October 22nd, 1805
London
Charlotte laid down the quill and flexed her fingers. The muscles in her chest and shoulders and arms ached from the flying she’d done yesterday. She glanced across at Lord Cosgrove. A week ago he’d interviewed her, had offered her this job, and she’d looked at the bruises on his face, the scabbed and healing cuts, and almost refused.
The marks of violence were gone from Cosgrove’s face. And she knew she’d made the right choice. There is nowhere else I’d rather be.
She watched him for a moment—the brisk strokes of the quill as he wrote his next speech, the frown of concentration between the strong, black eyebrows. Her fingers curled into her palms. She craved to touch him, a visceral yearning that clenched in her chest, in her throat.
Scratch the itch, the earl had advised. But how?
Charlotte tore her gaze away and looked at the ebony and gold mantel clock, following the second hand with her eyes as it worked its way around the dial. “Sir? It’s three o’clock.”
The earl wrote a few words, read them back under his breath, crossed them out.
“Sir?” Charlotte said, more loudly. “It’s three o’clock. You’ll be late for Gentleman Jack.”
“What?” Cosgrove glanced up, blinked, and then his gray eyes focused on her. “Three o’clock? So it is. Thank you, lad.”
Charlotte fiddled with her quill while the earl gathered his notes together. “Sir . . . I’ve finished the Dorset accounts. May I take my belongings around to Chandlers Street?”
“Hmm? Yes, of course. You can start on the Somerset ledger when you get back.”
Twenty minutes later, with her valise and portmanteau installed at Mrs. Stitchbury’s, Charlotte hailed a hackney. “The Pig and Whistle,” she said, with a sense of recklessness. “In Aldgate High Street.”
Nervousness grew inside her while the hackney traversed London. Charlotte rehearsed what to say, muttering the words under her breath, as the earl had muttered his speech. The carriage was rattling down Aldgate High Street when it occurred to her that the Smiths might recognize her as Cosgrove’s new secretary. Who was to say they hadn’t been watching the earl’s house, that they hadn’t seen her in his company? Panic spurted in her chest—the hackney was slowing to a halt—before she remembered her magic. I wish to have dark brown hair, straight, not curling, and a broad face.
Insect legs crawled over her scalp for a second, over her cheeks and jaw.
The hackney lurched to a halt. Charlotte opened the door and jumped down. Across the street was the Pig and Whistle.
She took a deep breath. I can do this.
“Please wait here.” Charlotte pulled her hat brim low, in case the jarvey noticed her change in appearance, but the man’s attention was on the coins she was fishing from her pocket. “I’ll be no more than ten minutes.”
It was dark inside the Pig and Whistle, and the air was stale.
Charlotte inhaled shallowly. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. She was in a taproom with a low, beamed ceiling and a floor of bare timber. A dozen or so men sat at tables, drinking. She scanned their faces. None of them looked like the men from Tewkes Hollow.
One of the drinkers saw her. He nudged his companion, who turned and stared at her.
Charlotte resisted the urge to touch her cheeks and jaw and check that she had an ordinary man’s face. It was her clothes they were staring at—the polished top boots and neatly tied neckcloth. I’m too well-dressed.
She inhaled another shallow breath and crossed to the tap.
“What d’ y’ want?” It was the same woman who’d shouted at her yesterday, wearing the same dirty apron. Her gown was faded and stained and straining at the seams.
Charlotte removed her hat and bowed. “Good afternoon, madam.”
The woman tittered. “Madam!” she said. “Did y’ hear that, boys? Them’s manners for you.”
One of the patrons replied. Charlotte didn’t catch the words, but she understood the tone: derogatory.
Behind her, a guffaw went up.
A dull flush rose in the woman’s plump cheeks. “Don’t you pay no attention to ’em, sir. Ill-mannered louts as they are. What can I do you for?”
Charlotte took a shilling from her pocket. She slid it across the counter, but kept her finger on it. “I’m hoping, madam, that you may be able to help me in a matter.”
The woman’s eyes fastened on the coin. “And what matter might that be, sir?”
“I’m looking for two men who I believe are regular patrons of yours. Tall, heavyset men, a few years older than me.”
The woman sniffed. “Ain’t much of a description. Could be anyone.”
“They may be going by the name of Smith.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Smith?”
Charlotte felt her pulse quicken. “Do you know them, ma’am?”
“Mebbe, mebbe not.” The woman took a filthy rag from her apron pocket and swiped it across the counter. “What’s your int’rest in ’em?”
“My employer would like to hire them. They have been particularly recommended to him.”
“Hire ’em?”
Charlotte nodded, holding her breath.
The woman pursed her lips. “It might be Abel and Jeremiah Smith. They does drink ’ere often enough.”
Charlotte glanced over her shoulder at the men sitting, drinking. “Are they here now, madam?”
Her stomach tied itself in a knot while she waited for the reply.
“No.”
The knot in her belly unraveled. “What do they look like, madam?”
“They’s big men.” The woman shrugged. “Ain’t much to tell about ’em other ’n that.”
“What is their trade?”
