Chapter One

T hey came from the shadows, half a dozen men in layers of dirty rags, with knives or broken planks in their hands and hunger in their eyes.

Reuben, the footman, moved in front of Rosalind Ransome and her stepsister, Pauline Turner. Harris, the groom, brushed past the sisters to join Reuben. He muttered, for their ears only, "Get back, my ladies, and if you see an opportunity, run."

Rose would have stepped up beside him, ready to fight, but Pauline grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

"We have to help them," Rose objected.

Pauline did not agree. "The biggest help we can be is to stay out of their way and to escape when we have the chance. They can make their own escape if they do not have to worry about us."

She did not say it was Rose's fault, but Rose knew. They were on London's streets in this unsavory area after dark because of her. But how could she have left the hospital earlier? Private Brown had asked for her. He had not been not expected to survive the night, and in fact, he didn't. Rose could do little but hold his hand. That helped, or so Mr. Parslow, the superintendent, believed.

When she'd agreed to sit with him, Rose had sent home the carriage her brother had sent for her and her maid. She could not see any reason why her servants should sit up all night. That decision had brought them here, in the early hours of the morning, facing murder or worse for the sake of the clothes they stood up in and whatever price she and Pauline might fetch in the brothels. That was all the thieves would get, because neither of them was foolish enough to carry valuables on an errand into this part of town.

The footpads had still not attacked. Harris had a two-barrel pistol, which was making the footpads think twice, but Rose did not suppose it would deter them for long.

"Is it worth being shot?" Reuben was arguing, persuasively. "Harris is a good shot, so at least two of you will not survive. Just let us go our way and no one needs to be hurt."

"I am sorry, Pauline. I never meant for this to happen."

Pauline squeezed Rose's hand. "You did not ask me to bring the carriage back to get you, and you did not arrange for the carriage axle to collapse." Which it had done five streets after they drove away from the hospital and only three from the broader streets patrolled by the watch.

The footpads' leader had a counteroffer. "How 'bout you gie us all the morts' glimmers and you can go your way?"

Glimmers, Rose guessed, must be jewelry. "I am not wearing any jewelry," she told Pauline. "Are you?"

"No, and I do not have money with me, either."

I would rather die than be sold into a brothel , Rose decided. She put her hand into the pocket she wore under her gown, a slit in the side seam giving discrete access. At least Private Brown would not be disappointed when she did not return tomorrow. He had breathed his last some fifteen minutes before Pauline arrived with the carriage.

She unfolded the object she retrieved from the pocket, extracting the blade from the bone handle to give her a small but perfectly serviceable dagger. "I have this," she announced. "If I kill my sister and myself, will the clothing you can retrieve from our bodies be enough to compensate for this area being overrun with Red Breasts for the next few weeks until they find every last one of you? For we shall be missed, and my brother knows where we went."

The footpads went into a huddle, most of them still keeping an eye on their annoyingly uncooperative prey.

"I'm not sure you should have done that," said Pauline, and Harris, the groom, groaned. "Not a good idea, Lady Rose."

In the next moment, Rose found out why, as the footpads' leader shouted, "Take the skirts alive, especially the mouthy one!" Four of them hurled themselves towards poor Reuben and Harris, and two began skirting around the fight that ensued to grab Rose and Pauline.

Rose had no time to spare a glance for the servants, though she heard a shot. She was determined not to be taken. The man who attacked her jerked back, screaming imprecations, his hand spraying blood from the wound he had inflicted on himself when he grabbed her knife and not her hand. The second man took advantage of Rose's distraction to seize Pauline, who hit him with her umbrella. He grasped the umbrella and ripped it from her hands, then stumbled backward.

Rose took a moment to realize that a large someone in dark clothes and a cape had dragged the man away from Pauline and swung him headfirst into a wall. A meaty hand landing on her shoulder was her only warning that the assailant she had cut was back on the attack. Before she even had time to struggle, the caped man had punched him hard enough to hurl him backward.

