by Erica Monroe
“I’ll spend two weeks with you. My virtue in exchange for two hundred pounds.”
Michael Strickland shouldn’t have been at this hell. As a newly promoted Inspector for the H-Division of the Metropolitan Police, he’d been forbidden from consorting with the criminal ilk.
But God, he was tired of following those rules. Tired of living in a holier-than-thou way, when he knew he was as much of a sinner as these cowards, shattered by the call of the tables and the song of gin.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, he was going mad.
The woman swathed in a black cloak looked so much like the girl he’d visited in London Hospital six months prior that he almost rose from his seat and demanded her identity. That girl—Abigail Vautille, he’d never forget her name—had disappeared back into the rookeries upon release from the hospital without even a “thank you” to the two men who’d paid her bills.
The hollers of the gamers soothed him. He was at his best in a crowd, when he didn’t have time to think. It was easier to brazen through his problems than engage in self-examination. Perhaps he’d seek out a new mistress, lose his pain in the tight fit of her quim against his cock. He’d do anything to keep him from thinking of Miss Vautille and his part in her torture.
But the woman pushed the cloak back from her face and revealed an angelic visage he knew all too well. Her azure eyes settled on him, frosty and deadened to the world. For a moment, he forgot how to speak.
He slid his hand down underneath the table, pinching his leg. A prick of pain answered, but he didn’t wake. This couldn’t be a dream, for in his dreams, she wore significantly less clothing and she was much more enamored with him.
The real Abigail Vautille stood before him. Not the healthy, happy version he’d created in his mind, but a woman who bore the mutilations of a maniac’s torment.
She spoke. “If you excuse my father’s debts, I’ll spend two weeks with you. My virtue in exchange for two hundred pounds.”
Everything crackled back to life. Two weeks with Miss Vautille. Two weeks learning the curves of her body until they were like a second language to him. Two weeks riding her, tupping her, groaning his release and then starting all over again. They’d bring to life every one of his nocturnal fantasies.
This was the best damn game of faro he’d ever played. Even if she weren’t a virgin—given she’d grown up in Whitechapel, he suspected she wasn’t—two hundred pounds was a fee he’d willingly have paid for her favors.
He knew she’d stopped working at the factory; weaving required the use of two strong hands. What other option did she have besides prostitution? He shouldn’t be surprised, of course, but still a twinge of sadness echoed somewhere deep within him.
What a bloody bag of moonshine. Why should he care if Miss Vautille was a ladybird? Hundreds of women, most likely even thousands, worked in the flesh trade in London alone. He’d never harbored any sentimental beliefs about sex. Bawdy houses existed because men wanted impersonal connections. Prostitution was a job like any other—even if it was supposedly illegal, the great majority of Met officers ignored these laws when presented with a sweet taste of paid cunny.
The miscreant on his right gave him a hard shove, almost sending Michael face-forward into the cards. “Ye gonna dip yer wick in her cunny, lad?”
“I bet she ain’t even a virgin,” said another man, sizing her up.
“I bet she likes the cock in ’er mouth. Look at dem lips. Ripe for my pecker,” came another rejoinder.
Miss Vautille stood as immobile as the bolted-in table. Her chin rose high. She was proud—too proud for a brothel. Either the bullybacks would whip that out of her, or she’d have to find a new profession.
Unless Michael taught her how to appear biddable. He’d be doing her the favor, wouldn’t he? A girl as pretty as she was could make good coin as a fen, far better than she made in her old factory job. If he reached out to some of the abbesses he knew, he could get her situated in a nicer bordello where she’d warrant higher socket money. Enough that she could get away from her gamester father.
“I’d say two weeks is a nice down payment,” Michael mused, not wanting to sound too enthusiastic at first. If Miss Vautille knew she held him by the balls, there’d be no hope of negotiation.
The bastard who had spoken so giddily of his pecker reached out a hand to stroke Miss Vautille’s rear. She cowered at first, but she didn’t move away from his hand. Her chin raised a fraction more. Her gaze became detached, as if she were miles away from here.
