Gambled Away: A Historical Romance Anthology

by Rose Lerner

  Without looking away from Daffy Lazarus said, “Mole.”

  There, at the back of the crowd, was the Mole. He must have heard whispers around him as the Brotherhood opened to let him through, but he hadn’t caught much of the story. He didn't understand, not even when he was pushed before Lazarus and stood, waiting for orders, wondering what he’d done wrong.

  Lazarus said, “Your son,” and turned the Mole around to face her.

  “Augustus?” Daffy took a step toward him. “Augustus? Gus.” She fell to her knees, grabbed the boy, and began to cry into his oversized, not-very-clean coat.

  The Mole fought free, staggered back, and swung around in panic, headed for a gap in the crowd.

  Damn Lazarus and his love for the dramatic. Aimée pulled Daffy back. Held her. Said, “He doesn’t know you. Doesn’t know what’s going on. If you chase him, he’ll run.”

  Gideon pulled a gold coin out of his watch pocket and held it up. “Boy.”

  The Mole stopped and stared. “I’m the Mole.”

  “A good name,” Gideon said without a trace of humor. “Moles know everything and they stay safe. Do you want this?”

  “A yellow George. Course I wants it.”

  “Can you stay exactly where you are—right there—till I’m through talking to your master?”

  The Mole looked for orders, got a nod from Lazarus, and said, “Just try me.”

  Gideon flipped the coin to the boy. “Stay and watch. This is about you.”

  Gideon’s nephew. The Mole was Gideon’s nephew, she realized suddenly. She saw it now they were set face-to-face. Gideon’s forehead and eyes. His nose. The resemblance would show more when the Mole was washed.

  Lazarus said lazily, “Mole, what was your mother’s name?”

  “Janet. They called her Janney on the streets.”

  Patiently, “Her whole name.”

  “I dunnoh.” The Mole shrugged. “No. Wait. She was Janet Brewer. She come from the south somewheres, outside of Lunnon.” The Mole bit his gold coin and liked the result. She could have told him any coin he got from Gideon would be good. “Near the sea, it was. She used to tell me about the sea. She was me mum. I dunnoh what the gentry mort’s talking about.”

  Lazarus leaned back, his eyes on Daffy. “A year ago, when Janet Brewer was dying of typhus, she told me about you leaving her and the boy.”

  “For God’s sake, what do you want from her?” Gideon helped Daffy collapse into the chair again. “She was young and terrified and she didn't know what could happen to a country maid in London. Janet Brewer had all the money stolen, right?”

  “Within the day. She was on the streets the next, keeping a child alive because little Miss Respectable couldn’t be bothered with her baby. Now your sister wants him back.”

  “She will have him. You made a bargain. Keep it.” Gideon’s voice was ice cold.

  “I promised to tell her where her son is. I just did. I didn't promise to hand him over.”

  Daffy put her hands, clenched, out across the table. “I’ll pay. I have money. I have a dowry.” She twisted to look at Gideon. “I’m right about that?”

  Gideon nodded.

  “My jewels. I have jewels from my mother. I’ll—”

  Lazarus said, “I don’t want your baubles, Daffy. I want you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I want you,” Lazarus said. “Yourself. I don’t trade in women usually—I leave that for my pimps—but I’d find a use for you. Maybe you and the Mole can pick pockets together.”

  Daffy made a creaking sound in her throat.

  Why is Lazarus doing this? Aimée caught Gideon’s eye and shook her head, telling him not to do anything stupid. Not till they understood what was going on. Gideon gave a fraction of a nod.

  This was one of Lazarus’s games. She was almost certain.

  “We’ll gamble for the Mole.” Lazarus smiled. “Here’s how it’s done. We each turn over a card. The high card wins. My card—I get you for… let’s call it three years. For three years you live where I say and obey my orders. Your card wins—you walk away with the boy.”

  The Mole watched, fascinated and frowning. Maybe not understanding what was going on.

  “Do you think I won’t do this?” The face Daffy turned in Lazarus’s direction was pale as death.

