His Improper Lady--A Historical Romance

by Candace Camp

  After a while, the door opened and Wells came in. “I thought you must be here.”

  Desiree smiled, pausing to give him a wave as she climbed the ladder to the tightrope. Wells stretched below her, but Desiree withdrew her attention from everything but the rope in front of her. Intently focused, attuned to nothing else, she crossed the rope and returned.

  Her mind was clear and calm now, the turmoil of emotions around Tom Quick pushed aside. She stepped over to the trapeze side of the ladder and took hold of the bar. Stepping onto it, she began to swing.

  She’d made no plans, had not even thought about it for the past few minutes, but now Desiree knew what she was going to do. She would find more substantial proof that her father had been a Moreland. Sid Upton might not know who Stella’s lover had been, but there could be other information in his head—small, extraneous facts that could lead her to identify the man.

  “Want company?” Wells called to her. He had climbed the ladder across from her and was tugging the opposite trapeze toward him.

  “Of course.” She sat down on the bar, then pulled her hands away, hanging by her knees, as her brother began his swing, synchronizing his with hers.

  There was a net below them, but she knew she and Wells wouldn’t need it. She was completely focused, her mind serene. Tomorrow she would get Sid Upton’s address from Brock, and she would go see him. But right now...

  Wells said her name, and at her highest peak, Desiree launched herself forward through the air, hands outstretched to clasp Wells’s arms.

  Right now she would let herself fly.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TOM STRODE DOWN the street, seething. That woman was worse than he’d thought. Not just an employee of Falk’s—God knows, he could understand that—and not just a thief—again, he was one who could cast no stones there—but now she was after the Morelands! There was no way he was going to let her damage that family. She could take her schemes somewhere else.

  Now he had a last name for her; the butler had called her Miss Malone. He could look up her birth certificate. He couldn’t be sure of the year, but he could get somewhere in the range. She was too confident, too assured to be really young, but the light of day revealed a loveliness without lines.

  And good Lord, had she been lovely. He had seen her without her mask last night, but that had been in the dim light of an East End street. He had thought she was as intriguing as she had been at the casino. But today, in the light streaming in the windows, he knew he hadn’t realized the full attraction of her. Her hair was a lighter, even more luscious shade of caramel than it had appeared last night, the color of her eyes an unusual gray-green.

  But it was far more than those physical characteristics that caused that traitorous blow to his chest and the sudden heating of his blood. It was the light in those large eyes, the glow to her face—even if those had been caused by anger. It was the graceful way she moved, the way she talked with her hands, her entire body expressing what she felt. It was the confidence in her face and posture, the intelligence in her eyes, the freedom in her speech.

  And it was something else, some indefinable quality that was simply her that reached out and grabbed him and made it nearly impossible to look away from her. Impossible to quell that lick of desire that ran through him even in the midst of his anger.

  He shouldn’t want her. He shouldn’t have been flooded with relief when Brock had called Desiree his sister, not his wife or his mistress. It was distinctly annoying that it mattered to him. It wasn’t as if he would come near this woman again, much less court her.

  Tom pulled his mind away. Thoughts of Desiree Malone would get him nowhere. He needed to get started on proving her lies. The place to start was the Register Office, and it was there he directed the hack he hailed.

  Estimating her age as somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, he started in the middle at the year 1865. He found no Desiree Malone there, so went down a year, then up a year. He found it in 1864.

  No wonder he hadn’t known her at Falk’s. She’d been born only two years before he left. She was several years younger than he was, though Tom couldn’t have said exactly how many, not knowing the date of his own birth.

  Reed had estimated him as seven or eight at the time he put Tom in the duchess’s orphanage. There was no point in looking up his own birth certificate in any year, since Quick was merely a name Falk had bestowed on him for his skills. Nevertheless, Tom had tried once, looking in several possible years, but if there was any record of his birth, there had been none of Thomas Quick.

  He ran his eyes down the facts before him. Desiree Elaine Malone. May 29. There was a time written beside the date, which Tom knew from former searches meant a multiple birth, so he went further and found Wells Henry Malone. She had a twin brother. The man he had met today was named Brock, and Tom was certain he was older than Desiree, anyway. So there was another brother around, the same age as Desiree—no, five minutes younger, he saw on the certificate. Interesting, but not really useful.

  The useful information would have been on the space for the father’s name, but that was left blank, the sign of an illegitimate birth. So she and her brother were some man’s by-blows, but that was no proof of who that man was. Her mother’s name was Stella Malone, and she had also been the person who reported the birth to the register office. The birth certificate had provided him with nothing—though the twin brother’s second name had given Tom a moment’s pause. Henry was the first name of the Duke of Broughton.

  It seemed likely a woman could have given her illegitimate child his father’s first name since she could not take his last. But Henry was a popular name, and the idea of the duke ever straying from his Emmeline was ludicrous. It could perhaps be the other way around: Desiree had learned that the duke’s name was the same as her twin’s middle name, so she had chosen to target him because of that bit of “proof.” That seemed very convoluted. Either way, in all likelihood, the name was nothing but happenstance.

