by Anna Randol
A muscle ticked in Northgate’s jaw. “I have no interest in Miss Valdan.”
Gabriel couldn’t savor the brief moment of relief. “Then why am I here?”
“I bid to force you to speak to me.”
That’s what this was about? Didn’t he understand the implications of Gabriel’s refusal to respond to his missives? Unfortunately for Northgate, Gabriel was immune to whatever manipulation he had in mind. “If you aren’t bidding on Miss Valdan, I have no reason to be here.” He stood.
“Don’t you want to know why I send money to your mother? Or shall I shout it from the rooftops until you hear me?”
Gabriel stilled. He didn’t take well to threats, but he couldn’t have the marquess tear apart the reputation his mother had finally rebuilt. “Then speak. But keep in mind, you have nothing to say that I want to hear.”
“I love your mother.”
Enough. The man was still a liar as well as a cozening bastard. Gabriel had experience dealing with his type. He narrowed his eyes and glared at Northgate. “You ruined an innocent under your brother’s protection, then left her to face the consequences alone. Where is the love in that?”
Northgate flinched but didn’t lower his gaze. “Damn it. It wasn’t something dirty and base. She knew my situation. We both knew. We didn’t mean for it to happen. But I have not once in thirty years regretted our actions.”
“You don’t regret leaving her to raise two children in poverty?”
“I didn’t know she was pregnant. She didn’t tell me until after I had already wed.”
“How fortunate for you.”
Northgate raked his fingers through his hair. “After I found out, I tried to take care of her. Of all of you. You can have every last penny I have if you want it.”
The man was a silver-tongued snake. What did he hope to gain by this? Even if what he said was true, his guilt came far too late. “You think you can buy forgiveness for what you did to my mother?”
“I wasn’t trying to buy forgiveness. I was trying to do the right thing. But your mother would never accept any help, not even when you were destitute.”
“Why would she take your money? So she could be your kept woman?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“You took her innocence with no intention of ever making it right. You left her with nothing.” The words stuck in Gabriel’s throat, and he braced his hands on the edge of the desk.
“Are you all right, Huntford?”
Gabriel stared at the man whose face he shared. He was angry at Northgate for wooing his mother. For taking her virginity. For robbing her of the ability to provide for herself.
It sounded far too close to Gabriel’s plans for Madeline.
“Huntford?”
It wasn’t the same. Madeline knew what she was doing. She was hardly an inexperienced young woman. And while he didn’t want to marry, neither did she. Besides, he cared for her—so intently, in fact, that he feared to examine it.
Gabriel strode from the room, ignoring Northgate’s perplexed frown.
He wasn’t his father. The very idea was ridiculous.
Yet Gabriel turned away from the mirror in the entry hall as he strode past, refusing to look at his reflection.
Chapter Twenty-six
Gabriel pulled his hat low over his face and turned up the collar of his greatcoat, drawing farther into the shadows and away from the splotches of melancholy light cast by the streetlamp. His attempts to gain evidence against Billingsgate had continued to prove fruitless. One of the footmen at his club claimed he’d seen Billingsgate leave early the night of the Simm murder, while another swore he’d been at the faro table all night. Gabriel had tried to meet with Billingsgate’s solicitor to view his financial records but the man said he hadn’t received authorization to do it.
In the distance, a church bell tolled midnight. Gabriel studied the road through the narrow space between his brim and the edge of his collar. He intended to see that apprehending Madeline’s attacker proved more successful.
A rat with a blunt stub of a tail picked its way over a forgotten pile of rags cluttering the mouth of the alley across the way. A spindly man scuttled down the street, his hands clutched protectively over his pockets, no doubt on his way to empty them in the card game. As expected, he headed toward the two spotters who guarded the entrance to the night’s entertainment.
A drunken man and a lightskirt stumbled down the street, the man singing loudly of a bonny farm girl named Bess. The woman clung to him and swung a bottle of cheap gin from side to side almost in time with the music.
