A Wayward Man: A Prequel to A Dangerous Invitation (The Rookery Rogues) (9 page)

He leaned on the end
of the bar, searching the room for Kate.

“Care for a
penny's worth?” The barmaid ceased wiping the counter-top.

He blinked. Her
accent was distinctly East London, yet her speech was polished. The
lady had airs that didn't fit with Ratcliffe. Her head barely rose
above the tall counter; if she leaned down, only the simple white cap
that confined her raven locks would be visible.

“I'm looking
for a woman,” he said.

“And you think
this is a brothel?” Her face hardened, brows knit in distaste.
“This is Chapman territory. If you leave now, I won't call them
to escort your vile rear out.”

“No, no, you
misunderstand me.” He quickly held up his hand. “I'm
looking for Miss Kate Morgan. I saw her come in here.”

Recognition dawned
in the girl's green eyes, but she clamped her lips shut, taking a
moment to survey him. “What do you want with Kate?”

“She is an old
friend from when I lived in London. Please, I just want to speak to
her. I don't mean her any harm.” He scanned the room again. He
couldn't see Kate in the hordes of people. The bar was deceptively
large, extending far beyond his view.

The barmaid stared
at him a moment longer. Her button nose wrinkled as she thought. “She
is at a table in the back.”

“Thank you.”
He turned away, the tightness in his chest from the putrefaction of
gin weighing heavily on him each breath was a struggle.

The barmaid called
after him. “And sir? If you hurt her, not only will you have
Chapman Street gang at your back, but I'll personally draw your
claret.”

“I've no
intent to hurt her, Miss—?”

Her guarded
expression was back. “Putnam. Jane Putnam.”

He nodded. “Miss
Putnam.”

He made his way
through the crowds. Finally, he pulled out a chair at her table. Kate
had removed her greatcoat and bunched it underneath her to ward off
thieves. Her gaze never wavered as she searched his face. He thought
he knew what she saw: a marred image barely resembling who he had
once been. His breath sucked inward, a futile attempt to draw in
courage with the air.

Kate glowered. “Must
we do this again? Whatever you want, Daniel, I'm not interested.”

“I don't want
anything except your company.” He wanted many things: to win
her heart back, to prove his innocence, to regain some sense of
control over his existence. But for now he'd settle for a civil
conversation with her.

She folded her hands
over each other. Her gloves were threadbare, the seams about to
burst. “Tell me what is so important that you felt it necessary
to linger in the exact alley I'd take to get home from the market. I
don't want to think of how long you may have been spying on me,
biding your time.”

“I've been in
London for five days.” Five long days in which he'd holed up at
Madame Tousat's Boarding House and pored over information from his
friend, Atlas.

Finally, he had the
names of people who might know something about the night of the
murder. If he could avoid being captured by the Peelers long enough
to figure out who had really killed Tommy Dalton, he might have
another chance to prove to Kate he could be the man she deserved.

He glanced at the
tables surrounding them. To their left, a group of sailors sat
huddled around what was likely a pornographic pamphlet, from their
jeers at the contents. One man in shirtsleeves with an anchor
tattooed on his neck looked directly at him. Daniel pulled the brim
of his hat down lower to shade more of his face, a lump high in his
throat.

He couldn't
recognize me, not in this light.

The barmaid came by,
setting Kate's plate of mutton and a glass of ale in front of her.
Jane turned to him. “Would you like something?”

“He won't be
staying,” Kate interjected.

Jane simply
shrugged, unconcerned.

“I don't need
anything to drink.” Daniel managed to keep the right amount of
calm in his voice, like he'd practiced with Poppy. He didn't
need
a drink, but he wanted one with every fiber in his being.

As soon as Jane
left, Kate turned back to him. “I never thought I'd see the day
when Daniel O'Reilly wasn't thirsty. You used to be a crank man.”

“I used to be
a lot of things.” Stalwart, honorable, respectable: those were
the terms which had once been applied to him. The taste of crank
lingered on his tongue, though he had not drank the blessed gin and
water in months.

