Improper Gentlemen

by Diane Whiteside

  BAM!

  The bullet blasted across her arm as if a fiery train had hit her and she fell down, skidding into a water trough.

  BAM! BAM! Oh, dear Lord, Johnson was still shooting.

  BOOM! Justin fired his Colt over her head.

  A man screamed and somebody was running toward them.

  Charlotte cautiously lifted her head. Her sleeve was scorched. Crimson started to blur its edges.

  “Darling!” Justin dropped to his knees beside her. “Are you all right?”

  “I think the bullet grazed my arm.”

  He started to examine it. His dark eyes met hers for a moment. “You saved my life.”

  “Of course.”

  Justin shook his head and compressed his lips even tighter. He was very white.

  “Where’s Johnson?” she asked.

  “Dead. His last shot went wild and took out Simmons.”

  “They can share the same grave,” she muttered.

  Justin choked in unwilling laughter, then lifted her up. “Can you stand? We need to bandage this.”

  “Yes, of course.” Her feet wobbled underneath her but everything was easier with his arm around her.

  “Charlotte?” Another man forced his way through the ever increasing crowd.

  The well-remembered voice made her head come up from Justin’s shoulder. They turned back from the Hair Trigger Palace to face the newcomer.

  “Charlotte, my dear?” Her filthy, bedraggled father swung down off his exhausted horse and leaped onto the boardwalk. Behind him, two sage mountain men in fringed leathers and buffalo skins folded their hands on their saddle horns and grinned proudly. He couldn’t have arrived with more unusual attire and companions if Elijah’s chariot of fire had deposited him. He’d lowered himself to perform this hunt on his own, rather than send Pinkerton’s agents.

  The shock was enough to deaden even her arm’s increasing anguish.

  “Father,” Charlotte acknowledged cautiously. If he was about to demand she return to the same prison as before, overseen by her stepmother . . . “How did you get here?”

  “My friends brought me to Wolf Laurel. I was afraid you’d slip through my fingers again so we rode through the night.” He’d lost weight and his clothing was made for mining country, not Boston.

  “Through the storm—for me?” She couldn’t imagine how he’d traveled without his private railway car. “How did you find me?”

  “A Denver gunsmith told me you’d come to Wolf Laurel.” The Moreland patriarch cast a suspicious eye at Justin. “He warned me to hurry because he wasn’t sure you’d stick around long.”

  “He loves you,” whispered Justin in her ear.

  “I came alone, since I’m now a divorced man.”

  She gaped at her father. The head of the Moreland family divorced? That scandal would match or possibly outweigh anything she’d done. “I’m not sure I believe you.”

  “I bought that woman off with ten thousand dollars and Putnam’s old Beacon Hill townhouse, one of the few to survive the fire.”

  “The one with the gaudy ballroom and the huge dining room?”

  “The same.” A smile almost touched his lips.

  “You didn’t give her enough money to heat that enormous pile for more than a few years, once she buys clothes for her girls. They’ll be paupers.” Charlotte had never hoped to see such a perfect revenge on those harridans.

  “Yes, I understand they sailed for Europe to hunt in fresh waters. But I care not. I’ve come to beg my darling daughter’s forgiveness.” Her father’s eyes pleaded with hers. “I should have asked for your explanation, rather than believing shapeless lies and losing my temper.”

  “Oh, Papa!” Tears spilled down her cheeks. They’d always promised to be honest with each other and that lapse had hurt her the most. She reached out to him with her good arm and he kissed her cheek.

  “Who is this fellow?” he asked sternly a moment later.

  “The man who saved my life,” Charlotte answered.

  “Her suitor, with your blessing,” Justin said simultaneously.

  She stared at him. She’d never thought Justin would leave the West.

  Then she began to smile. Perhaps she could have a future with him after all.

  Boston, Christmas Sunday, 1875

  Decked out in garlands of pine boughs and roses, the Moreland carriage turned the final corner to the family mansion on Beacon Hill. Inside, Charlotte held hands with her new husband.

