A Loving Scoundrel

  “A thief, no doubt.”

  “Better check your pockets if he’s been working this area today.”

  “Better check his pockets.”

  “All I wanted was some food,” Danny said quickly to the waiter. “Which I paid for. If I didn’t pay enough, ye could ’ave just said so. Ye didn’t ’ave to insult me.”

  The fellow looked as if he realized he had overreacted. But too many of his regular customers were about now for him to back down and apologize.

  “Just get out of here and don’t come back,” he warned. “This is a respectable district. Go back to the slums where you belong.”

  Chapter 10

  DANNY WALKED AWAY from that restaurant trying to hold her head high, though it took every ounce of will she had to accomplish it. She wanted to run instead, had an overwhelming urge to do so, but she had no doubt someone would try to detain her, because running would make her look guilty. They wouldn’t consider that she just wanted to find a deep hole that she could crawl into and cry, she was so heartsick and embarrassed.

  She’d experienced that kind of snobbery before, when she’d looked for jobs in the past. She shouldn’t have let it crush her as it did. It merely pointed out just how hard it was going to be to find a decent job.

  It took a while to push the hurt aside. When she finally did, it was replaced with unease, because for the second time in two days, she felt that someone was watching her, following her. This time it was probably just someone who’d been in that crowd, making sure she left their neighborhood.

  But turning to look, she saw nothing out of the ordinary, at least, not close to her. A lordly type entering an office building. A delivery boy. A lady with a maid following behind her bogged down with packages, a few couples walking along arm in arm, and dozens of other people going about their business. For the next two blocks, the feeling just wouldn’t go away, but every time she looked over her shoulder, she couldn’t imagine who it might be. There were just too many people on the street in this part of town.

  She finally ducked into a shop, then got yelled at when she kept on going, running through the back, which was restricted to employees only, and out the back door. For the next ten minutes she ran, backtracked, passed through other buildings, and finally, the feeling went away. If someone had been following her, she was satisfied she’d lost them.

  It was a long walk to Grosvenor Square. Night arrived before she got there. And there was a definite lack of nice alleys in the areas she’d been passing through. There were parks, though, lots of them, some so big she worried that she’d wandered out of the city by accident. She finally curled up in some bushes to wait for morning so she could get her bearings again.

  Dawn brought the hunger again, and even more anger because of it. But that was pushed aside when she actually looked around her and recognized the park she was in, though she’d never been in that part of town before to her recollection. She’d barely seen any of the park last night, it was so dark. But this morning, the benches along the pathway, the giant old oak shading them, the child running through a flock of pigeons to scatter them, laughing in delight. She blinked, and the child was gone, had never been there. A memory!

  Danny sat back down, shaken to her core. It was the first memory of her past that had ever come back to her, and it had come to her because it was the first time she’d ever been to a place that she must have visited as a child. Had her parents lived in this part of London, or had they only been visiting? There had been a hotel on one side of that park, along with a middle-class neighborhood, though she found more fancy houses on the other side when she left in that direction.

  She tried to remember more, to recognize other things, but nothing else stirred any memories, and it was giving her a headache to try. No, the hunger was doing that again. So she hurried now, had to question a few more strangers for directions, and finally arrived at the Malory house around midmorning.

  It was a bleedin’ mansion! It stood by itself, was fenced in, even had grass all around it, and nice flowers and shrubs, hardly what she’d been expecting. She was too intimidated to approach a house like that, especially after what had happened at that restaurant yesterday, so more time was wasted while she waited around for someone who looked like a servant to leave the house. A young woman finally did, dressed in a maid’s uniform—well, not so much a uniform, but not a fancy lady’s dress, so Danny took a chance and hailed her.

  “G’day, ma’am. The ’andsome Malory live ’ere?”

  “That’s rich, dearie,” the woman replied in a good-natured tone. “They’re all handsome.”

  “’Ow many Lord Malorys are there?”

  “In this household, three.”

  “With black ’air and—”

  “No, the earl lives here, with his two sons, none with black hair. You must mean his brother Sir Anthony. His house is over on Piccadilly. Or you could mean his nephew Jeremy. Those two lords both have black hair.”

  “I’ve this package to deliver,” Danny said, tapping her pet’s box, the best excuse she could come up with to gain access to Malory. “It were a young lord that placed the order, around twenty-five ’e was.”

  “That’d be Jeremy Malory then. Lives with his father in Berkeley Square.”

  Danny blushed, forced to lie again to get directions. “I’m new to the city. Could ye point me to Berkeley?”

  The woman did, and it didn’t take all that long to find the square, which was crowded at that time of the morning with pedestrians and carriage drivers pulled up to the curb, waiting on their passengers to leave their fancy houses. So she easily got pointed again to the house she needed. It wasn’t quite as imposing as the other one. She knew enough to go around to the servants’ entrance from all her job hunting.

  But it just wasn’t her day for luck, she was beginning to fear. Jeremy didn’t live there anymore, had moved out just last week to his own residence over on Park Lane, near his cousin’s house. As if Danny gave a flipping hoot for all the extra information the friendly cook’s helper passed on as she tried her best to flirt with Danny.

