Wayward One (33 page)

A hesitant smile pinched at her cheeks. What an amazing feeling, to know such. She shook her head. “My life has been fine. I should have liked to have known you earlier, but my mother…she did her best for me. And after she died, I was a very lucky girl to have been placed where I was.”

As she said the words, she saw the truth shining through them. Mama might have had her head in the clouds most days, and she might have had to do things no gentlewoman should, but nothing had dimmed her optimism. She’d done her best to pass that trait onto her child through the only medium she could, her fairy tales.

Afterwards, Fletcher had watched out for her, though he’d been no more than a child himself. He’d put her in the Waywroth Academy and there she’d grown into the woman she was.

A woman who threw away the blessings she received because of fear. Her blood ran cold.

Mama would have been disgusted with Sera. She’d discarded her chance of having a happy life with her husband. Locked herself into little, tiny boxes for fear of what others would say.

She looked from Lord Linsley to his wife. Not a whisper passed through society about them being anything but perfectly appropriate at all times, but in the face of such tumult they turned to each other. Willingly. Openly.

She wanted that desperately. Fletcher had tried to give it to her, but she’d been too closed off.

Hopefully it wasn’t too late.

Lady Linsley took Sera’s hands in both of her own. “Would you be willing to enter into a relationship with our family? We’d like to acknowledge you as Albert’s daughter.”

A hot blush choked her. “The matter of their marriage? Or lack of one?”

The earl cloaked himself in every bit of aristocratic power years of breeding had given him. He abruptly displayed a cold and remote mien. “Who’s to say there wasn’t one? In fact, now that I think on it, I do believe I remember my brother making a deathbed confession to an elopement.”

Sera couldn’t help a near-hysterical giggle. “Do you, now?”

He nodded. A conspirator’s smile lit his eyes—the brown of which looked remarkably familiar. Sera had seen the same color in mirrors. “I do indeed. It’s become crystal clear now.”

“See? Between my husband’s not-inconsiderable societal pull, your excellent schooling and our husbands’ alliance in business, there will be no one who dares to doubt us.”

“Oh,” Sera exclaimed. “The railroad syndicate… I must admit I haven’t much knowledge of Mr. Thomas’s intent in that matter.”

The earl shook his head. “I’ve little worry on that front. We’ll sort it all out later.”

Yes, they could. Because they all had the possibility of a later. Unlike her mother and father. Her chest caught on a surge of amazement. She actually had a father. Though he was gone forever from her grasp, she had his family willing to accept her to their loving bosom.

Loving certainly was the word for them. They didn’t shy from showing affection for each other, not when they needed it.

Fletcher could give that to her. A happy life filled with love. He’d said so, declared he loved her.

It
could
be true. Even their burning passion wasn’t too much. The idea of standing up to the world at large became much less frightening when she contemplated doing so with a family at her back. Between them and her friends, she’d never be alone again.

Most of all, there was Fletcher. He’d never leave her.

If only she could make things right between them.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The thick fog suited Fletcher’s mood exactly. Yellowish and sickly, it was threaded through with a distinct sulphurous scent, as if the bowels of hell had opened and spewed its stinking breath upon the city at large. Anything could roam through the fog.

Good people didn’t go out in a dark London fog. They stayed home, tucked in their parlors, and stuck their hands out at their fires as if that would keep hell’s breath away.

Fletcher roamed through the fog at will. A small army of knee breakers and rough men charged with him.

St. Johns, the sailor he’d kept under watch for nearly two months, stumbled along at his side. Micky wasn’t particularly gentle as he jerked the man by the arm. He’d reported to Fletcher that the sailor had whinged and complained with every breath he’d taken over being locked in a dank, prisonlike room. Fletcher had been unwilling to risk any chance that St. Johns would fly the coop or send off a letter of warning before presenting his partner in crime. They’d considered trying to snatch the man when he disembarked his ship, but the docks would have been busy. Fletcher wasn’t willing to risk letting the man who’d organized the attack on Fletcher and Sera slip through his fingers.

Despite the fact that she’d bloody
left
him, there was no way he’d allow a danger to her roam the streets.

She was his to protect, by God, whether she’d admit it or not. He’d done it for more than a decade already, and that was before he’d come to love her.

He’d be damned if he shrugged and walked away because she was too afraid to lay claim to what could be.

One hand curled into a fist as they marched along, the other clenching on his cane. Though it looked like a gentleman’s instrument, it was anything but. A real gentleman’s cane wouldn’t be weighted at one end with iron and have a concealed blade on the other. Not to mention the pistol tucked beneath his waistcoat.

He’d never laid claim to be a gentleman. That was Sera’s whole problem with him.

The streets had become more narrow and crooked than the dingy area of town he normally bothered with. Buildings listed against each other like the drunken sailors who called the apartments home when on shore. The thick stench of stagnant water and rotting fish barely cut through the thick fog, but it was enough to have some of Fletcher’s half-dozen men wrinkling their noses.

St. Johns drew to a halt before one building. Tall and skinny, the windows were covered with oiled paper. “Here,” he said. “This is his normal place when he’s home.”

Fletcher rolled his shoulders. He could do with a bit of violence. It had been a while since he’d had a good excuse to knock some heads. “You’re sure?”

“Sure as can be without being allowed out in the past weeks.”

“That’s good,” Fletcher drawled. “Because you’d hate to see what happens to men who lie to me. They end up in a bit of a mess.”

St. Johns gulped. “Yessir.”

“Come on,” Fletcher said. “Barnaby, you take your contingent to the back alley. Let no one escape until I’ve approved them.”

“Yes, sir.” With a tip of his hat, Barnaby gathered three of the men and stepped off.

