Scandalous Desires

  “Steady on,” Michael whispered into her hair. “Remember, we’re simply Mr. and Mrs. Rivers, returning home after a jaunt into London. I’m just a shipbuilder.”

  “Won’t you miss your palace?” she murmured anxiously. “Your gold walls and marble floors?”

  “I’ll not miss a whit of it. Gold nor silks nor fancy books and statues. I can live without them all. What I cannot live without is one Silence Rivers. I love you, my wife.”

  “And I love you, my husband. I look forward to being just plain Mrs. Rivers, I do.” She leaned back and whispered in his ear, “But perhaps you can still be Charming Mickey O’Connor the notorious pirate—in our bedroom.”

  He winked at her as he bent to catch her lips. “Oh, to be sure, m’love, to be sure.”

  Epilogue

  There was a patter of bare feet and when Clever John opened his eyes again Tamara knelt by his side. “Why do you want my purple feather?” she asked softly. “What possible use could a man who has everything he’s ever wished for have for a simple feather?”

  He reached out a hand that shook with palsy and touched her smooth cheek. “The rainbow feathers remind me of you and everything I should’ve asked for.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You,” he said. “I should’ve wished for you and only you, sweet Tamara, for I have loved you all these years and without you my wonderful riches are but bones and dust to me.”

  “Is this true?” she whispered.

  “Oh, yes, it is true,” Clever John replied sadly. “I am a foolish old man who has lost everything he might’ve had in this life.”

  But as his last words died away there was a great rushing as a powerful wind blew. Everything—the kingdom, the invincible army, and the treasure chest—disappeared, and Clever John found himself once again in his uncle’s garden. His limbs were young and strong, his hair black once again, and Tamara stood before him, her rainbow hair shining in the dawning sun.

  Clever John threw back his head and shouted with laughter. “How?” he asked as he caught up Tamara by the waist and swung her joyfully around. “How is this possible?”

  Tamara grinned down at Clever John. “Your wishes may have been used up, but mine certainly aren’t!”

  Together they went to wake the king and tell him that the cherry thief was discovered and Clever John the new heir to the kingdom. And was Clever John sad that the kingdom by the sea was smaller and not nearly as rich as the magical one he’d wished for? Oh, no, he was the happiest man alive, for he ruled his tiny kingdom by the sea with Tamara by his side.

  And that, Gentle Reader, made all the difference in the world….

  —from Clever John

  The harlequin leaned against a brick wall, panting. He thought he might be nearly to St. Giles, but he couldn’t be sure. They’d run him through the streets like a bull to slaughter.

  Blood was seeping from a wound on his thigh, soaking into his tunic and leggings, growing cold and making him shiver in the late spring air. He looked up, trying to judge the time, but since the sun was hiding sullenly behind gray clouds, it was impossible.

  It had taken him almost an hour to lose the rabid crowd. They’d been promised a hanging. They’d dressed in their Sunday best and gone out cheerfully to Tyburn for a festive spectacle and at the very last minute they’d been denied their entertainment.

  Natural, then, that their ire had turned to him, the source of their disappointment.

  The harlequin straightened away from the wall, testing his feet. The street swirled and dipped sickeningly and he abruptly emptied his stomach into the channel. Must’ve gotten knocked on the head. Strange how blurry everything seemed.

  Somewhere in his mind a tiny alarm bell began sounding.

  He tried walking but found he had to grip the wall to stay upright. A further few feet and even that support failed. Blackness was crowding in on his vision and he fell to his knees. He heard the clip-clop of hoof beats nearby, and slowly, agonizingly turned his head. A carriage was turning the corner.

  His sword dropped from his fist, clattering to the cobblestones. And then his cheek was on the cold, filthy stones. His eyes were slits as he watched the carriage draw nearer.

  His last thought before the darkness took him was how surprised they would be when they discovered who he was.

  Then Winter Makepeace, the Ghost of St. Giles, fell headlong into the enveloping black.

