by Laura Parker
The muscles in his shoulders became rock hard as he held himself still against something she did not understand. He did not touch her anymore. He had taken his arms from her waist and gripped instead the chair arms. This is what he had wanted, demanded, only minutes earlier. Now he was reluctant. He shuddered like a man in the throes of some enormous pain. Yet she went on kissing him. For now, after weeks of enmity and strife, all she wanted in the world was to continue kissing him, to kiss him until there was nothing left but this moment, this terrible wondrous feeling of dread, and the power.
She had never felt such influence over another creature, never before knew that she had at her disposal the means to move another being. What bliss, to make a man sigh!
Jack wondered at her power to wound him. He had not suspected that skill to be hers, the ability to reach so neatly beneath his guard and strike with deadly accuracy at his heart. No one since … since … no one.
He lifted his hands slowly toward her, aware with every ounce of rational sense left him that once he embraced her he would not ever be able to completely let go again. Better not to touch, not to want, not to surrender for even an instant than to live with the enormity of the want rising like lava from the depths of his soul.
So small a thing, so tiny, her display of compassion. Yet he had never before known the emotion in any guise. Women admired, adored, desired, or despised him. None of them had ever looked upon him and acknowledged in simple sympathy his humanity. Now Miss Sabrina Lyndsey had. And he would never forgive her for it!
Sabrina drew back first, the spur the smallest sound in the world. The cause was, perhaps, the scritch-scratch of mice claws in the wall or the spit and hiss of resin touched by flame. Some sound alerted her to their precarious situation. And she found she was not lost, not quite, to the world.
Jack opened his eyes and the full heat of his hunger flooded her. She had expected to be sliced to ribbons by his acerbic speech but now she was awash in a heat so finely wrought that even her toes curled in defense of the flame in those silver eyes.
“Stand up, Sabrina.”
His voice was so husky she scarcely recognized it as his, yet she acted upon his instruction without hesitation, sweeping her skirts free of his legs even as footsteps came down the hall. Moments later the door to the salon opened and an amazed maid stuck her head in.
“Oh, beg pardon!” she exclaimed and shut the door so quickly Sabrina had no time to stop her.
“There,” he mimicked in a girlish tone, “see what you’ve done to my reputation?”
She spun about to find the old amusement the only emotion in his perfectly composed face. “Well, weren’t you about to say something of kind to me?”
She stared at him a moment longer. He looked as at ease as if she had just served him a dish of chocolate instead of a feast of stormy, passion-laced kisses. She, on the other hand, felt flush and damp in a dozen places. She knew from his expression that her face perfectly reflected her tumult. So what? She, too, had felt with her own hands and lips and body his response. His appearance might defy it yet she knew now that he was not unmoved.
She turned from his challenge. “I think I have nothing more to say to you.”
“Then at last we are agreed.” He rose gracefully in a single fluid movement that brought him to his superior height before her. Reaching up, he draped her necklace of pearls about her throat and then worked the clasp.
When he was done he touched the lavaliere and then trailed that finger down into the warm valley of her cleavage. “I will come to collect my prize when I have earned it.”
She did not ask him what he meant. “I must speak with him.”
He looked up from her lush bosom. “Oh, you will see your Black Jack Law again. That I do solemnly promise you.”
“You understand your part?”
Zuberi smiled. “She understands perfectly, my lord.”
“I can speak for meself.” Alvy McKee, the Irish girl herself, had not softened a jot during her sojourn beneath the viscount’s roof. “And I’m after sayin’ I don’t like it.”
“Your opinion is of negligible importance, my girl.”
Jack inspected her for flaws. Her face had healed during the past week to reveal the features of a pleasant-faced creature. With her wild red hair washed and pinned back beneath her servant’s cap, she looked almost respectable. Almost. The stubborn set of her wide mouth, her remarkable height, and Amazonian proportions set her apart from the average timid, thin drab of an English maid. Moreover, even properly corseted and gowned in the dull garments of a maid, her figure and youth were undeniable.
She was right to suspect dishonorable intentions from men. It was upon just that appeal which his plan to free Jack Law depended. Yet it might easily misfire. If he lost the gamble they might be gaoled together by dawn.
He turned to his servant. “You have the message I entrusted to you?”
“May a thousand flies sting my flesh if I fail you,” Zuberi replied.
“I doubt the measure will be necessary,” Jack observed dryly. “But, if the lady agrees to follow my instruction, see her safely to the Coeur de Lion Inn before you attempt the more daring enterprise I’ve set out for you.”
“You may depend upon your most faithful one.”
Jack nodded and began pulling on his gloves, eager to be off. He was dressed for traveling in boots and leather breeches and a great winter coat to ward off the November chill. He had slept away the day, having given his night to the company of Sabrina.
Jack smiled cryptically. Was he the first gentleman to stage a gaol break in order to seduce a woman? Possibly not. If bards wrote true, men had over the centuries attempted any number of fantastical feats in order to win an hour between the thighs of their fair one, things which even the most inebriated fellow would not attempt. All in the name of love.
Jack smirked. Love! Hellfire and damnation! He was not in love. He was in rut for the most delicious young woman he had ever met. By morning he would be sated, avenged, and his own complaisant self again.
