by Rose Lerner
She was also lovely. No man could look upon her and not notice that. Her soft dark hair was braided and curled into a knot at the nape of her neck. When she sketched the air in her quick, angry gestures it was like sparks flying out of a fire.
She tapped the barrel of his gun lightly against her palm, scowling at it.
The boy said, “That’s an expensive weapon, Aimée me luv. It’s also loaded. No need to go banging it about like that.”
Aimée. That was her name then. The boy gave it a French pronunciation.
“You must teach me how to handle expensive goods, Hawker.” She weighed it in her hand. She continued to take care where she pointed the muzzle. “A pretty trifle to stuff in a pocket and swagger around with.”
“A gent’s weapon,” the boy said. “Taken directly from a gentleman. Talks like one anyway. Except a nob wouldn’t be caught dead in a stinking coat like that.”
“It is an aspect of his disguise. He is of Daffy’s family. You need only look at him to see they’re related.”
“Brother?”
“Brother, cousin, uncle.” She tested the drawn-back flint with the ball of her thumb. “No wear at all. No corrosion in the barrel. This gun has not been fired much. This is one of those showy pieces I so dislike. Will you bet me it misfires one time in ten?”
“Not on your life,” the boy said. “Bought for the occasion, would you say?”
They could have been ignoring him, except that he felt their acute, bright vigilance, second by second. They watched him and every corner of the room and once in a while they glanced toward their master, Lazarus.
The woman said, “It was either bought by a fool—do you think he’s a fool?—or it was bought to be discarded. A pistol of convenience. He handed it over like the unwanted kitten. Now I trust him completely. Don’t you?”
“Absolutely. He’s bamboozled me for sure. We are puppets in ’is hands.”
They shifted position to see the room better, making it look natural. Between them, those two kept every corner in sight. No advance scout could be more watchful and they did it all without giving anything away. Look at them, and you’d see them chatting without a care in the world. They’d have fit seamlessly into any of the corrupt royal courts across Persia and into the mountains. They were that good.
Their little show worked. Tension leaked out of the murderous assembly. Lazarus stretched out his legs and leaned back. Bully boys and brutes went harmlessly back to their ale and sausages, losing interest in the stranger at the door.
And he—he measured distances and lines of sight and considered tactics. This was no impregnable fortress. The marble foyer behind him, the way he’d come in, was the weak point. Eliminate the guards, kick in the door, and get men to the top of the staircase that curved upward. Three men could hold that position indefinitely, wipe out anyone coming in the front, and set up a crossfire sweeping half of this room. He could take this ground.
If Daphne weren’t here.
She quieted against his chest. She was grimy, her hair hung in strings, her eyes were red from crying, her face pale. She’d lost a stone of weight, but she was alive. Now that the first shock was over, she was quiet. She held on to him with a death grip, but she wasn’t shaking apart.
The woman Aimée said, “Lazarus wants to see you. Come.” She turned away and walked off, but slowly, so he’d have time to think it over and follow her.
Daphne stayed rooted to the ground. The boy Hawker touched her arm, getting her attention. “Daffy, if you don’t come now, Lazarus’ll send somebody nasty after you. There really are men nastier than me. You don’t want to set your Gideon swinging fists at them.”
“I know,” Daphne whispered. “I know what I have to do.” She took the first step.
His sister found these two—Hawker and “Aimée me luv”—reassuring. That made them, tentatively, friend rather than foe. He added that to his list of facts to consider carefully.
He crossed the room, following Aimee, bringing Daphne with him, step by dragging step. She’d drawn in upon herself like an old woman. He was taking her back into captivity because there was no choice and there never had been.
Chapter 5
* * *
Gideon kept his arm around Daphne. “Trust me, Daphne. I’ll buy you from Lazarus.” They crossed the room under a gauntlet of stares. “Not tonight, but soon. You have to wait. I won’t leave you here an hour longer than I have to. I promise.”
“You don’t understand.” Daffy sounded utterly exhausted, as if the bout of crying had taken her last strength. “You don’t know.” He could barely understand the ragged voice.
