Lady of Desire (11 page)

“I have no intention of it,” he answered coldly, “and the name is Blade.”

“As you prefer. If that is all, I will bid you good night.”

Blade tossed him an insolent nod.

“One more thing,” Lucien added, pausing in the doorway. “I was sorry to hear about your brother.”

Blade just looked at him. The man knew too damned much about everyone and everything.

With a cordial nod, Lucien went back inside and shut the door firmly behind him. Blade heard a series of locks sharply sliding home as he walked away, and he took insult even though he knew none was intended. He looked over his shoulder in scorn.
Don’t worry, Lord Lucien. If I wanted to break into your house, I could do it in a trice
.

Bloody aristocrats. His mood gone foul, he jumped up onto the driver’s bench and sat with Jimmy for the ride back to the rookery. He didn’t need to be driven around Town like a bloody prince.

As the coach wove through the dark, deserted streets, he looked down broodingly at his rough, callused hands resting loosely on his lap. They shook with anger and shame at the reminder of just how far he had fallen in life and with the cold, slightly nauseating uneasiness of a schoolboy who has just pinned the wings of a butterfly that he had thoughtlessly netted in a sunny meadow.

The last thing he had wanted was to hurt her.

Waiting for her brother in the darkened front parlor, Jacinda paced in restless agitation until she heard the front door close as Lucien came in. She rushed to the sofa and quickly sat down, smoothing her skirts. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, braced for battle. The diplomatic Lucien was her most broad-minded, lenient brother, but—still. This time she knew she was in for it.

He strode in a moment later and propped his fists on his waist, shaking his head at her. “You are in the suds, my girl.”

She clenched her jaw and looked away.

“Are you completely mad?”

“I have my reasons.”

“We will be most interested to hear them all, I assure you. Is there anything you wish to say for yourself before I take you over to Knight House to speak with the others?”

She groaned at the thought of a full-fledged family meeting. “Lucien, please—”

“I am not covering for you on this,” he said flatly. “It was a blasted foolish thing to do. I don’t know what possessed a cutthroat like Blade to show mercy, but thank God he did.”

She snorted and folded her arms across her chest.

Lucien sauntered closer. “Did he harm you, insult you in any way?”

“His arrogance is most insulting, yes.”

“You know what I mean,” he chided. “He admitted kissing you. If he did any more than that, one of us is going to have call him out.”

The blood drained from her face as she looked swiftly at him. “No! Good God, do not speak of dueling! He didn’t do anything like that. Lucien, it was my fault!”

“Your fault?”

“Entirely.” She gave an earnest nod as her cheeks turned red. “I rather… fancied him at first.”

He lifted his eyebrow.

“Well, I hate him now, of course. I meant to go to France, and that insolent peasant brute had to interfere!”

Lucien stroked his chin with a bemused expression.

“What did he want as his reward for bringing me back?” she asked in wary cynicism.

“Nothing. Perhaps your kiss was payment enough,” he added with a sardonic shrug.

“Are you going to tell Robert and the others that I kissed him? Please, don’t, Lucien, I beg you. This has all been humiliating enough.”

He considered for a moment, then gave a philosophical sigh. “You appear unharmed by your adventure, and God knows you’re already in hot-enough water without adding that bit of fuel to the fire. Besides, it wouldn’t do to have Damien or Alec rushing off to put a bullet in him. The blackguard has his uses.”

“Who is he, really?” She asked, leaning toward her brother confidentially.

“Why,” Lucien said with an opaque smile, “the leader of the Fire Hawks, of course. Come along, my dear. It is time to pay the piper.”

Eddie the Knuckler kept the hours of an alley cat. When most children his age were still safely tucked in their beds and dreaming, he was ambling along through the predawn darkness toward Covent Garden Market to see what he could get from the vendors who would soon be setting up their stalls for the day’s business. The highborn rakes who came staggering out of the whorehouses off the piazza early each morning, sick with too much drink from the night before also made excellent targets for a lad ambitious to pinch a fine silk handkerchief or a gold watch.

As Eddie approached the junction of two narrow city streets not far from St. Giles’s Church, his thoughts turning industriously upon the coming morning’s adventures, he was suddenly seized by the shoulder and felt a large hand clamp down over his mouth, so big it nearly wrapped from ear to ear. He was yanked around the corner like a rag doll, where somebody slammed his back against the brick wall of the alley.

