Gambled Away: A Historical Romance Anthology

by Rose Lerner

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  More Books by Molly

  Seduced (Into the Wild: Book One)

  Tempted (Into the Wild: Book Two)

  Helen Rivers and her mother Ann-Marie are inspired by abolitionist Elizabeth Van Lew and her daughter Bet. Helen’s friend, Mary – a former slave acting as a spy in the Southern White House — is inspired by Mary Bowser. Books to read if you’re interested in more about the brave female spies of the Civil War: The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Leveen and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott.

  I’ve fudged the dates of Barney Ford’s Inter-Ocean Hotel which wasn’t open to the public until 1873. The Soldier’s Heart was an early identifier of PTSD in Civil War soldiers, just as The Soldier’s Disease was an early identifier of alcohol and drug addictions.

  Any other historical inaccuracies are entirely my own.

  Please turn the page to read more about SEDUCED

  * * *

  Seduced

  * * *

  A gritty and emotional historical western romance by RITA-award winning and Bestselling author Molly O'Keefe.

  Melody Hurst’s days as a Southern belle are over. Now she’s widowed and alone in the foothills of the Rockies, struggling to make a life in a dangerous world. She’s determined to secure a future by marrying – but love is out of the question.

  Cole Baywood has turned bounty hunter after serving in the horrors of the Civil War, but the ghosts of the men and women he’s killed still haunt him. He’s drawn to the beautiful widow trying to seduce him, only the darkness in his soul forces him to reject her. Is it possible that Melody’s touch can heal the demons of his past? And how can he convince a woman who has lost so much to risk her heart?

  Buy it now!

  Gideon and the Den of Thieves

  Joanna Bourne

  Aimée Beauclerc, set adrift in England by the French Revolution, appraises stolen goods for Regency crime boss Lazarus while she plots her escape. But when Lazarus is injured, she has a choice: set her own dreams aside and stay to prop up his brutal rule...or flee and allow a bloody struggle for power that will be the death of the larcenous men, women and children she's grown to love.

  Into Lazarus’s headquarters stomps formidable soldier of fortune Gideon Gage threatening a bloody slaughter if his kidnapped sister isn't returned to him.

  With Gideon's skills at her disposal, Aimée just might have a chance. She offers him a bargain: she'll help his sister if he'll set aside his understandable thirst for vengeance and help her protect her friends, thwart the vicious killer trying to seize control of the gang, and get free of Lazarus once and for all.

  Aimée's used to gambling with her life, but as she learns to trust Gideon, she finds herself gambling with something even more precious: her heart.

  Chapter 1

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  She picked a gold watch from the loot spread along the table. A length of ribbon still trailed away from where it had been cut off from some nob’s waistcoat. Gold. Yes. That was the unmistakable greasy feel of authenticity. But it wasn’t heavy in her hand and the case gave a tinny click when opened. Not a very valuable gold watch.

  Aimée Beauclerc turned it over in the light of the lantern and used her little pick to open the back. The works were engraved Hess, Liverpool, which was not a distinguished maker. The man who stole this would be disappointed.

  On every side, housebreakers coiled their ropes and picked up their crowbars. Whores yawned and stretched, detached themselves from mats and pallets and the men they were sleeping beside, pulled on satin and velvet, and complained about the weather. London’s best thieves scratched and drank beer and chatted companionably. Some fell into tight knots of accomplices and departed. The air under the vaulted ceiling pulsed with their noise. In a parlor down the hall someone was frying sausages. It could have been any larcenous night in the padding ken.

  But tonight she was afraid. Afraid as she hadn’t been since she arrived in London, dragged before Lazarus and offered for sale.

  She dipped her quill in ink and wrote Gold watch, Hess, Liverpool, into the ledger. She added a fence value at twelve pounds.

  This was her great skill, learned at her father’s side in his auction house in Paris. She would have run the business someday, if Paris had not fallen into madness and riots with the Revolution. If Papa had not been killed on their flight to England.

