by Laurel McKee
“Who are you? Where do I know you from?” he said hoarsely as he kissed the corner of her mouth. “Tell me.”
Sophia frantically shook her head. Her thoughts went all hazy when he did that, so fractured and unfocused she couldn’t put them together. She feared she would shout out her name for him.
“Tell me,” he whispered again, and kissed the other corner of her parted lips. “I have to know.”
“I’m no one at all,” she answered.
The tip of his tongue traced her lower lip, and she opened to him with a gasp. His mouth covered hers in a hot, starving kiss, his tongue pressing deep to twine with hers.
Sophia’s nails dug into his shoulders. This was definitely not like any other kiss she had ever had! Those fumbling caresses from boys who had groped at her in the dark, even as she sensed their fear of her, could never have prepared her for the force that was Dominic St. Claire. He would not be afraid of anything. He claimed what he wanted and… oh, but he was so good at kissing.
He drew back from her lips, his eyes a bright green in the shadows. “Tell me,” he demanded again.
And Sophia wanted so much to do just that, to give him her name and hear him say it in that wondrous voice of his. But then this precious moment would be shattered. She didn’t know why he hated her cousin. She only knew she never wanted him to look at her that way. She never wanted his desire to become icy with hatred.
This moment was all she could have with him.
“No,” she answered, finding strength in the sure knowledge that she had to keep him from finding out she was Lady Sophia Huntington. From finding out what his kiss meant to her. “I am no one. You have to let me go.”
His arm tightened around her waist. “No,” he said, his voice a low growl full of dark determination. “I’ve just found you.”
Suddenly desperate to be gone, to not give in to the power he held over her, Sophia frantically shook her head. “Please, Dominic…”
“No! I need you to tell me who you are.”
“Then I’m sorry,” she whispered. “So very, very sorry.”
His head tilted back from her. “Sorry?”
Taking a deep breath, Sophia brought her knee up hard between his legs. Her old nanny had once told her to do that if she needed to escape from a man, and she hadn’t been sure it would work. But Dominic gave an agonized shout and fell to the floor, letting her go.
Absolutely appalled at what she had done, Sophia almost knelt beside him. Until he shouted a foul name at her, a string of the dirtiest curses she had ever heard, and she knew she had to get out of there while she still could.
“I’m so, so sorry!” she cried again, and dragged open the door. She let it slam behind her and ran for the entrance as fast as her heeled shoes would carry her. With the one stroke of luck she had had all evening, the foyer was deserted, and she found a hansom on the street outside.
Once safely in the carriage, Sophia yanked off her mask and covered her face with shaking hands.
“Oh, heavens above,” she whispered, quite sure she was going to be sick. “What have I done?”
Chapter Seventeen
“If you’ll wait here, sir, I’ll fetch Madame Marie at once,” the maidservant said with a bob of a curtsy. She deposited a tray of wine and refreshments on a table and hurried out of the room.
Aidan poured himself a glass of the excellent Burgundy and examined the chamber around him as he waited. Madame Marie’s house on now-respectable Seymour Place was not the usual sort of bawdy house or cheap bagnio, but a house of discretion and exemplary service. Only those who could afford her hefty fees were allowed in.
But Marie also knew everything that went on in the shadows of London. She had spies in every quarter. She was one of Aidan’s most valuable friends, and one with a connection he had not thought of before.
Which was why he was allowed to wait here, in her own sitting room, where only her most privileged clients were admitted.
Aidan studied the fine, carved furniture of dark wood, upholstered in dark red velvet that matched the wallpaper, and the heavy window draperies that kept out prying eyes. Like the rest of the house, the colors were those of night, rich and exotic but not in bad taste. It could have been any house, except for the collection of fine porcelain phalluses on the fireplace mantel and the three erotic paintings on the wall.
Aidan examined the series of three scenes. In the first, a woman clad only in stockings and a rumpled chemise was perched on a stool while a man with his breeches around his knees dove between her legs. In the second, the same man took the woman from behind as she bent over the stool. And in the third, the woman whipped the man’s backside as another female masturbated him. He appeared to be enjoying himself a great deal in all three.
