by Erica Monroe
First and foremost, thank you, Gentle Reader, for picking up this book. I know I’m one voice in a sea of many choices you have, and the fact that you chose to spend a little time in my world is incredible.
I am indebted to my critique partners, who took time out of their busy lives to rip apart my book in proper “leave no stones unturned” fashion. Rebecca Paula, Amy Jo Cousins, Emma Locke, Kristine Wyllys, and Genevieve Turner, thank you so much.
With every Rookery Rogues book, I find myself immersed in research. Gaylin Walli and Isobel Carr thank you for helping me nail down all the pesky details.
I wouldn’t be where I am today without the Romance Writers of America. I’m part of the Beau Monde and Kiss of Death chapters and I’m particularly grateful to Heart of Carolina for running Book in a Week. Much of this book was written during those week-long stretches.
Thank you to my editor, Meghan Hogue, for never minding when a book explodes on me, and for always striving to make my work ten times better. Thank you also to Teresa Spreckelmeyer for designing this magnificent cover.
Thank you to Eileen Richards, Vanessa Kelly, Lisa Lin, Samantha Maurice, Darcy Burke, Lila DiPasqua, Ki Pha, and Kianna Alexander for your sweet texts, tweets, and messages. You’ve kept me (relatively) sane.
To the friends and family who have learned to accept when I decline invitations, or when I randomly stare off into space for hours and claim I’m “plotting,” thanks for understanding. Your love and support throughout the years means the world to me.
And lastly, but always foremost in my heart, thank you to my husband. For endless plot talks, helping me with odd gun facts, understanding when I get creepily excited about suspense elements, taking care of the house while I’m writing, and for loving me. You are my muse, my rock, my everything.
The Rookery Rogues
Secrets in Scarlet is the second book in The Rookery Rogues. While each book reads as a stand-alone, the series is best enjoyed in chronological order. Joined by the poorest neighborhoods in London, called rookeries, the heroes and heroines in this series defy social expectations and find love in the darkest of circumstances.
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A Dangerous Invitation (Kate and Daniel)
Secrets in Scarlet (Poppy and Thaddeus)
Beauty and the Rake (Abigail and Michael)
Stealing the Rogue’s Heart (Mina and Charlie)
An excerpt from Erica Monroe’s Beauty and the Rake
Rookery Rogues, Book 3
Follow Abigail and Michael’s love story
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Whitechapel, London
October 1832
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Red was everywhere.
Abigail Vautille shouldn’t have been surprised. Since that fateful day when her left hand was forcibly rammed into a working loom, the color red had haunted her. Deep red scars from the punch card of the jacquard crisscrossed her skin. Pockets of exposed flesh remained, mangled red bubbles now crusted black. The bones had been reset to give her a range of movement, but she couldn’t feel the brace of a cold wind on her flesh or the touch of a man’s fingers against her skin.
If only she could staunch her emotions so effectively.
But no, she was fated to face crimson. Scarlet was even the color of her once-friend Poppy Knight’s hair. Poppy’s investigation into their past employer had led to Abigail’s torture.
Her stomach clenched at the shellacked ruby door of Cruikshank’s gaming hell. A battered wreath hung in the center, the previously garnet holly berries shriveled and dead. No one bothered to use the carmine-rusted iron doorknocker. This was no longer a place that required a doorman.
Scoundrels came and went, invited by the new proprietor, Arthur Cruikshank. He was in league with Joaquin Mason, who ruled the rookeries from the back room of his main property in Shadwell, the King of Spades. With Mason’s support, Cruikshank had turned this dank hole into a profitable gambling house.
Abigail knew the men here, their tells and their compulsions. Each battled a demon that only a hand of cards seemed to sate.
But familiarity didn’t breed ease. The hollers of foxed men drifted from Cruikshank’s, an unsettling cacophony. The building itself provided no comfort, constructed of crumbling gray stone, gray like her constant mood. Auburn brick made up the top floor, added after the original foundation.
Shivering in the frigid night air, Abigail drew her black cloak tighter around her to brace against the cold wind. With a glance upstairs, she brought the gloved fingers of her good hand to her lips to kiss for luck. She’d need all the help she could get in this godforsaken place.
After entering, she refused to give her cloak to the man who waited in the foyer. Cruikshank didn’t employ him. When unsuspecting people presented him with their garments, he fled to sell them in the rag and bone shops. She couldn’t help but admire his ingenuity.
Since she couldn’t hold down honest employment any longer, she’d do best to follow his example.
Her eyes narrowed as she surveyed the crowd mingling in the lower rooms. Conversations drifted in and out, an indistinct hum. A sweet, pungent scent caught her attention from the open door to her right. Men reclined on dilapidated chaises in sleep or stupor, while two women blew into pipes, kindling the opium in their bowls until it glowed red.
“Mystery lady!” a man called, his unfixed gaze settling on her cloak. “Come back, mystery lady. Come play with me.”
