As February progressed to March, Cecy’s cheeks finally took on a bit of natural color and her eyes lost their constant wariness. She pursued her acquaintance with Mrs. Mackey, the housekeeper, met Cook and the housemaids, and Jed, the kitchen boy, whose blatant admiration for Nick Black outstripped Fetch’s. Gratitude for being rescued from the streets? Cecy wondered, or did he too share her employer’s bed? Oddly, each day the question pained her a bit more.
She told herself her discomfort was not only because sodomy was unnatural, it was a hanging offense. And Nick Black had been kind to her, she didn’t want to see him taken up . . .
Alone in her room, Cecy gave a most unladylike snort. As if anyone dared take Nick Black up for anything. He probably had half the Bow Street runners in his pocket, as well as the River Police, and magistrates from Kensington to Limehouse and the Isle of Dogs.
Unease rippled up her spine. Something was wrong with her reasoning, she could feel it deep down. Something that said London’s gangs would not tolerate the control, or even the oversight, of a molly man. Yet she had been in the house on Princes Street three weeks now and not one of the inhabitants had favored her with so much as a flirtatious glance, let alone anything that could have been deemed salacious. The men conversed politely, if minimally, at dinner, did not slurp their soup, nor fist their knives and forks. Only Fetch, however, could be termed forthright in his conversation—though, to everyone’s astonishment, his speech had noticeably improved when speaking to his hostess. Cecy suspected it was the precocious boy’s taunting version of: See, see, I can do it if I please.
After dinner, however, the men unbent enough to applaud her songs with enthusiasm. Once or twice, she thought she caught a fleeting emotion on her employer’s face as he listened. But it was probably nothing more than the flickering candlelight. Or her imagination.
Nick Black had assigned two sturdy and well-armed guards to accompany her on journeys into the rookeries and to Boone Farm. Burt Higgins, though fast approaching fifty, had once been a pugilist and was still a handy man with his fives. Or so Fetch assured her. Tim Riggs, at eighteen, was one of Nick Black’s newer strong men. But agile and smart as Billy be damned—another confidence from Fetch. Cecy, having learned just how harsh the world could be, welcomed the company of both men, their shotguns, pistols, clubs, and knives as well.
Every other day she visited one of the three charities, spending hours talking to staff, children, mothers and prospective mothers, learning things she’d never wanted to know about, let alone experience through the hearts and minds of those who lived it. There were thousands of abandoned children living on the streets, Mrs. Dawes told her. And the Lord only knew how many women making their living on their backs, she’d added. “We try, but the burden is so overwhelming, sometimes I’m tempted to simply walk away.” The older woman heaved a sigh and hung her head. A tear fell onto her apron.
Cecy winced. Oh dear God, and here I thought a bit of bright paint and colorful fabric might help. Yet not even the whole of Nick Black’s fortune . . .
No! Her job was to help those already rescued from the streets. If she thought about the thousands still out there, she would accomplish nothing. She had to learn how to find decent work for the children old enough to leave, respectable positions for the unwed mothers and their children . . .
Cecy stifled a groan. Respectable positions for whores and their bastards? Merciful heavens, did Nick Black think she came to him with wings, a halo, and miracles tucked into her reticule?
Likely she was just another one of his charities, though her suggestions for improvements were undoubtedly making her his most expensive project yet. Cecy’s lips curled into a smile as she bounded to feet and headed downstairs. On the days she did not visit Nick Black’s charities, she met with the man himself, delivering a report on her previous day’s activities. She had come to enjoy these moments. His questions were penetrating, his counter-suggestions useful, and, amazingly, in the end he almost always accepted her recommendations.
But today his mind seemed elsewhere. Cecy wasn’t even certain he heard her when she asked if it was true there were as many as six thousand children on their own in London’s rookeries. “Mr. Black?” she ventured when the silence between them lengthened.
His gaze shifted from somewhere past her left shoulder to finally focus on her face. “Six thousand? Does that include the ones incarcerated in the hulks prior to transportation? The ones they’ve hanged?”
Cecy gasped. “Hanged? They hang children?”
