Chapter 3 #2
Her question was met with a fresh round of derisive laughter.
Heat snaked up his neck as all over again he became Mad Jack’s bullied son. Oh, yes, he’d like to put a birch rod to her plump buttocks. Then he recalled the surprisingly soft, lush feel of her arse in his hands months earlier. That bloody hungering for her enraged him all the more.
“Gentlemen, you may carry on with your lovely song.”
A fresh round of laughter pealed.
“I recognize it from somewhere.”
And Kerr fought his first real amusement since he’d found Andromena McQuoid traipsing through the Rookeries. “Yes, it is a very lovely song,” he murmured. “You might recall it from Sunday sermons.”
“Please, feel free to resume your earlier song.”
“I’m sure that’s not it.”
Andromena lifted her hands—to toss her hood off? He made to stop her, but she only cupped her hands around her shielded mouth. “Please, do not pay my friend any heed.”
“Ain’t paying him any ’eed!” someone slurred from the rafters.
Why would they look at his ugly mug when they had a real lady of the ton in their midst? They might as well have an angel in the Devil’s midst.
Narrowing his eyes, Kerr found the fellow who’d cracked himself up.
She made Kerr an afterthought with her next address to the crowd. “You left off at…”
Six times did his iron by vigorous heating
grow soft in her forge in a minute or so.
As oft was hardened still was beating,
it softened more and hardened slow…”
Pewter mugs pounded wood tables, glasses clanged, and the patrons stomped their approval for the devilish minx.
“Ye ’eard the lady,” the tavern keeper roared. The music above stairs resumed in full swing, with the entire taproom come to life.
“Really? Sunday sermons?” Her amusement made his head ache. “I’m afraid you and I must attend very different churches.”
“I should trust a shrew like you would know bawdy tunes.”
“And I should trust a gentleman like you would not only know them, but taunt a lady with….”
The lady lost her words.
Kerr followed the source of her focus.
Another young lady, this one in a black silk cloak, beaded with crystals and matching crystal slippers, commanded the room in a different way than Andromena.
Where Andromena had been greeted with the awe inspired by Helen of Troy by her mere presence, the stranger she met, in black lace gloves and a crimson-red-lined hood, was met with the respect befitting a proprietor.
“Never tell me. Your latest masquerade partner,” he said stiffly. “Which McQuoid is it n—”
Andromena darted with the speed of a startled doe, fled right for the snare.
“Bloody hell.” Kerr made a grab. She remained s just as elusive as a London fog; her cloak brushed his fingertips.
Like a skilled infantry, the vagrants moved into position around the pair, cutting him off from Andromena.
A panic akin to terror knocked at his chest. He should have thrown her over his damned shoulder. What was it about her that drove logic clean from his head? He brandished his blade at the bald, fat fellow directly between him and the imprudent chit.
A tiny, glove-covered hand came up. That gesture from the woman next to Andromena silenced the Rat’s Castle. Whoever the lady was held some sway over all the men in this place. His nerve-endings taut, Kerr honed in on their exchange. The whole while the pair spoke, his heart beat fast.
And when the discussion finished, the lady in black slipped her fingertips into Andromena’s, and began escorting her off.
“You are not taking her anywhere.”
Kerr centered his pistol on the woman who ran this place.
The room turned quiet so quickly that the metallic pling of the ale pump handle resounded like a shot. Steel hissed from scabbards.
Kerr surveyed their crowd. Men with missing teeth and more ruthless scars than the ones he sported eyed him through suddenly very sober-looking eyes.
And Andromena had achieved what she’d miraculously avoided before now—having weapons trained on them.
Him, to be precise. But she was too dumb to realize their dispensing with him gave them a free path to her.
Andromena gasped. “Edgar! Put your gun down.”
Kerr and the Lady in Black ignored her.
“The young woman is choosing to go with me.”
The gun in his hand did not waver. “What business could she possibly have with you?”
“The same can be asked of you, Lord Kerr.” Her eerie voice bore an undertone of sly amusement.
He shuttered his features.
“Yes, I know who you are,” the woman said.
Kerr regarded her through narrowed eyes. “Then, you also know my ties to her family. I’m more likely to split open anyone who stands too close to her than leave her.”
