Wicked As Sin

by Jillian Hunter

  He still had her gun, however, but since the runners who questioned him did not ask, he did not offer this information. It was empty, anyway.

  “Gentlemen,” Gabriel said at length to his in quisitors, “I have given you all the information I can, and—did I mention that I am to be married the day after tomorrow? I had hoped to spend my two last nights as a bachelor in more stimulating pursuits.”

  The two runners offered profuse apologies. They explained that they were merely thief-takers, and that the regular constable of this division had been called to a murder on Old Bond Street.

  An hour later the excitement of the Mayfair Masquer’s current adventure had spread across London. He hadn’t stolen anything. He was probably a prankster. And the most reliable witness so far, the only person who had actually spoken to the man, Sir Gabriel Boscastle, could not provide any useful information to identify him.

  Unfortunately there were a few suspicious souls who questioned the coincidence of Sir Gabriel’s claiming to confront a person to whom he was said to bear a great resemblance. Was this a clever plot hatched to throw the authorities off his trail? Some would have been convinced of this possibility had an old hackney driver not given a statement that same night that he had almost hit a cart carrying a man who also appeared to be wearing a disguise.

  It was as the interrogation ended that Lords Drake and Devon Boscastle finally arrived to take Gabriel out on the town. He explained what had happened, declining to go into detail.

  It was his last night as a bachelor. Tomorrow evening he was taking Alethea to a play. His cousins couldn’t decide whether to drag him to Covent Garden, to the most disreputable gaming hells, or to drop him off at Mrs. Watson’s for some high-quality conversation.

  In the end gambling won out. Alethea would merely be angry if he came home with another mortgage. She’d never speak to him again if he set foot in Audrey’s, their mutual fondness for the woman notwithstanding.

  So they set off in three separate carriages, Gabriel and his cousins in one, another set of friends from Timothy’s party in a second, and the third conveying a set of hangers-on who would follow the Boscastles anywhere for the privilege of being able to claim they’d been invited to accompany the infamous brood.

  The clubs welcomed the Boscastles. Old friends lingered to share a joke, a drink, a memory of days before wives. But for most of them life had changed in London. The war was over, and world expansion consumed every politician’s mind. Those wise enough to realize that effort would be required to heal problems at home had no interest in pushing territorial boundaries in far-flung kingdoms. Others sought riches and new lands to plunder.

  The rest seemed content to return to their lives at home. Gabriel had too much on his mind to enjoy himself. He was already bored with the game of faro he’d been winning. His cousins Drake and Devon weren’t playing at all, talking politics with a cabinet member. The dedicated players had emerged as the night deepened. This was the time Gabriel would typically make his appearance.

  But now he merely played out the game and split the three thousand quid he won among his friends. The cardsharper he’d beaten took his loss in silence, regarding Gabriel without expression from beneath his broad-rimmed straw hat. Gabriel had never played him before, but a friend said the man had been winning steadily and was a cheat. He was a former Yorkshire army surgeon who ran with a rough group of disgruntled soldiers.

  “I’m going to Brooks for a coffee,” Gabriel called over his shoulder to Drake. “I’m done here.”

  “Wait,” Drake said. “We’ll all go.”

  “Meet me there,” Gabriel said, stretching his arms over his head. “I need the walk.”

  In truth, he needed the time alone to think about what had happened tonight.

  This was probably the last night he’d walk the streets of London, at least on his way to some entertainment. The urge to seek some distraction had died such a natural death he hadn’t realized it was gone. In the past he’d have gambled half the night, had a meal of steak and fish at Covent Garden, then spent an hour at Ranelagh or Vauxhall. There had been clubs and horse-betting and gourmet suppers and pretty women willing to share their boudoirs with a Boscastle rogue. He’d enjoyed taking risks.

  But none of his former haunts tempted. Even when he crossed the street and an old group of officer friends recognized him and shouted out an invite from their carriage to join them on Bond Street for lobster, he merely laughed and waved them off.

  He would not be good company in his mood.