“Got him, O’Dell! Here’s the little whoreson.”

Looking up in terror, scarcely able to breathe past the giant hand over his mouth, Eddie found himself surrounded by several top members of the Jackals’ gang. These were the men, he realized, who had done unspeakable things to Mary Murphy, who was only a few years older than he.

Tyburn Tim was the one holding him, but Bloody Fred was there, fresh out of Bedlam and looking half rabid; Flash, striking a dandyish pose against the wall; and Baumer, who had a laugh like an earthquake and loomed half as big as a house. Eddie’s heart hammered against his ribs as the Jackals parted to admit their leader, the wiry, brown-haired Cullen O’Dell.

O’Dell prowled out of the deeper shadows of the alley past his henchmen. An ordinary child would have screamed outright, but hardy young Eddie managed to restrain himself to a large gulp when he saw what had become of O’Dell’s face.

The leader of the Jackals had long acted like a monster; now he looked like one, as well. The left side of O’Dell’s face looked normal, but the right was a swollen, shapeless, purple mass. His right eyelid was a horrifying bulge like a big, quivery blob of grape jam. A series of welts in a diagonal line bruised his cheek. Eddie thought the bruises resembled chain links.

“Well, if it isn’t Blade’s little mascot.” As O’Dell bent down slowly to Eddie’s height, his good eye, crazed and blue, swept the boy’s face with feverish intensity. “Top o‘ the mornin’, little man. You’re not gonna scream like a girl, are you?”

When Eddie shook his head in fright, O’Dell flipped a nod at Tyburn Tim, who eased his hand off Eddie’s mouth. The boy gasped for breath, his chest heaving.

“Now, then, Master Eddie. You know who we are, don’t ye?”

“Aye, sir. The Jackals.”

“That’s right. And pretty soon, all you see around you is goin‘ to be our turf. Why do you want to cast your lot with a pack of poltroons like the Fire Hawks, Eddie? A plucky little knuckler like you can do better. We think you should join wid‘ us.“

Eddie held very still. O’Dell’s tone was sly and silky, but the hard, wild glitter in his blue eye scared him.

“Aye, now you’re listening, ain’t ye?” O’Dell reached into his pocket, pulled out a shilling, and held it up in front of Eddie’s face. “I’m gonna give this to you, little Master Eddie.” He dropped the coin in Eddie’s coat pocket. “There’s plenty more where that came from if you do what I ask.”

“And if I don’t?” he asked defiantly, trying to be as brave as Blade.

O’Dell laughed gruffly and turned to his mates. “I told you he had pluck.”

Eddie looked at him warily.

O’Dell turned back to him with a cold, indulgent smile. “If you don’t, I’ll have Bloody Fred here skin you alive and make your hide into my wallet.”

Eddie gasped, jolting back against the wall at the horrible threat. When he looked up at the ex-Bedlamite, Fred held up his knife and breathed on it with a smile, polishing the blade with his dirty sleeve. For a second, he felt he might puke. There was no doubt in his mind that Bloody Fred would happily flay him and make him into a wallet.

Rookery lore claimed that Bloody Fred had once murdered and eaten one of his former landlords.

“What do you want with me?” Eddie cried, turning to O’Dell.

O’Dell smiled, edged closer, and dropped his voice. “I want you to become my spy, Eddie. I want to know where and when Blade means to carry out his next housebreakin‘.”

“Why?” Eddie breathed, wide-eyed.

“Don’t ask foolish questions, laddie. And don’t even think about double-crossin‘ me, because I’ll find out and let Fred have at you. You’ll do as I ask, or you’ll wish you was never born.” With that, O’Dell let him go.

Eddie slipped free and ran away as fast as his pumping legs could carry him.

Reclining on his tent-bed under the draped veils, a cheroot dangling from his lips, Blade stared sullenly across the room at the spot where the Canaletto had sat. Earlier today he had pawned the painting to buy more guns for his war against the Jackals. It was no mean trick moving a one-of-a-kind work of art through the black market, but his acquaintances in the art specialty were reliable and discreet. Now the aura of glamor that had visited his drab cell had fled, leaving it as it had always been, mean and hard and bare. The walls were cracked, the ceiling stained, and every damned time it rained, the roof leaked.