Michael lunged forward. She was his, damn it.
He caught the bastard’s wrist, wrenching so hard to the right that the man let out a yelp of protest.
“The only reason I’ve not ripped your throat open is because I haven’t claimed my due yet,” Michael hissed. “But for the next fortnight, this girl is my property and my property alone, do you hear me?”
“Just a little touch,” the man complained. “That’s all I wanted.”
Vautille let out a pained groan, trying to reach for them both, but falling short in his gin haze.
Michael twisted the imbecile’s wrist again until the man’s eyes bulged, and tears streamed from the pain. “If any of you touches even a hair on her head, I will bring the full force of the H-Division down upon you. We’ll move so fast your strumpets will be left wondering who will pay for their tuppence cunny now that you’ve been hung at Tyburn.”
Dropping the man’s grimy wrist, Michael wiped his hands on his breeches.
“Best believe ’im,” groused a spectator. “Bloody Peelers, the lot of ’em.”
“Cruikshank shouldn’t allow his sort,” protested another man.
“I’m allowed here because Joaquin Mason has deigned it so.” With this statement, he challenged each of them to take offense further. “I don’t think I need to explain to any of you what Mason does to those who disagree with him.”
One man audibly gulped, while another took a large step back from their table. Michael knew he’d hit the right note with this lot. An arrest might build up one’s reputation on the street, so it wasn’t an effective threat. Retaliation by criminal royalty like the Mason family, however, was enough to send most of these men running for shelter. In Mason’s hells, unsanctioned violence didn’t spread. Debts were paid on time. The proprietor always got his cut.
“Gotta be bringin’ the Masons into it, when we was just havin’ some fun. Come, let’s go. Better take it elsewhere, and all that.” Uttering various protests, the throng drifted toward the other tables.
Michael was left alone with the Vautilles. Mr. Vautille crumpled before him.
Miss Vautille directed venomous gazes at her father and him. Her gloved hands clasped the table, using the edge to hold up her weight. “My virtue may be on the cutting block, sir, but I assure you I am no one’s property.”
Michael waggled a finger at her. “You won’t become a successful courtesan with that attitude. Your job is to make men feel important, not impotent.”
Mr. Vautille lifted his head up from the table, twisting around in his seat to face his daughter. “Abbie, please—”
“Silence,” she ordered.
Mr. Vautille immediately closed his flapping lips. There was a dictatorial quality to his daughter’s demands that only came from a childhood spent having to raise one’s own parent. Michael knew that tone, having used the same on his mother during her too-short life.
“The arrangement will begin in two days’ time,” she declared, her voice so firm she couldn’t help but admire her resolve. “I must be allowed to gather my things first, to say goodbye to my sis—” She stopped, her bottom lip quivering for a second before she composed herself.
He ought to say something, anything to keep her from dissolving into sobs. Probably a ploy to up the price—those tears at the corners of her eyes couldn’t be genuine, could they? No woman who cared about her virginity would offer it up as an easily traded commodity. She’d exhibited such steely control he had
no trouble believing she’d arranged everything to her benefit.
“Do you need more time?” That wasn’t what he’d meant to say at all. He shook his head, reminding himself that this was all part of her strategy.
“I may be a virgin, sir, but I’m no schoolgirl,” Miss Vautille snapped. “I'm well aware of how this works. You claim you dismiss our debt, but you’ll take us into custody as soon as you no longer feel so generous. Those men back there, they said you were a Peeler, and so I trust you even less.”
He felt her words as a slap across his face. Rarely did people point out his faults to his face, and never so bluntly. “I assure you; my word is good.”
“Forgive me if I don't believe you,” she said, rising up to her full height, some heads shorter than he was. She still used the table to support her weight, but in his eyes, she was a raging tempest. “While my father may care so little about what happens to the rest of us, I won't see my family in Marshalsea.”
