Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

I’d like to make inquiries about a missing Northumberland baron.

~Recent communication from Jasper Noble to his solicitor

“ T hese streets are even fouler than the ones in Limehouse.” Jasper grimaced and yanked the carriage’s curtain into place, obscuring the piteous view of poverty and grime that signaled their entry into the stews. His heartbeat had been galloping in his chest since he received the frantic note from Mara.

A day after Cece disappeared from Edgerly’s terrace. A bloody, fucking day .

Tobias offered a dented silver flask Jasper was too tense to refuse. “Don’t be speaking ill of my beloved borough, Noble. I suppose you feel Shoreditch is the gem of the East End.”

The scent of stewed oysters and coal smoke was nearly choking him, his breath coming hard despite his effort to calm it. Not the best situation for a recovering asthmatic. Restless, he patted his chest, his hip, his boot. Pistol, blade, blade.

All was well, except for a missing countess.

Xander paused in the cleaning of his own weapon, a walnut cane with a blunt-edged metal tip you could render a man senseless with in one swing. “Down, boy. Dorsey isn’t known for violence against women. He’s done much for this community, as we have for ours. I’ve teamed up with him a time or two over the years. Thieves aren’t always the villain in the novel. According to my darling Pippa, they’re there to add the flavor.”

“It’s rumored he has a gaggle of sisters he’s accountable for,” Tobias said and took a pull on the flask before dropping it to the seat. “Chits who’ve managed to stay out of trouble, mostly, which is saying something in this district.”

Jasper nudged the curtain aside. Checked his pistol and repocketed it. Tapped his boot against the floorboard. Reached to adjust spectacles he’d left behind. It never paid to get glass in one’s eyes during a brawl. He’d learned that lesson the hard way.

“Sisters,” Xander whispered with an edge of dread in his voice.

Jasper snorted. He didn’t give two knocks who Dorsey was accountable for.

The bounder had dared take what was his .

Jasper pushed a smile through his anguish. Cece would be mad as hell to hear him call her that. She didn’t want to be owned, which was too bad because they owned each other. He’d someday find the nerve to tell her, someday soon. Maybe today. Or tonight as he slid inside her and the dewy glow he loved so much turned her eyes a dark, luscious green.

The men readied themselves as their carriage turned into the narrow alley behind a warehouse they’d been advised was the center of Jackson Dorsey’s thriving enterprise. It had been years since he’d gone racing off like this, his pistol drawn. For reasons he couldn’t quite place, Jasper had gone directly to the Duke of Leighton when he’d gotten the note—possibly because he was the most intimidating of the bunch. Two of the duke’s footmen brought as backup, brutish comrades from his military days, were clinging to the tiger seat. Leighton was in a second carriage with Dash, the Earl of Stanford, and the Duke of Markham. Nobs who knew how to fight and weren’t afraid to spill blood when the occasion called for it. Half of London’s nobility had come when he said he needed help.

He’d never again take for granted the support of friends. Somehow, his life was becoming more complete with each passing day despite his endeavor to muck it up.

Except, they were husbands now. And fathers. The Leighton Cluster had families, obligations Jasper could only dream of. He couldn’t live with himself if anyone was injured during this undertaking. His misplaced minx was completely on him unless the situation was a trickier one than he could manage.

“I’m going in alone,” Jasper stated when the carriage braked hard, pitching them forward on the squabs.

Xander banged his cane to the floorboard. “Like hell, mate.”

Tunneling his hand in his pocket, Jasper curled his fingers around Cece’s loupe. “Give me five minutes. I’m prepared. When I say I was presented with dire circumstances throughout my prior vocation, I beg you to understand I meant dire. You’re here because the woman I love is embroiled in misfortune of her own making, I suspect, but I did nothing to stop it. I could have safeguarded her better, made her see my side of things. You’re here to protect her, not me.”

