All Through the Night

With shivering fingers she combed back the clean, silky hair at the nape of his neck and guided his head to hers. He resisted. She arched up, standing on tiptoe to find his lips and opening her mouth over his.

Warm, hard. For three heartbeats he did not respond. And then it was as if something within him, something so long denied its existence, something waiting for release, abruptly found liberation. His passion spilled like acid over her body, bright, burning. He reacted instinctively, drawing her tight against his body, holding her to him by the belt he still clenched in his fist.

His lips softened. His free hand roved up her spine and cupped her skull. He bent over her, forcing her to flex backward and clutch his shoulders to keep from falling.

He was purely male, like every other male, being offered what all males seek. And yet ...

And yet, dear God, it was so much more.

London

March 12, 1817

The landlady shuffled into the long narrow room ahead of Colonel Henry “Jack” Seward and headed right for the curtained window overlooking the square.

“You don’t know how many times over I could ‘ave rented the use of this ’ere room,” she said, eyeing Seward’s tall, punishingly straight figure. “ ‘ad a baron’s man come round just last hour offerin’ me twice over what you paid. But I’m an honest woman.”

And a shrewd one,
Jack thought as he inclined his head in gracious recognition of the landlady’s honesty. She knew quite well not to cozen the likes of Whitehall’s Hound. He counted out a short thick stack of coins and handed it to her. She snatched them from his outstretched palm and stuffed them deep into the pockets of her worn skirt before yanking back the dingy piece of threadbare velvet hanging over the window.

With a glance outside and a mutter she turned and waddled over to the single chair in the room, a straight-backed wooden one sitting against a waterstained wall. With a grunt she lifted it. Jack immediately came forward and took it from her. “Allow me. Did you want this taken somewhere?”

She gaped at him. Doubtless no one had ever extended the woman a simple courtesy. “Ah.” She snapped her mouth shut and open and blinked. “Ah. Aye. To the window. So you can sits durin‘ the show.”

Jack strove to keep his repugnance from his face while he set the chair in front of the window. The woman craned her neck to look out and down the road leading to the square. A shout arose from the mass of humanity crowding the streets below. “There he comes now,” she said with unmistakable satisfaction. “I’m off then.”

Jack didn’t hear her. He was looking outside.

The crowd pressed eagerly in around the cart carrying John Cashman into a cordoned-off area in front of the gunsmith’s shop, the same one he was alleged to have robbed in order to arm himself in a revolt against His Majesty’s government. Men, women, and children, mostly poor people, had come to see “the gallant tar” hanged for treason.

Few, Jack knew, thought young Cashman deserved his sentence, and the injustice of it frightened them. Some hoped for royal clemency.

And who was more worthy of mercy than Cashman? Jack asked himself sardonically. His greatest crime had been trying to collect his arrears payment and prize money from the Admiralty. The crowd contained hundreds just like him. Men who’d fought for their country only to return home to discover they had no jobs, no pensions, and no futures.

Jack’s gaze remained mild, but the hand pulling off his black leather gloves trembled just the tiniest bit. He took his seat, his posture as straight as a papist’s at mass. Yes, Cashman had broken into this gunsmith’s shop during the Spa Fields riots, but liquor and his own discouragement had been the reason for his presence there, not treason.

Premeditated?
John Cashman, Jack knew, had received severe head wounds thrice in the line of duty. He was not even reckoned by most to be competent enough to handle his own affairs.

No wonder his fate frightened the crowd. Hell, it enraged them.

“I always fought for my king and country, and this is my end!” Cashman shouted once more as he stepped down from the cart and gazed resolutely at the scaffolding before him. Thousands shouted back in a frenzied chorus of support.

They’d been gathering since five o’clock that morning, and now they spread as far as the eye could see: choking streets and alleys, crowding windows with angry faces, thick as bees in an overcrowded hive, clinging to balconies, hanging over rooftops.

Without hesitation, Cashman mounted the steps to the gibbet, his courage firing the masses. At the top, a clergyman hurried to his side, laying a comforting hand on his arm. Cashman shook it off, his eyes blazing. “I want no mercy but from God!”

The executioner led him forward. When he moved to place a hood over the condemned man’s head, Cashman jerked away and said, “I want to see till the last.”

The executioner and clergyman left the scaffold together and took their positions beside the tripboard beneath Cashman’s feet.