“That’s not going to happen,” he said.
She remained unconvinced. “We’re already in dun territory. You know Mason will have us thrown in there, when he realizes his gruesome brother can’t bleed the blunt out of us.”
He shrugged. “I’ll pay the two hundred pounds owed to Mason. That’ll make it even.” The hell owner cared little who paid the debt, as long as he received money.
“Can't pay you,” Vautille interjected suddenly, as if he'd just woken up. He slumped back in his chair again, his bloodshot eyes barely focusing.
From the first round Michael had played, he’d marked Vautille as an easy target, and still he’d continued playing.
Abigail glared at her father. “I’m taking care of it, Papa. Do you understand we’re ruined now? All because you couldn’t keep away from the bloody tables.”
He expected to see some flash of hurt in Vautille’s eyes at his daughter's callous words. The man remained impassive; his threadbare coat huddled around him; hands thrust in his penniless pockets. Vautille had given up, perhaps long ago.
Michael turned his gaze to Miss Vautille instead. To her ripe lips, perfect for kissing. To her haughty cerulean eyes. At the end of the two weeks, he’d have her panting for his touch.
“There’s one more thing.” Miss Vautille frowned at her father. “You said you were here because Joaquin Mason knows you. I’d like you to have Mason bar my father from ever entering another gaming hell.”
Vautille groaned at this pronouncement, but he couldn’t seem to muster up enough energy to protest. His head lolled back.
Michael stroked his chin with his thumb and index finger. “That’s a weighty request. I can certainly get him banned from Mason’s own hells, but all of the hells in the surroundings areas will take some work.”
She ran her tongue across her lips, slowly, provocatively. “I’ll make it worth your while, I promise.”
God’s balls, he couldn’t resist her siren call. He nodded swiftly. “I accept your terms. Shall we shake on it, as two gentleme...er, gentlepeople might?”
Extending his hand, he ignored Vautille's attempt to interject his approval. A man who had to depend on his daughter’s help at the tables was no man at all. Debts were to be honored, or a man could not live with integrity.
Hell, Michael would pay the rest of his life for his sins, for his vowels wouldn’t wipe away with the drop of coin.
After a moment's hesitation, Miss Vautille raised her right hand. The cool press of her glove against his bare palm shot heat through him, startling him. He couldn't help but imagine those gloved fingers wrapped tight around his rod, the friction of silk against skin.
Once their palms parted, he reached into his pocket, drawing out a scrap of parchment. “If your father will meet me at Cruikshank's counter, I will add the terms of our agreement to the ledger book so that there is no question whether or not your debt has been paid.” He hated having her name dragged into public record, but it'd be common knowledge by the next day regardless. Drunks had a horrid way of spilling secrets.
The vowels paid; they said their adieus. “In two days’ time,” he bid her, slipping her his address.
“Don’t forget to talk to Mason.” She turned, refusing her father's arm for support.
2
Two days later, Michael headed to Wood Street early, hoping to get most of his work done before Abigail arrived that evening. He pushed open the doors to the station house, grimacing at the noisy lobby. His head throbbed mercilessly. He’d spent the night at Cruikshank’s again, securing Joaquin Mason’s promise to brand Vautille as persona non grata. If anyone allowed Vautille to place a bet, Mason would now consider it a special affront, whether or not it happened at one of his establishments.
The discussion with Mason had taken place over way too much blue ruin. Even Michael’s vision was slightly blurry. Gin would be the death of him, if he didn’t perish between the shapely thighs of one of Covent Garden’s finest doxies.
As he strode down the hall, the same sergeants that had once talked with him about the latest mill or their evening plans now passed him by with a nod of acknowledgment. Before, he was the one they’d crack jokes to, plot revenge with, or invite for a night trawling through London’s worst public houses. But the instant he became an inspector, those men were no longer his friends.
