“Wouldn’t dream of it.” The flush on his cheeks belied his protest—she’d caught him red-handed, and he knew it. “Jane can see to the other customers. The boys like her better.”
Mina shook her head, wishing her damnable heart wouldn’t squeeze so at Charlie’s guardian act. She ought to be irritated with him—he was one more man trying to shelter her from the realities of life. Yet his watchfulness never felt like a gilded cage; it filled her with a hazy warmth, like being snuggled in a fluffy blanket with a steaming cup of tea between her hands. Underneath Charlie’s observant gaze, she always felt special. Worthy.
Appreciated for who she was, instead of a prize to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Yet that was her reality. The men in her life ought to be sheltering her from that—instead of nonexistent danger—but they never did.
Two nights ago, she’d overheard Joaquin discussing her engagement with a wealthy, far older business associate, as though it was already done and negotiated. Despite the fact that she’d never once been consulted. Despite the fact that she barely knew Nigel Donaldson. He’d been a friend of her father’s. But Papa had died years ago, and Donaldson hadn’t been as close with her brothers.
Until now, when he’d appeared from the shadows of the past, because apparently at nineteen she was an appropriate bride for a man who had known her when she was but a child.
The very idea made her stomach roil. She gripped the tankard in her hand again, but this time, she took a long drag from it. The whisky flooded her throat, no longer the sweet taste of victory over her bodyguard. Now it tasted stale, like sweat and punishment, so vile upon her tongue that she sputtered and coughed as it sloshed down her throat.
“Easy there,” Charlie cautioned. “I’ve never seen you drink like that. What’s botherin’ you?”
Her grip tightened against the mug. No use telling Charlie her problems. He’d want to try and fix them, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to get her out of this. No, she’d have to convince Joaquin herself that Donaldson wasn’t a proper match for her.
“I thought Isaac might be finished with the woman soon.” It was a lie, of course, but she was proud of herself for how smoothly she delivered the line. “I don’t want him to tell Joaquin I’ve been drinking, as it’ll get me another lecture on propriety.”
Charlie raised a disbelieving brow. “Minnie, I’ll serve you in a cup and tell him it’s tea, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Thank you,” she said for the second time that night. It still didn’t feel like enough, for all the times Charlie had shown her kindness throughout the years. Him and his quiet acceptance, never once asking more of her than she could give. While the rest of the world treated her like a fragile doll, Charlie allowed her to be a real woman.
A woman with feelings and a bleeding, broken heart, mourning what she could never have.
“I’m fine, really,” she assured him, breathing a sigh of relief as another patron tried to flag him down. “But look, somebody else is trying to get your attention.”
He followed her gaze, grimacing as he recognized the two men on the other side of the bar. “That’s Jason Baines and Matthew Harper.”
Baines was the son of Chapman’s leader, and a veritable hothead. She didn’t recognize the other man, who was all lofty leanness and sinews, while Baines was short, arrogant stockiness.
“Then you’d better go.”
Charlie hesitated, but when she shooed him with a wave of her hand, he gave in. “I’ll be back later. You stay here. If you need anythin’, tell Jane and she’ll get it for you.”
She nodded, watching him as he headed down the bar, his fit form as familiar to her as her own silhouette. At the motion of Baines, Charlie untied his apron, coming out from the bar. He ran a hand through his short brown locks as Harper spoke, nodding in agreement. Then he was gone, following them, his quick, fluid stride separating him from her as he headed toward the back. She lost sight of the trio in the dense crowd that filled almost every table.
Mina cupped her hands around the tankard, wishing she could stay in this spot where she was safe and didn’t have to face her future. Where she could pretend, for a few minutes at least, that Charlie was hers to claim.
She looked about the room, trying to locate him. Her gaze came to rest on Kate and Daniel O’Reilly again. Kate leaned forward, placing a kiss on Daniel’s cheek. His entire face seemed to light up, his green eyes twinkling with such joy that Mina’s heart tightened.
God, how she wanted that life. The doting husband. A child on her knee. The love, real, impossible love, blossoming from a true connection versus a business merger and an impressive dowry.
