All Through the Night

by Connie Brockway

“Little Sophia North, eh? Pretty, isn’t she? I’ve thought of having a go there myself, but I am nothing if not consistent. I absolutely refuse to pursue a woman another man has not claimed.”

  Jack did not pretend misunderstanding. A few years ago Strand had discovered he loved a young lady—unfortunately for Strand he’d only made his discovery after she’d lost her heart elsewhere. That woman was now Mrs. Thomas Montrose.

  “What more do you know of them?” Jack asked.

  The looseness with which Strand shrugged suggested he was well into the wine. Pity. The man had much to recommend him.

  “Girl’s been keeping lads on tenterhooks all season,” Strand said. “Her mother died last winter, I believe, and she’s applied to her cousin’s widow, Anne Wilder, to act as her companion and sponsor for the season. Sophia’s something of a romp, I’m afraid. She’s making her bow with a, shall we say, sophistication that is surprising in one so young.”

  A few of the prince regent’s cronies sauntered past the North women, the gentlemen’s heads craning as they looked over the beauty and to a lesser extent her chaperone. Like prime cattle at an auction, the women were being discussed, examined, their potential for amusement—all types of amusement—weighed.

  “What about the widow?”

  Strand’s glance was sardonic. “Ah, you prove yourself a connoisseur, Colonel. An elegant and subtle piece of work is the dark and handsome widow. She has the most extraordinary eyes. Seasoned. Knowing,” Strand said thoughtfully, “and yet she is now regarded as quite a saint.”

  “Saint?” Jack asked, amused. In his experience sainthood inevitably proved a guise for self-interest.

  Strand’s smile answered Jack’s sardonic tone. “Oh, she wasn’t always so. She made her come-out six, seven years ago. Indulged daughter of a widowed merchant. Only entrée to society was some perpetually rusticating grande dame on her mother’s side. Father was knighted for his canny way with a coin during the war. Died a few years back. Yet in spite of her ’umble antecedents, she became a toast. Most definitely a toast.”

  “Really?” Jack invited further revelations.

  “Yes. And a prime little hoyden she was, too. Surprised us all when Matthew Wilder, a fine and decent and noble—oh, the glowing adjectives grow too wearisome to recount—actually married the gel. But she settled nicely, I’ll grant her that. Never made a cake or coxcomb of Wilder once he’d given her his name. Not that the marriage ever set well with Mama Wilder. The old biddy still won’t have anything to do with her.”

  “How did Wilder die?”

  “How did any of us die? In the war. Captained a ship, I believe. But from the way Anne Wilder acts, one would have thought she’d died. I’ve never seen a woman so greatly changed. I swear, I’m all agog to see who finally pierces her shell. I liked the hoyden, yet I admit—along with several dozen other fellows here, I’ll wager—I quite lust after the saint.”

  “You keep saying saint,” Jack prompted. “In what way?”

  “As I said, she’s just recently returned to society, ostensibly to chaperone Sophia. However, she spends a great deal more time eliciting funds for a charity she’s founded than checking the teeth on Sophia’s beaus. She calls it the Soldiers’ Relief and Aid Something or Other.”

  Soldiers? “And you, of course, have contributed,” Jack said.

  “Of course. Her cause is quite the darling of society. Everyone donates to it or appears cursed tight-fisted. And you know how important appearances are in my little world.”

  Jack did not respond. Perhaps he should cross Anne Wilder’s name from his list. A well-heeled do-gooder with wealthy sponsors for her pet charity would have little reason to clamber about roofs. Still, he reminded himself, the thief was not motivated by avarice alone.

  “Have a care, Jack,” Giles said. “She may surprise you. And not in an altogether comfortable way.”

  “Why ‘soldiers’?” Jack asked, still pondering the widow.

  “Oh, soldiers, sailors, any uniform will do,” Strand said in bored tones. “I believe she feels she owes a debt to her dead husband’s men. He wasn’t a very good captain, I’m afraid. Got his ship shot out from under him. Lost a number of men. Or pieces of men. Anne Wilder takes care of them and any veteran who can’t quite remember who he was before the war. Lucky me, Jack, I remembered,” Strand ended bitterly. “Even luckier you, the war never changed what you were to begin with.”

