The Danger of Desire (5 page)

And he didn’t stink of gin or stale ale, either. He didn’t smell at all.

Meggs searched her memory and stretched out her senses. She had a nose for that sort of thing, a knack for sorting scents out from one another—the lavender seller on the corner, the coffeehouse across the road, the pungent odor of horse droppings on the slick cobbles—but all she could come up with from this morning was the damp, heavy whiff of coal in the cold air and the acrid-sweet vapor of urine in the alley. Of him, she had nothing.

Fancy that.

Never met with a cove who didn’t have some smell, bacon or brandy, offal or gin. Half of St. Giles smelled like they’d never met with bathwater in their life, but he must bathe regular. Lord, what must that be like?

Meggs stumbled to a complete stop at the unlikely and entirely unfamiliar vision of him, of that man she’d only laid eyes on for the first time that morning, rising out of a steaming bath, all wet, gleaming skin and pale, intent eyes. She blinked her eyes hard to clear her head. Devil take her—she’d never thought of a cove like
that
before, naked as God made him.

Maybe he
was
the devil himself, come down with his fiery looks and icy eyes to tempt her into hell.

She palmed his thimble deep inside her pocket. Heavy it was, and far thicker than the goldfinch’s. She ducked into a doorway along Poultry Lane and fished it out. The gold was warm and solid in her palm. She turned it over slowly, examining it as if it could yield clues to his character, as if it could tell her what she wanted to know. Like, what did he really want with her? And why would a man like that want, or need, her to steal anything?

The fine script on the front of the dial read
Thos. Earnshaw
,
London
. She consulted the always present catalog and map in her head. Earnshaw’s was up on High Holburn. Back in the other direction. Still, she was going north a bit for Threadneedle Street. And she did want to visit the rag traders after that. Another glance down at her hand and she made up her mind. She was completely done for at present. What could it hurt to find out more about the pale-eyed cove and his hundred pounds? Now, before she lost her courage, as well as her hand.

After Levy’s, where Mr. Levy the younger clucked and tutted over her hand but thankfully didn’t ask too many questions, her next stop was Ruby the Ragwoman in Black Swan Alley.

Meggs loved the rag traders. To her, Ruby’s yard was like an enormous wardrobe for the theater of her imagination. She rotated her patronage between no less than four establishments so that she rarely had to turn over so much as a crown in the exchange of goods. She swapped out her clothing to suit whatever character she was attempting to play. Most dippers just went out day after day without any mind to their appearance. But Meggs had seen too many kiddies get the shoulder clap because someone eye-bolted them. “That’s him! I recognize him, the boy in the red cap,” some biddy would bawl, and that would be the last of Red Cap.

Meggs changed her appearance as often as she changed the part of the city she worked. Always one step ahead of the law and the sharps. If they couldn’t recognize her, they couldn’t stop her. This morning she had been the seamstress, this afternoon, she would be the down-on-her-luck lady. The Relative. The Companion. The togs cost her a few extra pennies, but she’d needed the bonnet and the shawl, both good quality, but a few years out of date and faded, to give her just the right touch of genteel poverty, and the dark gray gloves, to cover the ruin that was her hand.

Her second stop, dressed as neat and respectable as an old pin, was Thomas Earnshaw and Co., Watchmakers, at Number One Hundred and Nineteen High Holborn. The door rang out its discreet warning as she stepped tentatively into the quiet interior and was enveloped in the pleasantly industrious smell of lubricating oils and solder.

The clerk, a long, sallow piece of unpleasantness with a beak of a nose, unfolded from behind a counter and condescended to ask, “May I help you?”

She countered with a rush of breathless temerity. “Oh, I do hope so. I was wondering if you might help me return this watch to its rightful owner, sir. I believe it comes from your establishment?”

The beak was all superiority and suspicion. He looked over his spectacles and down his long bill of a nose at her. “That is not a mere ‘watch.’ That is a pocket chronometer. To be exact, a gold, pair case, openface, pocket chronometer. One of the finest instruments we make.”

