Secrets in Scarlet

by Erica Monroe

  “Of all the nights,” Jane groaned, following Charlie’s outstretched finger to a table in the corner. “I’ll come by later, Poppy, you hear?”

  Poppy nodded. No sense in Jane being punished. She sipped at the bragget, letting the smoothness trickle down her throat. With each sip, she felt looser, less tied to a reality that was determined to break her in two. The public house became noisier with each passing moment, as night descended, and the men filtered in from their days of pilfering in the East End. Soon, the street musicians would congregate around the circular plank set up in the back of the Boars, used for a stage for impromptu shows. It was all so bloody familiar that the lump in Poppy’s throat tightened.

  She shouldn’t be here, not now, when everything had changed. No longer could she remain blissfully ignorant of the dastardly people around her.

  Not when she’d become one of those blackguards.

  Good intentions mattered little when the result was pain and blood.

  So, Poppy finished off the second bragget and signaled to Charlie for another. When she’d boarded the mailcoach that would take her from Surrey to London, she’d been waiting to begin a new life. Now, she waited for Thaddeus to appear and the ending of the perfect illusion she’d been foolish enough to believe possible.

  17

  He felt naked without his blues or his top hat. Somehow less of a man, undeserving of any sort of respect, for as Thaddeus Knight he was simply the second son of a second son or some other bloody useless lineage. Without the outward trappings of the Met, he was a toff, born with money and dying with money. None of that mattered, not when he’d finished setting up a girl in the London Hospital under an assumed name. When he’d had to bribe guards to stay beside her door, so she’d be safe from any more reprisals.

  Damnation. He had to add bribery to the list of moral ambiguities he’d now crossed. That list got longer and longer as time went on with these O’Reillys, starting with that first moment when he’d agreed to help Kate Morgan save her betrothed.

  Pushing open the door to the Three Boars, he winced as the noise amplified around him, rising and swelling until his thoughts became a mottled blur. He’d known from standing on the street that it would be loud inside. The building was not particularly sturdy, with its green flaking paint and one cracked window. Yet he hadn’t estimated it would be so cacophonous. Nor that men would turn in their chairs with the sole purpose of scowling at him—as if they knew, even without his uniform, that he was a Peeler. The Met had become part of him. If pricked, would he bleed blue now? The last four years had been about the job.

  Until he’d met the beguiling redhead lolling back on the barstool. Her dilapidated boot hooked in the bottom rung of a stool that shook beneath her as she swayed to the peppy tune the band played. His gaze darted to the back of room, left corner, where a quartet of swarthy gentlemen had collected, playing instruments that appeared a step above rubbish in the alleyways. Christ, his bloody head pounded. He yearned to be at home in front of his fire, reading a treatise on Dupin’s maps.

  Daniel and Kate sat toward the back, keeping a careful watch on Poppy at the bar. Jane Putnam waited tables across the room, and every once in a while, her head would turn too toward the bar to observe Poppy. For a second, he was almost envious of the way Poppy’s family was so close-knit, immediately rallying around her when trouble hit. He didn’t dare tell Joseph what had happened, nor their mother and father. He couldn’t tell anyone.

  He had simply Poppy, and she couldn’t be truthful with him.

  She waited for him. He’d have to face her eventually—if not tonight, then when? When would they discuss the chasm widening between them? He forced himself forward. One step led to another, his boots stomping on the dirt floor, the sound devoured by the bang of a drum and the shrill of an oboe.

  She hadn’t trusted him, she hadn’t trusted him, she hadn’t trusted him.

  He didn’t want her lies to matter—they were pointless, emotional hurts that should be immaterial when held above these other perilous circumstances. He wanted to focus on the present, on the investigation, on finding something positive out of this swelling storm of excrement that had become his life.

  As he watched, debating if he truly should approach, Poppy’s posture went slack. Her blue dress drooped off one shoulder. Another man approached with a lecherous grin plastered over his blistering lips. “’Ey there, poppet,” he said.

  Before Poppy could reply, Thaddeus was next to her, his hand on her back. Too close to her rear for true propriety, but that was the language these men spoke, and damn it, he’d speak it too.