  “I daresay you’re correct,” Jack replied. “She doesn’t seek to remarry?”

  “No. There’s not the least bit of coquetry left in her. I believe it was truly a love match.” For a second Strand’s face grew pensive, as if presented with a puzzle he knew he could never solve. “Matthew Wilder doted on her. I remember thinking how perversely in love he was, even after several years of marriage.”

  “And now the grieving widow has donned a cap and plays guardian dragon over Sophia,” Jack murmured.

  “What I would like to know,” Strand said, “is who is going to play dragon for her? A nun with the eyes of a procuress.” He began his own leisurely perusal of the widow.

  “Will Malcolm North know me?” Jack asked.

  “Hm? Oh. He jolly well had better. You’re at Prinny’s own party. Who would risk his wrath by snubbing you? Besides, the Norths aren’t really of any consequence.” Strand spoke the cruel words with the pragmatism of the elite. “No money, no property. North simply had the foresight to belittle Brummel when the rest of us were still sure he and the prince would patch things up. Prinny has proven a grateful sovereign.”

  Jack frowned. If the thief were Sophia North or Anne Wilder—though both seemed most unlikely—they might seek shelter in the prince’s expansive arms, and he would be stymied. He could not allow that to happen.

  “If you’d be so kind?” Jack motioned Strand ahead of him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Anne’s gaze searched the crowd milling near the bottom of the staircase. She was almost sure she’d seen Jack Seward. Her pulse quickened with trepidation. That would be three times in the last week she’d seen him at the same entertainments she and Sophia had attended.

  Perhaps she was mistaken, she thought. Perhaps her preoccupation with the austere colonel simply made her see him everywhere. She bit the inside of her cheek, willing the little pain to make her come to her senses. It didn’t work, just as it hadn’t worked for the last two weeks.

  She simply could not forget his kiss.

  Even the memory of it was enough to … to excite her, she admitted shamefully. She knew why—at least she thought she knew why. He’d awakened her basest appetites and introduced her to the temptation of pure physical gratification. His kiss hadn’t meant “I love you, Anne” or “I adore you, Anne” or “Do you love me, Anne?” It meant “I desire you.” It asked nothing of her but her body’s involvement. And that’s all she wanted—probably all she’d ever been capable of—animal rutting. She should be ashamed.

  But she was tired of shame, exhausted by the knowledge that if she’d loved Matthew, truly loved him in the same pure, noble manner in which he’d loved her, he would be alive today. He wouldn’t have volunteered for front-line duty, killing himself and condemning his crew along with him.

  “Good God, Anne,” Sophia said suddenly. Relieved to have a diversion, Anne looked around.

  “Will you look at Lady Pons-Burton’s bracelet. How deliciously vulgar.” Sophia slanted a caustic look at her. “Do you suppose the gems can be real?”

  Oh, undoubtedly they were real. Anne’s father had taught her how to spot paste from real stones, even at a distance.

  “I declare I will have one just like it when I’m wed,” Sophia said, adding in a reverent voice, “It must be worth a fortune.”

  “Three fortunes,” Anne murmured. Enough to keep a dozen families fed for a dozen years, she thought, recognizing anew the bitter disparity between these people and those seeking a night’s refuge at the Charitable Society for Soldiers’ Relief. With anger came a w
ave of disquiet.

  She hadn’t planned on becoming a thief when she came to London to act as Sophia’s companion. The skills her father had taught her as a child had been games, a means of passing the time while her mother was away visiting her “top-lofty” relatives. The stories her father had told her about Blind Tom, Rum Mary, and the Prince of London’s Thieves were just stories.

  She hadn’t found out they’d been real until the day she’d found her father’s diary. Confronted, her father had sworn her to secrecy and then told her the truth; he was the Prince of Thieves. She’d been shocked, appalled, and, yes, thrilled. She’d begged her father to tell her more, teach her more. It had been such a lark to discover her own father had once been a notorious criminal.

