Chapter Six

A man snatched her upper arm, stopping her, and he leaned in front of her to spit into the chamber pot she was carrying as she weaved her way through the tables. She stood, waiting for him to hack up whatever putrescence was in his lungs, her eyes trained on the doorway next to the long bar that filled one end of the Jolly Vassal's main room.

Talia counted the guards coming down the steps beyond the door and into the main room. She had waited all night for this. One, two, three. Only two guards had gone up to relieve them. That meant there was one floor without a guard at the end of the hall.

Her palms went sweaty around the pot she was about to empty. The owner was behind the bar, chatting with the barkeep. She also knew they would never leave the third floor unguarded. If she was lucky, the floor above her was the one without a guard. It was where the owner's office was—she had been in there to empty the pot the first night she had been allowed onto the second floor—and she recognized this may be her only chance that night to sneak in there. She needed to find that list Fletch talked about—a ledger, she guessed, of all the virgins purchased and who the purchasers were.

She hurried through the tables to the back door, slipping out into the night. Dump this pot and then she could pretend it came from an upper floor. A quick scan told her the alley was empty.

She hurried through the shadows to the cesspit. Taking a deep breath and holding it, she flipped the wooden lid to the side with the toe of her boot. She dumped the pot, shaking it until she could hold her breath no longer. Kicking the lid back in place, she turned her head, scooting several feet to the side before she opened her mouth for a gasp of air.

A quick scratch at her itchy hairline under her handkerchief, and she started back to the door, only to be suddenly yanked to the left.

The pot dropped to the cold ground, shattering. Blast it. Another blackguard to deal with and her chance to get up the stairs broken at her feet.

Lesson learned from her neck that was still bruised, Talia started babbling in her ill-bred accent before the cur behind her could get his hand around her throat. "Aye, ‘bout time ‘e sees me pretty muff—it be primed ‘n ready fer ye."

The man clamped an arm around her chest, dragging her backward and deeper into the alley as she kept blabbering. "I be awaitin' all night fer ye to take me. Me itch ain't bad tonight—no pus, so I be ready fer a good clangin' with ye. Don't charge like ‘e whores inside accountin' on me bloody sores. Them bloody bast'rds pull me from the rooms cause of ‘em. Make me change their pots, they do, when I be better on me back."

A thick hand clamped over her mouth, cutting her words.

Time to panic. The second she mentioned sores, the men always dropped her to the dirt. Talia twisted, trying to free herself from the arm dragging her backward on her heels.

"Cease, Talia."

Talia froze. Fletch.

Her heels scraped along the muck of the alley as he dragged her to the next street over. She didn't move. Couldn't move for the vise he had her in. He may as well have tossed her over his shoulder for all the control she had.

The clamp around her chest tightened as Fletch's voice, growling, filled her ears. "Truly, Talia—‘muff,' ‘clanging'?"

His gait sped, jostling her as blood rushed to the tips of her ears. He had heard everything she said. She recognized he knew very well why she had said the words, yet still. Vulgar. He had heard her vulgar. Her only saving grace in the humiliation was that darkness hid her red face.

Fletch stopped at a black carriage, opening the door and lifting her. He tossed her—with a distinct lack of gentleness—inside onto the floor and jumped in after her.

He slammed the door closed behind him, sending the unlit interior into darkness as the horses jumped to a trot. Talia could feel him sit down, his legs brushing her arm. He didn't bother to help her from her heap on the floor of the carriage.

"You are done here, Talia." His voice came down at her from the blackness, seething.

Her fingers found the edge of the bench opposite him and she clasped it, yanking herself up onto the seat. "Why? But I—"

"No discussion, Talia. No pleas. No argument. You are done at the Jolly Vassal. You are done from ever setting foot near a brothel again."

"But—"

"Done."

The word left no room for explanations. No room for argument.

The carriage rattled down the street, taking a sharp turn that sent Talia onto her side. She righted herself, scooting along the bench to the side of the carriage to open the black velvet curtains. Flashes of dim light made it into the carriage from the random street lanterns.

She looked from the window to Fletch, almost afraid to witness in his face the violence that was in his voice. A flash of light verified his glare was exactly as furious as she imagined. She looked out the window. "You are taking me home?"

"I trusted leaving you at the boardinghouse earlier tonight after the gardens. I am not about to make that mistake again. I am taking you to my home so you can bathe and change out of those clothes that stink like the ass of a pig."