“Once you admit to loving a woman, it can’t be taken back. It’s a cosmic rule or something.” Xander nudged Tobias’ boot with the tip of his cane. “You heard him on the other, Street? He thinks he can make her see his side of things. Ah, how the mighty fall.”

Tobias batted the cane away with a scowl. “A man has to fight his own battles on the love front.”

Love . Jasper rubbed his temple, the ache accompanying this recognition a resounding, near-blinding pulse. “She’ll listen after this. I promise you. Your job is to get her out of here, no matter what condition I’m in. Do you understand? Emotion has never played a part before, and frankly, this change concerns the shite out of me. I worry love will throw off my normal, uh, instincts. ”

“Killer instincts,” Tobias murmured as he thumped the carriage roof to alert the coachman.

“I’ll wait seven minutes and not a second more. Spitalfields isn’t the place for a toff who played at being a spy, even one with killer instincts.” Xander settled back, though he brandished his cane like he intended to use it to bash in a nearby skull. He was the protective member of their group, Jasper was forced to gratefully admit. “Would have been nice to be informed about her forgery enterprise before now. A tad late, innit, as we sprint into battle? Though I’m appreciative of the skilled effort she put into my recent project. She’s a talented criminal, your countess.”

Jasper searched for a reply but the stutter resting on the tip of his tongue stopped him. Damn Cece and her predicaments. Waving his friends off, he alighted from the carriage to the grimy cobbles and a locale redolent of desperation and hopelessness. Shoreditch hadn’t looked this dismal in years.

He hadn’t the time to assess the state of affairs. The comings and goings of the inhabitants of the warehouse, the closest exits, any guards patrolling. He was going in blind, a dodgy move that had taken many an emissary down. He was usually logical about such things. Careful, deliberate.

Except where she was concerned.

Jasper realized two things when he reached the main door to find it unlocked and unguarded.

Dorsey was expecting him. He’d been invited. Thus, for the moment, Cece was safe.

Breath slowing, the ache in his chest lessening, Jasper stepped into the dim corridor. Scones were affixed to the wall every five feet or so, their golden glow drifting across the scarred floorboards as he crossed in and out of shadow. The scent of tobacco and raw wood swirled like mist, a calming scent amidst the danger. Unbelievably, beneath the expected aromas was the faint tang of linseed oil. What notorious thief’s compound smelled like a home?

Jasper halted in the entranceway of the soaring main room and slipped his blade from his boot. It wasn’t Tobias Streeter’s immaculate warehouse of exposed pipes painted a blazing crimson and aged wood reclaimed from other buildings—but it wasn’t the office of a thug, either.

Cece huddled behind a crude desk made of shipping crates, bent over her work. She wasn’t tied to the nearest steel girder. Her beautiful face was unmarked of injury from an assailant’s fists. Her clothing was only in modest disarray, the pale peach gown one he’d never seen before. Her hair had come loose from its clips, the flaming strands trailing over her jaw and down her neck, pretty much the norm. Dorsey sat opposite her in a buttery yellow armchair befitting a king. Jasper squinted. The man was reading Dickens , the only hint of his lack of education the blunt fingertip he trailed across the page, a signet ring with a ruby as big as a goose egg glinting as he moved.

Jasper’s heart kicked, his brain ticking off observations. The scene looked homey, inviting, intimate . None of Dorsey’s men were about. It was just the two of them. There was a teapot on the sideboard mixed in among decanters and bottles, one Streeter and Macauley’s whisky. His whisky now. The dark-green emblem on the label identified it even without the aid of his spectacles. A cup and saucer rested beside Cece’s elbow. As was her habit, there were crumpled wads of paper lying about. Scones rested on a plate, and if he could trust his nose, they were lemon.

This looked more like a rendezvous than an abduction.

The detail that unleashed Jasper’s rage was the loupe in her hand. The one in his pocket burned at the notion that another man had purchased anything for her. Suddenly, the stuttering, frightened boy he’d been was standing there with him, love and angst turning him to dust.