  He had convinced himself he didn’t give a damn that his brothers had deserted him. He’d been angry when he was younger—when his stepfather broke his hand for bringing a stray dog into the house, when the man bruised his mother’s face for defending him. He had grown up, fought in a war, become a gamester who lived off the losses of other men. He’d never harmed anyone who wasn’t asking for trouble. There were rules to play by even in his world.

  Because Alethea had chosen him, he could choose to walk away from the life that would sooner or later have killed him. He and his lady would raise children and thoroughbreds together and bring stray dogs and even lost boys into their home whenever they could. And if he died young, as his father had, he would know that his Boscastle relatives would protect his wife and family after he was gone.

  He was a man, his days of rage and irresponsibility behind him. He had been given a chance to fulfill the dreams his parents had once held for him. Any thoughts of revenge that had fueled him no longer seemed worth the effort.

  This was what he had believed until a few hours ago, when his brother had reappeared in his life.

  Suddenly he was angry again, his demons awakened, and the memories he’d thought were buried rose from their graves to torment him. His stepfather’s throwing a bucket of filthy wash water in his face whenever he overslept, or taking a knife to Gabriel’s mother’s lustrous black hair because a village man had complimented her at market. The books Gabriel brought home from school to read, smoldering on the hearth. The cruel taunts about his father’s death and Gabriel’s attempts to hold back tears.

  Alone. Three brothers gone. The eldest had taken himself off before their father died, but Sebastien and Colin could have chosen to stay. Why should he protect Sebastien? Why didn’t he turn the rotten bastard over to the authorities? He owed him nothing.

  And wanted nothing from him.

  He turned a corner, realizing that he wasn’t on St. James’s Street but on a side wynd to Piccadilly.

  And that he wasn’t alone.

  Three darkly clothed men stood in front of a pair of parked curricles, too well-dressed to be pickpockets, pretending too hard not to notice that he was approaching.

  He cut a glance across the street. The cocoa shop was long closed; there was a drunk ambling down the street in the other direction.

  He took a breath, kept walking. One of the men looked up. And Gabriel recognized the angle of his shoulders. The Yorkshire surgeon he had beaten in the hell. With him were two tall youths, pacing in agitation. His gaze dropped to the baton one held tucked in the fall of his cloak.

  He muttered a curse, slid his knife from his boot without missing a step. There were no other vehicles on the street. Only a battered donkey cart piled with rags and newspapers—bloody hell, could that be the same cart as…

  He stared at the drunk slumped against the wagon wheel, a bottle dangling from his hand. Had he imagined that their eyes met?

  It wasn’t…it was. Sebastien.

  Was this a setup? An ambush?

  Could that last game have been a trap from the start? Some political intrigue? A personal debt that involved a woman?

  He would have to figure out the particulars later.

  For now he had to react. He gripped his knife.

  And he could perhaps thank his brother later for involving Gabriel in a street-gang attack when he had to appear at the wedding altar in one piece the day after tomorrow.

  Yet he knew
he could run. He could still turn around. His instincts told him they’d give chase, but he was damned fast on his feet.

  He hadn’t passed the street watchman with his sign warning to “Beware of Bad Houses.” The Yorkshire bone-scraper and his two ghouls were most likely foreigners to London. Gabriel could make a dash across Half-Moon Street and lose them in Piccadilly. Then again it was starting to drizzle. He’d rather fight than run like a coward in the rain.

  He was curious about what his brother had to do with this unsavory bit of business.

  He searched the street; his footsteps echoed in the lowering mist. The figure slumped against the cartwheel did not move, apparently dead to the world, his hair snarled, his face shadowed in filth.

  Good disguise, Gabriel thought in amusement.

  The three men rushed him as a small carriage rattled around the corner and vanished into the foggy mizzle. The first man to attack him fell in the gutter at Gabriel’s hand before the other two pinned him around the neck and shoulders to drag him into an alley behind a tavern. A cat darted past. A shutter lowered in the candlelit window above.