  “That poppet is already spoken for,” Thaddeus growled, his lips pulled back to show the man his teeth. He’d read about how animals staked their claim; he assumed that knowledge applied here too. “Shall we take a table closer to the band? I know you enjoy their music so, love.”

  Love. He did love her, in spite of it all. He couldn’t refute that.

  Poppy nodded. The band had stopped playing, setting up for the next song. She leaned into his touch, letting out a murmur of approval when his hand squeezed the tender flesh of the curve between her buttocks and her back. His cock twitched to life at the sound, becoming ready for her. For something he knew damn well he shouldn’t take, not tonight. Not after the horrors she’d witnessed, and certainly not after the tankards she’d probably drank.

  Her moan was audible enough that the brute glowered, muttered something underneath his breath, and pushed his way into the crowd. Thaddeus had won that victory, but now he’d signed himself up for another failure. There could be no acting on these hedonistic impulses. He imagined the glide of his bare hand against fine muslin until he dared to lift up the hem of her dress and touch the silken skin of her calves. The thought almost undid him here in this blasted bar because he was the worst of rogues. He wanted it rough enough to replace the pain of this day with something raw and unstoppable.

  He wanted it with Poppy, wrong or not. If he couldn’t have her in an honorable capacity, free of lies and secrets, then he’d take her as he could get her. Anguish set in his bones, sank him down as his hand remained on her back, fingers kneading into her flesh.

  He wanted to bury himself so deep within her slick heat that he’d forget everything between them was falsified. He needed to forget.

  Maybe he’d lost every ounce of sensibility and dignity when he’d left that girl in the hospital.

  The barkeep’s voice brought him back, tenor pitch and strangely frantic, as though the young man had consumed a great amount of sugar before his shift. “What’ll you ’ave?”

  “Gin, and a lot of it,” he answered without hesitation. To his fatigued mind, it made sense to start with gin, the very spirit that had brought about his meeting with Daniel O’Reilly in the St. Sepulchre cemetery.

  But when Poppy’s mouth turned down in a grimace at his order, he quickly held up his hand to stop the barkeep from moving forward. No sense in disturbing her, when she already appeared as though she’d seen seven ghosts and they all spelled out her doom. “Actually, make that beer. You might as well bring me a pitcher.”

  “Jason’ll demand you pay up front.” The barkeep narrowed his eyes. His fingers drummed on the countertop to the music, and his head shook along with the rhythm.

  “Very well.” Thaddeus shrugged, pulling out a shilling from his pocket.

  The barkeep tapped the shilling against the counter, and then ran his fingers around the edges and the engraving. Satisfied the coin was not counterfeit, he proceeded to pour a pitcher of the most noxious-colored ale Thaddeus had ever encountered.

  Thaddeus had half a mind to ask if they had something less...piss-colored on stock, but he stopped himself. The color was apt. He thought of Joseph’s bottle of two-crown whisky, sitting on his desk at home.

  Tonight, he didn’t belong to that world. No, tonight Thaddeus was a man of the rookeries. Tonight, he had no principles to fall back upon.

  With the pitcher in one
hand and a glass hanging from his fingertips, Thaddeus helped Poppy down from the stool. Though her gaze was slightly less focused when she turned to him, her movements were swift, direct. He estimated she’d had about two mugs of whatever it was she was drinking, and she was a quarter of the way through another.

  He gulped. Her height and her weight didn’t bode well for extended alcohol consumption without setbacks. Probably, he ought to snatch up that last tankard from her and send her on her way to Atlas’s safe house. Atlas, bloody Atlas, who she trusted to protect her better than he could.

  He ought to do a thousand things but hold her close to him as they walked, the heat of her body sending flashes through him. She leaned hard into him, looking up at him with eyes he’d dismissed as alcohol laden but somehow now looked...passionate? Yes, he was certain of it. Her nails dug into his arm, and her hip bumped his thigh muscle as they wove their way around the tables toward the back.

  “Thaddeus,” she breathed, her voice like hot heaven to his ears.

