The Highwayman (27 page)

“Thank you, Madame Sandrine. I apologize for the imposition upon your time.”

“Nonsense!” The woman gathered herself from the floor in a pool of skirts. “In this shop, time stops for Dorian Blackwell, and now his
femme,
as well.” Gingerly, she helped Farah out of the dress, leaving her only in her corset and underthings. “Next I shall bring an assortment of
lingerie.
”

“Oh, no, that's quite all right,” Farah protested. “I have plenty of respectable—”

“Yes, bring them,” Dorian interjected. “Only your best.”

“That goes without saying. A newly wedded husband wants nothing to do with
respectable
undergarments.” The dressmaker tossed a lascivious smile toward Farah. “I have
just
the things that will keep the mistresses' beds empty and cold.” She bustled out, sweeping the blue gown with her.

Mistresses?
Farah glanced at Blackwell. He wouldn't ever have mistresses, would he? No. He could barely bring himself to lie with
her
. But what about the future? What if he developed a taste for sex that she could not fulfill? What if he found someone whose touch did not repel him?

A brightness glimmered back at her from where her dark husband sat in the shadows. A look not of laughter or joy precisely, but a rearrangement from his usual cold calculation. A sense of reclining and recreation, and dare she say joviality?

“Don't tell me you're enjoying this,” she warned.

His smug look became a full smirk.

“She thinks you have a harem of mistresses.”

“I believe you've pointed out before, it's a common misconception.”

“I'm fairly certain Madame Sandrine would like to apply for a position within the ranks,” Farah muttered.

“I find that jealousy becomes you, wife.” The suggestion in Dorian's voice caressed all the way down to her respectable knickers.

“Don't flatter yourself.” She was
not
jealous. Though, she had to admit, the suggestion that she couldn't please a husband such as the Blackheart of Ben More enough to keep him from straying hurt more than she'd expected.

“You can assign me a great many sins, but self-approbation is not among them.” Dorian's voice danced with amusement, and Farah had to fight back a threatening smile.

“If self-approbation were your only sin, you'd be an honest and virtuous man,” she quipped, lowering her lashes to hide her enjoyment.

“You weren't looking for virtuous when you found me,” he said softly.

She made a sound of mock outrage, and chucked a balled-up stocking at him and he caught it. “You know full well I didn't find you!
You
took
me
captive!”

“Is that how you remember it?”

“That's what
happened,
” she insisted.

“I recall being quite captivated when first we met,” he said lightly. “Helpless, I daresay.”

Farah's snort turned into a reluctant laugh. “Don't be charming. It doesn't suit you.”

The glimmer in his blue eye became a twinkle, the curve of his mouth lifted a little too far to be called a smirk anymore. But a smile? Almost … “No one's ever accused me of being charming before.”

“You don't say.” Lord, were they—flirting?

Madame Sandrine's swishing skirts announced her arrival. “Here we are! The latest in Parisian fashion.” She selected a particularly thin bit of lace chemise in the palest shade of lavender from her cart, stocked with everything from corsets to drawers, stockings, garters, and nightgowns that barely covered enough to deserve the name. “This would go with these stockings—”

“Wrap one of everything,” Dorian ordered.

Farah imagined her dumbfounded look was just as ridiculous as the seamstress's. “But, that's a small fortune in
underthings,
for which I really have no need.”

“As it so happens, I have a small fortune to spend on underthings.”

Madame Sandrine's throaty laugh set Farah's teeth on edge. She reached into the cart and picked up a long sheer gown comprised of fine black lace.

Farah didn't miss the tightening of her husband's features.

Perhaps these would push him over the edge, entice him to “defile” her again. A blush climbed up her cheeks as Farah imagined herself in nothing but this bit of lace, drawing the lustful mismatched gaze of her husband. The garment was almost more indecent than being naked. Something a
mistress
would wear. Or a prostitute.

A horrific realization seized her, and Farah gasped, letting the garment slip from her fingers before she covered her suddenly burning eyes with both hands.

