Dance of Seduction (3 page)

Then something caught her eye in the alley very near her destination. Normally, she wouldn’t give a second glance to two people squabbling, but a flash of red arrested her attention.

Johnny Perkins in his favorite scarlet coat. And the twelve-year-old, a resident of the Home, was having a spirited discussion with a tall, broad-shouldered stranger, who seemed to be restraining the boy from running off.

Reminded of this morning’s incident with Samuel, she shouted, “Stop the coach!” As it shuddered to a halt, she opened the door and leaped out. Telling the coachman to go on and Samuel to wait at the top of the alley, she headed to
ward the imposing gentleman dressed in a ragged frock coat and battered beaver hat.

The alley stank of fried herring and cabbage and the quiet fear that pervaded Spitalfields. It wasn’t fear, however, but alarm that spurred her toward the man gripping Johnny’s shoulder with firm intent. Because morning sunlight glinted off the gold watch dangling from Johnny’s hand, and that could mean only one thing.

Another one of her pickpockets was headed for trouble this morning.

Chapter 2

…converse not with any but those that are good,
sober and virtuous. Evil Communications
corrupt Good Manners.
A Little pretty pocket-book: intended for
the instruction and amusement of little
Master Tommy and pretty Miss Polly,
John Newbery

V
ainly trying to smother her distress, Clara vaulted the rest of the way down the alley. She was just in time to hear Johnny’s squeaky voice say, “Now see here—”

“Johnny!” she said sharply.

The boy’s head whipped around, and his ruddy cheeks paled to the color of milk. “Bloody hell,” he mumbled as she approached.

She leveled on him her famous Stanbourne Stare, which generally sent her children scurrying to behave. “Give the gentleman back his watch this minute!”

Johnny hesitated, then handed the watch over. As soon as
the stranger had it, he lifted cool black eyes to her. Fear banished her irritation at Johnny. The only men in Spitalfields with that direct a stare were watchmen. Or worse, officers of the law.

Sick with worry, she stepped up to place a proprietary hand on the other shoulder of her hapless charge. “Please, sir, I’m sure Johnny didn’t mean to take your watch—”

“What concern is it of yours whether he did or not, madame? Are you the lad’s mother?” The man’s hand still gripped Johnny’s shoulder and seemed to tighten as they both stood there holding on to the boy.

Her panic increased. The stranger’s faintly accented English wasn’t a foreigner’s exactly, but it wasn’t an Englishman’s either. Which didn’t rule out his being an officer.

She forced a conciliatory smile to her lips. “I’m a guardian of sorts to him.”

“Me mum is dead,” Johnny interjected helpfully. “This here’s Lady Clara.”

“
Lady
Clara?” Instead of tipping his hat or begging her pardon, he muttered a French curse under his breath. Then he surveyed her hair, her gown, and even her boots with a brusque, impersonal scrutiny. “What’s a lady of rank doing in Spitalfields?”

“I run the Stanbourne Home for the Reformation of Pickpockets. It’s the brick building on the next corner. Johnny is one of my residents.”

A thin, ironic smile touched the man’s hard mouth. “I see that his reformation is progressing nicely.”

She colored. “Lapses happen occasionally, sir, but they’re unusual. I’m only sorry you had to witness this one. Now if you’d be so good as to release Johnny, perhaps we could better discuss the…er…situation.”

Johnny remained silent, his gaze bouncing anxiously between her and the stranger.

The man stared at her long enough for her to glimpse a native intelligence in his fathomless eyes and wary expression. Then he shrugged and dropped his hand from Johnny’s shoulder. Casting the watch a cursory glance, he shoved it into his coat pocket.

She breathed easier. “Thank you, Mr…. Mr….”

“Pryce.” Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “Captain Morgan Pryce.”

Oh, dear, a captain. But what kind? When he offered no more information, she examined him more carefully. He dressed shabbily—patched fustian coat and waistcoat, decidedly ragged stock, scuffed boots—and his black hair curled far down past his frayed shirt collar. But other details of his appearance revealed a man with gentlemanly habits. He’d tied his stock with considerable care, and his fingernails were clean and well groomed.

Still, that didn’t make him an officer of the law. “Are you a captain serving with the River Police? Or the Lambeth Street Police Office?”

