Loving Lady Lazuli (London Jewel Thieves Book 1)

by Shehanne Moore

  She licked her lips, dry as bone of a sudden. “Actually, Gil’s right. It would allow me to continue my work if Gil was here.”

  Pearl swept a strand of hair behind her ear. “But Cass you said—”

  “I know what I said. But you saw for yourselves just how quickly Lord Hawley changed tack when he learned I was married.”

  “He soddin’ went cos you went and dropped that allergation. Whot the soddin’ hell did yer do that fer, when yer had him by the bleedin’ balls?”

  Because in some ways, he’d had her. The business of the ‘deal.’ raised prickles on her skin. Had he really meant to let her go? Was the deal still in place? Or was he going to come back here and want more?

  She raised her chin. “Lord Koorecroft is who we need to think about here, not Gil. Truth is we could be vulnerable.”

  “Us? No. Yer most of soddin’ all. Like any newspaper ever bleedin’ heard of us, the way yer was always top of their soddin’ bill. Sapphire this. Sapphire—”

  “For appearance’s sake we let Gil stay until … well … Sure you can guess as good as me, when that will be and what he goes to, ladies. We don’t want him blabbing.”

  Besides, she did know how to handle Gil. And she and Gil went back a long time.

  So long as he understood one thing. He did not own her. Nobody did. Not when she’d fought tooth and nail to be free. Not when she bridled at the thought.

  As for the dangerous things Devorlane Hawley raised in her? Being out of bounds where he was concerned?

  Two words.

  Why worry?

  ***

  “Mistook you?”

  The glare Devorlane shot Tilly—hoped he did anyway—did nothing to silence her. How terrible for her to have to sleep beneath the same roof as a thief and a rapist. Not that a thief or a rapist were exactly going to want to find their way into whatever she was wearing beneath her skirt. Being his older sister it wasn’t nice to think, let alone imagine. Even if she wasn’t his sister, it wouldn’t be.

  “But how, Devorlane? How could she possibly mistake you?”

  “Evidently she did, my dear sister.” Having made his selection from the breakfast dishes that stood on the once elegant mahogany sideboard, he sat down. Whether he’d an appetite for the sardines and bacon he’d forked onto his plate remained to be seen, what with the pounding in his head after last night’s sweat and it nearly being put in with a broom.

  He wasn’t a man who ate breakfast. He never had been. But he unfolded his napkin and laid it across his dove-gray covered knee.

  “A woman’s prerogative, Tilly.” Eudora smiled as she waved away the serving girl.

  A pretty little thing, with fetching copper curls. A nice backside too. The serving girl that was. Even he wouldn’t stoop so low as to consider his younger sister sexually enticing. Although he was forced to admit, it would be nice if she’d wave away this throbbing headache the same way.

  “Sometimes it is possible to mistake these things.”

  Tilly jabbed her fork into her bacon as if she wanted to kill it. “I understand that. Truly. It’s just—”

  “What were you doing at her door like that?” Belle said from the end of the table, the far end he’d purposely avoided sitting at—Charlie too—for just that very reason. “That’s what Tilly wants to know.”

  Dragging himself from his contemplation of the serving girl’s backside, Devorlane glanced around the table. Yesterday it had been his intention to march in and march Tilly and Belle out. Yesterday belonged to a different universe.

  How the hell could that damned baggage be married for example? When she kissed like that? Kissed him anyway. As if he was eating a peach, soft, succulent, only better. He shook his head to clear it. There was no denying in that second he forgave her everything.

  When revenge could and should be kept businesslike it was as well she’d ended it. What her lips had done to him was bad enough. Just imagine what her body would. Sitting here so respectably at this nice breakfast table, how could he help doing just that? Imagining it. Although, would she keep him for longer than a night? Unlikely. No woman had.

  “That’s none of Tilly’s damned business.” He mustered a smile.

  By now he should be taking his fill of the sinful jewel he’d brought all the way from London. But how could he dally with her after the indignity he’d suffered—at least last night he’d prayed it was the indignity he’d suffered—nearly being accused of rape—that had made him incapable. Sapphire had turned it all around nicely on him, hadn’t she? The same as she’d done that Christmas Eve too.

