Margaret McPhee - The Gentleman Rogue

‘We should get going,’ he said. And together they began to walk down the alleyway.

Their footsteps were soft and harmonious, the slower, heavier thud of his boots in time with the lighter step of her own.

They walked on, out on to St Catherine’s Lane. Walked along in silence.

‘You knew those sailors would be waiting for me, didn’t you?’

‘Did I?’

‘You do not fool me, Ned Stratham.’

‘It’s not my intention to fool anyone.’

She scrutinised him, before asking the question that she’d been longing to ask since the first night he had walked into the Red Lion. ‘Who are you?’

‘Just a man from Whitechapel.’

‘And yet...the shirt beneath your jacket looks like it came from Mayfair. And is tailored to fit you perfectly. Most unusual on a man from Whitechapel.’ He was probably a crook. A gang boss. A tough. How else did a man like him get the money for such a shirt? Asking him now, when they were alone, in the dark of the night, was probably not the wisest thing she had ever done, but the question was out before she could think better of it. Besides, if she did not ask him now, she doubted she would get another chance. She ignored the faster patter of her heart and held his eyes, daring him to tell her something of the truth.

‘You’ve been eyeing up my shirt.’

She gave a laugh and shook her head. ‘I could not miss it. Nor could half the chop-house. You have had your jacket off all evening.’

‘But half the chop-house would not have recognised a Mayfair shirt.’ Half in jest, half serious.

Her heart skipped a beat, but she held his gaze boldly, as if he were not treading so close to forbidden ground, brazening it out. ‘So you admit it is from Mayfair?’

‘From Greaves and Worcester.’

‘How does a Whitechapel man come to be wearing a shirt from one of the most expensive shirt-makers in London?’

‘How is a woman from a Whitechapel chop-house familiar with the said wares and prices?’

She smiled, but said nothing, on the back foot now that he was the one asking questions she did not want to answer.

‘What’s your story, Emma?’

‘Long and uninteresting.’

‘For a woman like you, in a place like this?’ He arched the rogue eyebrow with scepticism.

She held her silence, wanting to know more of him, but not at the cost of revealing too much of herself.

‘Playing your cards close to your chest?’ he asked.

‘It is the best way, I have found.’

He smiled at that. ‘A woman after my own heart.’

They kept on walking, their footsteps loud in the silence.

He met her eyes. ‘I heard tell you once worked in Mayfair.’ It was the story she had put about.

‘Cards and chest, even for unspoken questions,’ she said.

Ned laughed.

And she smiled.

‘I worked as a lady’s maid.’ She kept her eyes front facing. If he had not already heard it from the others in the Red Lion, he soon would. It was the only reasonable way to explain away her voice and manners; many ladies’ maids aped their mistresses. And it was not, strictly speaking, a lie, she told herself for the hundredth time. She had learned and worked in the job of a lady’s maid, just as she had shadow-studied the role of every female servant from scullery maid to housekeeper; one had to have an understanding of how a household worked from the bottom up to properly run it.

‘That explains much. What happened?’

‘You ask a lot of questions, Ned Stratham.’

‘You keep a lot of secrets, Emma de Lisle.’

Their gazes held for a moment too long, in challenge, and something else, too. Until he smiled his submission and looked ahead once more.

She breathed her relief.

A group of men were staggering along the other side of the Minories Road, making their way home from the King’s Head. Their voices were loud and boisterous, their gait uneven. They shouted insults and belched at one another. One of them stopped to relieve his bladder against a lamp post.

She averted her eyes from them, met Ned’s gaze and knew he was thinking about the knife and how it would have fared against six men.

‘It would still have given them pause for thought,’ she said in her defence.

Ned said nothing.

But for all of her assertions and the weight of the kitchen knife within her cloak right at this moment in time she was very glad of Ned Stratham’s company.

The men did not shout the bawdy comments they would have had it been Tom by her side. They said nothing, just quietly watched them pass and stayed on their own side of the road.

Neither of them spoke. Just walking together at the same steady pace up Minories. Until the drunkards were long in the distance. Until they turned right into the dismal narrow street in which she and her father lodged. There were no street lamps, only the low silvery light of the moon to guide their steps over the potholed surface.

Halfway along the street she slowed and came to a halt outside the doorway of a shabby boarding house.

‘This is it. My home.’

He glanced at the building, then returned his eyes to her.

They looked at one another through the darkness.

‘Thank you for walking me home, Ned.’

‘It was the least I could do for my betrothed,’ he said with his usual straight expression, but there was the hint of a smile in his eyes.

She smiled and shook her head, aware he was teasing her, but her cheeks blushing at what she had let the sailors in the alleyway think. ‘I should have set them straight.’

‘And end our betrothal so suddenly?’

‘Would it break your heart?’

‘Most certainly.’

The teasing faded away. And with it something of the safety barrier between them.

His eyes locked hers, so that she could not look away even if she had wanted to. A sensual tension whispered between them. Attraction. Desire. Forbidden liaisons. She could feel the flutter of butterflies in her stomach, feel a heat in her thighs. In the silence of the surrounding night the thud of her heart sounded too loud in her ears. Her skin tingled with nervous anticipation.

She glanced up to the window on the second floor where the light of a single candle showed faintly through the thin curtain. ‘My father waits up for me. I should go.’

‘You should.’

But she made no move to leave. And neither did he.

He looked at her in a way that made every sensible thought flee her head. He looked at her in a way that made her feel almost breathless.

Ned stepped towards her, closed the distance between them until they were standing toe to toe, until she could feel the brush of his thighs against hers.

‘I thought you said you were the perfect gentleman?’

‘You said that, not me.’ His eyes traced her face, lingering over her lips, so that she knew he meant to kiss her. And God knew what living this life in Whitechapel had done to her because in that moment she wanted him to. Very much.

Desire vibrated between them. Where his thighs touched to hers the skin scalded. In the moonlight his eyes looked dark, smouldering, intense. She knew that he wanted her. Had been around Whitechapel long enough to know the games men and women played.

Emma’s breath sounded too loud and ragged.

Their gazes held locked.

The tension stretched until she did not think she could bear it a second longer.

He slid his strong arms around her waist, moving slowly, giving her every chance to step away or tell him nay. But she did neither. Only placed her palms to rest tentatively against the leather breast of his jacket.

He lowered his face towards her.

She tilted her mouth to meet his.

And then his lips took hers and he kissed her.

He kissed her and his kiss was gentle and persuasive. His kiss was tender and passionate. He was the strongest, fiercest man she knew and yet he did not force or plunder. He was not rough or grabbing. It seemed to her he gave rather than took. Courting her lips, teasing them, making her feel things she had never felt before. Making her want him never to stop.