One of the other footpads shouted, "It's the Wolf!" In moments, three of them were running. The two that had attacked Rose and Pauline lay where the caped man had put them. One of the servants' attackers was also down, presumably shot, but so was Harris. Reuben was picking himself up from the ground. As far as Rose could see in the poor light, he was unharmed.

She hurried to Harris, kneeling to feel for his pulse. As she did, he groaned. Thank goodness! He was alive. "Harris, can you hear me?" she asked.

"Lady Rose." He yelped as he rolled to get his legs under him. "Reuben, lad, a hand," he begged.

As she got up from her knees, Rose did not voice her objection to him moving. She could not examine him in the dark, and they needed to get off these streets as quickly as possible.

Harris said out loud what she had been thinking. "We need to get the ladies out of here before they come back to get their men."

The footpads! She had forgotten them. She took two steps toward the one who had been punched, and who was now groaning. The man they called the Wolf stopped her. "Stay back! If he can, he will use you as a shield, and your servants' suffering will be for nothing."

Oh dear. "But they have been hurt," she pointed out. "I do not like to just leave them."

"We shall leave them to their own kind," Pauline decided. "We cannot risk Harris and Reuben for the sake of men who would have killed us or sold us without a second thought. Come along, Rose."

"You are right," Rose agreed, falling obediently into step with her sister. Reuben came behind, one arm around Harris to support him. The Wolf ranged around them, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, and sometimes walking beside them for a few paces.

In the moonlight, filtered as it was through London's fog, she could not see more of him than she had from the beginning. A large man, broad and tall. Dark clothes covered by a thigh-length cape, perhaps a domino. Try as she might, she could not see his face, even when he turned toward her to deliver a disparaging remark. He had an arsenal of them.

"This is no place for ladies of your kind."

"What would your family do if you were killed?"

"I cannot always be here to stop you from being hurt."

"You put your servants at risk. Did you think of that before you planned your little jaunt?"

All said in the accents of a gentleman and in a pleasant voice that sounded as if he might sing tenor.

The last remark was too much for Reuben, who protested, "We would not have walked if the carriage had not broken down."

*

Ruadh Douglas was struggling with the aftermath of battle, even more than usual. When he saw the disabled carriage, he recognized a trick Barding's gang had used before. Take out a wheel at this time of night, and the carriage was theirs. The passengers, too, whether they walked away or stayed put.

If the passengers left the carriage, the gang would pick them off first, then attack the carriage and clean it out. If they stayed, then the one attack would be enough. Ruadh had gone immediately after the passengers, hoping he wasn't too late.

He'd rounded the corner and saw Barding and his men assault the small group of naive fools. And he saw the little Amazon taking a slash at a man twice her size while her female companion thrashed another man with, of all things, an umbrella.

It looked as if the umbrella lady needed him first, but he had underestimated the resilience of the devil who had attacked the Amazon. His anger at himself as well as at Barding's insolence fueled his punch.

The others, except the one Harris had shot, ran off. They'd come back to collect their wounded, which was part of the reason Ruadh was annoyed. He should be dragging Barding to the constables, not nursemaiding this set of aristocratic idiots out of danger.

"The breakdown was no mistake," he explained to the footman who had nearly got himself killed because two fine ladies decided to go for a carriage ride through the rookeries. "Wherever you stopped tonight, you gave Barding's men the chance to damage either the wheel or the axle so you would be forced to walk."

"It must have been while we were in the hospital," the umbrella lady said. "One of my sister's patients died tonight, Mr. Wolf, or whatever your name is. He asked her to stay and hold his hand. He died shortly after midnight."

"And you nearly died shortly after that," retorted Ruadh, unreasonably irritated by the idea that the Amazon had held anyone's hand. Except mine . No. It was just the hot blood from battle confusing his brain. The Amazon—the man Harris had called her "Lady Rose"—was not going to be holding his hand or any other part of his anatomy.

"What hospital?" he asked, more to distract himself than because he wanted to know.

"The Hospital of St. George and St. Michael," Lady Rose replied.

Ruadh had heard of it, though it was just outside what he thought of as his patch. Outside of Barding's usual patch, too. That might be his fault. He had been pressing the Barding gang hard lately and had landed several of them in the courts and a couple in the Thames.

