Kidnapped with a Knight
Emily E K Murdoch
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
Peril with a Prince
HISTORICAL NOTE
About the Author
1
Edmund slammed down the pint and ignored the slopping stickiness that washed over his fingers.
“There,” he said triumphantly. “There – a straight flush. Can any of you match it?”
He looked around the corner table in the dingy pub where he had set up shop for the afternoon, and saw with what he hoped was well-hidden relief that none of his companions appeared to have a hand stronger.
What a way to spend Christmas Eve of 1818.
“Hand it over,” he said calmly, trying to ignore the tension in his shoulders. He must not loosen his cravat or his waistcoat, he must not show any sign at all of weakness. This was always the most challenging part of the game.
Not the cards themselves; no, he was too experienced now at earning his way day to day through a deck of cards. No matter where the queen hid, he could find it; he could make twenty one two out of three hands; a straight flush was never too far away.
No, it was collecting on his winnings that was always a little more difficult. No one liked to lose.
“It doesn’t seem possible,” said a stocky man sitting directly opposite him, his cards lying on the table. “Such a strong run of luck…it does not seem possible.”
Edmund swallowed. He was a tall man, that was true, but Mr Groats, if that was his real name, was broader than he was, and looked much more experienced with his fists.
He did not want it to come to that.
“Some people get all the luck,” said Mr Groats’ companion, pushing his share of the winnings towards Edmund with a glare on his face that was poorly hidden. “Another round?”
The fourth man at their table, a stringy sort of fellow with a straggly beard and a nervous look in his eye, shook his head. He pushed his share of the bet over to Edmund, inclined his head jerkily to them all, and rose to leave.
Mr Groats still had his eye on Edmund, who knew better than to look away. Never show weakness, that was the trick.
One of the few things of worth his father had ever taught him.
“Just how long have you been playing cards, may I ask?”
Mr Groats’ question was speculative, whining. Edmund leaned back, trying his best to give the appearance of a gentleman who was so unconcerned with the question that he would take his sweet time with the answer.
“Goodness, for as long as I can remember,” he said breezily. He had always had the Northmere charm, had it in spades, but in a place like the King’s Head, it was not just a life skill. It was a lifeline.
Mr Porter, scrubbing a glass at the bar, caught his eye and grinned. He had seen all of this from Sir Edmund Northmere before.
Mr Groats frowned. “And you have always won, have you not?”
This was not going quite as well as Edmund had hoped. Usually at this point, his opponents were so in their cups that they hardly noticed how much they were losing. When they eventually collapsed onto the table, what were a few more shillings taken from pockets?
Edmund swallowed. It was not going to be one of those easy evenings, he could see that.
He took a careful look around the room with a carefree air that he hoped Mr Groats would not recognise as checking for an escape route – and a woman sitting in the opposite corner caught his eye.
She did so for three reasons. Firstly, because she was there in the first place. Edmund could not remember the last time he saw a woman – an actual woman – in the King’s Head. Mr Porter did not usually allow that sort of thing.
Secondly, because she was with two of the most unpleasant gentlemen he had seen in a long time, and for Edmund, that was saying something. He had had money once, true, but no longer, and that meant frequenting places like the King’s Head far more often than he would have liked.
It was the best place to relieve people of their coin, when they were drunk.
But thirdly, and perhaps the reason why his eyes refused to continue their circuit of the room, was because she was beautiful.
Even from this distance, Edmund could see the line of her neck, the brightness of her eyes. Her lips were full as she spoke rapidly and quickly with the two gentlemen she was seated with, and as she twisted to raise her tankard to her lips, Edmund saw the curve of her breasts.
Edmund swallowed. Now was not the time to get distracted.
“I think you are cheating, sir!”
Mr Groats’ words caused a hush in their corner of the pub, and Edmund’s eyes snapped away from the enticing beauty in the corner to the rather sweaty man who had just uttered the words one should never say at a card table.
“Cheating?” Edmund repeated the word quietly but his steely gaze focused on the man, and Mr Groats did his best to look stern. “On Christmas Eve – on any day of the year?”
“Yes sir, cheating,” he said stiffly. “I do not think it possible for one man to have such luck, and so I say, cheating!”
His companion had half risen from his seat, ready for the fight, but had lowered himself gently as he saw Edmund was not going to resort immediately to fists.
He needed to think, and fast. Edmund knew the type, and knew that Mr Groats and his friend were almost certainly not alone. It was big talk Mr Groats was giving, and if Edmund had been amongst his old friends, it would have been a duel and with swords, not fists in a dingy establishment such as this.
A muscle twitched in his neck. Well, that life of his was over. This was his life now, and if he was going to survive longer than the two years he had managed, he needed to think, fast.
Something glittered on the other side of the room, catching his attention.
