A Season to Be Sinful Page 13

  “However,” Lily said, neither accepting or dismissing his apology, “I was not there that evening. I followed the boys to Covent Garden because I do not trust them. They are as likely to end up on a transport ship to Van Diemen’s Land as any I’ve known, perhaps more so because Midge is eager to prove his worth to the other two.”

  “Pinch and Dash?” Sherry asked. “How skilled are they?”

  “Expert enough to take your handkerchief without you knowing.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Lily simply raised one eyebrow and leveled him with a significant look.

  “Surely not,” he said, unfolding his arms to check for his handkerchief. It was gone. “The devil they did. When did they—”

  “They gave you the rum-hustle on their way out the door. Pinch was the bulker, and Dash did a bit of fogle-hunting. He gave your handkerchief to Midge, though, which I thought was generous. Midge waved it at me from the hallway.”

  Sherry remembered his back had been to the door and that he’d asked Lily to tell him if the boys had gone. “You didn’t say a thing.”

  She raised her hands helplessly and shrugged.

  Sherry plowed his fingers through his hair, supporting his head in his palm for a moment as he considered his response. “It is difficult to be annoyed when one is also damnably impressed.”

  “Yes,” she said. “One frequently feels that way about them.”

  “Nothing is safe here, is it?”

  Lily did not lie to him. “I suppose that depends on whether Ned Craven finds out that they’re here. Left to their own devices, they’ll be satisfied with tarts and custards.”

  “And handkerchiefs,” he said wryly.

  “Just to keep their hand in.”

  “I forget you are a wit.” He folded his arms again. “Who is this Ned Craven?”

  Lily had wondered if Ned might be known to Sheridan. Discovering he was not made her tread carefully. “I suppose it is best understood if you know that he enjoys some influence in Holborn. He trades in favors, large and small, and he expects a fair tribute for what he does—or what he doesn’t do. The boys steal for him when he asks.”

  “They wouldn’t refuse him?”

  She shook her head. “That is never wise.” She gave him time to think over her full meaning, then she went on. “Pinch told me this morning that Ned was in want of some funds that night, and that’s why they went to the Garden. Since it was a quid Ned was demanding, there was probably a gaming debt he wanted to settle.”

  “So the boys are there because of Craven, and you are there because of the boys.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And I am their mark.”

  “Yes. I saw Dash first from one direction, then Pinch from another. They are so small and slippery that it was not easy to follow their movements. It was when I spied Midge that I was finally able to make you as their target.”

  “I am curious about that,” he said. “Why did they choose me?”

  Lily suspected Ned had been more particular about the mark than the boys had led her to believe, but she did not explain this. Keeping it from him, however, did not give her any measure of peace. “You will have to ask them. I would not have.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you were watchful. I do not think the boys notice such things yet, but I saw how your eyes moved over the crowd. It was not merely in support of casual interest, and neither were you trying to catch anyone’s eye. I do not believe you offered a polite greeting to a single person in all the time I observed you.”

  “Truly?” Sherry asked, fascinated. “You noticed all this?”

  “Of course. One must.”

  “So it would seem. Pray, continue.”

  “The woman at your side,” Lily said, “she is your . . .?”

  “Miss Dumont,” he said.

  Lily was not surprised that he did not reveal his relationship to the woman, but she was disappointed. “Yes, well, Miss Dumont said something that took your attention. It is possible the boys observed this earlier and chose you because they knew you could be easily diverted. They also know that when it comes to making the rum-hustle a gentleman will have more care for his lady than himself.”

  “It would seem that gallantry makes one vulnerable.”

  “Indeed.”

  Sherry set his heels on the bed frame and tipped his chair back, balancing it at a dangerous angle. “Go on.”

  Lily felt a twinge in her side as she drew in a breath. Not wanting to distract Sheridan from the story, she said nothing and let her hand idly drift downward to where she could place pressure on the injury. “You were distracted, the boys were moving closer, and I only wanted to stop them. I started to duck and weave in the crowd, hoping to reach you before they did. I would have let you go unmolested; they only had to see me there to do the same.”

  “But you didn’t. You attacked me.”

  Lily nodded. “I did, but not to hurt you. There was someone else. Someone with a blade. I confess, I remember very little about it, and almost nothing about him, but I swear to you I didn’t have a knife.” She shrugged, hoping the truth would shield the lies. “More’s the pity.”

  Sherry set his chair down on all four legs. “That is what you said when you fell on top of me with the blade buried in your side.”

  “I did?”

  “Mmm. Except you said it in French.”

  Lily’s green eyes widened a fraction. She could think of nothing to say.

  “It was surprising,” he said lightly. “Especially when your speech was without accent.”

  “It must have raised a great many questions in your mind.”

  “A great many. Most of which you have since announced you will not answer.”

  She did not apologize for it. He would have known it was insincere.

  Sherry applied himself to all the particulars she had set before him and wondered which ones he could trust as facts. It was perhaps too convenient that she did not remember the last moments of the attack very well. “If you saw the man’s weapon, how is it that you got caught by it? Was there nowhere for you to move?”

