If he couldn’t find a way to continue with the crucial mission of the Dread Penny Society while still protecting Ana, he needed to know that now, before he’d committed himself to something he couldn’t follow through with.
“’Tis something I’ve been tellin’ the lot of you for years,” Brogan said. “We’re needing a means of letting our loved ones know a bit more than we can tell’m now. Not membership. Not full knowledge. Just something for those of us saddled with overly curious relations.”
“Móirín’s a lot of things,” Fletcher said, “but ‘overly curious’ feels below the mark.”
They laughed and needled Brogan good-naturedly. The Irishman took it in stride before taking up the topic again with emphasis. “I’ve proposed it before, but I’m doing so more strongly now. We’re needing a sister organization. One that allows our closest family, who are qualified, willing, and eager, to offer a hand now and then in what we do.”
Not everyone was in agreement. Arguments about accidentally revealing too much were tossed out alongside the insistence that such a group would eventually piece everything together. Some declared that keeping loved ones in the dark was making them only more curious, which was a risk unto itself. There was no consensus, no agreement.
“We’ve not enough here for a quorum,” Fletcher said. “Next full-membership meeting, we’ll put it to a vote, and I’ll consult the Dread Master.”
“All the way to the top?” Hollis asked, both impressed and concerned.
“It’s a matter that needs settling.”
There was little else discussed among them. The matter of the gambling establishment and its broader implications were foremost in everyone’s thoughts. The Mastiff had had his hand in this, just as he’d had in the arsons. Though they’d brought down the Raven, it felt like an empty victory. Four-Finger Mike had slipped away again. The Mastiff was still at large. People were still being hurt.
They were after a spider too venomous for ease or comfort, too wily to be trapped, too well-guarded for them to even know when he was nearby.
The meeting adjourned. Hollis didn’t remain long enough to receive the congratulations coming his way. He had more pressing matters to see to. He popped out of the parliamentary room and into the entryway. The butler slumped in his chair as always. Hollis snatched up the penny he’d left on the end table, and the butler reached out a hand and pulled a lever, opening the front door automatically, without ever opening his eyes or changing his posture.
Hollis tipped his hat.
“Ye’re welcome, sir.”
He stepped out onto the walk and into the bustling press of humanity. An obliging hansom cab picked him up at the corner of Garrick and King Streets.
“Where to, guv’nuh?”
“St. George’s Road. Pimlico.” With my heart in my throat and my head in the clouds.
When he arrived, he went, not to the servants’ door, where he’d entered before, but to the front door, like a proper suitor.
Wallace answered his knock. “Thought we might be seeing you, Mr. Darby.”
“You did?” He hadn’t made his intention known.
“Miss Newport’s been watching for you. Cain’t imagine you disappointing her.”
“I never would. At least not on purpose.”
“Best tell her that. Then her father. Then likely her again.”
“Excellent advice.” He followed the valet through the entryway, which had been recently dusted and swept, then up the stairs to the first-floor landing. “The ol’ place looks nice.”
“Miss Newport brought a li’l one over who’s looking to learn to be a maid. The mouthy little thing is a delightful sort of hooligan. But she’s done her work well.”
A mouthy, delightful little hooligan. That rather perfectly described someone who’d recently shown herself to be a whirlwind in his house.
He entered Mr. Newport’s room and found precisely the tiny thief he’d been expecting.
“Oy, sir.” Very Merry snapped a jaunty salute. “Miss Newport said you wouldn’t be in a huff if I came here to do a spot of learning. You ain’t, are you?”
“Not at all, scamp.”
“Scamp?” She put her fists on her hips again. That seemed a favorite posture of hers. “I’m a proper maid now, you old put.”
“A proper maid doesn’t call anyone an ‘old put,’” Hollis reminded her.
She shrugged and returned to her dusting. Very Merry was a handful, but a fellow couldn’t help but like her.
He turned to Mr. Newport, seated by the low-burning fire. “Good afternoon to you. How are you enjoying your newest addition to the household?”
The kind-eyed man looked to Very Merry with real affection. “She is, quite possibly, my favorite person in all the world.”
The little girl did something few urchins ever did: she blushed. Her smile, while still as full of mischief as ever, held a touch of fondness. Street children didn’t trust easily. That Mr. Newport had earned hers already boded well for this arrangement.
“Ana has finally decided to move into the mistress’s bedchamber,” Mr. Newport said. “It’s good for her to be finding her place in this home again. I’m hopeful her heart isn’t hurting as terribly as it has these past years.”
“You have a remarkable daughter,” Hollis said.