He hoped like hell Xander Macauley counted the seconds correctly on his Bainbridge timepiece because Jasper was going to kill Jackson Dorsey if his friends gave him long enough.

Jasper lifted the blackguard from the chair he’d been sprawled in by the neck and forced him into the first wall they met. Dorsey’s smile was grand, a celebration, and clued Jasper into the fact that love had indeed done what he’d feared .

He’d been had .

Dorsey’s pulse jumped beneath the thumb Jasper pressed against his jugular, but his eyes, a bubbling amber reminiscent of one of the Duke of Leighton’s gemstones, glowed in delight. One was noticeably darker than the other, giving them a sinister shine. “About time,” he whispered for just the two of them.

Jasper jammed his knife into the wall beside Dorsey’s shoulder without letting his grip lessen about the cur’s neck.

Cece gasped, and from the sound of things, upended a crate in her effort to get to them. A teacup shattered, the Dickens tome thudded to the floor. Her footfalls were a striking cadence in line with the wash of fury swirling in his ears.

“Let him go, Jasper!” she shouted, thankfully using the only name she could. “He’s a client! We have a deal.”

Jasper swore and tightened his hold. “ Deal ?”

“Jealousy becomes you, guv,” Dorsey said in a rusty croak that meant his throat was going to ache for days. “This attachment is what you’ve asked for after getting involved with that… sentimental bunch, your duke’s cluster.”

Cece grasped his sleeve and tugged hard enough to bring him back a step. In resignation, not because she could keep him from turning this into a violent occasion if he made the split-second call. He’d paid for his crimes and then some. His brutality, learned or a part of him since birth, had him waking in fevered remembrance in the dead of night. The asset had made him an excellent emissary—yet it was a part of himself he wished heartily to leave behind.

Dorsey coughed and scrubbed his fist over the bulging cords in his neck. “Leave him, little miss.” With a tight chuckle, he wrenched Jasper’s knife from the wall and presented it to him like a gift. “A man in a rage has to unbridle his emotion somewhere. You’re his possession, or so he thinks. We protect what’s ours. We’re simple creatures at heart if you don’t already know it.”

Jasper seized the blade and instead of pocketing it, tossed it from hand to hand. The metal glinted in the light, sending a shower of silver across the planked floor. In response, Dorsey’s underlings, three hulking knaves who made Leighton’s footmen look like starving lads, materialized from wherever they’d been ordered to remain during his arrival, further proof he was an expected guest.

Jasper pointed the blade at him. “I’m here, per the plan. What’s it you want from me? Though I should drop you on the spot for the method. I don’t accept enticements of this kind anymore.”

Stepping between them, Cece thrust herself into the conversation. The lust, the possession , exactly as Dorsey had stated, struck him like a stone. Her hair was a feral amber mass flowing over her shoulders, devastation Jasper longed to plunge his hands into and sink so deeply, he’d never come out .

Cece laid a hand on each man’s chest and gave another of her trifling shoves.

Jasper gently knocked her hand away. “ Christ , Ce, you trust this ruffian. Is that it?”

“I’m replicating two signatures of great importance and—”

“He wants me, Countess.”

Cece turned on him, her eyes as green as a lost sea. “You’re mistaken. About many things.”

Jasper slid his knife in his trouser pocket next to Cece’s loupe. “Tell her, Dorsey.”

Dorsey strolled to the middle of the cavernous space, and with a flick of his hand, those damned rings flashing, his men retreated to their hovels. “You know how to ruin a rescue, guv, I’ll give you that much. Unintentionally, as I’m no romantic, I’d set you up for a royal gesture of the kind chits love.” He perched his bum on a crate and stretched with a ragged hum. “Blimey, you’re not learning much from that love-starved group you’ve befriended. Macauley made signs for his wife when he was chasing her, did you know? Bought her a bloody business , then gave her the choice of a last name. Shrewdest proposal I’ve ever heard of.”

Cece curled her fingers into a fist and thumped Jasper’s chest, harder than the shove. “This ridiculous abduction was a ploy?”

