Not that the girl sitting with Withers looked in need of a new protector. She looked rich and pampered, and Ben Hawksmoor despised her for being so perfect herself and being here to take pleasure in the destruction of another living creature.
Ben straightened and moved away from the window. There was such anger and bitterness seething in him that his hands were clenched in fists of rage. The entire Ton, which had once fawned on Ned Clarencieux with the same ardor it now showed to him, had thrown its favorite to the wolves and had come to watch him be ripped apart.
There was nothing Ben could do, of course. Clarencieux had been his friend but he was beyond his help now. Ben had gone to the regent, had spoken up for Clarencieux when every instinct, every principle he lived by, had urged him not to risk his own neck for anyone else. And it had done no good at all. Prinny had not even listened and Ben had seen the flicker of irritation in the regent’s eyes and had backed down. He was an adventurer and he could not afford to lose the regent’s patronage or he would be back in the gutter where he had begun.
It was too late for Clarencieux, anyway. It had always been too late. The Ton was a fickle mistress and Ned had fallen from favor. He had lived by his wits and had no one with money or connections to help him when he fell. Nobody cared. And Ben shuddered because he could see himself so clearly in Ned Clarencieux.
A flicker of movement in the pavilion opposite caught his eye. Withers’s demirep had got to her feet and was making her way toward the steps that led down past the scaffold and into the crowd. Ben stared. Was she a fool? He could well understand that the noise, the heat and the stench of a hanging might turn the strongest stomach and make her want to escape, but to go down into so volatile a crowd was madness. They would rob her, rape her, rip her to pieces and count it all as part of the entertainment.
And he really should not care.
He was not certain why he did. He very rarely cared about anyone other than himself. Life had bred that in him. Protect and survive. But he saw the revulsion in the girl’s face as she looked about her at the excited crowd and he felt a sudden flash of deep affinity for her. Neither of them wanted to be there. They had that one small thing in common. The girl had probably come only because Withers had insisted. And he…Well, he was there because it was the last respect that he could pay to his friend and the shreds of honor he still possessed had forced him to do that one small thing.
So he could not let the girl go down into the mob alone and unprotected, demirep or not.
With a muttered oath he headed for the door. One of the bawds caught hold of his arm to detain him. He did not know her name as he had not been paying attention when his cousin Sam had introduced them. He had thought it tasteless in the extreme of Sam to bring them to Ned’s hanging. And he had never been interested in cheap whores anyway.
He heard the women’s laughter as the door slammed behind him. Like everyone else, they thought this was some sort of entertainment, more exciting than wine or hunting or dancing or sexual conquest. He felt a murderous rage. This was life and death and he had struggled against both from the day he was born.
As he descended the tavern stairs, Saint Sepulchre’s bell started to ring with a feverish jangling that made Ben’s head feel as though it were splitting. Out in the street the sun was cold and bright and the crowd seethed and surged toward the gallows. He started to fight his way through the throng toward the scaffold steps. He could see the girl in the jonquil pelisse. She was on the bottom step, arguing with one of the city marshall’s men. Ben saw the man bar her way with his stave and point back up into the stands. The girl’s face was pale but her mouth was set in a determined line. She shook her head, ducked under the stave and a second later the crowd swallowed her up. Ben’s heart jolted with apprehension as he renewed his efforts to reach her. Even as he struggled with the crowd he felt annoyed at his wayward impulse to chivalry. It was the marshall’s men who were there to keep the peace and it was no concern of his if some foolish creature decided to throw herself into the crowd. She was probably far better able to take care of herself than she appeared. No gently-bred girl would ever attend a public hanging. She was probably Haymarket ware tricked out as Berkeley Square. Withers was well known for his low tastes.
A roar went through the throng as Clarencieux came out of the Debtor’s Door. The press of people was so dense here that Ben could scarcely move. He saw a flash of yellow and stretched out a hand, but the crowd had surged forward, bearing the girl away, tumbling her over like a leaf adrift on a flood. The bells stopped abruptly and the crowd sucked in its breath. Clarencieux was on the scaffold now. He opened his bound hands helplessly and clasped them together again. His expression was so wild and imploring that Ben felt furious. He was looking up into the crowd behind the scaffold as though begging for someone to save him. His humiliation was unbearable.
Then the hangman pulled the cap down over Clarencieux’s face and dropped the noose about his neck. The priest’s lips were moving but the words of the prayers were lost in the sound of the crowd.
Ben’s hand closed about the wrist of the girl in yellow and he dragged her out from under the feet of the mob, where she had half fallen in the rush toward the scaffold.
He pulled her into his arms. He felt her body go stiff with shock at his touch and she almost pulled away, but the press of people pushed them together and the resistance went out of her. Her bonnet had come off. Her dark hair was in cloudy disarray about her face. Her eyes were a paler shade of brown than her chestnut hair, a luminous amber. She looked dazed.
“I had no notion it would be like this….” He just caught the whisper of her words through the roaring wall of noise that encircled them.
“You were a fool to come down here.” But his hands were gentle on her as he held her tightly, protecting her with his body against the stifling press about them.
