A Dangerous Man (19 page)

“I
said run!” Hart shouted angrily.

“Right,” Mercy shot back. “Do you suggest I run to that big ox or would you rather I ran to our smiling friend with the oily hair?”

“This isn’t any time for sarcasm,” he returned.

“Right again,” she said sarcastically. “Once more and we’ll have to see about a trophy.”

“Look,” he said, shoving a finger under her nose, “if you hadn’t been so damn eager to inform everyone in Soho that we were carrying cash, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

He was right—yet again—but it only made her angrier. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he’d
tried
to land on her when he jumped out the window.

“If
you
had asked the right questions in the first place—”

“ ’Ere now,” the hulking figure of the doorman
said in a confused voice. “You two off yer blinkin’ rockers?”

“Daft as two-headed dogs,” one of his cohorts said.

“Bickerin’ like me an’ me old lady and them but one jump away from Old Nick’s trident,” another added.

“Oh,
do
shut up,” Hart flung out.

“You stupid buggers!” Ned spat, shouldering his way past the men and advancing toward them. “They’re just playin’ fer time, ’oping the coppers’ll show. Well, ain’t no copper goin’ to show ’ere,
laddy
,” he sneered, pulling a short, stout cudgel from his rear pocket and dancing its heavy-looking head up and down in his palm.

“God, I hate fisticuffs,” Hart muttered, shooting her a condemning glare. “And this time you’d damn well better run when I say run,” he added.

The men prowled forward, their faces intent, splitting into two factions and flanking Hart and Mercy. Ned swaggered ahead of them, quickly closing the gap between them.

“Don’t move!” Mercy shouted, fumbling in her coat pocket. She made certain her voice carried, each word distinct. It was the tone she’d used when shouting “git” at a coyote scouting the henhouse. It had the same effect.

Or maybe it was the sight of the Colt revolver she pulled from her coat pocket that brought the group—including Ned—skittering to a halt. It didn’t really matter. Their mouths dropped open,
eyes widening with uncertainty. Even Hart was staring at her.

“Forgot I had it, didn’t you?” she asked him.

“Yes. I must admit I did.” She could have sworn that he gave a short, rueful smile.

“And”—she continued to address him, her eyes fixed on the shuffling, scowling ruffians a few yards before them—“I suppose we can safely be said to have rethought our stand on it not being necessary to ‘pack an iron’ in London?”

“Hm.”

The men looked to Ned for some clue as to how to go on. Ned was otherwise occupied. He was staring at the gun four inches from his forehead so intently his eyes were crossed.

“Now,” she said to the men, watching Ned’s sweating face, “unless you want to find out what an American
lady
does when confronted by ruffians with untoward designs on her person, I suggest you leave.” She offered a prayer of thanks that she wasn’t stuttering with fear. Regardless of how steady her hand was, her knees felt as though at any second they would start banging together.

The men peered at her assessingly. Mercy lowered the gun barrel ostentatiously toward another part of Ned’s anatomy. “Git!”

“Ah, she’d never—” the ox started to say.

“Yes, she would!” squeaked Ned.

“I think so too,” Hart said encouragingly.

Still, the other men didn’t look convinced. She sighed dramatically. “Look, even if you are willing to sacrifice Ned—and after my short association
with him I can certainly empathize should that be your decision—these things”—she waved the gun barrel and Ned made a choking sound—“are riotously noisy. And I daresay gun blasts are enough of an oddity here that even your most incurious policeman will be bound to investigate.”

“She’s right!” Ned sputtered. “Back off!”

“Ah, shit,” the ox grumbled, turning with a disconsolate air. Without another word or glance to either side he lumbered past his mates. The others fidgeted a second or two before disappearing after him.

“Now get moving, Ned. At a decorous pace.” Mercy motioned in the direction of the alley’s opening. “And do not make the mistake of thinking you and your friends can dog our steps and take us at a more opportune moment. Percy”—she nodded at Hart and had the satisfaction of surprising an expression of incredulity on him—“is a
notoriously
dangerous man. I shan’t be accountable for what he does if he even
thinks
you are plotting something.”

Ned scowled but cast a worried glance in Hart’s direction. Hart, resigning himself to his role, lifted his lip in a snarl.

“Right-o,” Ned said, his shoulders and bravado deflating in an instant, leaving him looking exactly what he was: a young man with bad skin, too much hair oil, and—in spite of his painstaking imitation of middle-class mannerisms—no hopes of ever leaving the sordid streets that had bred
him. “Ned Bright ain’t no fool. We had a go. We failed. No hard feelings, what?”

Mercy almost laughed at the incredible cheek of the young man. But the memory of his hard, speculative eyes and the pointed tip of his tongue wetting his lips when he’d discovered she was a woman killed her humor. They were at the entrance of the alley now. Hart held up a hand and prowled forward, looking either way before motioning them on.

Ned started past her but Hart caught his arm. The man flinched. Hart looked at him impassively, all animation having died on his countenance. An arctic wind would have been a balm compared to that harsh gaze.

“Where is he? Where is Will Coltrane?”

“I don’t know. I swear,” Ned said, squirming. “You knows how they are. They comes and goes. Willy-boy, he had an appetite, he did. It takes some of ’em like that. And I told you true before. I’d look up ter Red Lion’s Square way. Chinee houses, most like.”

Hart thrust him out of the alley. Ned broke and ran until he was swallowed by the Peacock’s Tail’s dark recessed alcove.