He picked up his mail and went to his office. Pausing outside, he ran his thumb across the plaque on the door. “M. Strickland,” making him the fourth in his lineage to hold rank in London’s constabularies. Therein laid the entire reason he’d been promoted: not because he excelled at his job, but because of his last name. The superintendents wanted constancy, something to quiet the concerns over too much change in the past year. It didn’t get any more consistent than the Strickland family.
After entering his office, he flopped down in his chair. Stacks of paperwork littered the desk. He pulled out from his mail a report on arrest rates for this quarter. While the statistics for the department were improving since Jonah Whiting’s dismissal for corruption, the men weren’t content. For the first time in their lives, the officers now had to report back immediately after their patrols. No more leniencies in filing the proper documentation. They were watched like hawks for signs of dishonesty.
But the numbers indicated that once the men adjusted to the new order, their productivity would show a pronounced improvement. Michael dipped his quill in ink and sketched out projections for the next quarter in the right margin.
He let the ink dry, pushing the paper off to the side of his desk. Returning to his mail, he sorted everything into piles without much thought, for the majority of it all was quite regular. An invitation to another dreadful party from his sister, Frances. The latest briefings on closed cases. Notice of the next departmental meeting.
A mud-covered square of parchment fell from the pages of another report, and he snatched it up. As he read, his heartbeat quickened. His palms were suddenly sweaty. He breathed in increments, jagged gasps that did nothing to calm him.
Scrawled across the foolscap in a deep brown ink far too close to blood was the following message: I’m gonna make all of you regret arrestin me. I’m comin for you and the whore.
Grabbing the note, he burst up from his chair and sprinted down the hall to Superintendent Bicknell’s office. He tugged the door open and entered without knocking.
“Strickland, what in the blazes has possessed you?” Scowling, Thomas Bicknell readjusted his eyeglasses.
Michael didn’t speak. He simply shoved the note at Bicknell.
Bicknell’s expression transformed as he read. Gone was the irritation that Michael had barged into his office unannounced. He pushed the note from him as though the closeness of the parchment could summon the devil himself.
“Clowes,” Michael demanded. “Where is Frank Clowes? The prisoner transfer was yesterday, wasn’t it?”
Bicknell shifted in his chair.
“The transfer,” Michael repeated. “Clowes was supposed to be on his way to
the penal colony by now. Did anything happen?”
“Er, well.” Bicknell stared at his desk with rapt fascination. He’d never been the type to accept responsibility for anything, and his diversion tactics increased in relation to the importance of the problem.
Which meant if he was avoiding Michael’s gaze, something had gone terribly wrong.
“Clowes didn’t make it to the ship, did he?” When Bicknell didn’t answer, Michael leaned forward, his feet planted firmly on the ground and his legs spread wide. “That man murdered two women and tortured another. When were you going to tell me? Or were you just going to wait until I was mauled on my way home?”
Clowes had been the main enforcer for the Larker gang. His cruelty was renowned in the H-Division.
“Now wait here, Strickland,” Bicknell protested. “I just received word of it this morning. I was going to brief you.”
Of course, you were. And I’m the bloody Duke of Cumberland.
Somewhere along the line, Michael’s people—the fourteen sergeants that served beneath him—had bungled this. It was on his head if Clowes hurt someone else. If his men didn’t catch the blackguard, all the progress the department had made in the past six months would be for naught.
“The math was sound.” He’d run the numbers thrice. Transporting Clowes to a penal colony was the best option. It minimized his ability to harm British citizens, and ultimately cost less than keeping him in gaol. Assuming Clowes didn’t die on the god-awful voyage to Australia, the other convicts would make quick work of him once he arrived.
Michael wracked his brain for something they might have missed. Three patrollers to escort the bastard to the docks. Seven seasoned guards on the ship.
“You and your damn equations,” Bicknell grumbled. “If you weren’t usually right, I’d take all your damn quills just so I never had to hear about your calculations again.”
Usually right.
“It’s not my mathematics that is the problem,” he protested. “How did it happen?”
