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  A crowd gathered, vultures scenting their prey. Shouts drew more people to the fray, blocking her view several steps above the streets. Afraid the brute was killing the unfortunate man, she lifted her skirts and rushed down into the street.

  “Stop! Stop it at once! What are you doing?” She charged through the crowd of gawking onlookers, elbowing past men jeering their support. Even a few ladies milled about. Although she could scarcely call them ladies. They shouted encouragement as crudely as any of the men, watching with glee as the large brute of a man beat the slighter one.

  Even as she pushed her way through, she could hear the smack of fists. It was a horrible sound, like cracking wood. Each one jarred her to the core, shuddering along her bones.

  Through the press of bodies, she glimpsed flashes of the assailant’s white shirt. No vest. No jacket. The man was a primitive. Uncivilized. After several blows, the small man could no longer rise. The scoundrel wasn’t done, however. He held him up by his crumpled cravat and delivered blow after blow to his lolling head.

  With a grunt, she gave another push and broke through the circle of onlookers with a stumble, earning herself an unfettered view, much better than what she’d witnessed from Madame Foster’s stoop. Or worse, depending on one’s perspective.

  She cringed. The beaten man’s face was a mangled mess, his nose swollen and misshapen. Dark blood gushed from his nostrils. Her stomach heaved at the dreadful sight.

  Reminding herself that she was no squeamish miss—she’d seen worse from her patients—she charged forward and caught the Goliath’s arm as he hauled it back for another punch. The moment her fingers locked on the heavily muscled limb, she sensed she might be in trouble.

  Through the thin lawn of his shirt, his arm felt hard and tight with raw strength. He was like no man she’d ever encountered … thankfully.

  A warning bell clanged in her head that she duly ignored. It failed to matter anymore. As risky as her behavior was, she wasn’t to die here … at least she didn’t think so. According to Madame Foster she must meet her sisters first … and marry. Not that she planned on the latter happening. A simple-enough matter to control.

  No. This wouldn’t be the hour of her death. The realization emboldened her, made her hang on harder to the arm of rippling muscle.

  The man tugged, practically lifting her off her feet. Still, she clung. Using her most ferocious tone, the one she used when dealing with an insensible patient, she barked, “You shall not harm this man, you brute! Do you hear me?”

  The crowd guffawed, chortling and whistling.

  A female’s voice called out, “Looks like she could use the tap of your fist, too, Courtland!”

  Courtland. His Christian name or surname, she knew not. She only knew that he was a popular fellow among this riffraff, and that couldn’t bode well.

  “Aye, maybe a tap of something else,” a man crudely suggested.

  “Well, Courtland there can certainly deliver ‘er that, just ask Sally over there!”

  “Aye, and if he won’t, maybe I will!”

  Marguerite’s cheeks burned, perfectly mortified at the rough remarks.

  The brute twisted so that she was no longer grasping his arm anymore. Instead he was holding onto her.

  She squeaked. “How did you—”

  Her words were lost as he hauled her close, their bodies flush, his face—handsome, in a rough-hewn, carved-from-stone sort of way—only inches from her own.

  She swallowed, fighting the sudden thickness in her throat at the abrupt change in position, shaken to find the tables so easily turned … shaken that he would press himself so intimately against her.

  Everything seemed to slow, the air crackling as the moment stretched out and she found herself in the grip of such a virile, dangerous man. Courtland. Ironic, she supposed, as there was nothing courtly about him. Certainly not in his chilling black eyes.

  She glared down her nose at the hand on her arm, gulping at the sight of his bloody fist—the cut, raw knuckles flexing over her. Her stomach dipped and twisted.

  Her gaze flicked back to his face. His eyes flashed dark obsidian down at her, the demon eyes a startling contrast to his golden hair. The sight undid her, robbed the last of her composure. It was this, everything, those last moments with Madame Foster when Marguerite accepted that the woman might not be a complete fraud after all. All of it sought to unravel her, take her apart bit by bit until she was naught but tiny motes of dust on the air.