“Very elegant,” Aidan muttered with a laugh.
The door to the sitting room opened to a rustle of fine satin and a whiff of heady lilac perfume. “Do you like ’em? They just got here last week, from France. They do the best work in Paris. I’m going to move them out to the salon next week, give everyone a peek.”
Aidan turned to smile at the tall redhead. “Hello, Marie. Your artwork is exceptional, as always.”
A wide grin spread over her rouged lips, and she ran across the room to throw her arms around him. “Aidan, my darlin’! We haven’t seen you in an age. The girls have been so sad without you.”
Aidan laughed. “They couldn’t possibly have the time to miss me.”
“Ah, well, I do keep ’em busy. Not that I can stop ’em asking about you every night. And I’ve missed you too. Have you found yourself a respectable girl, then? Mended your ways?”
Aidan thought of Lily’s quiet, dark eyes, her soft, white hands—and what those hands did to him. “Not exactly. But I have been a bit occupied lately.”
“Sounds interesting. Here, love, sit down. Have some more wine and tell me what brings you here today. It’s a few hours yet until our busy time.”
“Actually, I came to ask for your help, Marie.” Aidan sat down across from her as she settled next to the fire, her feet in their high-heeled shoes up on a tapestry stool.
“Of course, Aidan love, anything for you. After what you did for my Sally last year, I can’t thank you enough.”
“I need to find a man named Tom Beaumont. Perhaps you know him?”
Marie’s hand froze as she lifted her wineglass to her lips. “Now what would a toff like you want with a bad ’un like that?”
“He hurt a friend of mine.” Just as Aidan had hurt her—and now he had to make it all up to her.
“And you’re after revenge, is that it?” Marie drained her glass and shook her head. “You wouldn’t be the first. Best to let that one go, I’d say.”
“I can’t do that, Marie,” Aidan said, his voice quiet and ice-cold. “I want him gone.”
“You and everyone else. Before he was transported to Australia, he was into all the usual things. Thieving, pickpocketing, forgery, prostitution, blackmail, running padding-kens. He had his dirty fingers in every pie there was.”
“But you do know he’s back now?”
“Aye, I know that. Everyone knows. I can’t tell you how many thieves and whores have gone to ground since old Handsome Tom Beaumont showed up in London again. We thought we were done with him for good.” Marie gave him a shrewd look. “The friend you’re out to protect—it’s a woman?”
“Yes.”
“He must have hurt her a great deal, then.”
Aidan gave a brusque nod as he remembered the wariness that was always lurking in Lily’s eyes, the flashes of pain she tried to hide. “I won’t let him do it again. She deserves so much better.” She deserved better from Aidan as well. So much better.
“Is she a lady?”
He slowly turned his empty glass in his hand as he studied the paintings on the wall. “This house was your mother’s before it was yours, wasn’t it, Marie?”
She nodded, not seeming to notice the sudden change in subject
. “She bought a ninety-year lease on the building when she opened her ‘French’ house way back when this neighborhood wasn’t so respectable. She was a shrewd old thing. But I had to diversify a bit, of course. Tastes these days are so much more complex.”
“And her name was Madame Josephine?”
“That it was.” Marie laughed. “You’re all nostalgic tonight, love. What’s that about, eh?”
“I think the woman I’m trying to protect had a mother who once worked here.”
Marie’s eyes widened. “Did she, now? Must have been when I was a child.”
“Do you remember a Frenchwoman, then?” Aidan said.
“Lots of girls here like to say they’re French.”
“Well, she was truly French. A deft hand with a whip. She had a daughter about your age.”
“Sandrine!” Marie cried. “Must be her. No one else had a kid then but Mum. Sandrine was a real beauty, such dark eyes and pale skin. And she had a rare talent with that riding crop. Gentlemen would pay a high sum for an hour with her. Too bad about the opium. It gets a lot of girls in the end. I never touch the stuff myself. And you know her daughter?”
