It was Feagin.
She quickened her pace, hoping to reach Scatter before he revealed himself. While the gent reached for his pocket, as if to grant Scatter’s request, Feagin was not inclined toward such generosity. He shoved Scatter against the chest so hard that it threw him backward.
“Get back, you sniveling leech.”
The stranger’s head snapped around. “Feagin, what the hell are you doing?”
“Damned beggars. ’Tis the third time this week that they’ve come a panhandling. ’Tis getting so decent citizens can’t even walk the streets without being molested.”
To Fanny’s astonishment, the stranger wedged himself between Scatter and Feagin. “He’s but a child.”
“He’s a bloody nuisance. Not a one of them are worth the skin it took to cover their bones.”
Cold-hearted bastard, Fanny thought. Not that she was surprised. She’d had dealings enough with Feagin and his ilk to know charity and kindness were as plummy to them as burrs in their bums.
She moved faster, urgency driving her the last twenty feet despite the stitch developing in her calf and the lack of air in her lungs. She finally reached the men, bumping into one, then the other. Years of ingrained reflexes took over as she brushed through them, and fleet hands slipped into their coats for the night’s pickings.
“John, what mischief are ye about this night?” she dramatized. “Mum’s worried sick!” She grabbed Scatter by the arm and shoved the bounty into his coat.
Then she pulled him behind her and turned to face the men. “Thank ye for finding me brother, kind sirs. I’ll just see that ’e gets home.” She twisted around and prodded the boy away from the men.
“Not so fast.”
One broad hand landed on her shoulder, another on Scatter’s. Fanny froze. Her throat constricted, sparks shot through her veins.
She glanced warily behind her and found her view blocked by a solid wall of chest. Grosgrain fabric the color of charcoal stretched across its breadth. A spicy, masculine scent curled through dampness, smothering the stench of the West End, teasing her senses. Her gaze worked its way up the row of togged buttons on his gaping greatcoat, past a silvery vest worth a week of meals, over a plain ivory shirt, to the base of his throat. Nothing but smooth, bare skin lay beneath the starched linen collar. Glimpsing that tiny wedge of nudity seemed more intimate than if she’d caught the gent stripped down to nothing.
Fanny swallowed over the sudden tightness in her throat. Up close he was more powerful than he’d appeared from afar. He stood at least six feet in height, a mere four inches taller than she, but the span of his body far exceeded hers, making her feel small and fragile and oddly vulnerable.
She forced herself to look up into his face, and oh, crikey, wished she hadn’t. The bloke was even more handsome than she’d first judged and did not do her fantasy justice. Raindrops slid off the brim of his hat to soak his shoulders, turning the gray to black. A shadow of whiskers darkened his sharply angled jaw and chin and surrounded a nicely bowed mouth too unsettling to dwell on. The bridge of his nose was straight as a dagger blade, unmarred by the telling bump she so often saw on those prone to brawling, the tip rounded, the nostrils nicely flared. Unfashionably short sideburns looked freshly trimmed, as did the coal black hair pulled back behind his ears and secured at his nape. And his eyes. . . . God’s teeth, the man had glorious eyes. Spiky lashes swept out above irises the color of mist on stone, and long hooded lids drew down at the corners in a sensual curve that made her think of how a man might look at a woman waiting in his bed. . . .
“My purse, s’il vous plaît.”
Dumbly, she glanced down at the hand he held toward her, the palm unexpectedly callused. Palpable tension emanated from the scrawny body behind her. “What purse?” The words came out surprisingly strong considering that it felt as if she were shoving them through a pinhole.
His lip quirked as if he found her false ignorance amusing. “The one you lifted from my pocket.”
His voice held the hint of an accent that didn’t match his aristocratic appearance. Not French, though he obviously spoke the language, but something more exotic—and hauntingly familiar.
Before she could place its cant, Feagin cried, “Why, the little thief got my watch, too!”
Fanny squealed as her collar was seized and she was hauled up against Feagin’s rotund chest.