She frowned into her half-empty tankard, silently cursing her decision to go to the Three Boars. How could she have thought that it’d be a good idea to be near Charlie tonight, so close she could reach out and touch him? It was torture. Had been torture for years.
Before, she’d at least had the hope of a good future.
“What’s a pretty gel like ye doin’, frownin’ like tha’?” A man’s voice, coarse like sandpaper and thick with the slur of drink, cut into her reverie.
Bloody, bloody hell.
She’d been so caught up in her own predicament that she hadn’t noticed him approach. As she lifted her head to meet his gaze, he smiled at her, his bloodshot eyes focusing in on her lips.
“I’m Al McNair. And ye are?” He sidled closer, looming above her stool. He smelled of stale ale and backwater sewage, as if he’d dunked himself in the Thames and then decided to upend a keg atop his greasy, dirty straw-colored locks.
Before she could stop herself, she’d wrinkled her nose and drawn back from him.
His expression transformed instantly from leering to vengeful. “Ay, bitch, ye think ye’re too good fer me?”
He leaned closer, his breath stiflingly hot on her neck, the noxious scent of him clouding her nostrils. He was too close.
“No,” she gasped out, her eyes scanning the room for Charlie. He would make everything right. He always did.
But she couldn’t find him. Her heartbeat sounded in her ears, swift and hectic, echoing her desire to flee.
“Good,” the man said, but he didn’t appear pleased. His eyes had darkened. Before he had met her gaze—now he stared solely at her bodice, making her skin feel as though a thousand ants crawled upon her.
Mina knew his intentions. She spoke the language of pain and power, of men who derived pleasure from hurting others. Men like that only respected those with more power.
But devil take her, she was a Mason. Her name carried weight, and she needed no one’s help. Whether or not her brothers believed it, she could fight her own battles.
“Mina Mason,” she said, her voice so loud, so clear that several tables’ worth turned around to stare at her with rapt attention. “My name is Mina Mason, and you need to leave me be.”
A group of sailors by the door let out a hoot of approval, whilst another table of Chapman members she recognized vaguely sat up straighter, their hands automatically dropping to the knives sheathed at their sides.
I’m a Mason.
She needed to remember that power did not always mean knives and bullets. If she had learned anything from Joaquin over the years, it was that power could also be a well-placed word, a cut direct that stripped a business associate of his funds.
Raising herself up to her full—albeit still quite short—height, she assumed the cold, distant mien that had led to her being christened the Ice Princess of the Kings. They didn’t need to know it was all a lie, and that the ice within her veins was nothing more than frozen dreams.
“That’s right,” she said, with a nod at McNair. “You know my brothers, Joaquin and Cyrus. You know what they’ll do to you if so much as utter another foul word to me.”
“They’s got no ’old ’ere,” McNair said. “Ye’re in Chapman territory, lass. Ain’t nobody gonna save ye ’ere.”
She
swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat, her fist wrapping tight against the fabric of her gown. Her brothers weren’t here—what good was the threat of vengeance if she was dead?
She searched the crowd again, eyes wide. No sign of Charlie. Where was Isaac? Wasn’t it his job to protect her? The one time she needed him, he’d disappeared. God, she regretted telling him that since he had to accompany her, he might as well enjoy himself.
She’d been so sure she’d be safe.
But there was no one to rescue her.
She’d have to save herself.
So when McNair took his eyes off her to reach for his drink, she slipped off the stool faster than she ever had. She dodged to the left when he grabbed for her. He was drunk already, so his fingers touched air instead of the sleeve of her muslin gown.
She’d gone from the pot to the waiting fire, for as she flung herself away from McNair, she slammed into the path of another man making his way to a nearby table. She caught sight of big, wide shoulders and a scruffy chin before her face met his burly chest head-on. Strong, calloused hands gripped her shoulders, righting her before releasing her.
“I didn’t mean to—” she stammered, as she stepped back from him. In Kings territory, she wouldn’t have had to apologize. The man would have bowed before her, simply to avoid retaliation from her brothers.
