He’d been born on a night like this: the sky choked with black clouds, the wind banshee-screeching through cracks and rattling windows in their frames like a costermonger who’d caught hold of a thieving urchin.
Or at least that’s the sort of thing Lorcan St. Leger liked to tell whatever audience he held in thrall at a given moment.
“It’s how I got so strong and so ugly, you see,” he’d say. “I was born screaming into a headwind. And I’ve fought against headwinds me whole life.”
He didn’t actually know precisely when or where he was born. But he’d come to understand that a personal myth could be as useful as armor.
Experience told him the impending storm would be long and violent and his skin prickled with not unpleasant portent. His ship had reached harbor just ahead of it; and while his crew had dispersed at once to inns or brothels, captain’s business had kept Lorcan out later than he’d anticipated, and by the time he’d reached the nearest inn the last room had been taken. He needed to find shelter soon, but the only other possibility for lodging nearby was a storied brothel he knew of mainly through misty, prurient reminiscences shared by sailors over the years. He’d seen the building once, years ago; gargoyles lined the roof edge.
So that’s where he was headed. In a pinch, he supposed, he could take shelter in the livery stable he’d passed. God knew a man could keep worse company than horses.
Now and again the fitful wind whipped clouds away from a full moon, and fragments of his surroundings were illuminated: the eyes of a slinking cat, the sheen of greasy water atop an open barrel, a lantern hook outside a shop door. Nearly every shop and dwelling had taken their lamps in. He hadn’t seen another human on the street for nearly a quarter of an hour.
Only cats, rats, and Lorcan St. Leger would walk the streets near the London docks unafraid at this time of night.
In St. Giles, as a child, he’d learned that a moment’s distraction could mean death. Terror had been the whetstone against which he’d honed his reflexes and wits. How to find hiding places and escape routes, how to fight, when to ingratiate, when to intimidate, how to barter and steal—he leveraged his lessons into strength, and then into power. By the time he was scarcely more than twenty years old he’d built a shadowy empire from one end of England to the other of men and women who would have killed for him.
He’d made sure they’d never needed to. Brutality was the fastest way to the gallows, after all. The quickest way to get caught. And it was no substitute for strategy and cunning or for razor-sharp judgment of character. Lorcan wasn’t above it, of course, if it was the quickest solution to a sticky problem of disrespect or immediate threat. And he’d tolerated no nonsense from the various earls, viscounts, and other nobs who’d been his customers and whom he’d easily charmed. They paid cash on the nail or they got nothing.
And no one ever crossed him twice.
In exchange for their fealty, he’d given his meticulously chosen crew trust and respect. He listened to their needs and paid them promptly and well. They’d repaid him with adulation and ironclad loyalty.
Those days were behind him. He was more than a decade older than when he’d begun; he led a different life; he had a different crew. And yet still he instinctively moved swiftly and nearly soundlessly through the dark, his every sense on alert.
He froze when he heard a muffled thump from a few feet away.
It was the sound of something—or someone—falling to the ground in the narrow street up ahead.
He flattened himself against the building wall. Pistol in hand, he inched soundlessly toward the alley. Then peered around the corner.
Very little surprised him anymore.
But about fifteen or so feet ahead of him, into the alley separating two buildings, a woman was lowering herself out of a second-story window on what appeared to be a braided bedsheet.
On the cobblestones below her he could just make out a small, dark, oblong shape. Likely a valise or knapsack she’d thrown to the ground before her descent. The source of the thump.
He decided to pause to take in the spectacle as though it were a puppet show.
Her feet flailed a bit before she gingerly came to rest on the top of a stack of crates pushed up against the building wall.
She was still a good seven or eight feet off the ground.
And she’d run out of bedsheet.
Lorcan wasn’t quite certain what manner of escape he was watching, but he found himself rooting for her just the same. The wildness in his soul could not help but admire the wily people of the world, the ones who tried and got away with audacious things. He was disinclined to judge. No one knew better than he did what desperation could inspire even a saintly person to do. He possessed a moral code, after a fashion, but his first instinct was always to help. At least the first time.