  The Boston church bells filled the sky with cascades of brilliant joy, as glittering bright as the skies. A stream of carriages like golden bonbons turned into the street behind them.

  The crowd broke out in cheers, hailing a pageant brighter than anything in a concert saloon or variety house.

  Scents of coffee and chocolate drifted from inside, as the Moreland servants carried hot drinks to the policemen guarding the street corners. Tempting aromas of hot cider and hot chestnuts wafted past, from the food provided to the crowds.

  Liveried servants in burgundy and gold flung open the mansion’s great double doors. Inside, Charlotte could glimpse garlands wrapped around the grand staircase and gilded angels dancing below the chandeliers. Red and gold ribbons transformed all the furniture into gigantic ornaments. Servants bustled between the kitchen and the drawing room, carrying even more edible delights for the banquet to come.

  Their sleigh drew up before the great mansion and her father stepped out. He scanned the throng for a moment and an unaccustomed smile touched his harsh, patrician face. He bowed and waved to his fellow citizens, then stepped onto the crimson carpet leading into his home.

  Justin handed Charlotte down from the carriage. She was swathed in furs and velvet against the cold, and sapphires glowed at her throat.

  She leaned against him for a moment, to catch every bit of intimacy before they faced the throng inside. The crowd’s cheers redoubled and Justin’s smile lit his eyes.

  It came more often now, on this side of the Mississippi.

  She reluctantly waved at the people nearby but didn’t take her eyes off her beloved husband.

  “Are you truly happy here?” she asked, low enough that the grooms couldn’t hear.

  “Completely.” His smile deepened. “I have everything my mother wanted for me, and more. Plus, the most glorious future imaginable in your arms.”

  His hand rested briefly on her waist where his child grew.

  She blushed, then her grin blazed to match his. They hadn’t mentioned that detail to her father yet.

  “Come, my darling Ace, let’s greet our guests.”

  She shivered happily at his use of their private nickname.

  “The sooner we introduce my cousin, Earl Chillington, to everyone, the sooner we can depart on our honeymoon.”

  “I adore you, Mr. Talbot.” She tucked her hand into his elbow, fully in accord with his grasp of the necessities. Life would be an eternal delight with him at her side.

  To Match a Thief

  MAGGIE ROBINSON

  Chapter 1

  Jane Street, London, October 1820

  Lucy Dellamar looked down with dismay at the diamond brooch in her hand.

  It had happened again.

  She hadn’t meant to steal it, though it was clear she had, for why else would it be cutting into her palm? But there it had been, carelessly twinkling on the bedside table of her neighbor Victorina Castellano, where anyone might come upon it and pocket it. At least Lucy had not taken Victorina’s matching earrings that were right beside it, although she probably should have. Sets were more valuable when kept together.

  Botheration. No time for regrets about her light fingers and inadequate forethought. Lord Ferguson would be happy, and that’s all that counted. It meant a roof over her head for another month at least, and perhaps a choicer cut of meat even if the cook had already quit. She would buy it and cook it herself.

  Lucy was hungry right now. Thieving was hard work, though whoring was worse. It ha
dn’t come to that—yet.

  Even if she did live on Jane Street, ‘Courtesan Court,’ the most wicked street in Mayfair.

  Lucy lived a total lie. Oh, too many ‘ls’ upon the tongue, but there it was. Six years ago, she had been plucked out of obscure quasi-poverty by Lord Percival Ferguson and offered a job she could not refuse.

  There was no reason to say no. She had been a twenty-four-year-old spinster, deserted by her fiancé, a thief far more cunning than she ever aspired to be. For all she knew he was dead—there had not been a word from him in over seven years.

  Lucy’s new job was remarkably easy. Lord Ferguson had asked her to pretend to be his mistress, because it was expected that a man in his position in Society would keep one. She was in fact, one of a long line of women that poor Percy had kept over the last twenty years.