  Her father, perhaps a touch bored with life as a country squire, had happily complied. He’d taught her everything. It had been their secret, a wink between a father and daughter. She’d never expected to use the knowledge he’d imparted—

  “Couldn’t you?” Sophia demanded stridently. Anne looked over. Her husband’s young cousin regarded her with palpable irritation.

  “Excuse me?” Anne asked.

  “I said that you are wealthy enough to buy a bracelet like Lady Pons-Burton’s for each of your wrists. Though heaven knows why you would buy jewelry when you won’t even buy yourself a decent gown.” Sophia gazed with frank contempt at Anne’s gown and looked away, clearly signaling she’d had enough of the conversation.

  Anne did not look down at the muddy lavender gown. She knew its shape quite well, just as she knew she could have easily replaced it if she’d wanted. Upon Matthew’s death she’d inherited a fortune, money she could not bring herself to spend on herself and for which she had no other purpose. She had no real home to maintain. The country manor where she had lived with Matthew had never been more than a way station in their pursuit of pleasure; she’d sold it soon after his death. So she’d decided to establish a fund for the men Matthew had misled so disastrously.

  The estate’s trustees decided she would not. They had, they informed her, a solemn responsibility to see that Matthew’s fortune benefited Matthew’s widow, not nameless, faceless ex-sailors.

  But once the idea had taken hold of her, Anne was not to be gainsaid. She needed to do this thing—do something, anything—to help Matthew’s men.

  She’d begun by asking for donations soon after arriving in London. The ton had greeted her solicitations enthusiastically, impressing each other—and the popular press—with the enormous sums they promised.

  But pledges and payments, Anne had quickly learned, were not always the same thing. And when confronted, those who promised money threatened to destroy the Norths’ social position should Anne reveal their “economy.”

  So she stole what had been promised.

  At first she’d robbed only those who’d pledged in public and reneged in private. But over the course of months she’d added others to her list of victims: dandies without occupation or conscience, ladies who squandered fortunes on the turn of a card.

  Jack Seward had stopped her.

  She resented it. She hated having to give up the night but she’d no choice.

  He’d said she’d stolen something he wanted, but, try as she might, she could not think of what that could be. And until he’d found whatever it was he’d lost, she needed to lay low. Reason demanded that she stop. She would listen to reason.

  “Where’s Father?” Sophia whispered urgently. “We can’t be introduced if Father is not here.”

  “Introduced to whom, Sophia?” Anne asked, glad of the interruption.

  “Good God, Anne. Will you attend to the conversation? I just told you. He’s here.”

  “Another infatuation, Sophia?” she murmured. “Who this time? Lord Strand? Lord Vedder?” She frowned down at a button that had come loose on her long white gloves and began working the tiny seed pearl back into its satin loop. “Who is, Sophia?”

  “Whitehall’s Hound,” Sophia said. “Some call him Devil Jack.”

  The seed-pearl button popped off Anne’s glove and fell to the floor, skittering away beneath the sweep of a hundred skirts. A little tremor raced beneath her skin, a tingle signifying danger, disturbingly familiar and even more disturbingly gratifying. It was the same feeling she experienced when she donned a black mask and for a few brief hours became Wrexhall’s Wraith.

  She no longer fought against acknowledging the ruthless, rapturous sensation. It was only when she risked death that she experienced the edgy excitation that told her she was alive. After so many years of running from memories, she’d finally found a place where the past did not exist: London’s rooftops.

  There she’d become votary to the acceleration of her own heartbeat, to the laboring of her lungs as she flew, to the challenge of a hushed, locked room.

  Her hands clenched in her lap. The echo of excitement died, replaced by a cold sense of foreboding. She’d been a fool to taunt him, with his wounded eyes and grave manner and gentle voice. She’d been a fool to kiss him. She was worse than a fool to want more.

  “He’s too delicious,” Sophia whispered.

  Carefully Anne lifted her gaze. There. Across the room, moving through the jostling company like the wolf Lady Sheffield kept. Just as contained and aloof, his demeanor as mild, his eyes, like the wolf’s, those of a killer.

  He searched for something. And Anne knew—far, far too well—for whom.

  She watched him, praying Sophia would not notice her interest, praying he would not come closer, stimulated by the notion that he would, appalled at her reaction, helpless to look away.

