The Heiress's Deception

by Christi Caldwell

  Follow me?

  Not wanting to linger and risk him asking any probing questions, or worse, have Calum Dabney return and find she’d made off with his books, Eve hurried after him. What fate awaited a lady who stole from a gaming hell owner? Newgate . . . he could toss her in Newgate and return the favor. Which he’d no doubt enjoy if he discovered my relation to Gerald. Shivers iced her spine. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

  With each step that brought her away from Calum’s office and closer to her temporary rooms, her sense of victory mounted.

  “Here we are,” MacTavish muttered, and let her inside the rooms.

  Eve blinked, struggling to bring the room into focus through the darkness. Eager to be free of his and anyone’s company, she entered and found a nearby table. She released the burden in her arms. “Thank you, Mr. MacTavish. That will be all,” she assured him, as he set down her bag.

  “I can send one of the maids fer ya—”

  “No,” she squeaked, and then masked that high-pitched reveal with a cough. “I am quite fine. Quite capable of caring for myself.” Which was only partially accurate.

  Seeming as eager to be rid of her as she was of him, MacTavish rushed from the room and pulled the door hard shut behind him, leaving her alone in an inky darkness.

  An eerie silence clung to the small chambers, the sound of it ringing loudly in her ears. Moving over to the bed set up at the center of the room, Eve slowly claimed a spot on the edge of the mattress. With the weight of the lies pressing down on her, she lay on her back and stretched her arms high above her. All earlier thrill of victory at escaping discovery and being sent out in the middle of the night receded, when presented with the reality of what she’d just done.

  She’d purloined Mr. Dabney’s books, lied to one of his burly guards, and commandeered rooms inside his private suites.

  Eve slapped her hand over her eyes. “Think, Eve, think,” she said into the quiet, the sound of her voice breaking the deafening still, somehow empowering. Calum Dabney had formed one opinion of her—one that was far from favorable. There was just one way that she might secure the post of bookkeeper. Her gaze, of its own volition, slid over to the stack she’d deposited at the front table. She slowly smiled, and with a renewed purpose, she jumped to her feet.

  She’d at best a handful of hours before he discovered what she’d done.

  Enlivened, Eve marched over, gathered the ledgers, and carried them to a nearby desk.

  Not allowing herself to think of the second act of duplicity she’d committed against Calum Dabney, Eve pulled out the shellback chair and set to work.

  Chapter 5

  Not even twelve hours after sending away Mrs. Swindell, with her horribly unfortunate-for-a-gaming-hell name and odd odor, Calum felt like hell.

  Only this time it was not solely guilt for turning out that faintly pleading young woman.

  Seated at the breakfast table in the kitchens, Calum took a sip of his coffee and winced. Ignoring that sting of discomfort, he proceeded to read the front of the Times. Where most men attended those pages for the gossip contained within, Calum over the years had taken to studying them for their clients. A proprietor of any establishment was best served knowing when one of his patrons was on the brink of desperation. It always paid to stay a step ahead of them. He skimmed the useless stories and names, then stopped abruptly when his gaze collided with one familiar nobleman mentioned at the front and center of the page.

  The Duke of Bedford remains bereft at the loss of his sister.

  Calum started. Little Lena Duchess. He’d not allowed himself to think of that girl in more years than he could remember. She’d be—his mind worked—nearly six and twenty years now. Pushing aside thoughts of her, he continued skimming through the article.

  His sister now missing for more than a week, the duke wears his heartbreak upon him at any ton function . . . The brokenhearted Duke of Bedford has vowed he will not rest until she is returned to him . . . Such devotion has also earned the notice of countless matchmaking mamas . . . None, however, who possess the fortune that gentleman requires . . .

  Calum finished the article about the ruthless bastard who’d had him imprisoned all those years ago and the sister he’d now apparently lost. Devotion and heartbreak? From the Duke of Bedford? He snorted. There was a greater likelihood the Devil had developed a soft spot for mankind, everywhere.