“Oh yes, and they go to the gallows heads high, keeping the law of the streets to the very end.” Two beats of silence, and then: “If I hadn’t sent Ned and Ben to pull him in, I fear Fetch would have been next.”
“But you survived.”
“Things were easier then—fewer Runners, the River Police busy with bigger game.”
Cecy steepled her hands in front of her face. “I feel so inadequate,” she admitted.
“As do we all when it comes to doing good.” For a moment his customarily immobile face revealed an expression of deep disgust. “I am an expert on all manner of crime, I command an army of a thousand lost souls, yet I can barely make a dent on the side of good. A lowering thought, wouldn’t you say, Miss Lilly?”
Cecy peeped at him from around her fingers. At the starkly handsome face—dark hair, piercing eyes, firm slash of a mouth—and realized she no longer saw him as the Devil but a man alone at the top, who might just possibly enjoy his moments conversing with her as much as she enjoyed talking to him. Hell’s hounds, she must be fit for Bedlam!
“Enough talk,” he declared. “It’s time we proceeded down a different front.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Change into a carriage dress, my girl—your most striking. At five o’clock we will join the parade in Hyde Park. Not many nobs in town yet, but that’s just as well. Give you time to ease back into it.”
“Into what?” Cecy whispered, her hands now clenched tightly in her lap.
Somehow his cold eyes managed ingenuous. “Why, back into the world of high-flyers, Miss Lilly. It’s time the ton realized you are under my protection.”
Under my protection. Just another way to say she was his mistress, his courtesan, his whore. Cecy jumped up and ran for the door.
“Stop!”
Her brain ignored the roar, her legs did not. Cecy skidded to a halt, her hand on the door knob.
“Good God, woman, come back here. I thought you understood you could trust me.”
Caught between fear and fuming, Cecy slunk back to her seat, reassuring herself with a silent chant of molly man, molly man.
“Foolish chit,” Nick grumbled, adding under his breath what might have been: “As if I ever forced a woman in my life.”
“Explain,” Cecy demanded.
Nick leaned back in his chair and gave her a sharply assessing look. “We are embarking on our campaign against Longmere. Of necessity, you are part of the plot. No protests,” he added sternly as her lips parted. “You must be brave and play your role. Surely there must be satisfaction in flaunting yourself before him in the very carriage he gave you.”
Flaunting? But the rest of the sentence put paid to her indignation. “What do you mean by the very carriage he gave me? Did you not sell it?”
And suddenly he was wearing his Devil’s face once more, the mask sculptured of ice one moment, burning with all the furies of hell the next. “No, Miss Lilly, I did not. I had no need to be paid for my services.”
“No, of course not.” Ah, dear God, only now did she realize had badly she’d erred. She had insulted him . . . perhaps even wounded him. Was that possible? Could anyone touch the heart or soul of Nick Black? For fear of making matters worse, she dared not even say she was sorry. She settled for: “Naturally, I will be happy to do anything I can to disrupt Longmere’s existence.”
“Five o’clock, don’t be late.”
Cecy rose, dropped a subdued curtsy, and scurried out.
She was accustomed to being ignored in Hyde Park, to fashionably dressed ladies in ponderous landaus and smart barouches sticking their noses in the air and passing by with heads averted, as if a single glimpse of a courtesan might taint their eligibility for the ton. But on this crisp March day, with the sunshine peeking only intermittently through lowering clouds, traffic was light, the daily parade around Rotten Row predominantly male—driving sporting curricles, high-perch phaetons, or on horseback. The females sprinkled among them were mostly courtesans disporting their wares, some sitting in open carriages, a few of the most daring driving themselves—as Cecy had been wont to do when Longmere was not available. She enjoyed the power, the independence of driving herself, not only through the park but through the streets of London as well.
The women not of the ton, Cecy had discovered, were friendly—nodding, acknowledging her as one of their own. Today, however, their eyes were wider, their gazes more speculative. And the men . . .? She and Nick Black had not driven a hundred yards before Cecy noticed the incongruity. The gentlemen, without exception, barely slanted their gaze in her direction, while even noblemen of the highest rank nodded to Nick Black. They might not smile or stop to chat, but they did not sweep past on the far side of the path, acting as if he did not exist.
