Gambled Away: A Historical Romance Anthology

by Rose Lerner

  Hawker said, “I’ll take care of it.”

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  It was dark. It was raining, not devilish hard but in the cold and persistent way that said England.

  Gideon Gage sagged in his dirty, stained overcoat in the alley, pretending to be sick and drunk, and watched the coming and going of London’s worst in the night.

  Daphne was in that great dilapidated house behind the wall. His foolish, flighty, frivolous little sister had somehow attracted the attention of Lazarus, King Thief of London. She’d been dragged into a carriage and kidnapped.

  It had taken a month to track her down. He’d followed a thin thread of whisper to London. The magistrate at Bow Street couldn’t help him. Men who made a living selling stolen goods back to their owners—“finding lost objects” they called it—had nothing to say. His shipping agents denied all knowledge. He could almost map an empty spot in those conversations where men changed the subject. Daphne’s kidnapping was part of something that made these tough, experienced men afraid.

  It was Selim who found the answer. An old, blind soldier lived among the vegetable booths in Covent Garden Market. Selim led the way through the north side of the great market. “He is a deep well, Gideon. We have only to let the bucket down.”

  Harry Trendell spread his mat on the ground between sellers of vegetable marrows and cabbages. He carved animals from broken bits of wood. Clever foxes and lumbering bears, peaceful sleeping birds, wise cats. He lined them up neatly on a plank before him to sell.

  They came to him, ignoring women with market baskets and men with carts who wheeled past. Selim went down on one knee next to the beggar. “I have brought my good friend to you, the brother of this woman. I ask that you tell him what you have told me.”

  For a while Trendell rubbed his thumb over the surface of a piece of wood as if he were seeking the animal inside. Finally he said, “Lazarus has her.”

  The words, spoken low, vibrated with truth.

  This explained everything. Gideon felt ice spill across his skin and claw in his belly. Lazarus had taken Daphne.

  Lazarus was a power in London, King Thief, chief of a Brotherhood of thieves and murderers, a name to conjure with. Lazarus was a goblin to frighten bank clerks walking home alone. A threat to make nervous merchants double-lock the shutters at night. Sea captains paid Lazarus ‘the pence’ to offload goods at the dock without more than the usual pilfering. Warehouse managers handed over a monthly bribe so their building didn’t accidentally burn down.

  Gideon didn't know London. This was foreign territory to him, less familiar than Pondicherry or Alexandria. Since he’d come back to England all his energy had gone to cleaning up the mess his brother had left behind in Yorkshire. There’d been no time to set up his London branch. No time to walk the streets and learn the city.

  But he knew this much. Lazarus ruled London as much as the Lord Mayor did.

  Selim spoke Farsi. “Now we know the name of the man we will kill. It is good to have an enemy who needs killing. It adds flavor to life.”

  Gideon answered in the same language. “First we get Daphne back.”

  “That is first. We will take your sister from their lairing place and make her safe again. You will comfort her as a brother can. If she is with child we will find a husband for her, to honor and keep her. Then we will kill this Lazarus.”

  “Agreed.” Whatever happened, killing Lazarus would probably be part of it.

  Trendell took out a penknife and began to shape the wood, stroking the surface to read the figure as it formed. Thin curls of carving fell onto the leather of his knee britches. “Your sister is alive and well. Not hurt. Not…” He gestured with the knife. “Dishonored. Lazarus has rules.”

  Gideon absorbed that. “What does Lazarus want with her?”

  “What he always wants. Ransom.” The old man lifted blind eyes in his direction. “You must be very rich.”

  Almost nobody in England knew how rich. Gideon got down level with the man, close, to hear the hoarse whisper. “Your Lazarus went a long way to collect a woman for ransom.”

  A lifted shoulder. “His power stretches a long way and he takes what he wants. He keeps a woman at his side for a while. One, then another. Always a rich young woman. Some he treats better than others. This one, not so badly yet.” The wrinkles of the seamed face split in a rueful smile. “I’m not lying to you, sir, and I know. The thieving boys of the market gossip between themselves as if I were deaf as well as blind. I hear many things.”

