The Notorious Scoundrel (6 page)

A
my danced under the brilliant white limelight. She performed the scandalous choreography with ease, having memorized the steps. She shuffled sideways, rolling her hips and moving her hands to the rhythmic music. Twisting and undulating in her red silk skirt and coin belt, she maintained her eyes on the crowd.

She didn’t meet the patrons’ gazes, though, or focus on one side of the room for too long. She loathed connecting intimately with the visitors, however briefly. She loathed the way they looked at her, salivated over her.

Amy moved across the stage with methodical grace. As she dropped, then rolled her right hip, she spotted a tall figure approaching the stage with uncharacteristic urgency. The limelight in her eyes, she wasn’t able to see the man’s face clearly…until he neared the platform.

She gasped.

Heart cramped, she stumbled, but quickly regained her footing as she stared into Edward’s bewildered blue eyes. He looked confused—and furious. She was wearing a veil that concealed her lips, but he had plainly recognized her painted eyes.

She wanted to dash off the stage. An uncomfortable heat scorched her cheeks, her belly. She wanted to hide behind the curtains and evade his critical glare, for a deep shame welled in her breast. He had discovered her true, sinful occupation at the club—again! That he might reveal her identity right then didn’t trouble her; that
he
looked at her with such disapproval disturbed her beyond words.

The drumbeats ended and Amy shuffled off the stage in a maladroit fashion. She quickly peeled the veil off her features, feeling stifled even under the loose silk scarf.

“What must he think of me?” she said in a panic.

She rushed through the dimly lit passageway, glancing over her shoulder to see if he was following her. There were guards posted at every door, and yet she sensed the “resourceful” seaman would find some way of getting past them.

She entered her dressing room and with fingers trembling removed the exotic costume and headpiece. She swiftly donned her usual, unassuming attire and grabbed her shawl, leaving the charcoal paint around her eyes. She would remove the makeup at home. She was anxious to flee the Pleasure Palace.

Amy skirted through the empty passageway again,
hazily illuminated with innovative gas lighting. The hissing flames burned in her ears, like malicious hecklers.

She burst through the back entranceway—right into the sturdy arms of a vagabond…two vagabonds, for she spotted another shadow rounding the corner. The same two devils who had accosted her the other evening!

“You two do
not
give up, do you?” she cried in frustration.

One devil grinned. “I get one hundred pounds if I deliver you to my master.”

She firmed her lips and nailed him right in the nose with her knuckles. “Tell your master to go to hell!”

Swiftly Amy slipped back inside the club and bolted the door. The vagabonds banged on the door and rattled the latch, cursing up a storm.

“Trouble, Amy?”

She whirled around and spotted Edward’s muscular figure stalking through the ghostly passageway, charging her. The brooding fellow grabbed her arms and pierced her soul with his glare, making her shiver.

“How did you get back here, Edward?”

He ignored her query and demanded, “Why did you lie to me?”

Amy was overwhelmed by the man’s biting words and rough manner. She tamped the indignity she was feeling into the very tips of her toes, letting loose her frustration and fury instead.

“I don’t have to tell you anything about me!” She struggled in his arms and swatted at his chest. “Let me go!”

She was prepared to kick him in the leg, when the vagabonds slammed their shoulders into the sturdy door in an attempt to break it.

Edward curtailed their row with a brief scowl before he yanked her arm and dragged her through the rear of the club. “We’ll finish this at your apartment.”

“Arrgh!” She punched him in the arm. “You promised me you wouldn’t come to the club.”

“I did no such thing,” he returned stiffly, steering her toward an alternate exit.

He smuggled her away from the establishment undetected, and pulled her alongside him. She quarreled with him all the way back to her lodgings.

“You lied to me, Amy.”

He unlocked the apartment and pushed her inside the sitting room. Two candles sheltered in glass lamps still burned on the table.

“You told me you were a barmaid.” He pointed at her eyes and flicked his finger. “But you’re…you’re…I don’t even know who you are.”

She tossed the shawl aside, the blood burning in her veins. She scooped up a candle and strutted through the sitting room. She entered her bedroom, where she set the candle aside and poured clear water from an earthenware pitcher into a basin.

