Never Entice an Earl

by Lily Dalton

  A flash of movement in the corner of her eye, and suddenly she could not breathe, because two large hands constricted her throat. She flailed and twisted, her feet dragging against the pavement, unable to see her assailant.

  “’Ay, sweet, so I see you’re waitin’ for me,” murmured a gravelly voice beside her ear. The stench of liquor and foul breath crowded her nose.

  “He—help—” she gasped, seeking to draw the attention of the very constables she’d striven to escape just moments ago.

  The man dragged her toward the shadows, his arm winched against her throat. Her heart sank in a downward spiral into utter hopelessness.

  *

  In the ensuing madness, Cormack took an elbow to his side and a boot heel to his toe. Irritated at allowing himself to be so distracted by the chit on the stage that he’d lost sight of his prey, he endeavored to do a lot more pushing and shoving himself. Within moments, he’d made his way to the maze of ramshackle rooms behind the stage, which were of course, bloody damn hell, a wild crush of people, none of them the distinctively elegant, masked men he sought.

  He half-turned, intending to escape with all the others to the street, but a sudden flare of intuition made him turn back, and press in the opposite direction until he found himself alone. He heard the faint bark of men’s voices. Following the sounds of wood scraping on the floor and a slamming door, he found a large room adorned far more elegantly than the rest, with a large table at its center, cluttered by a jumble of chairs, crystal liquor decanters, and more than one article of woman’s clothing.

  A door, cut into the opposite wall, bounced ajar and he raced forward, delving inside to find himself in a narrow, pitch-dark passageway. But in the distance there were voices, and an intermittent flash of light. Taking a corner, he saw them, illuminated in the golden light of a lantern held high: men in hoods, with several bare-shouldered ladies among them.

  The last in line glanced over his shoulder and, catching sight of him, shouted, “Hurry!”

  They pushed and shoved and the ladies screamed. Cormack reached them just as the door swung closed—

  He reached through, grabbing the man’s shoulder, but the man twisted, and several more threw their weight against the door. Cormack bellowed in pain, but his fingertips grazed silk and he pulled, enjoying the subsequent sound of head thudding against wood. Hands shoved and pummeled his arm, but he fisted his hand in the silk—

  A tearing sound rent the air, and he fell back a step, the hood in hand—

  The door slammed. He reached, but heard a frantic scrabbling against metal and a turn of the lock. He yanked, but the door held fast. Cursing, he turned on his heel and retraced his steps down the passageway and into the room. He had to get outside before they got away.

  In the corridor, he joined others still making their escape, some holding chairs or paintings or whatever else they could carry. Near the door, he came face-to-face with a constable. Cormack curled his fists, and leveled a blistering look on the man, having no time for this nonsense. The officer, appearing overwhelmed by the selection of miscreants with which to take into custody, took one long glance at Cormack, all six foot four of him, and determined him to be too troublesome.

  He bellowed, “Get out of me way, then.”

  With a wave of his baton, he lunged toward less sizable quarry.

  Moments slipped past. Cormack prayed there was still time to catch them outside, men he’d glimpsed only in shadows. All he needed was the identity of one, and then he could track the rest. To have come this close, only to have the Invisibilis slip away like ghosts in the night, fueled within him a desperate fury.

  Cormack hurtled into the alleyway, splashing into an ankle-deep torrent. At some point the sky had opened. Thunder and lightning crashed. Rain hammered the cobblestones. Beside him a driver shouted and lowered his whip. Carriage wheels spun and vehicles clattered into the darkness, even as constables carried off countless fellows, kicking and cursing, to a box wagon. More constables rounded the corner, having emptied out the brothel.

  Cormack cursed as well, rounding the corner—almost to be plowed over by a magnificent town carriage speeding past, its window crowded with silk-hooded faces staring out at him with blank holes for eyes. A dark cloth had been draped over the door so as to obscure the familial crest.

