Kresley Cole - [MacCarrick Brothers 02]

by If You Desire

  The three began maneuvering through the crowd. Unfortunately, Maddy was short and had an uncanny way of blending in. A half an hour passed, and they still hadn’t spotted her—

  A shrill whistle rent the din; Jane’s head jerked up. The band whimpered to a lull.

  “Police!” someone yelled just as more whistles sounded all around them. “It’s the bloody peelers!”

  “No, no, that isn’t possible,” Jane said. These dance halls always paid off the police! Who in the devil had forgotten the “payment for protection”?

  All at once, waves of screaming people clambered toward the back entrance, jostling them. The Hive was suddenly like a bottle turned upside down with the cork pulled out. The entire building seemed to rock as people fled, colliding with Jane and her cousins until a current of bodies separated them.

  Jane battled to reach them, but was only forced back. When Belinda pointed to the back door, Jane shook her head emphatically—that way out was choked with people. They would be crushed to death. She’d rather get nicked and have her name printed on the page of shame in the Times.

  When Jane lost sight of her cousins completely, she backed to the wall—stunned to find herself separated and completely alone. The wave of people continued to swell until Jane was engulfed again. Unable to find a clear spot or an empty corner, she felt the world spinning out of control.

  Two hands shoved against her back, sending her careening. She whirled around, swinging her reticule. She garnered a split second’s worth of room but connected with nothing, and the momentum tore her reticule down and off her wrist. Gone. Her money, her makeshift weapon…

  The next push didn’t take her by surprise, but someone else was standing on her dress hem. Jane flailed her arms, helpless to stop herself from being pitched to the ground.

  At once, she attempted to scramble up, but her skirts had spread out over the floor like the wings of a framed butterfly, pinned there by the stampede. Over and over, she fought to rise, but always new boots trapped her skirts.

  Jane darted her hands out between ankles, yanking at the material with desperate strength, struggling to gather her dress about her legs.

  She couldn’t catch her breath under the press of people. How had this night gone so wrong—

  A boot came straight for her head. To dodge it, she rolled toward the wall as far as she could, but then, even over the commotion, she distinctly heard the eerie ping of metal.

  Looking up with dread, she saw one of the hanging murals directly above her, swaying wildly. The brass chain holding it had an opened link that was straightening under the massive weight.

  Like a shot, the link popped, and the chain lashed out like a whip. The mural came crashing down.

  Four

  When Davis Grey chased the dragon, he had no dreams.

  In that hazy twilight of opium, the pain in his body ebbed; no longer could he see the faces of the men, women, and children he’d killed.

  Chasing the dragon, Grey thought with a weary exhalation, staring at the paint chipping across the ceiling of his hidden east London loft. What an appropriate saying to describe the habit—and his life.

  In the past, the smoke had quelled the rage in his heart, yet finally his need for revenge had overpowered even opium’s sweet pull.

  He rose in stages from his sweat-dampened bed, then crossed to the basin to splash water over his face. In the basin mirror, he studied his naked body.

  Four crusting bullet wounds riddled his pale chest and torso, a constant reminder of the attempt on his life. Though it had been six months ago since Edward Weyland, for whom Grey had killed faithfully, had sent him to his own destruction, the wounds still hadn’t healed completely. Though half a year had passed, Grey could remember perfectly the order in which he’d taken each bullet from a trio of Weyland’s hungry, younger killers.

  Yet somehow Grey had survived. He’d lost much muscle, but he still possessed a wiry strength—enough to enact his plans.

  He ran a finger down his chest, skating around the wounds in fascination. Perhaps Weyland should have sent his best man for the kill. But then Weyland always spared Hugh MacCarrick the altering jobs, the ones that changed a man forever.

  Those tasks should have been split between Grey and Hugh, but Weyland carefully meted out each one. Hugh was dispatched to kill people who were out-and-out evil, dangerous people who often fought for the lives Hugh sought to take. Grey executed the variables, the peripherals. Toward the end, Grey hadn’t been very particular if children got in the way.