She lifted the bottle in Gabriel’s direction. “Hey, guv’nor. Care to join us? I think I’m enough for the two of you. Besides, old Togger here sometimes can’t raise his sails if he’s three sheets to the wind. If you know what I mean?” She took a messy gulp of the gin, some of the liquor spilling past two missing front teeth, down her chin to her bosom and the ample roundness of her stomach. “But he don’t mind paying for a show, either, and that might get you a fine deal.”
Gabriel drew farther back into the shadows, hoping the enterprising woman would take the hint. Where the devil were Maddox and Campbell? He’d give them two more minutes, then go after Nicholas Toole himself.
The woman tugged her customer across the street toward Gabriel. “Here now, luv. Don’t be shy. You a bit low on funds? Well, I’m feeling a mite generous this evening. Just name your price.”
Gabriel lifted the brim of his hat so she could see his glare. “Move along. I’m not interested.”
She paused an instant, then let go of the other man and stumbled against Gabriel. “Coo-ee! Aren’t you a balmy one? With a face like that, I expect you usually get it for free.” She reached out, dragging a filthy, broken nail across his chest. “You drives a hard bargain, but I accept.”
Gabriel pried her finger off him, his head swimming from the gin fumes emanating from her skin.
The prostitute tapped the edge of the bottle against her lip. “I hear that you know how to give a woman unspeakable pleasure, too.” Her voice lowered to a whisper and lost its accent.
Gabriel grabbed her shoulder, anger tightening his grip as he recognized the voice. “What in the blazes are you doing here, Madeline?” Gabriel dropped his hand to her stomach, his fingers examining the layers of wrapping that comprised her newfound girth.
The drunken man straightened, nearly tipping over backward. “Wait one minute, Bess. You can’t leave me behind. I employed you fair and square. If he’s going to tup you, I get to watch.” He staggered toward them.
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. From the man’s build, it had to be Campbell. Yet he pulled off his role to perfection: a sloppy, hopeful grin twisting on his face, his feet shuffling with the awkward deliberation of a determined drunk. He draped his arm over Madeline’s shoulder for support when he arrived. Only the glittering intensity of his dark eyes confirmed his true identity.
Across the alley, the pile of rags suddenly stirred and coalesced into the shape of a man.
Gabriel swore under his breath as Maddox joined their little group. How long had they been a team? Ten years? Gabriel turned down the collar of his jacket, hoping the cold air would clear his head. He looked at them with new respect. No, that didn’t quite describe it. That implied his preconceived notions had been near the truth. They could have walked right past him and he never would have known it. Hell, Maddox had been lying only a dozen feet from him the entire time he’d been standing there.
But there was one more person to this team than he’d anticipated.
“What are you doing here, Madeline?”
She smiled her drunken grin. This time he could see that her front teeth weren’t missing, just blackened. “Why wouldn’t I be here, luv? I think this concerns me rather personally, if you get my meaning.”
Gabriel frowned at Campbell. “You shouldn’t have brought her.”
Campbell shrugged. “It concerns her. She had a right to come.�
�
“This man tried to kill her.”
“Only because he was paid,” Madeline replied. And the three spies nodded at one another as if that excuse made perfect sense.
“It isn’t as if she’s a hen-witted innocent that needs to be left at home.” Maddox patted him on the shoulder. “We’re going to leave her here to keep watch over you.”
Madeline tucked her arm through Gabriel’s. “We didn’t want ye to be lonely. Or,” she added in a whisper, “to look like a Runner waiting to pounce.”
Gabriel was tempted to send them all home. But he wasn’t that much of a fool. He recognized the advantage they provided. Besides, if Madeline was with him, he could ensure she wasn’t harmed. “The card game is in a room above the bakery.” He tilted his head toward the building two blocks down the street.
