The woman was dressed in the costume of a lady from India.
For a moment all was silence, save for her breathing. Triumph raced through Bridget’s chest. At last!
Then she heard a masculine chuckle behind her.
Bridget froze, ice sliding down her spine. The sound could be nothing else, not the wind or a creaky house or even a mouse in the walls.
She turned, pushing the panel shut with her shoulder, and palming the portrait as she did so.
The Duke of Montgomery, all golden hair and sharp blue eyes, and wearing a purple velvet suit, smiled at her from the armchair in the far corner of the room.
“A lovely woman in my bed, what a fetching surprise.” He cocked his head, a corner of his beautiful mouth curving cruelly. “Tell me, Mrs. Crumb, what are you looking for?”
“I HAVE SOMETHING to discuss with you,” Asa told Eve late that night.
“Do you?” she asked absently. He was sprawled entirely nude over her bed and she’d made him promise not to move for at least five minutes.
“Yes,” he said, his voice sounding a little strained, possibly because she was tracing up the veins of his cock. “If you still wish to go to the Continent to find your brother, I want to go with you.”
“Hmm,” she replied, because penises were truly fascinating things.
He lifted his head to peer at her.
“No moving,” she snapped.
He obediently let his head fall to the pillows. “I’ll need to find a manager to take my place while I’m gone.”
“Yes?”
“And we’ll need to marry first,” he rasped. “I think my sisters and sister-in-law are already planning the wedding. I told them to keep it small, but I have a feeling it won’t be.”
Her heart beat a little faster as she trailed a finger around the head of his cock. “I’d rather like a big wedding.”
He frowned ferociously. “Then you’ll have one. I’ll give you anything you want; you have to know that, Eve.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Anything?”
He glared at her. “Yes!”
She leaned forward and touched her tongue to the moisture seeping from the slit at the top.
“Fucking God!”
She pulled back, a little shocked. “You swear too much, you know.”
“Goddamn it, Eve, I just want to make you happy.”
“I am,” she said softly. “You make me very happy indeed and I can’t wait to be married to you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Then come here and kiss me properly.”
She cast a forlorn look at his penis.
“You can play with my prick later.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her very lewdly and thoroughly.
“I love you, Eve Dinwoody,” he said softly, his voice so low it was nearly a purr, when at last he pulled away. “I love you more than wine and my right hand and my garden. I think I loved you the day you burst into my rooms.”
She pulled back at that, because there were only so many ridiculous statements she could take. “You did not! You told me I had an enormous nose.”
He kissed her on the nose. “Well, maybe not then, but I was fascinated by you in any case. And I was a little in love with you by the time you made me touch myself in your carriage.”
“I didn’t make you,” she retorted. “You seemed very happy to do it indeed.”
“Hush,” he said, “I’m trying to declare my love for you and you’re ruining it.”
“Not really,” she whispered. “It seems quite perfect to me.”
“Does it?” he asked, suddenly serious. “Because I would do anything for you, Eve, anything. If it means telling you I love you every day of my sorry life I’ll do it, just to make up for my idiocy.”
“Good,” she whispered. “Because I love you, too.”
He smiled then, that wide, confident, dangerous smile—that smile that was all hers now—and kissed her.
Epilogue
“Now I can take you home,” Eric said.
But at his words Dove grew sad. “I have no home,” she said, and told him her sorrowful tale and that her father and his soldiers no doubt still hunted her through the forest.
“Well, that’s easily answered,” said Eric, and, taking the bags of silk, emeralds, and perfumes, they set off for her father’s palace.
The moment they stepped foot inside the king’s courtyard, he came rushing out. “I’ll have your heart!” he cried to Dove.
But Eric turned into an enormous lion and, with a terrible roar, he tore into the king’s great belly. Out of the dead king’s belly spilled all the hearts of his children, still beating, and as they did so, the children rose from where they had been buried in the courtyard. The hearts flew to the children they belonged to and entered their chests and this is how the king’s children were reborn, whole and alive again.
“Sister!” called the cohort of reborn princes and princesses. “You have saved us and thus must be our queen.”
Then the king’s soldiers knelt and pledged allegiance to Dove.
The lion turned and came to Dove as well, but when he went to kneel, she tangled her fingers in his thick mane. “Not you, dear Eric. You have no need to kneel before me.”
At that he became a man again and asked, “What then shall I be?”
“Why, my husband and king of this land,” said she, “to rule beside me all the days of our lives, happily and in peace.”
And so they did.
—From The Lion and the Dove
DISCOVER HOW THE SIZZLING MAIDEN LANE SERIES STARTED!
PLEASE SEE THE NEXT PAGE FOR AN EXCERPT FROM
Wicked Intentions
Chapter One
Once upon a time, in a land long forgotten now, there lived a mighty king, feared by all and loved by none. His name was King Lockedheart.…
—from King Lockedheart
LONDON
FEBRUARY 1737
A woman abroad in St. Giles at midnight was either very foolish or very desperate. Or, as in her own case, Temperance Dews reflected wryly, a combination of both.