Rage sent hackles along the back of Talia's neck. "Of all the bloody high-handedness, you overbearing ogre." She lunged to the side, reaching for the handle of the door.

His hand swift, Fletch snatched her wrist, stopping her movement before she could turn the brass handle. "So now you think to jump from a moving carriage, Talia? You are not that stupid."

"And now you dare to call me stupid?" She wrenched her wrist, only managing to slightly jerk him forward.

"I said you were not that stupid." He dropped her wrist, his eyes boring into her. "Prove me wrong."

Talia glanced out the window. The carriage was going much too fast for her to jump safely. She was that angry, but not that stupid.

She shoved back onto the cushions, crossing her arms over her ribcage. "I do not care for your presumption that you can order me about, Lord Lockston. Our deal entailed no mention of your boorish tyranny."

"I suspect you do not care for anyone ordering you about, Talia." His head tilted, and he stared at her in silence for several blocks.

She refused to look at him as she was too consumed with attempting to stop her body from shaking in indignation.

He sighed, loud, filling the carriage. "Please, Talia. Please will you come to my home, wash the smell from your person, and change into a clean dress so that we may talk without a wall of stench between us?"

Her shaking eased, but it did not disappear completely. She looked across to him in the shadows. He had asked. And Talia guessed that Fletch rarely asked anyone for anything.

She swallowed the rage still wanting to send her tongue to lashing. "I stink that badly?"

He nodded. "I do not exaggerate. I will have to bathe as well after holding on to you."

She shrugged, looking out the window. "Fine, I will come with you."

One hour and one bath later, Talia sat in Fletch's study, warming her bare toes by the fire. Fletch had procured proper stockings and slippers, but as she rarely got to indulge in a true fire to heat her feet and dry her hair by, she had foregone putting them on.

Waiting for Fletch to finish his own bath, she stared at the fire, trying not to look at her surroundings. The room was rich, she had noticed that the first time she had been in here. Elaborately carved woodwork framed the fireplace. A deep mahogany coffered ceiling loomed above. Bookcases filled with row after row of leather-bound tomes.

Fletch's gleamingly polished desk alone took up a quarter of the room.

She didn't want to look at it all, because she didn't want to remember. Her father's study in Rosevin had been much like this one. And she had spent countless hours in there, playing on the floor, interrupting her father every ten minutes.

She had loved his study. Loved how safe, how warm it always was.

It was just another thing lost to her that she couldn't afford the energy to miss. Not when she still had to find Louise.

So she stared at the fire, racking her brain for how she could get into the brothel again to find the list of virgin purchasers. Fletch had taken it upon himself to know her every movement, and she was going to have to ignore his order that she stay away from the Jolly Vassal if she was going to find that list. She needed to find it, needed to hang onto the last vestiges of her tattered hope.

She would talk to Fletch and then leave. Return to the brothel, his anger be damned.

Talia was weaving her hair into a braid when she heard the study door open.

She popped up from the wide leather chair by the hearth and picked up the stockings she had draped on the ottoman.

"I should not be here, Fletch. Your staff has seen me and it is only a matter of time before their gossip reaches hungry ears."

He closed the door behind him, pausing with his hands behind his back. Foregoing full dress, he stood in dark trousers that sat tightly about his waist and a simple white linen shirt that opened wide on his neck. Still wet from his bath, his brown hair looked dark, almost black in the shadow by the door. His feet were bare.

His left eyebrow cocked at her. "Should you not have been worried about my staff's discretion days ago when you were here?"

She waved her hand in the air, the silk stocking she gripped fluttering. "That was before you set me in front of your aunt. She would be destroyed if she knew you were harboring me here in the middle of the night—even more so if she knew you were lying to her. That I was a farce in your life. Especially after what she witnessed at the gardens."

He gave a slight incline of his head to her and stepped fully into the room, stopping within an arm's length of her. "My staff will not breathe a word of your presence. They were hired long ago for their ability to be discrete."

She rolled up one of the stockings and set her bare foot on the ottoman in front of the leather chair. She looked up at him as she slipped the stocking on and unfurled it up her leg. "Do you have need for discretion often?"

Fletch looked at her without answering, his face notably blank.

The left side of her mouth lifted in a smirk. "Ah, yes. I suppose you are just as discrete as your staff."

"Why did you go back to the brothel, Talia? Your sister is not there."

"It is possible that she may land there after…" At a loss to finish her thought with what she didn't want to acknowledge, Talia cleared her throat as she tied the garter and then switched her feet on the ottoman. "And you said there was a list of buyers. I was on my way to sneak into the office of the owner to search for the list when you so rudely stole me from the alley."

