Wayward One

by Lorelie Brown

  Fletcher walked behind the sailor, who craned in his seat in an attempt to cover his back. “St. Johns, is it?”

  “Aye, sir,” agreed the sailor. His head bobbed so quickly that lank hair fell over his forehead. “James St. Johns, that’s me. Best rigger in the English fleet.”

  “Not the best gambler, however. Are you?”

  Fletcher would have leaned against the wall, but he’d end up with unknown substances smeared all over him. Sera might notice that when he got home.

  How strange, to know he had someone waiting on him at home.

  Instead, he slipped a slender stiletto from under his jacket. Despite the dangerously sharp tip, he ran it under his thumbnail to dig out an imaginary speck of dirt.

  St. Johns gulped as his eyes tracked the motion. “Yes, sir. That is, no. It seems I’m not much of a gambler. I’m terribly sorry. I thought for sure that boxer would—”

  “Frankly, I couldn’t give a bloody damn. I’m entirely more concerned about your plans to repay me.”

  Even under his thick tan, the man managed to pale as the reality of his situation became apparent. His throat worked. “I—I can’t say as I know, Mr. Thomas.”

  Fletcher tsked and shook his head. “A shame. I’m sure your captain will sorely miss you in the rigging.”

  “Wait,” the sailor yelped. “Just wait. Is there—that is, can I pay it back another way?”

  Fletcher pulled his lips back from his teeth in something that in no way approximated a real smile. “Terribly sorry, St. Johns, but you’re not my type. I prefer bubbies by far.”

  Keeping his cool was proving more and more difficult. He’d not the dexterity for such games. He was a straightforward man. Bludgeoning the sailor and demanding information wasn’t likely to get the job done.

  The attack four nights ago had seemed entirely too coordinated to be an accident. If sailors jumped a man in the streets, the intent was usually to press them into ship-bound service. Fletcher had been too well-dressed and not nearly drunk enough to be a good victim, not to mention they’d been lurking around the house waiting on him. Again, not the normal milieu of a press gang.

  He’d already blown through his contacts in the world of the docks, mostly those who came into the Fair Winds every time they hit port. None had been foolish enough to wage an attack on Fletcher. They’d all protested that had they known anything they’d have come to him first thing.

  St. Johns, however. He was stupider than most. He’d taken a table at the Fair Winds and bragged about knowing a rich man who’d soon be swabbing decks.

  The sailor was on the edge of breaking down. His lip quivered like a child denied a sweet. His eyes went wide enough that it almost made up for their beadiness. “I’ll do anything. I’m a half-decent fighter. If you need something collected…”

  Fletcher hitched a thumb over his shoulder at Mick and Barnaby. “I’m fairly certain I’ve got that covered.” He looked St. Johns over from head to toe. He was a muscular man, but both Mick and Barnaby had a good six inches and three stone of weight on him. “In fact, I’m also fairly certain they could make mash of you before you had a chance to take a swing.”

  The sailor lost it. He blubbered. Tears rolled down his cheeks in fat streams.

  Not so oddly, Fletcher felt no impulse to comfort him as he had Sera. Sera’s tears held the power of the universe, turning him into a pile of messy confusion, desperate to do anything to see them stop. Though if every time she cried ended up in intimacy, he might not mind.

  Fletcher counted out long minutes while he let the sailor stew in his own misery. It went on without ceasing, or any sort of easing.

  He cuffed the man in the back of the head. St. Johns’s head jerked forward and he coughed. The tears dried up. He swiped his dirty sleeves over his face, which only served to smear the various liquids and snot.

  “Good God, man,” Fletcher said. “Find a bit of a backbone, will you? I swear I’ve swived women who bore up with less wailing than you.”

  St. Johns nodded. “Anything,” he muttered. “Anything.”

  Fletcher sighed. If he’d gone through this distasteful scene only to receive no intelligence, he’d likely put his fist through the man’s nose himself rather than allowing Mick the joy of it. “Information might do.”