Barding might have thought it politic to move his operations, but he hadn't been bright enough to leave his victims alone when they chose to walk into the area that Ruadh kept safe.

They had nearly reached the first of the streets lit by gaslight and patrolled by the Watch. Ruadh caught up with the two servants and handed the footman the gun he had picked up. "Here is your friend's gun. You should be safe from here. Stop the first watchman you see and tell them what happened."

The footman nodded. Harris was wilting, but still game to walk a bit farther. Ruadh hoped he would take no permanent harm from tonight's adventure. He stopped, and the two ladies passed him. They said, in chorus, "Thank you, Mr. Wolf."

"Don't stay at this hospital at night," he growled. "Or, if you must, stay there all night until morning makes these streets a little safer. And do not ever, ever, walk them alone." He glared at Lady Rose in particular. The thought of her suffering what he'd seen in all his years in the army had added new fuel to his ever-present anger.

"I do not," she protested, and then, more softly, as if she heard the pain that made his voice harsh, "I will not, Mr. Wolf. Thank you. Mr. Wolf? Would you mind checking our carriage? I am worried about the two men we left there."

She was unusual for a lady of her obvious class. Brave, sensible—except for being in the rookeries in the first place, and unusually concerned about her servants. "I will," he promised.

They stepped out into the lighted street, and he retreated to guard them from the shadows until they found a pair of patrolling watchmen and he could be sure they were safe.

As he expected, Barding and the other two had gone by the time Ruadh got back to the place they'd fought. He checked on Lady Rose's carriage. It should be safe enough with Barding out of action and short a couple of men, but if it had been attacked, he might have been able to make a difference.

The vehicle was still where the ladies had left it, the driver alert on the carriage roof with a rifle, and the four horses sleeping in the traces. Ruadh didn't see a second man. Perhaps he had gone for help.

Ruadh resumed his patrol. He intervened in two scuffles. He forced a fop who had stopped for a quick one on his way home from some society event to pay the pleasure girl he had just tupped. He finished the night, as dawn rose, with a satisfying fight with some street tough who was beating a boy for failing to steal enough during the night hours.

"If you want a better job than this," he told the boy, after the tough was down and not getting back up, "go to the address I will give you and tell them the Wolf sent you."

The boy repeated the address and then backed away. "Be'er get the sawbones there to take a look at yer h'arm, Wolf. It's bleedin' somefink awful." He took off and was soon out of sight.

Ruadh hadn't felt the sting of the cut, but his arm hurt now the boy had called attention to it, and his sleeve was stiff with dried blood. Just as well the night was over. Getting to the free clinic whose physicians he trusted would be challenging if he lost much more blood, impossible if anyone saw fit to attack him.

He removed his cape and the red mask he wore beneath his hood and stuffed them both into the satchel he carried. His weapons were already concealed. With luck, anyone who saw him would think he was just another partygoer heading home.

He passed the place where Lady Rose's carriage had been. All was well that ended well.

*

Peter was awake and waiting for Rose and Pauline. "Why are you out so late? Is everything all right?" he demanded, taking hold of Rose's shoulders, and looking her up and down.

"We are quite unhurt," Pauline told him. "Harris did not fare as well, but he insisted that it was nothing his wife could not fix. And Reuben was unharmed."

His eyes widened in alarm. "You were attacked?"

"Yes," Rose confirmed. "But we are not hurt."

"You had better tell me what happened," Peter said. He led the way to the reception room by the front door, where he must have been sitting while he waited for them. A book and a glass of brandy sat on the little table by one of the chairs, the lamp beside it casting light over the shoulder of anyone who was reading in the chair.

Rose sat in one of the other chairs and held her hands out to the warmth of the fire. She was shivering a little, though more from reaction to the danger they'd been in, and to the violence, than to the cold.

"The carriage axle broke," Pauline said. "One of the footmen went for help. We were still in the rookeries, but only a few streets away from the better-lit streets. We thought staying with the carriage would put us more at risk than making for safety."

"It was not the wrong decision, Pauline," Rose assured her. "The men who damaged the axle would have attacked the carriage if we had remained in it. Indeed, they still might have done so."