  In dreams, he saw their glassy, sightless eyes.

  Weyland, that bloody bastard, didn’t even send Hugh to kill me.

  That galled Grey more than anything, scalding him inside.

  Soon Grey would deliver his retribution. Weyland treasured only one thing in this world—his daughter, Jane. MacCarrick had loved her from afar for years. Take away Jane, and two men would be destroyed, forever.

  A little work had ensured that Weyland and his informants knew Grey was stirring. Cunning and two deaths had ensured that they thought Grey was still on the Continent. Weyland would already have sent for his best gunman to protect his precious daughter.

  Good. Hugh should be there to see Grey end her life. Both MacCarrick and Weyland should know the searing purity of grief.

  There was power innate in having nothing left to lose.

  Years ago, Weyland had said that Grey was suited for his occupation because he possessed no mercy, but he’d been wrong then. Years ago, Grey wouldn’t have been able to happily slit Jane’s pretty throat. Weyland wasn’t wrong now.

  With a shriek, Jane rolled out of the way just as a corner of the mural hammered into the floor directly beside her. She didn’t have time to gape at how close it had been because more charging people overwhelmed her. She couldn’t breathe. With a cry, she ducked her head down, raising an arm over her face.

  Seconds later, Jane lowered her arm, brows drawn in confusion.

  The crowd was parting around her instead of treading over her.

  At last, she had room to maneuver, a fighting chance….

  She’d be damned if she’d be killed by the very spectacle she’d come to leer at! Finally able to gather her skirts, she made another wobbling attempt to rise, and lurched to her feet. Whirling around, she lunged forward. Free!

  No! Brought up short, she dropped to her front with a thud. She crawled on her forearms, but realized she was crawling in place. Something still anchored her. More people coming in a rush—

  The middle-aged roué she’d seen earlier dropped bodily to the ground beside her, holding his bleeding nose, staring up horrified at something behind them. Before she could even react, another man went flying over her, landing flat on his back.

  Suddenly, her skirts were tossed up to the backs of her legs, and a hot, calloused hand clamped onto her thigh. Her eyes went wide in shock. Another hand pawed at her petticoats, ripping them.

  “Wh-what are you doing?” she screeched, her head whipping around. With her mask askew and her hair tumbling into her face, she could barely see the man through the shadows of a jungle of legs all around them. “Unhand me this instant!” She jostled the leg he held firmly.

  With the back of her hand, she shoved her hair away, and spied another flash of her attacker. Grim lips pulled back from white teeth as if in a snarl. Three gashes ran down his cheek, and his face was dirty.

  His eyes held a murderous rage.

  The visage disappeared as her attacker bolted to his feet and felled another oncoming patron, before dropping down beside her once more. His fist shot up at intervals as he ripped again at her petticoats.

  She realized he’d finally stopped—when he swooped her up onto his shoulder.

  “H-how dare you!” she cried, pummeling his broad back. She vaguely noted that this was a bear of a man who’d lifted her with the ease of plucking lint from a lapel. The body she was looped over was massive, the arm over her heavy and unyielding. His fingers
were splayed, it seemed, over the entire width of her bottom.

  “Don’t go this way! Put me down!” she demanded. “How dare you paw at me, ripping at my undergarments!” As soon as she’d said the last, she spotted the remains of her petticoats pinned beneath a mural with a jaunty satyr covering a nymph. Her face flamed.

  With his free arm, the man sent patrons careening. “Lass, it’s nothing you have no’ shown me before.”

  “What?” Her jaw dropped. Hugh MacCarrick? This murderous-looking fiend was her gentle giant of a Scot?

  Returned after ten years.

  “You doona remember me?”

  Oh, yes, she did. And remembering how she’d fared the last time the Highlander had drifted into her life, she wondered if she mightn’t have been better off trampled by a drunken horde.

  Five

  Outside, instead of following the general flight down Haymarket, Hugh immediately ducked down a back alley behind a gin palace, then set her on her feet.

