The Highwayman (Victorian Rebels, #1)

by Kerrigan Byrne

“This one’s worth too much to let go.” Quick as a hawk, MacLean wrapped long, bony fingers around Farah’s delicate neck. “Ye should have picked another princess to prey upon.” Princess? “I’m not the predator here, ye are!” Dougan accused, unable to tear his eyes away from his Fairy’s terrified gaze as she squirmed, and struggled to breathe. “Give her over. Or I’ll cut ye both.” Farah gave a strangled sob as MacLean cut off her breath completely.

“I can hardly help myself. She’s such a ripe piece of skirt.” “Bite. Your. Tongue.” Farah had never seen Sir Morley so angry. His lips pulled back from his teeth. A vein pulsed in his forehead. This was a man she’d never met before. “Tell me, Morley,” Blackwell calmly but ruthlessly persisted. “How much time does she spend at her own desk, as opposed to beneath yours, with her lips affixed to your—”

Of all the evil Farah had had a chance to glimpse in this room, Dorian Blackwell’s smile, full of his own blood and teeth and challenge, had to be the most frightening Farah had witnessed in her entire life. His eyes were dead, devoid of any hope or humanity, the milky blue one utterly motionless but for the reflection of the torchlight lending it an unnatural pagan gleam.

“Where does she live?” Blackwell demanded. McTavish shrugged. “Couldn’t say exactly. Somewhere off Fleet Street in the Bohemian sector, I think I heard.” Blackwell’s nostrils flared with increased breath, remaining silent for a moment too long before McTavish thought he heard him whisper. “All this time…” “Pardon?” “Nothing.” The Blackheart of Ben More seemed—shaken, for lack of a better word. McTavish couldn’t believe his eyes. “Here is for your services, and continued discretion.”

“Come close, McTavish, and I’ll tell you a secret. Something about me that few men know.” There wasn’t a man alive who wanted to be privy to Dorian Blackwell’s secrets. They were the kind that got one killed. He stepped toward the dark, hulking man. “Y-yes?” “No one wants that kind of incentive, Inspector. Not even me.” Blinking rapidly, McTavish nodded as he watched Dorian Blackwell melt into the mist and shadows of the London evening, certain that he’d not only escaped death, but the devil, himself.

“Tell me where you’re off to dressed so fine.” Farah tempered the sadness and worry for the woman out of her smile. “I’m turned out for a night at the theater.” “Ain’t that grand?” Genuine pleasure sparkled in the woman’s eyes. “Who’s the lucky doffer wot’s escorting you?” “That doffer would be me.” Carleton Morley appeared at Farah’s side, his blue eyes twinkling at her from beneath an evening hat.

To unlock the secrets of her past. As time went by, she had begun to despair of that ever happening. As to the other question … she’d never allowed herself to think on it. Words like family and children had disintegrated when she was very young, and she’d never quite been able to resurrect them without her heart breaking. Though something deep inside her clenched and ached at the idea of a child of her own. A family.

“I wager they’ll write ha’penny novels about you next, Sir Morley,” she teased. “Perhaps even include your chase of he whom we shall not be naming for the rest of the evening. How grand would that be?” “Ridiculous,” Morley muttered, but his blush could be seen even in the lamplight, and his eyes were pleased as they glanced down at her.

She glanced down the stairs toward the cobblestones painted in crossed golden squares by the windows of the café. “But I love this part of the city. It’s so alive, so full of youth and art and poetry.” “And cutpurses and rakes and prostitutes.” That drew another warm laugh from her throat. “Most of whom know me from the Yard. I am careful and I feel quite safe here. Besides,” she added lightly. “We can’t all afford a terrace near Mayfair, now can we?”

“Consider what you are offering,” she said evenly. “I’m a widow well past the marrying age. A man of your position and deserving needs a young wife who will be content to make him a comfortable place to come home to. Someone to provide him with fat babies and respectable society. Everyone I know is either a criminal or a Bohemian.” She smirked before adding wryly, “Sometimes both.”

Dorian Blackwell probably kissed much differently than this, Farah found herself thinking. He was probably savage and hungry. Perhaps a bit too forceful and consuming in his passions. His mouth was so hard-looking. A cynical slash against an obstinate jaw. No, the Blackheart of Ben More would be selfish and demanding. Certainly not restrained or respectful like—Oh, Lord! What was she doing thinking about that criminal’s mouth while entertaining the lips of a gentleman? Angry, more at Blackwell than at herself, she cursed the man for again invading her thoughts uninvited. Again. The unmitigated nerve!

Would he recoil at the French manner of kissing? She’d really only heard of it from the mouths of prostitutes, but the idea had intrigued her for some time. Should she invite him inside again? Perhaps, in spite of whichever answer she decided to give him, she would still not reach the age of thirty untouched.

“I’m not religious,” she admitted. “Moreover, I do not like churches. But if you’d like to meet for tea when church is over, you could call upon me in the afternoon.” She smiled at the idea, liking the prospect of exploring more of these pleasant kisses with him. Of thinking about the future. Stepping back, he released her, but not before lifting her gloved hand to his lips once more. “I would like that more than I can say.”

“I hope you enjoyed that kiss, Mrs. Mackenzie.” Dorian Blackwell licked his finger and pinched the flame of her candle, plunging them back into darkness. “For it shall be your last.”