  More directions, more walking. Tarnation! She’d never walked so bleedin’ far in her life. It was a nice street though, that she finally reached, at least she thought it was, because one side of it bordered a park in full summer bloom. But even getting there in good time, another hour was wasted before she found someone who pointed her to the right house. Since Malory had only just moved in, most of the passing servants on the street didn’t know which house was his.

  Now after all that running around, she didn’t expect to find Malory at home. At the rate her luck had been going, tomorrow would be more like it, or even the day after. Which meant another night or two sleeping in parks. But at least one was near to hand. And as long as she kept her expectations low, she could keep her anger to just simmering. But that young lord was in for a ripping earful, when—if—she ever clapped eyes on him again.

  Chapter 11

  HE WAS HOME! Not only that, Danny was actually let in the front door!

  A young girl around her own age did so. Slightly plump of frame, with lackluster brown hair, she barely glanced at Danny, said merely, “Wait here, and don’t touch anything if you know what’s good for you.” Then she disappeared up some nearby stairs.

  Danny stood there tensely, still amazed that she’d gotten in the door. She ran her hand through her mop of curls to make sure they were orderly. Lucy always saw to her hair when they were alone, keeping it trimmed short. Lucy wasn’t very good with scissors though, so the chopping she did was usually uneven. But Danny wasn’t vain about her hair, and besides, not much of it could be seen when she was wearing her hat, which she missed keenly at the moment.

  She wasn’t going to touch anything. She didn’t want to even look at anything, she was suddenly so nervous. This was a bad idea. Hadn’t she concluded, when she was still in his company, that Malory was too dangerous to deal with? Her anger had made her forget that, but she recalled it
now in her nervousness.

  She turned to leave, the smart thing to do. But she was arrested by the mirror on the wall next to the door. Not very big, it hung over a narrow table that held only a plate with two small cards on it. The sight of herself had stopped her—and fascinated her.

  Rarely did she ever get to look in a mirror. The houses Dagger rented never had them. The rooms she robbed in that old inn didn’t have them, at least none that she’d ever noticed in the dark. This one showed her from the waist up, and without the debonair, manly hat, it pointed out just how pretty she really was. Amazing that anyone could still mistake her for a boy. Amazing what a pair of pants did for first and lasting impressions. Well, the flatness of her chest probably helped some with those impressions.

  That had been one of her old fears, that she’d develop really huge breasts like some women did and be unable to hide them. But she was lucky. Her breasts were a modest handful, mediumsized, and thanks to Lucy, easily contained.

  The easy part was because one of Lucy’s rare well-to-do customers had left behind a corset. They’d laughed a bit, that men would wear them, but then Lucy got the idea that it might come in handy for Danny in a few years, and it had indeed. Instead of wearing it around her waist where it was designed to go, she was thin enough that she could wear it around her chest. She just laced it up the front instead of the back, so she could manage it herself.

  It was a stiff contraption for the most part, but of a fine quality, the material that encased it so soft, she barely noticed anymore that she was wearing it. Yet it flattened her bumps nicely. That, and the slightly slouched posture she affected, was all she’d needed to look as flat-chested as any male.

  The sound of footsteps coming down the stairs reminded Danny that she had decided she didn’t want to be here after all, and she’d dawdled too long, ogling herself in the mirror. She didn’t turn around to see who it was though. She quickly reached for the door handle again.

  “Leaving?” the girl said. “Good. He can’t see you now anyway. He’s entertaining a lady friend. I hadn’t heard them come in, but then I don’t come in this part of the house often. We’re short of staff, or I wouldn’t have answered the door at all.”

  Danny swung around. She hadn’t needed to hear all that, figured the girl just needed someone to complain to. Her tone had been distinctly grumbling.

  “You’re the maid?”

  “No, we don’t have a maid yet, not even a footman to open the doors, much less a butler. I work in the kitchen. And you’d best run along. Come back later today. His lady friend should be gone by then.”

  Danny was about to take that advice when her belly growled. Roam around starving for several hours while Malory whiled away his time in bed with some lady? Not bleedin’ likely.

  “I’ll wait here if it’s all the same to you. It’s important I see him as soon as possible.”

  “Suit yourself. You might as well go into the parlor then, it’s through there. Though don’t expect to find anything to sit on. This house hasn’t been completely furnished yet.”

  The girl walked away toward the back of the house. Danny didn’t move, was still amazed at the speech that had come out of her own mouth. It was the way she used to talk! The way Lucy had insisted she forget if she was going to survive with the pack. And she’d learned Lucy’s way of speaking, learned it so well, she hadn’t spoken any other way in all these years.

  It no longer seemed natural to talk like that. She wasn’t even sure why she had just done so. Being in a fine house? Listening to a servant complain—with good speech? But it had obviously put the girl at ease with her, enough to leave her alone in their house.

  As for Malory, she’d give him exactly ten minutes to get his lovemaking over with. She’d experienced too much hunger in the last couple of days to wait any longer than that on that high-handed young lord.