Nor did they openly admire the woman with him. The truth was all too apparent. They were wary, one and all, because he was proclaiming to the world that she was Nick Black’s woman. Cecy’s stomach roiled; she grabbed the seat’s narrow railing and hung on tight, forcing her face into what she hoped was a blandly pleasant expression. Perhaps Mr. Black simply wanted to hide his proclivities behind her skirts. Yes, that must be it.
That’s not what he told you, her inner voice chided. This is about revenge.
Does it matter, since he’s likely the greatest liar in London?
“Look smart! It’s Longmere, coming this way.” Nick’s bark brought her back to the bleak prospect of not-yet-spring in Hyde Park. “Head high, chin up. Nod as cool as you please. You’re a duchess, he the younger son of a younger son.”
“I can’t!”
“You will!”
“I’m going to be sick.”
“No, you won’t!”
Cecy swallowed the bile in her throat and did as she was told, certain her face must be as white as the sheets on her bed. At any moment her stomach was going to cast up its contents. Oh, dear God, their carriage was slowing down, stopping. Longmere, on horseback, responded by slowing his horse to a walk and, finally, just as he was about to pass them by, bringing his chestnut gelding to a mincing halt beside them.
The oddity of the Marquess of Longmere deigning to speak to the likes of Nick Black in full view of the fashionable parade in Hyde Park stunned her. Everything she knew of London society said this could not happen. Yet it was.
“Do you know where I found her, brother?” Nick Black asked. “On your doorstep, beaten near to the death,” he added as Cecy’s head whirled into chaos, banishing her nausea. “As a family courtesy, I warn you I intend to avenge every bruise, every cracked rib, every fear you left her with. Not to mention a few grievances of my own. Good-day to you. You’ll not have many more.” Nick proffered his coldest nod, flicked the reins, and moved on.
Cecy stared straight ahead, her eyes not taking in the fine gait of the chestnut gelding Longmere had purchased for her. Nor the speculative glances cast their way, the avid curiosity about what Nick Black had said to his companion’s former protector. “It’s not true, is it?” she asked at last.
“That I plan to ruin him?”
“You called him brother.”
“Oh that.” Cecy could have sworn she heard a smile in his voice. A nasty smile. “That’s what my mother told me before one of her customers found his watch gone and broke her neck. And it just might be true, for where else would I acquire so much arrogance and so many bad traits rolled into one?”
“I take it Longmere knows?”
“We’ve met before,” Nick responded tersely as he turned the carriage toward Marlborough Gate, the nearest exit.
“You enjoyed making him quake.”
“Oh yes.”
“While I was dressed in garments he paid for . . . and riding in the carriage he had constructed just for me.”
“You object?”
“I am glad you are not my enemy,” Cecy returned with utmost sincerity. “Though . . . in spite of all you have done for me, I’m not at all sure I can call you friend.” She peeped at him from under the brim of her stylish carriage bonnet. “I am a tool, am I not? A convenient weapon in your vengeance against Longmere—because you are the bastard and he is not.”
He pulled up the carriage just short of the gate, his hands white-knuckling around the reins. “Look at me,” he ordered. When she did, he intoned, his eyes as fierce as she’d ever seen them, “Yes, Longmere has always been there, a shining goal, as was his father before him. But I achieved that goal, or as close to it as it was possible to come. I had no thought of vengeance. The sin was our father’s, not his. If he had not harmed you, there would be no plot to ruin him. If I use you, it is only because you are the cause I fight for. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Cecy murmured, blinking once before ducking her gaze to her lap. If only she could believe him.
And if she did, it would be one more thing to make her skin crawl in his presence. Longmere and Nick Black with the same corrupt blood? It was enough to make her run, screaming, back to Thornhill Manor, begging to be set up for a housekeeper in a remote corner of the kingdom.
But she wouldn’t, she knew she wouldn’t. It might be her desire for vengeance, it might be the tug of her conflicting emotions about Nick Black, but whatever was planned, she would see it through.