Chapter 6
Ban pulled on his boots and sheathed a knife in each one before he stood and reached for his second-best greatcoat.
He glanced up at the simple mantel clock above the fireplace in his bedchamber.
A room where he seldom slept but chose to keep as a sort of private retreat where neither the Devil's Den nor the streets of Seven Dials and the other rookeries existed.
At least not for him, for a little while.
The hour was half eleven. A steady rain tapped across the gabled rooftop.
He shrugged into his greatcoat and strode toward his study where the rest of his weapons rested in an ornate Chinese cabinet.
Waiting for him. Who would not be waiting for him was the harridan who'd hired him to break into a series of houses in Mayfair.
The stubborn wench had insisted on accompanying him.
Insisted most vehemently. He'd managed to silence her on the matter when he'd given her a specific time to meet him in the mews behind her Grosvenor Square residence.
An appointment he had no intention to keep.
"She won't realize she's been given the slip until I am in and out of the first house on her list and on my way home," he muttered as he crossed his study and unlocked the Chinese cabinet to retrieve a brace of pistols.
As he tried to decide which set to take, he heard the click of his study door opening behind him.
"Daisy, is there any word from Carrington-Bowles' dispensary about the two children dumped at the Ten Bells this morning?"
"Good evening, Mister Dyer."
"Shite!" Ban jerked around and dropped a pistol on his foot. The blast went off and tore a hole through his blue silk damask-covered wall across the room, nearly deafening him.
Isadore Fitz-Wilton stepped into the room as quietly as a Covent Garden pickpocket. She closed the door and leaned against the scarred wood, her hands behind her back. The damned woman appeared unshaken by the noise and smoke of the gunshot.
"Goddamn it, woman! What the buggering hell are you doing here?" He stuck the remaining pistol in the waistband of his leather breeches, slammed the cabinet closed, and strode toward his desk. "How the devil did you break into my home? Again!"
The inset doors on either side of his study burst open.
Men tumbled in from all directions, brandishing pistols and swords.
Missus Fitz-Wilton stumbled forward so precipitously she fell into Ban's arms and flattened him across his desk.
Daisy had thrown the front doors to his study open so forcefully, they banged into the walls with a resounding thud after they'd shot Missus Fitz-Wilton across the room like a cannon ball.
A very warm and full-bosomed cannon ball at that.
After which, a thick and sudden quiet fell over the room.
Ban took in the silence somewhere at the back of his mind.
The rest of him, however, focused entirely on the weight, the heat, and the enticing curves of the lady draped over his body like an erotic quilt.
Their eyes met and held. She took a few short breaths, then flattened her palms against his chest to push herself up.
When she made to remove her hands, he covered them with his own.
"Is it some privacy you'll be wantin', Mister Dyer?" Daisy asked as she lowered the pistol in her hand with a sly grin. A round of choked laughter rippled through his men.
"Absolutely not," Missus Fitz-Wilton said, as she slid a hand free, planted it in his groin, and shoved herself upright.
"Son of a pox-ridden whore," Ban groaned as he rolled to his side and sat up.
"Mister Dyer, your language is disgusting."
"And your bloody hand is lethal, madam." He glared at his men who stood grinning like cup-shot fools. "Don't you all have somewhere to be?"
"Aren't you going to introduce us to your lady friend, guv'?" Billings, a former boxer-turned-thief, asked.
"Why? Didn't she introduce herself as she made her way past every single one of you on her way into the house you're supposed to be guarding?
" That set the cat amongst the canaries.
With a great deal of grumbling and shuffling of feet and a few doffed caps the men filed out the way they came.
He was not fooled. The minute they had him alone the lot of them would want to know how she'd managed something the cleverest runners from Bow Street never had.
The lady in question stood before the fire, arms folded across her chest with a decidedly smug expression on her face. To his mind she'd earned that expression. How to rid himself of her help was the question.
Daisy stepped closer to him even as she cast a wary eye at the lady warming herself before the hearth. "We've had word from Rose Street," she said. "Those two lads are holding their own, but Mister Carrington-Bowles said its early days yet."
