Delilah Marvelle - Forever a Lady

Matthew paused. “Yes, I want it. What’s this business of him overriding me?”

Ronan eyed the closed door and lowered his voice. “There’s talk of another swipe on your life. Only, this time, it involves seventeen men from a neighboring ward, hence why Coleman up and put Kerner in charge. Coleman says he’s got business abroad he’s been putting off, so he bought two tickets on a packet ship to Liverpool and wants you on it with him tomorrow at noon. That way, you dodge the swipe, until these boyos are taken off the street by marshals, whilst Coleman ties up strings in London.”

Matthew set a heavy hand against his neck, pinching the skin on it. Another swipe. God. He should have been dead years ago.

Dropping his hand, Matthew dug into the inner pocket of his patched waistcoat, and pulled out all the money he had on him—three dollars. He held it out. “Here. Pay off the debt and keep the rest for yourself and out of your mother’s hands, lest she drink it. And next time, if you want a girl, Ronan, do the respectable thing and marry one.”

Ronan searched his face. “Thanks for... Thanks.” He took the money and tucked it deep into his pocket. He cleared his throat and adjusted his cap and trousers, trying to appear manly. “So, um...what should I tell Coleman? He’s got business over at the docks.”

“Tell him he’s a son of a bitch for caring.”

“Which means you’ll be on that boat.”

“Exactly.”

Ronan sighed, grudgingly turned and made his way to the door, flinging it open. “I’ll tell him.” Ronan glanced back. “You’re coming back, right? You’re not leaving me?”

Matthew hesitated, knowing the boy depended on him for far, far more than money. “I’ll be back once I get word from the marshals that the swipe is over. I promise. In the meantime, take my tenement whilst I’m gone. I’ll give you the key in the morning. The rent has already been paid for to the end of the year.”

“I’ll take it.” Ronan’s face tightened. “I’m done cleaning up whiskey and tossing men out on the hour. No matter what I say and despite all the times you’ve gone over there to talk to her, nothing ever changes. I hate her. I do.”

Matthew swallowed and nodded. Ronan’s mother, who had once been a successful stage actress in Boston when the boy was two, was nothing but a drunk and a penniless whore, who now brought all of her cliental home, whether Ronan was there to see it or not. “She’s still your mother and you’re all the woman has. She needs you.”

“More than I need her,” Ronan muttered, disappearing.

Matthew threw back his head, exhausted. London? Why did he have this feeling Coleman was saving him from one mess, only to drag him into another?

CHAPTER THREE

All that you see, judge not.

—The Truth Teller, a New York Newspaper for Gentlemen

The opening of the Season in London—Rotten Row

WHY, OH WHY, DID SHE feel like Caesar about to be stabbed by Brutus? Directing her horse alongside the stunning redhead who Mr. Astor was ardently gambling on, Bernadette Marie fixed her gaze on the remaining path leading through the rest of the park. She tightened her gloved hands on the leather reins, endlessly grateful not to have been ambushed or stoned. Yet.

Glancing over at Georgia, Bernadette withheld a sigh. She really was going to miss the girl. The idea of handing her off to London society made her cringe. Georgia was so much bigger in character and in spirit than these stupid fops around them, and after ten months of the girl’s eye rolling and giggling and huffing whilst Bernadette attempted to mold her into perfection, Bernadette realized that she was about to lose a friend. Something she really didn’t have. For whilst men flocked to her in the name of money, women never flocked to her at all. They only ever saw her as competition or a threat to their reputation.

Georgia groaned. “I hate London.”

Bernadette tried not to smirk. “This is probably where I should remind you that you have come to Town to wed and stay in it.”

“Oh, yes. That.” Georgia’s green eyes brightened as her arched rust-colored brows rose. “I wonder what Robinson will think of me when he sees me.”

Ah, to be twelve years younger and still think men were worth more than their trousers. “He will most likely faint.”

And Bernadette meant it. After the astounding transformation Georgia had undergone from street girl to American heiress, not even her waiting Lord Yardley was going to recognize her.

As Bernadette scanned the path before them, wondering if they were done showcasing Georgia for the afternoon, two imposing gents on black stallions made her pause. She lowered her chin against the silk sash of her riding bonnet.

Both well-framed men wore ragged great coats, edge-whitened black leather boots and no hats or gloves. In fact, their horses and saddles looked better kept than they did. The two clearly thought they had every right to be on this here path. One man had silvering black hair that was in dire need of shearing, and the other—

She blinked as her startled gaze settled on windblown, sunlit, chestnut-colored hair, a bronzed rugged face set with a taut jaw, and a worn leather patch that had been tied over his left eye as if he were some sort of...Pirate King.

She drew in an astonished soft breath. Oh, my, and imagine that. It was like meeting a phantom from her own mind. Ever since she was eight, she’d always dreamily wanted to meet a real privateer, like Captain Lafitte out of New Orleans, whom she’d read about in the gazettes she’d steal from the servants. She would dash herself out toward the Thames each and every morning with her governess in tow and rebelliously stand on the docks, watching the ships pass, whilst praying said privateer would spot her from deck, point and make her quartermaster of his ship.

Everywhere she went, be it the square, the country or sweeping the keys of her piano, she had waited and waited to be seized by pirates and dragged out of London. She had even envisioned one of them to be rougher and gruffer than the rest, bearing a leather patch over an eye he’d lost in a fight. She even gave him a name—the Pirate King. The Pirate King was supposed to introduce her to the span of the sea not set by female etiquette but by the wild adventures outside everything known as London. A life far, far away from her stern, penny-pinching papa, who had expected her to marry a crusty old man by the name of Lord Burton when she turned a walk-the-plank eighteen.

But this Pirate King was seventeen years and a marriage too late. And though, yes, pirates were considered criminals, and this one looked like one himself, she had learned at an early age that all men were criminals in one form or another, be they breaking the rules of the land or the rules of the heart. Oh, yes. She had no doubt whatsoever that this one probably broke all the rules. Even the ones that had yet to be written.

As he and his black stallion rode steadily closer alongside his other bandit of a friend, and the distance of the riding path between them diminished, he leveled his shaven jaw against that frayed linen cravat and stared at her with a penetrating coal-black gaze. His visible eyes methodically dropped from her face to her shoulders to her breasts and back up again with the lofty ease of a captain surveying a ship he was about to board.

An unexpected fluttering overtook her stomach. She squelched it, knowing that the man was probably just calculating the worth of her Pomona Green velvet riding gown.

Determined to trudge through whatever ridiculous attraction she had for the ruffian, Bernadette couldn’t help but cheekily drawl aloud to Georgia, “Well, well, well. It appears the row is more rotten than usual today. I love it. For the sake of your reputation, my dear, ignore these two men approaching on horseback. Heaven only knows who they are and what they want.” Because ruffians weren’t supposed to be on this path. It was the unspoken rule of aristocratic society.