Lady of Desire (34 page)

“Really,” Lord Drummond was grumbling, “I marvel that your brother, Hawkscliffe, high stickler that he is, would let a suitor near you who refuses to give a proper account of where he’s been these past fifteen years. I’m telling you, that lad is trouble—”

“My dear Lord Drummond,” she interrupted grandly, drawing herself up to her full height, “I will thank you to watch what you say about my future husband.” With that, she yanked her arm free of his hold and pivoted toward the exit again, her skirts swirling around her.

“I say, what’s this? Such impertinence! Husband? Wrong headed in the extreme! Lady Jacinda! Where are you going?”

Ignoring his indignant sputtering, she pressed on, her bridges burning behind her. Joy and dread pounded in her temples as she hastened through the milling assemblage of Almack’s elite subscribers; she felt giddy and indescribably free. She prayed she would find Rackford still standing outside waiting for his curricle to be brought round, for she had to tell him how she felt.

She scarcely dared wonder how he would react. Obviously, he had lost patience with her, but she was sure she would win her way back into his good graces when she told him that she loved him and that she was ready at last to commit herself to him. She only hoped he would forgive her for thinking too much of her own fears and too little of his need for her tender care.

As she strode toward the door on legs that shook beneath her, all her awareness focused on catching up to him, she was suddenly accosted by his old friends, Reg Bentinck and Justin Church.

“Lady Jacinda!”

“Mr. Bentinck, Mr. Church,” she greeted them in a fluttery voice, trying to hide her impatience as they blocked her path. “H-how are you this evening?”

“Never mind that. We have to talk to you!”

“I’m in a bit of a hurry—”

“This will only take a moment.” Reg ducked his head nearer to hers. “We heard what Rackford said to you about ‘the jungle.' So that’s where he’s been all this time! The jungles of India. Right? Was he with the army? I knew it!“

“Oh, Mr. Bentinck—”

“Tell us! Come, we are his friends. If Rack won’t confide in us, then you must. It was India, wasn’t it?” Justin implored her. “We’re not going to tell anyone.”

“Gentlemen, I cannot say.”

“Would you reconsider if we told you something about our mutual friend in return? ” Reg murmured.

Arrested by his sly tone, she gazed into his eyes. “Like what?”

The two exchanged a grim look; then Justin spoke, lowering his voice. “We were there the night he ran away from home.”

“
What? ”
she whispered, turning to him in shock.

“You tell us where he’s been all these years, and we’ll tell you what we saw that… horrible night at Torcarrow,” Reg murmured.

She gazed at him, riveted, her heart thumping. “You were there? Truly?”

They nodded.

No wonder Rackford always seemed to be keeping his two childhood friends away from her, making sure she never chatted with Reg and Justin without him present.

She burned to hear what they had seen that night, but she shook her head slowly. “ I can’t. I am sworn to secrecy. Besides, I think I’d rather wait for Rackford to tell me in his own time.”

They protested, but she held her ground. Though severely tempted, she knew that in order to learn their story, she would have to reveal his criminal past in exchange, and that was out of the question. No matter how loyal Reg and Justin were, she dared not breathe a word to them about Billy Blade. She would do nothing to compromise his hard-won trust.

“Please excuse me, gentlemen. I must go.” Hurrying past them, she rushed outside into the cool moonlit night, but her heart sank to discover that Rackford had already gone.

Going back inside, she sought out Robert and pled a headache, procuring his permission to go home. The minute she reached Knight House, she asked if any message had come for her, in the hopes that Rackford had regretted his outburst and had sent his apologies, but Mr. Walsh answered that none had.

Rather dejected and unsure of what to do next, she went up to her rooms, where her maid, Ann, helped her out of her elaborate ball gown. Jacinda slipped into her silk dressing gown and dismissed the woman with a nod. She sat down for a moment at her vanity and stared hard into the mirror for a second, plagued by the question of what Reg and Justin had seen that night at Torcarrow and why the devil Rackford had never shared it with her. She thought he had told her everything. Too restless to sit still, she rose again and prowled over to her bedroom window. Pushing the curtain aside, she gazed out at the city for a moment, then determination filled her face. This could not wait till morning. She had to see him, had to be with him.

Tonight.

She let the curtain fall and went to change her clothes.