Maddox nodded vacantly, then sauntered in the wrong direction. Campbell smoothed the lines on his cravat, balanced a pair of spectacles on the end of his nose, then hurried toward the bakery.
Madeline draped herself over Gabriel’s chest. “Now, luv, what pleases you this evening?”
Even padded and reeking of gin, the feel of Madeline pressed against him stirred heat through Gabriel’s veins.
Her newly hirsute brows waggled at him. “Unless you’re one of them mollies, but then mayhap I can change your mind.”
Gabriel swatted her on her padded backside, feeling cheerful for the first time as she yelped in outrage. He lowered his lips to her neck, avoiding the bulbous mole that now graced it. “Remember, I didn’t want you here in the first place.”
She nipped his ear.
It was his turn to yelp.
“Clayton is a parson’s son desperate to recoup his losses before he has to confess to his father. Maddox will circle around behind to cover any other exits.” Her eyes sparkled with glee.
“You like this, don’t you?”
She squirmed against him, groaning loudly. “I didn’t peg you for such a wild one. You want to tup me here in the street? Where anyone can see?” Her giggle ended in a hiccup he would have sworn was real, but her voice lowered. “Like spy work?” She frowned for a moment. “It was hell on earth. But I always knew who I was and never had to be anything more.”
Gabriel grunted when she backed him into a wall. “There’s no one about. You can cease your performance.”
Her hand tightened on his jacket. “Wrong. You never know who’s about. Who is watching from a window or rooftop. It could be anyone from a housekeeper to an assassin, and you never know what they will recall.”
“I bow to your greater wisdom.” Before she could speak, he switched their positions, lifting her off the ground and pressing her against the brick wall. “Why did you let your performance slip for me? Why did you ever let me know you were more than a courtesan selling her virginity?”
She wrapped her legs around his waist. “Am I something more?”
He gently rocked against her, relishing her gasp of pleasure. But then he stilled. He wasn’t his father. He wasn’t going to woo her with sweet words when there’d be nothing more between them. But a glimmer of uncertainty had entered her eyes at his pause and he wasn’t beast enough to leave it there. “You are much more. I’ve seen it.”
“What did you see?” she whispered. “A woman so wanton she’d take her pleasure where she could get it?” She threaded her arms under his greatcoat, as if suddenly cold.
“Would you have done what we did with anyone else?” He stopped her immediate answer with a finger across his lips. “If you weren’t being paid a fortune.”
The corner of her mouth quirked at his caveat, but then disappeared. “If he had information I needed.”
“But if it was up to you alone?”
She seemed to truly consider his question. “No.”
A primitive possession sealed his lips to Madeline’s before he could think better of it. “I saw a beautifully passionate woman. One any man in his right mind would want to claim as his own.” Gabriel choked on the rest of his words. What was he saying? He was coming damnably close to professing something he didn’t feel.
Liar.
Well then, he was coming far too close to establishing bonds between them that would be difficult to sever.
But why was he so afraid of those bonds? He didn’t want to be like his father. The simplest way around that would be to pursue Madeline with honorable intentions.
Yet that wasn’t what either of them wanted, was it?
Madeline’s fingers clenched in his hair. “Oh, ye swells know how to pleasure a woman right.” She tossed her head from side to side and began to moan. “Harder, harder! Ye know how I like it when someone’s watching.”
Taking her hint about an observer, Gabriel wrapped his arms around her back, saving her delicate skin from the bricks, and increased the pressure of his hips against her.
“To our right, four o’clock,” she whispered.
Gabriel turned his head slightly. Nicholas Toole. The man sauntered with the same cocksure stride as he had on the bridge. A new hat and jacket only added to his swagger. Bought with Madeline’s blood money, no doubt.
Gabriel looked forward to grinding that hat and the face under it into the dirt.
Toole spared them only a leering snigger as he walked past. But then rather than continuing on to the card game, he turned a corner.
