“Some o’ your finest ale, then—”
A tankard was slammed in front of her, foam splattering onto the bar’s scarred surface.
She picked up the sticky vessel and sipped, her nose wrinkling at the watered-down libation. Surreptitiously, she surveyed the clientele using the cracked looking glass behind the bar. At the center of the room, Dewey O’Toole and his cronies were still drinking, laughing without a care in the world.
Fury smoldered beneath Tessa’s breastbone at she thought of her friend Belinda’s battered face. The tears that had trickled over bruises, mingling with blood as Belinda had wept over her stolen savings.
You’re not getting away with it, O’Toole,Tessa fumed.Not while I’m breathing.
She felt a wriggle of agreement from the inner pocket of her jacket.
“Patience, Swift Nick,” she said under her breath, and the wriggling obediently ceased. “The rotter will pay the piper soon enough.”
Louder, she said, “Barkeep.”
“Wot now?” Stunning Joe grunted.
“Seeing as I’m celebrating, I’d like to buy a round for all the fine patrons ’ere.”
Fine patrons, her arse…orderrière, as her French tutor would say. (Apparently, the lessons at Mrs. Southbridge’s Finishing School For Young Ladies, orThe Old Dragon’s Dungeon of Doom, as Tessa dubbed it, had not gone entirely wasted.) The Hare and Hounds catered to cutthroats, thieves, and fences; while Tessa held no prejudice against those occupations, for she knew how her bread was buttered, she did judge a man by his moral character.
A man’s only as good as ’is word, her grandpapa oft said.’Ow ’e treats ’is kin and those under ’is command—that’s the true measure o’ a man, Tessie.
By any of those standards, Dewey O’Toole was a blackguard through and through.
Stunning Joe swiped a rag against the counter. “Ale don’t come for free.”
Deliberately, Tessa dropped a coin purse onto the bar. The heavy, unmistakable clink of gold drew gazes the way the bells of St. Mary-Le-Bow did worshippers. Stillness as reverent as a prayer spread through the room as she withdrew a guinea, letting the gold catch the light.
“Will this suffice?” she said innocently.
“Nan! Alice!” Stunning Joe barked at the serving wenches. “Drinks for the ’ouse courtesy o’ our young friend ’ere.”
The ensuing cheer shook the rafters. Within seconds, Tessa was surrounded by new “friends,” most of whom would sell their own grandmothers for a sovereign. Which still made them less dangerous than the milk-fed twits who’d been her classmates. Society ladies, she thought grimly, were the most cutthroat of all. They would stab you between the shoulder blades whilst smiling and sipping tea with their pinkies lifted.
Pushing back the painful memories, she answered a sly-faced coster’s question about the source of her windfall.
“The fortune was left to me by my Uncle Jim, God rest ’is soul,” she said, emulating a clodhopper’s earnestness. “Ma always said ’er brother was a good-for-naught—”
“If this uncle o’ yours was such a lazy prat,” a grime-streaked sweep cut in, “’ow’d ’e get ’is ’ands on a fortune?”
“Uncle Jim ’ad a lucky ’and at dice and won a ’undred quid. Gor, that’s fortune enough, ain’t it, but then ’e used ’is winnings to buy some pieces o’ paper…” She scratched her ear as her audience watched her with rapt expressions. “Certificates o’ share,that’s what the solicitor called ’em. Something to do with iron ’orses. Now, me, I don’t trust any ’orse that don’t eat and shit, pardon my language, but my uncle ’ad a gambler’s ’eart, ’e did. Paid off, too: those papers are now worthfive timeswhat ’e paid for ’em.”
She could almost hear rusty gears turning as the cretins worked out the arithmetic of her supposed inheritance. Just then, a movement at the end of the bar caught her eye.
Her heart stuttered. A curious tingle danced over her skin.
The stranger was standing a few feet away. He hadn’t been there moments ago, and she didn’t know how she could have missed his arrival. He was tall and broad-shouldered, lean of hip, built like a medieval knight from the tales she’d heard at her grandpapa’s knee.
He had one arm braced on the counter, a large hand wrapped around a tankard. His clean but worn clothes fit his sinewy physique like well-used armor. His boots clung lovingly to his muscular calves. The tavern’s dim light glinted off the thick, dark waves of his hair, flickering across his profile and glinting off...spectacles?
She felt an odd flutter in her belly.
His head turned, and her breath hitched at her first full glimpse of his face. He did indeed resemble a knight: one who had returned from some perilous quest and bore the travails of his journey. The clean structure of his broad cheekbones and square jaw was offset by the scar slanting through his left eyebrow. The scholarly spectacles were an intriguing contrast to that scar, as was his brooding intensity. There, on his face, she saw his true armor: his expression was as impenetrable as tempered steel.
Mind your own business, dunderhead,she chided herself.
It wasn’t like her to be distracted by a man. Her father owned a bawdy house, and she’d grown up surrounded by wenches who’d warned her of the dangers of animal attraction. At four-and-twenty, she’d never experienced that supposedly brain-obliterating force; she wondered if she ever would.
