The Earl and the Pickpocket

‘Mind?’ she repeated stupidly.

‘If I look at you.’

‘No—oh, no.’

A chuckle started deep in his chest. ‘Well, Ed? What do you have to say for this deception?’ he asked, dropping his hand and taking a step back.

His eyes were dark, probing, quizzical. His smile was rakishly winsome, and must have fluttered many feminine hearts. ‘I say it was no deception. You seem surprised—about my being a girl, I mean.’

‘Frankly, my dear, I believe you to be full of surprises.’

‘Are you disappointed?’

‘A little. It means I can no longer employ you to look for Toby.’

‘I don’t see why that should make a difference. I can revert back to Ed any time I choose.’

Adam laughed lightly, not taking her reply seriously. Her voice was soft centred, lovely, creamy. The vivid colour of her dress brought a glow to her pale skin. Without realising it she was standing straight, her head high. There was the hint of the kind of sophistication that seemed natural to young ladies of breeding—straight shoulders, the confidence of a level gaze, smooth line of spine, with no slouch.

‘I must thank you for coming to my aid last night. I hope it didn’t spoil your evening at the theatre,’ Edwina remarked, wondering who the dark-haired woman was and how closely linked they were.

‘I was glad to be on hand to render assistance,’ he said rather formally. ‘I’m afraid the ruffian who attacked you got clean away. Now—explain to me what has prompted you to adopt such a mode of attire.’

‘I dressed as a boy for my own protection. As a girl in St Giles I would have been ready bait.’ She gazed steadily into his clear blue eyes. ‘You are a man, so you will know what I mean.’

‘Perfectly. However, you seemed well at home in your boy’s clothes—but I like these better,’ he murmured in such a way that it brought an embarrassed flush to Edwina’s cheeks.

Having played the lad so long, she found the conversion to feminine ways difficult. Besides, with the air positively crackling with Adam’s virile presence, for the first time in her life she had met a man who made her feel alert and alive, and curiously stimulated.

‘I don’t know your reasons for the masquerade,’ he went on, recalling their conversation in the alehouse when the boy Ed had told him he had secrets he wished to keep, ‘nor do I particularly want to know. Suffice it to say that is your business—not mine. What we must decide is what is to be done with you. Just how old are you?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘I thought you were much younger. And the man who attacked you? Who was he?’

‘That was Jack.’

‘Your fence—receiver?’

‘Yes.’

‘And is he aware of your sex?’

‘No. No one is. I told you, it was for my own protection that I dressed as a boy.’

‘Yes, I can understand that. Why did he attack you?’

‘Because I ran away.’

‘Are you afraid of him?’

‘I’m afraid he will put the law on me—that I will go to prison—and because I ran away from him nothing would please Jack more than to see me rotting in a filthy cell. If he were to discover I am a girl in boy’s clothing, it would simply amuse him, and he would use it against me.’

‘Then he would do well to remember that receiving is as much a capital felony as the stealing of the goods.’

‘He knows that, but he is shamelessly bold and hardened above cautionary fear, working in an organised and far-ranging manner. He controls shoplifters and housebreakers, but I never progressed further than picking pockets. He despises laws and will carry on with his wicked trade, making sure he never hands over stolen goods himself, but craftsmen he employs—paying them handsomely so that they will keep their mouths shut, making them unidentifiable first.

‘He always uses someone else to exchange the spoils for money at a time and place arranged by him.’ She looked up into Adam’s warm blue eyes. ‘I have no money, nothing of my own, and when Jack took me in I knew I was on the road to prison, or worse—to the noose at Tyburn.’

‘Why did you stay with him?’ Adam asked gently. ‘Why didn’t you run away sooner?’

‘I couldn’t. I was afraid—and no one runs away from Jack,’ she said quietly. Those few words held a world of meaning that Adam fully understood. ‘Jack humbled me, confused me and seriously diminished my own sense of worth, and I could not seem to be able to clamber out of the dark hole into which I had fallen. Besides, it was inconceivable for me to return to my former life. I had nowhere to run to. I couldn’t see the point in exchanging one hell for another.’ She shrugged. ‘What’s the difference? When I did finally pluck up the courage and left Jack, hoping to find your Toby and receive payment, I staunchly decided to take charge of my own life and to choose its direction. I made up my mind to live decently, to find work of some kind to support myself.’

‘Dolly may be able to help you there,’ Adam suggested casually.

Offended by what she thought he was implying, Edwina drew herself up proudly and raised her chin to a lofty angle. ‘I may not be honest, sir, but I would never stoop so low as to become a whore.’

Observing that her eyes were dark with anger, Adam suppressed a smile and directed a stern countenance at her. ‘I was not suggesting that you should. That was certainly not what I meant.’

‘Besides, I’m unattractive and skinny, with none of the curves required to be one of Dolly’s girls, and not much hair to speak of, either,’ she said, running her fingers through the short, wispy tresses.

Perching his tall frame on the edge of a dresser and folding his arms across his chest, Adam arched his eyebrows, squinting at her with his head cocked to one side as he made a study of her. The purity of her face was quite striking. With her large eyes and unbelievably long dark eyelashes resting against her smooth, high cheeks, she looked innocent and incredibly lovely. She glowed with that strange fragile beauty of a young woman newly awakened to her sex, a nymph, clothed in bright yellow finery. Not for the first time, he wished he could immortalise her on canvas, but could he—or any artist—do justice to her flawless beauty? He smiled inwardly at the poetic bent of his thoughts and the challenge she presented.

‘Allow me to disagree. You are a remarkably beautiful young woman. You have the kind of unusual looks that put you in a class by yourself. The colour of your hair is divine—such radiance. You have a good neck and an excellent bone structure, and your features, particularly your eyes, are perfect.’

Edwina’s lips twitched slightly as she tried to suppress a smile. ‘In the past I’ve often been called sweet and sometimes pretty, but no one has ever complimented me—in such a matter-of-fact way—about my bone structure or my long neck. I don’t quite know whether to feel flattered or offended.’

‘I meant it as a compliment. I speak as I find. What happened to the five guineas I gave you?’

‘I had to give them to Jack.’

‘Had to? I gave the money to you, not Jack,’ he admonished sharply, coming to his feet.

‘I know better than to cheat him.’ Edwina was downcast. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. Having witnessed his brutality at first hand, perhaps it was as well. Did you manage to make enquiries about Toby?’

‘Yes. As you know, cripples are a common sight, and no one I asked remembered seeing a boy who answered to that name. One woman vaguely recalled seeing a man and woman with a boy, a crippled boy, about a week ago, but they left St Giles and took to the road.’

Interest flickered in Adam’s eyes. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes. They had a bear with them.’

Adam lowered his eyelids and reflected for a moment. ‘A man and woman, you say?’

She nodded. ‘Do you think the boy might be Toby?’

‘It’s possible,’ he replied absently as he began to pace restlessly about the room, frowning thoughtfully.