The Regency Season: Gentleman Rogues

Chapter Three

‘Emma, darlin’, you’ve been telling us porkies.’ Through the flicker of the kitchen lamps she recognised the sailor who had asked her to step out with him for a drink. He was unshaven and the stench of beer from him reached across the distance between them. His gaze was not on her face, but lower, leering at the pale skin of her exposed décolletage. Her heart began to thud. Fear snaked through her blood, but she showed nothing of it. Instead, she eyed the men with disdain and pulled her cloak tighter around herself.

‘Good job we came back for you, since there’s no sign of your “betrothed.” Maybe now we can get to know each other a bit better.’

‘I do not think so, gentlemen.’

‘Oh, she don’t think so, Wrighty. Let us convince you, darlin’.’ They gave a laugh and started to walk towards her.

Emma’s hand slid into the pocket of her cloak, just as Ned Stratham stepped out of the shadows by her side.

She smothered the gasp.

His face was expressionless, but his eyes were cold and dangerous as sharp steel. He looked at the men. Just a look. But it was enough to stop them in their tracks.

The sailor who had done the talking stared, and swallowed, then held up his hands in submission. ‘Sorry, mate. Didn’t realise...’

‘You do now,’ said Ned in a voice that for all its quiet volume was filled with threat, and never shifting his hard gaze for an instant.

‘All right, no offence intended.’ The sailors backed away. ‘Thought she was spinning a line about the betrothed thing. She’s yours. We’re already gone.’

Ned watched them until they disappeared and their footsteps faded into the distance out on to St Catherine’s Lane. Only then did he look at Emma.

In the faint flickering light from the kitchen window, his eyes looked almost as dark as hers, turned from sky-blue to midnight. He had a face that was daunted by nothing. It would have been tough on any other man. On him it was handsome. Firm determined lips. A strong masculine nose with a tiny bump upon its ridge. His rogue eyebrow enough to take a woman’s breath away. Her heart rate kicked faster as her gaze lingered momentarily on it before returning to his eyes.

‘What are you doing here, Ned?’ she asked in wary softness.

‘Taking the air.’

They looked at one another.

She’s yours. The echo of the sailor’s words seemed to whisper between them, making her cheeks warm.

‘I didn’t think you’d be fool enough to walk home alone in the dark through these streets.’

‘Normally I do not. Tom lives in the next street up from mine. He usually sees me home safe.’

‘Tom’s not here.’

‘Which is why I borrowed one of Nancy’s knives.’ She slid the knife from her pocket and held it between them so that the blade glinted in the moonlight.

‘It wouldn’t have stopped them.’

‘Maybe not. But it would have done a very great deal of damage, I assure you.’

The silence hissed between them.

‘You want to take your chances with the knife? Or you could accept my offer to see you home safe.’

She swallowed, knowing what he was offering and feeling her stomach turn tumbles within. ‘As long as you understand that it is just seeing me safely home.’ She met his gaze, held it with mock confidence.

‘Are you suggesting that I’m not a gentleman?’ His voice was all stony seriousness, but he raised the rogue eyebrow.

‘On the contrary, I am sure you are the perfect gentleman.’

‘Maybe not perfect.’

She smiled at that, relaxing a little now that the shock of seeing him there had subsided, and returned the knife blade to its dishcloth scabbard within the pocket of her cloak.

‘We should get going,’ he said. And together they began to walk down the alleyway.

Their footsteps were soft and harmonious, the slower, heavier thud of his boots in time with the lighter step of her own.

They walked on, out on to St Catherine’s Lane. Walked along in silence.

‘You knew those sailors would be waiting for me, didn’t you?’

‘Did I?’

‘You do not fool me, Ned Stratham.’

‘It’s not my intention to fool anyone.’

She scrutinised him, before asking the question that she’d been longing to ask since the first night he had walked into the Red Lion. ‘Who are you?’

‘Just a man from Whitechapel.’

‘And yet...the shirt beneath your jacket looks like it came from Mayfair. And is tailored to fit you perfectly. Most unusual on a man from Whitechapel.’ He was probably a crook. A gang boss. A tough. How else did a man like him get the money for such a shirt? Asking him now, when they were alone, in the dark of the night, was probably not the wisest thing she had ever done, but the question was out before she could think better of it. Besides, if she did not ask him now, she doubted she would get another chance. She ignored the faster patter of her heart and held his eyes, daring him to tell her something of the truth.

‘You’ve been eyeing up my shirt.’

She gave a laugh and shook her head. ‘I could not miss it. Nor could half the chop-house. You have had your jacket off all evening.’

‘But half the chop-house would not have recognised a Mayfair shirt.’ Half in jest, half serious.