With an exhalation of smoke, he rested his elbow on his bent knee and lifted his hand to gaze at the diamond necklace wrapped around his fist like a tiny, glittering lifeline. What a devil that girl was, leaving it here for him to find.

His stare was faraway as he brooded on what to make of the gift. What did it mean? His male pride bristled; his survivor’s wariness warned of a thousand dangers; hope danced painfully like flickering flames torturing his implacable will. By God, he was no charity boy. His pride would not countenance her pity. For all he knew, she had left the necklace as a trap, setting him up with the outrageous donation only to accuse him of stealing it. It would be a neat means of revenge for returning her to her family and to the unwanted marriage that awaited her.

But maybe, just maybe, came his vulnerable heart’s small whisper, she had left it because she had seen something good in him. Something worth saving. The possibility that this was a gift freely given simply because she had thought him worthy shook him. And as he stared into the glittering facets of the diamond, brilliant in the dusty daylight slanting through the window into his room, his mind drifted back to a day long ago, the day he had learned, for once and for all, that he was worth nothing, to memories he rarely dared revisit of Cornwall and the sun’s bright glitter on the wide blue sea…

“Biiill-yyy!”

“Look at that one, Billy!”

“I’m looking!”

Laughter. Boyish voices.

The low-sinking sun glinted gold off the brass folding telescope as Billy Albright braced his foot on the gunwale and steadied his aim against the skiff’s pitching, the salt wind riffling through his flaxen hair. One suspender fell over his shoulder, and the breeze billowed through his loose white shirt as he stared through his father’s borrowed telescope at the be-whiskered gray Atlantic seals posturing and barking at each other from their various perches upon the greenish black rocks. Before the days of King Arthur, the giant of Portreath had hurled the boulders there to help him catch his supper in the form of unsuspecting ships.
Already told them that one
. Every inch of this corner of Cornwall had an old legend or strange tale attached to it. Billy racked his brain for another with which to regale his two schoolmates, who had come home from Eton with him for the spring holiday.

All three boys were thirteen years old. Reg Bentinck, dark-eyed and slightly anemic, was fishing excitedly off the port bow, while freckled Justin Church, with his shock of carrot-red hair, minded the oars and tossed up bits of bread now and then to the screeching gulls that tirelessly flapped apace with them. Billy was anxious that his guests should not grow bored. He had never had friends to stay with him before—he was not sure he could say he’d ever been allowed to have friends before—but now that he was a proud Etonian, his whole life was different.

Many of the new boys had been wretched with homesickness during Michaelmas Half, but not him. For him, school was just the thing. Outside the reach of his father’s dark shadow, he had begun to thrive. In the span of one short term, the masters at Eton had already begun to fortify his bravado with true confidence. He had been astonished to find that, contrary to his father’s frequent assertions, he was actually rather intelligent.

At home he was treated with all the welcome of a rabid stray dog, but at school, he was shocked to find himself well liked, even popular, thanks to his skill at fives, his willingness to impress the other boys with reckless feats of daring, his occasional cheekiness to the teachers, and the word
lord
in front of his name. Lord William Spencer Albright, to be exact, second son of the marquess of Truro and St. Austell.

It was the last factor that had gained him his friends’ company for the spring holiday. Reg and Justin were of the landed gentry and the lower nobility; their parents had practically tossed them headlong into the coach upon hearing that their offspring had been invited by the younger son of a marquess to spend the break at His Lordship’s castle in Cornwall. Amid many hurrahs, the three boys had been on their way. Of course, if Reg and Justin’s parents
really
knew his father, he mused with a cynicism beyond his years, they would think differently. In any case, all that concerned him now was making it through the break and getting back to school without incident.

His young face hardened as he slowly lowered the telescope from his eye. He would never admit to it aloud, but the truth was, he had brought Reg and Justin home with him not merely for their jolly company, but out of the rather desperate hope that their presence would help to mitigate his father’s inevitable black spells.

Thank God the old blighter was not expected back until the day after tomorrow, he thought. Snapping his father’s telescope shut with a vengeful
snick
, he turned to his companions, pink-cheeked with sun and wind, a sparkle of mischief in his eyes.