“That you recognize that reflects well on you.”
Hollis sat in the chair nearest his. “Does it reflect well enough that you’d not object if I started courting her?”
Amusement twinkled in Mr. Newport’s eyes. “Started courting her?”
It was a point well made. “Started courting her in earnest.”
“I have no objections, but the lady herself is just now stepping in the room. Her objections are the ones you ought to be most concerned about.”
His heart dropped. “She has objections?”
“Only one way to find out.” Mr. Newport rose as his daughter approached.
Hollis did the same.
“Have you come to visit us, Hollis?” she asked.
“There’s no ‘us’ about it, Ana,” her father said. “He’s come to visit you.”
“How fortunate.”
The simple observation made Hollis beam. How fortunate. She was pleased to have him there.
“I need help moving an armoire,” she added.
Mr. Newport laughed out loud.
Ana grinned. “Come move the heavy piece of furniture, Hollis, and I’ll say every flattering thing about you that you could possibly hope to hear.”
“I will hold you to that,” he warned.
She pressed a kiss to her father’s neatly shaven cheek. “Do not spoil our Very Merry too much while I’m gone. I’ve seen you slipping her sweet biscuits.”
“No such of a thing,” Very Merry objected.
“She’s quite right,” Mr. Newport said. “They were jam tarts.”
Ana looked content, something he’d not seen in her face the first months he’d known her, certainly not when she was here, fretting over her father and their home and lives. How Hollis loved seeing her so light and at peace.
He walked with her from the room to the adjacent one from which he and Brogan had surveilled the neighbors.
A large armoire sat in the middle of the room. She’d moved it far already, and on her own, apparently. When he’d first met her, he’d thought her fragile and perhaps too breakable. He hadn’t minded the softness he saw, but he found he liked her combination of fire and lace even better.
He joined her at the tall piece of furniture. “Where are we taking this, darling?”
She pointed to the spot she was aiming for, and together they slid the armoire into place. In addition to that, her room now boasted a bed, a bedside table, a washstand, a large rug, and a chair near the window. It was a proper bedchamber again.
She laughed. “Wallace helped me repair a washstand and bedside table stored in the attic. The armoire was obtained secondhand in exchange for a few of the items I”—she cleared her throat—“repossessed. The bed, well, Wallace procured that, and I am choosing not to ask how.”
Oh, dear.
Ana’s moment of discomfort gave way to a look of contentment. “I mean to make my newfound independence a success, Hollis. Elizabeth is keeping me on three days a week, which will allow me to have some income while I increase my private teaching positions. And I get to live at home again.”
“You sound excited,” he said.
“I am.” She reached out and took his hand. “I’ve been living in shadows for a long time. I’m ready to step into the light.”
He tucked her close to him and clasped his arms behind her. “I first met you while you were living, at least in part, in the shadows. I will miss seeing you there, darling.”
She brushed her fingers along his jaw. “I could probably be persuaded to make a repeat appearance now and then.”
“Could you, now?”
“Are you issuing an invitation?” There was the flirtatious tone he’d come to love in his mysterious thief.
“That’s not the invitation I’d intended to make when I came here, but I’ll not complain if you accept it.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck. “What invitation were you going to make?”
“That you have dinner with me.”
She smiled softly. “Tonight?”
“And tomorrow. And the day after that. And after that.”
Ana leaned her head against him. “I’m detecting a pattern.”
“I don’t have a lot to offer,” he said. “A nonexistent inheritance. A snooty brother with a gambling problem. Questionable activities I don’t intend to give up but neither am I at liberty to explain, even to you. And I am caught between the demands of Society and the pull of low literature. An ideal suitor, really.”
“A perfect suitor.”
He laughed. She didn’t.
“My list of assets isn’t terribly different,” she said. “We might very well be the two best-matched people in the kingdom.” She rose up on her toes and pressed the tiniest whisper of a kiss to his lips.
“Would you let me court you properly, Ana? Come call on you? Scrape and bow to your father in an attempt to gain his good opinion? Nervously ask you to dance at balls and ride with me in the park and sip tepid tea while sitting in awkward, nervous silence?”
Her smile melted him as it always did. “Have we not passed that phase already?”
He slid his hands down her sides, resting them at her hips. Hollis bent close, a mere breath between them. “I love you, Ana Newport.” He kissed her quickly, lightly.
“I began loving you the first time I met you, but I didn’t dare let it show.” She brushed her fingertips over his cheek. “You are a gentleman from a fine family. I am the penniless daughter of a bankrupt businessman.”