A wave of fury swept over him. He'd returned from his meeting at the Prospect of Whitby yesterday to the news that two young boys, no more than six or seven years old, had been dumped nearly dead just before dawn behind the Ten Bells in White Chapel.
White Chapel was part of Ban's dominion and the rumors had already started that the boys were victims of his gang of thieves.
"Did you send word to my brothers?" he asked the maid.
"First thing. Mister Con sent word back for a meeting at Brick Lane in the morning."
"And the two I brought in from Grosvenor Street?" Ban was aware Missus Fitz-Wilton was listening attentively, but there was little he could do. He was stalling as it was, trying to come up with a way to keep the Mayfair lady from trailing after him on his house-breaking activities.
"Eating everything offered to them, furious as terrier dogs over being bathed, and still not saying much about who sent them into that house." Daisy stared at Missus Fitz-Wilton pointedly.
"I'll talk to them tomorrow. Tell Benny to bring the that old hackney cab around from the mews."
"Yes, m'lord." Daisy dipped a saucy curtsy and slipped out the inset door that led to the back stairs.
"Shite," Ban muttered and rolled his eyes.
He retrieved the fired pistol from the floor and put it back in the cabinet.
He stood before the black-lacquered pearl inlayed open doors.
A searing fissure of heat meandered up his spine.
He flexed his shoulders against the sensation, disturbed by the fact he could feel Isadore Fitz-Wilton's eyes on him.
"Ignoring me won't make me go away, Mister Dyer. My son is nearly fourteen years old. Before he was taken from me, I had plenty of experience dealing with a petulant boy trying to deny my very existence."
Ban closed the cabinet doors carefully and turned slowly to face her. He fought to school his features into an unemotional blankness. He'd acquired that skill young, a skill he'd honed to near perfection. His blood slowed, and one fist clenched so tight his hand shook.
"Deny your existence? How the fucking hell am I supposed to do that when you pop up at will, cause mayhem wherever you go, and continue to make ridiculous demands of me by virtue of your ability to see me hanging at the end of a Tyburn rope, along with the rest of the souls under this roof?
" He was shouting by the end of his question and didn't give a damn.
His thieving operations were in a shambles due to some miscreant using children to break into houses all over Mayfair.
He and his brothers were under suspicion of kidnapping children and hiring them out to every sort of cruel, murderous master in London.
And now this bloody woman--
"I don't want to see you or anyone else hang, Mister Dyer," she said primly.
"I want to find my son, nothing more and nothing less.
I want to find him and leave England never to return until George Fitz-Wilton is dead and buried.
" She'd gone a bit pale, though she held her head up and hardened that stubborn chin of hers.
"Well," he said as he waved her toward the door that led to the back stairs.
"Once we find your son I'll introduce you to my brother, Fam.
For a price, he will kill your brother-in-law and make it look like an accident.
" He followed her through the door and down the stairs.
"I can't believe I'm taking you with me. I must be running mad."
"What kind of man kills for a price?"
"One who is very good at it." They reached the door to the mews and stepped out onto the wet cobbles where Benny waited with the ragged hackney Ban had purchased a few years ago to effect seamless escapes from difficult situations.
One hackney looked the same as another when a skilled coachman steered his way into the nighttime crowds around Covent Garden.
He climbed into the carriage behind his unwanted accomplice and ordered Benny to head toward the outskirts of Mayfair to the first house on the lady's list. They rode without saying a word for several minutes. The lady stared at him as if he had two heads.
"What?" he barked, annoyed with her and annoyed with himself for being annoyed with her in the first place. Damnable woman.
"You have a brother who is good at murder." Her disgust and confusion bled into her words like dye into cheap linen.
"I have three brothers. We were forced to become good at murder in order to survive.
The Four Horsemen was not a title we gave ourselves.
'Twas given to us by people who learned to survive the same way we did.
By whatever means necessary. I'm no gentleman thief, Isadore, no highwayman from a gothic novel who turns out to be a nobleman in disguise.
If you think you've hired some sort of avenging angel, we can turn this carriage around right now.
" He could not stop himself. He wanted to wound and frighten her with his words.
Revenge was what he sought, though he could not for the life of him think what sin she'd committed against him.