  She addressed the scoundrel with a hiss. “Unhand me, you wretch!” She swung her free arm around, her palm cracking solidly with his cheek. The blow carried more force than she suspected herself capable.

  Her handprint stood stark white on his swarthy cheek. For a moment, the crowd stilled, all laughter and jeers dying. Then a whispering murmur broke out over the crowd.

  She caught a snatch of words, a fractured phrase. Dead woman.

  Irrational laughter bubbled up from her chest. She swallowed it back lest everyone deem her well and truly mad. She had no wish to be carted off to Bedlam. That’s not where she imagined spending her final days.

  “Wretch,” he sneered, a questioning ring to his voice. His lips curled back to display a flash of shockingly white teeth. She blinked. Superb teeth for one of Society’s dregs to possess. Even his speech did not mark him an uneducated lout given to thrashing helpless souls in the streets.

  His fingers tightened around her wrist until she feared the bones would snap. She winced. From the corner of her eye, she watched as the hapless creature he’d beaten scampered away, disappearing into the crowd. At least there was that.

  His gaze flicked to the retreating figure, then back to her. “You let him get away.”

  “You’ve already beaten him to an inch of his life … or was it your goal to kill him?” she bit out.

  His angry gaze slid over her, insolent and furious.

  “What concern is it of a fine lady like you? Strayed a bit far from Bond Street, haven’t you, sweetheart?”

  “I’ve no wish to see an innocent man murdered before my eyes.”

  He thrust his face so close she thought their noses would bump. Startled, she pulled back as far as she could, craning her neck at an awkward angle.

  “Innocent?” His mouth twisted cruelly and he laughed, the sound rough and deep, raising the tiny hairs on the nape of her neck. Even with that laughter, he looked furious, dangerous. Whipping his head about, he glared at their audience. “What are you all looking at? Show’s over!”

  Then she was moving, hauled after him by the wrist. A wrist she was certain would bear bruises later.

  She dug in her heels, but it did no good. She moved, tripping after him. “Where are you taking me?”

  He ignored her, his long strides taking them past Madame Foster’s shop to the corner of the street. He waved a hand. His whistle pierced the air. Almost immediately, a hack swung to a stop beside them.

  “Go home,” he snapped as he yanked open the door and practically threw her inside. “Where you can delude yourself about the innocence of others.”

  Delude herself? Sprawled on the floor of the hack, her legs tangled awkwardly in her twisted skirts and petticoats, she blinked up at the stranger’s fierce countenance and even fiercer words … and had the strangest feeling she was caught in the midst of a dream. Or rather a nightmare.

  First Madame Foster, and now this dark angel glowering down at her and speaking to her with such rancor and condemnation. Would this horrid day never end?

  “The next time you visit St. Giles, don’t interfere in matters in which you know nothing. Not if you hope to return home as lily-white as when you arrived.”

  She snorted inelegantly. “The scene I just witnessed required little explanation.”

  Dark heat flashed in his gaze. He leaned inside the hack, angling his imposing body over hers like a finely stretched bow, taut with barely checked energy.

  His fingers curled around the modest neckline of her bodice,
pulling her up by his grip on the fabric. She gasped, certain he meant to rip her gown from her body and ravish her.

  “That innocent man,” he hissed, “very nearly beat a woman to death. A working woman, the likes you would cross the street to avoid.” He scoured her with a contemptuous glare. “A woman with no family to protect her, no husband, and a small child to feed. An innocent child.”

  She absorbed his words, an awful heaviness settling into her chest. Her eyes stung and she blinked them fiercely.

  Still, a part of her couldn’t back down from him. Perhaps it was his manner, the rough way he handled her and spoke to her—his utter arrogance. “And beating him to death will improve matters? How will that help this woman and her innocent child?”

  “Stubborn fool,” he ground out, his grip tightening on the front of her dress. “You know nothing of how things work down here.”