  A masked avenger dressed in a harlequin’s motley protects the innocents of St. Giles at night. When a rescue mission leaves him wounded, the kind soul who comes to his rescue is the one woman he’d never have expected…

  Thief of Shadows

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  Chapter One

  LONDON, ENGLAND

  MAY 1738

  The body in the road was the absolute cap to the day. Isabel Beckinhall, Baroness Beckinhall sighed to herself. Her carriage had come to a standstill in the worst part of London—the dirty streets of St. Giles. And why was she in St. Giles as dark descended? Because she’d volunteered to represent the Ladies’ Syndicate for the Benefit of the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children at the final inspection of the new Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children, more fool she.

  Never volunteer. Not even when pleasantly filled with warm scones and hot tea. Warm scones were obviously the work of the Devil or perhaps Lady Hero Reading, one of the two founding patronesses of the home. Lady Hero had refilled her teacup and looked at Isabel with wide gray eyes, asking prettily if Isabel would mind meeting with Mr. Winter Makepeace, the home’s dour manager, to look over the new building. And Isabel had blithely agreed like some scone-filled mindless cow.

  And the damned man hadn’t even shown!

  “Moo,” Isabel muttered to herself just as the carriage door opened to admit her lady’s maid, Pinkney.

  “Ma’am?” Pinkney asked, her blue eyes wide and startled. Of course Pinkney’s eyes were nearly always wide and startled. She was one of the most sought-after lady’s maids in London, a paragon of the latest fashion, but Isabel had privately begun to wonder if her new maid wasn’t a bit dim.

  “Nothing,” Isabel replied, waving aside her bovine utterance. “Did you find out why it’s taking so long to move the dead man?”

  “Oh, yes, my lady,” Pinkney said. “It’s because he’s not dead.” Her pretty dark blond brows drew together. “Well, not yet anyway. Harold the footman is having a time pulling him aside, and you wouldn’t credit it, ma’am, but he’s a comic actor.”

  It was Isabel’s turn to blink. “Harold?”

  “Oh, no, my lady!” Pinkney giggled until she caught Isabel’s steady gaze. “Er…” The maid cleared her throat. “The not-yet-dead-man is. He’s dressed as a harlequin, mask and all—”

  Isabel was no longer listening. She’d opened the door and climbed from the carriage. Outside the gray day was growing grimmer still with the advent of nightfall. Fires flared to the west and she could hear the rumbling of the rioters from that direction. They were getting closer. Isabel shivered and hurried to where Harold and the other footman were bent over a figure on the ground. Pinkney was such a ninny she’d probably mistaken the costume or the man or the mask or—

  But no.

  Isabel drew in a sharp breath. She’d never seen the notorious Ghost of St. Giles in person, but she had no doubt that this must be he. The prone man wore black and red motley. His floppy, brimmed hat had fallen from his head and she could see that his brown hair was tied back simply. A short sword was sheathed at his side and a long sword lay by one of his broad hands. A black half mask with a ridiculously long nose covered the upper half of his face, leaving his square chin and wide mouth revealed. His lips were parted over straight white teeth, the upper lip a little bigger than the bottom, and sensuously curved in unconsciousness.

  Isabel snapped her attention up to her coachman. “Is he alive?”

  “He’s still breathin’ at least, my lady.?
?? Harold shook his head. “Don’t know for how long, though.”

  A shout came from nearby and the sound of smashing glass.

  “Put him in the carriage,” Isabel said. She bent to pick up his hat.

  Tom, the second footman, frowned. “But, my lady—”

  “Now. And don’t forget his sword.”

  Already she could see a mass of people rounding the corner down the street. The footmen glanced at each other then as one lifted the Ghost. Harold grunted under the weight, but he made no complaint.

  A crowd gathered at the end of the street, and then someone gave a shout.

  The rioters had spotted the carriage.

  Isabel picked up her skirts and trotted after her footmen. Harold gave a great heave and dumped the Ghost and his sword into the carriage. Isabel scrambled rather inelegantly inside. Pinkney was staring wide-eyed at the Ghost, who was in a heap in the corner of the carriage, but for the moment Isabel ignored him. She tossed the hat on top of the Ghost, lifted her seat, and withdrew two pistols from the hidden compartment underneath.

  Pinkney squeaked in alarm.

  Isabel turned and handed the pistols to the footmen at the carriage door. “Don’t let anyone climb the carriage.”