A lump formed in her throat. All these people drowning their sorrows. Little she could do for them now. The longer she stayed the greater chance she had of being a potential target for Cruikshank’s less principled patrons.
She kept going, ignoring his summons, her skirts swishing against the dusty floor. Two staircases flanked the vast entrance hall. While the left staircase ended on a landing, the right staircase would take her up to the top floor where the faro and hazard tables were. The play was deep there.
She’d find her father at the back table. Inevitably, he’d be in the third chair, his hands shaking as he grasped his cards. There’d be a wrinkle where his thumb gripped too hard.
She reached down into the pocket in her cloak. No blunt. Not that she could pay the rest of her father’s debts with a few coins. Settling the vowels for his last visit to Cruikshank’s had taken the last of her savings. Years of hard shifts, aching knees and pricked fingers gone in an instant to the tables.
Now that she couldn’t work in the factory, she had no way to earn back that money.
Three prostitutes lingered at the stairs, clothed in gaudy dresses with chemises peeking out of their stomachers. They roamed the halls in between their shifts in the cellar, which Cruikshank had converted into a whorehouse. He was always looking for willing lightskirts to fill the beds.
Abigail gulped as a flamboyant redhead with a gap-toothed grin caught her eye and waggled a brow.
Soon, she’d be one of them.
She mounted the stairs carefully, her uninjured hand grasping the railing for support. The hood of her cloak remained over her head, and she pretended it gave her a modicum of security. A shroud to hide behind, when it seemed everyone in Whitechapel knew her name and face.
People moved around her, passing her on the staircase and cursing her slowness. One foot in front of the other was never easy. Even before she’d lost the use of her hand, her unsteady gait had marked her as a cripple. As a child, she’d worked as a scavenger, sliding underneath the machinery to collect the broken bits of silk for reuse. The labor had distorted her body, and years of standing on her feet for fourteen hours, six days a week had worsened her knock-knees.
Each step higher made her joints scream for relief. Her lungs, weak from the poorly ventilated conditions in the factories, burned with the effort.
But she persevered, for life had given her no other choice. Everyone she used to consider a friend had abandoned her. The sole kindness she’d known in the last six months was the whisper of a stranger when she’d been in the hospital.
&n
bsp; Finally, she arrived at the top floor. A throng of people waited outside the faro room. Falling in line, Abigail peeked inside. Candles shimmered throughout, casting a golden glow. At least it was warmer than outside.
She’d already pawned the last of her books to pay for coal so that her little sister, Bess, wouldn’t freeze in their flat. Her heart panged at the memory. Those books had been more precious to her than any other possession, but Bess had to be her first priority.
Come tomorrow when the coal ran out again, there’d be nothing left to sell.
Nothing except for herself.
She couldn’t think of that now. If she did, her knees would sway, and her steps would falter. That would make her an easy mark. Already, she felt as though her movements were evaluated for signs of weakness. A chill skittered down her back. She shoved her battered hand into the pocket of her cloak and continued, trying to ignore the disconcerting sensation of being watched.
She was strong. She could survive anything.
The group behind her advanced, shoving her forward. She stumbled but managed to right herself in time before colliding with the man in front of her. The herd dispersed at the door, ambling to the various gaming tables. Abigail made her way toward the far corner of the room, pausing for a moment to lean against a post and catch her breath.
She scanned the crowd for her father, expecting to find him flanked on either side by intent players. Tonight, all the chairs were empty, except for three: the banker and two punters. A crowd of people watched the game proceed. The cards had split; the dealer took half of the bets on that rank. The onlookers let out a whoop of approval.
The mechanics of the game held little interest to her, for it’d always end the same: even if her father won, they’d still owe. Their debts were so high; they’d never dig out of this hole. She recognized her father: grizzly gray hair, the stoop of his shoulders, his threadbare green coat Bess had patched the week prior.
Across from him and facing her was a man Abigail did not recognize. As he purchased another check from the dealer, she swallowed back the dread that threatened to consume her. An unknown competitor meant her father might not receive leniency. Cruikshank had already told Papa that if he didn’t start paying his vowels, he’d need to find a new place to gamble or he’d have to face Cyrus. Known as an unhinged pugilist with a taste for blood, Cyrus Mason could make the injuries she’d incurred from the loom seem like papercuts.
And so, the cycle would begin again: another gaming hell and another night like this one. It didn’t matter that she’d cut her meals in half for the past few months to ensure Bess had enough to eat. Or that they were three months behind on rent, and if they didn’t pay up soon, they’d all be out on the bloody street.
Nothing mattered to her father except the game.
Abigail slowly steered her way through the crowd, minding her steps until she’d made it to the back table.
“’Ey now,” one man complained as she accidentally bumped him. He turned, catching her eye. Even in the cloak, he recognized her. So much for anonymity.
He motioned for a few of his friends to step to the side to make room for her. “Move, mates.”
Abigail nodded her gratitude, sliding into the vacated space. Her father hadn’t noticed her arrival, so focused was he on the game layout.