"Dammit, Talia." Fletch ran his fingers through his wet hair. "I didn't tell you about the list's bloody existence so you would go a fool and risk your neck looking for it."

She stood straight. "Oh. I thought that was exactly why you told me about the list. So I should look for it."

"What? Why would you not think I would handle it? Get the list by my own means?"

"It is just, in my position, I can move about the brothel much more covertly than you can." Her fingers drew together in front of her, intertwining. "I was going to deliver that chamber pot into that office—make it look as if that was all I was doing in there, just in case someone came in. I was only in a little danger. The owner and the barkeep do think I am quite stupid. I am positive they do not believe I can read, so I could have easily prattled my way out. Whereas if you somehow made it into that office, your presence could not be easily explained. You cannot deny my logic, Fletch."

"I cannot." His chin jutted out, his tongue visibly pressing along the inside of his cheek. "But there is one rather large folly in your plan, Talia."

"No. There is none."

"There is—it is the fact that I already have the list in-hand. I received it this morning."

"What—how?"

"I hired an investigator to get it for me."

Talia's teeth clamped tight, grinding. Of course. Money. Money would buy one anything. A virgin. A list. Whatever one fancied.

She stepped toward him. "You had it all day, when we went to the gardens—why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't think I needed to, Talia." He exhaled an aggravated sigh. "I told you I would find your sister, and that is what I am doing. I didn't think you would not trust me at my word."

"It is not my trust that is in question. It is your trust in me, Fletch. Why did you not think it a necessity to tell me what you found?"

"I did not want you preoccupied at the gardens and I in no way imagined you would take it upon yourself to go back to the Jolly Vassal. Especially when there is nothing that can be done at the moment."

His mouth closed.

Talia suppressed a groan. The man was purposefully not sharing anything of value.

"You are telling me absolutely nothing, Fletch, and I need to know. What was on that list? Why can nothing be done at the moment?"

He hedged for a moment before sighing. "I have the name of the man that bought her."

"You do? Who is it? We must visit him, make him tell us where Louise is." Her hand flew over her mouth. "Or does he still have her—no—what would he have done with her? We have to go, Fletch."

He turned from her, going to the sideboard and pouring himself a glass of brandy from the heavy cut glass decanter. He took a sip before turning back to her. "That is exactly why I did not tell you, Talia. You cannot go half-cocked and show up on his doorstep. You approach him as a bull, and he will deny everything."

Her hands flew up in the air. "This is my sister, Fletch—do you have a better plan?"

"I plan to put myself in a position to speak in private with him. The man is Lord Drockston."

"Lord Drockston? I have not heard his name before. I must accompany you."

"No. You will not."

Talia stepped across the room to him. "I will. If he has Louise, Fletch—"

"I understand your frenzy, Talia, but I am bound to get much more honest information from him if I approach him without having to hold back a rabid big sister looking for the girl he bought."

"I am not rabid."

"I fear what you will become if you are in the same room with the man."

"He deserves whatever I can inflict upon him."

Fletch lifted his glass to her. "Exactly. While I do not disagree on what he deserves, there will be time for that another day. Today, I am to approach him alone. You forget that I have sat in many auctions with the man. He knows me to have the same peculiarities as he, so is much more likely to speak openly with me."

Her hand flew to the door. "So go talk to him."

"Talia, it is only a few hours until daybreak. I am sure he is ensconced in his bed at the moment. Aside from the fact that I cannot approach him at his home. I must first discover where his calendar is going to place him during the next few nights. If we are lucky, he will be at an event that I can bump into him, sequester him in a private room or alcove."

"But we do not have time for that, Fletch. Louise is heaven only knows where. She…she…" Her chest tightened at where her sister might be at that very moment—at what she might be forced to be doing.

Fletch gently set his hand on Talia's shoulder. "I know it is hard to wait. But we cannot ruin this one chance I have to get honest information from Lord Drockston. As despicable as it is, he is our best option to find your sister. But we have to be cautious about approaching him."

It was common sense. Talia knew it, even if she didn't want to accept it.

She looked up at Fletch, meeting his eyes. "But I cannot just wait. I cannot just pace holes into the floorboards, waiting, not doing anything to find her."

Fletch smiled. "No. I do not imagine you can, Talia. But it is what the situation calls for. So in the meantime, I have a suggestion."

"What?"

"Marry me."