“I think we should—”

“You
be quiet,” Hart said.

“But I—”

“One more word and I swear to God I’ll leave you here,” he ground out before bellowing at a cab just pulling away from the corner. It rocked to a halt and he bundled her forward, all but shoving
her into its moldy-smelling interior and slamming the door shut behind her.

Once alone in the dark relative safety of the decrepit hansom, Mercy’s fear, held at bay during the last half hour, found purchase. She shivered uncontrollably.

They could have been killed.

She could
still
be killed, she thought humorlessly. She wouldn’t be surprised if Hart strangled her. And what had their escapade gotten them? The name of another place like this and the promise of another confrontation with evidence of her brother’s debasement. God. What had become of Will?

And, seeing an image of Will’s face superimposed over the greedy eyes and furtive manner of “Ned,” Mercy buried her face in her hands and cried.

He was simply going to have to scare her witless, Hart decided as he stood outside and gave the driver directions. But if he was going to find her damned brother, it was going to have to be without her tagging along.

With a start he realized that he was, indeed, going to find Will for her. Her fierce loyalty and determination had won his respect in spite of her lies, manipulations, and—he bit down on his teeth as he felt the thick wad of cash in his inner coat
pocket—even her damned “two hundred pounds sterling.”

Nevertheless, she couldn’t go with him again. Though he’d admit she had saved the situation tonight, there wouldn’t have
been
a situation if it hadn’t been for her. She was too eager for some clue, any clue, of where Will was. She hadn’t yet learned patience when dealing with her heart.

He hoped she never did.

He tossed the driver a quid as an added incentive to get them quickly back to the stables and rounded the hack’s ill-sprung body. He had to make her so damn afraid of him, she wouldn’t even consider following him again. She could get hurt down here.

His hand knotted at his side, his expression bleak. She
would
get hurt as soon as her facile mind unraveled Ned’s slum-cant and she realized her brother was a
hophead
. An opium addict.

He shifted his shoulder as though redistributing an uneven burden and paused at the carriage door, staring at it. He couldn’t do anything about that pain, but at least he could keep her physically safe.

Steeling himself to play the part of the bully, to force her to see him as a far greater threat than any slow-witted behemoth or brain-rotted addict with an unctuous smile, he snatched open the carriage door.

She was crying.

All the air abandoned his lungs in a single breath. He climbed in, pulling the door shut after
him. She didn’t notice. She was hunched forward, her slender back shaking. Her hair spilled in a dark tangle from under her hat, half shrouding her face as she muffled her broken sobs with her palms.

“Mercy,” he said softly, helplessly.

If she heard, she gave no sign. He didn’t know what to do, what to say. But he couldn’t sit here and watch her cry. Not to save his soul. He reached out and brushed the nape of her bowed neck.

Without hesitation she turned and flung herself against him, wrapping her arms around him as though she would never let go. Her damp face burrowed against his neck, hot and sticky. Impotently, he stared at the dark hair spilling across his chest.

He had never had a woman seek comfort in his embrace. Hell, he had never been held by a woman with any object other than sex in mind. And God knows, for the last three days he’d been as randy as a virgin adolescent. But not now. Not now.

Now there was nothing but this overwhelming need to soothe, to ease her pain and shelter her from grief. To hold her as though by doing so he could absorb her anguish. It was a shattering sensation. His throat ached and his body bowed over hers in a shielding posture.

Lightly, he smoothed her hair, his fingers shivering on the thick mantle. She nestled closer and awkwardly he set his arms around her. When she did not reject him, he settled her nearer still. She was ravishingly compliant in his arms, her sylphlike body narrow and fine boned and strong
beyond conception, and when her breath fanned his skin, he lost his own.

He didn’t have any words. He was struck dumb by the tenderness she wrested from his arid, arctic soul. He had no right to hold her like this and he knew it—even if she didn’t. Still, he thought with a shred of black humor and blacker self-knowledge, there was nothing in the world that could have made him relinquish her.

For long minutes she cried, spending her strength in sorrow until gradually her breathing quieted and she relaxed, limp and spent. Like a thief he brushed his cheek against the delicately shaped head tucked beneath his chin, masking the caress as a movement preparatory to pushing her away. She murmured something incomprehensible and clung more tightly. He swallowed and gave up.

Abandoning himself to the unaccustomed role, he pulled her wholly onto his lap, tucking her legs up over his, cradling her there. She sighed, a sound of utter release.

His head fell back against the stained leather headrest. Gazing at the blackness overhead, he damned himself for a fool even as he hoped the driver would ignore his instruction to hurry.

“We’re back.” Hart’s voice roused her from sleep and Mercy lifted her head. The wonderful warmth that had surrounded her had vanished. It
was cold. She shivered, looking about as she tried to adjust her vision to the murky interior of the carriage.

“The stables?” she asked in a sleep-hoarse voice.

“No. Acton’s estate.”

“But the horses—”

“Hitched to the back.” His voice sounded indifferent. “We’re at the gate.”

She’d forgotten; he was angry with her. Regardless of the fact that he had allowed her to find a haven in his arms, his remote tone made it obvious it was only a temporary one. The realization brought fresh tears welling up in her eyes.

Fool
, she thought.
He kisses you and you all but offer yourself to him. He offers a consoling pat and you fling yourself in his arms. And when he doesn’t dump you on the floor you assume … you hope …