  Too late. He was too goddamn late. For a long moment he stood in the midst of the melee, allowing the cold rain to hit his face, to soak his clothing, wishing in that moment he could drown in his hate. Instead, he cut down a side alley and abandoned the Blue Swan.

  Just then a golden mask floated past, carried by rainwater, its jewels dully reflecting the dark night sky.

  The muscles along his shoulders rippled, and drew tight.

  He paused, searching the darkness. Listening. A scream found his ears. Up ahead, a flash of pale skin lured him deeper into the shadows. It was her, the angel, kicking and flailing as she was being dragged by the fellow he’d pounded in the face for having touched her earlier. He followed, rounding a brick corner, to see the bastard on top of her, tearing at her clothes.

  In a flash, Cormack’s rage exploded.

  Everything after came in a blur, until she screamed again, this time in his ear, her hands yanking at his coat sleeve.

  “Don’t kill him!” she exclaimed.

  He stared down into a bloodied face, then up into hers. Rain trickled over her pale skin, plastering sodden curls against her cheek.

  “Please. Not because of me.” Wide, dark-lashed blue eyes pled with him.

  All he could think was that while the mask had been alluring, and the stuff of fantasies, it was nothing compared to the face beneath.

  “Damned lecher.” Cormack stood, stepping back from the crumpled heap. “Come with me.”

  He extended his hand.

  She backed away, shaking her head, her eyes bright with terror and tears.

  She was a small thing, and he towered over her. Her muslin costume clung slick and transparent against her skin. The young woman crossed her arms over her chest, doing her best to cover her nakedness. God curse him for looking. He could not help himself. Cormack prayed the darkness concealed the magnitude of his hunger, his physical reaction.

  Of course, she would expect the same thing of him as of the man who lay motionless at his feet: that like an animal, he would victimize and shame her.

  With a curse, he tore off his coat and held the weighty garment out as an offering. “You don’t belong in that place. I understand that. I won’t hurt you. Let me see you home safely.”

  She did not move. She only shivered.

  “Do you have a home?” he demanded.

  Did she have a lover? A protector? A husband? Those were the questions he wanted to ask, but he did not. If she did have someone, the bastard wasn’t good enough for her, wasn’t worthy. She ought not to be out on this mean street, unprotected. Ought never to have stepped foot inside the Blue Swan.

  “Of course I have a home,” she retorted, her pronunciations polished, not those of a woman of the street.

  “Then let us go,” he ordered, glaring at her now, for being so obstinate when they ought to be off and away. Rain pattered down around them. “I’ve a carriage waiting not far from here.”

  She stepped closer, her face stark and beautiful, peering into his eyes as if she could gauge his true intentions within them. At last, she appeared to come to some decision.

  “Very well. Thank you.” She nodded curtly. “But don’t you dare touch me, do you understand?”

  She snatched the coat from his hand, but the rainwater made the wool unwieldy. Reclaiming it, he shook the garment out, intending to drape it over her shoulders, but a sudden blast of male voices echoed down the alley. The light of lanterns bobbed, signaling the approach of what could only be the constables, searching side streets.

  “Oh, no,” she gasped, eyes wide. “I can’t be arrested.”

  Every protective instinct within him roared to life. There was no way
to escape the alley without being seen. Forgetting the coat, he seized her by the wrist and urged her into the archway of a crumbling stoop.

  She went rigid, her lips parted on a complaint—

  “Just cooperate,” he ordered, his hands going to her waist to guide her more urgently into the corner.

  They were face-to-face. Her hands came against his chest, pressed flat against his wet shirt, and her breasts rose and fell with her ragged intake of breath. He caged her within the deepest of shadows, shielding her body with his. It wasn’t that he feared discovery. He felt quite capable of handling himself on the street or in the gaol, but the idea of the angel spending even one night in a filthy cell with the dregs of London offended him beyond bearing.

  “They are coming—” she whispered, curling her hands in the front of his shirt.

  “Quiet,” he hissed near her cheek, savoring the feel of her forehead against his jaw, the softness of her body pressed so intimately against his.