  “I’ll tell you everything I ever knew.” St. Johns’s face lit with sudden inspiration. “I’ve a sister, you know. She ain’t much to look at, but she’s had two beaus already. I don’t think she’d mind much going to work.”

  His stomach roiled. Fletcher was pretty sure he was going to be sick. Not that it would make much of a difference in the muck of the floor. He’d so much rather do this in one of his regular rooms or offices, but it wouldn’t hold the same intimidating cachet.

  “What do you know about three men and a robbery four nights ago?”

  St. Johns looked from the papered-over window to the bruisers by the door and back again. “I don’t know nothing.”

  “If you’re referring to your lack of education, I’m inclined to believe you.” He slapped an open hand against the back of St. Johns’s head. He’d much rather punch the rotter, but eventually he’d have to get the man on his side. “But I think you know something about this.”

  “I know lots of robbers. Need a few groat, shake someone down. It’s nothing unusual.”

  “This would have been on the edge of Whitechapel. A rich man. They’d have waited outside his house.”

  The sailor’s eyes went wide. His mouth dropped open. The bottom lip trembled ever so slightly.

  “That’s right, you fuck. It was me. That, I could almost forgive.” Fletcher roamed around the back of the man’s seat and set his hands on the top rail. Bent low over him. St. Johns smelled like yeasty beer, the salt tang of the sea and sick, sweaty fear. “But someone put their dirty, nasty hands on my fiancée.”

  By the end of his little speech, the splintered edge of the rung bit into his palms. Anger tempted him to wreak destruction on the man. He held back. Somehow.

  Whatever St. Johns saw in Fletcher’s face must have been enough. He started babbling. “They were hired. I was supposed to go, but I had a little too much to drink and they left without me and they were right mad at me. Said they’d have had her if I’d gone.”

  Fletcher’s blood ran to ice in his veins. “Had her?”

  St. Johns nodded. “Yessir. They were to rough up the toff—that is, you—and take the girl.”

  “Where were they supposed to go with her?”

  “I don’t know.” Apparently that wasn’t the right answer because one look at Fletcher had the sailor shaking his head. “I really don’t. It were Jigger Jack who got us hired. Who talked to the man. I don’t know him neither.”

  Fletcher stared at the sniveling excuse for a man. He wasn’t even a man—more like a male specimen. Killing him would be too easy. One slice across his dirty, scruffy throat and the red blood would spread into the already filthy room. Mick and Barnaby would make the body disappear.

  His father would have done it, though he might have had the cunning to wait until he got all the necessary information. Then he’d have made sure everyone else in Whitechapel knew what he’d done too.

  Fletcher wasn’t his father. But with bloodlust prickling his skin, he’d never felt more akin to the man.

  He scrubbed a hand down his face. “You’ll take me to Jigger Jack.”

  “Of course I will. Of course, of course.” St. Johns hesitated. “But…”

  “What is it?”

  “He’ll be gone for nearly two months. When they took the toff, that is you, it was supposed to be for a long time. Jack just left for a run last night.”

  Fletcher ground his anger down as best he could. “Where are they going? I’ll send a faster ship to collect him.”

  “I don’t know.” St. Johns cringed. “They didn’t tell me that.”

  Fletcher gave into a fit of temper and kicked a piece of trash, spinning it across the room. “That
’s bloody well perfect, isn’t it? Mick, Barnaby, lock him down. I don’t care where. He’s not going anywhere until this Jigger Jack gets back to town.”

  He saw nothing and no one on his way home. The streets slid by like water through the gutters. He didn’t like leaving Sera home alone lately, but there hadn’t been much he’d been able to do about it.

  Finding the scum who’d attacked them had been even more important than hovering at the periphery of her vision, or making sure she didn’t slip away.

  He wasn’t sure where his anxiety came from. Likely that she’d wake up and realize what a horrible bargain she’d made. He’d be damned if he’d allow her free any time soon. She was his, whether she liked it or not.