“Barnaby,” Fletcher called. The man stopped immediately. “Break bones if you have to, but don’t kill them. Not ’til I’ve had a chance to speak to them, at least.”

A wicked grin cut through Barnaby’s bulbous features. “Yessir.” He strode off with even more pep in his step. Barnaby’s preference for breaking shinbones was a bit distasteful, but he was a good man to have fighting on your side.

“All right,” Fletcher said to the contingent he’d been left with. “Let’s on up.”

St. Johns shook with fear as Micky yanked him toward the front door. “Can’t I stay out? I’ve led you here. Jigger Jack’ll kill me if he knows I sold him out.”

Fletcher grinned. “And I’ll kill you slowly if I find out you lied. So you best come along and make sure I don’t knock on the wrong door.”

St. Johns went pale, but he followed Fletcher up the precarious stairs without further complaint. The boards were rickety and creaked under the weight of a contingency of hefty men. Without enough support, the stairs swayed in a way that set Fletcher’s guts to churning.

Or it would if he hadn’t been so bloody, raging mad. The fury had got stronger every day he’d roamed around his big house.

It was easier to be mad than to miss the quiet hum of activity and productivity Sera carried around with her. She motivated everyone around her to be better. Why, just this morning, his kippers had been cold, hard lumps, as if the cook hadn’t bothered to try.

“This one,” St. Johns squeaked on the third floor.

They turned down a hallway that was so scanty most of them couldn’t walk two abreast. The walls were smeared with distasteful smudges, and at their bases were drift piles of random rubbish and detritus.

Finally St. Johns pointed at a door. A finger-width crack ran from the top to waist-high, and the doorjamb was split through, as if someone had previously tried to mount an assault on the place. “Here’s it,” said the sailor.

Good. It would only make it easier to bust down.

With a couple silent gestures, he arranged his men on each side of the door. Micky took St. Johns a few paces away, then clapped a hand over the sailor’s mouth to keep him from yelling a warning.

Fletcher leaned back and slammed the flat of his boot into the door, right next to the tarnished knob. It rent with a loud squeal, the jamb giving up any last attempt at holding true.

They rushed in like a dark wave.

A single man was in the room, trying to scramble off the far side of the bed. Dressed in only a pair of breeches, he was tangled in brown-stained sheets. He writhed over the edge, but then his feet tangled up and he slammed into the floor.

Jesus. Could Fletcher not catch a break? It was a little beyond him to kick a man when he was down.

He took a small bit of pleasure from twisting the man’s wrist to a near breaking point as he jerked him to his feet.

“This him?” Fletcher spat.

St. Johns had been marched to the doorway by Micky. He nodded frantically, then tried to back away, but the way was well and good blocked. No one would be going anywhere until Fletcher sorted it all out.

“Who’s you?” the man said. He had a hard hooked nose that had blown red with overindulgence in drink. Despite that, his dark blue eyes were bright and intelligent, set in a round face.

Fletcher wrenched his wrist a little higher. “I’m the one you tried to attack two months ago.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re on about.”

One crack across the back of the blighter’s knees sent him sprawling across the floor. “No? Your friend St. Johns here says otherwise.”

The man who was presumably Jigger Jack struggled to his hands and knees. Lank hair hung in front of his face as he lifted his head, but he shot St. Johns a nasty look anyway. “I see no friends of mine here,” he snarled.

Fletcher indulged in another blow, this one to the buttocks. Jack went sprawling again. “I don’t care. I wish to know why you attacked me.”

Jigger Jack pushed up. Fletcher had to hand it to him, he was a determined sot. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Fletcher kicked him down, reveling in a base surge of enjoyment. He carefully ground his boot across the back of the man’s neck. “I do believe you might want to reconsider lying to me. I don’t much appreciate liars.”

Jack’s face flushed so red it was almost purple. “You’re a right rich toff,” he choked out. “Looked like you’d be an easy mark.”

Fletcher leaned his weight into the man’s neck. Counted—very slowly—to twenty. “Reconsider.”

Jigger Jack sucked in deep breaths, then coughed out. Spittle covered his fleshy lips. His fingernails scrabbled at the dirty floor. “You won’t like it.”

Fletcher stomped again, this time a hard and quick push. “Think I like this to begin with? It fairly angers me in general.”

“Was hired to it.”

He slid the sword end free of his cane in an intentional hiss. The room was quiet despite having a half-dozen big men piled in it, and the soft purr of the sword sounded as loud as trumpets. They all watched impassively except for St. Johns, who looked more terrified than anything.

“I already know that, you shit,” Fletcher said. He lowered the sword before Jack’s eyes and rested the tip on the wooden floor. “Tell me who hired you.”

“Rick Raverst.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

As Lady Honoria’s carriage rumbled to a stop before Fletcher’s home, Sera thought she ought to be nervous. Worried about her reception perhaps. After all, she’d left in an epic flounce. Too afraid of her own emotions, she’d scorned Fletcher’s declaration of his.

She wasn’t nervous; she was giddy. A silly smile kept creeping over her and tweaking her cheeks. Her hands fluttered, more out of an excess of energy than anything else. Sitting quietly in the carriage had been beyond her. Her heels bounced in an absolute denial of the serene decorum required of women. She couldn’t help it. She floated on the buoyancy of her emotions.

Fletcher wouldn’t turn her away.

She knew it all the way down to her soul.

Certainly there would be things to work through. She’d have to apologize first off. Somewhere along the line she’d have to explain to Fletcher that when he called her perfect or tried to place her upon a pedestal, it did nothing but make her more nervous of failure.

She’d have to demonstrate that she didn’t want to keep their affection constrained within the dark of her bedroom.

Fletcher was a good man. He didn’t deserve to be treated like a shameful secret even if the depths of her love for him frightened her. Life was too short for behavior like that.