The moon and a rude gust of wind conspired to hurl her cloak and skirts upward and dropped them again, but not before revealing a pair of elegantly curved calves wearing surprisingly good embroidered stockings.
“I once gave a pair of stockings much like those to a mistress,” he said idly.
The woman flattened herself against the wall and froze.
But her breath formed swift white puffs in the frigid air.
One hand remained fisted around the sheet. The wind whipped the hood from her head. She yanked it back over her head with the other.
He moved carefully closer. He could now hear her terrified breathing.
“Madam,” he mused, “it looks as though you’re in a bit of a bind.”
Perhaps because this was self-evident, she didn’t reply.
“If what you’ve just tossed down is a satchel full of silver plate, you’d best hurry. I should hate for their rightful owners to awake and shoot you.” Now he was having a little fun at her expense.
“Why would I take silver plate?”
Her voice was a shock. Low-pitched, exquisitely refined, every word as precise as a cut gem. It was like stumbling across a diamond necklace in the dirt.
“Oh . . . lass . . .” he said pityingly. “First day at thieving?”
“I’m not thieving.” She actually sounded indignant. “Some . . . blighter . . . moved the barrel that I . . . that I planned to . . .”
“Blighter!” He was amused. “You’ll never get to heaven using that sort of language.”
And then he became brisk. “I believe you’re going to have to jump. And I’m going to have to catch you, because the sound of human bones crunching against cobblestones puts me right off me feed.”
She said nothing. The only movement was the lashing of her cape about her ankles. It snapped like a sail in the wind.
“My offer is not indefinite, madam. Jump or be caught stealing, it’s all the same to me.”
Daphne finally risked a look over her shoulder.
For a chilling moment she saw no human at all. Only layer upon layer of shadows, all in various shades and textures of black.
It was as though the night itself had been speaking to her.
Fear seeped into her bones like an icy fog.
And then, at last, her eyes were finally able to distinguish the outline of what appeared to be a very large man.
Her slamming heart squeezed into an icy fist.
His face was a pale blur, shadowed by a beaver hat. The rest of him was all in black.
And then, as if he could read the run of her thoughts, she detected a fleeting glint. Perhaps a flash of teeth.
Daphne bit her lip. Her heart slammed like a boot kicking her over and over again in her chest. She had planned it all. And wasn’t planning one of her gifts? Over the span of two days, she had noted the crates. Calculated their heights using her own height as a comparison. Measured the sheets. Tested their strength by looping them around the bed frame. Surreptitiously measured the distance between the crates and the barrel. Noted the easy hop from the barrel to the ground.
And between the time she’d gone in this evening and the moment she’d gone out the window, somehow, for some reason, someone had moved the barrel.
And if that wasn’t a metaphor for her entire life, what was?
“I’m going to count to three.”
His voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. So deep, so resonant, so quiet. So nearly disinterested. As if this was a matter of everyday business for him.
He could be anyone. A murderer. A rapist. A Samaritan. A hallucination.
“One . . .”
She’d already dropped her valise to the ground. She could not afford to lose a single thing in it, particularly one critical letter. He could have stolen it, she told herself. He hadn’t yet.
She was positive she couldn’t pull herself back up to the window again.
Moreover, she thought she might prefer to break every bone than to suffer the indignities that stalked her inside.
She considered sending the man in search of a barrel.
“Two . . .”
Her palms were wet inside her gloves. Nerves robbed her limbs of sensation. Her teeth clacked from terror. She considered whether it mattered at all whether he murdered her. For a mad instant death sounded like blessed respite from the relentless, capricious buffeting of her life.
“Three . . .”
“God help me,” she whispered and leaped into the dark.