Peter, who had been pacing while Pauline and Rose talked, held up a hand. "I shall send help," he said. "The axle, you say?" He stepped out of the room and Rose could hear him talking to someone, a series of orders, by the sound. At times, Peter reverted to being the commanding officer of the cavalry he had been for so many years.

"I've sent people to retrieve the carriage," he said when he reentered the room. "Would you like a drink, Pauline?" He didn't offer one to Rose, though she was nineteen and no longer a child.

"A small brandy," Pauline agreed.

"And one for me," said Rose. Perhaps it would stop the shaking.

He was topping up his own glass from a decanter on a side table and pouring a drink for Pauline. He froze, then turned a searching look on Rose. After a moment, he picked up a third glass, put it with the others, and poured a finger of brandy into the glass.

"You were attacked, you said. And the men who attacked you said they had damaged the axle?" He passed a glass to Pauline and brought the other to Rose.

"We were attacked," Pauline confirmed. "Six men. It was going badly for us until another man intervened. The Wolf of Whitecross, Peter. Harris shot one of the men and the Wolf knocked out two others."

"It was the Wolf who told us the gang must have disabled the carriage," Rose explained. "He walked us to the streetlamps and promised to go back and check on the carriage and our men."

The Wolf of Whitecross had been in the news sheets. A shadowy figure no one but the poorest of the poor had even met. If, indeed, any of them had, for none would admit it to the watchmen or the constables. Nor could the reporters find actual eyewitnesses, only second-hand accounts of an avenging angel who stood up for the weak and the helpless. A masked angel in a cape.

"We met the Wolf," she said, in wonder.

"A man who takes the law into his own hands is not one to be admired," Peter said sternly.

"A man who saved me, Rose, Reuben, and Harris has my gratitude," Pauline retorted.

Peter sighed. "Rose, please be kind enough to tell me why you sent your maid home in your carriage and refused to come with her."

Rose had known he was going to want to know. "My patient," she explained. "He was dying, and he wanted to hold my hand. I thought I would be there all night, but he died, and then Pauline came to fetch me, so we left." She then burst into tears, to her great embarrassment.

She could not stand females who used tears to get their own way. Her stepmother, Pauline's mother, had used tears to rule the father Rose shared with Peter.

The tears refused to stop, though she tried to choke them back. Poor Private Brown. And the fate those men had intended for her! And Harris, bravely walking, with Reuben's help. There had been so much blood! Though she'd managed to bandage him with a piece of Reuben's shirt in the light of the first streetlamp they'd reached. So much blood.

Peter pulled her into a hug. "Poor Rose," he said. "It has been quite a night for you. Drink up your brandy, my dear, and then you and Pauline had better go off to bed. We shall talk some more in the morning and make a plan to keep you safe."

Peter truly was the best brother in the whole world.

*

"You can't keep doing this, Red," said Nate Beauclair as he sewed up the gash in Ruadh's arm. "Sooner or later, one of these brutes will kill you."

Ruadh shrugged. Nate had been patching him up for four months, ever since he arrived in London with a report from the colonel of his regiment for the desk-chair officers at the Horse Guard. He hated the city. But at least here, his pain had a purpose, since it drove him out into the streets at night, where he could ease his anger, his guilt, and his despair in bursts of violence against those who deserved it.

Nate tied off the last stitch. "I mean it, Red. Go home, for your own sake, and for that of your family. I have another letter for you. I'll fetch it once I've finished bandaging this."

"I can't go home," Ruadh murmured. Heavens knew, he could not live with himself. He would not ask his family to live with him.

The doctor's hands stilled on his arm. He had been a military man himself. A sailor, not a soldier, but he, too, had seen terrible things. They had exchanged stories over a drink one cold winter's morning when the clinic was quiet and Ruadh had no place better to be. Not about the horrors of war, but just the brief outlines of where they had been and why.

The press gang had taken Nate even though he was a gentleman's son. Nate didn't explain the story behind that, but he did talk about working for the surgeon of the ship on which he found himself. He'd had a gift for it and had eventually been sent to Edinburgh to become a physician.