  “I doubt you talk about what you know, since you still have your tongue. Why are you telling me this when no one else will?”

  “I’m old.”

  “No one’s too old to feel afraid.”

  Another thin smile. “I am old and my granddaughter sews dresses in a shop in Bond Street. She has no one but me.” He spread a hand to hover over the small animals. “And I have only this.”

  “I’ll take care of her. Whatever happens, she’s comfortable for life. Now, tell me what you know. Tell me everything.”

  It was amazing how much a blind man overheard in Covent Garden Market. Trendell talked steadily while they sat cross-legged beside him and shared a meal bought from pie sellers and sausage vendors.

  When Trendell had finished, before they left the market, Selim went from one stall holder to another, gossiping. “They were in the same regiment,” Selim said. “They were in battle together.” That said all that was needed to every old soldier in Covent Garden.

  Gideon dropped silver coins into the nearest pie seller’s palm with a “See that he’s fed. I’ll bring more in a week or two.”

  Ten hours later, long after nightfall, Gideon waited outside the lair of Lazarus. For this first sortie, there were few preparations to make.

  The wind in this narrow alley was unreliable, blowing first one way and then the other. The overhanging roof dumped a long line of water that sounded like ten thousand teeth biting the cobbles underfoot. Children raced from the old house in a sudden milling pack and passed under the street light, caps pulled down tight, oversized coats flapping. Boys and girls. Big kids of eight or nine. Little ones running to keep up. Miniature thieves all, thin, active, anonymous, and vicious as rats. They’d swarm over any gentleman walking the streets alone in the dark and strip him to his skin.

  None of the children would notice a figure still as the bricks behind him. If they did, they’d think he was another of their kind, the raggle-taggle poor.

  Selim had chosen his spot to wait. He was in the coach six streets north, armed to the teeth as was his custom. He disapproved of Gideon’s plan to go alone to Lazarus’s headquarters and said so in the three languages they shared, bluntly.

  “You’re a fool to go alone. No man is immortal.” Selim was speaking Farsi now. “Remember what happened in Karachi.”

  “Karachi was years ago.” Selim would never let him forget that one. “If I don’t walk out of this tonight, I leave Daphne in your hands. I trust you to get her out of there.”

  Selim was a prince in his own country, Khorasan, in Persia. Or an outlaw, or a rebellious native leader, inconvenient relative, or bandit, depending on who you asked. Various nations had put a price on his head. They’d been partners for most of a decade, moving raw turquoise, Gulf pearls, and artwork of questionable provenance out of Persia and Arabia. Selim came to London with holes in his carcass, a fortune in gems, and a diplomatic title. A man could have no better friend.

  The rain continued. Over the next hour men and women left the mansion in twos and threes. Others arrived at the door, stepped into the lantern light, spoke to the pair of guards, and entered. The perimeter patrol paused to warm their hands at the brazier on the front steps and went back to their circuit of the house, their mongrel dogs swaggering beside them.

  The combination of prosaic bustle and wild menace reminded him of bandit hideouts in the mountains. The upland fortresses were difficult for a stranger to approach, harder for
a prisoner to escape from. This house in London was another sort of fortress, but the rules were the same.

  Trendell had said, “Lazarus doesn’t want to kill you. You can’t pay ransom from a graveyard.”

  That was his trump card. Lazarus didn’t want him dead.

  In this hour of waiting and watching he noted windows and doors, mapped the path of the guards, added up weaknesses in the defenses. Give him a dozen of his sailors and warehousemen at his back and he’d crack this place like an egg.

  Not tonight. No. If he walked in with men at his back and guns firing, the house would rain villains out of every orifice. He’d find the place empty and Daphne gone. This was a night to scout out the territory. He’d find out what it would cost to get Daphne free. It would be simplest to pay what was asked and collect it back later when she was safe.