  He was transfixing, forbiddingly handsome with his rumpled golden hair, firm jaw, and piercing eyes. But something more than the arrangement of his features drew the eye. He had an indefinable quality of refinement about him, a gentleness of manner that, coupled with such predatory eyes, arrested the attention. Quite a few women followed his progress through the room with discreet and speculative gazes.

  Anne unfolded her fan and hid behind it, watching him. She could not find a word for what she saw in Colonel Seward. She only knew that all the thousands of candles glowing in their silver chandeliers could not chase the shadows from his face, that the finest tailor in London could not lay a veneer of languor over that taut, hard figure, and that no dandy’s slouch would ever bend that precise and curiously graceful posture.

  As she watched, he bowed over Jeanette Frost’s hand. The girl’s father stepped between them, his color high. Whatever hard words he uttered had no effect on Colonel Seward. He simply leaned sideways, addressing Jeanette before calmly turning aside.

  “I must know him. Such polish! Such address!” Sophia said in a breathless little rush. “He is fascinating. He was in the war, you know. They say he did terrible things there. Things no one else would do.”

  Terrible things. Elegant voice, compassionate, world-weary eyes. Terrible things.

  “He’s a bastard. Sir Jamison’s get off a Scottish maid, they say. Never legitimized him. Wouldn’t even give him his name. Though, to give the old man credit, he did raise him.”

  “Why do you know so much about this man, Sophia? It’s unseemly.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a prig, Anne. Everyone knows about him. He’s rumored to be Prinny’s new favorite”—she paused and let her gaze play over Seward’s tall figure—“though he hardly seems Prinny’s sort, does he? He’s all the on dit. He and that thief.” She released a rich trill of laughter. “Honestly, I don’t know which would be the more exciting to meet, Devil Jack or Wrexhall’s Wraith. What a delicious dilemma.”

  “Wrexhall’s Wraith?” Anne asked, diverted. She had, of course, heard the name some wit had given her, but she didn’t know her exploits had become public fodder.

  Sophia spared her a pitying glance. “You really must try to be more au courant, darling. ‘Wrexhall’s Wraith’ was so named because Lady Wrexhall was his first victim, and the old biddy swears she saw the robber disappear out of he
r third-story window like a ghost.”

  Anne did not reply. She’d believed her thefts were closely guarded secrets, that pride alone forbade anyone from admitting they’d been robbed. She should have known better.

  Colonel Seward disappeared into the crush. With a sense of disappointment and relief, Anne closed her fan.

  “Jeanette Frost is passionate that she should be the Wraith’s next victim,” Sophia stated nonchalantly.

  “What?” Anne stared at Sophia, finding to her amazement that she had to quell the laughter bubbling up within. How long had it been since she’d been surprised into laughter? Years.

  Sophia nodded sagely. “Both she and Lady Dibbs are rabid to be victimized by him. Many of the most fashionable ladies are. The Wraith has quite usurped Byron’s place as ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know.’ ” Sophia smiled smugly. “But I do believe that given the choice, I’d rather the more … solid of the two. The inestimable Colonel Seward.”

  “If you’re very lucky, given what you’ve said about this ‘Devil Jack’ fellow, you won’t meet either,” Anne replied, her amusement fading.

  Sophia gave her a pitying look. “You have utterly lost your spirit, haven’t you, Anne? When you married Matthew, I thought you the most dashing creature in the world. It’s why I begged Father to invite you to be my companion.” Her plump mouth pursed with distaste. “I must say, you’ve been something more than a disappointment. You’re old before your time, prim as a nun, and have about as much spirit as my father’s barrow pig.”

  “How kind you are, Sophia,” Anne said levelly, meeting Sophia’s caustic gaze with a direct one of her own. Sophia had once been a spoiled but harmless child. Her mother’s death had made her bitter, and this in turn had made her malicious.

  For a second the girl had the grace to look shamed but only for a second. She placed her hand on Anne’s forearm, her expression earnest but her eyes hard. “I’m sorry, Anne. I only meant to point out that you didn’t die, Matthew did. Life goes on. Just look what mourning has reduced you to. I am determined it will not happen to me. I will not run from life as you have chosen to do.”