A medical man, so he might have seen the violence that scarred a man's soul, but he had not been the perpetrator. Rather, he was there to fix what he could, as he still did today.

A twist of fate had also made him an earl. He hadn't been born and raised to it, and he didn't go by his title here in this little clinic that offered medical care to those who otherwise would not be able to afford it.

Ruadh's story was different. He had joined the army of his own accord. Just eighteen years old, full of stories of adventure and visions of glory. The 157th Highland Foot was the regiment of his father's mother's people, including a score or more of Ruadh's cousins. Many of them died, and others broken. Some of them were sent to their deaths by his orders, along with other good men whose faces he remembered in dreams, both asleep and waking.

In the long war against Napoleon, violence was in some ways understandable, and certainly necessary. The man had to be stopped. But the ferocities of war—his own most of all—purged him of the stories and the visions and wounded something inside him. Something essential.

He'd been broken by ten years of keeping the so-called peace in the tragedy that was Ireland under English rule. In the end, his frustration with British policy in Ireland caused him to attempt to resign his commission. His colonel, also a distant cousin, would not accept it but had given him six month's leave to go home. He had got no farther than London.

He had told Nate the bare bones of the story, but the physician's wise eyes told Ruadh he understood some of the rest. The pain, if not the reasons for it.

"I can't go home," he repeated. To change the subject, he asked, "What do you know about a hospital on Little Mill Street? St. George and St. Michael?"

"A charity hospital for ex-soldiers and ex-sailors who are too injured to look after themselves but have no one else to do it for them and nowhere else to go," Nate replied. "A good place. I consult there when I am asked, but most of the residents are past any help I could give them. They need nursing, food they can stomach, and the comfort of a clean bed. Is there trouble there? Snowy and I have put the word out they are not to be touched."

Snowy was Lord Snowden, who had apparently grown up in the rookeries. Ruadh had not met him, but he'd heard about him. "No trouble at the hospital. I rescued a lady on her way home from there. Lady Rose, her servants called her. She and her sister stayed with someone who was dying and got caught in a trap when they tried to go home while it was still night."

"Lady Rosalind Ransome, sister of the Earl of Stancroft. She's an herbalist, a protégée of Snowden's wife, who volunteers here. I heard that Lady Rosalind had taken over from Lady Snowden while she was in the country." A smile ghosted over his lips. "You would not have met Lady Snowden, for you are never here in the daytime. The other would have been the stepsister, I imagine. Miss Turner."

"Lady Rosalind called her ‘Pauline'," Ruadh remembered.

Nate nodded. "That's right. Pauline Turner. They weren't hurt, were they?"

"The groom was cut, but not too badly, I think. The footman and the two ladies came out of it safely enough." He slipped off the examination bed. His head was still clear, thank goodness. He hadn't lost too much blood. "Thank you, Nate. I'm grateful."

"Don't go out for the next few nights," Nate demanded. "Give my stitches time to do their job. Oh, and Red? I've heard word that someone has hired Wakefield and Wakefield to find out who you are."

Who the hell are Wakefield and Wakefield ? "Should I be worried?" Ruadh asked.

"Depends on why they are looking," Nate said. "They're good, but they're honest. When they take a case, they promise to find the truth, whether it works for their client or not. If one of the magistrates has hired them, it might be bad."

"Bounty hunters?"

"‘Inquiry agents', they call themselves. Be careful, Red."

Ruadh dropped a pouch of coins on the table. "For the clinic," he said.

The physician weighed the pouch in one hand. "Somewhat more than the going rate for a physician in this part of Town," he observed.

"The rest is payment for your scolds, though I'm far past the age for a nanny," Ruadh told him. Though he teased, he appreciated what Nate had to say. Or, rather, that he cared enough to say it.

He slipped his mother's letter into his pocket as he left the clinic. He'd read it later in the little room he rented in the rookeries. Not far, as it happened, from Lady Rosalind's hospital. Perhaps he should wander by and have a look at the place.

First, though, a pie and an ale. Then a sleep—for at least as long as his dreams left him alone.