“You think you can steal from George Feagin?”
Spots swam before her eyes as the odors of fish, cheap cologne, and the merciless grip on her collar threatened to choke the life right out of her.
Scatter charged out from behind her, eyes afire, hands outstretched. “Let ’er go!”
“Why you little—hey, I know you! You’re the weasel I caught breaking into my warehouse!” With a tight hold still on Fanny, Feagin made a grab for Scatter with his free hand.
“No!” Fanny angled herself between the two and shoved Scatter with all her might. “Run, Scat!”
“Damn your eyes!” With an enraged growl, Feagin swung his arm upward, and Fanny flinched, bracing herself for the backhanded blow.
It never came.
Shocked, she glanced up and saw that the dark stranger had seized Feagin’s wrist in midswing.
“Strike again, and I’ll break your hand,” he said, his tone so deadly that chills broke out along her spine.
Fanny had not a single doubt that he meant what he said.
Neither, apparently, did Feagin. His face suddenly paled, and he laughed, more a sound of rattled nerves than humor. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I’d more than dare.” The stranger smiled. “I’d take great pleasure in it.”
“You’re making a grave mistake, Westborough. I’m not certain I wish to deal with a man whose loyalties lie with riffraff.”
“Then I shall relieve you of the uncertainty. We no longer have a deal.”
If Feagin thought he’d had the upper hand with his implied threat, the man he called Westborough quickly burst the illusion. Eyes bulging, complexion ruddy, he sputtered in disbelief, “You’d call off a profitable venture over a pair of thievin’ guttersnipes?”
“I never conduct business with men who can’t control their tempers.” He released his grip on Feagin’s arm and stepped back. “Now, I suggest you unhand the youngster and take your leave. I’ll see your coin returned to you on the morrow.”
The tradesman’s jaw dropped. “You need me, Westborough.”
His expression never wavered. “Not that badly.”
The two men stared at one another for several seconds, one coldly calm, the other blazing mad.
“You will regret this,” Feagin finally spat. “Both of you.” After dropping his grip on Fanny’s collar, he spun on his heel and headed for one of two hacks that, at some point during the altercation, had drawn up at the curb.
And Fanny knew that if ever there was a time to save herself, it was now. She hadn’t survived the last ten years in London’s underworld by dawdling about. And yet, as much as she willed it, she couldn’t seem to tear herself away from the sight of her dark prince, standing in a halo of lamplight, watching Feagin’s hack pull away, his shoulders tense, his hands fisted. And there was something in his eyes . . . a bitter disappointment that reminded her of the times she’d held opportunity in her hands only to watch it combust before her very eyes.
Why? Why would he have come to her defense?
She shook her head, thoroughly befuddled. Hard as she tried, she just couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that a complete stranger—one of such obvious high-knobbed breeding—would not only protect her from the likes of George Feagin, but that he was willing to break some sort of arrangement because Feagin tried to hit her. She’d never heard of such a thing!
Only when the first hack disappeared around the corner did he finally turn to her. “Well, my young bandit, it seems that you and I have some unfinished business.”
Though cordial in manner, his tone carried a parlous unde
rtone and eyes that only moments ago reminded her of midnight sins now held all the warmth of a cemetery slab. Even a half-wit would understand that he held her to blame for his loss.
Well, to hell with him. She never asked him to take up for her. “Some other time, guv. I gots me more important things to do.” Wrapping her pride around her, she spun on her heel.
He caught her by the sleeve. “Not quite yet, my sticky-fingered friend. Now, I have asked you once, I shall ask you only once again. My purse, if you please?”
Fanny couldn’t say if it was that oddly familiar cadence of his speech, or the steely warning hovering just below the surface of civility, but she was beginning to feel terribly uneasy. She swallowed over the knot of dread creeping up her windpipe. “I don’t have it.”
His lips curved in a lopsided grin that she might have found charming under different circumstances.
“You’ll understand if I don’t believe you.”
That brought her up to her full height. “Are ye calling me a liar?”