  “You deserted him before. Show me how much you want him.” He glanced aside. “Aimée, find me cards.”

  There were cards in the drawer of the sideboard. Marked, of course. There wasn’t an honest set of cards in the house. She picked a deck at random.

  Gideon muttered, “This is a bad idea.” He gripped the back of Daffy’s chair and stood behind her.

  Eyes hard, nostrils flared, Daffy faced Lazarus. “He is my son.”

  Lazarus spread the cards out in a fan across the table. The complicated pattern on the back hid not one, but three or four marking systems, added by different people at different times. He said, “You go first, Daffy. Pick one.”

  For three years Aimée had watched Lazarus play with, manipulate, and lie to people. He was doing it now. She met Gideon’s eyes over Daffy’s head and knew he saw it too. The gamble would end exactly the way Lazarus wanted.

  Last-minute bets were whispered back and forth among the Brotherhood. Daffy reached out and turned over a card.

  The ten of diamonds. She dropped it to the table and waited.

  The air around the room became tense, filled with the sound of breath being held.

  Lazarus’s hand hovered. “You can stop this if you want. You can walk away, Daffy. Free. No hazard to you. No shame at home. Just give him up.”

  She shook her head.

  “You’re certain?” He set his fingers to a card from the middle of that fan and picked it up. “Five of spades.”

  Lazarus dropped the card on the table. “I lose. Pity. He’s a promising thief.”

  Daphne jumped to her feet. The Mole didn't retreat quickly enough to avoid being squeezed against her. “Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.”

  “Look, Miss, I ain’t—”

  “Augustus.” She held him more tightly.

  Gold coin or no, the Mole was ready to run. He elbowed free.

  Selim was faster than Gideon. He grabbed a handful of threadbare shirt in a competent fist.

  “Lemme go, ya son of a bitch.” The Mole kicked at Daffy’s skirts. Selim’s shins. He did not, however, squirm free.

  Selim shook him. “A gentleman does not insult his mother by contradicting her.”

  “What?” Mole stopped kicking. “Who the ’ell are you? Some foreigner?”

  “I am.” Selim picked the Mole two inches off his feet and held him as if he were a naughty puppy. “Where I come from a son does not kick strangers. Nor does he embarrass his family by acting the fool. You will stand straight, as a man stands, and accept what kismet has brought you.”

  He released the Mole who landed on his feet, staggering a little. “She sure as ’ell ain’t my mother.”

  “You shame your family,” Selim said. “I have seen boys your age go to execution with more honor.”

  Not surprisingly, the Mole’s mouth fell open.

  “You will now apologize to your mother,” Selim said.

  “But she ain’t—”

  “That is not open to discussion. You will bow and say you’re sorry.”

  Wordless, the Mole bowed from the waist, looking everywhere but at Daffy.

  “Is there anything in this place you cannot leave behind?”

  Confusion. Then the Mole said, “Two bob from me last theft.”

  “You will leave that. Your days of stealing are over. Now you will accompany your mother to the coach and keep watch to see she is not attacked.”

  That earned another blank, wide-eyed stare. Nobody attacked women outside Lazarus’s dwelling place.

  “A son protects his mother,” Selim said softly. “You are lucky to have a mother to protect. This way.” Selim shepherded Daffy and the
Mole out of the room. As they departed Selim could be heard saying, “Yorkshire is exactly like London. They are both in England.”

  When they were gone, past the watching Brotherhood, down the long tiled foyer, out the front door, Lazarus said, “She wants the boy enough.” Then he said, “Hawker, pour me brandy. Ask Mr. Gage here if he wants some.”

  Gideon said, “No.”

  “You’re a cautious man,” Lazarus said, approvingly.

  Chapter 14

  * * *

  Gideon walked toward his rendezvous with Aimée Beauclerc. He had no reason to think she’d be there and keep this appointment. But she might.

  The rain last night had polished the sky and swept the air clean. The windows of London gleamed. The cobblestones were slick and shiny. Women passed on the street, some of them looking, just for an instant, like Aimée. Reflections in the glass might have been her. Under it all, around it all, behind it all, he saw the face of Aimée Beauclerc. Not a woman to put in some neat box and understand. He couldn’t empty his mind of her.