Her heart skipped a beat, but she held his gaze boldly, as if he were not treading so close to forbidden ground, brazening it out. ‘So you admit it is from Mayfair?’

‘From Greaves and Worcester.’

‘How does a Whitechapel man come to be wearing a shirt from one of the most expensive shirt-makers in London?’

‘How is a woman from a Whitechapel chop-house familiar with the said wares and prices?’

She smiled, but said nothing, on the back foot now that he was the one asking questions she did not want to answer.

‘What’s your story, Emma?’

‘Long and uninteresting.’

‘For a woman like you, in a place like this?’ He arched the rogue eyebrow with scepticism.

She held her silence, wanting to know more of him, but not at the cost of revealing too much of herself.

‘Playing your cards close to your chest?’ he asked.

‘It is the best way, I have found.’

He smiled at that. ‘A woman after my own heart.’

They kept on walking, their footsteps loud in the silence.

He met her eyes. ‘I heard tell you once worked in Mayfair.’ It was the story she had put about.

‘Cards and chest, even for unspoken questions,’ she said.

Ned laughed.

And she smiled.

‘I worked as a lady’s maid.’ She kept her eyes front facing. If he had not already heard it from the others in the Red Lion, he soon would. It was the only reasonable way to explain away her voice and manners; many ladies’ maids aped their mistresses. And it was not, strictly speaking, a lie, she told herself for the hundredth time. She had learned and worked in the job of a lady’s maid, just as she had shadow-studied the role of every female servant from scullery maid to housekeeper; one had to have an understanding of how a household worked from the bottom up to properly run it.

‘That explains much. What happened?’

‘You ask a lot of questions, Ned Stratham.’

‘You keep a lot of secrets, Emma de Lisle.’

Their gazes held for a moment too long, in challenge, and something else, too. Until he smiled his submission and looked ahead once more.

She breathed her relief.

A group of men were staggering along the other side of the Minories Road, making their way home from the King’s Head. Their voices were loud and boisterous, their gait uneven. They shouted insults and belched at one another. One of them stopped to relieve his bladder against a lamp post.

She averted her eyes from them, met Ned’s gaze and knew he was thinking about the knife and how it would have fared against six men.

‘It would still have given them pause for thought,’ she said in her defence.

Ned said nothing.

But for all of her assertions and the weight of the kitchen knife within her cloak right at this moment in time she was very glad of Ned Stratham’s company.

The men did not shout the bawdy comments they would have had it been Tom by her side. They said nothing, just quietly watched them pass and stayed on their own side of the road.

Neither of them spoke. Just walking together at the same steady pace up Minories. Until the drunkards were long in the distance. Until they turned right into the dismal narrow street in which she and her father lodged. There were no street lamps, only the low silvery light of the moon to guide their steps over the potholed surface.

Halfway along the street she slowed and came to a halt outside the doorway of a shabby boarding house.

‘This is it. My home.’

He glanced at the building, then returned his eyes to her.

They looked at one another through the darkness.

‘Thank you for walking me home, Ned.’

‘It was the least I could do for my betrothed,’ he said with his usual straight expression, but there was the hint of a smile in his eyes.

She smiled and shook her head, aware he was teasing her, but her cheeks blushing at what she had let the sailors in the alleyway think. ‘I should have set them straight.’

‘And end our betrothal so suddenly?’

‘Would it break your heart?’

‘Most certainly.’

The teasing faded away. And with it something of the safety barrier between them.

His eyes locked hers, so that she could not look away even if she had wanted to. A sensual tension whispered between them. Attraction. Desire. Forbidden liaisons. She could feel the flutter of butterflies in her stomach, feel a heat in her thighs. In the silence of the surrounding night the thud of her heart sounded too loud in her ears. Her skin tingled with nervous anticipation.

She glanced up to the window on the second floor where the light of a single candle showed faintly through the thin curtain. ‘My father waits up for me. I should go.’

‘You should.’

But she made no move to leave. And neither did he.

He looked at her in a way that made every sensible thought flee her head. He looked at her in a way that made her feel almost breathless.

Ned stepped towards her, closed the distance between them until they were standing toe to toe, until she could feel the brush of his thighs against hers.

‘I thought you said you were the perfect gentleman?’

‘You said that, not me.’ His eyes traced her face, lingering over her lips, so that she knew he meant to kiss her. And God knew what living this life in Whitechapel had done to her because in that moment she wanted him to. Very much.

Desire vibrated between them. Where his thighs touched to hers the skin scalded. In the moonlight his eyes looked dark, smouldering, intense. She knew that he wanted her. Had been around Whitechapel long enough to know the games men and women played.

Emma’s breath sounded too loud and ragged.

Their gazes held locked.

The tension stretched until she did not think she could bear it a second longer.