“I have called you nothing. However, this night has been quite trying thus far, and my patience is wearing thin, so perhaps you should reconsider your answer.”
“I told ye, I don’t have yer bleedin’ purse.”
He studied her a moment—actually, challenged seemed a more apt description. His eyes, gray as polished pewter, bored into hers, as if trying to decide if she spoke the truth. She couldn’t deny that she filched the pockets of those who had more money than they could count. She would even admit to an occasional evasion of the truth.
But she never lied.
“All right, if this is the way you want to play . . .”
Fanny gasped as his hands shot out and began vigorously patted her hips, her waist, her rib cage. “Get your filthy hands off me, ye rotten bugger!”
“Not until I—” Whatever he’d been about to say came to an abrupt halt when his hands landed just below a part of her anatomy that she often wished had never developed. His dark brows shot up, then narrowed into a V. “Well, what do we have here?”
She almost blurted, “Breasts, you idiot!” but he spun her around before the words formed and whipped her cap off her head. She grabbed for it and missed. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders in riot of tangled curls. Fanny went rigid, mentally preparing herself for the worst.
But he didn’t tear at her clothes, didn’t grope her body.
Instead, with a gentleness she’d never imagined existed, he tipped her chin into the dim light of the streetlamp and searched her features.
A queer, swampy feeling spread through Fanny’s middle, as if she were sinking into a pit of warm molasses. She knew she should fight it. Struggle to pull away. She couldn’t. His eyes, shot with the same silvery tint of his vest, pulled at her, drew her in, held her motionless.
Never in twenty years had she given any thought to her own appearance, but that was before she saw her own reflection in the mirror of his eyes—the dirt-streaked cheekbones, matted hair, ratty clothes. A deep flush scorched her face, and the longer he studied her, the more cheap and worthless she felt.
“Well I’ll be. . . .” he said in awe. “You’re naught but a girl!”
Fanny blinked. He’d only just now figured that out?
“What’s your name?” he demanded.
She jerked her chin from his grasp. “Queen Victoria, ye loggerhead, now bugger off.”
“Tut, tut. Such language, Your Royal Majesty.” Laughter resonated in his deeply lyrical voice. “I wonder what your subjects would think were they aware their sovereign speaks with such savoir-faire?”
She pressed her lips tightly together. She’d been manhandled enough for one night and by crikey, she’d not take it from this gaumless muck-a-muck. “If you’re through pawing at me,” she ground out, “I’ll thank ye to let me go.”
“Indeed? And I’ll thank you to return my property.”
The grin he gave her was so boyishly disarming that she wasn’t even aware that he’d grabbed the strap of something much more personal and private than body parts. “Give me that!” She grabbed for the rucksack holding her most treasured belongings, but he hoarded it to his front as if he were a flask-nipper who’d just discovered the last drop of rum in England.
“You had your chance.”
Seething, she watched helplessly as he plundered the canvass bag. A second later, he withdrew a leather kit that housed a pair of palm nippers, a widdy for sliding locks, and a set of bar keys. His gaze sought hers in question; Fanny held her breath.
“Tools of the trade?”
She tried to think of some pithy response, but her tongue seemed stuck to the roof of her mouth.
The gent finally released his hold on the strap and sighed. “It’s not here,” he muttered to himself.
Clutching the rucksack tightly beneath her coat, Fanny immediately stepped back out of his reach. She couldn’t breathe when she stood so close to him, and her heart forgot to beat right. “I told ye I didn’t have it.”
“Where is it then?”
She refused to answer.
“You passed it on to your mate, didn’t you?”
Again, Fanny refused to answer. She stood in stony silence, staring at a spot past his shoulder, waiting for him to tire of his bullying and let her go.
“All right, if this is the way it is to be, then so be it.”
The flickering hope that he would release her crumbled in the next instant when he wrapped his hand around her arm and started leading her toward the second hack, where a silent, regally uniformed footman stood holding open the door.
Fanny dug in her heels. “Wait—what are ye doing?”