  The earl swore he’d never touched a one of them aside from a gentle steer of an elbow, which she could easily believe, as he was having it on with her strapping young butler, Yates. Percy and Yates had been lovers for quite some time, and the Jane Street address had proven a convenient spot for their assignations. Everyone in the ton thought Lord Ferguson was visiting Lucy, when it was really Yates’s bed he sought. Lord Ferguson could be himself in his little house, and if that meant borrowing Lucy’s rouge pot and silk stockings, what was the harm, really?

  But some months ago, Percy had lost most of his fortune through spectacularly unwise investments, and Lucy was very much afraid her days on Jane Street were numbered. The maid and the cook were gone, resulting in Lucy herself dusting and polishing the few bits of silver that were left and tying her own laces. She supposed it was only right that she begin to earn her keep, for really, the past six years had been a blissful blur of indolence and amusement. Percy had exquisite taste and had dressed her in everything he himself would want to wear—and did—so she had been turned out beautifully. Expensively. Totally a la mode. There had been nothing new—not so much as a plain-edged handkerchief for either of them—in seven months, and Lucy had resorted to selling a few of her older dresses to help pay for candles.

  Percy’s mother was pestering him to marry an heiress, which would never suit. He couldn’t touch his Scottish estate or his London townhouse—they were entailed for the heirs he would have only with the most miraculous of miracles—but the Jane Street house would fetch a pretty penny. Everyone in the ton would forgive Lord Ferguson if he was forced to sell his love nest due to financial reversals. They would not forgive him if they caught him in Lucy’s black lace peignoir, nor would the inevitable heiress his mother would force him to marry if she had her way.

  Percy looked better in the peignoir than she did—black washed her out. She was too pale, her milk-white skin and red-gold hair better suited to pastels. Of course, a courtesan was expected to wear more vibrant colors, so she did, much to Percy’s delight.

  The clothes were an improvement over what she had been wearing the day Percy found her in her aunt’s Edinburgh millinery shop. He had stepped in to get out of the rain, he’d said (but truly, he had been drawn by a lovely peacock-blue hat trimmed with matching feathers Lucy had set in the window fifteen minutes before). She wore a plain gray dress with a starched white apron, its pockets holding needles and her long-shafted scissors. When he’d offered her a job, she’d been so shocked she sat down and stabbed herself in the thigh.

  Percy hadn’t hired her because she was beautiful, although she was more than passably good-looking. She’d turned a head or two in her time, not that she wanted to remember those days. No. He said as soon as he looked into her light brown eyes—directly into them, because she was just his height—that he’d known she was just the girl for him. And when he glimpsed her enormous feet, he was in transports.

  Lucy was very tall for a woman, and slender—flatchested, if one wanted to be brutally honest. She and Percy were nearly identical in size, so she was able to fulfill his lifelong dream to deck himself out in the best women’s clothing without arousing suspicion. Of course Lord Ferguson accompanied Lucy for her fittings at the finest London dressmakers’ shops. Of course he fingered the fabrics, suggested the styles—he was paying the shot and knew what he liked to see his rather gargantuan mistress in.

  Under Percy’s tutelage, she had blossomed—the awkward ugly duckling had turned into a graceful, gliding swan, whose irregular height set her far apart from the ordinary. Lucy would be lying if she claimed she didn’t like to play dress-up, and her current position had released her from the tedium of pleating velvet onto straw and sewing stuffed songbirds onto bonnets and listening to her aunt’s continuous opprobrium. Her aunt now had to harangue some other girl, and pay her, too. Lucy had received very little for her efforts save the roof over her head and poor fare on her aunt’s table. Percy had made her eat so she could order bigger clothes to fit him.

  Her eating days were coming to an end. She could not keep stealing from the courtesans on ‘Courtesan Court.’ They already looked at her with distrust, and her invitations to the weekly amusements the girls hosted while they waited for their protectors had dried up. Stealing was wrong, even if the girls had more useless trifles than they needed at the moment. But someday their fabled beauty would fade—they’d grow stout and whiskery, and then all the diamond pins in the world could not replace their golden youth. A mistress had to make provisions for the future.

  But so did Lucy. She was thirty years old, after all, already well past her prime even if she didn’t look like an old hag—Percy’s special skin potions had seen to that. She just had to find a better—legal—way to secure her future. She didn’t fancy getting transported to the antipodean penal colony.