Sabrina had come to occupy his thoughts and actions more thoroughly than was wise. The lust he felt for her must be burned out. A night would be enough. Two nights too much.
That bit of self-awareness momentarily disconcerted him. Two nights too much? Why did he think that?
Shrugging off unaccustomed disquiet, he glanced again at his accomplice in the plot.
Zuberi had changed from his usual immaculate livery into loose-legged culottes, untucked shirt, and brogues. The poor man’s garb only served to emphasize his exotic appearance. Certainly his proportions were more obviously revealed.
An ebony Hercules, Jack mused absently and then after a second thought, glanced sharply at Alvy. The girl was eyeing Zuberi with all the tender admiration of a lady in the presence of her first beau.
Jack scowled at the pair. It seldom occurred to him to consider the private lives of his servants. Zuberi had an uncanny habit of drawing the amorous eye of the more adventuresome women wherever he went. No doubt the ex-gladiator was an agreeable armful in bed and Zuberi could swive her all he liked, with his blessing. But the exchange of calf-eyed glances did not bode well for his own purposes. He would not allow a street waif to steal his valet.
“You know what to do with the miscreant, should you succeed in liberating him?” he said crisply.
Zuberi tore his gaze reluctantly from Alvy. “Aye, my lord. I am to see him to freedom. You will be going now ahead of us to London?”
“No. I’ve business yet in town.” He glanced again at Alvy. “When you leave for London, do not bring Alvy with you. Her accent is likely to draw unnecessary attention to our plot.”
Stone-faced, Zuberi returned his attention to the viscount. “Is there any other way in which I might serve you, my lord?”
“See the matter through, that is all I ask.” He glanced deliberately at Alvy and away. “I am depending upon you alone.”
“Ah, but his lordship is not to be doubted, loveliness.”
“His eyes were as cold as the wail of a banshee. Me Da says there’s spirits as walk the earth in the guise of mortals.”
Zuberi’s complexion grayed. “Do not speak of them! You will call them to you.”
“Call who?” Alvy demanded.
“The dead who walk,” the great man whispered.
“Wirra! Is what you’re after callin’ his lordship behind his back?” Her laughter was unexpectedly musical. “I’d like to see himself answer that.”
Alvy’s amusement could not sway Zuberi. He came up to her and put a long thick finger to her smiling lips. “Do not mock the spirit world, mistress. Another time I will tell you a tale of great horror, a tale told me by my own mother.”
Alvy stared into the familiar dark face that had shared her pillow for the first time the night before and wondered how someone who looked himself like a phantasm come to life could believe as she did in so many ways.
She reached up and cupped his cheek. It still amazed her to find it smooth, though he said he seldom shaved. The beard of a man was a sign of his virility, her ma had once told her. Wirra! A mistaken measure, certainly.
She had never thought to lay with a man who was not hers, though it be only through handfast. Now she had given herself to a heathen. Her Da would have beaten her. Yet this man, with his dark skin and the strangely slanting black eyes and a smile wider than heaven itself, had been kind to her from the very first day. He had bathed her bruises, not once but twice, had fed her his share of the servant’s rations and then gone back for more for himself, knowing that no one in the viscount’s household would deny him.
How could she say no to him when he had come to her cot under the eaves of the house the night before and put his hand on her, startling her to wakefulness with its heat? How could she refuse the kiss he had so gently and sweetly placed on her mouth? How could she refuse his gentling touch as he stroked her from shoulder to hip and back, again and again until her blood sang some new tune?
If he had asked, if he had spoken a single word, she would have found a way to refuse him. But he did not ask. He never said anything, not when his kisses deepened and his arms tightened about her, or when he pulled her from her narrow pallet onto the floor beside him. He never asked or begged or demanded, just looked at her with such joy in his eyes and such happiness on his face that she could not find any words of reproach.
She had gone with him into the sweet bliss of desire, not knowing from one moment to the next if he would crush her to death or tear her apart in his need. He had done neither. He had cracked the world and shown her the beauty of its center.
And now she could no longer think how to breathe without being in his presence. “Ye won’t be leavin’ me behind, will ye, Zuberi?” Her face felt tight, her eyes hot with unshed tears. “Ye won’t allow himself to part us?”
“Mistress Alvy darling,” Zuberi intoned in his oddly formal way, “I may not disobey his lordship. He has spoken. It must be.”
Despair sliced through Alvy. “What am I to do?”
He smiled. “I will persuade his lordship to send for you.”
“What if ye cannot?”
He did not lie to her. His face lost its ardor and the solemnity of it pierced her heart.
Alvy snatched her hand from his face and then, thinking better of it, raised it to strike him smartly across his cheek. “That’s what I think of yer promises, Mr. Blackamoor!”
“Wait!” he called after her as she started out of the room. “You have a duty to the viscount. He is depending upon us.”
“Ye’re his man, not I!” she tossed over her shoulder without pausing. “Bad cess to the pair o’ ye!”
