Page 13 of His Improper Lady

“I want to ask you a few questions,” he replied. “My name is Tom Quick.”

He saw recognition hit her eyes, but she said only, “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“Why did you break into my office last night? What were you after?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Desiree said airily.

“No? Then I guess you’re not interested in what the thief left behind.” He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, noting that she hadn’t even warned him not to pull out a weapon. She might be a superlative burglar, but she wasn’t all that good at holding a gun on someone.

Tom held up the token he’d found under his desk. Her eyes lit, and she grabbed for the charm. He let her take it, instead reaching out and wresting her gun away from her. “Now. Let’s have a conversation.”

“I’m not saying anything to you.” Desiree clenched the token in her fist. “You going to shoot me?” She whipped around and started to walk away.

Tom reached out and gripped her wrist, whirling her back around to face him. “No, but I’m going to bloody well find out what you’re up to.”

Her eyes went past his shoulder, and to his surprise, she began to scream. “Help! Help me!”

He jerked his head around and saw a policeman running toward them, baton in hand. Desiree seized the opportunity to jerk her hand away, and she took off running, leaving Tom with the gun and the bobby.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered as a beefy hand closed on his shoulder. She had outwitted him again.

DESIREE DARTED BACK the way she’d come, anger fueling her feet. The wretched man had lied to her!

A drunk lurched out of the tavern as she passed it. He reached for her, but Desiree avoided him easily. The companion right behind him let out a hoot and started after her, obviously less drunk than his friend. Desiree increased her speed. Frankly, she was in the mood for a chase tonight.

As she ran, she cast her mind out around her, and the faint outlines of buildings unfolded in her head. Ahead of her on the right was a wall, but its match in her head was only a thick smudge of darkness, warning her away.

But across the next intersection, light glimmered. And though the area was shadowed and murky, in her mind light spread across the side of the building, illuminating the empty cart beside it. The men following her laughed as she sprinted straight toward the wall. Desiree pulled up her skirts as she ran and tucked the ends into her belt, freeing her legs. She took a running leap into the cart, continuing to the higher end without pause and springing up from it to grab the sign above the shop. From there, she scrambled up to the top of the sign and climbed the wall, her feet and hands finding the holes and misaligned bricks.

Grinning at the roar from the men far beneath her, she reached the top of the building and pulled herself up and over onto the roof.

She climbed up the slant of the roof to the top and stood up, looping her arm around the chimney and looking all around her, orienting herself and giving her a moment to catch her breath. Clearly, she was no longer accustomed to running this much. Indeed, she wasn’t as good in any way as she had been at fourteen. She’d been caught twice by Quick. And then she hadn’t even sensed that his intentions toward her were bad. It was galling.

Knowing she had lost the gambling chip, she ought to have stayed home for a few days. She shouldn’t have taken the chance that she’d lost it on the street instead of inside the office. Perhaps Wells was right; she should have taken her brother with her. Wells had always been the more careful of the two of them.

The two men, thwarted of their prize, walked away, complaining. Desiree could have climbed back down to the street, but she did not. This was her territory, and she loved moving across the rooftops, as familiar to her as the streets below. She turned and walked along the center beam of the roof to the other end.

The building behind this one was flush against it, and it was a short drop down to the roof below, which shone like a beacon, calling her. She swung down and made her way across the buildings crowded up against one another. Her mind was still attuned to her extra sense for guidance; it had been years, after all, since she’d used these routes, and things deteriorated. Darkness bloomed along the edge of the one roof and over a patched spot on another, so she avoided both. She came to a gap of a few feet between buildings. A sparkling line stretched out in front of her across the span, and she took a running jump to land lithely on the other side.

Desiree came to a stop when she reached her favorite place, and she sat down on the ledge edging the roof. The street below was blanketed by fog, and it was as if she were sitting on a cloud. There had always been peace and solitude here. Freedom.

During the day, one could see the dome of Saint Paul’s from here, poking up through the haze, as well as the steeples of other churches and the tops of the Houses of Parliament. But now the view was only fog and darkness, everything hidden and still. It was the perfect place to think. She thought about what she’d found at the office of Moreland & Quick and what she was going to do about it. She thought about her mistakes. And she thought about Tom Quick.

That smoldering gaze, the faintly suggestive banter, the whole pretense of liking her had been an act. And she had fallen for it, lured by a pair of bright blue eyes and a charming smile. It was galling. He had deceived her. She’d been as gullible as any mark.

How could her instincts have been so wrong? She hadn’t felt the danger in him, hadn’t sensed the lack of integrity in his motives; she’d felt only her own excitement. Maybe Wells was right, and she was too quick to assume a moment’s perception was reliable. She knew a practiced flirt often glossed over a corrupt intention, yet she hadn’t tried to look deeper. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to find it in Tom. Clearly she should have focused her talent, sought out his intentions, been more suspicious of his interest in her. Instead, she had let herself be led astray by the sizzle of attraction.

Not only that, she hadn’t even noticed that he was shadowing her. It had been the coachman who had alerted her to that fact. Quick must have been behind her since she’d left the club. He’d followed her home and had sat there, waiting. He’d followed her into the East End. And she hadn’t seen it, hadn’t even looked. She’d been too occupied wondering why he left the club early.

It was some compensation that she had outwitted him tonight. Desiree smiled to herself at the memory of his irritated face. No doubt he’d been equally frustrated when she left him to explain to the peeler why he’d been holding a gun on a woman.

Tom Quick would still come after her, of course. Well, she welcomed the chance to go head-to-head against him. She could hold her own. She wouldn’t be stunned at seeing his face, as she had been tonight, and she would deny his charges. There was nothing he could prove. He’d get nowhere with the police.

She was no longer a street urchin. She was now a genteel woman, a woman who could look and sound the part and the sister of a man who was wealthy and not without power. Brock would never be accepted by society any more than Desiree herself, but he had more than one member of the police in his pay, as well as a couple of aristocrats who were in his debt.

On that pleasant thought, she left her perch on the ledge and made her way to the next roof, where she could climb down the drainpipe and cross the street to Falk’s place. Falk had moved on from being a kidsman. After his success with Desiree and Wells breaking into houses, the man had gradually transformed his business into the more lucrative field of burglary, as well as adding a bit of extortion to round things out. Street urchins required too much effort and expense—after all, he had to go out and watch the little pickpockets and beggars to make sure they were doing their jobs, as well as give them a bit of food and a floor to sleep on.

Desiree was glad. She would never have come here if she’d had to face children suffering the same life she once had. It gave her a degree of pleasure knowing that the Malones had over the years made sure that Falk’s operation running children became more and more difficult.