Pulling the plate
closer, Kate cut into the mutton with gusto, as if it was an
epicurean treat served by her father's old cook.

Daniel lowered his
voice, deciding to play it safe. “Do you know a man named Atlas
Greer? They call him the Gentlemen Thief.”

Kate drew back from
him. “Do you really think I'd be foolish enough to confess my
associations, so that you have something to hold over me if I don't
comply with what you want?”

“Christ, Kate,
why do you think I'd do that?”

She gave him a look
that told him exactly how little she thought of him.

“I asked
because he's a friend of mine. I wrote to him a few months ago to ask
him to look into my case.” Daniel had penned that letter a
month into sobriety, but he held that information back. “Atlas
is a savant when it comes to puzzles. He sees conspiracies in a
simple trip to the market. I thought maybe he'd find something the
constable missed.”

“When we were
together, you never once mentioned your
friend
Atlas.”
Kate's eyes held a hard glint.

“I'd been
appointed your father's assistant. Somehow I didn't think it in my
best interest to confess my affiliation with a known thief, brilliant
lad that he is or not. That doesn't matter much now, does it?”
He'd always wanted Kate to meet Atlas, but not like this.

“No, I suppose
not. All those hours Papa spent grooming you to take over the
company, and you threw it away as if it was nothing. I don't
understand you, Daniel.” She spoke around bites of mutton.

“Your father
was never going to let me lead the company.” He had known
Morgan had plans for him, but he couldn't see himself as the head of
a large shipping company. Her father had never specified that Daniel
was his successor.

“Why do you
think he introduced you to all his damned suppliers, his business
partners? Because he believed in
you
.” She hissed the
last word as though it was the gravest insult.

Once you believed
in me, too.

“When you got
arrested, Papa's good name was dragged through the ditches.
Everything he'd done for you, and instead you brought shame to our
door.”

“I'm sorry.”
He'd been a fool to not imagine what wide-reaching effects his
departure would have.

“Apologies
won't bring back the company or my life.” She wouldn't look at
him, gaze intent on the mutton.

He was so
unimportant to her he didn't deserve her attention.

They lapsed into
silence. She patted at her hair, parted in the middle with short
curls on her temples. When he had last seen her, she had worn her
chocolate curls in ringlets with silk flowers. He liked this new,
simpler style better. It felt more genuine.

He let his gaze run
down her frame. She had always been tall, but she was gaunter now—her
thinness was emphasized by the swell of her wide skirts, the puffed
sleeves of her azure dress.

Yet she remained the
most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

Kate finished her
mutton and took a swig of ale. He watched the line of her throat as
she swallowed, imagined the taste of the frothy brown liquid on his
tongue. Her fingers curled around the clay mug. An angry scratch ran
across her wrist, in the space between her glove and sleeve. Dark
circles lined her eyes.

I doomed her to a
life of hard labor and injustice.

“After I
left...” He didn't know how to finish that sentence without
hurting her, and so the words spilled out like the rapid clip-clop of
horse hooves on cobblestone. “What happened to you? Why did no
one help you when the company collapsed?”

He didn't add what
he truly wanted to know:
why didn't you marry? Could you still
love me?

She sat up
straighter, spine stiffened. “That is none of your business.”

When Atlas had told
him she lived in the rookeries, he was aghast. She was the daughter
of an upper middle class merchant; someone in her social class should
have helped her. Even without her father's money, she should've been
able to marry well based on her beauty alone.

“You should
have better than this, Katiebelle.” He leaned forward,
pretending the smell of her soap pierced through the haze of gin.

“And who shall
give that happy future to me? You?” She gave a harsh, guttural
laugh.

“I could.”
He hated the pleading tone of his voice. “If I can prove my
innocence, then I'll be able to find work in London again.”

She snorted.

“I deserve
your scorn.” He deserved far more than that, yet he kept
silent, lest he give her ideas on the best ways to throttle him from
across the table.

“Damn right
you do,” she muttered.

“But if you
give me a chance, I'll show you I've changed.” He searched her
face, deluding himself into believing he saw a ghost of compassion in
her brown eyes, in the slight quiver of her bottom lip.