  The light of a lantern swept over the bricks above their heads. Footsteps splashed on the wet cobblestones, coming nearer, just behind his back.

  “This fellow’s beat all t’ bloody hell.”

  “Ay, but ’e’s alive. Let’s get ’im on ’is feet.”

  Cormack did not breathe. The girl trembled against him, her breasts pressed soft and full against his chest, something no man alive would fail to notice. He pulled her closer and she cleaved even more tightly to him, her hands clenching his arms. The threat of discovery only heightened the unintended sensuality of the moment. Shuffling, wet sounds, and groans from the injured man, and then silence, at last indicated their departure.

  “Come. Hurry.” Vacating the stoop, he quickly settled his coat onto her shoulders and led her in the opposite direction. Together they distanced themselves from the Blue Swan, their feet splashing on the cobblestones. The girl kept pace with him without complaint. The rain subsided, but a frigid chill remained. Two streets more, and Cormack found Jackson waiting exactly where they’d arranged to meet, sitting atop the carriage. True to form, the young man was smiling down at three girls gathered beside his perch, his mouth slanted with roguish mischief. Here, streetlamps illuminated the night. Wagons and conveyances crowded the street. “We’ll cross here.”

  Yet the young woman held back, reaching down to rub her foot, her expression one of pain and desperation. “A moment, please.”

  Only then did he realize the slippers she’d been wearing had disintegrated into little more than ribbons.

  “I’ve got you.”

  This time she did not protest, and he lifted her in his arms as if she were a child. She pressed her face to his neck, twisting her hand in his collar and shunning the curious gazes of passersby. The animal in his chest growled with satisfaction that she should cling to him so trustingly. Seeing their approach, Jackson waved his admirers away and leapt down to open the door, his gaze keenly fixed on the figure in his employer’s arms. Inside, enveloped by shadows, Cormack deposited the girl on the bench. Bloody hell, it was good to be back in his own domain, if only just his carriage.

  He lowered himself beside her, the opposite bench being presently removed for repair. His two black devils, Hugin and Munin, had gleefully ripped the upholstery to pieces as he spent his night in an inn that had refused them entrance. Needless to say, the following day he had found new lodgings, one amenable to canine traveling companions.

  Only now…returned to safety, the magnitude of his failure reverberated through him. Who knew how long it would be before the Blue Swan opened again elsewhere, or before the Invisibilis congregated in such a fashion again? Weeks? Months? Perhaps bloody never, depending on who appeared on the pillory in the coming days. They had slipped through his grasp. He had no other leads to follow. Unless, by chance, the girl could offer some helpful bit of information.

  “Instructions?” Jackson inquired, peering inside.

  Crowded into the corner, the girl appeared to assess all avenues of possible escape, color gathering high on her cheeks, more distressed at being alone in a carriage with him than she had been on a bawdy-house stage.

  He didn’t want to frighten her, so sought to ease her fears. “Miss, you may call me Cormack, and this is Jackson. Jackson, please make the acquaintance of Miss—” Ah, her name. At last he would have it.

  She blinked, and her pretty mouth opened. For a moment there was only silence, then she whispered, “Ah…Kate. My name is…Kate.”

  Did she tell the truth? Probably not. He supposed it did not matter.

  “Mademoiselle Kate, you may tell Jackson your address or wherever else it pleases you to go.”

  She did so, leaning forward to murmur instructions to the young man, holding his coat closed over her breasts.

  Jackson nodded, and under raised eyebrows threw Cormack a dazed look, silently professing his bewitchment. “Yes, Miss Kate.”

  With that, she withdrew into the deeper shadows of the corner, shivering. Cormack’s gaze fell on her bare calves, and her ankles, visible beneath the hem of his coat. She was slender without being thin, with luscious curves and creamy skin. Deep in his chest, the primitive male animal inside him growled in pleasure. His carriage. His coat. His woman. Yet with a twitch of her hand, she concealed her legs, drawing them up beneath her on the seat, and watched him warily.

