He gathered her in his arms. She buried her face in the crook of his shoulder.
Doubts assailed her like mice after a round of cheese. Determined and sneaky, they slid in under the cracks of her mind. Most of them could be dissuaded with the reminder that they were to be married. Surely a few such liberties were allowed at such a time. Should the worst happen and he toss her over like her mother’s suitor had tossed her, there was no irreparable harm done.
She’d made sure to learn all she could about human reproduction. Lottie had obtained the books from her numerous illicit sources, and Sera had pored over them like a scholar at Cambridge studying for exams. What she and Fletcher had indulged in would result in no babe. For that she was thankful.
But nothing washed away the fact that after such ministrations she was still hungry. Still wanting.
Nothing had been eased. She might feel safer than she had an hour ago, but she was a wreck. Because she wanted him. If anything, she wanted more. More of his kisses, more of his attentions.
She wanted to strip him naked and have him lay on a huge bed while she crawled over him in exploration. To taste the skin at the base of his spine to discover if it tasted as faintly salty as the skin of his neck. Spread her hands wide over his bare chest to see if she could come close to covering him.
Dear heavens, what if it never got better?
What if, after they were married, she only came to want him more and more? Even safe within the bounds of marriage she might shift into her worst fears of herself. She’d expose herself as baseborn and lusty.
Worse than that was the knowledge that despite such fears…she could never give him up.
Would
never give him up. The very idea seemed offensive. She’d cling to his heels should he try to shed her.
God save her soul.
Chapter Sixteen
Fletcher didn’t particularly like the side of himself that marched onward cold and cruel, without much mercy. Since his father’s death, he’d mostly been able to ignore it. Push it away and find another way to do business.
If Sera’s safety was at risk, he’d dismantle Whitechapel—all of London—to its very foundations. All to keep her protected. He’d cosseted and harbored her all her life from a distance. That such safety would fall apart when he’d finally decided to bring her fully into his fold was unacceptable.
The room was small. Stripped of anything but the very necessities, it all but warned of the risks in trading with him.
The man sitting in the single chair in the middle of the bare floor seemed to understand as much.
He hunched in on himself. His hands were clasped at his knees and his spine bowed. The rough-spun pants of a sailor clung damply to his legs, and the faint red remains of a flogging peeked above the wide neckline of his simple shirt. He hadn’t been on land long enough to get his sense back and he’d already run afoul of Fletcher’s organization.
He owed a hundred pounds in gambling debts. The faint sheen of sweat on his tanned brow said he knew exactly how deeply he was in over his head.
His eyes were rheumy and red-rimmed with the remains of last night’s drink, but that didn’t keep them from darting as he tracked Fletcher.
Fletcher roamed around the room, intent on throwing the man off his game. It didn’t seem to take much. He stopped by the single window that had never been graced with panes. Greasy, blackened paper covered the opening. No hope of anyone seeing the sailor—or rescuing him.
Mick and Barnaby, two of his best punishers, flanked the single door. With their arms crossed over their chests they looked like matching palace guards. Only they were much bigger and rougher than anyone Queen Victoria would ever allow near her. Not to mention they wore nothing resembling a uniform.
Fletcher walked behind the sailor, who craned in his seat in an attempt to cover his back. “St. Johns, is it?”
“Aye, sir,” agreed the sailor. His head bobbed so quickly that lank hair fell over his forehead. “James St. Johns, that’s me. Best rigger in the English fleet.”
“Not the best gambler, however. Are you?”
Fletcher would have leaned against the wall, but he’d end up with unknown substances smeared all over him. Sera might notice that when he got home.
How strange, to know he had someone waiting on him at home.
Instead, he slipped a slender stiletto from under his jacket. Despite the dangerously sharp tip, he ran it under his thumbnail to dig out an imaginary speck of dirt.