  He wanted Aimée walking with him in the sunlight. He wanted her out of those shabby caverns of the house ruled by Lazarus, wanted her out in the open, away from that crew of cutthroats. He wanted to see her smile.

  He turned into narrow, twisty Rice Street because it was headed in the direction he was going and because he’d noticed he was being followed.

  Far behind him, a slight figure made the same turn. In another hundred feet, Gideon stopped. The steps behind him stopped, then resumed. After a while he said, “I can hear you, you know.”

  “Of course you can. I’m making enough racket to wake a herd of elephants.” The boy Hawker appeared around a corner.

  “You’re following me.” He slipped his knife back in its sheath. If Hawker had planned to attack, he wouldn’t bother to talk first.

  “I’m supposed to be following Aimée and I will in a few minutes. She just hasn’t got in front of me yet. Go left here. It’s a shortcut.”

  “Is it?” This was an interesting alley, too narrow to walk side by side. He went ahead and presented Hawker with his back. A target if the boy wanted one. It was almost a physical itch, having an enemy behind him. If Hawker was an enemy. “You have something to say to me.”

  “I am a broadsheet of things I want to say. Head down there.” They continued through a warren of unclean alleys that would have done credit to Aleppo or Alexandria. At one point they climbed a six-foot fence. Eventually they came by crooked ways into the sunlight again. The hanging sign of the Crown and Cup tavern was ahead.

  Not a busy street but not an empty one either. Hawker selected a patch of the brick wall of the tavern and put it at his back, scowling.

  They had a fine view of the apothecary across the street, a trim establishment with fresh black paint on the window frame and door. Plumley and Co was written in gold lettering across the front. The plate-glass window faced south and now, at noon, it was glaringly bright in the sun. Inside the shop, the shades were drawn against the glare.

  It was a mild, bright day to chat with one of London’s young criminals. He joined Hawker in contemplating Plumley’s shop. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”

  “Bound to, the way I been running around the docks, taking note of yer activities. Pretty soon Aimée’ll come along and I’ll keep an eye on her till she gets back home. Then I’ll go watch Lazarus for a while. There is no end to the excitement in my life.”

  “If you whistle for trouble, it’ll come.”

  “That’s deep, that is.” Hawker contemplated the apothecary with the air of someone for whom philosophy held no mysteries. “You have your sister. Why are you still bothering Aimée?”

  “If she didn't want to see me she wouldn’t be here.”

  Hawker chewed on that for a bit. “It’s not going to do you any good, meeting Aimée. You’re just making her miserable. And she belongs to Lazarus.”

  “She doesn’t belong to Lazarus.”

  The boy shrugged. “Different opinions on that. She shouldn’t be meeting you, Aimée shouldn’t. There is nothing she should be doing with you.”

  “That’s up to her.”

  “She don’t have the pragmatism God gave a rabbit. A hundred men in and out of the padding ken every day, some of them even halfway honest, and you’re the one what takes ’er fancy.” Hawker’s mouth twisted. “I watched it start. I should have put a stop to it.”

  “Discuss that with her.”

  “Much good that would do,” Hawker muttered. “I don’t know why you rob Aimée of all common sense whatsoever.”

  It was mutual. She snatched away his common sense too.

  A customer emerged from the Crown and Cup, well dressed and prosperous but clumsy with drink. Hawker measured his progress with every sign of interest. “I’d pick that one’s pockets,” Hawker said, “if I weren’t busy with you.”

  “I’m sure you’d do a good job.”

  “The best.” Hawker pushed away from the wall and stood, looking young and skinny. “She’s going to run from Lazarus soon. That’s one of those secrets being shared by a select few dozen of us. Do you know what happens to people who run?”

  “Something drastic, I imagine.”

  “Sometimes he sends me after them. I’m drastic.” The boy’s face didn’t change. There was nothing new in his voice. “She’s been waiting for good sailing weather to the Americas. She already has the fare stashed away.” Hawker shrugged. “Stupid place to go, if you want my frank opinion.”