“Abel and Jeremiah?” She snorted a laugh. “They does whatever needs doin’. They ain’t fussy.”
“Do you know, madam, whether they ever undertake commissions out of town?”
“They was away from Lunnon the night before last, workin’.”
And I know where: Tewkes Hollow. Charlotte tried not to let her excitement show. “Then, may I leave a message with you, madam?” She lifted her finger from the shilling.
The woman snatched it up.
“If you have a quill and paper—”
The woman snorted. “Abel and Jeremiah can’t read. You tell me your message, an’ I’ll make sure they gets it.”
Charlotte lowered her voice and leaned closer. “Can you please inform them that someone is desirous of offering them employment? There is a . . . a task that my master would like carried out that he believes to be well within their ability.” She hoped her manner implied that the task was illegal. “They’ll be generously paid for their efforts.”
“I’ll tell ’em.” The woman wiped the counter again with her rag, then stuffed it back in her apron.
“If they are interested, they may reach me at . . .” Charlotte hesitated. She didn’t want to give the Smiths her true address. “If they’d like to entrust their answer to you, I shall return tomorrow.”
“As you like, sir.”
“What’s your name, madam?”
“Sally Westrup. Mrs. Sally Westrup.” She emphasized the Mrs. as if it gave her respectability.
Charlotte bowed. “Thank you, Mrs. Westrup.”
The woman’s cheeks flushed a gratified pink. “Thank you, sir.”
Charlotte sat on the squab seat of the hackney, almost bouncing like a child in her excitement. I did it! She had the men’s names: Abel and Jeremiah Smith.
Alongside the excitement was a sense of pride, of achievement. She was growing into her role as a man, assertive and bold. Charlotte Appleby would never have dared venture into the Pig and Whistle by herself, but Christopher Albin had dared. Dared, and come away with valuable information.
A bubble of glee expanded in her chest as she imagined Cosgrove’s reaction to her news—and then deflated. What exactly was she to tell him? She didn’t want to lie to the earl, but she could hardly tell the truth.
She chewed on her lip as the hackney turned into High Holborn Street.
I’ll tell him that I disobeyed him. That I went back to Whitechapel as Albin. That I asked questions that led me to Aldgate.
He’d be furious with her. Livid. But she wasn’t afraid of Cosgrove’s anger. He wouldn’t slap her like Aunt Westcote. Wouldn’t scream at her or send her to bed without dinner.
Charlotte paid off the hackney in Duke Street. She strode across Grosvenor Square and climbed the steps to Cosgrove’s house two at a time, whistling under her breath.
“Good afternoon.” She greeted the butler with a smile and took off her hat. “Is his lordship back yet?”
Fellowes looked down his nose at her. “And who might you be, sir?”
Charlotte stared at him blankly. “What?” And then she caught sight of herself in the pier mirror. Straight brown hair. Broad face.
I’m not Christopher Albin!
“I beg your pardon,” she stammered. “Wrong house!” She wrenched the door open and fled outside, cramming her hat on her head.
Charlotte ran from the square, not halting until she was out of sight around a corner. Her heart hammered in her chest. How could she have forgotten she’d changed her appearance in Aldgate?
She wished her hair and face back to Albin’s. Horror was cold on her skin, cold in her belly. It congealed in her lungs, making it difficult to inhale, difficult to exhale.
Fool, to be so careless!
Above the rooftops, dusk was falling, the color leaching from the sky. An icy wind blustered down the street. Charlotte hunched her shoulders and hugged her arms. She shrank from returning to Grosvenor Square. What if Fellowes noticed she wore the same clothes as the stranger who’d fled so precipitously? But she should be at her desk in Cosgrove’s study, making a start on the Somerset accounts.
She shifted her weight from foot to foot, shivering. Cosgrove was likely still at Gentleman Jack’s. Wouldn’t a loyal secretary with exciting news to disclose follow him there?
Charlotte hailed a hackney cab. “Gentleman Jackson’s, please.”
She had hoped for a long drive, for time to compose herself, but the hackney halted less than three minutes later.
Charlotte scrambled out. “Where—?”
The jarvey pointed across the street.
“Thank you.”
Charlotte paid the man, and crossed the street. She tugged at her neckcloth, swallowed the nervous lump in her throat, and knocked.
After a moment, a bored servant opened the door. “We’re closed for the winter.”
“I’m Lord Cosgrove’s secretary.”
The servant shrugged and opened the door wider.
“He’s here?”
“Sparring with the Gentleman.”
Charlotte stepped inside. “Uh, where . . . ?”
She had a feeling the servant barely suppressed a yawn. He led her inside and gave a jerk of his thumb. “In there.”
The door he’d indicated stood open. Charlotte heard the creak of floorboards, the scuff of feet, the puff of panted breaths.
She hesitated, then trod towards the door. She took a deep breath—I’m excited, bursting with news—and stepped into the room and halted, staring.
The two men sparring were stripped to the waist.
Charlotte’s throat seemed to close, her lungs to drain of breath.
The man Cosgrove was fighting had to be Gentleman Jack, England’s Champion, but she had no eyes for him. She was transfixed by sight of the earl.