“I could not get my own, and that has brought me here!” Cashman shouted. “I have done nothing against my king and country but fought for them!”

He was still shouting when his words were cut off, strangled in his throat. Jack’s hand jerked involuntarily to his own throat. He ground his teeth, pain and anger mixing together as he forced himself to watch the man below swing crazily, his tied limbs spasming.

The crowd went utterly silent. The silence lasted while he was cut down, while the clergyman finally placed the hood over his contorted features, while they hefted his body into a plank coffin. It lasted as they set the coffin in a cart and drove away.

Jack stood up and drew on his black leather gloves. He felt cold, as if a bitter wind buffeted him, yet not a breeze stirred the skeletal branches of the trees outside. He checked the buttons at his wrist and adjusted his coat, his expression carved in concentration, his movements economical, deliberate.

Below him, a single utterance rose from the stunned crowd. It gathered pitch and momentum, growing louder with each added voice until it reached a horrendous din.

“Murder! Murder!”

Colonel Seward finally ceased adjusting his gloves and looked out over the crowd to see the cart disappear from view.

“Indeed,” he murmured soberly, “indeed.”

London

December 1817

Never assume you are safe. Never drop your guard.
The thief’s father, a cracksman the likes of which London had never known before or since, had drilled that lesson home above all others.

Ears straining to detect any sound above the murmur of a night breeze stirring the bed curtains, the thief known as Wrexhall’s Wraith lifted an ormolu clock from the mantel. Too heavy. A delicate porcelain figurine nearby tempted but was too fragile to survive the leaps across rooftops that night work entailed.

Another of the old man’s imperatives whispered just behind the thief’s conscious thoughts:
Five minutes in, five minutes out.
This was taking too long.

Long, sensitive fingers lightly roved along the gilt frames of the pictures on the walls, searching for hidden caches, finding none. With a small utterance of annoyance, the Wraith roamed deeper into the Marchioness of Cotton’s suite. Her fabled jewel collection had to be some-bloody-where.

At the far wall the thief pushed aside the unease that came from being so far from the window and bent over an ornate dressing table. A music box, pretty but no more than a dab. A pearl-inlaid snuffbox. Bah! Nothing worth the Ł5,000 promised. Only a gem would suffice to pay
that
debt.

The thief moved more quickly now, thrusting hands along the contours of various furnishings, tipping a mirror, opening drawers, and then . . . there. Innocuous, noteworthy only for its relative stodginess among its opulent companions, a thick, marble-slabbed washstand.

White teeth flashed beneath the band of black silk masking the Wraith’s face. So obvious. Father’s most elementary wisdom:
Hide in plain sight.

The thief dipped to one knee and felt along the undercarriage of the washstand, immediately finding a small metal tab and slipping it back. A drawer dropped beneath the marble top. The smile broadened. Now just a quick plunge of the hand into the secret drawer and ... It was empty.

“No joy there, I’m afraid,” a calm voice said.

The Wraith bolted upright and spun, looking frantically about for the author of those words.

There, in the lightest shadows, in the center of the room, his dun-colored coat blending with the gold settee, he sat on with telltale perfect posture.

Hide in plain sight.

No fashionable scent signaled his existence. No quiver of readiness shivered through the air, telegraphing his presence. Colonel John Henry Seward. Whitehall’s Hound.

Every fiber in the thief’s body coiled in preparation to take flight as Seward’s lean figure slowly rose, blocking any access to the window. The thief was fast but no one was that fast. London’s underworld regarded Seward as their most formidable opponent. Still, there might be no other way, and if—

“I wouldn’t, son.” There was nothing but gentleness in Seward’s soft advice, a hint of raspiness in his tone, as if his throat had been injured at one time.

“Coo, what would ye have me do?” the thief said. “Stand here docile-like while you tie the bow ‘round me neck? Not bloody likely.” Only a slight tremble ruined the thief’s cocky certainty.

“You should have thought of that before you embarked on this career. Give over, lad.” Incongruously, a touch of pity laced Seward’s voice.

Pity? Nothing of the kind from Jack Seward. That “pity” was only a spot of wishful thinking best eradicated now. There’d be no pity from Jack Seward. Best keep one’s wits clear, alert for an opportunity to escape.