  “Where’s my money?” the surgeon asked with a smile, holding a scalpel at Gabriel’s throat while his companion struggled to restrain him.

  Gabriel went still for a few moments, leaning with deceptive submission against the second man’s chest for leverage. With a humorless smile, he drew his legs inward, then snapped a one-two kick that sent the taller man crashing back against a low flight of steps.

  “I gave it to charity,” he said, brushing off his cuffs. “If you want to collect more, there’s a church on the next corner that allows beggars.”

  The surgeon jumped back onto his feet. “I don’t want mere money.” Spittle punctuated his words and a large curved blade glinted in the misty rain. “I want your blood to flow in the gutters. I want to disembowel you and feed you to the city rats.”

  Gabriel sighed. God knew he enjoyed a good fight as well as the next unemployed cavalry officer, but he already had one black eye, and he’d be damned if he’d pledge his troth to his bride with a toothless grin.

  “You’re a bloody bad gambler,” he said. “I’ve no reason to believe you’re any better at fighting. And for the sake of all the poor bastards who probably died under your knife in the name of medicine, I’m going to even the score.”

  Gabriel’s knife flashed, and in the next breath, he was holding the damned fool against the wall with the tip of his blade pressed delicately into the jugular. “I really ought to kill you, but the sight of fresh blood—”

  He broke off as he heard footsteps running up behind him, then felt a baton crack against his shoulder. The first bastard he’d fought had recovered enough to take revenge. And he took it hard, swinging the baton at the back of Gabriel’s head this time.

  He ducked, swiveled, and butted his head into the man’s stomach.

  “Hold him still,” the surgeon said, and Gabriel thrust back his elbow as the scalpel sliced through the sleeve of his coat. His skin stung. Nothing fatal. Just another scar.

  “Gabriel!”

  He saw movement to his right, angled his head only long enough to recognize the street wretch who had been slumped against the cart. His two assailants noticed also, their momentary inattention giving him the opportunity to break free as his brother advanced.

  “Who asked for your help?” he said, catching the sword Sebastien threw his way.

  “Our mother.” Sebastien’s dirt-stained face broke into a handsome grin. “It appears I have neglected my brotherly duties toward you and need to make amends.”

  Gabriel tested the sword’s weight in his arm, grunting. “I haven’t needed my family for—I don’t even think I have a family, save for a few London cousins.”

  Sebastien backed into Gabriel until they stood shoulder to shoulder, swords raised, their bodies slowly circling in unison to defend against attack from any quarter.

  “Do you still want to disown me?” Sebastien asked casually.

  Gabriel laughed. “You disowned me a long time ago. I don’t want anything to do with you. What do you want with me, anyway, aside from stealing my identity to rob women?”

  “Do you think I would fail to give my youngest brother my best wishes on the advent of his wedding?”

  Gabriel narrowed his eyes. The surgeon had drawn a pistol from his belt. “You failed to say farewell when you left. Why bother now—he’s got a gun, you know.”

  “Aren’t you the hero who confiscated four enemy cannons and played cards on a fifth? You managed quite well without me.”

  He thrust Gabriel behind him as a pistol flashed in the drizzle. “The gun works, too.”

  Gabriel started to curse. A burn that spread across his lower left ribs smothered the words in his throat. He looked down, expecting to see a dark stain of blood. And so he did—blood that flowed from both his own flesh and from the arm his brother had thrown around him to absorb the blow.

  Blood brothers. Hell, he wasn’t going to be swayed by sentiment.

  “I am not about to forgive you that easily, Sebastien, you bastard,” he muttered, positioning himself into a protective crouch to hurl his knife, sword held aloft in his other hand.

  Sebastien dropped alongside him, grinning darkly. “I don’t give a damn whether you forgive me. It’s our mother I’m worried about.”

  The three other men closed in around the two brothers who had once taken on every boy in their village for sport. “She isn’t coming back to England, is she?” Gabriel asked worriedly.

  “That depends on her new husband. If she does, we’ll all have a lot to explain to her.”

