My Favorite Thief (19 page)

Until that moment, he had not really understood the importance of her work. He had thought it noble enough, in the way that any charitable endeavor to help the less fortunate was good and decent. But the slums of London were teeming with violence and despair. With her modest little house and her odd assortment of servants, Charlotte could hardly wage a war on a dark reality that had existed for hundreds of years. Harrison now realized that even if she only succeeded in altering the lives of one or two of the women and children she brought into her refuge house over the years, that in itself was a magnificent accomplishment.

He had only to look at her to understand that.

“When he first spoke to me a few days ago, my father told me he had thought that I was so weak and useless, I probably hadn't survived prison anyway. I don't think he particularly cared whether I had or hadn't.”

“Then how did he suddenly find you?”

“He came to London a few months ago, and he said that while he was going about St. Giles, he started to hear about a young woman who was trying to help the less fortunate in London. I suppose I am something of a curiosity to the people who live there—especially given that I have chosen to actually live with those I am trying to help. Once he heard that I was Scottish, my name was Charlotte, and I walked with a limp, his interest was sufficiently aroused that he decided to find me.” Her expression was pained as she quietly reflected, “I suppose I don't look all that much different from the way I did then—just a lot cleaner and better dressed.”

Harrison regarded her in surprise. It suddenly struck him that the young woman who was seated beside him had no real inkling of her loveliness. He thought of the simplicity of the evening gown she had worn to Lord and Lady Marston's ball, the loosely pinned arrangement of her hair, and the fact that she had not adorned herself with a single piece of jewelry. He had sensed that her sparing approach to fashion was the result of her not wanting to draw too much attention to herself. But the result was an extraordinary softness and naturalness to Charlotte's beauty which was much more appealing to him than the heavily perfumed, overly coiffed, lavishly gowned women who preened about at every function he attended.

“And once he realized that you are now a woman of some means, he decided it was time to reassert himself as your father,” Harrison surmised. “Which meant demanding that you give him five thousand pounds.”

She nodded. “I tried to explain to him that I didn't have that kind of money, but he didn't believe me. He told me if I didn't get it for him, he would harm a member of my family. When I gave him your eight hundred pounds this evening, I hoped that would satisfy him, but instead he was furious. That was when he told me that he had Flynn. He said if I didn't get the rest of the money to him within one week, he would break every bone in Flynn's body.”

Harrison absorbed this in grim silence. “And will he actually do that?”

“Yes.” Her voice was ragged. “He will.”

He rose from the sofa and began to pace the confines of the drawing room. The pain in his head that had been plaguing him for over twenty-four hours now had abated considerably, thanks to a dose of laudanum and the fact that he had confined himself to his darkened room. But his mind was still clouded and his vision slightly blurred, making it difficult to think.

He did not have four thousand two hundred pounds at his disposal—not immediately, anyway. If he sold some of his investments and rearranged some financing, he might be able to pull the money together within a few days. The question was, would Charlotte's father be satisfied with this, or would he continue to hold Flynn hostage and demand even more?

“I can get you the money, Charlotte, although it will take a bit of time to arrange it,” he began. “However, I'm not convinced that giving your father more money is the answer. Paying a kidnapper is always risky. By abducting Flynn, he has demonstrated that he is willing to use violence to get what he wants from you. If he thinks you can scrape together another forty-two hundred pounds in just a few days, what is to stop him from demanding even more? Why wouldn't he just keep Flynn and use him as a constant leverage to extort money from you on a regular basis?”

She regarded him in horror.

“I'm not saying he will do that,” he quickly qualified, realizing that he was frightening her even more. He decided not to point out the possibility that her father could just take the money and murder Flynn anyway, to keep the boy quiet. “I'm just saying it is a possibility we have to consider.”