  He heard footsteps approach. One set of steps. Someone alone.

  A boy, thin and dark-haired and preoccupied, approached. He didn’t exactly swagger, but he walked with a confidence that seemed wholly unjustified in the deserted night. He was even whistling off-key. Every indication said this was the right key to the door Gideon wanted opened.

  The boy slowed even before Gideon stepped in front of him. He had good night vision.

  Gideon said softly, “I’d suggest you hold still.”

  The boy opened his hands, loose and empty. “Sounds like good advice.”

  “Do exactly what I say and you won’t be hurt.”

  “You must have a gun,” the boy said.

  Gideon drew the pistol from his coat pocket far enough to let the meager light fall on it. “I don’t plan to hurt you. I want to walk into the house. I’ll keep my hand in my pocket. Like this.” He put the gun back in his pocket and kept his hand on it. “You vouch for me at the door and we go inside.”

  The boy shrugged. “No objections from me. There’s a mort of scoundrels inside already. Why not add one more?”

  I have netted more than I fished for. It might be a mistake, trying to control this odd, unaccountable young man, but it was too late to back out now. “That way. Now.”

  “I am all cooperation.” The boy turned readily toward the mansion. “Let’s go be amiable to them gentlemen guarding the doorstep. If you have to shoot somebody, make it somebody besides me.”

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  Aimée sensed stillness and looked up from pretending to study a sapphire ring. Hawker was back. He’d stopped just inside the door. He’d brought them a stranger for their amusement, a man dressed as a beggar but carrying himself as no beggar ever had in the history of the world. The stranger was a tall fellow with broad shoulders, wearing a long, threadbare overcoat. A slouch hat shaded his face, but under the brim was the bright glint of searching eyes.

  He stood with his right hand thrust into his coat pocket. The readiness of his stance, the subtle signs of his balance, said he held something important, small and heavy. Hawker’s open amusement said it was a gun.

  She wasn’t the only one to read the signs. Around the room, the more nimble-witted of Lazarus’s men were coming to the same conclusion.

  Outsiders came to the padding ken every night to conduct the ordinary business of larceny. City traders and bankers, gentlemen, even noblemen, sneaked in to sell valuables and secrets or buy illegal services. None of those men would dare to come here armed.

  So she knew one thing about this visitor. He was either clever and reckless or he was very stupid.

  Lazarus glanced lazily toward the door and his lips twitched with amusement. He spoke and Daffy, wilted against the wall, looked up dully. Looked up and froze. Then she launched herself to her feet and ran headlong down the room and threw herself at the stranger, laughing and crying. The man hugged her against his chest.

  From one corner of the room to the other, the hubbub of the evening’s activities trailed off into silence.

  This was Daffy’s kin, come to demand her back. Now there’d be dramatic gestures, threats, loud argument, and something that required a gun because the man was certainly carrying one.

  Lazarus said a few words to Bent Thomas in obvious dismissal. Bent Thomas left, his face insolent as soon as his back was turned to Lazarus. A challenge between the two of them was put off for a while. Hawker had accomplished that much.

  Lazarus motioned to her where she stood at the valuing table. The Brotherhood had a language of secret signs with exact meanings, but this could have been read by anyone in London. It was an ordinary “Come here.”

  She would be part of this apparently. She rounded the end of the table and went to him.

  When she was close enough so that only Lazarus and Black John could hear, she said, “He has a gun in his right pocket.”

  “So I see.” Lazarus sounded testy. He was pale. His jaw clenched and he stirred irritably in his chair. “Go take it away from him. Bring him to me.”

  “Yes, sir.” She didn’t like the idea, but in the last three years she’d done many things she did not like. She headed toward an angry man with a loaded gun and felt all the reluctance appropriate to that course of action.