  Before she could say a word, he began pawing her again. “Were you injured?” he barked. While she could only sputter, he pulled up her skirts again to check her legs, then rose to fist his hands around her arms, dragging his palms down them from her elbows to wrists to fingers, checking for breaks, sprains. Amazingly, she felt herself to be unharmed.

  “Jane, say something.”

  “I…Hugh?” Somehow he was here for her, though she scarcely recognized him. It was Hugh, but it wasn’t. “I-I’m all right.” Soon, yes, soon, she would catch her breath and stop gazing up at him.

  How many times had she imagined their first time meeting after so long? She’d envisioned herself coldly sighing and spurning him as he begged her to marry him. He would plead for forgiveness for abandoning her without a word.

  How different reality was proving. Of course, Jane would be quite foxed and capable of little more than dumbly staring. Oh, yes, and fresh from a police raid and near death by stampeding.

  As he lightly tweaked her crooked mask, he exhaled a long breath. “Ah, lass, what in the hell were you thinking, coming here?” Though his looks were altered, his voice was the same—that deep, rumbling brogue that used to make her melt.

  Buying time to collect herself, she drew back and brushed off her torn skirts. “This would have been perfectly safe if the proper bribes had been paid.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Quite.” She nodded earnestly. “I’m writing a letter to management.” She could tell he couldn’t decide if she was serious or not. Jane did have a tendency to joke at inappropriate times.

  When she began untying her mask, he said, “Keep that on for now. Till I get you in a cab—”

  More whistles sounded, and a harsh horn trumpeted the arrival of a police wagon. Hugh took her hand and strode forward, quickly putting distance between them and the warehouse—and her group.

  “Hugh, you must stop. I have to go back!”

  He ignored her.

  When she tried to dig in her heels, he easily pulled her along. “Hugh! My cousins and my friend are still back there.”

  “They’re fine. But if you go back in your condition, you’ll get arrested.”

  “In my condition?”

  “Drunk.”

  “Well, since you’ve addressed it, I will tell you that, in my condition, the idea of going back to save my friends feels imperative and quite achievable.”

  “Will no’ happen.”

  The alley finally ended, and they reached a cabstand. So Hugh was sending her home for the night? Perfect. She’d let the cabbie go a block, and then she’d get out and return.

  As ever, a score of drivers geared up to jockey and wrangle for the fare. But Hugh held up one finger with a look that subdued even this lively bunch, then pointed to the nicest-looking cab. The chosen cabbie eased his vehicle over, all obliging.

  Hugh tossed Jane inside, then turned to direct the driver to his mount on the next street over. When she realized Hugh was accompanying her, Jane opened the opposite door and heedlessly climbed out.

  “Damn it, Jane.” He loped around the carriage after her, swooping her to his side with his arm around her waist.

  She was being carried again and could do little more than drunkenly blink behind her mask.

  “Your friends are safe,” he repeated as he tossed her back in, keeping a fist in her skirts as he joined her. He slammed one door, then reached over her to slam the other. Once they’d begun to roll along, he finally relaxed a fraction.

  He’d never forget catching sight of her inside, then seeing her disappear in that swarm of people. Never, not as long as he lived.

  “How do you know they’re safe?” she demanded.

  “I saw Quin go in, no’ five minutes before me. And trust me, Quin will no’ let his sisters stay to look for you.”

  Jane’s eyes narrowed. “What was he doing there?”

  “He suspected his sisters would attend.”

  She quirked an eyebrow, glancing out the window in the direction of the warehouse. “Really?” When she said the word slowly like that with her proper English accent, it always sounded like “raaaally.”

  Oh, yes, she was very suspicious. She hadn’t climbed out her window tonight for no good reason.

  She suddenly gasped, facing him. “B-but we were separated from Maddy!”

  “Is she the blonde in the blue dress?”

  “You noticed her?” Jane stilled. “I didn’t think blondes were your type.”