  She might bump into someone she knew.

  No, she would not think about him now. He’d done enough to ruin her dreams without taking over her waking hours too.

  She fetched a hat—a quite pretty one she’d made herself, red ribbons and cherries to match her red pelisse, and went to see Mr. Peachtree with the pin tucked into her reticule. He was an honest, honorable broker who believed her lies and thought he was helping her to get free of the wicked Lord Ferguson. The fact that Lord Ferguson gave his mistress such odd gifts—mismatched teaspoons, jeweled snuffboxes, small objets that could easily be stuffed into pockets or down bodices—hadn’t seemed to occur to him yet.

  Lucy was not a thief, although she had been taught by the best. And he had stolen her heart and sent it back broken.

  Chapter 2

  No one who saw him now could ever guess precisely how primitive Sir Simon Keith’s beginnings were. Thanks to Providence, his teeth were mercifully straight, his black hair clipped a la Brutus, his shirtpoints starched high, his cravat snow white, his jacket tailored to perfection—the list could go on and on with a plethora of commas. He was a veritable nonpareil, tall, dark and almost too handsome.

  It was only when one noticed his long fingers, nails irrevocably grease-stained from years of manual labor in its truest sense, that one realized that Sir Simon had not been to the manor born. He’d been very good with his hands (whether with women or machinery or removing the odd watch from an unsuspecting cove’s pocket) since he was a boy on the streets of Edinburgh. When he joined the army at the age of seventeen, under some duress if it be known—there was a price on his head and the local constable was keen on his trail—the military seemed preferable to prison. His superiors had soon discovered that whatever one put in front of Private Keith he could fix. When he put his mind to something, he could turn a bit of string and a scrap of metal into anything one would like. His mid-battle adjustments to a crate of useless but much-needed rifles earned him a rapid promotion, until he was taken out of the field altogether and put to work at a drafting board in the War Office. One thing led to another, and now Sir Simon owned his own foundry and a fistful of patents.

  With peacetime cutting into his profits, he’d seen the way to convert his materiel to less deadly accoutrements and was now deep into the promulgation of a railway system
that would stretch from one end of Britain to the other, using his own engines, of course. He had been knighted for his service to the Crown in squelching that fiend Napoleon, was unbearably rich and only thirty. Who knew what his future held?

  It should hold a wife. Some nice, proper well-bred girl who would help him advance in Society. She needn’t be rich—he had more money than he knew what to do with—but she’d have to have a pedigree to make up for the one he lacked. Simon supposed a girl like that would be rather dull in bed, but that was all right. He had an appointment this very afternoon to meet with Lord Percival Ferguson, a fellow Scot. The gentleman was a bit eccentric—the earl preferred to wear his kilt even in town—but Simon didn’t mind. He’d heard old Percy was hard up and planned to sell his Jane Street house. Simon could set up a mistress there to escape from his boring future wife.

  If Simon purchased a property on that sought-after street, he really would consider himself ‘arrived.’ Imagine, a boy from the Edinburgh slums keeping a high-class London courtesan. What would Lucy say?

  Ah. Poor Lucy. His lost love. Dead and gone for years. Whilst he was out and about fighting and inventing for King and Country, she toiled like a slave for her wretched aunt. He’d come back for her too late. The aunt had chased him out of her hat shop with a fistful of hatpins and he’d lost himself in a pint or two for longer than he cared to remember.

  He’d promised to return, and had, once the war was over and he had something to show for it. But she’d died six years ago, poor wee thing.

  Well, ‘wee’ was not precisely correct. His Lucy was a Valkyrie, an Amazon among women. But she’d fit against him to perfection and he missed her every day.

  Calf love it may have been, but it had stayed true. Simon had even taught himself to read and write to surprise her. He still had every one of her letters—all five of them—unopened of course, because at first he could not admit to being such an ignorant sod as to need someone read them to him. His old gran had sent them after he was safely established in his regiment, if “safe” meant not having his head shot off yet.