He caught her first by the shoulders, then she collided with a chest like a wall of bricks. Huge arms snapped around her and he staggered backward two steps. He regained his balance swiftly.
And then neatly, gently, he placed her feet on the ground.
He hadn’t even grunted. One would have thought he spent his days catching flying women.
He didn’t release her at once. Which was all to the good, because her knees were like water.
She remained motionless within the confines of his arms. Winded, weak with mingled terror and outrageous elation, mindless with relief. Whoever this was represented shelter and safety.
He smelled of woodsmoke and cheroot smoke and damp wool.
When she felt his chest move with a breath she was mortified to realize her hands had reflexively curled into the wet wool of his coat like a cat’s claws. Her forehead was pressed against his waistcoat button.
Mortification scorched away elation, then sanity swept in. She was instantly wildly terrified to be in the grip of a strange man.
He sensed it. He released her at once and stepped back.
“There now. Are you sound?” His voice was more efficient than kind. But it was a little of both.
“Y-yes. Thank you.” Her voice was frayed.
“Nothing I wouldn’t also do for a drowning cat,” he said amiably. “After that, it’s up to the cat to survive another day, if it can manage it. Godspeed, madam.”
Lorcan touched his hat, pivoted, and strode three steps away from her.
Impulsively, he glanced back.
She remained rooted to where she was, statue still, it seemed, staring blankly at the wall in front of her.
He took two more, slower, steps.
Then stopped.
He pivoted.
He debated with himself over whether to ask the question. He did not have to care. He frankly didn’t want to care.
But she looked so stunned. And very alone.
“What are your plans?” he said evenly.
She gave a start and staggered backward, away from him.
“My plans are not your concern, sir.” She said it politely but firmly.
But her voice trembled.
Well, he thought. Truer words were seldom spoken.
“There won’t be a sane or sober hack driver on the street in this weather,” he warned.
“Which is just as well, as I planned to walk.”
“I see. To . . . where, precisely?” He languidly swept an arm to indicate the black night laced by labyrinths of alleys. Here and there, blurry pinpricks of light interrupted the dark. Lamps that would soon be snuffed either by their owners or by the relentlessly building wind. When the storm broke in earnest, not even the watch would be out on the streets.
The woman took a breath and drew herself up to her full height. The top of her head had reached about to his collarbone, and she smelled of good soap. He’d noted this when he’d held her. “Sir, I’ve nothing worth taking in any sense of the word. If you do not plan to rob or—or—otherwise—me, I’ll just be on my way. But I am grateful for the assistance and I hope no lasting damage was done to your person by its collision with mine. Goodbye. I’ll . . . think of you fondly from time to time.”
It was just the sort of bracingly acerbic speech Lorcan appreciated.
She sounded more exasperated than fearful. Given where she was and what she was doing, she ought to be both. A sane woman would be, anyhow.
When he said nothing, she snatched up her bag and began walking.
She rounded the corner out of the alley and continued walking at a brisk clip, the heels of good walking shoes echoing in the dark, her bulging valise thumping against her thigh. Increasingly fat raindrops bashed down on the top of her hat and bounced off, glinting. She was soon barely visible in the misty wash of darkness and weather.
He had the strangest sense that he was watching someone wade suicidally into the ocean.
“Christ,” he muttered. Irritated.
He couldn’t allow it.
He followed, quietly. Stealthily. At a distance.
She made what appeared to be a decisive turn around a corner toward Lovell Street.
Seconds later, he heard the scream.
Daphne flung her body back against the building wall.
A knife was pointed at her throat and a mouth was open in a dark snarl inches from her eyes. “I’ll just take yer baggage, now, won’t I—”
Something darted out in her peripheral vision.
Her attacker howled in pain as the knife flew from his hand.
She heard it slice the air in cartwheels and land with a metallic clink.
Her rescuer seized a fistful of the attacker’s coat in one fist and hoisted him until his boot toes scraped the cobblestones.
