Chapter 3
Kerr got himself knocked on his arse. His wasn’t a literal fall—which would have been horrifying enough—but a figurative one, and those were notoriously the worst.
Soldiers and sailors who froze in battle ended up with cannonballs through their chests or lead and steel in their flesh.
Kerr had seen it happen enough times and never failed to pity them.
A veteran of Napoleon’s fiercest sea battles, he had sailed through the deadliest waters unscathed, only to have a whisp of a lady confound him.
The only excuse he could give now was the ease with which she’d entered the ruthless haven for the lawless.
He would have welcomed another campaign, a privateer, hell, even a pirate’s blade before another encounter with the exasperating chit.
Alas…
Gritting his teeth, he drew a blade from his boot and the pistol from his hip, and he stormed the Castle; kingdom of the depraved and degenerates centered at the heart of the Rookery.
Andromena’s glaring presence had the same mystifying effect on her wider audience. That much was clear given the fact that not a single vagrant reached for a weapon to confront the ones Kerr brandished. The lady stood out like a diamond amidst a bucket of coal and ash.
A thick cloud of smoke hung over the squalid hovel where the lowest members of society gathered.
The beggars, thieves, and killers who’d been tossing back ales and watered-down whiskies on their way in gawked.
Some with stained glasses and pewter tankards halfway to their mouths.
Others who’d spilled their libations all over rough-cotton shirts and cheap wool vests just stared.
She had hushed the entire Rat’s Castle.
She marched like an ethereal queen through the gloam of cigarillo and pipe smoke, like she was sizing up her newly conquered kingdom and Kerr with no other choice but to follow along like her royal adviser.
She was a flitty Smith. But a man with a sexual appetite as Kerr’s could appreciate a lush form—even hers.
He didn’t care for it. Loathed it, to be exact.
No man wanted to be a slave to his cock.
It was her brains and mouth he had the real problem with.
With every muffled tap of her insolent heels against the sticky floorboards, Andromena remained entirely oblivious to the mayhem about to unfold.
She floated elegantly along floorboards coated with blood and drink the way she would glide upon Lady Jersey’s No.
38 Berkeley Square drawing room. Her brown curls peppered with blonde and burgundy streaks poked from her hood and bonnet and called leers from men who’d never get ten paces, let alone breathing distance of a genuine lady of the ton.
There were wolves aplenty. Wrapped in innocence and a red cloak, the only thing the minx needed was a basket and a visit to Grandmother’s house.
The free-and-easy above stairs remained unaffected by the madness hanging over the taproom. The whine of a fiddle and drunken discordant revelers swelled.
“A fine young smith at a vice stood filing,
his hammer out and his forge aglow…
Honor dictated he rescue the lady. Though in removing her from the room, Kerr was actually doing the lawless present a favor.
Andromena abruptly stopped near the center of the tavern.
She rested her hands upon her hips, drawing all eyes to their lush curve and the femininity masked by delicate, ruffled skirts.
Drawing every single drunken stare. She might be a flitty Smith lady.
But a man with the same eye for lusty desire as Kerr’s could appreciate a lush form—even hers.
He had the luxury of knowing what wonders those ladylike garments hid.
He’d had his hands on her but carried the same question as every other man present: with those bustles and petticoats stripped away, what would it feel to glide scarred, callused paths along the swaths of silken soft flesh exposed?
With every step, Andromena’s wool-lined crimson redingote swirled, and a pair of white-satin ribbons atop her emerald-green half-boots peeked out as she walked, the lady flashing her station for a captivated audience.
Hell, had she held a sign painted with an arrow pointing downward and the word ‘lady’ emblazoned upon it, it couldn’t be clearer.
Red spots danced across his vision. His fingers tightened on the knife hilt until the silver bit into his palm.
“When to him a young maid came smiling
and asked if to work in her forge he’d go…”
For a rare moment, it wasn’t the chit behind his fury but the jackals sizing Andromena up. They circled her like wolves at a fresh kill… but the low growl rattling in the air belonged to Kerr’s own throat.
“J’aurais d? te laisser te débrouiller seule, la gueuse,” Kerr muttered.
I should have left you to fend for yourself, you wench.
Andromena gave him his first look since he’d entered Rat’s Castle. “What was that?”
“Je ne m’attendais pas à ce que vous parliez francais et, effectivement, vous ne le parlez pas.” I didn’t expect you would speak French. “Et voilà que vous ne le faites pas.” And lo and behold, you don’t.
“I…see.” The confusion in her utterance said otherwise.