“Lily. Beaumont has been a threat to her.”
“What a rotter he is. I do remember Lily, a quiet little girl, didn’t say much. She ran off after her mum died.” Marie gave a dark scowl as she poured out more wine. “She was one of our own, though, no two ways about it. Can’t let a bastard like Beaumont get her.”
“I knew you would agree with me, Marie.”
She went to her desk and quickly scrawled something across a scrap of paper. “If you go to this address and talk to a riverman named Piker, he can help you out. Just let me know what you find out. I’d like a chance at Beaumont myself.”
“Thank you, Marie.” Aidan tucked the paper into his pocket and kissed her powdered cheek. “I promise you—I will get him.”
Marie grinned up at him. “She’s a lucky lady indeed, Aidan my love. You tell her we remember her mum here. And if she ever needs work…”
Aidan thought of Lily’s graceful hand wielding the crop more deftly than the woman in that painting could ever hope for, and he laughed. “She would make you a fortune here, Marie. But I intend to keep her talents to myself for a while to come…”
“Well, now, ain’t you the handsome one? Down here looking for some company, are you?”
Aidan turned to see a girl leaning against the low wall that held back the muddy banks of the river. She was small and thin, her skin a pale grayish color under her paint, her hair a tangled skein of pale yellow. She wore a low-cut gown of grubby white muslin, barely covered by a threadbare shawl.
And she was much too young to be out looking for customers on the rough Wapping docks. Aidan remembered what Lily had told him about her childhood, how she ran away to avoid prostituting herself only to find herself starving and stealing on the streets. This could have been Lily, would have been her if the bastard he looked for today had any say in it.
It made him even more determined to bring Tom Beaumont down.
He gave the girl a gentle smile. “Not company, love, but some information.”
She scowled and pulled her shawl closer around her. “What sort of information?”
Aidan drew out a handful of coins and held them out to her. Her scowl vanished. “I’m looking for a river dredger named Piker.”
“What would you want with him, now?” she said, still staring at the coins.
“I was told he knows something I would very much like to find out.”
The girl licked her lips. “He’ll be at his boat right now. Too early to be out on the river. Under the bridge down that way, first one you come to.”
“Thank you.” Aidan handed her the money, which she quickly tucked away in her bodice. “You wouldn’t happen to know of a man named Tom Beaumont, would you?”
Her eyes widened, and she frantically shook her head. “Not me. I mind my own business, and so should you.”
Aidan gave her a nod and turned to make his way along the riverbank, his old boots sucked in by the mud and muck of the low tide. As the girl had said, it was too early to be out on the river yet. All the dredgers, who made their livings hauling dead bodies and other detritus out of the Thames, were working on their small boats or mending their trawling nets. They watched him walk past without much interest. People came down to the docks seeking all sorts of things, and they had seen it all before.
A few mudlarks, children who scavenged in the sludge for whatever had washed in, were poking about with their sticks. The fishy, dirty tang of the river, blended with the old sewers that ran down to the water’s edge, was strong there. Pasted along the stained brick walls were posters of people missing or descriptions of those pulled from the water.
Aidan ignored all of it, intent on what he had to do. He found the riverman named Piker just as the girl had said, under the bridge as he scraped the sludge from the hull of his small boat. He was a thin man, younger than Aidan expected, his face obscured by a bushy beard and his skin weathered by years on the river. A cap was pulled low on his brow.
“Are you Piker?” Aidan asked.
The man didn’t look up from his task. “Who wants to know?”
“Marie sent me. She said you might have some information for me.”
Piker laughed. “Now what would someone like you want with me?”
“I want to find Tom Beaumont, and I was told you might know where he is.”
The man’s eyes shot up to Aidan’s face, and he dropped his scraping blade. Aidan could see it a split second before Piker ran. He took off at a flat run, but Aidan was faster. He caught Piker at the foot of the bridge steps and brought him down hard, his fist cracking on the man’s jaw.
