Chapter 1
October
Not many men would dare walk the London streets at three o’clock in the morning, all fancied up in a tailored coat of black superfine, brushed top hat and polished boots. Raven knew he looked like easy prey, flush in the fob. Just the kind of gent he’d have pickpocketed as a lad. Or the kind he’d seen gutted and left by the Thames far too often.
But he wasn’t worried. Nearly every day of his twenty-eight years had taught him about back alleys, crooked dealings, ruffians and cheats. And despite his unsavory beginnings, he’d made a good life.
It was going to stay that way, too. All a man had to do was follow a certain philosophy. He’d come up with four rules—or keeps, as he liked to call them—years ago and they served him well.
One: keep a watchful eye.
Two: keep your nose on your own face (and out of some other bloke’s business).
Three: keep what’s yours safe and sound.
And four: keep anonymous.
For an orphan raised in a foundling home, the last keep should’ve been simple. But he’d run into more scrapes than he could count just by being noticed. So, he’d learned the hard way to blend in.
It was a good skill to have, especially now.
This was the hour of cutpurses and wastrels. An earlier rain had sent the latter to the shelter of the mews to warm themselves by sputtering dustbin fires. But the former tended to lurk in the shadows, waiting for the telltale sounds of the rich—the plink and clatter of coins, the rasp of folded notes, or the distinctive clap of hard-soled Hessians on the damp pavement.
To avoid announcing his presence, Raven kept his footfalls in time with the night watchman on the other side of the street. The sharp measured strike echoed within the gathering snakeskins of fog that curled along the cobblestones and would disorient any thug listening in an alleyway.
Up ahead, an old beggar woman sat huddled beneath a streetlamp with a basket of yesterday’s wilted violets on her lap. She squinted through the chilly mist, then gave a familiar toothless grin as he approached. “Why, if it ain’t the randy gent back fer the second time this week.”
“I had to drop by to visit your flower shop, didn’t I?” he teased, touching the brim of his hat in greeting.
“Bah,” she sniggered, shooing her hand in the air. “The only visitin’ yer doin’ is to the bawdy house up a pace. Well, ’ere’s yer posy, then.”
Pretending great offense, he asked, “Now, when have I ever bought only one posy from you, Bess? That’ll be three posies. I’ve made promises, after all, and a man must uphold his word.”
She clucked her tongue at him and fished through the basket. “Three girls in one night. A cryin’ shame. Why, if I were me younger self, I’d have left you too weak to visit another bed. Buried two husbands, I did. A’ course neither were fine gents. Not like you.”
Raven smiled to himself. She didn’t realize that they’d crossed paths dozens of times when he wasn’t in his gentleman disguise.
He was usually dressed in a regular coarse wool suit and shirtsleeves on his way to Sterling’s gaming hell, where he worked as a general factotum. His straight black hair wasn’t often parted and styled with pomade beneath a black Regent as it was now. And he didn’t parade about in a stiff pointed collar and cravat.
But he’d learned long ago that people saw what they wanted to see and he used it to his advantage.
“Your promises are impossible to resist.” Bending down to lift her vellum-skinned hand to his lips, he stared soulfully into her eyes. “Run away with me, Bess.”
She snatched her hand back and cackled, spots of color tingeing her wrinkled cheeks, her breath misting in the air beneath the flickering glow of the lantern. “Get on with ye now, randy gent. I’ve said before, I’m too much of a woman for ye. Now, take yer posies before there’s nothin’ left of ’em. A’ course”—she hesitated, holding tightly to the limp, string-tied bunches, her thin brows inching higher with meaning—“should ye ever need a new cook for yer fancy pile of bricks, ye know where to find me.”
Believing this was her way of negotiating for more coin, he fished a bob out of his pocket and dropped it into her waiting palm. She bit down on the tarnished silver token before sliding it into her frayed gray bodice.
“Aye. You’ll be the first on my list.” Then he tipped his hat and went on his way.
Once he was out of sight, he stowed the flowers in his pocket. The women working at the bawdy house wouldn’t appreciate the disrespect of wilted flowers, but buying them helped Bess gain a meal or two while still keeping her dignity.
Raven knew from experience that, sometimes, pride was all a person possessed.
Keeping a watchful eye, he walked on, not letting the stillness of these early hours fool him into complacency.
Even so, London almost seemed like a cathedral at this time of morning, hushed and reverent. On the street, a dingy yellow hackney lumbered by in a solitary procession, disappearing into the congregating fog toward some unseen altar. It chanted in a disembodied clip-clop-clip of horse hooves and rang bells of rigging. The sounds reverberated off the shingle and brick facades of boardinghouses and shopfronts that stood tall like pew boxes filled with sinners. And the incense that burned to purify the worshippers was little more than the charred, heavy soot that sifted down from chimney tops and mingled with the damp, fetid odors rising from the gutter.
He drew it deeply into his soul—the sounds, the scents, and the sights of his world.
Raven’s steps took him beneath a trio of painted wooden signs that hung from curlicues of wrought iron in front of darkened shop windows while their proprietors slept abovestairs. Here, houses, rented flats, and shops intermingled. All of a man’s necessities were within a short stretch of the legs—a barber, a tailor, a mercer, and a pleasure house.
Yet, Moll Dawson didn’t hang a sign out front. Not even a placard. She didn’t have to.
Moll ran the most exclusive brothel in London, catering solely to haute society nobs. Strictly invitation only. She even spun a tale that her girls had never been touched by common hands and were trained by courtesans from all over the world.
Raven was as common as soot. But, three years ago, when he’d started working at Sterling’s gaming hell, Moll had approached him with a secret bargain.
She’d grant him admittance to her infamous gilded parlor, with girls draped in silks and bathed in perfumes . . . as long as he directed the high-stakes winners at Sterling’s to her establishment instead of her rival’s.
After being spat upon by foppish aristocrats all his life, the offer was too tempting for Raven to refuse. So, whenever he came to Moll’s entertainment emporium—as she liked to call it—he dressed the part. He even mimicked the gestures and the air of supremacy that he witnessed at the gaming hell.
But she never let him forget his place. He was allowed inside solely by the favor of her graces.
It shouldn’t have made any difference to him. After all, a man with such humble beginnings shouldn’t expect anything better. And yet, something inside him had always wanted more.
Raven tucked that thought away, as he usually did, and paused in the shadows near the narrow ginnel between buildings, taking careful measure of his surroundings.