  Then, like now, he’d been caught out by what she’d roused. Beguiled into thinking it hardly mattered. Into selling his soul for a taste of her lips. That was what happened at her door last night, wasn’t it? He’d been led straight up the herb garden path. Then bang, when she had him where she wanted him … Rape.

  Casting his napkin on the table, he pushed back his chair. “Tilly should just be glad Tilly still has a roof over her head. You too.”

  “Me? But Devorlane …” Belle fingered her throat. “You, you just … Well, you can’t. Why your dear mama always said there was a place for me here. Indeed, if I may be so bold as to say so—”

  “You may not, but you probably will anyway.”

  Gritting his teeth—as always his leg hurt like hell in the morning—he walked to the sideboard and poured two generous brandies. One for himself. One for Charlie. An awful lot better than that piss pot of chocolate coffee that was on the go. Not so effective as an opiate in terms of dulling that plaguing throb in his thigh, but enough to improve his capacity to think straight.

  “Your dear mama thought that one day you and I—”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to arrive. Unless you want to expire. Swoon in those lovely stays of yours. End up in the family vault.”

  Him and Belle? He’d need to be knocked dead first. His stomach curdled. Insufficiently to stop him lifting the glass to his lips, as he contemplated the mist wreathed lawn outside. “No. I was actually thinking how Lady Armstrong’s attempts to have me drummed out the district might impact on you, Eudora, and Tilly.”

  He turned his head. What had been wrong with him, going berserk like that?

  That damned piece had made that accusation and something in him surged, as it hadn’t surged in years. Something long dormant, something trapped in ice, had risen like a subterranean creature and shattered the icy crust it had wintered in for a long millennium. “But hopefully it won’t come to that. She retracted.”

  “I—I am gratified to hear it.” Tilly set down her fork. “Although it worries me to think there might be some other man in the area given to standing, to peering, in a window of all places.”

  “I shouldn’t worry too dearly he’s going to peer in these ones.”

  “Yes. But—”

  “Tilly.”

  She lifted her coffee cup to her lips. “Well, thankfully Charlie was there. Thankfully the fuss was not too great. We must be grateful for that, especially … well, especially after … ”

  “Sapphire?”

  There was nothing like saying the name, was there? Especially now he knew where she was. “No. Go on. You can say it. It’s all in the past now. Besides, you believe me. What more can I want? Seriously.”

  “Yes, well. You know the pity is they never got her when they raided that Starkadder man’s premises, the one they say was murdered by one of those dreadful Sisterhood specimens.”

  It was a pity. But how could she have been caught when she’d moved next door?

  “Those … Those … A filthy, viperous nest of them the papers said. Cankers on the bosom of society. Of decent people, of people who—”

  “Don’t upset yourself, Tilly.” Eudora squeezed Tilly’s hand. “We know Devorlane never did anything wrong, and that’s all that counts.”

  “I’m not upset. How can you think so?”

  Because there was no doubt there was more than coff
ee in the cup she raised to her lips and slugged from. Hard living must run in the family. She set the cup back on the saucer.

  “No. No. I just feel it would have been nice if he could have had the chance of identifying her, at least. Of adding the Wentworth emeralds to her list of crimes.”

  Yes. So Tilly might be received in polite society again. Not if she didn’t curb the drinking though.

  “But there, it just seems all she’s done is get away again. Which means … well, we know what it means.”

  “Yes. Things like last night.” Belle broke open a roll. “And how easily you could be accused of anything, Devorlane. Although Tilly and I still don’t know what on earth you were doing there, for Lady Armstrong to make these ridiculous assumptions that it was you looking in her windows at her. Or why you left the party either. Although, of course, perhaps it was fortunate for her you were there. Living on her own like that.”

  Slowly he lowered his gaze. Sapphire’s skill and audacity had led him to believe she lived in a palace of splendor. Each nook, each cranny crammed with a maharaja’s worth of treasures. Over-priced paintings, baubles she’d filched for her ears, her neck. Gowns of fine spun silk. Gold mirrors in which to admire her sinful countenance.