  He’d never met a more perfect woman. Never a single cross word passed her lips. Reproofs she gave in calm, dulcet tones. He thought he might take apart London brick by brick to ensure she stayed pure and as sweet as she was. The brunt of his efforts on her behalf had all been worth it to see her rise unsullied from the muck. He’d been marked not only by the choices he’d later made but by the order of his birth.

  The front door swung open as he topped the stairs. Hareton on alert, as always. Fletcher had reached a new level of respect for the man since his intervention on the night of the attack.

  He was stripped of his overcoat, hat and gloves with ruthless efficiency. “Miss Miller?” He sounded like a calf-eyed boy, but he didn’t care.

  “I believe she’s upstairs in her sitting room, sir,” Hareton said without even a blink of surprise.

  Fletcher started bounding up the stairs. “Thank you, my good man.”

  Upon arrival, he stood in the doorway a long minute, watching her. With soft light streaming in through the window, she looked like a pre-Raphaelite beauty. Her hair twisted up on her head, with a few tendrils gracing the length of her neck. The pale yellow of her dress drank up the sunshine, and she bent over her work in a charming curve of neck and shoulders.

  The only noise in the room came from her pen scratching across paper.

  She looked too lovely to touch. Like he’d sully her if she knew what he was thinking of. Lucky for shady men like him, that was what marriage was for. To let him touch her in wicked ways without scuffing her up too much, and also allowing him the chance to keep her. Forever.

  He moved on quiet feet and feathered a kiss over the exposed velveteen of her nape.

  She jumped with an indrawn gasp. “Fletcher. Please don’t do that.”

  Leaning over the back of her chair, he was struck by how much different she smelled than the last person he’d bent over. Sera meant flowers and freshness. “Which do you mean? Sneak up behind you, or kiss you without warning?”

  From his angle, he could just see the pink sweep over the tops of her cheeks. He could also see the slightest hint of shadow between her breasts.

  “Either,” she said. “Or both.”

  He drew back to a more proper distance. “So sorry to inconvenience you.”

  She crumpled up the sheet of paper. The gesture seemed unlike her. He’d have rather thought she might neatly stack up her castoffs and consign them to some more noble purpose. “Please don’t be like that.”

  He eased into a chair and stretched out his legs. It had been a bloody long day, and he’d expected to come home to a warmer reception. That she would have been watching for him, only to run to him and throw her arms around him… Patently ridiculous. To hope for a little warmth didn’t seem that much.

  After the attack, she’d melted so sweetly for him. He’d felt like a bloody king to have won her so. The response had been fleeting. She’d wrapped herself in her measured rules before the next morning. Even by the time the inspector had arrived to question them, she had tucked and pulled and smoothed herself into respectability.

  “What are you working on this morning?”

  She shuffled some papers and then turned to face him. “Household matters. As a matter of fact, I would like to ask you about the third best bedroom.”

  “And which would that be?”

  “Silk moiré curtains and a damask bedspread. Peacock-pattern wallpaper.” Though she peered at him expectantly, he only stared at her. A faint smile crossed her mouth. “The second door down from this one. How do you not know the rooms in your own house?”

  He shrugged. “I know how many rooms there are and how much I spent. Do I need to know more than that?”

  “Of course you do.” She sounded rather affronted. “One’s home is their bastion against the world. Every choice reflects upon you.”

  He couldn’t help a chuckle, though he risked sending her past affronted into raging mad. “Perhaps. But now I’ll have you to take care of those details.” As he’d meant all along.

  He levered out of his chair and planted one hand on the table and one on her seat. The silk of her dress did nothing to dampen the warmth emanating from her skin.

  He dared a kiss, this one on her sweet mouth. For a too-brief moment she flowered under him and her lips opened to accept him. She tasted like honey. Before the power between them could build, she pulled away.

  When he stood, a dark shadow flitted across her features. A tiny wrinkle marred her brow, and she seemed to be trying not to scowl.

  He traced it with a fingertip. “What’s wrong?” She shook her head, but he wouldn’t be that easily put off. “Tell me. I can’t help if you won’t say what you need.”