“A few days, Daphne,” he said. “Just a few days.”
The Frenchwoman stopped and turned. “I have to ask. Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”
“Getting my sister back.”
“That’s splendid. Just excellent. This is the most dangerous ground in London and you stride in like an idiot knight in a fairy tale, waving a banner, thinking everybody will give way to you. You make your sister promises you can’t keep. You know nothing of what happens here.”
So much annoyance from a woman he judged to be of carefully controlled temper.
“Other men have paid ransom,” he said. “Dozens of men have walked out unharmed, with their sisters and daughters. Poorer, but still in possession of life and limb.”
“Other men come when they’re summoned. Other men—”
Hawker cut in, “He’s what we need. He could ’ave been made to order. Use him.”
She said, “It’s unpredictable.”
“He’s a dancing bear loose in the grog shop. No better distraction in the world.”
Almost in unison their eyes went to the same corner of the room and shifted quickly away. Obviously these two were running some campaign of their own, neck deep in secret plans. He wondered if Lazarus knew.
“I’m less fond of chaos than you are.” Aimée hissed between her teeth—a very French sound.
She took a step toward Gideon, her head angled to the side as she studied him. This close, her skin was fine-pored, free of even the least dusting of powder, flawless as the skin of a child. Her eyes, the color of clear water running over fallen leaves in a stream. Soft brown hair wisped out in a light haze around her head. He realized with a little shock that she was younger than Daphne.
She said, “Will you take advice, monsieur?”
“I might.”
“Then I advise you to do exactly what Lazarus tells you. He’s already irritated tonight and you’d make a fine object lesson. Don’t draw whatever weapons you’re carrying. Don’t make unexpected movements. Don’t make threats.”
“My intentions are entirely pacific.”
“I’m holding the gun you brought here, being entirely pacific.” She lifted her hand to show it to him, making her point, and spun on her heel and walked away.
Lazarus, calm as marble, his fingers steepled, watched them come.
Aimée went ahead to speak to him at length, low and private, into his ear. He paid keen attention and nodded. When she finished she took a place behind him where she could observe everything and talk to him easily. That was exactly where a trusted counselor would stand.
She was a power in this den of thieves, an intimate of Lazarus, one of the inner circle. What did she do to earn that place?
At the edge of the big red carpet that marked off Lazarus’s territory, Daphne stopped abruptly and swayed on her feet. He went forward, keeping himself between her and Lazarus.
He said, “You’re Lazarus, a man who kidnaps women for sport.”
“And you are Gideon Gage, second son of James Gage, gentleman of Bradley Ambo, Yorkshire. You went out East to fight for John Company in the south of India. Left that and went to see the world. Ended up in Persia, captain of troops for Shahrukh Afshar, whoever that might be, chasing down bandits and fighting the local wars.”
Lazarus knew a bit about him. “I wonder where you heard that.�
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“You turned merchant in the end. They say you sailed out of Karachi with trunks full of turquoise and pearls.”
“I’ve heard that rumor myself.”
“You’re one of those well-bred Englishmen who go out to pillage the far corners of the world and come home rich. We’re all thieves together tonight,” Lazarus said. “Just so we understand each other. Sit with me.” He indicated the closest chair.
It would do no harm if Lazarus assumed he was a fellow scoundrel. Scoundrels paid ransom as reliably as honest men.
Lazarus was wrong about stealing, though. The turquoise and pearls, silks and spices, had been acquired honestly enough, allowing for some difference in custom and a few small wars going on.
He lifted the chair he was offered and set it squarely in front of the King Thief. Slowly and deliberately, he sat. Daphne came up behind him, breathing raggedly, and clenched her fist into the sleeve of his coat. A thin, barely audible note moved with her breath, in and out. Without taking his eyes off Lazarus, he found her hand and covered it with his own.
Lazarus said, “Men don’t disguise themselves and spy on my house. They don’t come here at all till I invite them. You’re early, Mr. Gage.”