At Johnny’s inexplicable snort, the gentleman cast the boy a quelling glance. “I’m a captain serving Her Majesty’s Navy.”

“In Spitalfields?” she blurted out.

A faint amusement crossed the surprisingly handsome face. “In case you hadn’t heard, England isn’t fighting any wars these days, so there’s little call for naval captains. We’re all on half-pay.”

While his profession explained his educated speech and air of command, it didn’t explain what a foreign-sounding gentleman who’d managed to obtain a captain’s commission was doing in an alley in
her
part of town. “Half-pay or not, surely you can afford to board your family in better surroundings than Spitalfields.”

“I have no family. And I live here because I own a business concern in the area.” He jerked his head toward the tum
bledown building on her right with a door that stood half ajar. “That’s the side entrance to my new shop. I sell nautical goods to sailors.”

“But why here, of all places?”

“Why not? Plenty of sailors live in this part of London. Should I have set up my business in the Strand among the milliners and the tailors? So I could tap the lucrative market for young ladies buying compasses?”

His sarcasm made her arch one brow. “Certainly not. But there are parts of town where you’re less likely to risk having your shop robbed.”

Oh, bother, thievery was the last thing she should have mentioned.

He shot Johnny a meaningful glance. “Excellent point.”

She sucked in an anxious breath. Captain Pryce might not be a police officer, but some navy men could be rather surly about such things as being robbed in the street. And he definitely seemed the surly sort. “I hope you realize, sir, that little would be accomplished by taking Johnny before the magistrate.”

Johnny flashed Captain Pryce a panicked look. “I ain’t going to no magistrate, am I?”

“No,” Captain Pryce said firmly. “Of course not.”

Relief flooded her, but she couldn’t risk the man changing his mind. “Where you’re going is back to the Home this very minute.” She squeezed Johnny’s shoulder. “Go on then.”

“But you gave me leave to visit Lucy this morning—”

“Which you used to ill effect, so your leave has been revoked.” Lucy was Johnny’s sister. If necessary, Clara would take him to visit Lucy herself later. “Now go tell Mrs. Carter I said to put your clever fingers to work in the kitchen. A long stint helping peel potatoes will give you time to contemplate how close you came to disaster this morning.”

“I could connemplay it better dusting the parlor,” Johnny offered hopefully.

“
Contemplate
,” she said, enunciating the consonants. “It means ‘think.’ As in, ‘think about your sins.’ Perhaps you could do it best by cleaning out the chamber pots.”

“Oh no, m’lady!” Johnny looked appalled. “Now that I consider it, peeling potatoes is just the thing for thinking. Aye, just the thing.”

“Good choice.” She shoved him none too gently toward the entrance to the alley. “Go on with you. I’ll be there in a moment.”

Casting Captain Pryce a last furtive look, Johnny scurried off. She held her breath until the boy slipped past Samuel and around the corner, then let it out in a long
whoosh
. Another disaster averted.

Well, not entirely. She still had to deal with the suspicious captain. But when she turned to face him, she read interest rather than suspicion in his eyes.

This time when his gaze swept her, it wasn’t brusque or impersonal. It was slow, thorough, and intimate—the look of a man examining an attractive woman. To her annoyance, it set off an unfamiliar fluttering in her belly. And when his gaze rose to her mouth, as if drawn there by her quickened breath, the fluttering in her belly grew positively frenzied.

How absurd. He was a neighbor, nothing more. A decidedly attractive neighbor, true, and certainly more interesting than any other man she’d met in Spitalfields, but still merely a neighbor.

She fought to regain her composure. “Thank you for your indulgence with Johnny, sir,” she said in a breathier voice than she would have liked. “I know he’s given you the wrong impression of my children, but I assure you that most of them are not like him.”

The gaze he lifted to hers was once more icy and remote. “You mean, they’re not foolish enough to get caught.”

This captain might be handsome, but his manner was worse than the gruff Beast’s in her favorite tale by Madame Le Prince de Beaumont. “I mean, they try to avoid behavior that lands them in trouble.” When he cocked an eyebrow skeptically, she stiffened. “They
are
only children, you know. They do err from time to time.”