  “You look like hell,” Adair drawled, bringing Calum’s attention up. Tearing a piece of bread with his teeth, he waved the uneaten portion at Calum’s swollen eye. As though Calum needed him to point out the injury in question.

  Eating breakfast with the other guards who sat around discussing club business, Calum took care to not show that he also felt like hell. After his meeting with Mrs. Swindell, Calum’s evening had been spent breaking up a fight between the once great fighter, Sam Storm, and a more than slightly insulting Lord Pemberly. “A fist to the face will do that,” he muttered, shoving aside the paper. Especially one errant blow thrown by that skilled fighter.

  Adair picked up his utensils and carved a slice of sausage. “Ah. I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  The guards seated around the table erupted into laughter. Allowing those men their mirth and ribald jesting, Calum took another sip of his coffee.

  “Did you read that?” Adair asked around a mouthful of food. His earlier brevity gone, he nodded to the copy of the Times. “About Bedford,” he clarified.

  “I did,” he said in even tones. Outside of the monies owed the Hell and Sin by that reprobate, Calum didn’t give ten damns on Sunday whether the man had lost his sister or how society spoke of the dissolute bastard.

  “It’s all that’s being whispered about at the gaming tables. Apparently, this is the reason he’s been such an infrequent visitor here.”

  Calum snorted. “The only reason he’s been visiting less is because he knows we’re on the cusp of calling in his vowels.” And anyone who doubted different hadn’t been the recipient of that heartless Duke of Bedford . . . I’ll see you swing, you guttersnipe. His gut clenched as the memories of that night flooded forward. He quickly shoved to his feet.

  Adair looked up. “I can see to the floors,” his brother offered, nodding at Calum’s swollen eye.

  Early-morn hours were the quietest at the club, when patrons slept off a night of excess in either their private suites or homes. Calum, however, wasn’t one who deferred responsibility, and certainly not because he’d taken an unintended blow to the face. “I’m fine,” Calum muttered. He lied. He felt like he’d been dragged facedown along the cobblestones of St. Giles. Lifting his hand in thanks and parting for his brother, and then the other guards, Calum started for the gaming hell floors.

  Passing through the labyrinth of the establishment, he followed the winding halls that led to the gaming floor. Calum reached the quiet floors. The fragrant hint of cheroot smoke lingered in the air still, as it always did, the scent familiar and soothing for it. But for a handful of the most notorious wastrels, the tables sat empty of patrons. The scantily clad women who’d given up their posts as prostitutes for that of servers flitted about the hell, dusting the already-gleaming mahogany tables. Even with the quiet, his head pounded.

  “I told you I’m fine,” he said out the corner of his mouth.

  Adair cursed and moved into position at his side. “How in hell do you manage that?”

  “Skill,” he muttered. He’d not mention that those street skills of using one’s every sense had only been further heightened in the five days he’d spend in the bowels of Newgate prison. In those dark, dank cells, to keep from descending into madness Calum had focused on the squeak of rodents and the shuffling footfalls of ruthless guards. Fixing on anything but his own terror had kept him sane.

  They fell into a companionable silence, both continuing their perusal of the quiet hell. A sharp bark of laughter thundered around the room from Lord Langley’s table, only exacerbating the damned pounding in his head.
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  “I take it we are still without the services of a bookkeeper?” Adair put forward, breaking the calm.

  Again, the wide-eyed Mrs. Swindell’s visage slid forward, as did a damned guilt he didn’t want to feel. After he’d suffered a knock to the head, he’d sought out his rooms, tended his bruise, and quite contentedly fell into a heavy sleep. He’d not had to think about the small creature with her wide, terrified eyes—until now. “Did you expect I would hire her?” he challenged, arching an eyebrow.

  “You?” Adair snorted.

  Calum looked over.

  His brother flashed him a sheepish grin. “I thought you might,” he admitted.

  Calum scowled. A man was only as strong as other people trusted he was. The moment one showed any frailty, one’s days in St. Giles were numbered.

  “I said might,” Adair reminded him.