“Keeping the streets of London safe from impertinent thieves.”
His jaw was set in a determined frown, his stride was sure and swift. The panic she’d held under such tight control began to unravel through her veins and claw at her throat. “What do you mean?” Her voice dropped and trembled. She could hardly keep up with him. “Where are ye taking me?”
“Someplace where you can’t cause any more trouble.”
Newgate!
Stories told late at night in the darkness of the tunnels by knucks who had spent months—even years!—trapped behind the stone walls came at her in a rush. Of bodies shrunken from starvation and illness. Of cries of the convicted and insane, and worse the hopelessness of freedom forever denied. . . .
Fanny slammed her elbow between his ribs then took off. She didn’t wait to see if he followed, she just ran, ducking into alleys littered with broken carts, crates, and foraging pigs, slipping through wrought-iron fences and crossing yards strung with clotheslines. Images of Newgate loomed up before her like wraiths in a nightmare. She’d not go to prison. She couldn’t. She had bigger plans for her life than to spend it rotting away in some dank cell.
She should have known escape would not come easy. His arms were too long, his reflexes too swift, and the night had gone poorly from the outset. He caught up to her after only a few hundred yards, seized her around the waist, and lifted her off the ground, hitching her backside against his hip as if she were a sack of feed. Her breaths came out in harsh gasps, sobs snagged at the back of her mouth. She pounded his wrist, as angry at him for catching her as at herself for being caught, but it was like beating a chunk of iron. “Let me go, ye bloody oaf! Let me go or I’ll—”
“Scream? Be my guest.”
Oh, she wanted to. The scream built in her throat, choking off what air she’d managed to take in. But she held it back, knowing as well as he did that it would only serve to call every bobbie in the district down upon her head. “You’ve got no proof against me.”
“I felt you. That’s proof enough for me.”
He’d felt her? Oh, God, Jack was right then, she was losing her touch! He’d told her often enough over the last year, and it had been all she could do to prove him wrong.
Certainly she could deny taking this bloke’s money to her heart’s content, but who would the c
oppers believe? A respectable gentleman or a street rat? Fanny wilted in defeat, knowing the answer to that.
They rounded a corner, and the tavern came into sight. Once they reached the horse-drawn cab, she knew it would only be a matter of moments before she forfeited any chance of escape. “Please, sir.” Fanny had never begged for anything in her life, and even now, the words felt as if they were being ripped from her throat. “Please, just . . . just let me go. I can’t—I won’t—go to prison.”
“I have no intention of taking you to prison; however, you have cost me two hundred pounds and an important alliance, and I am not a man to take such offense lightly.” His stride never broke. “If you want my money so badly, you will have to earn it.”
Earn it? Her gaze flew to the lamplight ladies watching him carry her across the street from their corner post. Outrage blazed through every pore. “I ain’t lifting me skirts for no man.”
“Lift your—” He came to a startled stop, let her drop to her feet, then spun her around. “Let me assure you that I have no intention of having you”—his gaze swept her ragged trousers and ill-fitting coat—“lift your skirts as they are. Some men may harbor adolescent preferences, but I find women much more to my liking than children.”
Children! He thought her a child? Her spine stiffened. “Just how old do ye think I am?”
He angled his head and studied her a moment. “Thirteen—no, too tall. Fifteen, then, perhaps sixteen, even. Still too young for my tastes.”
So insulting was the notion that Fanny almost declared her true age until it occurred to her that a measure of safety lay in his misconception. “What do ye want from me, then?”
“Simple. You shall come to work for me in my home.”
“Doing what?”
“Well, I was going to suggest stableboy, but under the circumstances, housemaid seems more appropriate.”
Her mouth fell. “Ye want me to be a . . . a servant? In yer house?” Of all the things she’d expected him to say, this was not one of them.
“Do you prefer the alternative?”
“But I don’t know nothin’ ’bout being a servant!”
“It’s not as difficult as you might think. Millie, my housekeeper, will teach you everything you need to know.”
A Scandalous Lady Page 3