“’Tis said the Ghost of St. Giles haunts on nights like this,” Nell Jones, Temperance’s maidservant, said chattily as she skirted a noxious puddle in the narrow alley.
Temperance glanced dubiously at her. Nell had spent three years in a traveling company of actors and sometimes had a tendency toward melodrama.
“There’s no ghost haunting St. Giles,” Temperance replied firmly. The cold winter night was frightening enough without the addition of specters.
“Oh, indeed, there is.” Nell hoisted the sleeping babe in her arms higher. “He wears a black mask and a harlequin’s motley and carries a wicked sword.”
Temperance frowned. “A harlequin’s motley? That doesn’t sound very ghostlike.”
“It’s ghostlike if he’s the dead spirit of a harlequin player come back to haunt the living.”
“For bad reviews?”
Nell sniffed. “And he’s disfigured.”
“How would anyone know that if he’s masked?”
They were coming to a turn in the alley, and Temperance thought she saw light up ahead. She held her lantern high and gripped the ancient pistol in her other hand a little tighter. The weapon was heavy enough to make her arm ache. She could have brought a sack to carry it in, but that would’ve defeated its purpose as a deterrent. Though loaded, the pistol held but one shot, and to tell the truth, she was somewhat hazy on the actual operation of the weapon.
Still, the pistol looked dangerous, and Temperance was grateful for that. The night was black, the wind moaning eerily, bringing with it the smell of excrement and rotting offal. The sounds of St. Giles rose about them—voices raised in argument, moans and laughter, and now and again the odd, chilling scream. St. Giles was enough to send the most intrepid woman running for her life.
And that was without Nell’s conversation.
“Horribly disfigured,” Nell continued, ignoring Temperance’s logic. “’Tis said his lips and eyelids are clean burned off, as if he died in a fire long ago. He seems to grin at you with his great yellow teeth as he comes to pull the guts from your belly.”
Temperance wrinkled her nose. “Nell!”
“That’s what they say,” Nell said virtuously. “The ghost guts his victims and plays with their entrails before slipping away into the night.”
Temperance shivered. “Why would he do that?”
“Envy,” Nell said matter-of-factly. “He envies the living.”
“Well, I don’t believe in spirits in any case.” Temperance took a breath as they turned the corner into a small, wretched courtyard. Two figures stood at the opposite end, but they scuttled away at their approach. Temperance let out her breath. “Lord, I hate being abroad at night.”
Nell patted the infant’s back. “Only a half mile more. Then we can put this wee one to bed and send for the wet nurse in the morning.”
Temperance bit her lip as they ducked into another alley. “Do you think she’ll live until morning?”
But Nell, usually quite free with her opinions, was silent. Temperance peered ahead and hurried her step. The baby looked to be only weeks old and had not yet made a sound since they’d recovered her from the arms of her dead mother. Normally a thriving infant was quite loud. Terrible to think that she and Nell might’ve made this dangerous outing for naught.
But then what choice had there been, really? When she’d received word at the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children that a baby was in need of her help, it had still been light. She’d known from bitter experience that if they’d waited until morn to retrieve the child, it would either have expired in the night from lack of care or would’ve already been sold for a beggar’s prop. She shuddered. The children bought by beggars were often made more pitiful to elicit sympathy from passersby. An eye might be put out or a limb broken or twisted. No, she’d really had no choice. The baby couldn’t wait until morning.
Still, she’d be very happy when they made it back to the home.
They were in a narrow passage now, the tall houses on either side leaning inward ominously. Nell was forced to walk behind Temperance or risk brushing the sides of the buildings. A scrawny cat snaked by, and then there was a shout very near.
Temperance’s steps faltered.
“Someone’s up ahead,” Nell whispered hoarsely.
They could hear scuffling and then a sudden high scream.
Temperance swallowed. The alley had no side passages. They could either retreat or continue—and to retreat meant another twenty minutes added to their journey.
That decided her. The night was chilly, and the cold wasn’t good for the babe.
“Stay close to me,” she whispered to Nell.
“Like a flea on a dog,” Nell muttered.
Temperance squared her shoulders and held the pistol firmly in front of her. Winter, her youngest brother, had said that one need only point it and shoot. That couldn’t be too hard. The light from the lantern spilled before them as she entered another crooked courtyard. Here she stood still for just a second, her light illuminating the scene ahead like a pantomime on a stage.
A man lay on the ground, bleeding from the head. But that wasn’t what froze her—blood and even death were common enough in St. Giles. No, what arrested her was the second man. He crouched over the first, his black cloak spread to either side of him like the wings of a great bird of prey. He held a long black walking stick, the end tipped with silver, echoing his hair, which was silver as well. It fell straight and long, glinting in the lantern’s light. Though his face was mostly in darkness, his eyes glinted from under the brim of a black tricorne. Temperance could feel the weight of the stranger’s stare. It was as if he physically touched her.
“Lord save and preserve us from evil,” Nell murmured, for the first time sounding fearful. “Come away, ma’am. Swiftly!”