“I don’t want trouble!” Piker shouted. “I don’t have nothin’ to do with Beaumont now. I work for myself.”
“Then why did you run?” Aidan curled his fists in the man’s coat and held him pinned down. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know!”
Aidan drew back his fist, and Piker held up his hands in surrender. “Well?” Aidan said.
“I told him I wouldn’t work for him no more,” Piker said. “But he was down here the other night, trying to get a gang together.”
“For what purpose?”
“To turn over a goldsmith’s shop. He needs money fast, I think.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I swear! That’s all I know. But my cousin Ralph went with him, the stupid tosser. You could maybe get somethin’ out of him.”
“Then tell me where to find this cousin of yours, and we’re done,” Aidan said. “But if you are lying to me, I promise you will be very sorry. I’m as bad an enemy to have as Beaumont.”
Piker nodded, his face gone ashen. “I ain’t lying, I swear. I don’t want trouble with anyone.”
Once Aidan had the information he sought from Piker, he left the docks and went in search of this Ralph in Southwark. It was time he gathered a “gang” of his own.
It was a strangely quiet night. Usually the narrow, dirty streets of that crowded neighborhood came to life in the darkness, crawling with drunks, whores, and thieves as they fought to survive for a few more hours. But people like that also seemed to have an instinct for when things were about to go very wrong, and they knew how to go to ground. Tonight only a few people scurried along in the shadows, and the cracked windows were shuttered.
Aidan slipped around a corner to a slightly wider street lined with shops that were mostly owned by Jewish proprietors who had to deal in such places. Those places were also locked up tight, but in the goldsmith’s shop that Piker said Beaumont intended to “turn over,” a faint light shone under the door. The silence felt thick and heavy, almost crackling in the darkness.
Aidan glanced down the street to see a ripple of movement beside the wall of another shop. It was Constable Morris and his men, waiting for the signal. Constable Morris had given Aidan some valuable information once
or twice before Aidan went to the West Indies, and now Aidan had repaid those favors tenfold. Capturing Beaumont would make Morris’s career—if they could carry this off and emerge unscathed themselves.
Aidan turned his attention to an upstairs window across the street, where the moonlight gleamed on a flash of steel. Nick kept watch there, pistol at the ready, but he hadn’t indicated that he saw anything of Beaumont and his gang yet. Aidan drew out his own gun and held it at the ready, his whole body tense and alert as he waited.
Tom Beaumont had hurt Lily for the last time. Aidan was going to make very sure of that now.
Suddenly the night was shattered by a loud crash from the alley that ran beside the shop. A light flared in the darkness, and Aidan felt a wild excitement leap inside of him. The battle was on.
There was a startled shout and a woman’s high-pitched scream. Aidan surged forward to kick down the front door of the shop, and the constables rushed into the darkened store behind him. The back door to the alley hung open, and lamplight spilled down a narrow staircase. The noise came from up there, a torrent of screams and crashes and the sound of breaking glass.
Aidan ran up the stairs to find a scene of chaos, the floor littered with coins and shards of glass and furniture overturned. Two women huddled in the corner, cowering back from two men, while a tall figure wrapped in a long, black coat fought with a skull-headed walking stick.
“Beaumont,” Aidan shouted as he cocked his pistol. His blood burned hot now, ignited by the violence and by facing Beaumont at last. The man would pay for what he had done to Lily.
Tom slowly turned and let the hapless shopkeeper collapse to the floor. Dark blue eyes shone like coals in a scarred, ruined face as he looked at Aidan, and a terrible smile spread over his thin lips. Aidan was aware of the men behind him, the fighting, but this moment was between him and Tom Beaumont.
“Ah, it’s Lil’s fancy man,” Beaumont said with a laugh. “I should have known it would be you.”
“You’re finished, Beaumont,” Aidan said quietly. “You might as well surrender now and go peacefully.”