Chapter Eighteen
At first it seemed the room was empty. A mephitic gloom permeated everything with the damp sourness of rotting hay while an unseen bucket, called a chaise d’aisance by the French, offered the commingled stench of human feces and retching.
Shadows folded back upon shadows chased barely to arm’s length as Jack held the lantern he carried aloft. Finally something moved in the far corner of the brick-walled cell, something humped and huddled. Larger than a rat, Jack readily surmised. Therefore it must be a man.
He had paid the guard a few coins into order to view the infamous Black Jack Law, much as one would at a menagerie of zoo animals in London. He was not the first to bribe his way into a gaol. The aristocracy and gentry considered the viewing of condemned criminals a great diversion, especially if the prisoner was in any way notorious. He, however, was getting very little so far for his fee.
“You, fellow.”
The shape convulsed as if in terror and Jack heard the faint clink of fetters. Damnation! Chains would make his task that much more difficult. Yet, he was not without resources. He fingered the heavy iron key in the pocket of his greatcoat.
He approached the still huddled figure. “If you be the highwayman who calls himself Jack Law, show yourself. Otherwise be damned to you!”
The harshly spoken words, though barely above a whisper, did the trick. The figure sat up, revealing much less of a man and much more of a boy than Jack had supposed he would find.
As he swung his lantern forward for a better view, the scarecrow figure threw up a bony hand to shade his eyes. The person before him was a gangly, very wiry youth of perhaps fifteen—no, fourteen. No beard smoked his lean cheeks. There was mud and blood smeared across his face, which distorted his features, and long ropes of tangled greasy hair lay limply on his thin shoulders.
Jack’s brows lifted. What folly was this?
“Attend me. I will ask but once. Are you Blackjack the highwayman?”
The scarecrow’s mouth began to work as if it were on rusty hinges in need of oil. Finally the voice that issued from it was as pathetic as it was hoarse. “I sweared I was. Only, God’s truth, I ain’t!”
“Then why did you say you were?” Jack prompted, accustomed by his own notorious life to dealing with knaves and chicanery of every stripe.
The figure struggled to his feet to the accompaniment of clinking chains, revealing an all but shredded shirt that hung in ribbons from his thin shoulders and wrists. Stains caused by, Jack surmised bleakly, any number of disgusting causes matted his breeches. Yet he waited with a patience neither of them could truly afford for an answer to his question. Finally the figure staggered about, revealing his back.
His thin back was a mass of crisscrossed welts blacked by dried blood from which matted wisps of straw protruded like grotesque whiskers. Jack winced at the sight, as eloquent an answer as any bard might have made him.
“The confession was beaten out of you.” It was not a question.
He approached the boy cautiously but there was no need to expect assault, for the weakened boy collapsed, his legs folding under him, long before Jack reached his side.
“Can you walk?” He bent down to briefly to prod the prisoner’s shoulder, feeling knobby bone beneath thin skin. “Your life depends upon it.”
The boy’s head jerked up and Jack found himself staring into bloodshot eyes of fearful blue tinged with a spark of hope. “I ain’t guilty. That’s not a word of a lie!”
Jack knew better than to offer the wretched boy sympathy. Only anger would give him the strength he needed to escape.
“Perhaps you are not guilty of the crime of which you’ve been accused. But do not abuse my wits with the notion you are innocent. You may answer me this. Why were you chosen to be hanged as Jack Law?”
The young man hung his head so low it seemed as if the weight of it would snap his wretchedly thin neck. “I cannot say.”
“Who did you rob? Come now.” Jack prodded him with his boot tip. “I’m not your confessor nor do I give a jo
t if you robbed the Queen herself. Only do not try my patience or I will wring your worthless neck myself and save the hangman’s fee.”
This got the boy’s attention and he lifted his head again, anger burning now in those pain-rimmed eyes. “I stole a chicken. To feed me family. Da’s gone and Ma’s ailin’.”
“A pretty tale.”
The boy struggled again to his feet and in the meager lantern light his former sallow skin was ruddy with indignation. “I’m tellin’ ye true, though ye see me hanged for it!”
Jack smiled. So the boy had spunk. He reached into his pocket and withdrew the key, which he tossed at the boy’s feet. “See if that affects the small miracle we’re in need of. Do be lively, fellow. I’ve no desire to share your accommodations. The guard could return at any moment.”
The boy scrambled in the fetid hay to pick up the key and awkwardly inserted it in the manacle that chained him to the wall.
Jack watched in weary resignation, faintly curious to know why so ill-suited a victim had been chosen to represent the swaggering figure of the country’s most infamous highwayman. Nothing about the boy fit the image of the flamboyant, elegant, hale and hearty, and reputedly aristocratic Mr. Law. Even the age was incongruent. He could not imagine that this puling lad had yet managed to mount his first woman.
The distinct metallic click of the lock opening brought a smile to both their faces. “Give me that,” Jack directed, holding out a gloved hand for the key, which he promptly returned to his pocket. “You are to remain here until the occasion arises when you see your moment for escape. Not a moment before, do you understand me?”
“I don’t,” the boy freely confessed.
Jack’s smile was as brief as it was beautiful. “If you fail me, I’ll dance a jig on your grave. Do you understand that?”