  Harold’s jaw tightened. “Yes, my lady.”

  He took the pistols, gave one to Tom, and mounted the carriage.

  Isabel closed the carriage door and knocked on the roof. “Fast as you can, John!”

  The carriage started forward with a lurch just as something hit the side.

  “My lady!” Pinkney cried.

  “Hush,” Isabel said.

  There was a lap robe on the maid’s seat and Isabel pulled it over the Ghost. She sat back on her own seat, clutching the window as the carriage rocked around a corner. Something knocked against the carriage. A grimacing face appeared suddenly at the window, tongue smearing against the glass lewdly.

  Pinkney screamed.

  Isabel stared at the man, her heart racing, but her gaze steady as she met his eyes. They were bloodshot and filled with maddened rage. The carriage jolted and the man fell away.

  One of the pistols fired.

  “My lady,” Pinkney whispered, her face white, “the dead man—”

  “Not-quite-dead man,” Isabel muttered, eyeing the robe. Hopefully anyone glancing inside would see a robe thrown carelessly in the corner, not the hidden Ghost of St. Giles. She braced herself as the carriage swung wildly around a corner.

  “Not-quite-dead man,” Pinkney obediently repeated. “Who is he?”

  “The Ghost of St. Giles.”

  Pinkney’s robin’s egg blue eyes widened. “Who?”

  Isabel stared at her lady’s maid in exasperation. Really, the chit was something of an idiot. “The Ghost of St. Giles? The most notorious footpad in London? Goes about in a harlequin’s costume, either ravishing and murdering or rescuing and defending, depending on whose stories you believe?”

  If Pinkney’s eyes got any bigger they might fall out of her head altogether.

  “No?” Isabel waved a hand toward the window and the shouting and screaming outside and said sweetly, “The man that mob wants dead?”

  Pinkney stared horrified at the robe. “But… why, my lady?”

  The second pistol fired with a deafening BOOM! Pinkney jumped and looked wildly at the window.

  Dear God, they were out of ammunition. Isabel prayed the footmen were safe—and that they could hold off the rioters without their guns. She was an aristocrat, but that meant little to a mob such as this. Just last year a viscount had been dragged from his carriage and robbed in St. Giles.

  Isabel took a deep breath and felt under the robe until she found the hilt of the Ghost’s sword. She drew it out and put the heavy thing across her lap. If nothing else she could hit someone over the head with it if need be. “They want him dead because this morning he cut Charming Mickey O’Connor down from the gallows.”

  Pinkney actually brightened at this. “Oh, Charming Mickey, the pirate! Him I’ve heard of. They say he’s handsome as sin and dresses better than the king himself.”

  Of course her lady’s maid had heard of a well-dressed pirate.

  “Quite,” Isabel flinched as something hit the window, cracking the glass. “They probably chased him all the way from Tyburn gallows, poor man.”

  “Oh.” For a moment Pinkney bit her lip. Then she looked timidly at Isabel. “But, my lady, if the mob wants him and he’s in our carriage… ah…”

  Isabel drew on all her strength to smile firmly. Her hand tightened on the hilt of the sword across her lap. “That’s why we’re not going to let them know we have the Ghost, are we?”

  Pinkney blinked several times as if working through this logic, and then she smiled. The child really was quite pretty. “Oh, yes, my lady.”

  The lady’s maid sat back as if quite confident that they were all out of danger now that everything had been explained.

  Isabel twitched aside the curtains to peer through the cracked glass. She wasn’t nearly as sanguine. Many of the streets in St. Giles were narrow and twisting—the reason that her carriage had been traveling so slowly earlier. A mob could move much faster afoot than they. But the mob was beginning to fall away. John Coachman had found a straight stretch of road and was urging the horses into a trot.

  Isabel let fall the curtain with a heartfelt sigh of relief. Thank God.

  Half an hour later the carriage was pulling up before her neat town house.

  “Bring him inside,” she ordered Harold when he pulled open the doors.

  He nodded wearily. “Yes, my lady.”

  “And Harold?” Isabel descended the carriage still clutching the sword.

  “My lady?”

  “Well done. To both you and Tom.” Isabel nodded to Tom.