  The answering thrum of his cock had him gulping for air. Not now, not here, not after everything had happened. No matter how much it seemed like it would abate the pain they both felt.

  They found a table in a small room behind the stage area. The walls were thin, yet they served as enough boundary that the sound didn’t carry as badly here. The ache of his head had lessened slightly. He splashed some ale from the pitcher into the glass and took a sip. The ale tasted watered down, stale, yet it was refreshing. After three gulps, he’d become used to the taste. After half the glass, he started to think he could get used to shit ale, since it made his head feel so delightfully empty.

  Poppy crossed her hands on top of the tabletop, eying her tankard but not drinking from it. Thaddeus should say something, he knew, but he couldn’t think of a single thing to say except “Why didn’t you trust me?” or “I want to pound into you in this derelict public house even though I know I should respect you enough to take you home.” She’d righted the shoulder of her dress, a loss of tantalizing flesh he sincerely regretted.

  Oh Christ, he was a blackguard, for as she settled back in her chair she’d begun to look as though she might sob at any moment. This was too much for her to bear. She wasn’t hardened to this life of murder and mayhem. Hell, he wasn’t as hardened as he’d thought he was.

  Quickly, he swung his chair around to her side of the table. Scooting closer to her, he swung his arm around her and there they sat for a moment, him drinking the ale with one hand and his other hand wrapped around her arm.

  She laid her head on his shoulder, finding the soft space where his chest connected with his arm. Each breath she took was deeper than the next.

  Maybe, maybe he couldn’t fix this part of her.

  Finally, she spoke. “It’s all my fault.”

  He’d never heard her so wooden, so haunted. He set the ale down—he’d finished the first glass—and squeezed her arm. “There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible, as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.”

  She turned her head slightly, peering up at him. “I don’t recall Shakespeare ever saying that.”

  “He didn’t.” Thaddeus wished he had thought of something particularly apt, so that he could bring a smile to her lips. He had nothing but old quotations by men that no one remembered to soothe her. “Polybius. He wrote a dreadfully dull treatise on the Roman empire.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t read it.” She nestled back against him, breathing in the scent of his clothes as if everything about him comforted her.

  That was something. He wanted to hold onto that thought, to pretend that it mattered above all else. Thaddeus could catch the Larkers, reveal Whiting’s involvement, and save Abigail Vautille all in one fell stroke—he could do anything if Poppy believed in him.

  He laid a kiss on top of her head. At the same time, his grip tightened around her shoulder, the perfect pairing of gentleness and his possessive need to tell all the world that she was his. “All of this, it’s not your fault, do you understand me? This isn’t your doing. The Larkers are bad people, Poppy, the worst of the worst. They hurt your friend. Not you.”

  Poppy squirmed from his hold. Her sad, sad eyes rested on his face and his heart lurched in response. “She wouldn’t have been in the factory after-hours if it wasn’t for me. And Bess was with her! I thought I was so clever, getting that information for you. Thought I’d solved the entire case.”

  “You helped me momentously.” A lie, for he hadn’t given the reports to Whiting and he didn’t have a damn clue how to proceed. But if she could lie, so could he.

  “This isn’t the life I want.” She waved her hand in the air, as if to indicate this entire bar had offended her in some way. “All of this, as you call it, all of this is rotten. It hurts people, Thaddeus. It would have hurt me if I wasn’t already so far gone.”

  “No, no.” He tugged her back to him, needing the feel of her upon him for anything to make sense. “You’re not gone, love. You’re beautiful. You’re bold and smart and you take my bloody breath away.”

  She sniffled, eying him with obvious skepticism. “I think you are saying that because you don’t want to see me cry again. Men are wretched with crying women.” Looking back toward where they’d come, a little smile toyed with her lips for a second before it disappeared. “My brother once told Kate she could buy her fifth gun, so she’d stop frowning at him.”

  He didn’t find it particularly comforting to know that Kate Morgan O’Reilly owned five guns, yet he wasn’t surprised either. “I can solemnly promise you I shall never tell you that you may buy a fifth gun. There, does that help me sound stalwart, love?”

  “You keep calling me that.”

