A Dangerous Proposal (Bow Street Brides Book 2) Read online

  Rodger had taken her body.

  Coldly.

  Mercilessly.

  Without a single concern for anything but his own pleasure.

  When a cold chill worked its way down her spine she gently untangled herself from her children’s heavy limbs and padded silently out of the bedroom, careful to leave the door open a crack so if Henry or Anne woke they would not have to wonder where she had gone. Then, gathering a shawl around her shoulders, she went to the window and perched on the edge of the sill to stare broodingly out into the night.

  Nary a single cat stirred in the inky darkness. Nor a person for that matter. After a certain hour anyone not looking for trouble locked their doors, dimmed their candles, and remained tucked away until dawn. But while outside the flat everything was still and quiet, inside of it Felicity’s mind had never been busier or her thoughts louder.

  She wanted to believe Felix was different. She wanted to give herself permission to love him. She even thought she had, until he’d tried to buy that damned silk scarf and all of her old doubts and insecurities had come rushing back to the surface. And she’d remembered her promise to never put herself in a position where she could have everything taken away from her ever again. Yet if she gave herself to Felix, if she allowed herself to love him, that was precisely what she would be doing.

  As his mistress she would be at his beck and call, relying on his money and his generosity to sustain her. As his wife she would be little more than chattel. Either way, if he changed his mind – if he decided he no longer wanted her, or another woman pleased him more – she’d find herself cast aside with nothing to show for her pain but another broken heart.

  Wasn’t it better, then, to remain alone? Of course being alone meant being lonely, but at least nothing could be taken from her. Not the flat she was desperately trying to turn into a home, or the meager possessions she’d managed to steal out from under Ezra’s nose, or her poor beleaguered heart. Her fingers tightened in the scratchy folds of her shawl, drawing it more closely around her shoulders as if it might somehow offer protection against her troubled thoughts.

  Her heart would be safe if she was alone. Her heart could not break if she was alone.

  I would never let ye go.

  “But you might,” she whispered softly, her warm breath fogging the glass as she stared blindly out into the darkness. “You might and if you did I don’t know how I would survive it.”

  She wanted Felix. She could no longer deny her own feelings, nor the strange, wonderful, frightening attraction they both shared. But she wanted him with the certainty that he would never hurt her.

  Unfortunately, love did not come with a guarantee.

  On a sigh of bitter confusion she began to draw her leg up against her chest, only to have it hit the floor with a hard stinging slap when a woman’s scream suddenly tore through the night.

  Eyes wide, cheeks pale, Felicity jumped down from the sill and ran to the bedroom. The children were still sound asleep, blissfully unaware of the horrible bloodcurdling screech that had raised every hair on the nape of their mother’s neck.

  It was nothing, she tried to tell herself as she stood by the fireplace wringing her hands. Nothing but a cat.

  Except it hadn’t sounded like any cat she’d ever heard before.

  Just to be careful, just to be safe, she reached for the tin box she kept on top of the mantle and took out the knife she’d hidden inside. It was the same one she’d tried to use on Felix, and even though it was small, the sheer weight of it in her hand gave her the courage to walk to the door and press her ear against the grainy wood.

  The goose pimples dotting her arms began to recede when the only thing she heard was the erratic pounding of her own heartbeat. Perhaps her overwrought emotions had made her imagine something that wasn’t there. Yes. Surely that was it. But just as she started to turn away another terrified scream tore through the night, even louder and closer than before, and this time there was no mistaking it for a cat.

  “Help!” Fists beat against the door, rattling it on its hinges.

  Felicity jumped back, her heart leaping into her throat as she muffled her own scream with the palm of her hand.

  “Someone! ‘E’s goin’ to kill me! For the love of – no. Git away. Git away, I said!”

  “It is time to stop running, whore, and face your fate.” A man’s voice. Cold. Empty. Merciless. “Do not worry, I will make it quick. Which is more than you deserve.”