“As long as you keep them away from my shop, I don’t really care what they do.”

His bluntness brought her up short. “If you’re worried they’ll steal from you—”

“I’m worried they’ll get underfoot.”

“They won’t.” She forced a smile, determined to be congenial even if he was not. “I assure you that the residents of Spitalfields find us to be very good neighbors.”

Scowling, he glanced to the top of the alley, where Samuel stood polishing the brass buttons of his yellow-and-black livery with a handkerchief. “Tell me, madame, do you spend a great deal of time in the neighborhood?”

“Every day.”

“Your father or husband or whatever man is responsible for you doesn’t object?”

That got her dander right up. “I beg your pardon, but I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself—I need no man to be ‘responsible’ for me.”

“Oh?” He nodded toward the head of the alley. “So why is that incompetent fool there standing guard?”

Thank heavens Samuel was too far off to hear this audacious captain’s insults. “Samuel is my footman. He accompanies me everywhere as a matter of principle. And he’s not an incompetent fool.”

“He is if he thinks he can protect you while remaining several yards away.”

“I
told
him to stand there. Quite frankly, I didn’t think I’d be in any danger.”

He stepped closer, his dark gaze drifting to her lips, then her breasts. It fixed there meaningfully before rising casually to meet hers. “Then you’re as much a fool as he.”

Color rose in her cheeks despite her attempts to squelch it. Though she was draped from neck to ankle in sturdy brown worsted, his look seemed to lay her bare. Or at the very least, imply that he’d
like
to lay her bare. A sudden image of the large, virile captain stripping her clothing from her one piece at a time affected her pulse most alarmingly.

She struggled to regain the upper hand. “Are you always this rude?”

“Are you always this careless of your safety?”

“I happen to consider some things more important than safety.”

“Like what?”

“The well-being of my charges and my fellow creatures. The future of mankind.”

“What lofty concerns for such a
petite jeune fille
,” he said sarcastically. “And here the rest of us merely worry about surviving from one day to the next.”

She lifted her chin. “That’s why I believe being born to privilege means I must help those less fortunate. You might say I do my own part to keep the ship from sinking.”

“By bailing it out with thimbles?” His voice held a taunt. “Take care, my lady, or you’ll find yourself sinking faster than you can bail.”

“If I had a shilling for every time some well-meaning person predicted disaster, I could buy your entire shop, lock, stock, and barrel. Yet despite the naysayers, I’ve managed to place sixty-three of my charges in positions as apprentices or servants throughout the city.”

Surprise showed in his face. “You convinced that many
people to hire pickpockets?
Pickpockets
, for God’s sake?
Bon Dieu
, how long have you worked here?”

“Ten years, though I’ve only been in charge for seven. And before you ask how ‘whatever man is responsible for me’ could allow it, I should tell you that my late father is the one who first brought me to work at the Stanbourne Home.”

“And your husband approves?”

To her utter mortification, she blushed again. “I-I’m not married.”

He rolled his eyes. “That explains everything.”

“What do you mean?”

This time the sweep of his glance was insultingly insolent. “No man with any sense would allow his pretty young wife to saunter about this part of town unprotected.”

“I
am
protected,” she countered smoothly, refusing to be intimidated. “I have Samuel. And despite his appearance, he’s quite effective. He used to be a pickpocket himself, so he knows the dangers of this area. And he carries a wicked-looking knife.” She smiled sweetly. “Shall I have him brandish it for you?”

His gaze flicked past her to Samuel. “Don’t bother. It would take him too long to fish it out of his boot. Which isn’t where it should be, since it does him little good there.” When she started, surprised that he’d know where Samuel kept his knife, the captain swung his gaze back to her. “Besides, a knife is useless against a man with a pistol. A villain could dispatch your foolish footman with one shot before you even gathered breath to scream, mademoiselle.”

She would consider the blunt words a threat, except for one thing. Though he looked stern and his tone was rough, concern glinted deep in his eyes. Good Lord, the man was actually trying to caution her…in his own boorish, arrogant way.

“Why, Captain Pryce,” she cooed, “I hardly know what to say. While I’m flattered by your concern for my well-being, it’s entirely unnecessary. After all, I’ve been coming here for ten years with nary an incident.”