Burning Lamp (9 page)

“Mr. Winters,” she said quickly. “Think for a moment. You said, yourself, that you need me.”

“I found one dreamlight reader. I will find another.”

“Hah. You are bluffing.”

“What makes you so certain of that?”

“I spent over a decade in the American West. Gambling is a popular pastime in that part of the world. I recognize a bluff when I see one. Even if you could locate another dreamlight reader I doubt very much you’ll find one who is as powerful as I am.”

“I’ll just have to take my chances.”

He went out into the hall.

The odds were staggeringly against him. She knew that, even if he did not. If he was right about what was happening to his senses, he might very well go mad and perhaps even die.

“Oh, bloody hell,” she muttered. “Very well, sir, you win. I will work your lamp for you.”

He stopped and turned around. “And the price, Mrs. Pyne?”

She twitched up her skirts and started toward the door. “I thought I made it clear. I do not need your money.”

His jaw was rigid. “Damn it, Mrs. Pyne—”

She went past him into the hall and headed toward the stairs. “I will not charge you a fee for my services, Mr. Winters. Instead you will have to consider yourself in my debt from now until I think of some other favor to ask of you.” She gave him her iciest smile over her shoulder. “Of course, you will likely decline to grant that one, too. For my own good, of course.”

He followed her. “I will do anything you ask of me so long as it will not put you in harm’s way.”

“If repaying the favor to me hinges on your approval of whatever it is I choose to ask of you, I suspect you will be in my debt for a very long time. Possibly until it snows in that rather warm destination you mentioned a moment ago.”

“I will find a way to repay you, Mrs. Pyne,” he vowed.

“Don’t bother. I shall take far more satisfaction in knowing that a notorious crime lord is in my debt.”

“Damnation, Mrs. Pyne. Has anyone ever told you that you are stubborn, difficult, reckless and altogether lacking in sound judgment?”

“Certainly, sir. Those are the very qualities that enabled me to make my fortune in America.”

“I can believe that,” he said with great depth of feeling.

She reached the front hall and opened the door for him with a flourish.

“Before you hurl any more insults,” she said, “you would do well to bear in mind that those are also the same character traits that have convinced me to work your damned lamp. Certainly only a stubborn, reckless, difficult woman lacking in
sound judgment
would have allowed a prominent member of the criminal class over the threshold of her home.”

He paused on the front step and looked back at her. The flash of sensual heat combined with the dangerous irritation in his eyes sent a thrill through her. She caught her breath.

“You make an excellent point, Mrs. Pyne,” he said, sounding very thoughtful. “I will do my best to remember it in our future dealings.”

“Good day, Mr. Winters.”

She closed the door with considerably more force than was necessary.

 

 

 

“DARE I ASK IF THE MEETING IN THE MUSEUM WENT WELL?” Mr. Pierce inquired in his whiskey-and-cigar voice.

“It could best be described as
interesting
,” Adelaide said. “Mr. Winters was not quite what I expected, to say the least.”

She employed her black lace fan in a futile attempt to stir the still, stuffy air. It was intermission and the ornate, heavily gilded theater lobby was crowded with elegantly dressed people. She and Mr. Pierce and Adam Harrow had procured glasses of champagne and retreated to an alcove.

She told herself that it was the crush of theatergoers combined with the overheated atmosphere that was making her so uncomfortable. She felt stifled and edgy. The heavy veil of her hat was exacerbating the sensation, she thought. What should have been a pleasant evening had become an ordeal. She could not wait for it to end. But she did her best to conceal her unease from her companions.

“No one ever gets quite what they expect when they deal with Griffin Winters.” Pierce swallowed some champagne and lowered the glass. “That is likely one of the reasons for his extraordinary success.”

“Did he let you get a close look at his face?” Adam Harrow asked in his languid manner.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, he did,” Adelaide said.

She drank some more champagne in an attempt to quell her inexplicable tension. When she lowered her glass she realized that her companions were gazing at her with astonished expressions. They looked oddly impressed.