“ARE. YOU. MAD.” Three vicious slaps whipped the would-be thief’s head to and fro. Three words were delivered like barked orders.
The shocking sound of flesh striking flesh cramped Daphne’s stomach.
“God have mercy . . .” Her attacker moaned. “Lordship? I didna know you were back in London—I didna know she was yer doxie, Lordship—dinna kill me—God save me—”
Lordship?
“Cease your whining. Preying on a wee woman alone,” he hissed. “I should slit you like a fish. Go on. Get out of here.”
He opened his hand as though dumping a chamber pot. The man dropped to his knees with a gut-churning crack. He crawled a few inches, then righted himself, and half scrambled, half stumbled away. His footfalls echoed, then faded, then were gone.
Her large rescuer didn’t precisely brush his hands briskly together. But he seemed no more nonplussed than if he’d just taken a broom to a dusty cottage floor.
They regarded each other in silence for a moment.
“I’m sorry you were obliged to experience that,” he said finally.
But she couldn’t speak. The efficient, competent brutality of it had bludgeoned her witless.
Her fear was transcendent and arrived delayed and so total it was almost anesthetizing.
No thought or feeling could get through. She couldn’t seem to form words.
He waited.
Finally, she opened her mouth, and as if waiting for her to do that, a tiny sound emerged.
It regrettably bore more resemblance to a whimper than a word.
Her back was literally against the wall. She realized it didn’t feel dissimilar to the man’s front.
A wall would not save her if he wanted to break her in half. She was certain he could.
She was shivering nearly violently now.
An overhang protected her somewhat from the ever-swifter downpour.
He remained where he stood, a dark dripping statue.
“Madam,” he said quietly. Patiently. His low voice penetrated the hiss and splat of rain like a cello. “The streets here at night are as full of sharks as the ocean. My bones tell me a storm will be long and brutal. The ones I’ve broken never lie. Do you have a destination? Are you meeting someone?”
He could break her in half if he wanted to, she thought again. Slit her like a fish, she supposed.
He hadn’t yet.
“One hundred feet.” Her wobbly voice shocked her. She sounded like someone else entirely.
“I beg your pardon?”
She cleared her throat. “It’s about one hundred feet from here. I counted it off, you see, when I . . . The building. I can find it. It’s white . . . there are little . . . little . . . gargoyles on the roofline, and a sign on chains . . . I saw the rules in the tobacconist’s, and I liked them . . .”
She stopped, because her ability to speak had run out.
He was quiet. She wondered if he was considering the possibility that she was quite mad.
“Are you certain you want to go there?” He sounded careful.
It wasn’t the question she was expecting.
“Yes.”
Another odd pause. “Are you . . . looking for employment?”
And now his words seemed strangely, carefully uninflected.
It was a curious question.
Oh God. She wondered whether he was about to make her an uncomfortable offer.
“I hope to find shelter there.”
This was the truth. Employment would have to wait. But it could not wait for long.
“As do I. In exchange for escorting you safely there, I should like the answer to a question.”
“You may ask it,” she said.
She wouldn’t promise to answer it. And she didn’t intend to give him her name. It was bad enough that he’d witnessed perhaps the most ignominious event of her life yet.
“Why were you climbing out of that window in the middle of the night?”
She considered this. “Because I couldn’t remain where I was a moment longer.”
After a moment, his smile appeared again, that white flash in the dark. He gave a short laugh. But it sounded almost like approbation.
The rain was falling faster now, the drops larger and messily splatting, as if the sheer weight of it was tearing a rent in the sky wider and wider.
“I’ve a question for you, sir.” Though her voice was stronger now, it still wobbled.
“Very well.”
“Are you, in fact, a lord?”
He paused.
“What do you think, luv?” he said ironically.
She didn’t dare say what she thought.
And after a moment he said: “Shall we?”
For the second time that evening, she moved away from the wall and toward him, and it felt nearly the same as leaping from a crate.