  A shy grin split Harold’s broad face. “Thank you, my lady.”

  Isabel permitted herself a small smile before she swept into her town house. Edmund, her dear late husband, had bought Fairmont House for her shortly before he’d died, and had gifted it to her on her twenty-eighth birthday. He’d known that the title and estates would go to a distant cousin and had wanted her properly settled with her own property free of the entail. Isabel had immediately redecorated on moving in four years ago. Now the entry hall was all white marble, with soaring gilded Corinthian columns along the edges emphasizing the height of the room.

  “Thank you, Butterman,” Isabel said as she tucked the sword under her arm and pulled off her gloves and hat, handing them to the butler. “I need a bedroom readied immediately.”

  Butterman, like all her servants, was impeccably trained. He didn’t even blink an eye at the abrupt order—or the sword she carelessly held. “Yes, my lady. Will the blue room do?”

  “Quite.”

  Butterman snapped his fingers and a maid went hurrying up the stairs.

  Isabel turned and watched as Harry and Tom came in with the Ghost between them.

  Butterman raised his eyebrow a fraction of an inch at the sight of the unconscious man, but merely said, “The blue room, Harold, if you please.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harold panted.

  “If you don’t mind, my lady,” Butterman murmured, “I believe Mrs. Butterman may be of assistance.”

  “Yes, thank you. Please send Mrs. Butterman up as quickly as possible.” Isabel followed the footmen up the stairs.

  The maids were still turning back the sheets on the bed in the blue room, when the footmen arrived with their burden, but at least the fire on the grate was lit.

  Harold hesitated, probably because the Ghost was quite dirty and bloody, but Isabel gestured to the bed. The Ghost groaned as the footmen laid him on the spotless counterpane.

  Isabel propped his sword in a corner of the room and hurried to his side. His eyes were closed. His hat had been left in the carriage, but he still wore his mask, though it was askew on his face. Carefully she lifted the thing over his head and was surprised to find underneath a thin black silk
scarf covering the upper part of his face from the bridge of his strong nose to his forehead. Two eyeholes had been cut into the material to make a second, thinner mask. She examined the harlequin’s mask in her hand. It was leather and stained black. High arching eyebrows and the curving grotesque nose gave the mask a satyrlike leer. She set it on a table by the bed and looked back at the Ghost. He lay limp and heavy on the bed. Blood stained his motley leggings above his black jackboots. She bit her lip. Some of the blood looked quite fresh.

  “Butterman said ’twas a man injured,” Mrs. Butterman said as she bustled in the room. She went to the bed and stared at the Ghost a moment, hands on hips, before nodding decisively. “Well, nothing for it. We’ll need to undress him, my lady, and find out where the blood’s coming from.”

  “Oh, of course,” Isabel said. She reached for the buttons of the Ghost’s fall as Mrs. Butterman began on the doublet.

  Behind her, Isabel heard a gasp. “Oh, my lady!”

  “What is it, Pinkney?” Isabel frowned as she worked at a stubborn button. Blood had dried on the material, making it stiff.

  “ ’Tisn’t proper for you to be doing such work.” Pinkney sounded as scandalized as if Isabel had proposed walking naked in Westminster Cathedral. “He’s a man.”

  “I assure you I have seen a nude man before,” Isabel said mildly as she peeled back the man’s leggings. Underneath, his smallclothes were soaked in blood. Good God. Could a man lose so much and survive? She began working at the ties to his smallclothes.

  “He has bruising on his shoulder and ribs and a few scrapes, but nothing to cause this much blood,” Mrs. Butterman reported as she spread the doublet wide and raised the ghost’s shirt to his armpits.

  Isabel glanced up and for a moment froze. His chest was delineated with lean muscles, his nipples brown against his pale skin, black, curling hair spreading between. His belly was hard and ridged, his navel entirely obscured by that same black curling hair. Isabel blinked. She had seen a man—men, actually—naked, true, but Edmund had been in his sixth decade when he died and had certainly never looked like this. And the few, discreet lovers that she’d taken since Edmund’s death had been aristocrats—men of leisure. They’d hardly had more muscles than she. Her eye caught on the line of hair trailing down from his navel. It disappeared into his smallclothes.