“Come, Papa,” she quietly bid. “Settle up your accounts and hope to God this man lets you by with incremental payments.”
She hated having to say those words. She hated the humiliation of having to stand there, while all the men leered at her as if she was the choicest bit of flesh they’d get all night. But if she was going to be a harlot, she might as well start expecting this treatment.
The unknown punter across from her father coughed. A cough meant to distract, to clear the air. She looked up to see who would be so polite in this den of iniquity. She focused in on his features and her stomach did a flip. A purely physical reaction, for what woman wouldn’t have felt a surge of fancy for the way his linen shirt stretched over his broad shoulders. His oval face was classically handsome, chiseled with an impossibly straight nose.
The man’s blue eyes narrowed. “He owes me two hundred pounds. You can’t expect me to excuse so large a debt.”
Two hundred pounds.
His voice rang in her ears, like the steady drum that signals a firing squad. Two hundred pounds. Each breath was harder. Her throat closed. Two hundred pounds.
The mob erupted with cheers at the announcement, eager for a potential conflict. Their hoots barely registered when her heart pounded so hard, she feared it might burst free of her chest. The world spun around her, and she prayed the floor might swallow her up.
Yet nothing changed.
Around her, the horde grew impatient for a response. Whatever leniency they’d shown in allowing her into their midst had disappeared. Now she was a part of the spectacle. Her pain on display for their enjoyment.
“’E don’t got two hundred,” one man jeered. “’E won’t even pay me the two crowns ’e owes me.”
“And ’e owes me twenty pounds!” another fellow added.
Oh, God. Her father had killed them all with the fifty-one cards of a faro game.
They were doomed. With vowels that large, surely her father would be sent to debtor’s prison. Hell, maybe they’d all be sent to Marshalsea. The thought of her little sister living in such squalor made Abigail’s heart tighten. How would Bess survive?
“I can’t pay you,” her father mumbled, as if he was just now realizing how much he’d lost. “Ain’t got that.”
“Then something will have to be done,” his opponent announced.
Thoughts sped through her mind. Bess couldn’t go to Marshalsea. It’d ruin her in a way Abigail couldn’t countenance. Sorrow had seeped deep into Abigail’s life, ripping apart all her hopes and dreams, but Bess deserved better.
What could Abigail offer this man? Their coffers were as empty as their cabinets. The little blunt Bess brought in at the new textile factory already wasn’t enough for the rent.
Abigail glanced down, taking in the plump curves of her breasts, her wide hips reputed to be perfect for grasping onto as a man tupped her hard. She was all the family had.
And if it were the last damn thing she did, she’d save Bess. This man knew Mason—perhaps a deal could be brokered to keep her father away from the hells too.
Abigail pushed back the hood to her cloak, revealing her blonde curls. Before her disfigurement, the factory boys had made it quite clear she stirred their attentions. But what was the price of her soul? Was she worth such an exorbitant sum?
“We can’t pay you,” she said, repeating her father’s words. “But if you excuse my father’s debts, I’ll—”
The words wouldn’t form. She gulped for air. A vision of Bess huddled in the corner of a filthy cell danced before her eyes. So, this was how her degradation would begin, not in a brothel but in a hell. How could she actually go through with this? She’d be signing her soul away to the devil.
She couldn’t think of another choice.
She needed to entice him. He wouldn’t accept a single night for two hundred pounds—even as a virgin, she was not worth it. A man as good-looking as he was wouldn’t pay that much for one lay with a working-class girl.
One month with her. She dismissed that idea immediately. A month away from Bess was too much. Two weeks instead. She’d start there.
“I’ll spend two weeks with you. My virtue in exchange for two hundred pounds.”
* * *
Purchase here
Books by Erica Monroe
The Rookery Rogues
A Dangerous Invitation
Secrets in Scarlet
Beauty and the Rake
Stealing the Rogue’s Heart
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Covert Heiresses
I Spy a Duke
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Gothic Brides
The Mad Countess
The Determined Duchess
<
br /> The Scandalous Widow
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Anthologies and Boxed Sets
Mystified (featuring The Mad Countess)
Charmed at Christmas (featuring The Determined Duchess)
The Rookery Rogues: Volume 1
Suspenseful Starts
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About the Author
USA Today Bestselling Author Erica Monroe writes dark, gritty historical romance. Her current series include Gothic Brides (Gothic Regency romances), The Rookery Rogues (pre-Victorian gritty working class romance), and Covert Heiresses (Regency spies who are the children of a duke). She was a finalist in the published historical category for the prestigious Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Romantic Suspense, and her books have been recommended reads at Fresh Fiction, Smexy Books, Smart Bitches Trashy Books, and All About Romance. When not writing, she works as an editor of romance novels. She loves coffee, wine, comic books, and television. She lives in the suburbs of North Carolina with her husband, two dogs, and two cats.
Erica loves to hear from readers, so please feel free to contact her at the following places:
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