“I was looking for someone.” There were tears on her lashes now. He saw her swallow hard. “I did not realize it would be so dangerous.”
“What were you expecting?” Ben’s voice was rough. “A garden party?”
The shout went up. “Hats off!”
It was the only public show of deference to mark the hanging itself. The crowd shuffled and doffed their hats and bonnets. The hangman drew the lever and the trap door fell with a crash. The crowd screamed, a wild and ragged sound with an edge of violence to it, and Ben felt the shudder go straight through the girl’s body. She buried her face against his jacket. His hand tangled in her hair, holding her closer still. He could feel his heart racing beneath the blue superfine of his coat. Her cheek was pressed against his chest and her eyes were closed. The anger and the misery and the hatred swept through him in a vicious tide and he bent his head to blot out the sight of Clarencieux’s wicked death and pressed his lips to her hair. She felt sweet and soft and she smelled faintly of roses. Ben could feel the tiny shudders that racked her body. Her tears wet his jacket.
“I met him once,” she said, muffled. “He did not deserve this.”
“He was my friend. There was nothing I could do.” Ben could hear the rawness in his own voice as he faced his failure and loss. Once before he had managed to save his friend from certain death. This time he had not.
She raised her head and looked into his eyes. Her own were dark and innocent, and his heart jolted. It felt as though she could see directly into his soul.
“I am sorry,” she said. “It is no more than murder.”
The hangman was swinging on Ned Clarencieux’s heels to hasten his end. Ben had paid him a lot of money to do it. It had been the only thing he could do but at least the promise had been honored. The crowd was cheering now as Clarencieux died. For a moment, Ben stared at the horror of it all and then he gave a ragged exclamation and drew the unresisting body of the girl harder against him. She came without protest and he felt the relief swamp him to feel her close. He needed her. The intensity of his longing baffled him but he could not question it now, not while the dar
kness raced through his soul and she was the only light. He wrapped his arms about her and pressed his cheek hard against the softness of hers and closed his mind to the demons that swarmed at his heels.
He could not have said how long they stood like that while the violence and the bloodlust swirled around them and, although he knew the girl was terrified, in that moment Ben felt a small sane core of peace.
The tension in the crowd slackened and the noise fell away a little. Ben loosened his grip and the girl drew in a deep, shaken breath. She was still trembling. He could feel it.
“He was a brave lad,” someone said. “He died like a man.”
People were passing execution broadsides around, with a woodcut picture of the hanging and a report of Clarencieux’s alleged confession. They had been printed long before the hanging and Ben ground one underfoot in disgust.
He raised a hand and brushed the tears away from the girl’s cheek. He felt exhausted, as exhausted as she looked. Her lashes were black against the pallor of her skin and her eyes looked tired and bruised. His fingers grazed the corner of her mouth and he heard her catch a tiny breath. Her gaze flew to his face, eyes wide and questioning now. Something powerful and indefinable passed between them and the lust slammed through him. He did not want to want her, not here, not now. It did not seem right. And yet he needed her. He could not help himself. It was as alien and as frightening a feeling as he had ever experienced.
They were cutting Clarencieux down now. Ben recognized the doctor Astley Cooper coming down from the gallery behind the scaffold, talking to the hangman and the sheriff. It sickened Ben more than anything else that day to think that Clarencieux was now for a surgeon’s dissection table.
“Send the body to my chambers as usual,” Cooper said. “I’m for my dinner. Deviled kidneys, is it, as is traditional?”
Ben felt the girl shudder. In the crowd a small boy was crying and a disheveled nursemaid was scolding him in a voice high-pitched with anger and relief. It seemed to break some sort of spell that had bound the two of them together, closer than close, soul to soul. Ben stood back and forced himself to see her as just another harlot, a pretty girl on the make. Nevertheless he felt cold inside to let her go.
She pressed her hand against her mouth. “They will be looking for me. I must go.”
Ben was still holding her arm, his grip very light now. He did not release her but studied her face for a moment. She was not as young as he had first thought, maybe twenty or twenty-one rather than the eighteen he had originally guessed. Her face was free from the paint that high-class whores normally applied, but then she did not need the adornment. Her clothes were stylish, good quality, reeking of money. She must be important to Withers for him to fund her so well and it was no doubt true that her lover would be coming looking for her very soon….
“Catherine!”
Ben straightened up. As if on cue, Withers had come running down the steps from the pavilion behind the scaffold and had taken the girl’s elbow in a deliberate gesture of possession. Ben felt the antagonism he had always held for the other man breathe gooseflesh along his skin. He did not want to think about the things this girl had to do to please the lover who kept those fine clothes on her back.
Withers looked down his nose at Ben, which was quite a feat since Ben was the taller by at least six inches.
“Take yourself off, Hawksmoor,” he said.
Ben laughed harshly. He needed to vent his anger and Withers was as good a target as any. “This is a public hanging, Withers,” he said scornfully. “Anyone can attend. The clue is in the word public.”
Withers’s pointed features sharpened into hatred. “And anyone can die, can they not, Hawksmoor? You should remember that.” His face twisted. “Let Clarencieux’s end be a warning. Fate will catch up with you.”