Thus urged, Temperance ran across the courtyard, her shoes clattering on the cobblestones. She darted into another passage and left the scene behind.
“Who was he, Nell?” she panted as they made their way through the stinking alley. “Do you know?”
The passage let out suddenly into a wider road, and Temperance relaxed a little, feeling safer without the walls pressing in.
Nell spat as if to clear a foul taste from her mouth.
Temperance looked at her curiously. “You sounded like you knew that man.”
“Knew him, no,” Nell replied. “But I’ve seen him about. That was Lord Caire. He’s best left to himself.”
“Why?”
Nell shook her head, pressing her lips firmly together. “I shouldn’t be speaking about the likes of him to you at all, ma’am.”
Temperance let that cryptic comment go. They were on a better street now—some of the shops had lanterns hanging by the doors, lit by the inhabitants within. Temperance turned one more corner onto Maiden Lane, and the foundling home came within sight. Like its neighbors, it was a tall brick building of cheap construction. The windows were few and very narrow, the doorway unmarked by any sign. In the fifteen precarious years of the foundling home’s existence, there had never been a need to advertise.
Abandoned and orphaned children were all too common in St. Giles.
“Home safely,” Temperance said as they reached the door. She set down the lantern on the worn stone step and took out the big iron key hanging by a cord at her waist. “I’m looking forward to a dish of hot tea.”
“I’ll put this wee one to bed,” Nell said as they entered the dingy little hall. It was spotlessly clean, but that didn’t hide the fallen plaster or the warped floorboards.
“Thank you.” Temperance removed her cloak and was just hanging it on a peg when a tall male form appeared at the far doorway.
“Temperance.”
She swallowed and turned. “Oh! Oh, Winter, I did not know you’d returned.”
“Obviously,” her younger brother said drily. He nodded to the maidservant. “A good eventide to you, Nell.”
“Sir.” Nell curtsied and looked nervously between brother and sister. “I’ll just see to the, ah, children, shall I?”
And she fled upstairs, leaving Temperance to face Winter’s disapproval alone.
Temperance squared her shoulders and moved past her brother. The foundling home was long and narrow, squeezed by the neighboring houses. There was one room off the small entryway. It was used for dining and, on occasion, receiving the home’s infrequent important visitors. At the back of the house were the kitchens, which Temperance entered now. The children had all had their dinner promptly at five o’clock, but neither she nor her brother had eaten.
“I was just about to make some tea,” she said as she went to stir the fire. Soot, the home’s black cat, got up from his place in front of the hearth and stretched before padding off in search of mice. “There’s a bit of beef left from yesterday and some new radishes I bought at market this morning.”
Behind her Winter sighed. “Temperance.”
She hurried to find the kettle. “The bread’s a bit stale, but I can toast it if you like.”
He was silent and she finally turned and faced the inevitable.
It was worse than she feared. Winter’s long, thin face merely looked sad, which always made her feel terrible. She hated to disappoint him.
“It was still light when we set out,” she said in a small voice.
He sighed again, taking off his round black hat and sitting at the kitchen table. “Could you not wait for my return, sister?”
Temperance looked at her brother. Winter was only five and twenty, but he bore himself with the air of a man twice his age. His countenance was lined with weariness, his wide shoulders slumped beneath his ill-fitting black coat, and his long limbs were much too thin. For the last five years, he had taught at the tiny daily school attached to the home.
On Papa?
??s death last year, Winter’s work had increased tremendously. Concord, their eldest brother, had taken over the family brewery. Asa, their next-eldest brother, had always been rather dismissive of the foundling home and had a mysterious business of his own. Both of their sisters, Verity, the eldest of the family, and Silence, the youngest, were married. That had left Winter to manage the foundling home. Even with her help—she’d worked at the home since the death of her husband nine years before—the task was overwhelming for one man. Temperance feared for her brother’s well-being, but both the foundling home and the tiny day school had been founded by Papa. Winter felt it was his filial duty to keep the two charities alive.
If his health did not give out first.
She filled the teakettle from the water jar by the back door. “Had we waited, it would have been full dark with no assurance that the babe would still be there.” She glanced at him as she placed the kettle over the fire. “Besides, have you not enough work to do?”
“If I lose my sister, think you that I’d be more free of work?”
Temperance looked away guiltily.
Her brother’s voice softened. “And that discounts the lifelong sorrow I would feel had anything happened to you this night.”
“Nell knew the mother of the baby—a girl of less than fifteen years.” Temperance took out the bread and carved it into thin slices. “Besides, I carried the pistol.”
“Hmm,” Winter said behind her. “And had you been accosted, would you have used it?”
“Yes, of course,” she said with flat certainty.
“And if the shot misfired?”
She wrinkled her nose. Their father had brought up all her brothers to debate a point finely, and that fact could be quite irritating at times.
She carried the bread slices to the fire to toast. “In any case, nothing did happen.”
“This night.” Winter sighed again. “Sister, you must promise me you’ll not act so foolishly again.”
“Mmm,” Temperance mumbled, concentrating on the toast. “How was your day at the school?”