“’Tis my mistake, lass,” he said, his deep voice containing no traces of resentment.
She had no time to thank him. McNair lumbered toward them, his ham-fists clenched at his sides. Mina gulped, wishing she’d taken the dirk Cyrus had tried to hand her that night. They’d passed the point where she could bluster her way out of this.
Perhaps Joaquin had been wrong. Perhaps power really was only weapons and blood.
“There ye are, Jones,” McNair said. “’Arper’s been lookin’ for ye. Run off now. I got this ’ere bunter.”
Her breath sucked in at such harsh language. She was no man’s whore, and certainly not a diseased one. McNair tracked her startled inhale with a sick grin.
The man she’d run into—Jones—looked from McNair to her, his eyes narrowing beneath his bushy brows. He was a mammoth of a man, all muscle and strength, yet somehow he didn’t intimidate her.
“Don’t know ’bout that,” Jones pronounced after a long moment of silence, each word slow and clear, as he’d sounded when addressing her a second before. She got the impression he rarely spoke—and when he did, most people listened.
Except for McNair, who apparently had enough blue ruin in him to make him unwisely bold. “Back off, Jones. She’s mine for th’ takin’, ye ’ear? Me blunt’s as good as any man’s. Ye can ’ave ’er when I’m done.”
Jones contemplated this with a frown. Mina stepped closer to him. Yet as Jones stood there, engaging in a noiseless battle of egos with McNair, the two men from before approached. Harper and Baines, followed by—bless the good Lord, Charlie.
Fueled by spirits and perhaps a good dose of self-aggrandizing delusion, McNair viewed their approach as a stroke of good fate for him. “’Ey, mates!” He waved them over. “Look ’ere wha’ Mason sent us for dinner—’is little sister. Shall we show ’im what we do to Kings’s cun—”
Before he could finish the sentence, Charlie hauled off and slugged him. A sickeningly wet snap echoed through the room, as the bone in McNair’s nose broke. He staggered back, one hand grabbing wildly for the table behind him to steady his caving knees and the other pressed to his nose in a futile attempt to staunch the streaming blood.
But it kept coming, that red, red, red shiny slickness, coating his lips. He let out a muffled gurgle as he sucked in one breath, then another, his gasps coming out in garbled wheezes.
She couldn’t move. She kept staring at McNair, fixed to that point. Even as the men at the table McNair leaned on for support pushed him back up and rooted him on. Even as Isaac skidded out from the back closet, doing up the flap of his breeches as he ran. He made it halfway to her, pushing through the crowd. So intent was Isaac on approaching her, he didn’t see the Chapman man sneak up behind him and cold-cock him with a broken bottle.
Unconscious, Isaac fell to the ground with a sickening thud. The crowd cheered wildly, while panic clutched at Mina’s throat.
The chant of “Fight! Fight!” rang out throughout the public house, and every person seemed to swivel in their seat toward them.
Because there was Charlie, standing with his fists raised at the ready, his toned legs spread apart in a fighter’s stance, his broad shoulders back and his jaw locked. His brown eyes were narrowed. Yet the darkness, the unbridled rage she saw in those eyes sent a frisson of eager heat through her, belaying her cloying fear.
She had never seen Charlie like this. So masculine.
So protective.
Of her reputation. Her honor.
Of her.
These thoughts flashed through her mind with alarming alacrity, in the space of no more than three seconds, though time seemed to slow around her. Awareness skittered down her spine, and that new, enticing warmth lapped at her core. She hated when Cyrus and Joaquin defended her but Charlie’s protectiveness felt different. A show of support without an expectation that she’d fall in line with his demands.
She couldn’t stop to analyze these unfamiliar sensations, for McNair was hacking and spitting out blood onto the floor. His mouth open wide, his teeth as red as the fluid pouring down his face. She was too slow, too dulled by the shock and awe that echoed through her in competing waves. Time started to speed up, so quickly her gasp was swallowed by the noise that was no longer a muted roar but instead an untenable din.