“And a thief,” he reminded her.
She smiled and blushed. “Do you truly wish to court a thief?”
“I can think of nothing I wish for more ardently.”
Ana linked her arms behind his neck again. “I love you, Hollis Darby.”
There was nothing tentative about the way she kissed him, and nothing indifferent about his response. He kissed her lips. Her cheek. He took his time pressing kisses to her neck, reveling in the feel of her in his arms.
For years, he’d wondered if he would ever have enough or be enough for anyone to wish to build a life with him. Ana knew his double life; he knew hers. Together they could build a new life, together, with all their contradictions and struggles. He kissed her with the promise of that future. He kissed her with all the dreams he had for tomorrow.
Theirs would be a very happy, never dull, ever after. Together. The gentleman and the thief.
Invaluable sources of information and insight into this fascinating era and people:
• Susie Dent’s many brilliant books on dialect and etymology.
• Normanby Hall’s exhibit on Victorian-era clothing.
• A Treatise on the Game of Ecarté, as Played in the First Circles of London and Paris, published in 1824.
• The Handbook of Games, published in 1867.
• Sharps & Flats, published in 1894.
• The fantastic faro demonstration at the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona.
• A Book of Remarkable Criminals, by HB Irving, published 1918.
• The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals, by Michelle Morgan, published 2018.
Invaluable sources of encouragement, advice, and support:
• Annette, Emily, and Luisa, my Tuesday writing gals.
• My family, for helping me with random research, putting up with my focus on such oddities as Victorian-era card games and the difficulties of climbing walls in 19th-century clothing, and cheering me on.
• Lisa Mangum and the team at Shadow Mountain for making the final product a fabulous one we can all be proud of.
• Pam Pho, agent extraordinaire, who makes navigating this industry more pleasant and far more possible.
• Kneaders™ banana-and-walnut oatmeal, for getting me through more writing sessions than I can count.
1.Hollis feels like he has more to offer to the Dread Penny Society than they know. What talents or skills do you have that are not well-known to your friends?
2.Ana went to great lengths to reacquire items that had been stolen from her family. Was she justified in stealing back those things, or should she have found another way to secure justice?
3.Mr. King’s penny dreadful featured a bluecap—a creature from English folklore. Had you heard of a bluecap before? What did you learn about them from this story?
4.During this time, boarding schools were reserved for the wealthy and well-connected, yet Hollis’s stories were designed to appeal to poorer children who could never attend such a school. How did he make his story relatable for his readers who had a very different personal experience? What about his story made it enjoyable for readers of all ages?
5.Ana and Hollis both kept secrets from each other. Did keeping those secrets help draw the couple closer together or keep them further apart? Is it ever okay to keep a secret from someone you love?
6.Gambling and card games were a common pastime during the Victorian era. What games are you proficient at?
7.Who do you think the Dread Master is?
© Annalisa Photography
Sarah M. Eden is a USA Today™ bestselling author of historical romances. Her previous Proper Romance novel Longing for Home won the Foreword Reviews 2013 IndieFab Book of the Year award for romance. Hope Springs won the 2014 Whitney Award for “Best Novel of the Year,” and Ashes on the Moor was a Foreword Reviews 2018 Book of the Year silver medalist for romance.
Combining her obsession with history and an affinity for tender love stories, Sarah loves crafting witty characters and heartfelt romances. She happily spends hours perusing the reference shelves of her local library and dreams of one day traveling to all the places she reads about. Sarah is represented by Pam Pho at D4EO Literary Agency.
Visit Sarah at www.sarahmeden.com.
Contents
Chapter 1
Higglebottom’s School for the Dead: Chapter I
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
The Gentleman and the Thief: Installment I
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
The Gentleman and the Thief: Installment II
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Higglebo
ttom’s School for the Dead: Chapter II
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
The Gentleman and the Thief: Installment III
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
The Gentleman and the Thief: Installment IV
Chapter 14
Higglebottom’s School for the Dead: Chapter III
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
The Gentleman and the Thief: Installment V
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
The Gentleman and the Thief: Installment VI
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Higglebottom’s School for the Dead: Chapter IV
Chapter 22
The Gentleman and the Thief - Installment VII
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Higglebottom’s School for the Dead: Chapter V
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Higglebottom’s School for the Dead: Chapter VI
Chapter 27
The Gentleman and the Thief: Installment VIII
Chapter 28
Acknowledgments
Discussion Questions
About the Author
Landmarks
Cover
Table of Contents
The Gentleman and the Thief Page 27