Jasper stalled, resisting the urge to stutter, which he wasn’t going to bloody well do in front of a man who could, possibly, be his enemy.

Turning on her heel, Cece crossed to Dorsey. Her gown—now that Jasper got a solid look at it—was divine. Frilly but understated, her style, the peach silk flowing down her supple figure like a dream. He didn’t want to want her in that moment, but his body responded just the same.

“You arranged this charade to get Jasper Noble here?” She tapped her slippered toe on the planks and propped her insubstantial fists on her hips. “I want the truth Mr. Dorsey, and I want it now .”

Dorsey glanced over her shoulder with a wicked smile. “ Ah , guv, she’s a champion in any race. You’ve chosen well.”

“Blasted cur,” Cece said and made her way to the crates serving as a desk, but not before one of Dorsey’s henchmen got there to block her way. “Both of you, cheats and scoundrels.”

Jasper was across the room in a flash, muscling his way in front of her.

“Little miss, I need those fine signatures, I do. Don’t make my man break your man’s arm for no good reason. You’ve done me a favor I won’t soon forget. Jackson Dorsey makes good on any debt owed him. Ask anyone. The papers you signed are for the good of this community. We have workhouses overflowing with illness, the basest medical care in the city given to the people in this borough. Women are dying during childbirth, and the babes who survive enter an even riskier world. I have plans, but plans require dirty dealing every now and again. It’s a despairing situation I’ve tried, without luck, to get Mr. Noble to support. Hence this, ah ”—he gave his neck another brutal scrub—“what did you call it? This charade.”

“Let him have them, minx,” Jasper said in a voice that brooked no argument. “Then, we leave in peace.”

Dorsey bowed his head regally. “Wise man.”

Jasper could feel her vibrating at his side, her fury more than palpable. Cupping her elbow, he turned her to face him. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips trembling. He longed to hold her, kiss her, save her, but she appeared as untouchable as shards of glass. And some injuries a person had to feel the sting of. “Jackson Dorsey isn’t an associate of mine, Ce. I received a frantic note from Mara, then was left to figure out where you were. I have no part in this, so don’t make me pay for his crime. I was going to come to you on the morrow, I swear. ”

“Most of his crew are waiting in the lane.” Dorsey shifted, and the crates gave a weak groan. “He’s well represented. My majordomo of sorts is right now haggling with a duke about where to park his upmarket equipage. I never thought that’d be a statement coming out of me mouth.”

“How many dukes are outside?” Cece directed her question to Dorsey. Jasper was apparently getting the silent treatment.

Dorsey grinned and rocked forward, almost off the crate. “Two, which is two too many.”

With a huff, she elbowed the brute standing guard before the desk. “I’d like my loupe, if you please.”

Dorsey gave his man a nod, and the unmovable force stepped aside to allow her to take it. “Your payment is in the envelope on the desk, little miss. And the favor I mentioned is yours should you ever need it. You know where to find me.”

“Donate my fee to your philanthropic endeavors,” Cece said and marched toward the door without looking back. “I’m asking a duke, any duke, for an escort home.”

Dorsey snapped his fingers, and his sentry stepped into Jasper’s path when he tried to follow.

“I haven’t forgotten my training,” Jasper snarled, the first time in his life he’d admitted to being anything other than an enterprising scoundrel from Shoreditch.

“Leave her, Noble. My gut is faithful about such things. I have four sisters, and I sense when they’re hot to the touch. You don’t want to get charred any more than you already have. I’d give this kettle a spot of time to breathe.”

Jasper paused and yanked his hand through his hair. Why did everything he tried to do for Cece end up being doomed? Maybe they were doomed.

“Just so you know, harming your wee countess was never the plan,” Dorsey drawled as he came to stand beside him. “I have a sister with hair that color. The oldest, Henrietta, the sprite who keeps me up fretting over her.”

Jasper glanced at a man whose reputation was almost as forbidding as his, the last bloke in England you’d expect to find “fretting” in the dead of the night over his sister. “I figured, when I stumbled in to find you two looking so cozy.”