Slowly, her posture
rigid, she rearranged her thick skirts. She patted the greatcoat
underneath her, where she had slipped the pistol. “You have
five minutes to tell me what the Gentleman Thief has discovered.”

Read on for an excerpt from

Erica Monroe’s next novella

Secrets in Scarlet

The Rookery Rogues 1.5

Coming in Early 2014

And Coming in Mid-2014

The Rookery Rogues 2

Scandal Becomes You

London, 1832

The two-story brick
Larker Textile Factory should have looked ominous. Steam roiled out
from the chimneys in thick gray tendrils, obscuring the moon. But
that was expected when London had exchanged reliance on cottage
laborers hunched over looms for churning machinery and ready-made
clothes.

The variable speed
baton power loom sounded to Thaddeus Knight like the devil's own
calling card. Clack-clack-clack the looms went in their steady jig of
brimstone and hellfire. Once, he had thought the industrialization of
England was a sign of progress. Country folk migrating to London
would build a new social order, one free of the restraints of low
income and hypocritical aristocracy.

Perhaps he was still
an idealist. He wanted badly to believe that the work he did as a
Sergeant in the H-Division of the Metropolitan Police Force was
meaningful. He was making a difference in the lives of those doomed
to the rookeries, or so he told his mother every time she questioned
why he chose to spend his days patrolling the streets of the East End
with only a truncheon for protection.

They're people too,
Mother. They deserve justice.

But what was justice
in a world that failed to mourn the lives lost to poverty, famine,
iniquity, or murder? He shook his head. Thaddeus had studied Plato,
Descartes, Confucius. Hell, he'd even read the social treaties of a
male prostitute he'd arrested for protesting nude in the middle of
the Smithfield market. He spent his nights poring over crime reports
from the Old Bailey, but he was no closer to the truth.

His hands clenched
around the worn handle of his truncheon. He tapped the bully-stick
against his leg sheathed in the dark blue uniform common to the Met.
The blue had been meant to make the public believe they weren't a
military unit, but rather a civilian peacekeeping organization. Most
days, he did feel as though he was doing his part to help the borough
of Stepney.

Today was not one of
those days. Nor, he suspected, would the next two weeks be any
better. From his supervisor, Superintendent Jonah White, he had
received a maxim: solve the case at Larker factory or move the hell
on. Thaddeus had been given release from his patrol duties only after
he'd begged to investigate the crime.

The corpse of the
young woman he'd found outside the Larker factory haunted his dreams.

“The duty of
the Police is to prevent the crimes,” White had said that
morning. “We're not the bloody Runners. You're destined for
greatness, lad. The work you did on catching those bloody
resurrectionists was brilliant. Don't botch it by dodging your
regular duties.”

He had fourteen days
to uncover why someone had left a young girl beaten to a pulp outside
of the factory. A day for each year of the girl's too short life. As
he stood outside the factory, cloaked by the lack of street lamps in
this godforsaken part of Shadwell, he could not shake the sight of
the girl's face. Blood dribbling down her lips as she coughed. Her
slight frame was suddenly bitterly cold like this February night. She
was gone.

The factory had let
out an hour ago. There was an alleyway behind the butcher shop in
front of the factory, which left him able to view the factory without
being seen. He should be back at the H-Division station, combing
through records for any mention of the factory owner Boz Larker.
Instead, he stood outside of this factory as if by his presence he
could prevent another murder.

A light bobbed in
the distance. Thaddeus lingered in the alleyway. He pulled his coat
tighter around him to shut out the chafing wind. The light came
closer, closer until the body of a young woman appeared, surrounded
by golden luminescence.

His breath died in
his throat. He gulped down the rising panic that always accompanied
the sight of a gorgeous woman; crimes were his specialty, while
flirtations had him facing definite heart palpitations. She was
beautiful, with a crown of flaming red hair that stood out bright
from underneath her brown straw bonnet. With skin pale like ivory, he
ached to touch her heart-shaped face to see if it'd be as perfect as
statues in the British Museum.