He slid his strong arms around her waist, moving slowly, giving her every chance to step away or tell him nay. But she did neither. Only placed her palms to rest tentatively against the leather breast of his jacket.

He lowered his face towards her.

She tilted her mouth to meet his.

And then his lips took hers and he kissed her.

He kissed her and his kiss was gentle and persuasive. His kiss was tender and passionate. He was the strongest, fiercest man she knew and yet he did not force or plunder. He was not rough or grabbing. It seemed to her he gave rather than took. Courting her lips, teasing them, making her feel things she had never felt before. Making her want him never to stop.

By its own volition one hand moved up over his broad shoulder to hold against the nape of his neck. Anchoring herself to his solidity, to his strength and warmth.

He pulled her closer, their bodies melding together as the kiss intensified. Tasting, touching, sharing. His tongue stroked against hers, inviting hers to a dance she did not know and Emma followed where he led.

He kissed her and she forgot about Whitechapel and poverty and hardship.

He kissed her and she forgot about the darkness of the past and all her worries over the future.

He kissed her and there was nothing else in the world but this man and this moment of magic and madness, and the force of passion that was exploding between them.

And when Ned stopped and drew back to look into her face, her heart was thudding as hard as a blacksmith hitting his anvil and her blood was rushing so fast that she felt dizzy from it.

‘You should go up now, before I change my mind about being the perfect gentleman.’ He brushed the back of his fingers gently against her cheek.

With trembling legs she walked to the front door of the boarding house and let herself in. She did not look round, but she knew Ned Stratham still stood there watching her. Her heart was skipping in a fast, frenzied thud. Her blood was rushing. Every nerve in her body seemed alive. She closed the door quietly so as not to wake the neighbours. Rested her spine against its peeling paint while she drew a deep breath, calming the tremor in her body and the wild rush of her blood, before climbing the stairwell that led to her father and their rented rooms.

‘It is only me, Papa,’ she called softly.

But her father was sound asleep in the old armchair.

She moved to the window and twitched the curtain aside to look down on to the street.

Ned Stratham tipped his hat to her. And only then, when he knew she was home safe, did he walk away.

Emma blew out the candle to save what was left. Stood there and watched him until the tall broad-shouldered figure disappeared into the darkness, before turning to her father.

Even in sleep his face was etched with exhaustion.

‘Papa,’ she whispered and brushed a butterfly kiss against the deep lines of his forehead.

‘Jane?’ Her mother’s name.

‘It is Emma.’

‘Emma. You are home safe, my girl?’

‘I am home safe,’ she confirmed and thought again of the man who had ensured it. ‘Let me help you to bed.’

‘I can manage, my dearest.’ He got to his feet with a great deal of stiffness and shuffled through to the smaller of the two rooms.

The door closed with a quiet click, leaving Emma standing there alone.

She touched her fingers to her kiss-swollen lips and knew she should not have kissed Ned Stratham.

He was a Whitechapel man, a man from a different world than her own, a customer who drank in the Red Lion’s taproom. And he was fierce and dangerous, and darkly mysterious. And she had no future here. And much more besides. She knew all of that. And knew, too, her mother would be turning in her grave.

But as she moved behind the partitioning screen and changed into her nightdress, in her nose was not the usual sweet mildew, but the lingering scent of soap and leather and something that was just the man himself. And as she pulled back the threadbare covers and climbed into the narrow makeshift bed, in her blood was a warmth.

Emma lay there, staring into the darkness. They said when the devil tempted he offered a heart’s desire. Someone tall and dangerous and handsome. She closed her eyes, but she could still see those piercing blue eyes and her lips still tingled and throbbed from the passion of his kiss.

When exhaustion finally claimed her and she sank into the blissful comfort of sleep she dreamed of a tall, dangerous, handsome man tempting her to forbidden lusts, tempting her to give up her struggle to leave Whitechapel and stay here with him. And in the dream she yielded to her heart’s desire and was lost beyond all redemption.

* * *

Tom did not come to the Red Lion the next night, but Ned Stratham did.

Their gazes held across the taproom, the echoes of last night rippling like an incoming tide, before she turned away to serve a table. Butterflies were dancing in her stomach, but she knew that after what had happened between them, she had to rectify the matter. She emptied her tray, then made her way to where he sat alone.

Those blue eyes met hers.

She felt her heart trip faster and quelled the reaction with an iron hand. Faced him calmly and spoke quietly, but firmly enough that only he would hear.

‘Last night, we should not have, I should not have... It was a mistake, Ned.’

He said nothing.

‘I’m not that sort of a woman.’

‘You’re assuming I’m that kind of a man.’

‘Lest you had forgotten, this is a chop-house not so far from the docks. All the men in here are that kind of a man.’

He smiled at that. A hard smile. ‘Not gentlemen, but scoundrels.’