  “We are just sucking the juice out of London, ain’t we?” A boy, black-haired, not tall, came to stand at the other side of the table.

  “A profitable night,” she said.

  “The wealth of the nation filched away, ring by ring, purse by purse.”

  Hawker was thirteen, more or less. He didn't know himself. He was the voice of the King of Thieves, passing along orders, carrying valuables, trusted and untouchable. Hawker the Hand. That wasn’t a nickname, but the title that went with the job.

  He was brilliant and ruthless, tough as packed sand, without a vestige of conscience. He was one of the half dozen in this place she thought of as a friend.

  He picked up the watch she’d been looking at. “Gold.” He opened the back. “Out of a passable shop in a grubby town. Ten quid?”

  “Twelve. It’s gaudy, but look.” She took it back from him and held it so the light slid across the case. “Not a scratch on it. Condition is everything in the secondhand market.”

  “That’s what we’re calling stolen goods these days? Secondhand?”

  “I try to give every theft a bit of—”

  A sharp crack sounded through the room. Sudden. Loud. Cold fear punched her belly like a fist.

  She spun toward the sound. Reached for her gun.

  Hawker’s knife was out, ready to throw. A yell and a curse from across the room. Shuffling and the smack of flesh on flesh.

  With a smooth continuation of the motion, Hawker flipped his knife and hid it away. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  A chair fell and scraped the floor with a confused rattling. Men and women shouted. More furniture toppled.

  She located the center of the ruckus. Women tried to pull a pair of drunken brawlers away from each other. A gathering crowd urged them onward. One annoyed and substantial man stood up from his table and waded in to put a stop to it.

  Hawker said, “Fisticuffs. The pastime of the Brotherhood.”

  Lazarus could ignore a fistfight. No one would find that strange. She let out a long breath and settled her gun back into her pocket.

  With steady hands she picked up the next offering on the table. It took a minute for her to focus on it and see what it was. “Why am I looking at this?” She let it coil back to the table. “This” was a necklace of coral beads, worn, chipped, and the clasp was broken. “Who’s wasting my time?”

  “The Mole.”

  The Mole was six years old, at most.

  “It’s ’is first jewel snatch and he’s puffed up like a toad.” Hawker sounded indulgent. “He’s young.”

  “A happy day for the Mole. I will call it two bob.” Even a child thief had his pride. “I wish him much illicit profit in the future.” It was a measure of her moral decay that she meant it.

  “Illicit?” Hawker said.

  “Illegal. Unlawful. Forbidden.” She waved the length of the tables. “You could say everybody and everything in the house qualifies as illicit.”

  “Illicit.” He tasted the word, liking it.

  At the far end of the room Lazarus, King Thief, leader of the Brotherhood, sprawled in his throne-like chair at the great stone hearth. The Turkish carpet at his feet marked out a territory on the floor. There, in view of everybody, Lazarus met with his lieutenants, gave orders, received tribute, and generally cowed his followers into a semblance of obedience.

  He was a big brown-haired man, not yet forty, with square, massive, man-killing hands. He wore the clothes of an honest tradesman. The overall impression wa
s one of efficient brutality.

  She hoped he could sit upright for the next few hours. There’d been considerable blood loss.

  Hawker glanced in that direction and looked away without any change of expression. He said, “He’s fine so far,” and turned his attention to the next pile of glitter and color. She slid the lantern and her account book along with him.

  Did Hawker feel Death crouching in the corner, licking its chops? He seemed the same as always. Alert, amused, pleased with himself, irreverent as a jackdaw. But then, Hawker had no sense at all.

  He selected the snuffbox from the medley of loot and held it up. “Talk to me about this. I need to look around.”

  “Good choice.” She tapped snuff onto the floor. “The hallmark is Antwerp.”

  “Antwerp. Right.” Hawker watched Lazarus and one of the pillars of the Brotherhood, Bent Thomas, engaged in conversation. “They’re talking about you.”

  Most of her worries of the evening centered on Bent Thomas.