  He hadn’t considered for a second that just maybe this woman, who was the talk of London, lived as he’d witnessed last night. Fighting tooth and nail in some century’s old dive. Clawing for survival amid dirt and mortar, against creatures like—pardon him, but hadn’t Tilly said Ruby was very nice, very refined? He toyed with the brandy glass, swirling the liquid around. Then he emptied it in a long, satisfying slug.

  “She’s not alone. Not exactly.”

  “I never said she was. She has compan—”

  “I’m not meaning them.”

  “What?” Tilly’s coffee cup clattered back into the saucer.

  “She has a man there.”

  The clattering cup was followed by a chair scraping back. He tilted his jaw and refilled his glass.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t … You mean a brother, or cousin? A—a nephew perhaps?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You mean—”

  Pious cats weren’t they? With the exception of Eudora. Yet if he’d brought his whore to breakfast, Tilly would have pulled out a chair because she’d good reason to welcome her. It was almost enough to make him envy the light-fingered snit, her brilliance, to view her as something else all together. Like yesterday when she’d murdered her way through that recital. He stared back out the window.

  “Actually I was thinking we should hold a soiree here and invite them.”

  “Them? Devorlane … you can’t.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t sound so alarmed.” Much as he didn’t want to, it was time to arrest their falling jaws, even if he did sink another glass of brandy. “The man’s her husband.”

  “Husband?”

  To their credit, Tilly and Belle sounded as shocked as he was when he’d first heard the word. He had found it impossible to think of her as a widow, hadn’t he? This man who said he was her husband, now—what was that about?

  On the one hand she and her “husband” were as fine a pair of snaps as he’d ever seen up to God knows what they were up to. On the other—what if he was her husband? What if she’d run away with Ruby and Pearl and all they were doing was hiding from him? They had seemed a trifle surprised--horrified in fact--to see him.

  Congreve had it wrong though. It wasn’t a woman scorned hell had no fury like. It was guilty, given that little charge she’d tried laying on him just before that man—whoever the hell he was—had turned up.

  Belle rose to her feet. “A soiree? Oh! Do you hear that, Tilly? Eudora? How delightful. It will bring such joy to the house. I will be able to sing another song.”

  She would be the first to welcome the thought. But that was all right, although yesterday a soiree had been furthest from his thoughts.

  Perhaps Lady Armstrong was the military wife she claimed? Perhaps she really was Sapphire?

  Either way, he was making it his priority to damn well find out.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Cass dropped the lace edge of the bedroom curtain as if it burned her. “Right on cue.”

  “Whot?”

  “Devorlane flaming Hawley. Here already. I knew he wasn’t going to let this go.”

  “Yer are jokin’,” Ruby thundered across the wooden floorboards. “Show me.”

  “There.” Cass slipped closer to the mullioned window in order to stare down. The tangled shrubbery, the scene of last night’s unfortunate debacle, glared back. It wasn’t alone. The morning was overcast, patches of mist in the air, but even at this distance the gleam in his emerald gaze, like jewels on a foggy night, was obvious. “The bastard.”

  “‘Least he ain’t got the soddin’ law wif him. Unless Miss Snotter-nose has joined the Runners.”

  True. But he also had Cass’s muff and cloak and was holding them up, in his dove-gray coat and tight fitting trousers, in the hope of her seeing them. The dove-gray coat and tight fitting trousers too. Damn him.

  This was like those fairground booths where the instant you hit one wooden head, another popped up elsewhere, a rabbit out a hole. And no matter how hard you hit you never cleared the board.

  Of course she could pretend the cloak wasn’t hers.

  “Persistent bugger’n he?” Ruby’s breath misted the panes.

  “You can say that again.”

  “Well, don’t yer worry none, I’ll deal wif him.”

  “After last night? Thieving’s bad enough. I don’t want us had up for murder. No. This is my turn.”