“My father is a simple man, Harrison,” Charlotte replied. “He drinks, he fights, he steals. Those are the things he enjoys in life. What he doesn't enjoy is having responsibility. He made that amply clear to me every day. Flynn is a means to an end for him, but I don't think he will want to keep him for any longer than is necessary. Once I have given him what he wants, he will release Flynn and leave me alone.”

Either that or he'll kill the lad,
Harrison reflected silently. “But now he sees his daughter living what to him appears a lavish lifestyle, and he wants a piece of that for himself. If I understand him at all, he probably believes you owe it to him, as some kind of payment for his being your father—regardless of how he treated you as a child. I think he'll continue to blackmail you as long as you give in to his demands. After all, getting money from you is far easier and more profitable than any other schemes he's tried in the past.”

“Even if you're right, at this point it doesn't matter,” Charlotte argued. “He has Flynn. I have no choice but to give him what he wants.”

“And what if he doesn't release Flynn after you give him the money?”

“He will,” she insisted stubbornly. “He must.”

“Or what?”

“I won't give him the money until I see that Flynn is safe. I will make him release Flynn first.”

“Assuming he agrees to that, what happens next month, or the month after that, when your father finds himself short on cash or longing for something he can't afford, and he decides to pay you a visit again? You have enough people in your life whom you care for deeply that make you an easy target for blackmail. You can't possibly protect all of them from your father, and regrettably, even my means are not unlimited.”

“I won't ask you again,” she assured him fervently. “I promise.”

“I don't give a damn about the money. What I care about, Charlotte, is the fact that this vile excuse for a human being thinks he can threaten you and your family and abduct children who have placed themselves in your care. He has to be stopped, don't you see?”

“I can't go to the police, if that is what you are suggesting.”

“Why not?”

“Because my father has sworn to me that if he hears that the police are looking for him, he will hurt someone.”

“He won't find out until it is too late,” Harrison argued. “For God's sake, I know the London police can be inept, but it isn't as if they will place an article in the newspapers announcing that they are looking for him.”

“No, they'll just patrol the rookeries of the worst areas in London, asking everyone if they've seen or heard of him, which will be a far quicker way of warning him.”

“Just ask them to be with you when your father comes to pick up the money, and they can arrest him. Then at least he'll be off the streets and no longer a danger to you.”

“You don't know my father, Harrison,” Charlotte objected. “He may be uneducated and unsophisticated, but that doesn't mean he isn't intelligent. He never rushes into anything. He waits. He watches. He listens. And long before the police have any hope of arresting him, he will have figured out that they were there and left.” Her mouth was dry as she finished, “And then he will make sure I am severely punished for disobeying him.”

“You aren't a helpless little girl anymore, Charlotte,” he said, frustrated by the effect her father was having upon her. He seated himself beside her once more and placed his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. “You're a strong, beautiful woman with a family and friends who care about you, and believe it or not, you are also a respected member of society. So stop talking about being punished as if that piece of filth actually has some right to lay a hand on you. You no longer have to obey him, and he has no right to touch you. Do you understand?”

“I'm sorry,” she said, feeling defensive and overwhelmed. “I realize it's hard for you to understand. I know I must seem terribly weak and pathetic to you—limping over here in the middle of the night, looking a mess, begging for your help. I don't know why I came to you, when you have already given me so much money. It's just that when I woke this evening to find him standing in the dark over my bed—when I felt his hand pressed hard against my mouth—for a moment I was eight years old again, and I knew I had to do whatever he said or—” She broke off suddenly, too ashamed to continue.

Harrison stared at her, still holding her fast, helpless. It pained him deeply to see her suffering so. He looked at the wine-colored bruise on her cheek, and felt a terrible, impotent rage fill him. He could see the memories of her childhood flooding through her, filling her with a suffering he could scarcely imagine. He could feel it in the tremors pulsing through her, could see it in the bleached skin of her knuckles as she clutched desperately at the wrinkled folds of her gown, could hear it in her soft, desperate swallows of breath as she fought not to cry. A terrible nightmare had awakened within her, stripping her of the courage and strength that she had demonstrated on the night when she first came into his life. And he couldn't bear it. He couldn't bear to see this magnificent woman, who in her relatively short life had learned more about courage and strength and endurance than most people would ever know, reduced to this shivering, terrified state.

