Dance of Seduction (4 page)

“Until now,” he said mulishly.

“So you plan to assault me in the alley in broad daylight, do you?”

“Confound it, that’s not—” He looked thoroughly exasperated. “I only meant that women of your sort shouldn’t be prancing about Spitalfields.”

“I’ll have you know that I do not ‘prance’ anywhere. And I had no idea I had a ‘sort.’ Precisely what is my ‘sort’?”

“You know what I mean. A young, unmarried lady of rank with more time on her hands than sense.”

“Such compliments! Aren’t you the gallant gentleman? I begin to think you might truly be a naval captain after all.”

Her sarcasm made him cock one eyebrow. “Did you think I was lying?”

She shrugged. “You sound like a Frenchman, and I doubt the navy commissions many French captains.”

“I’m as English as you are.”

“I don’t see how. You mix French too easily and too well in your speech. The English are always mangling it, myself included.”

“I grew up in Geneva, that’s all. So I tend to use both my childhood languages.” He crossed his arms casually over his chest. “And anyway, it’s no business of yours where I’m from and what my profession is.”

“Ah, but there you’re wrong. You’re my neighbor, and I must consider my children’s welfare. With your shop so close, I’d like to know what sort of person we’ll be dealing with in the future.”

His heavy black brows lowered in a scowl. “Stay away from my shop, and you won’t have to deal with me at all.”
Abruptly, he turned on his heel and headed for the open door.

For a moment, she could only gape at him, the sheer enormity of his rudeness knocking the wind out of her. But as he reached the door, she recovered her composure. “You certainly set me straight, didn’t you? God forbid that a person should try to be neighborly.”

Cursing under his breath, he whirled toward her. “Let me make this clear, Lady Clara. I’d rather that you
not
be neighborly.” Then he paused, a decidedly sinful expression spreading over his face. Resting his hand on the doorknob, he allowed his gaze to play over her suggestively. “No, I take that back. Be as neighborly as you like as long as you leave your brats at home. I always welcome female…companionship, especially when the female is so choice.”

She’d have to be an idiot to mistake his meaning. “Is that your idea of a compliment? Because if it is, it’s in very bad taste.”

“That was my idea of an invitation. I beg your pardon if I wasn’t clear enough.”

“Oh, you were quite clear, sir. But you’ll have to use the establishment down the street for that sort of companionship. I’m afraid my talents don’t lie in that area.”

“What a pity,” he said coolly. “Because I have no other use for you as a neighbor, and no use at all for your charges. So keep them away from my shop. Understood?”

“Perfectly.” She wouldn’t let her children near his shop now even if he gave them his goods for free.

“
Adieu
, mademoiselle.” He entered his shop and closed the door with a bang.

Good Lord, what a man! First to act as if he feared being robbed by every one of her charges and then to give her a most insulting invitation! She hoped she never had to deal with him again. Such rudeness went beyond the pale.

Still muttering to herself about their astonishing neighbor,
she turned toward the top of the alley, where Samuel waited for her, scowling.

“What did that fellow want?” Samuel asked as she neared him.

Thank heavens Samuel hadn’t heard what the beastly creature really wanted. “Johnny picked his pocket. I was trying to soothe things over.”

Samuel eyed her oddly. “Are you sure that’s what Johnny did?”

“I caught Johnny red-handed. And he wasn’t only ‘practicing,’ I assure you. Fortunately, Captain Pryce was willing to overlook the matter.” And lecture her and insult her in the bargain.

Samuel kept staring at the closed door to the shop. “
Captain
Pryce?”

“He claims to be a captain in Her Majesty’s Navy.”

“Looked too rough to be a naval officer, if you ask me.”

Rough? Oh, yes. But if his behavior weren’t so appalling, she would call him attractive—in a roguish sort of way. Those formidable thick brows…strong, aggressive features…intriguing eyes. A pity he had the manners of a troll.

A small smile touched her lips. He should fit in nicely around here.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. For all his surliness and rude suggestions, he bore little resemblance to one-eyed Briggs with his coarse language and filthy habits. Or that brutal boxer Harry, who leaped out with his fists to avenge any offense, large or small.