St. Johns gulped as his eyes tracked the motion. “Yes, sir. That is, no. It seems I’m not much of a gambler. I’m terribly sorry. I thought for sure that boxer would—”
“Frankly, I couldn’t give a bloody damn. I’m entirely more concerned about your plans to repay me.”
Even under his thick tan, the man managed to pale as the reality of his situation became apparent. His throat worked. “I—I can’t say as I know, Mr. Thomas.”
Fletcher tsked and shook his head. “A shame. I’m sure your captain will sorely miss you in the rigging.”
“Wait,” the sailor yelped. “Just wait. Is there—that is, can I pay it back another way?”
Fletcher pulled his lips back from his teeth in something that in no way approximated a real smile. “Terribly sorry, St. Johns, but you’re not my type. I prefer bubbies by far.”
Keeping his cool was proving more and more difficult. He’d not the dexterity for such games. He was a straightforward man. Bludgeoning the sailor and demanding information wasn’t likely to get the job done.
The attack four nights ago had seemed entirely too coordinated to be an accident. If sailors jumped a man in the streets, the intent was usually to press them into ship-bound service. Fletcher had been too well-dressed and not nearly drunk enough to be a good victim, not to mention they’d been lurking around the house waiting on him. Again, not the normal milieu of a press gang.
He’d already blown through his contacts in the world of the docks, mostly those who came into the Fair Winds every time they hit port. None had been foolish enough to wage an attack on Fletcher. They’d all protested that had they known anything they’d have come to him first thing.
St. Johns, however. He was stupider than most. He’d taken a table at the Fair Winds and bragged about knowing a rich man who’d soon be swabbing decks.
The sailor was on the edge of breaking down. His lip quivered like a child denied a sweet. His eyes went wide enough that it almost made up for their beadiness. “I’ll do anything. I’m a half-decent fighter. If you need something collected…”
Fletcher hitched a thumb over his shoulder at Mick and Barnaby. “I’m fairly certain I’ve got that covered.” He looked St. Johns over from head to toe. He was a muscular man, but both Mick and Barnaby had a good six inches and three stone of weight on him. “In fact, I’m also fairly certain they could make mash of you before you had a chance to take a swing.”
The sailor lost it. He blubbered. Tears rolled down his cheeks in fat streams.
Not so oddly, Fletcher felt no impulse to comfort him as he had Sera. Sera’s tears held the power of the universe, turning him into a pile of messy confusion, desperate to do anything to see them stop. Though if every time she cried ended up in intimacy, he might not mind.
Fletcher counted out long minutes while he let the sailor stew in his own misery. It went on without ceasing, or any sort of easing.
He cuffed the man in the back of the head. St. Johns’s head jerked forward and he coughed. The tears dried up. He swiped his dirty sleeves over his face, which only served to smear the various liquids and snot.
“Good God, man,” Fletcher said. “Find a bit of a backbone, will you? I swear I’ve swived women who bore up with less wailing than you.”
St. Johns nodded. “Anything,” he muttered. “Anything.”
Fletcher sighed. If he’d gone through this distasteful scene only to receive no intelligence, he’d likely put his fist through the man’s nose himself rather than allowing Mick the joy of it. “Information might do.”
“I’ll tell you everything I ever knew.” St. Johns’s face lit with sudden inspiration. “I’ve a sister, you know. She ain’t much to look at, but she’s had two beaus already. I don’t think she’d mind much going to work.”
His stomach roiled. Fletcher was pretty sure he was going to be sick. Not that it would make much of a difference in the muck of the floor. He’d so much rather do this in one of his regular rooms or offices, but it wouldn’t hold the same intimidating cachet.
“What do you know about three men and a robbery four nights ago?”
St. Johns looked from the papered-over window to the bruisers by the door and back again. “I don’t know nothing.”
“If you’re referring to your lack of education, I’m inclined to believe you.” He slapped an open hand against the back of St. Johns’s head. He’d much rather punch the rotter, but eventually he’d have to get the man on his side. “But I think you know something about this.”