  When he left the Register Office, he went to the Blue Lion public house. It had been a long time since the roll he’d had for breakfast and he was hungry, but his choice of the pub had a motive other than simply satisfying his hunger.

  As he walked through the door of the place, a woman standing behind the bar called out, “Tommy, me lad! Come here and give us a kiss!”

  Tom had known Jessie Smith as long as he could remember. As ignorant of her parentage as Tom was, she, too, had worked under Falk, though neither her fingers nor her feet were fast enough to be one of his prime pickpockets. A few years older than Tom, she had spent more of her time cooking food and seeing to the other children’s welfare than she had stealing.

  She had had a fondness for Tom, slipping him an extra bit of food or sharing her blanket with him. They had lost track of each other for a few years after Tom had gone to the duchess’s orphanage, but they had run into each other after Tom left the orphanage and started working for the Morelands.

  Jessie was at that time working in a pub, one of the few of Falk’s children who had managed to get out of the criminal life. She had been determined to make something more out of herself and, like Tom, did her best to save her pennies. Eventually she’d managed to buy the pub where she worked. Tom had loaned her the money he had been squirreling away for years, and he had never regretted it. She’d made a success of the place and paid him back with interest.

  Jessie gave Tom a buss on the cheek, then motioned to an employee to take her place. “Come back to the snug with me, luv, and have something to eat.”

  She led Tom back into the snug just off the bar. A barmaid brought them each a pint and a plate of food, and they settled down to eat. After they finished their meal, Jessie leaned back in her chair and looked at him shrewdly. “Well, now, Tom, what brings you around today?”

  “Isn’t seeing you enough?” He grinned, and she rolled her eyes. “Truth is,
I wanted to ask you about somebody who used to work for Falk. She says she was one of his kids, but I don’t remember her. She’s younger than me, though. Her name is Desiree Malone.”

  “The Magnificent Malones?” Jessie laughed. “That’s what they used to call themselves.” She shook her head reminiscently. “Aye, what a pair they were.”

  “A pair?” Had the twin brother died? “I thought there were three of them. Brock, Desiree and Wells?”

  “No, just Wells and Dezzy. I didn’t know any Brock. Twins they were and looked like little angels—blond and blue eyed. They were there after you left, mostly. At first they came round sometimes just to make a bit of coin, but they lived with their mam. They lived with us later, after their mam died.”

  “Their mother died?”

  “Aye, ’twas a terrible thing. There was a fire at the circus, you see, and she was killed. Can’t remember her name.”

  “Stella?”

  Jessie wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t know—could be, I guess, but it don’t sound right. It was something odd, like the others. Even odder.” She shrugged. “Well, I never knew her, you see. Falk brought ’em in to live after that. He knew they were moneymakers, right enough.”

  “They didn’t have a father?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. They was part of her act—the Magnificent Malones, you see. But I guess there weren’t much of a show after their mam died.”

  “They toured the country?” Tom supposed it didn’t really matter, but he was interested.

  “I suppose. But they were at the music halls, as well. Golden Palace and such.”

  “I see. So Falk turned them into pickpockets.”

  “No. They might have been good at that, too, but what he did was have ’em put on street shows. Like I said, they looked like little angels. I don’t think they were more than four or five, but they could do all these flips and tricks.” She shook her head. “They were something to watch, they were. Keep a crowd looking while the other kids nabbed their watches and wallets.”

  “Ah.” Tom nodded. “Do you know what happened to them? Do they still work for Falk?”

  “They were there when I left—that must have been, what, three or four years after you did.” She shrugged. “I didn’t keep up with Falk and his lot, though. No, wait—I lied—I do remember. There was another brother. One day he showed up and took ’em away from Falk. It was a big ado. I didn’t see it, but everybody was talking about it.”

  “He came from Australia?” That was another dangling thread. His contact had said the man came from Australia with a fortune, but Brock had certainly spoken like an Englishman today.

  “I don’t know about that. Just recall he took ’em from Falk and Falk was furious.”

  “Did they run swindles for Falk?”

  “Swindles? Like tricking folks out of their money?”

  “Yes. Pretending to be someone they aren’t or getting someone to put money in a phony business or such.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. About the time I left, he’d started them doing second-story work. They fit in places nobody else could, and they could climb like little monkeys.”

  Tom nodded. He was well aware of that.

  “I never saw the like of them,” Jessie went on. “But they could have done the swindles, too. They were smart as whips. I don’t know. Like I said, I didn’t keep up with Falk much. Too glad to be rid of him.”

  “I understand.”

  “Sorry, luv, that’s all I know about the Malones.”

  They continued to talk for a few minutes, roaming over all sorts of things besides the pub or the Malones. There was a certain ease in talking to Jessie that came from a shared past, and as the conversation went along, Tom found himself slipping now and then back into his old speech patterns.

