One
May 1826
It could be the fog. Or it could be the whisky fogging his brain. Or it could be that his sister was stealing into a coach behind their house and… what? Going where? At this godforsaken hour? Only bounders were about this late at night. Early in the morning? Time didn’t matter, but Alexandra did. Alexandra climbing into an old beaten unmarked hack. Bounders were about!
And Keats. But then Keats was—hiccup—a bounder, so he pushed away from the wall and the woman he’d been kissing.
“Keatsy, come back.” She tugged at his lapels, her dark curls falling from her coiffure, the rouge that carefully shaped her lips smeared and faded. “If you die tonight, we’ll never get to kiss again.”
They would never kiss again, even if he lived. Keats never kissed the same woman twice.
“Off with you, love.” He pushed her down the street with a hearty smack to her arse as a parting gift. Too hearty. He swayedand sought the strength of a solid wall to lean against. The box he cradled under one arm thumped against the brick, and he braced for an explosion.
Got only silence, thank God. But… curse God because it looked like the coachman was about to pull away. With Keats’s sister.
“Shit.” He ran and the world spun, but before the carriage could pull away from the dark alley behind his father’s townhouse, he jumped aboard it, sat beside the rather shocked coachman, and set the box neatly on his lap.
“Hey there, now,” the coachman cried. “Get off!”
Keats calmly opened the box and pulled out the dueling pistol. He pressed the barrel against the coachman’s ribs. “I was going to use this in Green Park at dawn, but I don’t see why I can’t use it now instead. Besides, this is rather new and novel.” He hiccupped. “I’ve dueled before, but I’ve never demanded answers from a coachman”—hiccup—“at gunpoint. Feel like a highwayman, I do.” He grinned and dug the barrel deeper between the man’s ribs. “Did I load this gun earlier? Or did I mean to do so at the park? Hm. Can’t remember.” He shrugged. “Shall we see?”
“You would’na loaded it and put it in the box.” The coachman’s hold of the reins tightened.
“Oh, who knows, really. I’m that foxed, I assure you.” He hiccupped again. Proof of his circumstances.
“What do you want?” the coachman asked, his body a block of ice.
“Where are you taking my sister?”
The coachman’s already tight jaw became flint—hard and sharp and breakable.
“Come, come. I’m the Earl of Ennis, and I have more right to my sister than you do. Tell me.” Those last few words as hard as the man’s jaw. More unforgiving. He could simply pull Alex fromthe carriage and toss her back into the house, but he’d never find out her destination that way, her intentions. She’d lace her lips up tighter than a lady’s corset and with unbreakable ribbons. The coachman would at least know their destination.
The coachman swallowed. “Hawthorne House.”
“And where the devil is that?”
The hack shook before the man could offer an answer, and the door swung open. A figure emerged, settling into a pale circle of light cast by the gas lamp above. A woman. No, not a woman. A bloody angel.
Her golden hair glowed in the soft gas light. She’d bound it tight atop her head in a practical twist of some sort, but wisps of it escaped here and there, little curls to make a man’s hands ache with need. Those wisps curled a halo about her head. Fitting. And she lifted her full, lush, heart-shaped face to him. No, to the coachman. But no doubt she saw Keats, too.
Bloody hell. Keats would be found out before he got any answers. The whisky fog had begun to roll away from his brain, dissipating like a sour-smelling morning mist, and he dug the gun deeper into the man’s ribs.
“You give me up,” Keats hissed, “and I’ll find out with the flex of a finger if I loaded this gun earlier.”
“What in hell do you want me to say?”
“Figure it out.”
“Mr. Sacks,” the angel said with full, pink, kissable lips, “why aren’t we moving? You know time is of the essence.”
“Y-yes, miss. I… well, Mr. Beckett asked me to pick up a new boy for the stables.”
“Boy? Do you want me to pull this trigger?” He was a man of eight and twenty. Nothing about himboy.
The coachman swallowed. “He’s just jumped up, and… we’re ready to go now.”
The angel scowled. “Mr. Beckett told me nothing of it. And it’s most unusual. Risky to add another body to tonight’s activities.”