  Gabriel sprang upward, fending off one attacker with his sword, the other with a sharp kick in the groin. Sebastien’s saber flashed. The surgeon dropped with a groan into a puddle of filth.

  “I’ve written to her regularly,” Gabriel said distractedly. “While I may not be proud of everything I’ve done in my life, I don’t have anything to hide.”

  “It probably won’t come as a surprise”—Sebastien launched into a flawless riposte—“but I do.”

  “The last I heard”—Gabriel paused to advance—“you had left the infantry and were missing.”

  “Well, I still am,” Sebastien answered. “Officially speaking, that is. Don’t let Maman mourn me if she comes to England. I’ll make it all up to you later.”

  Gabriel backed his opponent into the wall, the saber pointed at his neck, then had a change of heart and motioned him to escape, which he did without a backward glance of regret at his cohorts. “Should I even ask about my brothers?”

  Gabriel whirled around, lowering his sword. Dragging the surgeon with him, the other attacker disappeared. And so apparently had Sebastien. Not counting the damage done to Gabriel’s body, only the thin French sword he held in his hand offered proof the assault had even occurred.

  By the time he reemerged from the alley onto the street even the mizzling rain had lifted. The cart on the corner was also gone, as if it had never been there, and a procession of carriages from a party letting out on Curzon Street lit up the road with their lanterns.

  His arm ached. His head throbbed. He looked like a disreputable tomcat on the prowl for trouble.

  In two days, God willing, he would have a wife, unless she took one look at him now and called off the wedding. He would have his own family, which did not include the three brothers who’d abandoned him.

  “Oh, my God,” a deep male voice said from the corner to which he’d walked. “We leave you for an hour and look at the mischief you make.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a bottle of brandy and a clean handkerchief on you, Drake?”

  Drake straightened in concern. “Get in the carriage. Where are you hurt?”

  Devon and Heath Boscastle jumped down onto the sidewalk, holding back at Gabriel’s wave of annoyance. “How many men were there?” Heath demanded. “Are they gone?”

  “Where did you get that fine sword?” Devon as
ked, staring at the saber Gabriel had almost forgotten he still held. “You didn’t have it when you left the hell.”

  “I…I found it.”

  “You found it?” Heath said in that quiet voice that had disarmed and deceived untold numbers of enemies into believing that he was exactly what he appeared to be: a gentle-spoken English aristocrat who was more interested in academics than anything else.

  Gabriel knew better.

  Heath had survived unspeakable tortures and had not broken.

  And Gabriel was not about to break himself. “One of the men who attacked me must have dropped it,” he said with a shrug. “Or maybe it belonged to that rough-looking character with a cart parked outside a dolly shop when I walked by. Perhaps he stole it. All I know is that I picked it up, and it came in handy.”

  “Do you mind if I take it home with me?” Heath asked.

  Gabriel hesitated. “Now that you mention it, I might like to keep it as a talisman. I’ll look it over later tonight. If I notice anything suspicious or any clue that indicates its owner’s identity I shall come to you posthaste.”

  “So, you didn’t ask his name?” Heath asked, pulling open the carriage door.

  Gabriel shook his head. “No. And I didn’t ask for a certificate of character, either.”

  “I find it all a bit puzzling.”

  “You know how London is. Most of the people out this late at night are either seeking danger or are insane.”

  “Well, I trust you rewarded this mysterious Galahad.”

  “I might have if the Boscastle guard hadn’t arrived to scare him off.” He pushed his hand against the door. “I don’t mean to be rude, but it is late for a tête-à-tête, and I’m becoming a reformed man.”

  Heath grimaced. “Your shirt is torn, one eye is blackened, and you’ve the start of a swollen lip. Alethea is with Julia and the ladies. You’re going to give them a good scare.”

  Gabriel rubbed his face. “She’ll never believe that I did not cause the fight.”

  Heath flashed him an ironic smile. “That makes two of us, then.”

  Gabriel lowered his hand. “I confess, Heath, I’m too tired to make sense of anything tonight.”