  Stop! Felicity wanted to cry. Stop! Get away from her! But the words were frozen in her throat, just as they had been seven years ago. Every muscle felt locked in place. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. The only thing she could do was listen. Listen as the woman begged for her life. Listen as the man laughed. Listen to the wet gurgle of a knife slicing through flesh, and the hard thud of a body hitting the ground.

  Then the only thing to listen to was the silence.

  Heavy, oppressive silence.

  The sort of silence that came from the dead.

  Chapter Thirteen

  With the knife clutched tightly in her sweaty palm and her pulse roaring in her ears, Felicity waited for what felt like a small eternity before she dared open the door just wide enough to peer outside.

  At first glance everything looked as it always did.

  And then she saw the blood.

  It was everywhere. Dripping off the petals of the daffodil she had been so carefully tending. Sprayed across the brick. Pooled in the cracks between the cobblestones. And covering the woman who was sprawled on her back in the middle of the alley, like a broken doll that had been played with and then tossed carelessly aside.

  Her skirts were twisted around her waist. Her right shoe was missing. Her stocking torn. And Felicity knew, she knew before she even walked over, that the woman wasn’t breathing.

  How could she? How could she breathe when her throat had been sliced from one ear to the other?

  The doorknob slipped from her numb fingers and swung outward, leaving her standing in the doorway in her shawl and nightdress, face drained of all color, violet eyes glassy with shock and horror. On legs that did not feel as though they belonged to her she walked forward, her shawl slithering off her shoulders and trailing on the ground as she fell to her knees beside the woman.

  No.

  Not a woman.

  Beneath a tangled swath of light brown curls was the face of a young girl. She had too much rouge on her cheeks and there were dark smears of kohl under her eyes, but she could not have been more than fifteen years. Sixteen at the most.

  A child, Felicity thought as she gently smoothed the girl’s hair away from her blank, unstaring eyes with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. The poor thing is only a child.

  What sort of monster had done this?

  And where had they gone?

  Her breath caught in her throat as she realized the murderer could be watching her even now. Hiding in the shadows. Waiting to strike. The knife he’d used to slice his first victim’s throat still clutched in his hand, blood dripping off the tip of the blade.

  On a soft cry she lurched to her feet. Through a sheen of tears she ran back to the door, stumbled inside, and locked it behind her. For a moment she stood frozen, her breath coming in hard, fast little bursts that caused her lungs to burn and her entire body to shake.

  She’d never seen such violence before. She’d never imagined such cruel, senseless violence was even possible. For the girl had not just been killed, which would have been horrible enough. She had been – she had been maimed. Her throat… Reflexively Felicity lifted a hand to her own neck, smearing blood across her pale skin.

  The children.

  She needed to protect the children.

  A mother’s driving instinct to guard and defend that which was most precious had her swallowing the fear that threatened to overwhelm. She dashed into the bedroom, readying the children’s shoes and hats before she went to the bed and gently roused them
.

  “Darlings,” she whispered, stroking their soft heads. “Darlings, you need to wake up now.”

  Henry stirred first. “Mama,” he said, his green eyes unfocused and heavy with sleep. “Mama, why’s it so dark?” Confused, he rolled onto his belly and started to drift back into slumber, his face cushioned in the crook of his arm.

  “Because the sun has not come up yet. Henry. Henry,” she said firmly. “Something has happened. We have to leave. Be a good boy and put on your shoes.” He started to protest when she pulled him from the warm confines of the bed, but she quelled his resistance with a stern frown. “Henry Ezra Joseph. Put on your shoes. Now.”

  “Yes Mama,” he mumbled.

  While Henry did as he was told, she scooped Anne up, blankets and all. Her daughter began to stir, but then on a long, dreamy sigh she promptly fell back asleep, head lolling on Felicity’s shoulder.

  Shifting Anne to her right arm, she knelt and helped Henry finish buckling his shoes with her left before putting on his hat. “Hold my hand and do not let go. We are going to walk very quickly and I need you to keep up, no matter what. You must keep up, Henry. Do you understand?”