Ben laughed shortly. “Are you preaching a moral fable to me, Withers? How very inappropriate.”
Withers took a step forward until Ben could smell his rancid breath and feel it on his face.
“Justice was finally done today,” he spat out, glancing across to where Clarencieux’s broken body was being taken away. “You will be next, Hawksmoor. I brought Clarencieux down and I will bring you down, too.”
Ben heard the girl catch her breath at the threat. “My lord—” she began, putting out a hand toward Withers. He shrugged her off angrily.
“Be silent, Catherine!”
Ben stepped forward, took Withers’s lapels in a tight grip and lifted him off his feet. The man’s face reddened to a dangerous hue.
“Don’t threaten me, Withers,” Ben said pleasantly. “I have no notion what your grievance could be but I am not like Clarencieux. I can look after myself.” He looked at Catherine whose face was an angry, embarrassed red. “And do not speak so discourteously to a lady. It is conduct ill-becoming.”
He put Withers down with exaggerated care and sketched an ironic bow to Catherine. “Excuse this undignified brawl, madam. It was a pleasure to be of service to you.” He smiled straight into her eyes and saw the startled awareness leap there, the interest, quickly suppressed, that told him that if he wanted a dalliance with this particular lightskirt she might be more than half-willing.
“I am in your debt, my lord,” she said.
“Catherine,” Withers said, and there was a clear warning in his tone.
She cast him a faintly contemptuous glance.
“My lord?”
“We are leaving. Before this…this scoundrel causes an affray—”
Ben took her hand. Catherine. He liked the name. It suited her. Suddenly he wanted to take her away from Withers more than anything else in the world.
“I believe Lord Withers thinks I might spirit you away from him, madam, if he allows you to spend a moment more in my company,” he said.
This time her brown eyes flashed with mischief. “Does he so? How…diverting. I assure you there is not the least chance of it, my lord.”
Their gazes met and locked in challenge. Ben raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss on the gloved palm.
“No?”
She blushed. That was quite an accomplishment. Ben, cynic that he was, still found it was delicious to watch, even knowing it was probably a practiced reaction. She almost managed to convince him that she was an innocent rather than a whore. But the best whores were the most skillful at appearing innocent. He knew all about that. He had lived among them for long enough.
And this one knew her game. She would not sell herself short. She removed her hand very firmly from his grasp, signifying that their brief flirtation was at an end.
“No.”
Even so, he saw her fingers curl over unconsciously to trap the kiss in her hand and he smiled.
“It might be worth a thought.” He had no compunction about stealing a man’s mistress directly from under his nose. It made the conquest sweeter and in this case it would be very sweet indeed to have this clever, tempting little harlot in his bed—and to spite Withers into the bargain.
“I understand that you have nothing to offer a lady.” Her tone was cool.
“Not much.” Ben conceded it easily. “I have no fortune, as no doubt you have heard. I can only offer my prowess as—”
“Catherine!” Withers sounded as though he was about to explode.
“As a gamester,” Ben finished smoothly. “I never lose.”
Catherine shook her head. “Little enough recommendation, in truth, my lord. You must hold me excused. Good day.”
She turned away, evading the proprietary hand that Withers put out to draw her to him. A smile curled Ben’s lips to see her defiance. Withers might be able to pay her a fortune but she was still attracted to Ben. He knew it. His body tightened unbearably at the thought.
He watched her as she went up the stairs to the pavilion, her back ramrod straight. Withers was hurrying to catch up with her, scolding, waving his arms about in agitation. Ben waited, but she did not look back. His smile turned rueful. He had a noti
on that she knew he was watching her and nothing on earth would make her turn around. But he would see her again. He would make sure of it. And then she would not refuse him. He would have her to thwart Withers and for his own pleasure. And he would wager on his success in the conquest. As he had told Catherine, he never lost.
CHAPTER TWO
We must hope and believe that the liberties thus taken were owing to no light manner nor indiscreet conduct in your case.
—Mrs. Eliza Squire, Good Conduct for Ladies
“WHAT THE DEVIL WERE YOU thinking of, Catherine, to behave like…like Hawksmoor’s doxy? No doubt he and the entire crowd now think you are nothing more than a whore!”
Lord Withers, like the gentleman he purported to be, had just about managed to wait until they were back at the house in Guilford Street, with the drawing-room door closed behind them, before he finally upbraided Catherine for her behavior at Newgate.
Catherine had known it would happen. Withers had been almost bursting with the effort to keep his rage under control in the carriage, in front of her father. She knew he would consider himself wronged and think her fast. And it was true that she had flirted a little. Withers’s proprietary attitude had infuriated her and her emotions had already been ragged with the experience of being in Ben Hawksmoor’s arms. She knew she had been utterly seduced by the gentleness with which he had held her during Clarencieux’s execution. It had been unexpected and frighteningly attractive. And she was so tired of being the obedient young debutante, trapped in a future defined by Withers’s cruelty, living a drab life in Guilford Street, the unloved daughter, betrothed to a man who could barely hide his contempt for her.
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