  At his quick intake of air, the sudden franticness he knew must be splashed across his face because she’d cornered him, she shook her head quickly. “Never mind, Thaddeus. It is of no matter. No matter at all.”

  He ought to tell her he loved her. That she’d burned through every one of his last reserves. He wanted to make a home with Poppy, take care of her daughter as his own. He felt things he’d never thought possible around her. Hell, he was a bloody schoolboy, randy for her even in these horrid circumstances.

  But there was something in the way she dismissed that conversation so quickly. In the way her eyelids were now partially shuttered. She didn’t want to have this conversation with him, not now, and maybe not ever. It’d offer clarification on what they were to each other.

  No, she liked everything messy between them, when all he wanted to do was label and tie it all up in neat little packages. Fine, he could give her messy for tonight. He wouldn’t tell her what he knew. But eventually, when the smoke cleared, they’d have to have this conversation. He’d understand her better.

  She sagged against him, using his body to hold herself up. Life had crushed her spirit, and he ached to put back the fire of the woman who had told him to go to the devil that first day.

  “I keep thinking I never should have stayed in London.” Weariness sunk down into her tone.

  “Was it better in Surrey?”

  She winced, and he knew he’d committed the gravest sin in inquiring about her past. Would she tell him what had happened?

  “No, it was worse. Much worse. But I should have left Moira with Daniel and Kate, let them raise her. ” Realizing she’d said too much, she bit her bottom lip to stall the agony that spread across her pretty features to no avail.

  “I see,” he said, because maybe, he did. Maybe he understood what had motivated her. “Moira belongs with you. She is your daughter. You’re a good mother, Poppy, a better mother than most.”

  Poppy swiped a hand across her eyes, and he snatched up that hand, pressing it to his lips.

  “The greatest gift you can give Moira is to allow her to have dreams. I don’t know what it’s like to be a parent, Poppy, but I can see the way you interact with her. She’s a clever kid and I’d love her for how damned special she is, even
if she wasn’t yours.”

  She relaxed against him, as if she had started to believe his words.

  It was enough to urge him on and he spilled out his admiration for her like a youth writing his first sonnet. “I love the way you love people, Poppy. The way you defend those who have your heart. ”

  He wished she could love him the same.

  “When I got into this, it wasn’t just to protect my friends,” she confessed. “Or because I thought Anna should have justice. I...I wanted to see you again.”

  The world stopped around him. He saw Poppy, vulnerability in her jade eyes, her bottom lip trembling with the weight of what she’d admitted. Tendrils of her red hair had fallen from her bun, caressing her pale cheeks. She cared for him, felt for him, hell, maybe she’d even love him someday.

  He no longer heard the band play. He forgot they were tucked in the back corner of the notorious Three Boars public house, with practically every member of Chapman gang present. His heart beating so loud it slammed in his ears, he breached the distance between them, and he kissed her.

  18

  Thaddeus kissed Poppy like his entire universe was aflame and she was the only one who could put it out. He broke away to kiss the salted tears that had fallen onto her cheeks, to remove the memories of pain and shame.

  There’d be no shame in what they were doing. All along she’d been meant for him.

  Lips met lips hurriedly, in an almost stumbling attempt to breathe in the exact same air and know the exact same truth. He tasted mead and honey. His tongue thrust in deep, sinking into her mouth, into what it meant to be with Poppy. The lies and the secrets would remain, but she couldn’t falsify this. In his arms, the rapid press of her lips against his as she gave as much as he took, she was real.

  For what seemed like an eternity they kissed, two adrift sailors desperately in need of a dock for their wandering boats. His hands tightened around her waist, pulling her from her own chair into his lap. Not once did he break apart from her, for his hands had minds of their own and found her body without him ever needing to verify the location. The weight of her against his erection tore a growl from deep within his throat. Following his need, she ground against that hardness, moving her taut bottom against him in such a blatantly delicious way he almost couldn’t believe that she was in his arms. She was his, his. His lips smashed against hers, his mouth insistent. He needed everyone to know that. This woman, Poppy “Corrigan” O’Reilly, was his. No matter where she’d come from, where she’d been before, she was his.