Prostitute.
“Gemma!” she groaned. Tears squeezed from her clenched eyelids as she considered all the terrors the woman faced in her absence. Farah had promised the poor prostitute that she'd be there before her release from Scotland Yard. That she would help her escape the clutches of Edmond Druthers. She'd been so busy what with getting drugged, kidnapped, and subsequently married, that she'd all but forgotten. “What have I done?”

“What are you talking about?” Dorian's voice was closer, alert, and concerned. “What's the matter?

Slowly, Farah lowered her hands, revealing the wide form now towering in front of her. A dark notion swirled in the periphery of her moral conscience. Her
husband
was none other than the formidable and notorious Blackheart of Ben More. His name struck fear into the hearts of the most hardened criminals, to say nothing of his menacing features and powerful frame.

She only hoped that her outlaw husband would be willing to place his ill-gotten skills at her disposal. Sucking a bracing breath into her lungs, she prepared to speak the words that might just strike her final alliance with the devil. “Dorian, I need your help.”

*   *   *

A silent, expectant aura lifted the fine hairs on the back of Dorian's neck as he surveyed the foul-smelling mists of the London docks. He didn't have time for this. Furthermore, he didn't like bringing Farah here. The dangers of the London neighborhood of Wapping didn't exactly rival that of Whitechapel, but one didn't bring their treasures here and hope to keep them. At least not at this hour of the early morning with all the river pirates and smugglers making use of the dark wharfs along the Thames.

Three things kept his shoulders relaxed as he strolled down Wapping High Street with Farah beside him.

The first was the thick copper hair, wide shoulders, and long stride of Christopher Argent, who guarded Farah's other side. Dorian's London assassin had the eyes of a hawk and the reflexes of a mongoose. Nothing would leap from the shadows that Argent didn't see coming.

The second was that Murdoch flanked Farah and, despite his stout frame and advanced years, he was handy with a pistol or two. Though Dorian saved pistols as a last resort, as they tended to rouse the coppers if fired within the city. No need for that, tonight. Or ever.

The third, and most important, was that he remained Dorian Blackwell, and he owned the interest, goods, and loyalties of more than half the dock smugglers and river pirates along the Thames. This was his world. Not because he belonged here, but because he
ruled
here. Anyone they'd likely meet would either owe him fealty, money, or blood. And if someone stepped in his path, he'd collect his due.

If the Thames was a river of filth and sewage, Wapping High Street was a river of brick and stone. The structures here were comprised mostly of moldy warehouses and crumbling manufacturing buildings made obsolete by the new industrial revolution. The cobbles shone blue from the full moon, as street lamps were spaced much less liberally here than back on the lively Strand or in wealthy Mayfair. The moonlight never reached the deep alleys or narrow roads that led from the thoroughfare out to the docks.

This was a place for men who lived in shadows. Men like him.

Dorian glanced down at his wife. Her upswept ringlets glowed in the moonlight like a silver beacon against the seedy grime barely concealed by the night. He should not have brought her. Should have insisted she stay back in the safety of his terrace.

They shouldn't be here at all, chasing after errant prostitutes. They'd interviewed over a dozen between Queen's Head Alley and where they now stood on the corner of Brewhouse Lane. Farah had offered them coin, resources, and a place to sleep for any information about her friend Gemma Warlow.

Dorian couldn't understand her grim determination. There were too many prostitutes to save. Too many orphans and urchins to house. Too many of the wretched and starving to feed. Chances were they'd go to all this trouble and the whore would run back to her master the moment her bruises healed and the man called her to him with a flippant apology.

Dorian had known and hated Edmond Druthers for years. The man was the human equivalent of the toxic sludge that gathered along the banks at low tide. No one wanted it there, but no one knew quite how to rid the city of it.

Gods, this was a bloody waste of time.

But Farah's acute distress and earnest tears had unstitched him, and Dorian had known for some time that he could deny her nothing. Not even this fool's errand. Christopher Argent kept stealing disbelieving looks at Farah, his blue eyes reflecting the ambient glow like an alley cat's. Dorian understood why the man would dare in his presence.