“There’s nowhere to run,” Jack said as if reading the thief’s mind. “My men are in the outer hall and I”—he shrugged apologetically, lifting his hands— “well, I am here.”

“So you are,” the Wraith murmured.

Abruptly Seward tilted his seal-sleek head. Even in the dark, one could discern the intensity with which he suddenly listened.

Damn.
The thief had only one trump card to play— surprise—and that was a long shot. Jack Seward looked as if he’d given up being surprised a long, long time ago. Yet there was no other option. If unmasked . . . Well, there was only one possible end for a thief: the Tyburn Tree.

“Right-o,
Cap,”
the thief said, using Seward’s former rank and swaggering forth with hard-feigned bravado. “You got me fair and square. But why, I’m wonderin‘, ain’t you screamin’ to your lads for help?”

“Very good. Very astute, lad,” Seward said approvingly. “But not so fast, if you please. I’d like to see your hands, above your shoulders and straight from your body. Anyone as good with a pick-lock as you are is bound to be just as good with a sticker.”

“Right, mate. But I don’t carry no knife. Bloodlettin‘ ain’t what you’d call a gentlemanly trade, and I— within me means a’ course—am a gentleman.”
A bit closer now.

This close the shadows lifted from Seward’s angular face revealing a scar-broken brow, a long mouth mobile with intelligence, and quiet, watchful gray eyes.

“Just what sorta deal is it you look to be strikin‘? You wants a bit of the take? A little somethin’ to turn the blind eye?”

“No,” Seward said. “I want something you’ve already stolen.”

“Oh.”
What?
the thief wondered desperately, measuring the distance to the window, all the while still moving closer to Seward.

What could possibly be so important that Whitehall’s Hound had been sent to retrieve it? Nothing taken had been priceless. Indeed, there were never any family heirlooms in the take, nothing anyone would bother to raise a sustained hue and cry about. No, nothing—
nothing—
justified the involvement of the War Office’s premier agent.

“I told you to stop moving,” Seward said, his gentle voice assuming a subtle mantle of deadliness.

The thief shuddered, a tincture of unhealthy pleasure spurring on a sudden, reckless decision. Lately, more and more often, audacity proved irresistible, the urge to give in to it irrepressible. Like now.

“Right you are, Cap.” Nearly within arm’s reach. There would be no second opportunity to catch Seward off guard. “But I told you, I ain’t got no sticker. And we don’t want the lads in the hall there to get wind of any deal we might be conducting now do we? Pat me down if you don’t believe me. Go on, satisfy yerself before we begins negotiations.”

Seward’s eyes narrowed at the same time his crippled hand shot out, seizing the thief’s wrist. There was surprising strength in the twisted fingers. The Wraith jerked back, instinctively fighting the implacable hold until it became clear any struggle could end only with Seward the victor.

“I believe I will, at that,” Seward murmured, pulling the black wool-clad figure against his hard chest and securing both wrists. Quickly and efficiently he swept his free hand down over the thief’s shoulders and flanks, hips, thighs, and legs. He moved back up, his touch passing lightly over the thief’s chest.

He stopped, pale eyes gleaming with sudden intensity, and quickly jerked the slight body forward by the belt. His hand dipped down, clamping hard on the juncture between the legs in a touch both violently intimate and absolutely impersonal.

“My God,” Seward said, dropping his one hand as if burned, though the other still clenched the belt, “you’re a woman.”

She’d done it. She had him off balance and she needed desperately to take advantage of that fact. She gulped a steadying breath. “Your woman, Cap. If you want.” She imbued the husky East End accent with low provocation, striving to keep the quaver from her voice.

She stepped closer and undulated against him, nudging her legs within the cincture of his rigid stance. His body was hard, like adamant. “We can come to some sort of an arrangement, Cap. One you’ll fancy. I swear it.”

“Arrangement,” Seward echoed faintly, head dipping down and forward to better scan her face. His cheeks were lean. Hard lines of experience bracketed his mouth and marked the corners of his eyes. Eyes the color of some precious, abused metal.

Ah, yes,
she thought, intoxicated by the sense of danger, disoriented by her very boldness,
tarnished silver.
Slowly he reached up to unmask her.

She could taste the flavor of his warm breath, feel the danger of his regard, the acute awareness arcing from his body, and she knew she was a second from having her identity discovered. Her heart thrummed in violent, fevered response.