Dorsey laughed but tried gallantly to conceal it behind his wrist. “She agreed to this farce to protect the boy. But I also mentioned you to secure the deal. Your name on my lips turned her skin the color of cream, guv. Quite fetching, I must admit.”

“Solid play,” Jasper whispered, unsure if he should start a fight he might not be able to win. He was exhausted. He was old. He wanted peace .

He wanted Cece.

“I wouldn’t have harmed her… but the next bloke might. The infuriating women are the ones you have to watch closely, trust me on this. For my sanity, my wife will be beautiful but dull, count on it. As for you, your little miss is known in certain circles for having a valuable talent as she’s made no effort to conceal it. I realize you’re not sitting this low anymore, prowling the stews, to be aware. She even has a name, Northumberland Gold.”

Jasper rubbed his eyes, a headache pinging through his skull. Fucking brilliant.

Dorsey slipped a key from his pocket and smoothed it between his bejeweled fingers. The metal was dull from handling, the move so mechanical Jasper wondered if he even realized it. “I’d be willing to partner with you to pension her. Let anyone and everyone know the countess is off-limits, her business closed for good. Under my protection as well as yours. Mine being the more daunting threat because I’m still in the game. When you now chum about with dukes and such. Nothing intimidating about a pack of toffs, am I right?”

Jasper grunted, impressed despite himself by Dorsey’s crude savvy. “In return?”

“In return, you obtain a bit of information about a certain gent who stepped where he shouldn’t. He’s high in the instep if you get my meaning. Friends in lofty places, not someone I have regular access to on the east end, hence my coming to the man with the most connections in the bleeding country.” Dorsey gave the key a kiss, aware of exactly what he was doing, and sneaked it back into his pocket. “I’m supposing you have ways to get me what I need, what with your former training.”

“Who?” Jasper asked, his gut telling him the name wasn’t one he wanted to hear.

“Devonshire.”

Jasper turned to Dorsey, wishing he had a drink. The Duke of Devonshire was known for ruthless activities that would ruin a man if brought to light. It was a marvel he hadn’t been killed for them by now. “You’re making a powerful enemy if you target that bastard.”

Dorsey shrugged, vengeance glowing in his eyes. The differing shades of amber in each, slight but noticeable, gave him a feral air. “I protect what’s mine as well as you, guv. Right is right. You’d be helping me help a vile man go down.”

“She’s retired if I bring you this information?”

“My vow, guv. Although”—Dorsey began to crack his knuckles, one ringing pop at a time—“I have a workhouse undertaking similar to yours. I’m not above accepting help with it. Cruel times, if you get me. I have my own crew, like your cluster, but my lads are gutter-bloods through and through. A rough lot I’m working to better. A titled nob or two might be who I need to recruit, now that I consider it. Add a shine. Blokes who donate money and make change in the Houses like shine.”

“The Rookery Rebels. I’ve heard of them. Every lowlife in London has heard of them. Fears them, per your plan.”

Dorsey gave one of his gaudy rings a twist, his smirk two ticks past sinister. “Then you know what an able partner I’ll be to you in this time of need. The Rebels, as we’ve been named, are a loyal bunch. You won’t regret going into dealings with us. I’ve got your back, you and your cluster, when you need me.”

“Send me the details,” Jasper murmured and made his way down the shadowy corridor. This wasn’t an alliance he’d anticipated forming, but one he could, conceivably, use in the future. Xander Macauley would be pleased, Tobias Streeter wary, the Duke of Leighton disgusted.

There were no guards manning the warehouse door, same as when he’d arrived. Curling his fingers around Cece’s loupe, Jasper wondered which duke had offered to take her home. Markham, he hoped, because he’d speak better of him. Leighton would fill her ears with rubbish—all of it true.

“Good luck with your romancing,” Dorsey called, the last thing Jasper heard as he strode into the mist-laden dusk.