  “Jackson, stop on Houndsditch if you will, near the clothing stalls. Kate needs a dress and some shoes.”

  “Of course.” Jackson then secured the door, throwing the cab into darkness.

  She exhaled loudly. “I don’t need clothes. I just want to—to—”

  “To escape me, as soon as possible?” He grinned. “Now you’re hurting my feelings. After everything we’ve been through together tonight?”

  She stared at him in silence, her eyes not frightened, but flashing and accusatory.

  He feared he’d offended her with his teasing, when all he wanted to do was earn her trust. Perhaps she could help him find the proprietor of the Blue Swan.

  He softened his voice. “Wherever you’re going, you can’t make an entrance in that insufficient costume or wearing a strange man’s coat.”

  After a long moment, in which a thousand emotions played across her face, to include a flash of impatience, she nodded. “I suppose that’s right.”

  “We’ll stop for only a moment and then be on our way again.”

  “Very well,” she whispered. Shadows painted the hollows beneath her cheekbones.

  Lord, she was pretty.

  “So,” he said, his gaze descending slowly along the column of her lovely throat, down to the upper swell of her breast, barely visible within the shadow of his coat. “Home is Hamilton Place, the exclusive domain of the ton’s rich and powerful. I knew you didn’t belong on that stage. Care to tell me who you really are?”

  Chapter Four

  I…I work as a maid at a private residence there,” Daphne lied, nearly breathless to find herself in the company of the man she’d connected with so powerfully from the stage, a man who had very nearly beaten someone else to death in order to save her. The violence he’d exacted both horrified…and pleased her.

  A sudden chill rippled through her. The night was cold, and she wanted nothing more than to be warm. Her savior—Cormack—relaxed not a foot away from her, as soaked through as she, yet he didn’t appear the least bit chilled. Robust and ruddy cheeked, he might as well have been dressed in flannel and slippers, and sipping brandy beside a roaring fire.

  Only he wasn’t. Blood stained the cuffs of his sleeves and, she realized, likely the coat she wore as well, though she could not perceive its presence for the dark wool and shadows.

  “You’ve gainful employment, then.” His gaze moved over her with such heated interest she shivered from it, more so than from the cold. “So why were you at the Blue Swan?”

  As the carriage proceeded along the road, intermittent flashes of light from the streetlamps illuminated the interior. Other carriages crowded close
at times, and the loud voices of nighttime revelers could be heard.

  He raised his hands—fine hands, with long, square-knuckled fingers—to his cravat and deftly worked the knot. Her attention fell to where his linen shirt clung damply to his skin, revealing with his every flex of muscle the indentations that defined his chest and abdomen, and her mouth went dry. With a lift of his chin he removed the cloth from his neck and abandoned the sodden linen to the bench beside him.

  She did not answer him. She only stared at the place where his shirt had parted to reveal his throat, and wondered what it might be like to kiss a man there. Not any man, but Cormack.

  “Kate, why were you there tonight?” he pressed, his voice quiet and assured.

  “I’d rather not say,” she responded abruptly. The less he knew about her, the better.

  “Oh?” His brow went up. He dragged his fingertip across his lips—and a faint smile that after a moment, broadened a degree more.

  Amused. She amused him—which vexed her, of course, because if she were honest with herself, she would prefer that a mysterious and intriguing man like Cormack find her mysterious and intriguing, not entertaining, like some precocious child.

  “So that’s it. Because you helped me I’m now obligated to confide in you my most private matters, despite your being a complete stranger?”

  His smile faded. “No, of course not, Kate. It’s just obvious that you didn’t belong at the Blue Swan. I can’t help but be curious over how you came to be on that stage.”

  Daphne stared into his eyes, mesmerized by the blaze of heat she saw in them, heat apparently inspired by her. Instinct told her she could trust him. He had saved her virtue and very likely her life.

  “If you must know—” she began.

  He raised a hand, and shook his head. “Please, you don’t have to—”

  “Your carriage smells like dog.”

  He smiled. “That’s because I have two very stinky dogs.”