Regardless, he took her confirmation as his carte blanche to carry on in impeccable French. He heaped his sizeable grievances at her satin half-heeled boots.
“Tu n’es qu’une source d’ennuis.” You are nothing but trouble. “Pas étonnant que tu ne sois pas marié.” No wonder you’re unmarried.
The raucous song filtering from above, swelled in volume.
“I will,” said the smith, and they went together
along to the lady’s forge did go.”
The planks, sticky from drink and blood, muffled the staccato tap of Andromena’s heels as they walked. The same could not be said for the bawdy music in the background.
“They stripped to the waist hot work, hot weather
he lit her fire, and she made him blow…”
He leaned down to ask the necessary question quietly at her side. “What in hell are you doing here?”
“It is hard to explain.”
“Try,” he snapped.
“No.”
The bawdy music intensified.
Kerr lashed out in French.
“J’ai passé une soirée des plus agréables… une bouteille entière de cognac Comète de 1811.” I had the most enjoyable evening…an entire bottle of 1811 Comet cognac.
“Her husband, she said, no work he gave her…”
“Deux charmantes courtisanes qui, si j’en avais eu envie, étaient prêtes à tout pour moi.” Two lovely courtesans who, if I had been in the mood, would have done anything for me. “Rien.” Anything.
Keeping a constant eye on her, Kerr sized up the drooling fiends, searching for the first man he’d have to kill for her.
Because of her.
“Je me vois contraint de veiller à votre survie.” Unfortunately, I am enjoined to keep you among the living.
“His tools were worn out long ago…”
“Lovely song, is it not?” he commented in King’s English.
“The loveliest!”
Andromena unbuttoned the pearl fastening of her glove. Kerr grasped her bare wrist. “Tell me, are you going to strip off your mantle and let them see the full of your delectable form?”
“The smith said, ‘Mine are in good order…
and I’m prepared my skill to show…”
Confusion stitched the graceful arch of her eyebrows into a single line. “Whyever, would I want to do that?”
She directed her question at his glove-clad hand holding her.
“Oh, I don’t know. Because you’re mad. Or stupid.”
He zeroed in on a young man who’d been seduced forward by that slight flash of creamy skin. The biggest thing about the painfully thin fellow was his enormous Adam’s apple, and it hadn’t stopped bobbing since Kerr leveled a look his way.
Pushing her hood back a fraction, Andromena revealed a dazzling smile. “My form is delectable?”
“Hot grew his iron as both desired
and he was wise to strike while so…”
Christ.
“No.”
“But you did say it,” she delighted in pointing out.
That would be what she harped on.
A handsy stranger tried to finger her wool cloak.
Cursing, Kerr pulled her nearer. Weapons in either hand, he grabbed both sides of her hood and yanked the feather-trimmed fabric higher up.
“J’ai changé d’avis.” I changed my mind. “Une fois que je t’aurai mis en sécurité, loin d’ici, et ramené auprès de ta famille, tu finiras illico sur mes genoux.” Once I have you safely away from here and delivered to your family, you’re going straight over my knee.
“He said, “What I get is out of the fire
so please strike home and redouble the blow…”
The colossal tavern keeper lunged with a metal shovel, moving with unlikely speed and agility.
Before the other man’s boots hit the counter, Kerr’s arm was already banded around Andromena’s narrow waist. He drew her tighter to his side.
Even in her defiance, the impudent minx possessed enough survival instinct to curl against him like a kitten.
The proprietor struck the ceiling with several solid thwacks. Large flakes of white plaster dropped like snow into the drinks. Patrons with red-rimmed eyes swallowed from their tankards without missing a beat. “We got a lady ’ere!”
His blithe Riding Hood stepped away from Kerr’s protection and into the belly of the wolf. “Oh, you needn’t have them halt on my account, sir.”
The oil-slicked haired proprietor looped his dirt-encrusted fingers under his checker-patterned vest and rocked onto the balls of his feet. “’ere that, the lady called me a ‘sir’.”
Ribald laughter ensued.
By this point, the patrons who had been gambling, whoring, and dealing in whatever illicit business upstairs had found their way to the show Andromena was putting on.
With the hand still holding his dagger, Kerr reeled her back in.
“Not another word, hellion,” he said into her ear. He sized up their suddenly sober-looking audience. “Your ‘sir’ just let the entire bloody tavern know there’s a lady in their midst.”
At best, he could take down a dozen before they got to her. Silently cursing her and the trouble she invariably found, he backed them away—or tried to.
The chit dug in tenacious heels and whispered, loud enough to be heard in Mayfair. “Since when did you become a snob?”