  “A single woman alone? It probably is, even if it’s Aimée.”

  “Or she may think better of it and go orf with some cove what promises he’ll take her away and keep her safe.”

  “I keep my promises.”

  “Well, she don’t ask for any, do she? No common sense and too damn proud anyway.” The boy said, “You’ll use her, and get what you want, probably pop a bun in the oven, and you’ll walk away whistling. Then Lazarus’ll get her back and think of something creative to do with her.”

  “You’ll be the one doing that creative work.”

  “No,” Hawker said shortly. “You can leave now. I’ll see she gets home.”

  “I’ll wait for her.”

  “I’d say you can’t do much harm to her in a apothecary shop, but you look to be a clever sort so you probably can.” There was a universe of cynicism in the words. “I’ll be round the corner to follow ’er back home and see she actually goes there.”

  “You think she won’t?”

  “I think you’d take her to bed, because she’s pretty and you don’t have a regular mistress set up. You think she’d do just fine for the position. But men like you don’t stick on shore for long. You’ll probably even offer her money when you go.” The boy hitched up his trousers and prepared to stalk off. “Just a word, Mr. Gage. If Aimée gets hurt because of you, I’ll let daylight into your gut.”

  Chapter 15

  * * *

  Aimée saw him at once when she opened the door to Plumley’s apothecary and stepped into the dimness and the smell of herbs and chemicals. Gideon stood to the side of the shop, reading the labels on the blue-and-white Chinese jars lined up, row upon row, along shelves that ran from floor to ceiling. Old Plumley’s son, Young Plumley, waited behind the counter, keeping an eye on him, discreetly.

  Plumley’s sold, among other things, poison. “Inheritance powder,” Old Plumley called it, having a sense of humor about such things. Father and son were doubtless used to customers who lingered in the shop and fingered their way along the little drawers and cabinets before they finally sidled over and said they’d come to buy rat poison. They wanted quite a lot of it.

  Lazarus didn’t poison people himself, preferring more direct methods.

  When she set her basket on the counter, Gideon came to stand at her elbow. She didn’t turn to look at him. He was an impression of height and width and strength at the corner of her eye. Both reassuring and worrisome. She’d walked a goodly l
ong way across London this morning and still hadn’t decided what she’d say to him.

  “Gideon.” She’d start from there.

  He murmured, “I was beginning to wonder if you’d come.”

  She slipped a quick glance at his face. He was somewhat forbidding when he was being respectable. A rumpled, untidy Gideon pretending to be a beggar had been more approachable. “I’m about ten minutes late. Are you one of those men who carry a watch around and keep appointments to the second?”

  “Not guilty. We need to talk.”

  All the miles this morning, everything she’d done, she’d been practicing what she would say to him. Every word had fled from her head. She must fumble around and find new ones.

  They’d earned the quivering attention of Young Plumley, hovering behind the counter. Meeting Gideon here, so unobtrusively, must reek of a romantic assignation… either that or some business of the Brotherhood. Criminal plotting or climbing into forbidden beds. Hard to say which Plumley would find more interesting. Either way, he’d gossip about them up and down the street within the hour.

  “Good morning to you, Mr. Plumley,” she said. “Nitric acid. As usual.”

  Her basket was half full of worn cravats from the piles of secondhand clothing on Rosemary Lane. Nobody would be surprised when she brought such stuffs home. They made excellent soft cloths for cleaning expensive goods. Today she’d use them for bandages.

  “Nitric acid. Ah, yes. Nitric acid.” Young Plumley repeated it importantly as he rolled his stepladder down the line of medicines. He climbed to retrieve a big brown bottle from the third shelf and brought it back carefully, holding it by the neck and bottom. “You’ll be careful with this?”

  “I’m always careful.” Her father had taught her to assay silver when she was six.

  “Even a drop can give you terrible burns. Wear an apron to protect your dress and—”

  “She knows what she’s doing.” Gideon pushed the basket forward till it nudged up against Plumley’s hand.

  Plumley said, “I want to emphasize—”