Lady of Desire (26 page)

Unschooled and illiterate, quite innocent of even the most basic mathematics, the young thieves had had no idea of the value of the goods they stole; having been hungry and destitute from the day they were born, they did not realize that the food the old man served them was meager and foul.

“The boys were angry when I did the math for them. When I showed them how much profit they were unwittingly handing over to the old man and gave them a few examples of what such sums could realistically buy, it was O’Dell who said we should not go back to the flash house, but should start our own gang. And that,” he said, “is exactly what we did.”

“Gracious!” the young ladies exclaimed.

“You were in a gang with O’Dell?” Jacinda asked.

He nodded. “He was the one with all the street smarts, while I had the education. Combined, these traits made us quite a menace. I would make up the various tricks and rackets to gull unsuspecting marks, and O’Dell would lead the other boys in carrying them out.”

“What kind of tricks?” Jacinda asked with a mischievous smile.

“Let’s see.” He scratched his chin. “My favorite one had us posing as a company of chimney sweeps. We would go into large homes on the pretense of cleaning the chimneys, while in fact we would be methodically casing the house for a future robbery— identifying routes of entry, where the valuables were kept, whether there was a dog. That sort of thing.”

The girls were laughing, scandalized.

“As long as our skills were balanced with O’Dell as the brawn and myself as the brains, things went smoothly. But one night, all of that changed.”

“What happened?” Jacinda asked.

He fell silent for a moment, choosing his words very carefully, for he did not wish to mar their innocence with any mention of the unnatural men that existed in the world who would use a child, even a boy, for their own gratification.

In truth, none of them had known how vulnerable they were. Fast asleep in their hideaway, an old burned-out warehouse by the river, none of the members of their little boy-gang heard Yellow Cane creep into their midst that night.

All the street children knew to stay away from the strange, predatory dandy known as Yellow Cane after the elegant yellow walking stick he always carried. He had a long, painted fingernail on his pinky from which he was always taking snuff. Billy had often seen him around the streets, in the gambling hells, and scouring the more peculiar brothels.

That night, something had made him awaken from a dead slumber. Through sleepy eyes, he had been horrified to see Yellow Cane holding a knife to O’Dell’s throat, forcing the boy to keep silent and to come with him. He still remembered his shock at seeing tough O’Dell’s face wet with tears of sheer terror.

Billy had jumped to his feet with a roar and, rather stupidly, had charged. It could have gotten O’Dell’s throat slit, but instead, it had startled Yellow Cane, giving O’Dell the chance to shove the man’s weapon hand away. Yellow Cane had tried to run, but Billy had barreled into him, diving for his knife. The fight was a blur, for his battle cry had awakened the rest of the boys. Everyone was screaming. O’Dell had picked up the infamous yellow walking stick and began clubbing the man with it. The next thing Billy knew, he had Yellow Cane’s knife in his hand. When the dandy reached into his greatcoat pocket for his pistol, Billy had stabbed him in the neck.

“Lord Rackford?” Jacinda’s gentle touch on his forearm startled him back to the present.

He looked at her abruptly, the dark shadows of the past clearing from his eyes.

“What happened?” she repeated softly.

He forced a slight smile. “O’Dell was attacked one night, and I saved him.”

Her dark eyes flickered, as though she sensed he was not telling her the worst of it, but she did not press him.

“From that point on,” he continued, “the others regarded me as their leader. O’Dell refused to forget the humiliation of having been rescued by me, since he was supposed to be the tough one. His shame turned to hatred of me. Eventually, he left us and formed a gang of his own and became corrupted, I suppose, by the hardship he had suffered all his life. The rest,” he murmured, “you already know.”

The girls glanced at each other, then at him.

Jacinda caressed his shoulder, frowning with concern. “I am sorry things have been so hard for you, Billy.”

“Me, too,” Miss Carlisle added softly.

“Well, my circumstances have decidedly improved,” he said with forced brightness. “True, I am under my father’s thumb once more, but Nate and the others are alive. That’s what counts.” He gazed off wistfully into the distance for a moment, then tried to shrug off his persistent sense of guilt. “I have hired a gentleman of business to find me some property in Australia. I intend to buy a plantation there so they can serve out their sentences in a place where at least they will be humanely treated. Unfortunately, I must remain anonymous as their benefactor. I am to have no contact with them ever again. They have all been told that ‘Billy Blade’ is dead.“

“How sad,” Jacinda murmured. “They were like brothers to you.”