Remembering all he had taught her that night in the rookery, she removed the rest of her jewelry and dressed in her most ordinary-looking frock, a simple round gown of sprigged cotton. She put a bit of money in her pocket to pay the hackney; then went to the bottom drawer of her dresser and took out a velvet-lined, teakwood box. She opened it and withdrew the elegant lady’s pistol that her brother Damien had sent her from Spain.

She held it up for a moment, admiring it in the moonlight. The gun was more a work of art than a weapon, made from gleaming Toledo silver. The butt, engraved with her initials, was inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

Knowing her enthusiasm for target practice, Damien had sent it as a gift for her debut, which he had been unable to attend, away at the war. The note he’d sent had humorously explained that since he could not be in London personally to protect her from the swarms of suitors she was sure to attract, she was now well armed to keep her admirers at bay. It had a rifled barrel three inches longer than Alec’s dueling pistols, which gave it greater accuracy at longer ranges. A little panel in the butt opened over a compartment that could store up to six powder cartridges.

Tucking the elegant, deadly weapon into her half boot, she donned a shapeless, hooded cloak over her gown. Rackford would be so pleased that she had followed all of his injunctions on how to move about safely after dark, she thought with growing excitement for her adventure.

Pulling the hood of her cloak up to shadow her face, she sneaked out of the house by the veranda door and stole away through the garden, just like the night she had tried to run away from home. This time, her heart was light, knowing she was going to her lover.

She could not wait to see his face when she told him that she loved him.

Waving down the first hackney coach that passed her on St. James’s Street, she took it to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, her pulse racing with nervous anticipation. When the coach stopped in front of Lord and Lady Truro’s house, she saw the pair of Bow Street runners who had been assigned to watch Rackford around the clock. She chewed her lip and cast about quickly for an explanation for her arrival that would not lead them to realize she was a young lady of Quality dabbling in scandal.

But just then, as she started to get out of the coach, she spied a flicker of motion in the shadows alongside the house, some twenty yards away. An agile, muscular silhouette vaulted up onto the garden wall and disappeared silently over it. She furrowed her brow.

Rackford?

He was already gone, vanishing like… a thief in the night. The thought filled her with instant apprehension. What the devil was he up to, sneaking out of his own house?

“You got some business ‘ere, miss?” one of the Bow Street runners asked, sauntering over toward her where she stood half in, half out of the carriage.

She glanced at the man in distraction. “No,” she said abruptly, then turned to the coachman. “Drive on. That way.” She pointed, then nodded to the Runner. “Good evening.”

The officer tipped his hat to her with a suspicious look. As the hackney rolled into motion, continuing on down the street, she searched the surrounding darkness for Rackford with inexplicably mounting dread.

“O’Dell!”

Rackford’s deep, thunderous roar filled the rookery, bounding off the brick buildings and dark cobbled streets.

At last, he stalked into the open before his former headquarters.

He was empty-handed, though his weapons waited at his waist. His body bristled as he stood out in front of the building, his feet planted wide.

He was done with sneak attacks. Certain that Jacinda’s rejection was inevitable after the way he had embarrassed her at bloody Almack’s, nothing else mattered. It was time to finish this once and for all.

“O’Dell!” he bellowed again. “Come out and face me, you coward!”

Hearing his shouts, the Jackals began prowling out of the gin-shop, edging toward him warily, as though they suspected he had gone mad. He could feel the muzzles of at least ten guns trained on him, but none of the men fired, taken off guard, a bit confused by his slow advance, perhaps even a little intrigued by his audacious approach. Likely they half suspected a trick. Rackford turned his attention to O’Dell’s followers and bodyguards, well aware that their leader’s control over them had been slipping for some time now. He was determined to shame his enemy out into the open.

“You there! Are you going to keep letting O’Dell hide behind you?” he challenged them.

They shifted uneasily.

“Where is he? Too scared to show his face?”

No answer.

“You call this man your leader?” he pressed on in a tone that rang with command. “Well, I ask you, are you better off because of him, or worse? I already know the answer to that. Aye, Cullen O’Dell has given you nothing but trouble and grief. He’s not a leader. He’s a thug. And a coward.”

“There’s no cowards ‘ere, Blade!” Tyburn Tim yelled in defiance.

The others roughly agreed, bristling.