  The moment hung poised between many unpleasant outcomes and a few harmless ones. The stupidest of the Brotherhood watched her avidly, hoping for blood and mayhem. Conspirators drew shoulder to shoulder and wondered how to take advantage of events. The tumbling pack of children found safe vantage points to watch what was likely to unroll as an entertaining half hour. Cautious men measured the shortest distance to the nearest door.

  Daffy clung to the stranger and sobbed indistinguishable words against his chest. Hawker, the cause of this very effective distraction, propped himself on the wall to one side of the doorway and stood, arms crossed, pleased with himself. The intruder’s eyes swept back and forth across the ballroom and its inhabitants.

  That trying little journey under the eyes of the interested Brotherhood should have given her time to come up with clever stratagems. Instead she finished the final steps and confronted this stranger, and she still had no idea what she was going to do.

  An impressive man. That was her first thought. There was a solidity to him. A strength. His skin was rough from wind and sun. His body was lean under that heavy, sodden coat. The lines in his face were the sort men earned enduring hunger and cold. But his eyes, coolly appraising, gave him away. He didn’t have the eyes of a poor man.

  That combination of assurance and hardships suffered, arrogance and privation, made her think he might be a soldier. The tanned face meant he’d seen more of the world than England.

  “You have to give me the gun,” she said. She was polite, as one is when talking to armed men. “You can’t use it and it’s complicating everything.”

  “It is a source of confusion and turmoil,” Hawker said cheerfully. He was not helping.

  “Will you be quiet. I don’t want to get shot tonight.”

  “That’s a clever cully inside those smelly clothes. He ain’t come all this way to shoot you.” Hawker became involved in smoothing his sleeve. “This nob,” he said, “seems to be Gideon. That’s what Daffy’s sniveling down his chest. He’s not going to shoot anybody, least of all you, because nobody wants to shoot a pretty woman. He don’t want to shoot me because he don’t know me yet. The gun is in the nature of a general threat.”

  “It’s not even that.” She turned to this Gideon and became persuasive. “There are a dozen armed men in this room—”

  “More like two dozen,” Hawker said judiciously.

  “Too many. Some of them are excitable.” She held her hand out, palm up. This was when she’d get shot if that was going to happen. “Give me your gun.” It was uncanny how little this stranger showed of what was going through his mind. “Look around till you spot the stupidest man in here. He’s the one who’s going to kill you.”

  There was no change in the man’s expression so she added, “Or he’ll kill Daffy when he misses you.”

  “Or me,” Hawker said. “We must consid
er that.”

  Carefully, with exaggerated slowness, Gideon lifted a small pistol from his pocket. Holding it by two fingers, he laid it, cold and heavy, in her hand.

  “You have only to ask,” he said.

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  Gideon gave his gun into the hands of this remarkable woman. It had never been more than a device to get him through the front door. Now he didn’t need it.

  The boy he’d waylaid, the one who’d walked them past three layers of guards without the least challenge, laughed low. “That was easy.”

  “He came in planning to hand it over,” the woman said impatiently. “He’s carrying something else. Probably lots of something elses. Do you want to search him? I don’t.”

  She was wholly fluent in English—educated, almost scholarly English—but every word revealed that she was French. So did the mobile, sensitive mouth, the expressive hands, the way she held her body, the lift of her chin. All French. Her dress was drab-colored and modest, but it was beautifully cut. It was expensive clothing and she wore it with the air of a Frenchwoman.

  The boy said, “I vote we let him keep the rest of the armament. Knives, probably. Everybody has a knife or two.”

  “I’m supposed to take him to Lazarus, but you could do that.” The woman turned the pistol over in her hand.

  “I’ll just watch, thank you.”

  She gave an ungenteel snort.

  King Thief had sent her to deal with a dangerous stranger. She was young for the task, probably not yet twenty, but she acted as that man’s lieutenant. She held herself like a trusted emissary, self-contained and disciplined, with guarded eyes and a back straight as a ruler.

  A woman to be reckoned with. Totally out of place in this setting, of course. Was she a possible ally? A possible weakness in the cage around Daphne?