  “It was moving that caused him to stick me,” she said. “Do you not understand, my lord? The knife was meant to split your ribs, not mine.”

  When Lily had considered how she might tell him the whole of it, she had entertained some notions regarding his response. It had occurred to her that he was likely to be appalled, perhaps incredulous. When she painted the same picture with less bold strokes, she thought he might be dismayed, mayhap wary. What she had not been able to anticipate was his unemotional and unequivocal acceptance.

  “You knew,” she said. It was an accusation.

  Sherry corrected her. “I suspected.”

  “Why did you permit me to prattle on?”

  “I needed to learn what you knew,” he said. “And in the event you could tell me nothing substantive, there is still the fact that you are vastly entertaining.”

  Lily made to speak, then decided she didn’t know what she might properly say. Had she been insulted? Or was there a compliment paid? In truth, she did not know if she was annoyed or flattered.

  “You wish to say something?”

  She shook her head.

  “Than perhaps you will permit me to explain.” He tipped the chair back on its hind legs again. “You denied having a knife. You spoke a foreign tongue. Plainly, a knife was in your side and plain to me at least was the truth that I didn’t put it there. Your body was spirited away before the crowd was cleared, and yet there were no witnesses. I think you will agree, it is a peculiar set of circumstances. I made a good effort to ignore the whole of it. A day passed before I ventured back to Covent Garden and into Holborn. I was looking for you, certainly, but for answers also. I did not know if you still survived, and I particularly did not know that you were female. There were not many people who were willing to speak to me.”

  “Did you offer coin?”

  “For your car
e if you were alive. For your burial if you were not. I demanded proof of either.”

  “Then you never spoke to an informer. Any one of them would have told you where I was for very little of the ready.”

  “Perhaps none knew.”

  “There is always one who knows, and it takes only one. It can’t be helped.” But Lily knew why no one had come forward—and it wasn’t because of her. She felt a small stab of conscience, then another in her side as she shifted her position to put more weight on one hip. It was sharp enough to make her breath hitch.

  Sheridan’s dark glance was shrewdly assessing. “You have been sitting there too long.” He dropped his feet to the floor and stood. “Harris says you’re healing well enough on the outside but that it will take considerably more time to heal what none of us can see.” He held up the covers so she could stretch out more comfortably under them. “Not on your side,” he said. “Your back.”

  “I will get a crick in my neck trying to look at you if I lie on my back.”

  “I am not staying. You are going to rest, perhaps even sleep.”

  “I am bored with resting and tired from so much sleep. I cannot stay bed-bound. Nothing good can come of it.”

  “That is my opinion also, but walking about is something to begin this afternoon.” She looked as if she meant to continue arguing, and Sherry held up a hand to stop her. “I mean to have my way on this.”

  Lily could not think of any situation thus far in which he had not had his way. She would have dearly liked to point this out, but he was already quitting the room and her wide yawn precluded speech of any kind. She would not be at all surprised if she was asleep before he reached the stairs.

  Sherry was in want of a diversion. It occurred to him that he might have been too hasty putting a period to his liaison with Francine. He had not accounted for the possibility that his journey to Granville would be delayed. Now he was at sixes and sevens, reluctant to venture out to the clubs and risk another flurry of invitations that would require answering but equally dissatisfied with the prospect of remaining indoors.

  The solution that he arrived upon was to do something out of the ordinary. He would go out but not to any of the haunts he typically frequented. There was a certain freedom in that, being unburdened by the expectations of others. It was what he’d hoped to accomplish by going to Granville. It was no small revelation to find the same could be accomplished in Holborn.

  Sherry counted five patrons in the Blue Ruination. Rutland was setting drinks on a table between two of his customers when Sherry walked in. The tavern received little in the way of sunlight through the glass at its front, and the gloom shielded Sherry from immediate recognition.

  He chose a table as far from the other patrons as was possible and sat on the bench that would put his back to them. Blue was not long in coming over.

  Sherry glanced up when Rutland demanded his order.

  “Demmed if it ain’t you.” Blue wiped his hands on his apron and struck a small bow before he joined Sherry at the table. “What are you doing here?” He looked about. “Miss Rose? You ain’t here to tell me you killed her, are you?”

  “No. I’m here for a pint of ale.”

  “Pull the other one.”

  “It’s true. Join me.”

  Although suspicious, Blue got up and poured Sheridan a pint and one for himself. When he returned to the table he pocketed the coin that was put out for him and sat down. “You’ll tell me how she fares?”

  “Well enough.”

  “You ain’t chased the lads out yet, leastways they haven’t come round here.”

  “Would they?” asked Sherry. “Come here, I mean.”

  “They might,” Blue said cautiously. “I have work for them now an’ again.”

  “Fogle-hunting?”

  “Not bloody likely. I don’t deal in stolen goods, but if I had a mind to do it, I’d make a proper job of it. Fogle-hunting’s sport for children. I’d set up the drag sneaks and snoozers, that’s who get the goods.”

  “Drag sneaks?”

  “With all your fine talk of fogle-hunting,” Blue said, “I thought you knew the cant.”

  Sherry ignored Rutland’s mockery. “I’m learning. Tell me about the drag sneaks.”