He looked nothing like Phillip Langford—doughy, soft, plump. He was Heracles, magnificent of body. She saw the strong shapes of his bones, saw the lines of tendon and sinew, saw the lean slabs of muscle.
The men circled one another, moving lightly on their feet, punching with padded gloves. Cosgrove’s hair was damp. A sheen of perspiration gleamed on his skin.
Neither man noticed her; their focus was wholly on each other.
A line of dark hair arrowed down Cosgrove’s abdomen and disappeared into his breeches. The sight of it made her flush with embarrassment. It seemed such an intimate thing, so private—that line of hair disappearing from view.
On the heels of embarrassment came a wave of longing, intense and painful. She wanted Cosgrove so much that it hurt.
Sex, which had seemed so grotesque at Mrs. Henshaw’s, wouldn’t be repugnant with Cosgrove. It could only be exciting to explore that body. What would the texture of his skin be like beneath her fingers? Would that hair on his abdomen be soft or crisp and wiry?
Longing clenched in her chest, as if someone had taken hold of her heart and squeezed it.
She saw his muscles flex, saw the wings of his shoulder blades move beneath his skin, saw the corrugations of his ribs and the long line of vertebrae marching down his back.
I want to touch him.
No. It was more than mere want. It was craving, intense and uncontrollable.
Charlotte discovered that her pego was pressed against her breeches, hot and hard and aching, poking up the fabric. I wish to have a soft pego, she said urgently in her head. Her pego subsided.
Charlotte exhaled a shallow, horrified breath. What if Cosgrove had turned around and seen that?
It was all very well for the earl to tell her that if she scratched the itch, it would go away; but she had no way of doing that. Not as Christopher Albin. Not with Lord Cosgrove.
The idea crystallized between one heartbeat and the next. I can do it as me. As Charlotte.
She didn’t see the blow that ended the contest. The earl stepped back with a laugh, clearly conceding defeat.
A servant she hadn’t noticed came forward, unfastened Cosgrove’s padded gloves and handed him a towel, then turned to remove the Champion’s gloves. Cosgrove wiped his face. He turned and saw her. “Albin? What are you doing here?”
Charlotte had to swallow twice before she found her voice. “I have some news, sir.”
“News?” He strode across to her. “What about?”
“The men from Tewkes Hollow.”
Cosgrove’s gaze sharpened. “What about them?”
Charlotte glanced behind him, to Gentleman Jack and the servant. “Should I tell you here, sir?”
“Perhaps not.” Sweat trickled down his temple. He wiped it away. This close, she could see the pulse beating in the hollow of his throat. The impulse to reach out and touch it was so strong, so powerful, that her hands lifted a few inches.
Charlotte gripped the lapels of her coat tightly. I wish to have a soft pego.
Cosgrove turned towards the Champion. “Jackson,” he said. “This is the lad I was telling you about.” His hand closed on Charlotte’s shoulder, urging her forward.
Charlotte walked into the center of the room.
Gentleman Jack looked her up and down. “Should strip well.” He was a plain man in his mid-thirties, thicker in the torso than the earl.
Charlotte was acutely aware of Cosgrove’s hand on her shoulder. The fresh, masculine scent of his sweat had a visceral effect, making the longing squeeze more tightly in her chest, making her throat close.
She wanted to turn her head and press her face to Cosgrove’s chest. Wanted to inhale his scent deeply. Taste his skin with her tongue.
Heat gathered fiercely in her groin. I wish to have a soft pego.
“He needs to learn to defend himself.”
The Gentleman nodded. “I’ll give him some lessons. Starting next week?”
“Much obliged to you, Jackson.” The earl released her shoulder.
Charlotte swallowed, found her breath, bowed to Gentleman Jack. “Thank you, sir.”
“I shan’t be long,” Cosgrove told her. He strode across to a door. It opened into a chamber outfitted as a dressing room.
Charlotte walked the perimeter of the salon while she waited, but her attention wasn’t on the pictures hanging on the walls, the scales and weights, the wooden staves.
Scratch the itch, Cosgrove had advised her.
Dare I?
She halted in front of a picture of a pugilist and stared at it unseeingly.
Charlotte Appleby no longer existed. She had no reputation to uphold, no virtue to guard. If she were ruined, no one would know or care.
Dare I?
Cosgrove hadn’t shut the door to the dressing room. She slid her gaze sideways, watched him roughly towel his hair and face and torso dry.
The intense, visceral craving gripped her again, squeezing her throat, making breathing difficult.
Or perhaps the better question to ask was: Dare I not? Her lust for Cosgrove strengthened with each day that passed. If she was to continue as his secretary she had to conquer it. Had to.
Cosgrove pulled on his shirt and buttoned his waistcoat. He took a minute in front of the mirror to tie his neckcloth, then raked his fingers through his hair, tidying it.
Charlotte stared at him in helpless, aching longing. I shall go mad if I don’t touch him.
And with that thought, the decision was made.
Cosgrove shrugged into his tailcoat. “Let’s go, lad,” he said, emerging into the main salon.