“At least I managed to keep them out of the hangman’s noose. Still,” he said pensively, tilting his head back to study the wind-riffled branches above them, “it doesn’t seem enough. I get to sit here in the park with two pretty ladies while they’re in chains aboard some prison hulk.”

“You did the best you could,” Lizzie said sympathetically.

“You saved their lives,” Jacinda agreed.

“Do you know what you could do, Lord Rackford?” Lizzie spoke up all of a sudden.

“What could I do? ” he asked, turning fondly to the unassuming girl.

Lizzie stared into space, tapping her lip in thought.

“Gracious, Lizzie’s got an idea,” Jacinda said in a tone of excitement. “Have I told you, Lord Rackford, that Miss Carlisle is a genius?”

“No, you hadn’t mentioned it.”

“Once you have your plantation in order, you could send a schoolmaster to educate them,” Lizzie said. “Artisans to teach them honest trades. That way, when they’ve served their sentences, they shall have the means to adopt a new way of life independent of crime.”

“Hmm. They wouldn’t want to be bothered, I’m afraid. They’re not boys anymore. The time for apprenticeships is ages past, and I’m not sure you can teach an old dog new tricks—”

“My dear Lord Rackford, when Lizzie has an idea, it usually works. I agree with her,” Jacinda said. “Actually… I can think of one motive that might be all that’s needed to inspire your fellows to change their ways.”

“What might that be?”

“Wives,” she declared. “Get them women.”

Rackford and Lizzie burst out laughing.

“Wives, Jacinda?” Lizzie exclaimed.

“Why not? Surely a man with a wife and children to look after is less inclined to risk his neck in daft criminal schemes,” she insisted over their laughter. “Give them more to lose, and I wager that within a few years, you will have molded them into upstanding citizens.”

“You know, that might actually work,” Rackford murmured. It delighted him to think of Nate, Sarge, Flaherty, Andrews, and all the rest as married men with wee ones underfoot. He looked at Jacinda, who smoothed her skirts, looking altogether pleased with herself. “I think you both are geniuses,” he said.

The girls exchanged a tickled look at his compliment.

Theirs was a friendship entwined with lust.

In the weeks that followed, Jacinda poured her efforts into civilizing Rackford—but did not really want to see him tamed. Not when she basked in his thrillingly dangerous advances. He flirted openly with her whenever he could get away with it, and though she pretended a droll annoyance, it was deliciously heady flattery to find herself the one continual object of his smoldering attentions.

She chose not to take his rakish advances very seriously, but their private flirtation had added a zest of excitement to her life that had been decidedly missing before. Whenever they were left alone even for a moment, he was always touching her, however subtly—a caress on her cheek, a playful tug on her hair, a gallant kiss on her hand. Somehow she never found much reason to protest, though she sometimes made a show of anger at his bawdier compliments. It seemed important to keep him in line.

Fortunately, Lizzie’s frequent presence helped diffuse the craving tension that sometimes made the very air between them crackle and hum. As for her governess, Rackford had charmed his way past Miss Hood with ease, but he was essentially a man’s man, and even her brothers had taken a guarded liking to him, thanks to Lucien’s vouching for his character.

Little did she know Rackford had already made his intentions known to her brothers and had procured Robert’s permission to court her…

Rackford had had no choice, really. She was under twenty-one and could not marry without her guardian’s consent, not to mention the fact that her formidable tribe of elder brothers could end his courtship before it had begun, if they saw fit. He did not want to make enemies of them. It was a great risk, but he knew that the only solution was to show his hand, prove himself, earn their respect, and thus seal his place among them from the start. In truth, he had so often willfully done wrong in his life, but this was important enough to him that he wanted to do everything right.

Boldly, he requested an audience with the duke of Hawkscliffe on a day when he had learned beforehand that Jacinda would be out shopping with her beautiful sisters-in-law and the lovable Miss Carlisle.