  “Whot? If it’s anythin’ like the turn yer took last—”

  “Do you somehow think I can’t?”

  Cass flicked the curtain aside. Well, she could deal with him. What a waste of a night, tossing and turning it would be if she didn’t. Hadn’t she wracked her brains in an effort to determine how best to explain Gil when she’d not only failed to greet him as a feared lost soldier but someone who looked never to have left in the first place? Not to mention putting it around the county she was a widow? And kissing Devorlane Hawley—the worst of it really, since she couldn’t very well say Gil had turned up alive and well and she’d not long received the joyous news. Because, never mind how—why would she then have kissed another man on her doorstep dressed in a black wrap and not a lot else? In fact nothing else.

  But now, now she knew exactly what she was going to say and it was perfect—foolproof—she might as well get down there and do it. With Gil at her back, what could go wrong? She’d even burned the miniature of Elgered, the one she got for a bob off a barrow at Spitalfields market.

  “Go put the kettle on.” She smoothed her hands on her skirt.

  “Whot? Whot do yer think my name is? Soddin’ Polly?”

  “And put out the buns.”

  “I ain’t puttin’ out no soddin’ buns. Not unless I get ter spit—”

  “Yes, you are. Without spitting on them first.”

  “Whot? Fer some toffee-nosed—”

  “Snout you hit with a broomstick? Listen, what you witnessed last night, Devorlane Hawley and me, was nothing. A shabby attempt to deal with things. On his part.”

  “I’m glad yer clarified that. For a moment there I thought yer were undersellin’ yerself. I mean it’s hardly surprisin’ he thinks yer can show him the soddin’ works. And Gil perked up soddin’ remarkable’n all, once he’d sunk that bottle of port yer laid in over by. Pearl an’ me had ter lock our bleedin’ doors. Barricade them too. Still, he’s sleepin’ it orf now.”

  “All the more reason for me to deal with this while he is. While it would be nice, we don’t want Lord Hawley six feet under. Believe me, when he hears what I have to say, about Gil and me, what I dare not reveal rather, he won’t trouble us again.”

  Ruby tucked a tendril of flame hair behind her ear. “How’s that if yer dare not reveal it?”
<
br />   “You’ll see. You know, it might even be that he’s simply brought back the cloak as an act of charity.”

  “You hope.”

  “If you don’t think what we’ve just discussed is any good—”

  “Oh no, Saff.” Ruby shrugged. “Who am I ter disagree wif yer? Especially the way you deal wif things. Long as it don’t do no more soddin’ harm than good.”

  Sodding was perhaps the word Cass heard loudest, as she made her way down the open, wooden staircase, past the frayed Mughal hangings, the vase of fresh chrysanthemums. Because if it wasn’t for the sodding Devorlane Hawley, now at her sodding door, she would not have to go to these lengths, sodding or otherwise, and ask him in. Belle—equally sodding—neither. What she had to say being of the delicate—secretive rather—sodding nature that demanded it, in addition to proving she had absolutely nothing to hide.

  But at least, she knew what to do about it and it wasn’t like she hadn’t expected him. What was it she’d thought last night about the deal being off? Just as well she’d also thought her next move through. She smoothed a tendril of hair back from her forehead—if only she hadn’t kissed him—and reached for the door bolt.

  “Lord Hawley.” Just because she could extend her hand for him to kiss, didn’t mean she should. Or, should could and should be the other way about? “How nice to see you.” That was a joke after last night but she continued anyway. She grasped her cloak too. “And with my cloak. How very kind of you to return it. After last night too.”

  “Last night?” Belle said.

  “Yes. Didn’t he tell you? Last night when that intruder was on the loose.”

  Although in grasping her cloak—in struggling not to snatch it from him—she wished he wouldn’t step forward like that. Deliberately, as if he couldn’t take his eyes off her, his hair falling across his cheekbones. Provocatively, so she was instantly aware, not just of the immaculately groomed clothes, but what was beneath them. Possessively, as if her next stop was Lord Koorecroft’s door. The theatrical act was almost as good as ones she could do herself.