Still, she could understand what Samuel meant by “rough.” Captain Pryce had a certain hardness…an authoritarian air and rampantly masculine strength that sent delicious shivers along her spine. Any “female companion” would probably be well pleased to find herself at his disposal.

Good Lord, what was she thinking? The man was a beast. It was just as well that he’d warned her and her children away. Any woman of good sense would avoid dealing with him entirely.

Besides, she had far more important matters to attend to now that Uncle Cecil had bequeathed her a fortune. “Oh, Samuel, I haven’t yet told you the news, have I?” As they left the alley, she explained about her new inheritance, thankful that her revelation took his mind—and hers—off the disturbing Captain Pryce.

When they reached the Home, she paused to survey the faded brick façade with an assessing eye. “What do you think should be done first with the money?”

“That’s easy—you got to fix the roof. Leaks every time it rains. You got to put up new tiles.”

“And something should be done about the listing shutters and the windows, too.”

“Sturdier ones is what you need, tightly hung so as not to let in great drafts.”

She nodded. “Poor miserable old matron.” It had weathered a hundred years, first as a hospital for the insane until Bedlam had edged it out, and then as her own imperfect Home. “I’d dearly love to dress her up a bit—paint the trim a bright blue and replace the crumbling cornices with more magnificent ones—but then the old girl would look entirely out of place in Spitalfields.”

“And that’d surely mean trouble, m’lady.”

“Yes.” It would mean the difference between being left alone or being continually robbed. “I suppose we’d best confine repairs to the practical.” She smiled at Samuel. “I’d better go in. Mrs. Carter will want to hear the good news.” Mrs. Carter managed the Home as lovingly as any hen with a brood of chicks, though she was getting on in years and often
spoke of retiring. Clara didn’t know what she’d do without her when she did.

“When shall me and the coachman return to fetch you? Five o’clock as usual?”

“That’s fine. Oh, and Samuel?” She glanced back down the street to the alley. “Ask Aunt Verity to hunt up the navy lists and send them over at once. I know she has them. She used to follow her cousin’s postings rather closely in the lists.”

“Planning to check up on the cap’n’s claims, are you?”

She shrugged. “It’s always good to know who your neighbors are.”

Samuel eyed her shrewdly. “You never checked up on old Mrs. Tildy, when she moved in down the street, or—”

“Just tell my aunt to send over her navy lists.” Then she hurried up the stairs, not wanting to see her footman’s curious expression.

It was simply a precaution. She wanted to make sure Captain Pryce was who he said he was. After all, with him so close by and her children so vulnerable, it only made sense. There was nothing more to it than that. Nothing at all.

She was so intent on her self-avowals that she didn’t notice five-year-old Timothy Perkins until she’d crossed the foyer. He hadn’t yet seen her. His eyes were fixed on the floor, and only when he suddenly smashed something with his foot did she realize he was absorbed by one of the many bugs that plagued the old building.

She started to ask why he was waiting outside the library, the one room her charges avoided. Then she thought better of it and glided toward him silently. But as she neared him, he looked up and froze. When he glanced to the library door in a panic, her eyes narrowed. She recognized a lookout when she saw one.

He opened his mouth to give the warning, but she shot him the Stanbourne Stare and held a finger to her lips. He slumped. Poor lad. His brother Johnny might defy her, but little Timothy was still young enough to be cowed.

Laying one hand on his shoulder for reassurance, she stepped up to the door and held her ear to the crack.

“So are you going back?” asked a voice she recognized as David Walsh’s.

“Bloody right I am.” That was Johnny’s voice. “At least to get me money. The sly knave didn’t give me a farthing for the watch. I know it’s worth at least eight shillings.”

“Well, you could hardly expect him to give you money with m’lady standing there,” David said. “Then she’d know what you were both doing. And I’ve heard tell that the cap’n ain’t stupid. He wouldn’t let himself get caught in the act by her.”

The captain? Giving Johnny money for a watch behind her back?

The truth hit her with brutal force, settling in her belly like a lead weight. Captain Pryce, curse his hide, was one of those awful men who provided the other half of the thievery equation: a receiver of stolen goods.

Of course! That explained so much. Why a naval captain—if he really was such a thing—had settled in Spitalfields. Why he and Johnny had been in the alley.