“Put it down to my eagerness to do business.” He pulled his mind from the assorted cutthroats and murderers scattered around the room and concentrated on Lazarus, the son of a bitch in charge. “Let’s talk about money.”
The huge black man standing bodyguard shifted his weight subtly, both instantly ready to attack and patient as a rock. The boy Hawker, insouciant as oil on water, slid to Daphne’s side and began whispering to her in a light, unconcerned way.
And at Lazarus’s back, Aimée was motionless, her face stiff and empty as a Byzantine icon’s.
He thought suddenly, She’s afraid. She’s been afraid since before I walked into this room.
Lazarus straightened in his chair. “My Daffy pet is whining, Hawker. I don’t like it. Take her upstairs and lock her in. She’s a distraction and not an amusing one.”
Daphne’s fingernails bit into his coat. “Gideon, I have to tell you…”
He said, “Go with him. I’ll get you out of here, I swear. It may take time.”
She whispered, “I can’t leave. I—”
Then the boy Hawker was in front of her. “It’s allus me, ain’t it? The one stuck with the dirty work?” He shook his head. “That’s because I am patient and good natured and I never complain.”
“Be good natured later,” Lazarus said. “Rid me of this annoyance.”
“It don’t matter that I hate tormenting women.” Nimbly, boylike, Hawker went down on one knee to look up into Daphne’s lowered face. “You trust me, doncha? Yer old friend Hawker.”
“No.” Amazingly she gave a tremulous half laugh.
“Come along then. Leave your brother to haggle over your price. You don’t want to hear them doing that. It’ll be vulgar.” While he spoke he untwisted the grip Daphne had taken. The boy had strong, brown, not-very-clean fingers, ruthless doing the task, but he didn’t hurt her. He pushed her quickly toward the stair, talking all the time. “I will share with you one of the great secrets of life in this paradise of the larcenous that is our home. You don’t annoy Lazarus when he’s in a bad mood, which ’e is much of the time. Stop me if I’ve told you this already.”
Daphne went with him, out the wide door, into the marble foyer, up the broad staircase. She looked back only once.
Hawker’s voice trailed behind them. “I’ll bring you bread and sausages, Daffy. Illicit, forbidden sausages.”
There is nothing I can do. He locked his muscles in place, wrapped his fists on the wood of the chair’s arms, and stayed still. He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t take Daphne away.
Not tonight.
When Daphne was home safe, he’d come back to London and find Lazarus. Track him down to a dark alley one night and match knives with him. As for that sarcastic, cold-eyed boy… Hawker would profit from a stint in His Majesty’s Navy. He’d arrange it.
What he wanted from Aimée had nothing to do with revenge. He wanted to loosen the braid that bound her hair and set that brown sleekness free over pale, naked shoulders. He wanted to snare her thoughts as he explored, touch by touch, across her face. He wanted every bit of her attention on him when he kissed her.
Whoever was sleeping with her could find someone else.
She looked out over the assembly of villains and thought complicated thoughts. Maybe no one else was close enough to see how tense she was, how tightly controlled, how uneasy.
But he saw it. She was strong and beautiful and beleaguered and she touched off a kind of madness inside him. He imagined her waking beside him in his bed, rumpled and happy.
It would be a deep satisfaction to take care of this woman. What did she want most? Could he give it to her? It wouldn’t be something obvious.
This was a particularly unhelpful set of speculations. He set it aside.
So. If his men had to fight a skirmish across this room, alcove to alcove, marble pillar to pillar, he’d send them to the north end. Those tables could be overturned to make a barricade.
Chapter 6
* * *
Gideon was where he’d planned to be, confronting Lazarus. He could afford to be patient. There’d be some preliminary back and forth before they settled down to the serious business of ransoming his sister.
Aimée pulled out a jeweler’s loupe to inspect the firing mechanism of the pistol she’d taken from him. She slanted the gun into the firelight to bring up the design etched into the metal, keeping the muzzle pointed at the ceiling. A careful woman, and her hands were delicate and sure on the deadly machinery, holding it like somebody who knew what she was doing.