The lovely woman had lifted her tankard again, and a candle had glimmered in the one shiny part of it.
Edmund smiled. “I do declare, Mr Groats, that I am innocent!”
“Prove it,” snarled the man, taking to his feet.
He was far taller than Edmund had predicted, perhaps even taller than him – but that did not matter now. He had a plan, and all he needed was a distraction.
“I am more than willing to be searched, Mr Groats,” he said clearly in a loud voice, “but I hope you do not take offence when I say I would rather it was a beautiful maid than yourself.”
Mr Groats’ companion laughed, as did a few other onlookers who had turned in their seats to watch the free entertainment for the evening.
A flush tinged the parts of Mr Groats that was not beard. “I – I did not say I would – ”
“And so we need a beautiful maid,” said Edmund, leaning back and grinning.
More laughter rang out and Mr Porter yelled, “Don’t we all?”
Putting his hands behind his back as though utterly unfazed by the whole thing, Edmund smiled.
Mr Groats was looking discomforted now. “Well, what do you suggest? I will not leave this place until you are searched, mark you, I do declare it!”
Edmund’s smile widened. “You there, the girl at the table. Would you do me the honour of searching my person?”
Molly frowned and tried to calm her beating heart. It was enough that
they had agreed to meet with her; if she could just get to them to agree that –
“No,” said Tom with an air of finality. “No, Molls, I do not see it. Not interested.”
Molly sagged with frustration at the table. “Tom, you know that I speak sense, and you know that I have always been the one to do so.”
“You are not the only one with a plan, Molls,” said Jack, shaking his head with a smile. “Oh, no. We do not need you to think up the next one.”
Molly sighed and leaned back in her chair. She should have known, when her brothers had suggested a drink at the King’s Head on Christmas Eve, that they were not serious in their discussion. She had asked them to think about it, and they had promised they would.
Why had she been so foolish as to believe them?
More to distract herself from the frustration rising in her stomach than because she was actually thirsty, she raised the tankard of beer to her lips and drank.
It was disgusting, but she should have known. No woman ever stepped foot in the King’s Head, and there was a reason for that – beyond Mr Porter’s dislike of having them about the place, unless they were behind the bar and convincing foolish men to buy around round.
“We cannot continue as we are,” she said quietly in the silence that had grown. “You know that. We have been lucky up until now – ”
“Not lucky enough,” interrupted Tom, thunder in his look. “If that Peeler had spent just five minutes longer talking to you, we would have finished that job and got all the coin from the pawnbrokers.”
Molly took a deep breath and tried to steady her breathing. This was all they had ever known, she tried to remind herself. Their Da had been a crook, and his Da had been a crook, and now her two brothers were crooks.
“It would break Ma’s heart to see us like this,” she said softly, trying a different tack. “You know she raised us for more than this.”
Jack nodded. “She did, but the world did not want that for us, Molls. Good fortune ‘tisn’t for the likes of us. We have to make our own way in the world, and this is the only way we know how.”
Molly sighed and shook her head. “Thieving, stealing, begging? We cannot do it any longer, you know that.”
“I likes what we do,” Tom said with a wide grin, revealing several teeth missing at the sides. “And do not pretend you do not like the spoils, Molls, because I know you like a little coin to take yourself around the shops with. New bonnet?”
Molly’s cheeks darkened a little. “From my savings.”
“From our crimes,” Tom corrected. He leaned back and shook his head. “What will you do, Molls, if you are not our bait no longer?”
Molly swallowed. She had thought of this problem and not yet found a solution. Her heart was focused on getting her brothers out of this mess they had all found themselves in, but Tom made a fair point.
How did three siblings with naught but crime in their pasts make a clean breast of it in 1818?
“And ‘tis easier for you,” Jack said slowly. Molly glanced at him; her baby brother. “You are a woman, Molls, they will ask no questions of you. But us? They will need references, evidence of good character.”
“Evidence we do not have.” Tom took a long draught of his beer.
Molly laughed drily. “Boys, I do not think you realise just how few opportunities there are out there for girls to work. What we do now is wrong – wrong, you hear me?”
But the word did not seem to touch either of her brothers. Wrong? What did wrong or right mean to two lads who had been raised in a house where the food on the table had once been someone else’s?
“You are excellent bait, Mollsy,” said Tom with a grin. “No one can say no to you, no one. Without you…we need you to make the tricks work.”
Molly shifted uncomfortable on her seat. She knew it. She knew that walking away from the lives they had led together did not just mean a different way of life for her – one she barely knew anything about.
No, it also meant her brothers would need to find a pretty girl willing to smile at fools while they did their dirty work.
“I am tired of being bait,” she said heavily. “Are you not tired of – ”
“No,” said Tom flatly. “Are we, Jack boy?”