God rot that scoundrel! While she’d been away paying a long overdue visit to Papa’s relations in the country, he’d been settling in here, coaxing her children back into crime. And she’d actually thanked him for letting Johnny go. How could she have been so stupid?

A shop for sailor’s goods, indeed. She ought to know better. Fences often marketed their stolen wares under the guise of legitimate shops. Especially in Spitalfields, where legend said you could “lose” a snuffbox in one street and buy it back
a few minutes later in another. No doubt that’s why he’d set himself up here.

Devil take him! Until now she’d been fortunate to have no fences operating so close to her Home. This end of the street held mostly taverns and rag shops, neither of which tempted her children to stray. Having a fence half a block away would be disaster.

“Did the cap’n say how much he’d give you?” queried a feminine voice. Mary Butler, no doubt. She worshipped Johnny the way Johnny worshipped fat purses.

“No, we didn’t get to it before m’lady came up.”

“When you go back to the shop, tell us how much he offers,” David said. “’Cause I heard it’s more than any of the fences who work for the Specter. And the cap’n might be less rough to deal with than them.”

The Specter? The hair rose on the back of her neck. Rumor had it that every fence in Spitalfields worked for the master criminal. His nickname came from his ability to run his business in utter anonymity. Wearing a hooded cloak that hid his face, he handled transactions in dimly lit rooms that changed with each encounter. Even his fences didn’t know who he really was, which was why he’d eluded the authorities for years.

The pickpockets, being superstitious by nature, thought his uncanny ability to escape capture was supernatural. Rumors abounded that he could fly over the water, that he’d once floated from one building to another while being pursued.

Nonsense, all of it. But his reputation for ruthlessness was not. Anybody who crossed him eventually turned up in some forgotten alley with a slit throat.

“We don’t know for sure he ain’t in league with the Specter,” Johnny said. “That cap’n looks as hard as any of the Specter’s men. I heard he was once a pirate.”

“I heard he was a smuggler,” Mary said in a whisper. “I’ll
wager he could slip a knife in a man’s belly as easy as any of the Specter’s men.”

Was that just the typical exaggeration of children? Or was this captain really so dastardly? Clara strained closer, hoping to hear more.

“You should stay away from him, Johnny,” Mary went on plaintively. “Let that cap’n keep the watch. Why would you want to return to the old life? There ain’t naught but trouble in it.”

Clara smiled. At least one of her children had good sense.

David snorted. “You only say that ’cause you’re jealous, Mary. You couldn’t lift a watch off a cully even if he was blind, deaf, and dumb.”

“Could so!” little maligned Mary cried. “I once took a lace wiper off a gentry mort while she stared right at me!”

A “wiper” was a handkerchief. Stealing them had been Mary’s specialty.

“It don’t count when the lady offers it to you to blow your nose,” David retorted.

“She didn’t, you arse! I stole it fair and square!”

“And anyway, a wiper don’t compare to a gold watch like Johnny told us about. You know how hard it is to filch a tick like that? And Johnny here lifted a ten-pound note from a wrestler once and got away without a scratch. You never done nothing like that.”

Wonderful. Now they were competing for the title of Most Talented Pickpocket.

Johnny said offhandedly, “Leave her be, David.”

“Why? Is she your flash-girl?”

“At least
I
do my own filching,” Mary shot back. “I don’t hide behind Johnny while he does all the work.”

“Odsfish, I’ll get you for that!” David cried.

At the sounds of scuffling, Clara decided she would hear nothing more of use and hastily pushed open the door. David
and Mary were engaged in a hair tug-of-war that Johnny was trying to break up.

“That’s enough!” She separated them swiftly, grabbing Mary with one hand and David with the other. “I don’t want another word about who steals better! And no more about that cursed captain either, if you know what’s good for you.”

All three went pale when they realized how much she’d overheard. They glanced accusingly to little Tim, standing behind her.

“Bloody hell, you let her listen in?” Johnny snapped at his poor brother.

“I tried to warn you,” Timothy cried, “but m’lady wouldn’t let me!”

Johnny snorted in disgust. If Clara hadn’t been so upset by the whole mess, she would have laughed. Johnny was a fool if he thought a five-year-old could stand firm against the Stanbourne Stare.