How to Be a Proper Lady: A Falcon Club Novel (35 page)

“Be seein’ ye, Mr. Smythe. Do come again. And bring yer friends too.” He bowed with a smirk and spit in the dirt.

The sky was still dark, the autumn air chill when Jin walked out the front door of the prison as though he hadn’t been brought up on charges of thievery by a lord of the church mere hours earlier. Wealth had its advantages.

His clothing clung to him, soaked with sweat from his brief tenure in the dank cage of men, his body’s uncontrollable response as he’d sat motionless, swallowing back the dread. But she had not had to endure the filth or discomfort of a similar cell, or the real dangers a woman faced in such a place. The regular denizens of jailhouses knew no shame, modesty, or pity; they would have made a meal of Viola Carlyle. Unless, of course, she cozened them as she did everyone else—except unfortunately the bishop. With him she had been inconveniently petulant.

He crossed the yard and passed through the outer gate, sucking in air, the sour remnants of terror slipping away from his exhausted limbs.

“You ain’t gonna talk to us?” Mattie grumbled. Matouba and Billy slogged silently behind. The boy was wily, but the hue of Matouba’s skin had not been popular with several of their cellmates. Jin had allowed them to manage on their own. They deserved whatever discomfort they suffered for dragging her into it, as did he. But he would spend a thousand nights of hell in a prison cell if it meant Viola would be well.

“I have nothing to say which you do not already anticipate.” He walked to the street. “Did you manage to set aside a coin for a hackney coach, or must I walk home?”

Mattie jingled the remains of the purse. Jin took it.

“Not even a thanks, a’course,” his helmsman grunted.

He halted and turned to them. “Mattie, give me your knife.”

Three pairs of eyes went round. Even Matouba’s cheeks turned gray.

Jin rolled his eyes. “For later. As mine was taken from me by our hosts, I am now left without, and you have another on the ship.” He accepted the blade and slipped it into his boot. “If I wanted to kill you,” he added, turning back to the street, “I would have done it years ago.”

“We’re plumb sorry Miss Viola dropped that lamp, Cap’n,” Billy peeped uncertainly. “She was doin’ a right bang-up job o’ the thing till then.”

He had no doubt of it. “Amateurs. You should all be ashamed.”

“Never meant for her to go into the house at all. Tried to stall, but she insisted,” Mattie mumbled. “We thought you’d get there sooner. You got there every night earlier this whole past fortnight.”

“You ain’t never been late for nothin’, Cap’n,” Billy’s tenor piped.

“Picked a fine night to dilly-dally.” This in Matouba’s bass.

Jin pivoted slowly, restraining the laughter building in his tight chest.

“You are a pack of imbeciles.”

“We might be imbeciles.” Mattie crossed his thick arms. “What we ain’t is blind. Not nearly so blind as you, at least.”

For a series of moments Jin stared at his crewmen. Then he hailed a hackney and went home to sleep.

Chapter 30

H
e awoke midafternoon, washed off the salt and stench of his prison sojourn, and sent a message across town by courier.

He waited.

Three quarters of an hour later a reply arrived. In illiterate phrases, Pecker explained how he had taken advantage of the bishop’s absence that morning (when His Lordship went to Newgate to check on his prisoners) to remove the box from his employer’s bedchamber and hide it. In the intervening hours, however, he had grown overly anxious to rid himself of his prize. Jin was to meet him at a specified location at the London Docks, where he would exchange the box for gold.

The location was Jin’s hired berth.

Removing Mattie’s knife from his boot, he set it on the table. He was not willing to harm another person again. Not gravely. Not since he had set eyes on Viola Carlyle standing in a dark parlor in the middle of the night dressed in breeches and a man’s shirt.

He rode to the docks, stabled his horse, and made his way down the quay. Looking toward his ship, he could not resist smiling. Amid her distress in those last moments at Savege Park, she had paused to marvel over the exorbitant amount he was spending to dock at the busy port for so many weeks. She had a quick, relentless spirit, and a madness that twined about his heart and made him thoroughly hers. Whatever happened with the box, and whatever treasure it held for him—or did not hold—he would not let her go. He would rather forgive himself and ask the rest of the world for forgiveness every day of his life than lose her.

The quay was settling down to quiet for the evening, lumpers hauling cargo onto ships that would depart in the morning and sailors busy with tasks on board vessels stacked two deep at each berth. The bishop’s footman was nowhere in sight. But a sailor leaned against the base of the gangway on the vessel before Jin’s. The angle of his hat brim revealed a face uncannily like Pecker’s.

“Thought it was you,” he greeted Jin. “Told my brother Hole it was. But he was suspicious. Thought I just wanted to take all the money and run.” In the warm September breeze that clanked lines in blocks and fluttered banners atop masts through the failing sunlight, he wore a heavy overcoat, especially bulky at one side of his chest. “But I wouldn’t do that to kin, you sees. And I was curious.”

