

  “Wipe that look from your face,” Avery admonished.

  Dare’s neck heated. “What look?”

  “The only time I ever saw you with that silly, infatuated look on was when you were thinking about Temperance. By the way, I thought she was done with you?”

  Yes, because after he’d found her the first time in the Cotswolds and she’d pleaded with him to leave her for good, Dare had returned to the Rookeries and revealed the end of his marriage to Avery. The other man had commiserated with him over brandy he had stolen from some nobleman’s household. “I convinced her to . . . help me one more time.”

  Laughing softly, Avery shook his head. “Always had a way with that one, you did. Always had a way with everyone.”

  Had it been anyone else, there would have been a trace of envy to those latter words. Dare stared down once again at the notepad containing Avery’s latest assignments. He and Avery, however, had managed a perfect partnership, with his mentor having been determined to look after him.

  This moment proved no different. “You don’t
want to do this, Dare. Not again,” his mentor said with a gruff gentleness, contradictory sentiments and yet both existing in truth. “And I’m not going to let you venture back out. Your days of that are done.”

  “As if you could stop me,” he called over to his mentor.

  With a snort, Avery shoved to his feet. “That much you’re correct on.” He touched the brim of his hat and headed for the doorway.

  Something in seeing his retreat sent panic spiraling. Once Avery was gone, so went with him the link Dare needed . . . craved . . . to his previous life. “I’d start with Ashcroft.”

  “And here I thought you’d say Bolingbroke.”

  Because Dare had been a victim of a crime committed by the likes of Bolingbroke. “I’m clearheaded enough to know which assignment is the right one. Mercy is more likely if you’re caught stealing from the bastard who’d kill his own son.” Is it that? Or is it simply that you want the privilege of that great theft?

  As he turned, Avery lifted a hand and waved it in parting. “You’re not wrong.”

  “I’m right,” Dare called out, earning a laugh from his mentor.

  The other man paused at the doorway. “How is she, by the way?”

  “The same,” Dare said automatically, not pretending to misunderstand who the other man spoke of. “She is the same.” And yet different. To say as much, however, would invite an elaboration Dare had no interest in providing.

  “Now that I can believe. That one was always a spark.”

  She and Avery had always had a volatile relationship, Temperance’s dislike palpable, an emotion she’d never made an attempt to conceal around the other man. Whereas Avery? Avery had always been amused by her.

  Dare stood. “I’d ask you to . . . keep me abreast of the Rookeries,” he said, that being the closest he could come to asking the other man to be part of his life still.

  “And is that something Temperance is going to support?”

  No, she wouldn’t. She’d disapproved wholeheartedly of Dare’s relationship with the other man, and even more, she’d despised the work they’d done.

  The other man chuckled again. “Not that you ever did make decisions based on how she felt about our work.” There was no recrimination there, and yet . . .

  Dare frowned. Something in hearing the other man put the words that way . . .

  “Anything else you need from me?” Avery asked, pulling him from those guilty musings.

  “Your latest list.” At the other man’s puzzled expression, Dare clarified. “Might I hold on to it . . . do some research of my own on those households?”

  Avery chuckled. “You can take a thief out of the Rookeries, but you can’t take the thief out of the man.”

  Now those were words Dare could find himself agreeing with.

  Avery nodded at him. “It is yours.”

  After Avery had gone, Dare found himself alone once more with nothing more than the ache of regret for what he was missing out on . . . and frustration with this new life he now found himself forced to live.

  He studied the four names: men who were all strangers but evil in their own right, and deserving of finding themselves targets . . . Reluctantly, he drew the center desk drawer out and filed the sheet inside.

  You? Thieving still? You’re mad . . . Whyever would you want to do that?

  Dare gathered his ledgers and stared once more at the columns of names: men, women, and children whom he’d given to.

  How adamant Avery had been that Dare should carry on in his new, comfortable existence . . . and divorce himself of his past.

  And ironically, the pair who’d long been at odds over everything and anything had come together in their opinion . . . of this. For Temperance had been insistent that Dare had to choose one life.

  To hell with the both of them . . . telling him who he should or should not be. Or what he should or should not do. Dare knew what his fate and future held. He always had.

  Go . . .

  The streets called, their whispering potent . . . stronger than the opium the men and women with their tobacco addiction craved.

  Go . . .

  A voice niggled.

  Unbidden, he found himself opening the center drawer and withdrawing the notes written in Avery’s sloppy hand.

  Do it. Why wouldn’t you?

  The funds he was here attempting to earn in Mayfair the honorable way required him to give something he didn’t know how to give. Dare stared at the page he held in his fingers. While the monies belonging to these men? That money was there, now, for the taking.