“No? Then why don’t one of you go tell him to come out here and finish this like a man? Just him and me.”

“Well, if it ain’t the great Billy Blade!” O’Dell swaggered out of the gin shop, his narrow face etched with bitter scorn, but there was fear in his eyes. “Look at you back from the dead to teach me how to be a big man, eh?”

Rackford’s mouth thinned in a sly, hostile smile.

O’Dell looked at his men. “Kill him.”

Nobody moved.

Tyburn Tim was the only one who cocked his gun and took aim at Rackford, but Oliver Strayhorn pushed the muzzle of Tim’s musket back down to the ground.

“Kill him yourself, O’Dell.” The tall young man coolly issued the challenge. “Looks to me as though this is between you and Blade. Unless you’re afraid, like he said?”

“You scurvy bastard, Strayhorn,” O’Dell hissed. “I ain’t afraid of any man, not you, and especially not ‘im!”

“Good. Then let it be a fair fight.” When Strayhorn jerked a curt nod at the others, they retreated a few steps, lowering their weapons.

Rackford sent Strayhorn an appreciative glance; then his stare homed in on O’Dell. The Jackals’ leader clearly seemed to realize as he glanced around at his men that he had a serious problem on his hands.

If he fought Rackford, he might very well die; if he refused to fight, he would lose face completely and forfeit his place as their captain.

“Bugger yourselves, the lot o‘ you,” O’Dell muttered at his men with a look of grim resolve. He tossed his musket to Tyburn Tim, then unsheathed his knife with a cold hiss of metal and stalked toward Rackford.

He flicked his fingers over the hilt of his weapon, adjusting his grip. A surge of savage energy pounded in Rackford’s veins as he moved into fighting stance. He and O’Dell circled slowly, sizing each other up.

O’Dell slashed at him in a swift arc that cut the air. Rackford curved deftly, then lunged, striking back. O’Dell evaded the thrust, his rookery instincts as finely well honed as Rackford’s.

The world spun faster; the faces of the men looking on became a dizzying blur. Rackford’s heart hammered in his ears.

“Where’ve you been, Blade? You’ve lost your touch,” O’Dell taunted him.

He snarled and they clashed, tumbling onto the ground with the force of Rackford’s charge. They rolled; he dove for O’Dell’s knife. As he struggled to pin O’Dell’s wrist to the cobblestones, the man fought like a hellion. Their muscles strained as each strove to overpower the other.

Sweat dripped from Rackford’s brow, the salt of it stinging as it ran into his eyes.

The tip of O’Dell’s blade nicked Rackford’s jaw. He cursed, slamming O’Dell’s hand to the ground, but O’Dell suddenly planted his feet in Rackford’s stomach and flung him back. Thrown back several feet, Rackford caught his balance, once more at the ready.

O’Dell climbed to his feet and wiped the greasy sweat off his brow with his forearm, then flashed him an unpleasant grin. “Come on, Billy. This time when you die, it’ll be for good. Think I’ll cut off your head and keep it on my wall for a trophy. What do ye say to that?”

O’Dell’s mad laughter bounded off the flat brick faces of the surrounding buildings. Gazing at him in contempt so sharp he could almost taste it, Rackford shrugged off his enemy’s stupid vaunting, but the grotesque threat reminded him of how O’Dell had terrorized little Eddie the Knuckler.

He could still see the boy’s round, grubby face as vividly as though that afternoon in Newgate were only yesterday, could still hear his high-pitched voice.
He said if I didn’t help him, he’d make me into a wallet
!

Rackford’s eyes narrowed with deepening wrath. O’Dell was in better form than he had expected, but as he remembered that bruised, scared, unloved kid, he felt new force seeping into his veins from he knew not where. With pounding intensity, all of his awareness narrowed down to the moment at hand.

He attacked, his every step sure and strong as he advanced relentlessly, driving O’Dell back. He was heedless of the stabbing, slicing blows with which O’Dell tried to ward him off, dodging each with lightning speed. Rackford’s blade connected twice in rapid succession, cutting O’Dell’s shoulder, then biting into his side with swift precision.

Cursing, O’Dell lashed out with a roundhouse kick to thrust him back, but Rackford grabbed his leg and twisted it. O’Dell crashed to the ground with a furious shout, his knife clattering out of his grasp as he reached to break his fall.