  “They take luggage from coaches and carts. Snoozers are about the same, but they sleep close to the hostelries along the road and steal the luggage straightaway from the rooms.”

  Sherry thought of the rooms Blue had abovestairs. He did not suppose those who took one for the night ever had much in the way of trunks and bags. “What do the boys do for you?”

  “Wash the cups. Sweep. They take a meal and bit of grog for that. I give them coin for catchin’ rats.”

  Although he tried, Sherry could not imagine Blue Rutland offering any employment because of a generous nature. It seemed more likely that Lily’s fine hand was at work here. “Do the boys work for anyone else?”

  “Couldn’t say. I ain’t their wet nurse.”

  “What about Ned Craven?”

  Blue choked on a mouthful of ale. His eyes watered, and his complexion grew as ruddy as an old salt’s as he coughed hard over his drink. More than a minute passed before he recovered. Making a frank assessment of Sheridan, he slowly wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “You’d do well to be cautious there,” he said. “He’s not a bloke you want to cross.”

  Sherry shrugged. “How would I find him?”

  “You wouldn’t. He’d find you.”

  “Does he come here?”

  Blue looked around, gauging the notice his other customers were taking of his conversation. “You a thief-taker?”

  “A thief-taker? What manner of sneaksman is that?”

  Rutland’s lip curled; his expression hovered on contemptuous. “Here’s a piece of advice for you, m’lord: go on back to your fine house and your fine life and be happy with the education you got. You don’t know enough about what happens here to keep your wits about you. Some would say it’s easier to bash a man’s brains in, then pinch his purse, than it is to pinch his purse.”

  Sherry didn’t blink. As warnings went, it was a good one. “What is a thief-taker?”

  Rutland chuckled, albeit without any genuine humor. “My conscience’s clear. I give you my best advice.” He took a long swallow of ale. “A thief-taker’s a hunter. He’s after the criminal, you see, and when he finds one with a proper reward on his head, he takes him off to court. There’s a good livin’ to be made from it. A fellow can prosper if he don’t get himself killed.” His eyes narrowed as he put forth his question baldly. “So what I’m askin’ you is this: are you one of them? Perhaps they go by a different name where you come from.”

  Not a different name, Sherry had good reason to know. There simply was no name. It did not follow that the profession did not exist. It would have been a grave error to make that assumption. Rather, the absence of a name for it was quite deliberate, for there was inherent power—and mystery—about something of which no one could properly speak. Silence was all but assured.

  In Sherry’s society the thieves taken in were no drag sneaks and snoozers. Governments did not concern themselves overmuch with fogle-hunters and pickpockets. To the extent that the apprehension of these petty criminals provided great spectacle as they were marched aboard the transport ships and fostered the quality’s belief that their leaders were responsive to this threat from the lower orders, the Parliament passed laws and assigned judges to mete out punishment.

  It was Sherry’s observation that governments were not interested in merely protecting the citizenry from threat but in removing those souls who through persuasion or force threatened the government’s very existence.

  Dissidents. Assassins. Traitors.

  And in time of war, foreigners.

  To combat the danger and eliminate each threat in turn, a confederacy was created and made almost invisible to those outside it by its lack of a name. In secret, its members acted on orders from the king and prime minis
ter when they were working in concert and on orders only from the king when they were not.

  These confederates were the thief-takers, hunting their quarry in places not frequented by drag sneaks and snoozers but by gentlemen of quality and sometimes of rank. Once captured, the traitor rarely was asked to account for his actions in a public trial. Instead, justice was routinely served by offering him a ball and pistol and an honorable end by his own hand.

  Sherry regarded his pint of ale a long moment before he met Blue’s gaze directly. “A thief-taker? Me? You cannot imagine what amusement that would be to the people who know me well. No, Mr. Rutland, it’s a life of regularity and routine that I enjoy. What you’re describing is certain to be fraught with risk and offers little reward.”

  He held up a hand as Blue made to object to this last. “I heard you say a man can prosper in the profession, and I say this next not as a boast, but as a point of fact: I am already a prosperous man.”

  Blue grunted once. “Aye. I meant no offense putting the question to you.”

  “None taken.” Sherry set his forearms on the rough table and leaned forward. “Now what of Ned Craven?”

  “He’s all risk, m’lord. You won’t learn about him from me, so I don’t mind asking what your interest is.”

  Sherry made a careless shrug. “I understand the boys work for him from time to time. It has occurred to me that he might press them into service while they are yet under my roof.”

  Blue offered no comment. He stared at Sheridan over the rim of his tankard.

  “I wondered if he might be someone who can be reasoned with.” Sherry waited until Blue’s hoarse and hearty laughter died before he spoke again. “I believe I take your meaning.”

  Grinning, Blue answered, “Aye. You take it right enough. An’ bribery won’t work. Not that Ned wouldn’t be happy to take your silver, but once he has a taste for it, he’ll empty your pockets.” His grin faded and his broad features turned grave. “There’s only one way of ending an arrangement with him, m’lord. Seein’ how you say that you like things all regular and routine, it don’t occur to me that you’d be the one ending it.”