“I don’t need a lecture from
you
about honesty.” She grabbed a small white towel and immersed it in the
basin before she scrubbed the black ink off her eyes. “You’re an admitted thief!”

She peered into the mirror on the dressing table as she removed the cosmetic paint. She then observed the man’s wide, shadowy figure as he stood under the door frame, glowering at her.

“How can you prance on stage, arousing so many men? I thought you said you weren’t a whore?”

“I’m not, you blackguard!” She dunked the towel into the basin again, the water turning grimy. “But I need the money.”

“Aye, so you can purchase more mirrors,” he returned dryly. “Such vanity, Amy. I’m disappointed in you.”

“How dare you!” She scrubbed her skin with more vigor, the black makeup clinging to her flesh like baked filth. “The mirrors have nothing to do with vanity.”

“Then why collect them?”

Amy peered even deeper into the dark glass. The candlelight in the bedchamber danced, casting rippled waves of fire across the shiny surface.

Amy picked up the small mirror with an ivory handle and gazed at her features. The soft swooshing sound of petticoats flirted with her ears as the older woman moved lightly about the room, fluffing her carefully pressed curls and pinning her glittering earrings.

The warm figure soon approached her and knelt, and Amy sensed a pair of gloved hands squeeze and tickle her midriff.

She squealed with delight.

“Never mind about the mirrors.” She took in a deep, shuddering breath. “And keep your voice down or you’ll disturb the other tenants.”

“Oh? Do you mean the couple fighting on one side of the wall? Or the couple shagging on the other?”

She flushed. The level of noise from the other residents was troubling. She had one set of neighbors who bickered every night, their rows often ending in vicious blows. A prostitute regularly entertained her clients in the other apartment, leaving Amy boxed in between all the commotion.

“I suspect the other tenants won’t mind our quarreling,” he said with wry humor.

“We are not quarreling;
you
are quarreling. Unjustly, I might add.” She dropped the dirty towel into the basin, the water splashing. “I don’t owe you an explanation regarding my life or my choices.”

She picked up the candlestick and glass orb, the flame flickering, and brushed past him into the other room.

He followed her.

“You have to quit the club, Amy.”

She placed the candle on the table in the sitting room, fingers quivering. “No.”

A strong hand grasped her wrist, and she pivoted.

“You can’t work at the club anymore.” Hard, steely eyes pegged her. “It’s too dangerous.”

Amy gazed into the dark pools, reflecting the glimmering light like mirrors. However, unlike the glass, she didn’t see herself cast back in the glossy orbs. She
looked deep into the obdurate man’s soul and witnessed a bevy of emotions that both alarmed and strangely thrilled her. Being so close to Edward teased her senses, muddled her thoughts. Every word and breath was more acute, every touch more sensitive.

“I can handle the situation at the club,” she insisted in a low voice.

“You’ve been attacked
twice
in two nights.”

The man’s sharp, warm breath stirred the fine hairs at her temples, making her shiver. “I was attacked once,” she clarified tersely. “I protected myself tonight.”

She wriggled her wrist loose and stepped away from him, her heart thumping in her chest with greater vigor.

“And who will protect you tomorrow night?” He glared at her. “There’s one lazy guard who can’t get off his arse and quit napping during the performances.”

So that’s how Edward had finagled his way into the rear of the club, she mused.

“I’ll protect myself,” she said with confidence.

“Amy,” he drawled in a deadly tone, “the attackers have been offered one hundred pounds to kidnap you. I heard them before the door closed.”

“I heard them, too,” she said indignantly. “I’m not deaf.”

“Do you think such men will quit coming after you? Forfeit the fortune?”

She gritted, “I can’t quit the club.”

“It might be the queen who wants you dead.” Slowly he approached her. “She might have hired the attackers
to kill you. The woman hates you, you know.”

Amy snorted. “Madame Rafaramanjaka would never waste one hundred pounds on me. If she wanted me dead, she’d strangle me herself.”

Amy stepped away from the nearing scoundrel. He roused her blood, her pulse in such an alarming manner, she felt safer at a distance from the brooding fellow.