  Her mouth curved into a frown. Her gaze dropped to his neckcloth. Small fingers wiggled under his jacket. Her voice squirmed almost as small. “What if I make the wrong choices?”

  He brushed his fingers over her ear. Even such a simple thing carried the magnitude of their differences, with Sera so small and delicate. “You won’t. I’ve every faith in you. You’ll turn this gaudy place into a showroom. A row of showrooms.”

  “Despite Mrs. Waywroth’s lessons, I’ve never actually been in control of a household before. To leap into the fray with one so large as this… It seems utter hubris.”

  “You’ll be fine. What’s the worst that can happen? You choose the wrong wallpaper and then what? The empire will fall to pieces?”

  “Please do be serious.”

  He stole another kiss. Feeling her hand spread across his chest was gratifying. “I am utterly serious.”

  “The dinner for the earl… What if it doesn’t go well?” How concerned she could be, even with her lips rosy and parted.

  “Then it doesn’t. We’ll try again. As many times as you like. I’ve every faith in your abilities to create the perfect home.”

  She nodded. Her shoulders firmed with renewed energy. “All right. If you’re so certain, I’ll simply try harder. I can manage everything.”

  Fletcher walked away to his rooms with a spring in his step and a whistle threatening behind his lips. If he were able to cure every worry of hers throughout their marriage so easily, they’d be blessed indeed.

  It was only hours later, when he was already at his club, that he realized the little wrinkle above her dark eyebrows had never gone away.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sera would be a married woman in less than an hour. A matter of minutes.

  The stacked stone walls of the chapel’s anteroom pressed in on her. Her heartbeat clomped through her chest like a runaway carriage team. Beneath her gloves, her palms were damp with sweat.

  Lottie and Victoria had foolishly left her alone to consider the exterior door of the anteroom. It seemed a simple door, but it let out on a foul back alley of London. Hiring a hackney might be difficult initially, but she could go three streets up and one over to find them swarming like flies. Poof, she’d be gone.

  The ivory dress she wore might be a little conspicuous however. Fletcher had insisted she order new clothes, though she’d quite accurately pointed out that with such a small audience, her best gown would be sufficient. After all there would be only her friends, Mrs. Waywroth and Rick Raverst to witness. Victoria’s dotty aunt, Lady Dalrymple, was in
attendance as well, but only to give a semblance of chaperonage to their assembly.

  Sera smoothed the sleek silk of her skirts. Running her hands over her bodice gained her little solace when the rough nub of lace reminded her of the ridiculous expense to which Fletcher had gone. If the materials hadn’t been enough, he had insisted the seamstress attend her at the house and that it be done with a level of alacrity that must have meant the modiste spent two days sewing without relief along with five other workers.

  What in the world had she got herself into? The man knew nothing of restraint or modesty. She both feared and anticipated what that would mean for their wedding night. He lived so large. She hardly knew what to make of him.

  The door behind her opened. The one to the main chapel, not the one to the exterior. She began talking even before she managed to twist the train of her dress. “Lottie, I find myself…” The words died in the desert of her mouth.

  Her friend was nowhere in sight. It was Fletcher.

  He looked impossibly handsome. The stark black-and-white scheme of formal dress called forth the golden tone of his skin. His blond hair had been tamed for once and every strand laid in perfect alignment.

  Really it was the way he looked at her. His pale blue eyes shone with admiration as if he saw a goddess or some saint ready to give blessings.

  “Fletcher,” she squeaked. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

  He came so near she could smell the citrusy scent of him. No matter what society meant she must change about him, that would be one thing that would never go.

  “I know.” He traced the high neckline of her dress with a single finger. “Do you know, with all that lace and fripperies, you look rather like a wrapped-up present?”

  The tips of her ears felt like they would wiggle right off her head. For the life of her she couldn’t tell if it was enjoyment or embarrassment. Maybe a mix of both. “I do not.”

  “You do indeed. I can’t wait to unwrap you.”