She widened her eyes and strove to look suitably impressed. “Oh, my. A chronometer is it? It doesn’t belong to me, you see, but I feel I ought to try and get it back to its rightful owner. I thought perhaps
you
might have a record of its owner, so I might be able to return it to him.”

The clerk pursed his already thin lips and considered her timid reply. He must have decided she presented no harm, as he took up the watch and his loupe to look at the markings on the dial and the case. “Number two hundred and fifty-six.” He turned his eye from her only long enough to consult a book of records on the desk behind the felt-topped counter. “Ah, yes. That would be Captain Hugh McAlden, of the navy.”

“Ooh, a
captain
. That would make sense, with it being, as you say, a pocket
chronometer,
not just an ordinary watch, and as I found it near the Admiralty Building.”

So that’s where he’d come from, Himself, down Spring Gardens, from the back of the Admiralty. She should have seen it—the weathered tan and the granite jaw. Bloody naval captain.

“Might you have his direction? Or—” Seeing the suspicious disapproval seep back into the beak’s face, she swiftly adapted her plan. “Perhaps you might be so kind as to send a message directly to Captain McAlden that his watch has been found and he may come here to pick it up? I hate to have a thing so valuable in my possession. Makes me nervous, it does.” She fluttered her hands away from the thimble.

The beak’s mouth softened just enough. It was as good as done.

CHAPTER 4

H
e came.

Another sleepless, cold night had her second-guessing herself, rubbing her throbbing head and wondering if she’d done the right thing. But there he was, the captain. Captain Hugh McAlden. Meggs rolled his name around in her mouth as if it were a stone she could smooth down into a pebble. McAlden. Hugh.

He appeared at the corner of Newton Street and turned up High Holborn. Had a cane with him today. He leaned on it more heavily as he crossed over through thick traffic to fetch up at the watchmakers. Meggs had to smile. She had served him a thorough basting, hadn’t she?

He looked more like a seafaring captain this morning, wearing a dark, double cape over a blue merino coat, buff-colored breeches, and heavy boots. His tricorn hat was pulled down low on his brow, so she couldn’t see his eyes. But it was him, no doubt about it. He wasn’t burnished with the gloss of town bronze, but now she had more than a few seconds to size him up, and now that she knew better, he moved with what she could only call command.

Captain
, the clerk had said. Used to having things his way. Used to telling people what to do. Used to having the fate of people resting solely in his hands.

What in blue blazes did he want with her?

Meggs hid herself well out of his sight, across the street and down a ways in New Turnstile Lane. She was unrecognizable in shapeless boys clothes this morning, her hair shoved under a worn tweed cap and her body hidden in loose, woolen folds. He would never see her here, let alone know it was her even if he did see her.

Once the captain was safely under the watch shop’s bells, Meggs took a chance and sidled nearer—still across the street but so she had a clearer look through the window. Her head was pounding as she squinted in the unfamiliar sunlight pouring into the street and tried to get a sense of what was going on behind the watchmaker’s glossy windows. And tried to figure out what she ought to do.

But before she could figure her way clear through the muddle, he reappeared through the door of the shop and slowly, carefully looked around.

She hitched herself back into the shadow of a doorway, but the canny bastard had seen her. And he waved. Right there on the High Holborn, where God and every sharp within a mile could see—he held up his watch to her and waved.

Jesus God. In the first place, how the hell had he seen her, and in the second, did he want to get bunged all over again? Was he dim?

She couldn’t help herself. After all the trouble she’d gone to, to get the damned thimble back to him, so he wouldn’t pursue her. She skidded herself across the street and fetched up close enough to talk to him, but not so near he’d be able to shoulder-clap her. She was mindful of that stick.

“Take it easy there, Gov’nor. You want to put that away afore someone flips you for it.”

“Again, you mean?”