  Chapter 12

  “I WAS PLEASANTLY SURPRISED to run into you this early in the morning,” Mary Cull said as she lazed back in the overstuffed chair by Jeremy’s bed. “So unexpected. I was sure all you young rakehells were in the habit of sleeping the day away, since you stay up to all hours of the night searching for your entertainments.”

  Jeremy smiled at the lady as he knelt by her feet, removing her shoes. Mary was a rather young widow, the youngest he’d ever seduced. Old Lord Cull had died on their wedding night. Too strenuous an enterprise for the old boy to undertake was the consensus.

  Mary was no beauty, but she was rather pretty with her round blue eyes and dark blond hair. And she had taken to lovemaking so well, she entertained a number of gentlemen in her home now regularly. Jeremy wasn’t one of her “regulars,” though he’d been invited three times now and had enjoyed himself each time. Today when he had run into her, they had been closer to his house than hers, and it being so new, he had the ready excuse of wanting to show it off to her. Of course they hadn’t stopped to see much of the house; they had come straight upstairs to his room instead.

  “I had some business to attend to with my uncle Edward this morning,” Jeremy replied.

  “Something to do with your family?”

  “No, actually, I’ve been managing several of the family’s investments, including one of my own.”

  She was surprised. “You? Involved in business? You must be joking.”

  “Not a’tall. I’ve found that I rather enjoy the managerial aspect. Wouldn’t dream of trying my hand at finding investments. We leave that to my uncle, who has a knack for only picking winners.”

  “You amaze me, Jeremy. You are quite frankly the most handsome man in the city, and you know it. Your family is extremely wealthy. Like many of your peers, you don’t need to work. Why on earth would you?”

  “Bite your tongue, m’dear. I don’t see it as ‘work,’ but as something I enjoy doing. Big difference there, don’t you think?”

  “Not really.” She grinned at him. “But whatever suits your fancy—”

  It was the wrong thing to say to a rakehell like Jeremy Malory if conversation was on your mind. His expression turned immediately sensual, his hands started rising up her skirt. Mary’s heart fluttered. But when she glanced over at his bed, which was their intended destination, she frowned.

  “This room is entirely too—bachelorish. Is that even a word, darling? Never mind.” A sigh. “I really wish you had come home with me. I’d feel much more comfortable in my own bedroom.”

  Her skirt rose up her thighs as his hands continued their path and pulled her hips closer to him so she was almost lying in the chair, her legs straddling his waist. “Pretend it’s your bed.”

  She laughed. “It doesn’t look anything like mine and you know it. Where are the satin sheets, the fluffy pillows, the things that make you want to stay in bed? That’s a bachelor bed if I’ve ever seen one.”

  “But you won’t know how nice it is until you get in it, will you? I promise you, you’ll find no complaints with my bed.”

  It was said so huskily, Mary couldn’t resist clasping his head to draw it to her bosom. And that’s when the pounding started on the door and someone shouted, “Get decent, mate, I’m coming in.”

  Danny bristled on the other side of the door. She’d given Malory his ten minutes, more like twenty, though she didn’t have a watch to confirm it. She was afraid he was one of those “lover” types that Lucy praised, that he’d be taking all day with the wench he had in there with him, and she wasn’t about to wait that long. So she’d finally marched upstairs and put her ear to each door she passed until she heard voices behind one.

  It didn’t take long, though, for the door to get yanked open after she’d pounded on it. Malory was standing there, impatience turning immediately to surprise when he recognized her.

  “You?”

  “Ye got that right,” she snapped, her street slang coming back in her anger.

  Her tone brought back his frown. “What the deuce are you doing here?”

  “Get rid o’ the wench, then we
’ll talk.”

  It looked as if he’d momentarily forgotten about the lady behind him, and she’d taken offense at the word wench, was stiffly adjusting her skirts as she looked about for her reticule. Finding it, she snatched it up and marched to the door.

  Jeremy quickly told her, “You don’t have to leave, Mary. This will only take a moment.”

  “That’s quite all right, darling,” she stopped long enough to say, and patted his cheek to assure him she wasn’t that upset to have their tryst end so abruptly. “Come and visit me later today, where we won’t be interrupted.”

  With one last glare in Danny’s direction, the lady left. The nabob ran a hand through his black hair in frustration and turned back into the room, heading toward the mantel over the fireplace, and a bottle of brandy and two glasses kept there. Danny followed him in, then stopped cold when she saw the bed. Where was her sense? She should never have barged into his bedroom of all places.

  “I’ll wait for ye downstairs,” she said uneasily, and turned back for the door.

  “The devil you will.” When that didn’t stop her, he added,

  “Don’t make me tackle you. I might like it.”

  That definitely stopped her. She could have been made of stone for all the movement she was capable of at that moment. Could she outrun him again?

  As if he could read her thoughts, he added the warning, “I’d have you in my grasp before you could reach the hall. You may depend upon it. So you might as well close the door and tell me what you’re doing here.”

  She wasn’t about to close the door, but she did turn around to face him again. It was galling, though, to find him not even close to her; in fact, he was leaning against the wall next to the mantel, arms crossed, ankles crossed, in that damned relaxed posture he’d used at the inn. Deceptive. He’d been no more relaxed that night than he was now.