“Look,” he said more softly, stilling his steps. “I know you’re frightened about the unknown future, but you can’t risk your life at the club.”

She shook her head vehemently.

“You need to find another form of livelihood,” he persisted in an even voice.

“No. No!” She skirted around the table to evade his darkening expression. “I refuse to live like one of them!” She pointed at the two opposite walls. “I refuse to be poor and desperate.”

“Amy,” he said sharply, eyes aglow, “you have to be reasonable. You’re being hunted.”

“I am being reasonable,” she retorted sourly. “As soon as my youth is gone, Madame Rafaramanjaka will dismiss me from the club and hire a replacement.” She jabbed her forefinger into her bust. “But I will have saved enough funds by then to live out the rest of my days in comfort.” She looked daggers at him. “What do you want me to do? Be a seamstress? A governess? I can’t even read! I’ll make a pittance each year toiling under some other ruthless employer. I make more than sixty pounds each annum working for the queen!”

“You slave for the queen,” he corrected darkly. “And it isn’t worth your life.”

“You want to see me living in the streets! How is that any better?”

“I want to see you work in a less dangerous profession.”

She scoffed and rubbed her hands together, pacing the room. “You want me to work under the direction of some other boor for a meager amount. And then, one day, when I’m too old to work, and I’ve no money saved because I’ve spent every penny on food and rent, I’ll be destitute. Thank you,” she said sarcastically, “however, I don’t like your plan for my future.”

“Well, do you have some money saved? Or have you spent it all on mirrors?”

“Why do you think I live in this wretched place?” She glowered at him. “I want to save every penny, but I still don’t have enough.”

“You can get married. A husband will look after your needs.”

He offered the alternative as if it was an obvious solution to her troubles, and she looked at him with scorn.

“A husband will only drink away my hard-earned pennies. I see what it’s really like out there.” She pointed at the window. “I see the wives with their drunken curs for spouses. Just listen!” She outstretched her arms as if to take in all the vile noises stemming from every side of the room. “I won’t live like them.”
She crossed the room and collected her shawl, fingers trembling, heart pounding. “I’ve survived on my own since I was a babe, and I’ll continue to survive on my own just fine.”

She hustled from the room, impervious to Edward’s shouts. She made her way through the building and reached the ground level, where she quickly skirted across the muddy street, rehashing the quarrel with Edward in her mind.

It burned her blood to even think about forsaking her profession, as scandalous as it was, and working in a shop or a factory like a miserable horse for scraps. She would keep her livelihood as a dancer and confront the risks, as she had done—successfully—in the past.

Insensible to her surroundings, Amy rounded the dark corner and rammed a towering figure.

She murmured, distracted, “Pardon me,” and sidestepped the ruffian with his two gruff companions, but a firm hand arrested her movements and a deep voice stirred her hackles.

“You must be Amy.”

Amy’s heart palpitated as she gazed into the ruffian’s sinister eyes, and the danger Edward had warned her against flitted through her head, for the shaggy barbarian, with his long hair secured in a queue, was the most menacing fellow she had ever set eyes on.

“She looks just like he described her,” said another ruffian.

He was almost as tall as the devil holding her, though not nearly as ominous. Still, Amy’s chest
cramped as her heart beat wild and sweat formed across her brow.

“Aye, she’s as lovely as a rainbow,” praised the third shadow. He even smiled in the dark, for his teeth gleamed like moonbeams.

She didn’t recognize the three assailants. How many were out there searching for her? As Edward had expressed, there was a one-hundred-pound bounty on her head. Who would forfeit such a fortune?

“Oh, bullocks!” she cried.

Amy struggled with her captor. In vain. The man shoved her against the nearest slimy wall with one hand, and glowered at her.

“Where is he?”

“Who?” she whispered.

“Edmund.”

“I don’t know anyone named Ed—”

Amy’s thoughts scampered like dry leaves in a windstorm. Did he mean Edward? What did
he
want with Edward? No, Edmund. Had Edmund robbed him of his coin purse? Was that why he was after him?

She imagined the ruffian’s meaty fist slamming into Edmund’s handsome head, and she shuddered, pinching her lips.