She felt rather than heard his exhalation of satisfaction. He gave her a crooked hitch of a smile and buried the “gold, double case, openfaced pocket chronometer” away on the inside of his waistcoat. Safe enough, but not impossible. But she was
not
here to bung him again. She turned up the pavement without looking to see if he followed. He did.

“Ain’t here to argue with you. The old beak give it to you
gratis
, the way he was meant?” She tossed her head back in the direction of the watch shop.

“Yes. He returned my watch to me. May I know why?” His accent was pure toff, all polished address, but his voice was low and rough. He sounded like solid oak beams and creaking spars. He sounded, even though he spoke to her quietly, like he could be heard above a cannon’s roar.

And he smelled like soap. No perfume, no flowers. Just like pure soap. Clean. God Almighty.

“Just don’t want no trouble with you, see?”

Meggs crossed behind a dray and skirted down a convenient alley into a timber yard. The air was full of sunshine and sawdust, all pungent, golden, and lovely. Like his bleeding watch. She sidled away from Himself, just far enough, so she was on one side of a three-foot-high brick wall dividing the yard while he was on the other. It gave her some measure of security, however flimsy. She already knew she could outrun him. Barely. But the lumberyard gave her the advantage, as it was full of objects and pitfalls, ready to trap the less than nimble.

The captain nodded at her answer and looked ahead, mindful of his unsteady pegs. “I see. I was hoping we might have a chance to meet again.” He glanced at her and held out his hand. “This is for you.”

When she made no move to accept the shining coin, he tossed it over and she caught it reflexively, with her left hand. Her right, she kept hidden deep in her coat pocket. The long, sleepless night had not improved the hot, miserable ache that had spread from her palm upward, throughout her whole arm.

She held the guinea gingerly, in plain sight, so no one could accuse her of having stolen it. “Why?”

He smiled, but there was little enough warmth, just shrewd calculation. “Why don’t we call it a reward. For the return of the watch.”

She glanced around, wary of the traps. “Why?”

“A token of my faith. And because you look hungry.” His voice sounded almost angry. “Buy yourself a decent meal.”

She held silent. And skated a glance up at him. Faith? There was a word she hadn’t heard much of in a very, very long time. He was looking away, out over the lumberyard, not at her, and his face was silhouetted against the clear blue of the sky. He looked solid and unmovable. Reliable even. He looked as though he meant it.

“D’you mean it? Wot you said?”

“Yes, I did. I have a ... business proposition for you.”

She made a scornful sound of temper and disbelief. “We been over this. I’m not a whore, mister. Whatever you think about shop girls is wrong.”

“Ah, but you’re not a shop girl, are you? Not dressed like that. Although you did fool both the Member of Parliament for Lower Sudbury and the watchmaker’s assistant yesterday. Neither of them took you for a thief.”

And then, quick as a mortal shyster, he reached over and grasped her hand in his. She twisted and braced one foot against the wall to break his implacable hold, but it proved impossible without both hands. Her strength had deserted her.

“Be still. I’m not going to hurt you. And I’m not going to call the constables.”

“Lemme go.”

He didn’t. He turned her left hand palm upward and traced his bare hand over her fingers. Her other hand clenched reflexively in her pocket, and she clamped her jaw down over the wince of pain.

“They’re strong and nimble enough, but you’ve not got the callouses I would expect to find on a girl who plied her needle all day long.” He dusted his finger over the top edge of her pointer.

His touch made her all quivery, like the inside of a pie. She must have a fever to be so weak and foolish as to let this man get ahold of her. Old Nan had taught her better.

“I’m not a whore.” She twisted within his grip.

“Yes.” He acknowledged her insistence with a nod of his head. “I can see that. As it happens, I am not interested in working you on your back. Your business, if I’m not mistaken, and I seldom am, is conducted with nimble, sure fingers and a distracting display of ankle. Very fine ankle if I may say so, but as I said, your physical attributes are not of primary interest to me.”