“That’s the glorious thing about this game. It’s plausible that I am the heir. There’s a lost baby. A secret marriage. A family resemblance. The memory I have of a woman holding me and crooning to me in Spanish. I said my name was Ash when I arrived at the orphanage. It could be short for Ashbrook.”
“Or it could be because your father was a chimney sweep and you were cradled in a coal scuttle.”
“I’m the heir. I have to believe it, or no one else will. I’ll change the world, Jax. I’ll settle for nothing less. Times are changing. The nobility with their wealth steeped in blood can’t rule the world forever. The children dying in their factories, in their rookeries, don’t have a voice. I’m going to be their voice. But they won’t listen unless I’m one of them. They won’t listen unless I have a title. And I’ll have it. It’s within my grasp. It’s almost mine. One spinster bluestocking isn’t going to stand in my way.”
“You always did have grand ambitions. But how can you prove it?”
“You didn’t think I’d run such a high-stakes game without an ace up my sleeve, did you? I have a fairy godmother.”
“A what?”
“Haven’t you read any fairy tales? A fairy godmother. But this one didn’t magically appear and transform me into a duke. She was recruited.”
“I’m confused.”
“All will be revealed, Jax. All will be revealed. In the meantime, 20 Ryder Street is yours. Everything we built. The moment I’m acknowledged as the heir, I’m signing it over to you. You deserve it, Jax. The future profits will be yours. I’ll never forget my origins and my loyalties. Brothers forever.”
“Brothers forever,” Jax replied, filling Ash’s glass to the brim with gin.
He and Jax had made a pact when they were young lads forced to labor sixteen hours a day in the harsh, unhealthy conditions of a bottling factory that they’d use their wits and charm to rise above their sordid origins.
They’d give as good as they got. Live life by their own rules.
They’d escaped the factory by joining a gang of pickpockets, but that had been exchanging one form of servitude for another. Ash hadn’t seen it that way at first. He’d thought that joining John Coakley’s motley group of thieves was gaining the family he’d never known. Coakley had taught them the ropes, the tricks of the trade. He’d taught them to gamble.
He’d been like a twisted version of a father. At first. And then the beatings had started. And Coakley’s true nature had been revealed. He’d ruled his band of thieves and card sharps with merciless cruelty, demanding all of the profits for himself and thrashing any boy who tried to escape.
He’d taken Ash and Jax with him overseas, to Spain and France, where they’d had no choice but to carry out his crooked schemes.
Don’t think about it. The glass in Ash’s hand shook, gin sloshing over the edge.
Coakley was dead. Ash had put a bullet through his heart.
“You’ll have to be damned careful, Ash. We have dark secrets to hide,” Jax said.
“You’re the only other person who was there that night. You’re the only one who knows what we did.”
Memories slammed into his mind before he could fend them off.
A fist smashing into his nose. Blinded by pain. By blood.
Cold steel fused to his fingers. Gunpowder singeing his nostrils.
He gulped the rest of the gin, wiping his lips with his sleeve. “The past is dead and buried.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to a brighter future!”
They clinked glasses, and Ash drank deeply, the cold fire of the gin burning his throat and settling like liquid fire in his belly.
It was a dangerous game, but then, he lived for danger, for the spice of it, the thrill that kept him coming back for more.
Danger meant he knew that he was alive, that his heart was still pumping.
He wasn’t like the law-abiding citizens in their stone houses behind iron gates, their only aspiration a grave plot with a marble headstone. A crypt if they were lucky. Watched over by a stone angel.
Sleep through life and then Rest in Peace.
No thank you.
He lived on the knife’s edge of life. Pursuing bigger and better prizes.
His goal when he’d moved back to London had been to open a gaming house and make it profitable. But when fate presented an even bigger opportunity, he’d seized it..
“Really, once Lady Henrietta thinks about it rationally, she’ll see that I’m doing them a favor by coming forward,” Ash said. “If her father’s dukedom reverts to the Crown, she’ll be left with nothing. She’ll probably have to become a governess or something. There’s no guarantee that the duke can produce another heir.”
“That’s an excellent way to look at it. You’re doing them a favor.”
“What am I taking from them? Nothing. I’m giving them security. Lady Henrietta is independent-minded and doesn’t like to think that a man like me could wield any power over her, but everyone wins in this game. I’ll save her estate and she can live there forever if she wants to.”
“Did you say the lady was tall?” Jax asked.
“A statuesque goddess.”
“Full lips?”
“Like plump, ripe cherries.”
“And a generous bosom?”
“Curves for days. Why do you ask?”
“Because I think she just walked through the door.”
“She what . . . ?” Ash sputtered, wiping gin from his chin and swiveling in his seat.
Jax was right.
Lady Henrietta stood inside the doorway, flanked by a burly footman and another young lady. She was wrapped in a hooded cloak, but there was no mistaking her height, and the startling beauty of her face.
This was all kinds of wrong.
“What the devil is she doing here?”
Jax chuckled. “From the looks of it, she’s out for your blood. Let’s hope she didn’t bring that pistol.”
Chapter Five
“He’s seen us,” said Hetty.
“He doesn’t look pleased,” Viola whispered.
Mr. Ellis sat at a sheltered table in the back of a large central gaming room with an ornamental plaster ceiling and green-baize-covered tables. It was early yet, and the games hadn’t begun.
In order to access 20 Ryder Street, they’d descended a long, winding stone staircase with brick walls. Once they’d gained admission to the perfectly ordinary-looking stone building from a ruffianly doorkeeper, and passed through a second portal, monitored by the use of a spyhole, the interior was fully as decadent and depraved as she’d imagined it to be.
The furniture was covered in crimson and purple velvet, and the walls sported gilt mirrors and bawdy oil paintings. The disreputable chamber was presided over by a bare-knuckle bruiser of a barman with a shock of red hair and ruddy cheeks, wearing a curious green cap, who dispensed gin and other spirits from behind a long mahogany bar stretching the length of the wall.
Rose-tinted lamps cast a sensuous glow over everything. The pretty barmaids the duke had mentioned were garbed to match their surroundings in crimson velvet with gold braiding.
This wasn’t one of the exclusive gentleman’s clubs, which were by invitation only and banned females. And yet it also wasn’t one of the lower hells. It was somewhere in the middle. A gambling purgatory, where rough ne’er-do-wells mingled with noblemen eager to shed the cumbersome burden of family fortunes at the hazard tables.