“Do you expect me to know you?”

“No. But I know you, Mr. Smythe. Or should I say, Pharaoh?” He grinned smugly. “You bought a girl off a bloke I was working for a few years back. Pretty little girl, that one. A real screamer, too. Have some fun with her, then, did you?”

“Have you brought the casket?”

The sailor straightened. “Well, now don’t be getting all high and mighty with old Muskrat. Can’t blame a fellow for trying to make a bit of friendly conversation afore transacting business, like.”

“Your brother agreed to my price. Produce the casket now and I will give you the gold.”

Muskrat rubbed his ragged whiskers and looked thoughtful a moment. “Now here’s my problem, Mr. Smythe: Hole, he ain’t no genius. I got me all the brains in the family, you see.” He tapped a fingertip to his hat. “And I been needing a little task taken care of that I— Well, you see, Mr. Smythe, old Muskrat just don’t have the heart for it.” He shook his head sorrowfully.

“I haven’t time for theatrics. What do you want?”

“You see, I got me a little problem I need out of the way.” He wrinkled his brow. “As in dead out of the way. You see.” The wind picked up for an instant, pressing the overcoat against the bulge beneath his arm. “I heard you was partic’arly good at getting little problems dead.”

“I am no longer in that line of work. I have, in fact, come to this meeting unarmed.” It felt remarkably good to admit that. Insanely imprudent, too. But perhaps she was having an even greater effect on him than he knew.

“You don’t say?” Muskrat scratched his chin again. Then he pointed up the dock to the base of the gangway of Jin’s ship where a boy sat with a lantern. “That’s Mickey. Me and Hole’s youngest brother. Now, Mr. Smythe, Mickey there is going to take you to the place I know that little problem is guzzling gin right now, you see. Then you’re going to take care of my problem, and when you’re finished, old Muskrat will be waiting right here for you with that box. What do you say to that?”

“I say you haven’t any idea with whom you are dealing.”

Muskrat’s face pinched. “They said as you was a tough one.”

“They said right.”

“Also said you ain’t hurt a fly in years. But I thought if you was properly motivated . . .”

“On that account, they were wrong. I may no longer be in that line of work, but a man may do anything for simple amusement.” Merely suggesting it wouldn’t damn him. “Properly motivated, of course. Give me the casket, Muskrat. Now.”

“My soul,” the sailor cooed. “The mighty Pharaoh’s asking me favors, without even a pistol or knife on him, eh?”

“But I do have my bare hands. Give me the box and you needn’t have concern over that soul quite yet.”

Muskrat narrowed his eyes. Then his gaze flickered to the side, and widened. The boy leaped up, the lantern jiggling light across the dock’s shadowed planks, his gaze fixed over Jin’s shoulder as well.

“Well, I’ll be. Looks like an angel coming my way.” Muskrat wiggled his brows. “Guess it’s old Muskrat’s lucky day.”

“Not today, I am afraid.” Viola’s satin voice came just behind Jin; then she appeared at his side. “Now, what have I missed?” She wore a gown of spring green, a delicate shawl and gloves, and her hair was swept up beneath a neat little hat. She lacked only a parasol to be fit for a stroll in the park. Jin had never seen anything so beautiful and his heart had never beaten so hard.

“You were not invited to this meeting, madam,” he said as evenly as he could. “I suggest you retire from it now.”

“Oh, phooey.” Her dark gaze darted between them. “By the by, the bishop is hopping mad. You should have seen him storm into the house this morning demanding justice. It seems he went to Newgate and, discovering your absence there, decided to accuse Alex of disloyalty to both church and crown.” Her lips curved into a grin of perfect pleasure. “Alex pretended he’d never seen the bishop before, when they had spoken mere hours earlier in the middle of the night! I had no idea my brother-in-law was such a proficient actor. Or you, for that matter.” She slanted him an acute look. “In any case, when Alex insisted that I had spent the entire night tending our dear old maiden aunt at her deathbed, the bishop turned six different shades of red. He left believing himself quite addled. It was all remarkably great fun.”

“Do not tell me you came here alone.”

“I must! For I did. I did not wish to involve Billy, Mattie, and Matouba, not after last night, so I didn’t tell them I bribed Mr. Pecker to tell me everything. What good fortune that he actually had something of worth to tell me, all about your meeting right here with his brother, Muskrat. And Hole, can you imagine? I think their mother must have been a very peculiar person. But then I worried I would not arrive on time. Am I on time?”

“Violet, leave.”

“No. I am here to help.”

“Can you not stay out of anything, woman?”

“Probably not.” She reached into a pocket and produced a dagger. “Here. Billy said they commandeered your weapons at the prison, so I brought this.”

Muskrat drew back his coat to reveal the butt of a firearm stuffed into his trousers. “And I brought me my pistol. We can have us a nice party now.”

She set her hand on her sweetly curved hip. “Pistol or no, give him the box or he will kill you for it.”