“I know lots of robbers. Need a few groat, shake someone down. It’s nothing unusual.”
“This would have been on the edge of Whitechapel. A rich man. They’d have waited outside his house.”
The sailor’s eyes went wide. His mouth dropped open. The bottom lip trembled ever so slightly.
“That’s right, you fuck. It was me. That, I could almost forgive.” Fletcher roamed around the back of the man’s seat and set his hands on the top rail. Bent low over him. St. Johns smelled like yeasty beer, the salt tang of the sea and sick, sweaty fear. “But someone put their dirty, nasty hands on my fiancée.”
By the end of his little speech, the splintered edge of the rung bit into his palms. Anger tempted him to wreak destruction on the man. He held back. Somehow.
Whatever St. Johns saw in Fletcher’s face must have been enough. He started babbling. “They were hired. I was supposed to go, but I had a little too much to drink and they left without me and they were right mad at me. Said they’d have had her if I’d gone.”
Fletcher’s blood ran to ice in his veins. “Had her?”
St. Johns nodded. “Yessir. They were to rough up the toff—that is, you—and take the girl.”
“Where were they supposed to go with her?”
“I don’t know.” Apparently that wasn’t the right answer because one look at Fletcher had the sailor shaking his head. “I really don’t. It were Jigger Jack who got us hired. Who talked to the man. I don’t know him neither.”
Fletcher stared at the sniveling excuse for a man. He wasn’t even a man—more like a male specimen. Killing him would be too easy. One slice across his dirty, scruffy throat and the red blood would spread into the already filthy room. Mick and Barnaby would make the body disappear.
His father would have done it, though he might have had the cunning to wait until he got all the necessary information. Then he’d have made sure everyone else in Whitechapel knew what he’d done too.
Fletcher wasn’t his father. But with bloodlust prickling his skin, he’d never felt more akin to the man.
He scrubbed a hand down his face. “You’ll take me to Jigger Jack.”
“Of course I will. Of course, of course.” St. Johns hesitated. “But…”
“What is it?”
“He’ll be gone for nearly two months. When they took the toff, that is you, it was supposed to be for a long time. Jack just left for a run last night.”
Fletcher ground his anger down as best he could. “Where are they going? I’ll send a faster ship to collect him.”
“I don’t know.” St. Johns cringed. “They didn’t tell me that.”
Fletcher gave into a fit of temper and kicked a piece of trash, spinning it across the room. “That’s bloody well perfect, isn’t it? Mick, Barnaby, lock him down. I don’t care where. He’s not going anywhere until this Jigger Jack gets back to town.”
He saw nothing and no one on his way home. The streets slid by like water through the gutters. He didn’t like leaving Sera home alone lately, but there hadn’t been much he’d been able to do about it.
Finding the scum who’d attacked them had been even more important than hovering at the periphery of her vision, or making sure she didn’t slip away.
He wasn’t sure where his anxiety came from. Likely that she’d wake up and realize what a horrible bargain she’d made. He’d be damned if he’d allow her free any time soon. She was his, whether she liked it or not.
He’d never met a more perfect woman. Never a single cross word passed her lips. Reproofs she gave in calm, dulcet tones. He thought he might take apart London brick by brick to ensure she stayed pure and as sweet as she was. The brunt of his efforts on her behalf had all been worth it to see her rise unsullied from the muck. He’d been marked not only by the choices he’d later made but by the order of his birth.
The front door swung open as he topped the stairs. Hareton on alert, as always. Fletcher had reached a new level of respect for the man since his intervention on the night of the attack.
He was stripped of his overcoat, hat and gloves with ruthless efficiency. “Miss Miller?” He sounded like a calf-eyed boy, but he didn’t care.
“I believe she’s upstairs in her sitting room, sir,” Hareton said without even a blink of surprise.
Fletcher started bounding up the stairs. “Thank you, my good man.”