  “Lazarus sent me away.” Hawker’s mouth twisted. “I wish ’e wouldn’t do that. I am a useful distraction at all times and invaluable in a fight. I make an elegant threat if one’s needed. It’s not as if I can’t keep me mouth shut.”

  “You are silent as the grave.”

  “Silent as a fairly deep grave, of which I have dug one or two.” For an instant Hawker wore a cold, blank expression, inhuman as winter ice. “He should let me knife Bent Thomas. It’d save trouble in the long run.”

  “The Brotherhood wouldn’t like it.”

  “They wouldn’t know.” He grinned and became Hawker again. “What’s one more splash in the Thames on a night like this?”

  “Somebody else would start scheming to take over. Probably somebody worse. You can’t kill them all.”

  “There you go, being sensible.”

  In his place by the fire, Lazarus stretched and deliberately scratched his side, as if he’d received a pin prick in some fight. As if the long slit she’d stitched up a few hours ago didn’t exist. That was Lazarus’s reply to any rumors.

  She said, “He should be in bed.”

  “Oh, that’d reassure everybody, that would. Him upstairs and nobody knowing if he’s ’arf dead or just taking a nap. He has to show hisself.”

  “They don’t know he’s hurt. You, me, Black John—we know. That’s all.”

  “And the cove what stabbed him in the dark. Where do you think them rumors come from?”

  The stabbing was only the first step in this plot. She didn't know what came next, but they were neck-deep in it. “I hope Lazarus doesn’t keel over, making his point.”

  “Not ’im.” Hawker began to pace along the table, prodding this and that.

  Black John, the bodyguard, stood to the left of Lazarus, being imperturbable. The dark-haired woman sitting miserably on the floor was the current toy, one of the rich women Lazarus kidnapped and held for ransom. It was his small amusement. A hobby of sorts. He called this one Daffy.

  That was another reply Lazarus made to the whispers. He wouldn’t bring his toy out where she might get hurt in a fight. He was careful with them. He was very careful with this one.

  Bent Thomas let his gaze linger on the toy, hot and appreciative. Most men had sense enough to kept that hidden.

  Aimée took out her loupe and examined the snuffbox. Even now, even here, it was a pleasure to handle such things. “I would have called this élégant once.” It wasn’t often these days that she reached for a French word, except when she was teaching Hawker the language. “You have the eye, Hawker. Give me a few years and I could make a reasonably good fence of you.”

  “One of many professions that would welcome me with open arms.”

  “Nice.” She studied it closely. “Very nice. It’s too good to carry around, really. It should be in a glass case.”

  “Not the trinket fer a man to put in his pocket and head out to tup the Covent Garden ladies.” At the end of the table he picked up an ebony cane. He spun it in his fingers. “I like this. Good balance.”

  He flipped the black cane in his hand. Cut and slashed. Danced back as if an opponent pressed him. Blocked an imaginary attack. Returned with a deep thrust. The street rat in shabby, oversized clothes became, for an instant, a lithe young fencer.

  A contingent of sneak thieves—Sticks, Bill, and Lamb—clapped and whistled. Hawker’s particular friends.

  He pulled off his battered cap and bowed with a flourish. The moment was over. He dropped the cane on the table and sauntered back to her. “I’d look a right fool, wouldn’t I, carrying a gentlemen’s plaything?”

  “At least you wouldn’t let somebody snatch it from you.”

  If Bent Thomas called challenge on Lazarus tonight, Hawker would die almost at once. Black John and Goodman and the Bishop would die. And Benedict Miles. Then Thin Mary, if they could track her down. Those six had to be dead for Bent Thomas to take over.

  There’d be others—men, women, and children who didn’t scramble out of the way fast enough. The pregnant whore dozing on her pile of cushions in the corner. Daffy, who wouldn’t know enough to run. The old limping woman who lighted the lamps. All of them caught in the crossfire.

  Two dozen deaths in the first ten minutes, if Lazarus fell. More later, when the winners cleaned house. She herself would survive in some form or another.

  She brought the snuffbox close to the lantern. “It’s technically skilled painting. I don’t suppose you noticed that.”