“Got your fancy piece doing your work for you now, Pharaoh? P’raps you have turned over a new leaf.” He winked at her.

“Miss Daly,” Jin said in a low voice, “it is now high time that you depart.”

“I am not his fancy piece, whatever that is. I am the daughter of a lord, the Baron of Carlyle, and I will get you in a lot of trouble if you do not give him that box this very instant.”

Muskrat scoffed. “If you’re a baron’s daughter, then I’m Bonnie Prince Charlie.”

“Well then, it is an honor to meet you, Your Highness.” She curtsied prettily. “Now give him the box.”

He looked skeptical. “If your da is Carlyle, why did the Pharaoh here call you Daly?”

“Anybody knows that a man’s surname may not be the same as his title, you ignoramus. But mine does happen to be Carlyle. Mr. Seton called me Daly to protect my identity. But since I don’t care about that anyway, it’s all well and good.”

“Viola, this is not helping,” Jin muttered.

“Of course it is. Can’t you see he is already starting to cave?”

“I admit to not yet having noticed that.”

“Well, your powers of observation are clearly less keen than mine.”

“Not concerning some matters.”

Muskrat’s gaze was flickering back and forth between them.

“You mean Aidan and his strong desire for impressive social connections? Which I figured out finally.”

“I wondered if you would.”

“He is not a bad man. Not as bad as you certainly. Rather, uncomplicated. Again, unlike you.”

Muskrat shot a snickering leer at Jin.

“Must we do this here and now, Viola?”

“You introduced the topic into conversation.”

“She got you there, Pharaoh.”

Viola shrugged. “Sometimes he’s not very bright, it’s true.”

Turning away with rolled eyes, Jin took an obviously frustrated breath, and—so swiftly Viola barely saw it happen—swung at Muskrat. The man went down hard to the boards. Jin didn’t give him a moment to recover but fisted his neck cloth and twisted it tight. Muskrat struggled, swinging back and coughing, and the casket tumbled out from beneath his overcoat. Viola leaped for it, but his arms and legs flailed in her way. A boy darted in, grabbed the box, and bolted.

“Jin, the casket! That boy has it!”

The lad ran, his little arms barely able to hold the box and his lantern at once, down the dock and to the next gangway. He turned to look back, tripped on the gangplank, and casket and lantern flew—the casket into the Thames, the lantern onto the deck of the closest vessel, where it shattered. In a flash, fire licked across the deck, following the lamp oil.

Viola’s hands slapped over her mouth. “Holy Mother Mary. Isn’t that
your
ship, Jin?”

Muskrat’s eyes were saucers. “You can have your box, Smythe.” He bolted, the boy chasing after, pushing through men running toward the deck on fire.

Viola rushed forward, but by the time she reached the gangway the flames were already doused and black smoke curled from the steaming planking. Dockworkers and sailors carrying charred cloths disembarked. Several glanced at Jin and tugged their hats respectfully before moving off.

Viola gaped in a terribly unladylike fashion as he came to her side. “I think it is a very good thing I had no idea who you really were when you appeared on that dock in Boston demanding I give you work. As it was, I was enormously impressed with myself for gaining the attention of the notorious Pharaoh. But if I had known the entire truth I would have been terrified to even speak with such an exalted personage.”

“Then I am very glad you did not know the entire truth.”

Gathering courage, finally she looked up at him. His gaze shone in the failing light.

Her hands flew to her mouth again. “The casket! Oh, Jin, I am so sorry,” she groaned. “It’s gone.”

“I don’t want it. I don’t need it any longer.”

Her eyes went wide. “You don’t? But I thought—”

He shook his head.

She fisted her hands. “Then what do you need?”

“You.” His gaze consumed her. “I need you. Viola, I need you.”

“You are repeating. You are trying to convince yourself, aren’t you?”

“You are an impossible woman. I am declaring my love to you and still you quarrel with me.”

“Well if you had mentioned the love part right away I might not have—”

He halted her speech with the most beautiful kiss any woman had ever gotten, she was certain. They both became quite breathless.

Abruptly, he thrust her to arm’s length. Shabby treatment, as always, but she didn’t care. And a lump had taken up residence in her throat so she could not quarrel even if she wished.

“I love you, Viola. I want you. I want you forever.” His voice was thoroughly uneven. Heavenly. “Say you love me too.”

“I don’t take orders,” she barely managed to choke out.

“It is not an order. It is a plea.”

She swallowed thickly. Twice. For the first time in fifteen years since a band of scruffy sailors had gagged her mouth, she actually could not manage to speak.

Jin’s gaze covered her face, at once warm and anxious. “Viola, I am perishing before you.
Perishing
.” His tone was strained. “Say something.”

She nodded.

“What does that mean?”

She nodded again, faster, her throat a clogged mess of joy.

His eyes seemed to sparkle. “You do love me.”

She got dizzy nodding.