And again, there was Charlie, darting to the right as McNair surged forward, swinging his fists at the air. Charlie delivered a hook to McNair’s ear. The blow wasn’t hard enough to distract the man from pursuing him further. Then another hard slap by McNair, a grappling of bodies, and a surge of excitement from the crowd, as Charlie’s wild haymaker slammed into McNair’s chest.
For a second—one precious second—it seemed as though the fight was over, and Charlie had won. Mina took a step forward. McNair had fallen back against the table, the breath knocked out of him. He spat out more blood and snot, the vile combination landing with a plop. Yet he did not stay away. The men at the table urged him on, shoving him at Charlie, giving him encouragement to continue the attack.
McNair came at him, pounding a ham fist into Charlie’s jaw. When he reeled back, McNair slammed the full weight of his big, bulky body into his opponent’s shoulder.
Charlie went down, impacting the ground with a hard crunch.
“Charlie! God, no, Charlie!” She heard her scream before she realized the words had left her mouth. Before she could rush forward and try to block him—before she could do anything at all besides shriek helplessly—she felt a hand on her arm, pulling her away. She tilted her head to the side, one eye on the person behind her, while still trying to keep watch over Charlie.
Jane’s fingers dug into the lavender fabric of her sleeve. “You need to leave.”
When Mina tried to slap her hand away, tried to move forward again, Jane’s grip tightened. She was strong for such a small woman. “Now.” Jane hauled her away with such firmness and speed Mina stumbled. Jane righted her, but kept on tugging.
“Let go of me,” Mina demanded, planting her feet in the floor.
“You think you’ll save him? Wrong. They’ll eat you alive,” Jane hissed. “You, a Mason, were the cause of this and Chapman won’t forget. Come on.”
Mina barely heard her. How could she leave Charlie there? The hollers of the crowd were like knives to her heart, as they berated Charlie for not getting up and fighting. “I have to help him.”
“He’s up,” Jane said, pointing as Charlie accepted a hand up from Jones. “Now move your bloody arse. Charlie did this so you’d be safe. Don’t make it worthless.”
She started to protest, but Kate and Daniel O’Reilly sidled up to them. Daniel slid to the
other side of Mina, grabbing hold of her. She could have resisted Jane, but three people? Mina was surrounded.
The lull in the fight had made the audience thirstier for blood. Altercations—first verbal, soon to become physical—popped up around the room. A jagged bottle whizzed past Mina’s ear, almost nicking her face before shattering upon the ground. All around her, men were beginning to choose sides, needing little reason to draw blood. They were poor and hungry and tired, and the fight made them feel alive for a few minutes.
“Go or die,” Jane snarled, yanking her arm.
So Mina fled, a coward in chaos, allowing them to lead her around sailing tankards and men engaged in fisticuffs. When they reached Isaac’s prone body, she attempted to help him, but Jane urged her onwards.
They navigated a circuitous path, seemingly two steps forward and one step back, the straight route to the back entrance blocked by fighting men. And as she ran, the cheers of the intoxicated onlookers rose in her ears and she hoped to God that Charlie would survive this fight.
Chapter 2
Bloody, rotting bollocks.
Those three words kept repeating in Charlie Thatcher’s mind, from the moment his fist smashed into Al McNair’s nose to when he accepted Hawk Jones’s extended palm and dizzily shoved himself up off the floor. As his knees shook with the effort to stay upright, blood poured from his split lip. The public house spun around him. His unfocused eyes were too bleary to sharpen reality back to order.
If he were smart, he’d stop then and there. Admit defeat. Maybe buy McNair an ale as a show of good faith. Hell, the bastard had already turned around to gloat over his victory. Provided Charlie was properly pious in his apology to Zacharias Baines, the leader of the Chapman Street Thieving Gang, this might all be forgiven. Maybe no one would care that he’d punched a fellow gang member in defense of—God forbid—a Mason.
But Charlie had never been smart.
He’d been a fool in his boyhood, thinking he could survive alone on the streets during his father’s drunken rages. And he was as much a fool now, as he scanned the crowd for Mina. He didn’t see her at first, and his stomach churned. What if someone had seized her? He’d tear apart anyone who dared touch her.
When a Rogue Falls Page 12