“Well, well, well,” Pierce muttered. “An interesting meeting, indeed. Very few people are allowed to see Mr. Winters’s face.”

“And live to tell about it,” Adam concluded dryly.

Pierce and Harrow were far more than very good friends. Adelaide could see from their dreamprints that the bond between them was deep and strong. It extended into every aspect of their lives, physical as well as emotional. They were women who lived as men and did it so successfully that they were accepted as gentlemen without question.

Pierce was short, square and as solid as a stone monument. His black hair was shot with silver. Although he had long ago banished the accents of the streets from his voice, the knowledge that he had gained in London’s darkest alleys was still there in his startlingly blue eyes.

Adam Harrow, however, had come from an upper-class background. He was the very image of a modern, debonair man-about-town. He projected an effortless air of elegant ennui that marked him as well bred and fashionably jaded. His trousers and wing-collared shirt were in the very latest style. His light brown hair was brushed straight back from his forehead and gleamed with a judicious application of pomade.

Pierce studied Adelaide with an appraising look. “I will not pry but may I ask whether you and Winters arrived at a mutually satisfactory understanding?”

Of course he would not pry, Adelaide thought. In Pierce’s secretive world, privacy was to be respected at all costs.

“I would not call it a mutually satisfactory understanding,” Adelaide said. She fanned herself more briskly. “But I did agree to assist Mr. Winters with a certain project. In exchange I received a rather vague promise to repay the favor at some unspecified future date.”

“I do not know why you are grumbling about such a bargain,” Adam said. His eyes glinted with amusement. “Having Griffin Winters in your debt strikes me as no small thing. There are those who would give a fortune to be in your position.”

“The problem with the bargain is that Mr. Winters made it quite clear that he will repay me only if he approves of the favor that I ask.” Adelaide tried another sip of champagne and lowered the glass. “He has already refused my first request.”

Pierce’s brows shot up. “That does not sound like Winters. He may be as hard as granite but he has built an equally solid reputation as a man of his word.”

“Precisely,” Adam agreed smoothly. “If the Director of the Consortium lets it be known that a certain individual will disappear if said individual does not move his opium business to another neighborhood, one can place a secure bet on the result.”

Adelaide glared at him through the veil. “You’re trying to frighten me.”

“Don’t worry.” Adam smiled. “You’re not selling opium.”

Pierce looked thoughtful. “Winters must have had a very compelling reason to deny you the first favor. He can deliver anything, except the impossible. And on occasion, he has been known to come through with that, as well.”

“Did you request the impossible?” Adam inquired.

“Not at all,” Adelaide said. “I merely asked him to help me revise my strategy for the brothel raids. He pointed out that they have become predictable. I had already reached the same conclusion.”

“Ah,” Pierce murmured. “Well, that explains it.”

“Explains what?” Adelaide demanded.

“Winters knows that every time you go into a brothel you court disaster. He would never agree to help you take such a risk.”

“Because if something goes wrong with a strategy that he had helped plot he would feel responsible?” Adelaide asked.

“Yes,” Pierce said. “But there is another consideration as well. If word got out that he was behind an assault on one of Luttrell’s establishments, it would shatter the Truce.”

Adelaide flicked the fan, irritated. “He did mention the Craygate Cemetery Truce. Somehow, it is difficult to take an agreement between crime lords seriously.”

“I assure you, the Cemetery Truce is an agreement that we all take extremely seriously,” Pierce said evenly. “The open warfare that was going on between Winters and Luttrell in the months following Forrest Quinton’s death affected many of us whose businesses were only on the sidelines.”

“Who was Forrest Quinton?”

“The undisputed emperor of London’s underworld,” Pierce said. “He ruled for nearly three decades. Collapsed and died of a heart attack several years ago. It is generally assumed that the man who took over his organization arranged his very convenient death.”

“Luttrell?” Adelaide asked.

“Yes. Luttrell was very busy for about a year securing what he could of Quinton’s empire. But he was young and he lacked experience in management. Not surprisingly he lost a lot of territory.”