Dozens of staggered clicks rippled around the tavern. Andromena tore through the men surrounding him.
Later, Kerr would find a surprising amount of admiration for Andromena’s strength and fearlessness.
Right then, as Andromena tore through a merciless London mob to shield him from a dozen drawn blades, pistols, and shattered bottles, the only thing he felt was a decidedly unchivalrous combination of annoyance, exasperation, and anger.
Fear implied he cared about her—beyond the grim obligation of delivering her back to Culross in one piece.
Arms aloft, the minx addressed her loyal court of cutthroats. “Forgive me. Though, foul-tempered, there are many things to recommend the gentleman. He is…and he…”
Kerr waited.
Leave it to this harridan to find not a single redeeming quality. Had it been any other friend, sailor, or nobleman, they would have happily rattled off a lengthy list of his attributes. Even his patience had limits.
“Would you finish the sentence, chit?”
Andromena spoke in a rush. “He’s a very capable sailor and served in the King’s Navy and—”
“They are not looking for my bloody letters of introduction.”
“No. They are clearly defending the young woman whom I’ve come to see.”
It wasn’t a lady of her acquaintance.
She rested her hands on his lapels, nudging him for attention. She needn’t have bothered. His body had already reacted to the warmth from her palms. Annoyed by how easily he was affected, he growled. “What?”
“I’m not a child, Edgar.”
No, she wasn’t. “You’re certainly acting like one.”
Andromena scoffed. “Why? Because I want to go out and live my life the same as you or any man.”
Kerr spoke the harsh reality; fully aware she was too stubborn to listen. “The key distinction is that you aren’t a man,” he said bluntly, determined to shatter her naive illusions and drill the truth into her thick skull. “And not being one in this world will get you killed. We’re going.”
The impudent chit planted her feet apart and angled her dainty, obstinate chin up at Kerr.
So be it. She was determined to make him do this. He would have to toss her over his shoulder. Flexing his neck and rolling his shoulders, he steeled himself—until her whispered plea stopped him dead in his tracks.
“She is a fortune teller.”
He must have heard her wrong. Because in no rational world would anyone, not even the flightiest McQuoid of them all—Andromena Smith—dash around the Rookeries for…
“A fortune—?”
“Teller.” She nodded.
A sharp crack rang in his ears as his molars ground together.
“She is someone who predicts the—”
“I know what a bloody fortune teller is.”
“You needn’t get testy. You seemed confused.”
Testy? “I’m a bloody master of self-control.”
“Of course you are,” she gave him another pet like a favored dog.
He dragged air slowly through his nose. It was no use. He had been a master of restraint until her.
Nothing this chit or her outlandish family did could surprise him anymore.
“I am confused, darling.”
“I knew—”
“By the fact you risked your life, virtue, and good name to have some charlatan predict your future.”
From the corner of his eye, he caught the shift of a crowd moving in on them.
This had gone on long enough.
Andromena tugged his arm like a bell. “I’ve made it all this way to meet with this…seer. Please, allow me to finish, and then I promise to leave.”
The hell you are, he was going to say. That, along with a few other choice phrases.
But then, she slanted back her hood, revealing enormous eyes which defied categorization.
They were neither green, brown, nor amber, but a swirling prism of hues—and the flecks of gold caught in them felt like a peculiar kind of sorcery.
“Ten minutes.” Continuing to eye their bloodthirsty audience, he spoke through a rigid jaw. “And I’m stationed in the room.”
“You can’t be.”
The brazen young woman truly believed she held the reins.
For an instant, he spared her his full attention. “Why the hell not?”
“I don’t want you to hear my future.”
“Do you mean the future you won’t have the longer you remain here?”
He opened his mouth to set her straight when she turned her begging-kitten eyes up at him. “You may, however, search the room, and then wait outside.”
“Ten minutes.”
And the absolute only reason he found himself marching close behind—checking every corner of a space no bigger than a cupboard—was not because of those ridiculously wide eyes she had turned on him, but because it meant he’d have them both out of here faster.
Then, Kerr was going to kill her. Culross would have to understand. It wouldn’t take much to convince him. How could it when presented with her brazen audacity?