  Heat scored her where the backs of his fingers slid down between the valley of her breasts. The first time any man had touched her so intimately …

  Her heart hammered, beating like a drum in her too-tight chest. She didn’t resist him, didn’t blink, her eyes wide and aching in her face as he pulled her closer and closer … until no more than an inch separated their faces.

  An arrested look came over him then.

  She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

  He stared at her, truly stared at her for the first time, it seemed. Everything else melted away. It felt like they were alone in the hack, even with half of him still standing in the street.

  Street sounds faded, lost to the roaring in her head.

  He lifted one hand between them, large and masculine. Not the hand of a gentleman. He brushed her lips with his fingers. “Such a beautiful mouth to spout such drivel,” he mused.

  She drew a ragged breath, her belly quivering with a twisting heat.

  He eased her back down then. She propped her elbows on the carriage floor to stop herself from descending completely onto her back.

  The back of his hand delved lower inside her bodice, knuckles grazing the swell of a breast. She gasped at the foreign sensation, at the sudden tightness of her chest. Her breasts grew heavier, the tips tightening, hardening. Embarrassing heat washed over her face, traveling all the way to the tips of her ears.

  He watched her closely, moving his hand again, testing her, it seemed, with each graze of his knuckles against her goose-puckered skin.

  “You like that.” It was more a statement of fact than a question, but a denial rose swift and fiery to her lips just the same.

  “I do not.”

  The look in his eyes told her he didn’t believe her, which only increased her mortification. Mortification she would perhaps not feel so deeply if she did not suspect it to hold a grain of truth. She did like his touch, reveled in the way her belly twisted and clenched, enjoying the way her heart thundered inside her chest, reminding her that she was alive.

  She needed this—had to find this magic with another man. A lover of her own. The idea had burrowed and rooted its way inside her already, but now it intensified its hold.

  The notion would not go away, and she didn’t want it to. It filled her with purpose. Led her to action she would otherwise have thought brazen and insane under ordinary circumstances. Only her circumstances were no longer ordinary.

  “Yes,” he rasped, dipping a single finger deep inside her bodice, beneath her shift, the tip daring to stroke a nipple. Her teeth clenched against the spike of sensation arcing through her. Magic.

  A strangled sob escaped her.

  His eyes flashed, darkly smug.

  He continued, his voice a low rumble, physical, as tangible as that finger against her breast. “You like it,” he declared. “What’s your name?”

  “Marguerite,” she breathed before she could consider the wisdom of giving him her name.

  His lips turned up slowly, flashing teeth too white for belief. That grin was all-knowing. It galled her, pulled her from whatever feelings and sensations had addled her head. She wanted this, true. Only not with him, a voice whispered, small and unconvincingly inside her head.

  “Perhaps, Marguerite, you’ve no wish to return lily-white. Perhaps you came to the rook for a taste of what you can’t get in your clean little world across the river.” He cocked his head, studying her as if he had never seen anything quite of the like. “Is that it?” He brought a hand back to her face and stroked the soft flesh of her jaw.

  Then she smelled it—blood. Coppery rich on his knuckles. An inch from her mouth. Her stomach rolled, heaved.

  It was all the reminder she needed. He was a savage. Seductive or not. Dark-angel mien and all. She was a fool to let such a scoundrel lull her with his mesmerizing gaze.

  Without thinking, she turned her face and bit down on his finger.

  He hissed and pulled his hand back, shaking it. She held her breath, waiting, certain he would strike her. Certain he would turn the savagery she had witnessed in him on her.

  Instead, he merely glared at her, his glittering gaze furious. And something else. Something that made her belly fill with dancing butterflies.

  She thrust out her chin. “Remove yourself from me!”

  The driver shouted down. “Eh, we going anywhere or you just going to shag the wench in there, guv’nor? Whatever yer business, I need coin for time in my hack!”

  “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t come back to St. Giles. A pretty bit of muslin like you, with that saucy mouth …” He shook his head, frowning. “You’ll only meet with trouble. Run into the sort of man you so gallantly saved from my fists this day.”