“It’s yours,” Lazarus said to her. “You took it.”
That got a wry smile. “You’re generous. There wasn’t much of a battle.” She went to place the pistol on the far edge of mantelpiece. “I’ll sell it. I have the gun Hawker stole for me last year and it’s better than this. One gun should suffice. I’m unlikely to shoot more than one person at a time.”
“Such a gentle soul.“
To him she looked determined, rather than gentle. Those were wise, sardonic, calmly considering eyes that stared out at the world. Wariness flickered inside her like flame inside a lantern when the wind blew.
Lazarus snapped his fingers and pointed to a spot beside him. The French woman came around the big chair.
“This.” Lazarus barely lifted the half-empty glass of brandy balanced on the arm of the chair. She took it from him smoothly and set it on the table twenty inches away.
Calling her to perform so petty a service was an odd form of conceit in a man as physically powerful as Lazarus.
Lazarus said, “Bring us tea, Aimée. Use the bone china.”
She didn’t conceal her reaction perfectly. She sketched a question with the tilt of her head. Lazarus tapped the arm of his chair in answer.
An almost-invisible exchange. If he hadn’t been watching Aimee so carefully, he would have missed it.
She said nothing but she was gone, light on her feet, almost running. That was how Lazarus’s orders were obeyed in his household.
Lazily, Lazarus watched her to the arched alcove, to the hidden doorway there, and out of the room.
That would be a back stairs that led down to a kitchen below. An exit for fugitives or entryway for attack. A well-aimed grenade would bring the ceiling down and block it.
“I’m waiting to hear his threats.” Hawker had returned from taking Daphne to wherever they imprisoned her. He found a likely spot by the hearth and folded himself down, cross-legged, next to the fire. “They always come carrying threats.”
“Offers and threats and excuses,” Lazarus agreed lazily. “They have so many reasons they can’t pay so much for a daughter or sister.“
“Or a wife,” Hawker said. “Strange ’ow few of ’em wants a wife back. Enough to make a man reconsid
er the whole institution of marriage.”
“Expensive luxuries, wives. Cheaper to leave her with me.” King Thief stirred in his chair. Did he give a wince of pain, instantly suppressed? An unhealed injury, maybe? That was a useful detail to know when they might be fighting soon.
Hawker gestured widely. His oversized coat tented around him. Thin arms emerged from rolled-back sleeves. “Always surprises me how poor the nobility of England is.”
“At least this one refrains from empty threats,” Lazarus said. “Unless he shared them with you.”
“He didn’t. He is obviously a man of violence instead of bluster. You should have seen ’im forcing me into the house at gunpoint. Terrifying with a pistol, that man is. I’m still quaking in me boots.”
“I know exactly how dangerous he is. I talked to men who served with him in India.”
Lazarus had taken the trouble to learn a great deal about one Gideon Gage. That argued Lazarus was a careful man. Careful men he could negotiate with. There was cunning in this den of thieves as sophisticated as any he’d met in the courts of the Ashrafs or the Zands. Cunning men he could outwit.
Negotiate tonight. He’d sow blood and murder later, if he had to.
“My sister isn’t eating,” he said. “If you starve her to death or let her die of some filthy disease in this place, you’ll get nothing.”
Lazarus said, “She gets two meals a day from the workhouse down the street. The same food, the same amount, that keeps the paupers alive. There’s thousands who live on less.”
“He don’t approve of pauper food fer a delicate lady,” Hawker said.
“The paupers don’t like it either. And Daffy’s got a choice. She can eat what’s offered or go hungry. Or…” Lazarus’s voice turned sly. Deliberately sly. “She can be friendly to me and eat as well as she wants. I’ll give her partridges and sugar cakes. She has only to ask.”
She could whore herself for food. That was what Lazarus meant. The kidnappings stretched out week after week because Lazarus wanted to see hunger and cold and fear wear down his victims till they’d do anything to make it stop. None of this was about money.