‘I did not say that.’

‘It’s what you meant.’

He glanced across the room to where Paulette was working behind the bar before returning his gaze to hers.

Nancy’s curses sounded from the kitchen.

And she knew he knew that Tom had not come in again, that there was no one to see her home.

Ned looked at her with eyes that made no pretence as to the man he was, with eyes that made her resolutions weaken.

‘Emma!’ Nancy’s voice bellowed.

‘It is not your duty to see me home.’

‘It is not,’ he agreed.

As their gazes held in a strange contest of wills, they both knew it was already decided. Ned Stratham was not going to let her take her chances with a kitchen knife through the Whitechapel streets tonight.

‘Get yourself over here, Emma!’ Nancy sounded as if she were losing what little patience she possessed.

Ned did walk her home. And he did kiss her. And she gave up pretending to herself that she did not want it or him.

* * *

He came to the Red Lion every night after that, even when Tom had returned. And every night he walked her home. And every night he kissed her.

* * *

Ned tumbled the token over his fingers and leaned his spine back against the old lichen-stained stone seat. St Olave’s church clock chimed ten. Down the hill at the London Docks the early shift had started five hours ago.

The sky was a cloudless blue. The worn stone was warm beneath his thighs. His hat sat on the bench by his side and he could feel a breeze stir through his hair. His usual perch. His usual view.

His thoughts drifted to the previous night and Emma de Lisle. Two weeks of walking with her and he could not get her out of his head. Not those dark eyes or that sharp mind. She could hold her own with him. She had her secrets as much as he. A lady’s maid who had no wish to discuss her dismissal or her background. She was proud and determined and resourceful. There weren’t many women in Whitechapel like her. There weren’t any women like her. Not that he had known across a lifetime and he had seen about as much of Whitechapel as it was possible to see.

Life had not worn her down or sapped her energy. She had a confidence and a bearing about her comparable with those who came from a lifetime of wealth. She had learnt well from her mistress. A woman like Emma de Lisle would be an asset to any man in any walk of life; it was a thought that grew stronger with the passing days.

And he wanted her. Ned, who did not give in to wants and desires. He wanted her with a passion. And he was spending his nights and too many of his days imagining what it would be like to unlace that tight red dress from her body, to bare her and lay her down on his bed. Ned suppressed the thoughts. He was focused. He was disciplined. He kept to the plan. It was what had brought him this far.

The plan had never involved a woman like her. The plan had been for someone quite different. But she was as refreshing as a cool breeze on a clammy day. She was Whitechapel, the same as him, but with vision that encompassed a bigger view. She had tasted the world on the other side of London. He had a feeling she would understand what it was he was doing, an instinct that she would feel the same about it as he did. And part of being successful was knowing when to be stubborn and stick to the letter of the plan and when to be flexible.

His gaze shifted.

The old vinegar manufactory across the road lay derelict. Pigeons and seagulls vied for supremacy on the hole-ridden roof. Weeds grew from the crumbling walls.

Tower Hill lay at his back. And above his head the canopy of green splayed beech leaves provided a dapple shelter. He could hear the breeze brush through the leaves, a whisper beside the noises that carried up the hill from the London Docks; the rhythmic strike of hammers, the creak and thud of crates being moved and dropped, the squeak of hoists and clatter of chains, the clopping of work horses and rumbling of carts.

A man might live a lifetime and never meet a woman like Emma de Lisle.

Ned’s fingers toyed with the ivory token as he watched the men moving about in the dockyard below, men he had known all of his life, men who were friends, or at least had been not so very long ago, unloading the docked ship.

Footsteps drew his attention. He glanced up the street and recognised the woman immediately, despite the fact she was not wearing the figure-hugging red dress, but a respectable sprig muslin and green shawl, and a faded straw bonnet with a green ribbon hid her hair and most of her face. Emma de Lisle; as if summoned by the vision in his head. She faltered when she saw him as if contemplating turning back and walking away.

He slipped the token into his waistcoat pocket and got to his feet.

She resumed her progress. Paused just before she reached him, keeping a respectable distance between them.

‘Ned.’

Last night’s passion whispered and wound between them.

He gave a nod of acknowledgement.

Once, many years ago, he had seen a honeycomb dripping rich and sweet with golden honey. In this clear, pure daylight her eyes were the same colour, not dark and mysterious as in the Red Lion.

Their gazes held for a moment, the echoes of last night rippling like a returning tide.

‘It seems that destiny has set you in my path again, Ned Stratham. Or I, in yours.’

‘And who are we to argue with destiny?’

They looked at one another for the first time in daylight.

The road she was walking led from only one place. ‘You have come from the dockyard.’

‘My father works there. I was delivering him some bread and cheese.’