  The urgency in her tone brought a flicker of alarm to Henry’s countenance. “Mama, Mama I don’t want to leave.”

  Still crouching, she cupped his chin and looked him squarely in the eye. “It is no longer safe here, darling.” As the gruesome image of the girl’s sliced throat flashed through her mind she fought back a shudder. “When we go outside I want you to close your eyes tight. Close your eyes tight and do not let go of my hand. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “That’s my brave boy.” She ruffled his hair, as if it were an ordinary day. As if there wasn’t a dead woman laying on their doorstep. As if the cobblestones weren’t slick with blood. As if a monster wasn’t hiding in the shadows.

  For an instant she considered staying put. Bracing a chair under the doorknob and hiding beneath the bed. But surely it was better to run than to cower and hope the murderer would not return. Holding Anne against her chest, she took Henry’s little hand and murmured a quick prayer. “Close your eyes,” she reminded him. “And do not open them until I tell you to.”

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Bow Street. We are going to Bow Street.”

  Bloody uncomfortable cot. Thumping his fist against the thin mattress in frustration, Felix sat up and swung his legs over the side. He hated sleeping at Headquarters. Mostly because he never slept. But at least one Runner always needed to be available in case someone came knocking in the wee hours of the morning, and tonight it was his turn to man the post.

  On the other side of the small room Ian Ferguson was snoring.

  Loudly.

  “Put a cork in it ye bugger.” Picking up his pillow, Felix launched it with no small amount of force at Ian. It struck him square on the back of his noggin. Coming awake with a snort, he propped himself up on his side and glared across the room.

  “Watch yourself, Spencer.”

  “Or what?” Felix sneered. “Don’t pretend ye are going to come over here and do anything about it.” He knew he was a being a right bastard, but he couldn’t help himself. A dark cloud had formed over his head since he and Felicity last parted and every day that went by without a word from her it grew heavier and darker and more volatile. Each morning he fought a battle to stay away from her and every night as he laid alone in bed with only this thoughts to keep him company he damned his stubborn pride to hell and back again.

  He was in love with Felicity. He did not know when it had happened, or even why, but he was in love with her. And even though she refused to say it, mule headed woman that she was, he knew she loved him as well. Which was why her hesitation did not make sense. Why the flash of fear he saw reflected in her gaze when she thought he wasn’t looking did not make sense.

  Felix knew what it was like to lose everything. The shame of it, and the helplessness. But one thing he’d never felt, one thing loss had never brought him, was fear. Which was how he knew Felicity was hiding something from him. Something greater than what Ashburn had done. Something that had hurt her worse than the divorce. Something that always made her draw back just as she was about to rush forward. Something that was keeping her from giving him her heart.

  Restless, angry, confused, he stood up and dragged a shirt over his head.

  “Where are you going?” Fully awake now, Ian scrubbed his hands down his face as he rose to his feet. A by the books fellow if ever there was one, he kept his jaw cleanly shaven and his blond hair neatly trimmed. Both taller and slightly leaner than his twin brother, he had chiseled features that would have been perfectly symmetrical if not for his nose. Courtesy of a wayward fist during a scuffle with two drunks, it slanted slightly to the left.

  “Downstairs.” Although he could have easily walked through the house blindfolded, Felix lit a small oil lamp and carried it with him out of the room. The stairs creaked as he descended the narrow staircase, his shadow rippling across faded wallpaper and the stern-faced portraits of Henry and John Fielding.

  Leaving the lamp on a small table by the front door, he went into the kitchen to rummage for a quick morsel but after searching through the cupboards and the pantry the only thing he managed to find was a single red apple. Biting into it, he wandered back through the foyer and into the drawing room where Ian was waiting for him, having taken the time to formally dress himself in trousers, a waistcoat, and an impeccably folded cravat. Felix lifted a brow.