Madeline shoved Gabriel away. “Well, luv, that’ll be five shillings.” She reached into his pocket, pulled out all the money he had, then darted away with a cackle in the direction Toole had taken.
“Thief! You said three shillings.” He hurried down the street after her.
Ahead of them, Toole ducked through the tattered purple velvet that covered the door of a brothel.
Gabriel swore at Toole’s choice of establishment. “I’m afraid Mrs. Humphreys will not be eager to lend me assistance.”
“You make friends everywhere, don’t you?”
“I arrested her a while back for kidnapping young girls from the countryside and selling them to brothels around London.”
Madeline grimaced. “Is there another exit out of the building?”
Frowning, Gabriel nodded. “Into an alley behind.”
“Wait for Toole there. I’ll send him to you.”
Madeline shed padding as she walked. Toole was a prideful young pup. No one would believe he’d tumble good old Bess. She scrubbed the ink off her teeth with the back of her hand. And altered her walk into a brazen sway of hips. Now she was Betsy, a Covent Garden prostitute, going places in the world, thank ye very much.
“Nicholas!” Madeline shrieked as she flung aside the curtain obscuring the doorway. She pushed past the prizefighter who posed as a footman. “Did he just come in here? Sporting a new hat and coat, is he?”
A plump, white-haired woman hurried forward. No wonder she’d been successful in luring children into her clutches. The carefully painted glow in her cheeks overshadowed the cruel light in her rheumy blue eyes. “What’s going on, my dear?” Her gaze stripped Madeline naked and assigned a price to every attribute.
Madeline flounced as Betsy would have done. “It’s that Nicholas Toole. Gave me the pox. And he never paid me for my services neither, don’t pay any of his women apparently. But I ain’t one to take it.”
Although Madeline liked to think the threat of the French pox swayed Mrs. Humphreys, she knew it was the risk of not being paid. Mrs. Humphreys nodded to the footman and he disappeared into the back rooms, moments later dragging out a hatless Nicholas Toole with his open trousers held in his fists.
Madeline clouted him on the head. “That’s for giving me the pox.” She punched him in the stomach. “And that’s for skinting me on my payment.”
Toole struggled against his captor’s beefy fists. “What in the blooming hell is the matter with you? I don’t even know who you are.”
Madeline smiled with false sweetness. “From the bridge three days ago.”
Toole’s gaze searched her face,
then he paled. “Bloody witch.”
With a wild kick backward, Toole broke free of the footman. Madeline had positioned herself between him and the front door, so he took off in the other direction, yanking up his trousers as he went.
Madeline ran behind him, cursing like a fishwife. A gentleman in the process of unlacing a prostitute’s bodice stepped out of the way without looking up. As they raced past, the bored woman surveyed them with only slightly more bleary-eyed interest than she paid to her customer.
Toole skidded around a corner, flung open a door, then stumbled through it. Flesh hit flesh, and Toole grunted.
He’d found Gabriel, then.
Madeline followed him out into the alley, careful to latch the door behind her.
Gabriel had Toole slammed into the wall, his arm twisted behind his back. “Who hired you?”
“I don’t know—” His words ended in a squeal as Gabriel tightened his grip.
“I have you for attempted murder, and that’s a hanging offense. As you may have heard, I’m not a merciful man. But if you give me the name of the man who hired you, I might suggest transportation instead.”
Toole struggled for another moment, then sagged against the wall. “I knew I should’ve run when I saw a beak like you there, Huntford. But the money was just too good. I don’t know his name.” He groaned as Gabriel applied pressure. “I swear it! But I can tell you about him.”
“Then speak.”
“He’s a foreign gent. Not very old, but not too young, either.”
“You haven’t yet earned your way out of a noose.”
The pace of Toole’s words increased. “I met him in a tavern by the docks. The Bull and the Bear. I think he was staying there. But I don’t know if he still is, I didn’t exactly want to see him again after we found out you hadn’t drowned. I just took the money he’d paid to secure our services and went my own way.”