“I assume he lost some of that territory to you?”

“Yes, but he lost far more to a young up- and-coming crime lord who called himself the Director,” Pierce said.

“I see,” Adelaide said. “You know, this story is a lot more interesting than the play we are watching. Please go on.”

“Things remained fairly calm for a time. But Luttrell was nothing if not ambitious. When he decided he was ready, he went after his most serious competition.”

“The Consortium?” Adelaide asked.

“Yes. If Luttrell had managed to crush Winters, there is no doubt but that I would have been next. I could not have mustered the army that would have been required to defeat Luttrell’s enforcers. After me, the smaller players would have gone down easily enough.”

“In the end, Luttrell would have been the last one standing,” Adam said.

Pierce cocked a brow. “You can see that I am very much in Winters’s debt.”

“I understand,” Adelaide said. “But it does leave me holding the bad end of the bargain I made with him.”

“Who knows? The day may come when you will need another favor from Griffin Winters, one that he is willing to grant you.”

Adelaide finished the last of her champagne and set the glass on a nearby tray.

“I cannot, for the life of me, imagine what that would be,” she said.

 

 

THE CURTAIN CAME DOWN for the last time shortly before midnight and not a moment too soon as far as Adelaide was concerned. She walked outside with Pierce and Adam, eager to go home.

The scene in front of the theater was awash in the usual noisy chaos that always ensued when a play ended and the crowd spilled out of the lobby in search of carriages. In the street, the drivers of the private vehicles struggled to find their employers in the throng. Cabs and hansoms vied for fares.

“We’re going for a late supper,” Pierce said. “Will you join us?”

“I would love to but I think I will go home instead,” Adelaide said. “I need my sleep. I have a feeling that Mr. Winters will be calling on me at an unfashionably early hour tomorrow morning. He is very eager to get started on his project.”

“Winters is right about one thing,” Pierce said quietly. “You are playing with fire when you stage those raids. Your goal may be admirable but you will not do the girls you have managed to rescue any good if you get yourself killed by one of Luttrell’s enforcers. Who will finance the charity house and your Academy if you get your throat slit?”

The last thing she needed was another lecture on the subject, Adelaide thought.

“I am aware of the risks,” she said.

Adam exhaled his jaded sigh. “You cannot save them all. A handful at most. As long as there is poverty and despair there will be young girls searching for a way out.”

“Don’t you think I understand that?” Adelaide whispered.

“The raids make excellent fodder for the sensation press,” Pierce said. “But you could save more girls by spreading the word of your charity house and the Academy on the streets.”

Adelaide wanted to argue but she was well aware that logic was not on her side. Maybe Pierce and Adam were right. Perhaps she had pushed her luck far enough.

“I will give the matter some thought,” she promised.

Pierce nodded, satisfied. “I see your driver has found you. He is just across the street, waving madly. We will bid you good night.”

Adelaide glanced in the direction Pierce indicated and saw the carriage and driver she had hired for the evening.

“Good night,” she said. She gathered her cloak around her and made her way swiftly through the throng.

She was out of the theater at last. She should have been feeling some sense of relief from the too-close, slightly frazzled sensation that had been plaguing her all evening, she thought. But her senses were more agitated than ever. If she were back in the American West she would have been looking over her shoulder for a mountain lion or a rattlesnake or a man with a gun. But this was London and she was surrounded by respectable, well-dressed people. In London respectable people did not carry guns. Except for her, of course.

Perhaps her uneasiness was linked to her promise to work the Burning Lamp for Griffin Winters. It was bound to be a dangerous experience for both of them. Her intuition warned her that failure could be devastating.

If I had any sense I would have called his bluff, she thought. Just let him try to find another dreamlight reader.

But she had spoken the truth when she had told him that he was very unlikely to find another talent who could manipulate and control dreamlight as well as she could. Sending him off to find someone else who could work the lamp would have been tantamount to consigning him to whatever fate awaited him.