  Rolling his shoulders, Calum continued to scrape his intent stare over the hell. Calum wasn’t Ryker Black—he had a sliver of a soul left—but he’d still not forsake his family and those dependent upon him to help a stranger. A stranger who also happened to arrive five days late for her interview, and who’d believed he’d ever hire a person for that important role sight unseen.

  Adair sighed. “If it is any solace, I didn’t want the task of turning her out, either.”

  No, that did decidedly not do anything to assuage the guilt.

  “You interviewed her, I take it.”

  Calum gave a curt nod.

  “All the while knowing you couldn’t ever hire her. Not after failing to arrive for an interview, and arriving five days late, at the height of the action inside the club.”

  All correct. He gritted his teeth. Would his brother not let the damned matter of Mrs. Swindell, with her atrocious name and equally atrocious bonnet, rest?

  He’d really rather talk of anything other than the quaking woman with desperation in her eyes. Calum knew desperation. It hollowed out a person’s soul and filled one inside out with an icy dread. Just a glimpse of her after she’d pulled off that god-awful bonnet had revealed Mrs. Swindell knew a thing or two about desperation.

  “Was she capable—”

  He silenced Adair with a hard look.

  “There is another candidate for the post scheduled for a meeting on Friday,” his brother wisely demurred. “Mr. Cleverly.” A vastly better name than Swindell. “If, in the meantime, you’d rather I oversee the task, I will fill in that role.” Again. Just as Adair had after Helena had left the hell—first for a London Season, and then forever, when she’d become the Duchess of Somerset.

  Even so, Calum considered the offer. Generously considered it. Alas, Adair had already served his time as bookkeeper, and filling in as head guard of the hell was equally as vital. “I’ll see to it. You’ve enough with the guards.” Calum cracked his knuckles. “We won’t be without a proper bookkeeper forever.” In the meantime, Calum would see to the task. He’d served as second-in-command to this club since it was purchased and established. To him, however, that role—regardless of who held the majority shares of the hell—had been of equal importance. A man was only as strong as the person at his side. It was why, when some men of the streets shut out the world and relied on only themselves for survival, Calum had not. His siblings had saved him too many times for him to believe he didn’t need anyone in his life.

  What mattered, however, were the people whom you entrusted yourself to. Calum had learned the peril of being lax. It had taken but one misstep. He flexed his jaw. And he’d nearly swung from the gallows at Newgate for that folly.

  The guard at the entrance drew the door open, admitting a pair of patrons.

  Elegantly attired in black satin cloaks and equally black hats, they might as well have been any other gentlemen inside the Hell and Sin. Calum thinned his eyes, honing his focus on just one of those nobles—Lord Bedford, with his eyes downcast and shoulders slumped. Fancily dressed gents approached the young duke and patted him on the back. The man’s pathetic showing at feigned grief was worse even than a kid’s Punch and Judy show.

  If he were a believer in fate, Calum would have conceded that Bedford’s sudden appearance was that lady’s way of validating his silent thoughts from before.

  “What is it?” Adair demanded. Then, when you’d hidden in dank alleys, utter silence the only barrier between you and discovery at the hands of men you’d fleeced, you became adept at knowing another person’s thoughts.

  Not taking his gaze off the Duke of Bedford, Calum gave his chin a slight jerk. “Apparently, the brokenhearted duke has nursed it sufficiently to spend some time here,” he drawled, watching as that powerful peer moved through the crowd. With a day’s growth of beard on Bedford’s face and his cheeks flushed, only a damned nob would take his drunkenness for sorrow over a missing sister. “Keep a particularly close eye on him,” he said, evading his brother’s piercing stare. “He’s in fifteen thousand to us.” Triumph tasted sweet on Calum’s lips just speaking those words aloud. He watched as Adair took himself off, and then, as stealthily as he’d picked pockets in the streets, he wove around the pillars and tables, his eyes seeing everything.