  Dare snapped his book of names closed and tucked it into the desk drawer.

  He stood, pausing to stuff the ripped page into the front of his jacket.

  A short while later, he found his way through the all-too-familiar streets of Mayfair . . . and outside the household of his latest victim.

  A man who deserved nothing but had everything.

  This was what Avery and Temperance would have him quit. The only damned thing he’d ever been good at.

  The household had been entirely doused of candlelight, leaving the townhouse welcomingly pitch black. Even the heavily clouded moonless, starless London sky complied this night, agreeing with Dare and casting aspersions upon that which Avery and Temperance had urged of him.

  Staying close to the stucco unit, Dare withdrew the dagger he’d strapped along his back. He wedged it under the window. The distinct clink of metal striking the wood echoed like a telltale shot. Hanging to the side, he waited, allowing for an errant servant still strolling the halls to investigate any out-of-place sound.

  And waited.

  Dare straightened and peered into the unlit ballroom . . . recalling a different waltz.

  What are you waiting for?

  Someone would have come by now had they heard him.

  He wiggled the blade back and forth . . . when a little face reflected back within the pane.

  Dare jumped.

  Heart thudding, he glanced around . . . and then back to the unattended child.

  The little babe wiggled its fingers and then beat them hard against the glass.

  When no one came rushing to collect the child, Dare hesitated a moment and then rested his palm against the glass.

  The child giggled happily. Naively innocent of Dare’s intentions or any evil—his father’s. His family’s.

  Dare cocked his head and studied the babe with his thick, dark hair. This boy linked to Bolingbroke.

  Dare didn’t look at the families he robbed in this light, as having children reliant upon them. He didn’t think of them, really, in any way. There were only two truths: the men he stole from were evil . . . and they deserved to lose everything.

  Now, this unattended child . . . threw all that into question. This boy, not very much younger than little Rose, whom he and Temperance had taken in that night, had a father. A mother. And a reliance upon the items that filled this household, just as Rose and the children of the Rookeries did. All the families who were dependent upon work here, and who would be split up if there weren’t funds to retain them.

  The babe tapped his fingers against the glass in a rhythmic little beat.

  Dare matched those movements, though his were silent, in the staccato rhythm he tapped.

  This was really the first time he’d been confronted with a new reality, one different from what he’d allowed himself before this. Until this moment, it had been all too easy to see the men he robbed not as victims but as sinners deserving of losing out.

  He’d not thought of them having sons and daughters. Because to do so would have humanized them. It would have forced him to look at what he did in the same light that Temperance had through the years, as something shameful . . . and wrong.

  “Where . . . issssssss he?” The cry came close to the room where the boy was, and Dare was jerked back to the moment—the danger in his being here, the risk of discovery. “Pauuuuul?”

  The little boy looked toward that commotion, and t
hen with Dare promptly forgotten, he went toddling off. “Ma-Ma-Ma.” The glass muffled the remainder of that call for his mother.

  Springing into movement, Dare quit his spot at the Baron Bolingbroke’s household and, clinging to the shadows, found his way down the narrow alley and out toward . . . home.

  Only it wasn’t really home.

  He’d never truly had one.

  Not since he’d gone off to live in the streets of East London . . . where he’d remained until now.

  And there had never been a home again.

  Dare quit Bolingbroke’s street and continued walking. Time melted away, and he continued on . . . until he found his way back to his townhouse. Spencer stood in wait, opening the door for him. The servant gave no outward reaction to Dare’s suspicious nighttime travels, dutiful servant that he was. Dare continued walking, climbing the stairs, and didn’t stop until he’d found his way outside a partially cracked open ivory door, resplendent in tulips and roses that had been etched into the panel, two small ponies frolicking at the very center of the beautifully crafted piece. So much loving mastery . . . of something as simple as a door. No detail had been forgotten. Intricate care had been taken for the entryway of this room.

  Not so much as blinking, Dare stared at those carvings.

  You got me a horse, Mama . . . a hooooorse!

  His mother’s answering laugh filled Dare’s ears.

  Why had he come here? This place where his memories were strongest.

  He had turned to go when the faintest whisper of song froze him in his tracks.

  Tom, he was a piper’s son

  He learned to play when he was young

  The only tune that he could play

  Was over the hills and far away.

  Dare moved closer, edging the panel open another fraction so he had an unhampered view of the owner of that voice.

  Over the hills and a long way off

  The wind shall blow my topknot off . . .

  He felt drawn to that soft, lyrical melody, soothing and entrancing for its simplicity. Engrossed as she was in the child in her arms, Temperance gave no hint of awareness as Dare slipped in.