  He thought of the way Desiree had spoken—not quite the tone of the upper crust, but not that of the streets, either. It was, he realized, much the way he talked. He’d spent years learning his grammar, losing his accent, but he’d never perfectly matched that tone that came naturally to the Morelands and others. Obviously Desiree had done the same thing. And like him, she didn’t belong in either place.

  He left the Blue Lion and headed for the Golden Palace. He knew one of the dancers in an act there; he’d had a brief relationship with her that had turned into a sort of friendship after their ardor had cooled. As he remembered, she often rehearsed in the afternoons.

  Matilda was happy to see him, but when he asked if she knew anything about the Magnificent Malones, she looked at him, puzzled, and said, “Malones? You mean the bloke that owns this place? He never had an act. He’s, you know, some sort of gentleman.”

  “Brock Malone owns the Golden Palace?” At her nod, he went on, “No, not him. These were children and long before your time. But I thought you might have heard of them or know some older performer who might.”

  “Oh, sure. Talk to Maisie. Come on, I’ll take you to her.”

  It turned out Maisie had no memory of the act, either, but she in turn referred him to a graying magician at another music hall, who nodded and said, “Ah, yes, I remember them—Bruna the Italian Angel and the Magnificent Malones.” He named the act in the manner of an announcer, sweeping one arm out in a grandiose gesture.

  “Bruna?” The name on Desiree’s birth certificate had been Stella. “Was that her stage name?”

  The man shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s what everyone called her. She really was from Italy. She came here with a show, but after she met Sid, she stayed.”

  “Sid?” Tom’s instincts went on alert at the mention of a male name, someone who could possibly be Desiree’s real father.

  “Trapeze artist. We used to lift a pint or two. But then I tried my luck in the States. I met him again over there, in fact. Odd, that. After Bruna died, their circus decided to tour America—get rid of the bad luck, I suppose. ’Course, the Malones weren’t still with him then. He joined a different act... I’m not sure what the name was.”

  “He left the children here?”

  The other man nodded. “Well, they weren’t his, were they?”

  That dashed Tom’s rising hope that he had a name for Desiree’s actual father. And he didn’t understand the change in names from Stella to Bruna. “They were just Bruna’s, then?”

  Having been born in Italy would negate Desiree’s claim almost as effectively as this fellow Sid’s paternity. But that wouldn’t match with birth certificate he’d found.

  “Oh, well, they weren’t hers, either. I don’t know who their mother was or what happened to her, but Sid and Bruna took them in when the little ones were just babies.”

  “The twins.”

  “Yes.” The magician opened his watch and glanced at it. “Sorry. I need to practice before I go on. That’s all I know about the Malones anyway.”

  “Just one more thing. What happened to Sid? Is he still in the United States?”

  “No, that circus came back, and I think he joined another one. Circus folk move around a good deal.”

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  “No. Haven’t heard anything of him in years. He was never the star of the show, you see. Without Bruna and children, he wasn’t as popular.”

  “What was his last name?”

  “Upton. Sid Upton.”

  “I appreciate it. Thanks for your trouble.” Tom pressed a bill into his hand and turned to leave.

  He had barely reached the hallway, however, when the other man hurried after him. “No, wait. I just remembered something that might help you, if you’re wanting to find Sid.”

  “What?” The money had apparently jogged the magician’s memory; Tom hoped his information was real and not something made up in a bid for more money.

  “I heard that a few years back Sid was working at the Golden Palace. Not onstage—he
would have been too old, but backstage or at the door. That sort of thing.”

  This new information meant a return to the Golden Palace, but, after a persistent inquiry (and another bill placed in the stage manager’s hand), Tom learned that Sid Upton had indeed once worked there. He no longer did so, but the stage manager knew his address.

  Tom returned to his home, buoyed that he had untangled at least some of the mystery around Desiree Malone. And the next morning, when he interviewed Sid Upton, he just might be able to put the threat to the Morelands to rest.

  * * *

  DESIREE SET OUT the next morning to see Sid Upton, their cook’s plum cake in hand. Sid lived in a village on the outskirts of London, where Brock had bought him a small retirement cottage. She was oddly nervous. If the ring and the Moreland name didn’t call up some other memory in Sid, she didn’t know how she would discover who her father was.

  Unlike the disagreeable Mr. Quick, she was not a detective. Years ago, she had gone to the Register’s Office and found that hers and Wells’s birth certificates listed no name for their father. And she knew of no one other than Bruna or Sid who would have known her father’s identity...apart from the members of the Moreland family, of course.

  Brock was doubtless right in saying the Morelands would turn her away. Tom Quick would make sure of it. She wished she hadn’t blurted out her parentage to him yesterday. She had been so mad at him for his arrogant attitude—as if he had any right to judge what she did or who she had worked for—that she’d said the first thing she could think of to shake him up.

  It had certainly worked in that regard. Just not in a good way. Apparently even more than he disliked Falk, Quick loved the Morelands. She felt her irritation rising as she thought of Tom Quick, so she pushed him out of her mind. She was less than happy, therefore, when the door to Sid’s cottage was opened by Quick himself.

  Desiree scowled. “What are you doing here?”