  “How considerate,” she sneered, certain she would never come face-to-face with a greater threat to her person than he. “I thank you kindly for the advice.”

  He rose up, hovering, looming within the narrow carriage door, overfilling it, blocking out all light. His eyes gleamed from within his shadowed features. She loathed that she couldn’t make herself move, that she lay on the floor of the carriage like a quivering mouse.

  “Just do as I say. If you know what’s good for you, stay out of St. Giles.”

  All her wrath bubbled to the surface at his terse command. How dare he speak to her like she was his to command? Words she’d never spoken before, dared not think—except perhaps when she was enduring one of Master Brocklehurst’s unjustified beatings—rose on her lips. “Go to hell.”

  For a moment he did not move. Did not speak. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “Perhaps the lady isn’t such a lady, after all.” She felt his gaze then, raking her, traveling over her with familiar insolence. “But then I don’t find that such a surprise.”

  Sputtering, she clambered to the carriage seat.

  “You beast!”

  His laughter scraped the air, dragged across her stinging nerves. “Never fear. I’m certain I shall find my way to those fiery pits someday. Just do me a favor, sweetheart, and don’t wish me there before my time. And in case you didn’t notice"—he waved a hand about them and her gaze drifted to an ugly lodging house with broken, gaping windows. Stained rags were stuffed into the cracks in a weak attempt to ward off the cold—"this is fairly close to hell.”

  He vanished from the hack then, his laughter receding, a drifting curl of sound, strangely provocative, winding itself around her where she shivered on the stiff squabs.

  A sound, she would later learn, that would follow her to bed that night and haunt her dreams.

  Chapter 5

  Ash Courtland strode down the streets that stank of rot and acrid smoke from the nearby factory. The odor was as familiar to him as his own shape and form, and yet he smelled only the chit he left behind. The whiff of honey lingered in his nostrils.

  Stepping over a gutter, he cursed low beneath his breath. He shouldn’t have let her go, he realized with an uncustomary pang of regret. He shook his head at the irrational thought. She was not a puppy one discovered on the streets, to be kept and coddled.

  Still, h
e could not shake the feeling that he left something behind as he strode along the uneven sidewalk. Rarely had he met a female to stand toe to toe to him. She brought out the primitive in him—perhaps the chief reason he let her go. His primitive, savage nature was a thing of the past. He was a man of property now. Wealth. A respected businessman.

  He and his partner owned two of London’s most popular gaming hells. Not to mention a mine in Wales and a factory in the north, the latter two only acquired at his insistence. Jack would just as soon have kept their business to gaming. His partner did little these days aside of letting Ash run affairs and increase their wealth, something at which he was proving vastly superior. Jack’s lack of involvement didn’t trouble him. Without the older man taking him under his wing, Ash would never have gotten off the streets.

  After all he had accomplished, Ash didn’t need a female hanging about who looked at him as if he were still the lowest of street vermin—who, in fact made him behave that way.

  He’d come far from the boy that skulked in the shadows committing all manner of vice and crime in order to survive. He possessed wealth and power that most men never knew. The only thing lacking was gentility, breeding. He vowed to have that, too. With a grimace, he acknowledged that snatching a female off the streets and mauling her in a hack like a caveman of old did not serve to that end. And yet those whiskey-hued eyes burned an imprint on his mind.

  He sent a lingering glance over his shoulder, as if he would still find the hack sitting there. Feeling a stab of regret yet again, he cursed himself. So she was a pretty piece, with her black hair and flashing eyes. Pretty women were no rarity, he reminded himself. Beautiful women were common enough within the walls of his gaming hells. One interfering, hot-tempered virago didn’t bear notice.

  Go to hell.

  He laughed. Again. Those ugly words had sounded absurd in her soft, cultured voice. He’d bet that she’d never uttered them before.

  But the sound of that voice, whispering a much different variety of words, words that enticed with naughty, wicked suggestions, filled his imagination.