First, because Christopher Argent was an unfeeling, fearless killer-for-hire.

And second, because most of the incarcerated men at Newgate had considered Dougan's
Fairy
some mythical creature, a sight too rare and beautiful to be beheld by a common man. Maybe even a fancy born of an imagination keen enough to take possession of the prison. To meet her was to gaze upon a fantasy realized, to remember the desperate yearnings of a lonely prisoner bereft of kindness, mercy, or beauty. To be blinded by the embodiment of all three of those things. For a man like Argent, one born into incarceration, the sight might have him reassessing some long-held cynical philosophies.

But judging from the curious yet calculating look sparkling in Argent's pale eyes, Dorian realized he could be mistaken. Seventeen years and he still knew next to nothing about the man other than the fact that Argent would kill without question and was abjectly loyal to him.

Farah was oblivious to the man, so intent was she on the rescue of her friend. She likewise ignored the sounds of drunken dockworkers spending what they won in many belowground gin hells for a cheap fuck, and approached the women who stood in the streets, brave enough, or desperate enough, to service thieves, smugglers, and dock pirates. Her composure was impressive as she conversed with these women without fear or judgment, even recognizing some of them by name. They might have been respectable ladies meeting in a city park, rather than unwashed wraiths stinking of sweat, sex, and in some cases, disease.

Problem was, Farah was getting nowhere, and with each dead end, her shoulders would lose a bit of their starch, and her eyes lost a bit more hope. Dragging Blackwell and Argent in her wake guaranteed her loose tongues, as no one would dare deny them, but it seemed that Gemma Warlow was nowhere to be found.

“I'm beginning to wonder if Druthers hasn't—killed her,” Farah worried. “And it would be all my fault.”

“How in God's name would it be your fault?” Dorian asked, staring down two sailors who leaned against an abandoned building. Hired muscle, possibly, awaiting an incoming shipment of smuggled goods, pocketing what would have been paid to the crown in import taxes.

Not his freight. They didn't have anything scheduled until a company fleet arrived from the Orient in a week's time.

Dorian heard his name spoken in awestruck whispers and knew the men wouldn't be a bother. But they shouldn't be looking at his wife like they did, so he didn't break his glare until they found something interesting to study about their boots.

“I told Gemma when I left Scotland Yard with Morley that I would return in the morning to help her figure out how to escape Druthers for good. When I didn't show she must have felt so—Wait a moment.” She stopped walking and her vanguard paused as well as she turned on Dorian. Her eyes, once wide and luminous with tears, now narrowed with accusation. “This isn't my fault, this is
your
fault.”

Argent hid his amused smile behind the upturned collar of his long, black coat, but Murdoch didn't bother hiding his undignified snort of laughter.

Dorian blinked. “I fail to see how.”

“If you hadn't kidnapped me, I'd have been there for her.”

“You also might have been murdered on the way to work,” Dorian reminded her stiffly. “There is a price on your head, you know.”

“Yes, but Gemma Warlow might be the one who is murdered now. Is my life any more important than hers?” Farah challenged.

“It is to me.”

Three pairs of eyes widened in the blue darkness, and Dorian narrowed his in challenging response. He'd step over a mountain of murdered Gemma Warlows if it meant saving Farah, and didn't feel one drop of shame for the truth of it. Though her features told him shock had turned back into reprobation, and therefore Dorian wisely remained silent.

“I 'ear you're lookin' for Gemma,” a voice cooed from the stairs that led down to the Hangman's Pub and emptied onto Brew House Lane.

His wife instantly forgot her ire, and rushed toward the top of the stairs, her eyes beseeching as she gazed down at an aging dark-haired woman dressed in little more than tatters. “Yes! Gemma Warlow. Have you seen her?”

The strumpet pushed matted hair away from eyes alight with calculation. She looked through Farah to Dorian, and saw opportunity.

“Wot's it werf to you, Black'eart?” she asked in her thick cockney. “We all know just how deep your pockets be lined. And you know there in't no questions on the docks wot's answered for free.”