Molly’s eyes turned to Jack, who hesitated. The youngest of the three, Jack had followed his elder brother Tom everywhere. What he did, Jack did. What Tom said, Jack said.
Molly bit her lip. If she could not get Tom around to her way of thinking…
“I am not tired of it,” Jack said defiantly.
Molly sighed. “You won’t be tired of it until it is too late, boys, trust me.”
But Tom did not want to be convinced. He jutted out his jaw. “Charlie never questioned what we did.”
“And my husband has danced the hangman’s jig,” Molly said sharply, her eyes flickering between her two brothers. “Is that what you want for yourselves, is it? You want to go the same way as Charlie?”
For a moment, Molly was sure she had them. It had come as a shock to both of them when Charlie went down for thievery. So sure he would be sent to Australia, and they could all join him after all, there had been stunned silence in the court when the judge had placed that black square over his wig.
Molly swallowed. She had never cared for Charlie, really. He had been their father’s friend’s boy, just a kid they had grown up with. She had been lonely, she had been bored, and six months of marriage had left her with a different name and no fond memories.
“Perhaps,” Jack said tentatively.
Molly’s heart stirred.
“You there, the girl at the table. Would you do me the honour of searching my person?”
The three siblings stiffened. Tom’s hand immediately moved to the blade he kept in his sleeve while Jack’s fists clenched.
“No,” Molly muttered. “Wait.”
It was not worth starting a brawl here, not in one of the few pubs where the Bletchley boys were still permitted to drink.
Turning her head, she stared at the gentleman on the other side of the pub that had spoken those words.
He was grinning at her. Dressed a little too well for a man drinking at the King’s Head, he had dark hair and sparkling eyes, a sense of superiority that was evident even from here, and the gaze of everyone in the place was on him.
Molly swallowed. “Thank you, kind sir, but I am quite happy to miss that spectacular opportunity.”
She allowed just a little of her scathing wit to seep into her words, and the watching men laughed appreciatively as she turned back to face her brothers.
Her brothers who now had wicked grins on their faces.
“No,” said Molly immediately.
“He would be worth having,” said Tom, whose eyes were still weighing up the stranger.
“No, we want out of this life,” Molly said in a hiss.
Tom looked at Jack, who swallowed. “You want out of that life, Molls. He looks like a ransom would come for him, and a pretty penny it would be too.”
It was going from bad to worse. Molly’s heart sank as she saw the eagerness on her brothers’ faces. She had been foolish to come here, foolish to think that she could persuade them to a different life.
“I need your assistance, dear lady, and this kind man insists!” The gentleman’s voice rose above the growing din. “All you need to do is prove I am not a cheat. My life is in your hands?”
Molly rolled her eyes. What she would not do to be free of egotistical men. Well, he was seated with Mr Groats and she had seen him break a man’s hands for refusing to allow his waistcoat to be checked for spare cards.
What was the harm in giving him a hand?
2
Edmund’s eyes widened as he watched the elegant woman rise to her feet – albeit with bad grace, if her features were anything to go by.
“An unbiased observer!” He said, thrusting a hand towards the woman as she approached their table. “There, Mr Groats, you cannot possibly protest against s
uch a lovely thing.”
And she was lovely. If Edmund had not been in such a precarious position, with Mr Groats clenching his fists and all those wonderful silver coins still lying on the table between them, Edmund would consider the young lady now standing between them as someone worthy of his full attention.
If possible, he had underestimated her beauty. She was all curves and softness, dark eyes and yet light golden hair, an intoxicating mixture he had never seen before.
“You called, sir?” She said haughtily, looking him up and down as though he was a rat who had clambered out of a hole.
Edmund’s face must have fallen, for the crowd still watching him gave a laugh and someone wolf whistled.
“I did indeed, and I am beyond grateful that you answered that call,” Edmund said quickly, regaining his composure quickly. All he needed to do was for this pretty young thing to pat him down – perhaps in some areas more than others – and prove he was no cheat.
Then he could take his money, get back to his rooms, pay the rent that had been due two days ago, and forget about this evening.
Not that he would ever be able to forget about her.
“I would like nothing more to get this over with as quickly as possible,” the woman said dully, somewhat dampening Edmund’s growing ardour. “Arms out, please.”
As she came closer to him, Edmund breathed in her scent, a heady mix of lavender and something else he could not quite put his finger on. Her fingers moved to the pockets of his waistcoat, pulling out a scrap of paper and a small ha’penny pencil.
“Nothing there of interest,” she said quietly, more for the crowd’s benefit than anything else.
Edmund grinned. It was invigorating, having a beautiful woman like this so close to him. God, if they had met years ago when he had been in his element – at the Pump Room in Bath, perhaps, or Almack’s in London – he would have had her hanging on his every word.
Kidnapped with a Knight: A Steamy Regency Romance (Ravishing Regencies Book 0.5) Page 1