She closed her eyes, knocked his hand aside, and wrapped her arms around his neck, drawing her body fully against his, crushing her breasts to his broad chest.

“I’m woman enough to pleasure a man like you.”

“Pleasure.” He spoke the syllables as if saying a foreign word, but he did not back away from her. His intense regard mutated, his curiosity swallowed by the need for some baser knowledge.

It was as if she embraced a razor-sharp blade, rigid, superbly balanced, lethal. With shivering fingers she combed back the clean, silky hair at the nape of his neck and guided his head to hers. He resisted. She arched up, standing on tiptoe to find his lips and opening her mouth over his.

Warm, hard. For three heartbeats he did not respond. And then it was as if something within him, something so long denied its existence had been forgotten, something waiting for release, abruptly found liberation. His passion spilled like acid over her body, bright, burning. He reacted instinctively, drawing her tight against his body, holding her to him by the belt he still clenched in his fist.

His lips softened. His free hand roved up her spine and cupped her skull. He bent over her, forcing her to flex backward and clutch his shoulders to keep from falling.

Too much. Unimagined. Unwanted. Feckless body. Treacherous mouth.

He was purely male, like every other male, being offered what all males seek. And yet . . .

And yet, dear God, it was so much more.

In the way he held her head to receive his kiss, he betrayed an awful hunger. His lust tasted like starvation, and behind it, in the pleasure—and Lord help her for that pleasure—there was hopelessness.

Worse, she recognized her own hunger in his and answered it. His lips roamed, his breath mated with hers, and she drank in his essence. Her thoughts swam with a hundred impressions: his hand fisted about her belt, holding her captive; the faint astringent aroma of soap beneath the wet scent of the fog drifting through the open window; the heat of his mouth; the slick slide of clean teeth against the tip of her tongue.

She wanted to lose herself in his seductive menace, longed to touch the darkest part of his need. She opened her mouth further, helpless to contain the surging desire created by each stroke of his tongue against hers. Her legs trembled weakly and she gave herself up to his strength, clinging now, wanting to surrender, to let him have her body, her life . . .

He tore his mouth free, his crippled hand still holding her head. “Bloody hell. Am I to take you on the desk and then, having spent myself in pleasure, let you go? Is that the trade?”

She could barely think. “Yes.”

“I’d rather have you on a bed. Unmasked. Do you think Lady Cotton would mind?” The bitter bite of humor lay thick in his voice.

She shook her head. “Sorry, Cap. Here and now. That’s the deal.”

She twisted against his hold on her belt and he released her. She leaned against him, stood tiptoe, trailed her mouth lightly along his hard jawline. His skin was warm. The stubble of his beard abraded her lips.

“Almost worth it.” He sounded breathless, damned. “Almost.”

His lips were parted, his chest rising and falling in deep, silent breaths. He stared at her, his pale gaze holding her motionless in the moonlit-steeped room, something hard and angry and pleading in his expression.

“All right.” He whispered the words and with them the promise of unimaginable pleasures. In his embrace she might finally lose every last bit of herself. She might forget . . .

She swayed back toward an embrace she knew would never release her and stopped. No. He was Whitehall’s Hound. He’d use her and take her and do his duty. Heartless. Soulless. She should recognize his type; it was kindred to her own.

She clutched his jacket sleeves, jerking his arms down and driving her knee into his groin. He gasped, doubling over and dropping to his knees. He fell, reaching for her. She leapt clear of his outstretched hand and raced for the window. Before she heard his curse, she was on the sill, vaulting for the opposite roof.

She sprang too late, misgauging the distance to the building across the narrow alley. She landed on the eaves, slick with moss, then stumbled and fell. Frantically she clambered for a handhold, her nails gouging the wet, half-rotted shakes as she struggled to keep from plummeting to the ground.

With the last of her strength failing, she grabbed the lead drainpipe snaking beneath the eaves and fell. Her hands caught the full force of her weight, jerking her arms in their sockets. She hung, suspended fifteen feet above the ground. If she fell, she wouldn’t die, but likely she’d break something and be caught.

Then
she’d die.

“Hold on!”

From the corner of her eye she caught sight of Seward, half hanging from the window on the other side of the alley, arm outstretched, too far away to aid—or hinder—her. His expression was taut, only his eyes alive, filled with promises she could not name.