  “I noticed she’s naked as a frog. That’s got to raise the price.”

  “Doubles it.” She pulled the ledger close and wrote, Sterling snuffbox, Albert Minceau, naked Demeter holding a horn of plenty.

  In his comfortable chair, Lazarus leaned to one side, looking bland and bored. Everyone in the Brotherhood knew how dangerous he was at such moments. But Bent Thomas thrust a thick, muscled arm forward, arguing with Lazarus, stabbing the air with emphatic, stiff gestures.

  Lazarus said one word. “No.”

  Silence sliced across the padding ken. It held long enough for men to draw breath in and let it out. Then Lazarus crooked his finger at Daffy and she jumped up and came to him. He spoke softly. She went to pour a glass half full of brandy that she brought to him. None was offered to Bent Thomas.

  Bent Thomas sank back and made some mild, grumbling remark.

  Conversation resumed. The whores took up their accustomed grousing. Men put elbow to table, stuffed food in their mouths, and guzzled ale. The disorder of ragged kids went back to playing knucklebones.

  Lazarus drank deep. Maybe the brandy was for the pain. Maybe it was to make him look drunk and explain any weakness. He looked pale to her, across this distance, and he didn’t talk much.

  Bent Thomas turned to stare in her direction. He licked his lips before he went back to his argument with Lazarus.

  “That one has plans for you,” Hawker said, meaning Bent Thomas.

  “It has become fairly obvious.” Blood rang in her ears with a high, tinny drum sound. “I wish they’d pick some other woman to fight over. The toy, for instance. She’s pretty.”

  “You’re staring.” Hawker snapped his fingers and called her attention back. “You ’ave no idea, do you? Pretty is that pocket watch you weren’t impressed with. What you are, French girl, is quality.” He tapped the snuffbox she still held. “Like this. When you work your way along this table, they holds their breath, waiting to see the price you lay on their goods. Nobody questions it. A cove can take your numbers to any fence in the city.”

  “My small skill.”

  “Magic, far as everyone here’s concerned. You are worth fighting over. If Bent Thomas cries challenge for one of them street whores or for that toy, everybody laughs at him. If he challenges for you, Lazarus has to meet him.” Hawker looked directly at her. “Or Lazarus can negotiate. He can lend you for a while.”

  “He won’t.”

  “It stops the challenge. Bent Thomas gets the sparkle of running yo
u under the Dead Man’s nose. He rubs the polish off what belongs to Lazarus. He gets rich because you tell ’im what to steal and where to sell it. Putting you under ’im in bed is icing on the cake.”

  No one more cynical than Hawker.

  Lazarus wouldn’t give her to Bent Thomas. He wouldn’t.

  Except Lazarus played byzantine games. Hard games that pinned the unsuspecting to the nearest wall. Brutal games that tipped you headlong into cold water when you couldn’t swim. Lazarus might hand her over to Bent Thomas and expect her to get out of the situation on her own.

  She steadied her breathing. “So. We do something clever, you and I. We provide a distraction. We make this a bad night for a challenge.”

  Hawker pulled on his lower lip, thinking. “Something interesting. Something that drags attention elsewhere. Bent Thomas won’t challenge unless all eyes are on ’im.”

  “I could knock this table over.” She rapped the wood with her knuckles. “Or better, you do it, fighting with that cane against the boys. All the goods end up on the floor, mixed together. I could set a fire.”

  “I could put a knife into some cully what annoys me. That’s a lengthy list. Or Blue Sally might be convinced to have ’er baby tonight.”

  She looked past him. “Or this.”

  The ripple that disturbed the currents of the room was so slight she wouldn’t have noticed it another night. One of the outside guards, Thimble, stood at the door, huge and damp, frowning in the direction of Lazarus, not willing to interrupt King Thief when he was busy but carrying some heavy weight of information he wanted to unload.

  Hawker motioned. With relief, Thimble headed their way.

  “There’s a cove where ’e shouldn’t be,” Thimble said. “I dunnoh what to do wif ’im.”