Perhaps Hawkscliffe had divined the purpose of his call, for when Rackford walked into the duke’s study, he found four of the five Knight brothers already arrayed before him.

Only Lord Jack Knight, the second-born, was absent. Rackford later learned that Lord Jack was quite the black sheep—and could not be expected to appear anytime soon. None of the others even knew where he was.

Fortunately, however, Lucien and Alec were there and had already decided to accept him. Hawkscliffe watched his every move with skepticism in his dark eyes; then Rackford was reintroduced to the one who had worried him the most—Lucien’s twin, Damien, the earl of Winterley. The silver-eyed, war-hardened colonel had brought his wife, Miranda, into Town to go shopping with her womenfolk. Winterley shook his hand, looking him over—indeed, taking his measure, as though he were a rather unsatisfactory new recruit of the regiment. As it turned out, however, the stone-faced warrior was prepared to give him a chance because of Billy Blade’s help so long ago in saving the raven-haired beauty Miranda.

The grueling, two-hour interview made his many hours of questioning from Sir Anthony Weldon and his Bow Street runners look like child’s play. He knew he was not the favorite—he knew he was no Lord Griffith—but he forced himself to be utterly honest with her kin.

He sat uncomfortably under their scrutiny, giving them a matter-of-fact account of his past—one considerably more thorough than the one he had given the girls in the park. Grimly, he confessed the true extent of his father’s violence so they would understand he had been justified in running away. He told them next of how he had conducted things in St. Giles, providing for hundreds of people with his ill-gotten gains, uniting various gangs to stop the killing among the young men, and using the threat of his might to impose some sense of order on the rookery when it had been under his control.

He did not know if his accomplishments, such as they were, held any weight with her brothers, or for that matter, if they even believed him; but when Lucien told them that it was Billy who had found Jacinda and had brought her back safely the night she had tried to run away, they exchanged a few shrewd glances with each other.

Then Lucien told them of his secret aid to Bow Street, which had already helped to bring about a flurry of arrests. Counterfeiters, crooked moneylenders, illegal gaming hell operators, horse thieves, a band of murderous highwaymen, black-market dealers, one assassin-for-hire, an extortionist, and a pair of arsonists who would, for a price, help one burn down one’s home in order to collect the fire insurance—all had gone to prison on the strength of his information.

Hearing all this, Hawkscliffe and Winterley regarded him with grudging respect in their eyes.

Lastly, Truro’s solicitor had drawn up certified documents stating the sum of his fortune and the holdings that would one day be Rackford’s. The papers had been prepared in advance of the wife search his father had ordered him to make. As Hawkscliffe skimmed the pages, Alec sent Rackford a rather envious smirk.

“Now I know who to come to for a loan.”

“Alec,” the duke warned.

“I spoke in jest, Rob. For God’s sake,” he said haughtily.

Drumming his fingers on the desk a moment longer, Hawkscliffe stared at Rackford’s financial statement, then looked around the room: first at Lucien, who gave him a furtive nod; then at Damien, who shrugged slightly and sat back in his chair; then at Alec, who had begun boredly flipping a coin.

Hawkscliffe put the papers down and steepled his fingers, staring at Rackford for one moment longer. “Very well,” he said with a curt nod. “You may court her. But we will be watching you. One wrong move…”

“I understand, Your Grace. Thank you. My lords, I am grateful for your time.”

They stood; he prepared to make his exit.

“Join us for a brandy, Rackford?” Hawkscliffe invited him as he sauntered around his desk.

“Gladly, Your Grace. Thank you.”

“Call me Hawkscliffe.”

He was still marveling over their decision to accept him when Alec heaved out of his chair onto his crutches. “I cannot wait to tease the little henwit about this.”

“No!” Rackford exclaimed, turning to him a bit too vehemently as the others ambled toward the door. “Beg your pardon. But—” He looked around at them rather haplessly. “No one must mention this to Lady Jacinda. Not yet, anyway.”

“Why not?” Lucien asked with a curious glance.

“You know what a feisty, skittish creature she is. If you try to encourage her in my direction, it will only make her go the other way. She doesn’t like… being told what to do, I’m afraid.”