  “Is there a ball I haven’t been invited to, or are you dressed like a pompous dandy just for the thrill of it?”

  “Sod off, Spencer.” Walking around the room, Ian lit the tallow candles tucked away inside mirrored sconces before he sat at the end of the large, cluttered table where they conducted their meetings. Light flickered across stacks of papers and wooden crates filled with an odd assortment of items, everything from a letter opener that had been used to stab a banker to a fluffy ostrich feather that belonged to the mistress of an ambassador suspected of murder.

  “Why don’t ye jest go back to bed?” Irritated that he wouldn’t be left to brood alone, Felix crossed to one of the windows overlooking the street and drew back the heavy curtain.

  “And spend another night listening to you pace a hole in the floor? I think not. What’s gotten under your skin, Spencer? I do not think you have slept in three nights.”

  Felix glanced back over his shoulder and bared his teeth in a humorless smile. “Four.”

  “Guilt for all your past crimes finally catching up to you, is it?” Ian did not like the fact that Felix was a Runner any more than Hargrave did. “Or is it a woman that’s giving you trouble?”

  “What do you know about women?” Felix said with a snort. Given how dedicated he was to being a Runner, it wouldn’t have surprised Felix in the least to learn Ian was still a virgin. The man ate, slept, and breathed Bow Street. It was his lover, his mistress, and his wife all rolled into one.

  “I’m married to one, aren’t I?”

  “The devil you are,” Felix said incredulously as he turned back around. Ian Ferguson? Married? Preposterous. Owen was the only one among them that had taken the plunge. There were bets on who would be next – Hargrave was the odds on favorite, given who his father was – but Ian was about as far down on the list as one could possibly get. Come to think of it, Felix couldn’t recall if he had even made the list at all.

  “We were wed three years ago. Before I became a Runner.”

  “How much did ye have to pay the poor wench?”

  “Pay her?” Ian shook his head. “She should have paid me. Elizabeth fancies herself a bluestocking.” He spoke the word as though it were a curse, which for him it might as well have been.

  Bluestockings had their place. Felix had even fancied one himself a time or two. But in his experience they were high strung, independent creatures who had little patience for social rules and cust
oms. The sort of rules and customs a man like Ian regarded as law.

  “Why the hell did ye go and marry one of those?” he wondered out loud. Ian may have been about as engaging as a piece of pocket lint, but he was also well-spoken, intelligent, and passably handsome. He could have had his pick of any number of women, and yet he’d chosen the one lass who was almost certain to bring him strife? It didn’t make a damn bit of sense. But then love rarely did. Wasn’t he learning that firsthand with Felicity? Stand the two of them side by side and they couldn’t have been more different.

  He had been raised on the streets. She had been raised in bloody mansion. He was a commoner. She was a lady. He was impulsive. She was reserved. She was a mother twice over and he’d never given having children a passing thought. Except for the first three letters of their names they were complete opposites in nearly every way, and yet he’d fallen for her so hard and so bloody fast his head was still spinning.

  “Why did I marry her…?” Ian’s voice trailed away, his expression contemplative as he thought it over. Then he shrugged. “Because I was young and reckless.”

  Picturing Ian Ferguson young and reckless was like imagining a cow sprouting wings and taking flight. In short, it was impossible. While Ian may have technically been young in years – twenty-five of them, to be exact – he was the least reckless man Felix had ever met. If Owen wanted a three page report Ian wrote four pages, just to be safe. He was perpetually early. He never missed a day of work. He always did everything by the book. Hell, he might as well have written the book himself. And he was married to a bluestocking no one even knew existed.

  “How did ye know she was the–”

  “There is someone at the door,” Ian interrupted. “A woman and one” – he leaned forward and squinted past Felix out the window – “no, make that two small children.”

  “At this hour? It’s almost three in the morning.” Felix took another bite of his apple before he set it down on the sill. “Best go see what they’re about. Start some tea, would ye? And see if ye can scrounge up something more than fruit. Chances are they’re going to be hungry.”