He would have done anything in that moment to ease her suffering, to bring her back from the black precipice of her tortured past. But everything he had said so far had only further agitated her, drawing her deeper into the world she had fought so hard to escape. And so, realizing that his words were all clumsy and wrong and inadequate, he wrapped his arms around her and drew her close, thinking only that he wanted to shield her from her past, and her present, and all the forces that were battering her injured body and soul.

She leaned into him and laid her cheek against his chest, wearily, trustingly. Her back was rigid and tense, and so he began to stroke her, his hands slowly caressing the narrow expanse along her spine, urging the tightly clenched muscles to relax. She was lean and fine beneath the firm contours of her bodice, but he knew that beneath her delicate form burned a will and a determination to survive forged of pure steel. That was why Charlotte had been able to survive the cruelties and deprivations of her childhood. She had been rescued, yes, but that rescue had come when she was ten years old, and had already known a lifetime of poverty and abuse. It was enough to destroy most people, he reflected, perhaps not in body, but in soul, leaving them destined to live their lives in fear and anger and resentment. But Charlotte had not succumbed to those emotions—or to the equally destructive trap of self-pity. Instead she had learned to accept herself for who she was, which was the result of many forces, including her life with her bastard of a father. Although he had not asked, Harrison was convinced that her father had caused the injury to her leg. But instead of shutting herself away and leading a secluded life of pleasant calm as the ward of a marquess, reading and painting or playing the piano in a mansion filled with beauty and grace, Charlotte had decided to strike back at the harsh world from which she had sprung. She had summoned the strength to limp through its bleak streets and offer help, to try to do something to make a difference.

Her courage was astounding.

He laid his fingers against the elegant curve of her jaw and tilted her head up until she was looking at him. He wanted to tell her not to be afraid. He wanted to assure her that he would help her in any way he could. He owed her that much, at least. After all, she had risked everything she had to save him on the night they met. But he wasn't offering to help her out of some sense of obligation. Nor was he doing it because he pitied her, or thought her weak and pathetic, as she had so wrongly accused him. He wanted to help her because the thought of her suffering even a moment longer at the hands of the man who had tormented her for the first ten years of her life filled him with unspeakable rage. Because he couldn't bear the thought of anyone threatening her, or worse, daring to lay a hand on her. Because in all his life he had never met a woman as brave and selfless and giving as she, nor one who at the same time could be so stubbornly, maddeningly infuriating. Because from the moment he first laid eyes upon her he had felt a desperate need burning within him, which never abated, but only grew hotter and more overwhelming each time he was in her presence. All these things he wanted to tell her, and more. But as he sat there, staring into the liquid depths of her eyes, which in the soft glow of lamplight reminded him of the sun playing upon the soft green leaves of his father's beloved tree, he found himself unable to speak.

And so he bent his head and captured her lips with his, thinking he was almost certainly going mad, and not giving a damn.

Charlotte froze, shocked. She suddenly felt as if the ground had been ripped out from under her. As if everything she had previously understood to be the parameters of her existence, parameters that she had quietly learned to accept over the years, had shifted in an instant. No man had ever kissed her. At the relatively mature age of twenty-five, she had long ago given up any childish fantasy that any man would ever want to. She was well past the girlish bloom of eighteen. Well past the secretly nurtured hope that someday she might meet someone who would see beyond her crippled leg, her awkward gait, her plain, unremarkable features. She had come to accept that she would never know the feel of a man's hands upon her body, the touch of his lips against her mouth, the presumably exquisite sensation of being desired, and feeling desire in return. Therefore the urgent, powerful heat of Harrison's lips upon hers rendered her nearly paralyzed, unable to think or speak.