  Calum’s attentions, however, were reserved for one. The duke and his companion took up a spot at a roulette wheel, until now occupied by just two other members, and tossed down several coins. Desperate men were capable of desperate things, and there was a thrilling vindication in the reversal of roles they’d been dealt. The fact he’d set aside his quest for his beloved missing sister to wager away additional coin he didn’t have here was further testament to his depravity . . . and not at all surprising to Calum. But then, the duke was one step away from debtor’s prison, and Calum, risen from Newgate and now king of his own empire, was responsible for Bedford’s fall. He continued to carefully watch him.

  The irony was not lost on Calum. First, in order to feed his family, he had stolen the nobleman’s fob. Now that same ruthless bastard willingly handed over coin and vowels for the privilege of sitting at Calum’s tables.

  How . . . odd. The man came here, never knowing Calum was the same boy he’d turned over to the constable and ordered to hang. Lord Bedford glanced around. His gaze fleetingly touched on Calum and then moved onward.

  Or mayhap it was that in his conceit and pomposity, it was simply that he didn’t care. Members of the nobility had long demonstrated that their own pleasures and comforts came above all else—including the starving children in the street. Most men, his own brothers included, wouldn’t have rested until vengeance had been doled out to the duke. Calum, however, had not built a life on revenge. Rather, he’d found his strength and stability through rising up and taking from that man, and all those like him, in ways that were legal and vindicating. Calum’s successes were triumph enough.

  Thrusting aside musings about the Duke of Bedford, Calum quit the floors and sought out his offices. Until a replacement was found, the task fell to him. Other than the security on the floors, there was no more important task than overseeing the club’s accounting. Reaching his office, Calum pressed the handle and stepped inside. The sun crept over the horizon, spilling orange-red light into his rooms. He fetched himself a brandy from the sideboard and then carried it over to his desk.

  Calum blinked.

  His eminently neat and tidy desk. Rather, his empty desk.

  He blinked again, and yet the sight remained.

  What in blazes?

  Calum set down his brandy with a hard thunk. Liquid splashed over the edge, spilling onto the leather surface. He looked under the broad surface of the oval-shaped piece and, with quick movements, yanked out each drawer, searching. He’d received a knock to the head, but surely he’d remember moving his damned ledgers.

  Settling his hands on his hips, he did a sweep of the shelving.

  Gone.

  Christ in hell . . .

  The Hell and Sin had been infiltrated countless times in the past two years. From disloyal staff aiding their rival establishment, the Devil�
�s Den, to their old gang leader Diggory and his wife attempting to bring actual harm to them. It is happening, still . . . Calum stomped across the room, thundering for a servant.

  A moment later, a young guard ducked his head in the room. “Ya called, Mr. Dabney?”

  “MacTavish,” he boomed. “I want MacTavish.” The last person whom he’d knowledge of being inside Calum’s office . . . He froze. And Mrs. Swindell, who’d been cowering one moment and boldly insistent the next.

  He pounded his fist into the wall. Bloody, bloody hell. She’s one of Killoran’s.

  The door opened a moment later, and MacTavish rushed in. “Ya asked to see me, Mr.—”

  “My books,” he said brusquely, his voice calm despite the fury pumping through his veins.

  The red-haired guard angled his head.

  “My books are missing,” Calum bit out, sweeping a hand over to the empty place on his desk.

  Several creases lined MacTavish’s brow, and he scratched at his thick mane of red hair. “Mrs. Swindell has them.”

  “Mrs. Swindell,” he repeated dumbly as the man standing across from him confirmed his worst suspicions.

  The burly man nodded. “Took them last evening—”

  Calum unleashed a stream of black curses. With the murder and death of their rival gang leaders and a truce reached with the Devil’s Den, they’d let their guard down too much.

  “And just what did she do with my books?” he asked, straining to keep his temper in check. After all, this fell to him. When he’d stormed off to see to the fight on the club floors, he’d given nothing more than a vague order of what MacTavish was to do with the damned woman.

  “Why, she took them to her rooms.”

  “Her rooms?”

  The guard gave another nod, confirming Calum had spoken aloud.

  “What rooms?” he bellowed.

  “The first available one farthest from the gaming”—Calum had already started from the room—“hell floors,” MacTavish called after him. “Just like you advised.”