  He frowned at her tone. “Apparently, they’re my brother’s. Ethan is intent on the lass and went in to…talk to her.” Even after Hugh had followed him inside and warned him yet again not to seek out the girl, Ethan was undeterred. “Your friend Maddy—”

  “Madeleine. Madeleine Van Rowen.”

  Van Rowen. The name hit him. His brother could not be lusting after that one. What in the hell would Ethan do when he discovered whose daughter she was?

  “Your friend will be fine.” At least from the crowd and the police. “Ethan will no’ let her be hurt.” By anyone else. “But when you see her again, you might want to warn her about Ethan. He’s no’ the most honorable of men.”

  Another understatement. Hugh would like to say Ethan had changed after he’d received the injury to his face. Or when his fiancée had died the night before their wedding. But Ethan had always been a rough, roguish sort, showing a marked indifference to feelings and forming few attachments even as a young man.

  “Oh.” Then she frowned. “Actually, Hugh, you might want to warn your brother about that one. Little Maddy’s not as sweet and helpless as she looks. I’d worry more about Ethan.” He cast her a doubting expression, but she ignored it and said, “So, both Quin and your brother were there. I wonder, what were you doing in a place like that?” When Hugh simply shrugged, her lips thinned. “No need to answer, I can imagine. Curious, though, that you’re not scandalized that I was there.”

  Did she want him to be? Of course, he hated it, hated that she was in a place so rife with danger. “Nothing you do could shock me, Jane.”

  “No comments on my behavior?”

  “You’re a woman grown, are you no’?”

  “Hugh, you don’t have to interrupt your night’s revelry just to take me home.” Her tone was almost cutting. “And there’s another establishment very like the Hive, not too far away. I could give you directions. Much amusement for a man to have inside.”

  “I dinna go for that,” he answered quietly.

  “Then why on earth were you there?”

  He studied the window beside her as he muttered, “Heard you might be.” He glanced back at her. Her sudden smile was as baffling as it was devastating to him. Never taking her eyes from his, she untied her mask. Somehow she made that small movement sensual—as if she were undressing her body for him alone.

  Want tightened his every muscle, and he leaned closer to her, even as instinct screamed for him to ease away.

  She dropped the mask; he stifled a curse. Go
ddamn it, how could she have grown more beautiful? He’d hoped he might have imagined how lovely she’d been. He’d thought she would have lost the first blush of youth, the fire in her personality diminishing. Seeing her again now, he knew these qualities would never fade.

  An old question arose for the thousandth time: Would he have been better off never having met her?

  Right now, he believed so, yet he was still greedy for the sight of her, studying her face at leisure, savoring.

  Her eyes were that changeable, intoxicating green. Her cheekbones were high, her nose slim and pert. In the cab’s flickering lamplight, her loosened hair appeared dark, nearly black, as it curled all around her face and shoulders, but it was actually a deep auburn. Her lips were plump, and on the one occasion he’d dared stroke his thumb over them, he’d been amazed at how soft and giving they’d been—

  “Do I pass muster?” she murmured breathlessly with a slow, easy grin that made his heart punch the insides of his chest.

  “As ever.” He fought not to touch a curl that teased her cheek, taunting him.

  “You, however, are quite dirty,” she said with a disapproving glance at his clothes. “And your face is cut up.” Were her words slurring worse? “Hugh, whatever have you gotten into?”

  “I’ve ridden for days on end.” He hadn’t taken time to heal and sure as hell hadn’t stopped for ablutions when he’d believed she was in danger. But how badly he wished he looked successful, as wealthy as he’d finally become. Any man would want to appear rich and powerful to the woman he desired. Instead, Hugh was injured, his clothing covered in road grime.

  Appear successful? Right now, he’d accept clean.

  “And what brings you to London?” she asked.

  You. Finally, I’ve permission to see you. Hugh had never lied to her before. Yet the last time he saw her, he’d been a decade younger and still concerned with honor. No longer.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but the facile lie he’d prepared refused to escape his lips. So, he told her the truth. “Your father sent for me.”

  “Important business?” she asked, gazing over at him with an understanding expression.