Farah had thought it wasn’t possible to be more confounded. How wrong she’d been. Though the lapse proved fleeting, and by the time she blinked, the placid calculation had returned, causing her to wonder if what she’d seen had been a trick of firelight. “Most people need much stronger fortification than a strawberry tart before facing me,” he said wryly. “Yes, well, I’ve found that a well-made dessert can do anyone a bit of good in a bad situation.” “Indeed?” He circled her to the left, his back to the fire, casting his face into deeper shadows. “I find I want to test your theory.”

“One day, my rock missed his hands and caught Dougan between the legs. He fell to the ground, vomited, trembled for at least five long minutes while we all stood and laughed at him, even the guards. And then he did something quite extraordinary. He reached for the rock, stood up, and hurled it so hard at my head that it felled me. Then he leaped on me and beat my face so bloody, my own mother wouldn’t have recognized me.”

“None of us knew it at the time, but Dougan Mackenzie was the only one among us who knew how to read the signs or the guards’ registers. We all would have marched to our deaths had he not plucked my two best mates, Argent and Tallow, into the railway worker line. To this day, I don’t know what made him do it, but at the last moment he grabbed me, too, without a guard noticing, and very likely saved my life.”

For seven years, we gathered favors, debts, allies, and a few enemies among the boys and men who came and left Newgate Prison. We were leaders among them, young and strong, feared and respected. They came to know Dougan and me as ‘the Blackheart Brothers,’ as we both had black hair, dark eyes, and sharp fists.”

That Dorian Blackwell could laugh at a time like this astounded her. But he did. The sound so devoid of true mirth, it caused goose pimples to rise on her skin and her nipples to tighten painfully. It was a dark sound, like the rest of him, and it washed over her with chilling totality. “I don’t see what’s so funny, it was only a question.”

“There are immense differences between the Count of Monte Cristo and the Blackheart of Ben More. Edmond Dantes was given his treasure. He never had to stoop to the things I did in order to take it. In prison, he was only whipped on his anniversary. He was isolated in his own cell, which Alexandre Dumas never imagined would be preferable to what we had to endure. He was never stabbed, raped, publicly flogged, humiliated, beaten within an inch of his life, or taken ill and left for dead.”

“Dougan would rather have submitted to his thousand tortures than to have you submit to one. He wouldn’t have survived your suffering. He loves you that much.” “Loved,” she sobbed. “Loved me, and because of it, he didn’t survive! His love for me got him killed.” A smothering nausea overtook her, images of the boy she loved suffering in the graphic ways Blackwell described assaulted her imagination until she wanted to crawl out of her own skin to escape them.

Dorian stood in the archway of his castle and watched the woman flee as if for her life. “Let her go, Walters,” he ordered, stopping his cook from going after her and hauling her back. “Name’s Frank,” Walters insisted, though he obediently returned to Dorian’s side. It took a moment for the words to penetrate Dorian’s concentration, so focused as it was on the retreating form running with desperate abandon toward the pavilion, her skirts the color of sea foam billowing out behind her. Finally, he glanced over at his biggest and most pliable employee. “Frank?” Walters inclined his head toward the pavilion. “She named me this morning.” “Of course she did,” Dorian muttered.

“You were in Newgate with Dougan Mackenzie.” She didn’t pose it as a question, more of a soft declaration, one he couldn’t deny without perjuring himself. Murdoch froze. His stout form working through a shiver as he found something arresting about her shawl draped across the chair. “Aye,” he gruffly confirmed. “For five long years.” “What was your crime?” He turned to her slowly, his face a mask of shame and pain. “My only crime, dear girl, was love.” He must have read the lack of comprehension on her face, because he continued. “I had a prolonged affair with the son of an earl from Surrey. When his father found out, charges were brought against me, and the man I loved turned on me in court, branding me a … predator.”

Ye became something of a patron saint to us all. Our daughter. Our sister. Our … Fairy. Without even knowing it, ye gave us—him—a little bit of sunshine and hope in a world of shadow and pain.”

“I mean to say, I know it doesna seem like it now, but ye can trust him. The rest of us, we’d lay down our lives for yers, but Blackwell … he’d do that and more. He’d rip the beating heart from his chest. He’d give up his soul if ye’d only—” “It is making a rather large and fallacious assumption that I have a heart to give … or a soul.” Dorian Blackwell’s smooth voice didn’t echo through the washroom as theirs did.

“How fortunate for you that the water obscures so much.” Blackwell shifted in his chair, his knees falling wider and his nostrils flaring. “Would Dougan Mackenzie forgive this coercion?” she challenged, doing her best to ignore the stirrings of her own body. “If you owe him as much as you claim, would he not wish you to spare my modesty?” The spark of heat in his eyes died for a moment, before flaring brighter than before. “When we meet in hell, I’ll ask his forgiveness.”

Farah knew Dorian Blackwell had his secrets, ones buried deep enough to be licked by the flames of hell. Could she be tied to them as his wife? Did she dare? Ye canna marry anyone else, Fairy. Ye belong to me. Only me. Her heart clenched and dipped, pulling the lids of her eyes down with the weight of an old and heavy burden. “This isn’t what he would have wanted,” she told herself in a wavering voice.

Oh, Dougan, why send me this dark horse? Farah inwardly railed. Why ask the devil in the flesh to find and protect me?

“Other than Dougan, I’ve been without a family for over twenty years.” Farah pushed herself up until she stood before the Blackheart of Ben More completely nude. “What I want from you is a child.”

“What about me do you find distasteful?” “It isn’t that.” The instinct to protect her from hurt was a hard one to smother. “Then…” Her gaze bounced to the side, her arms inching up to cover her breasts, now quivering with a chill. “Are you and Mr. Murdoch somehow involved—” “Christ, no!” Running frustrated fingers through his hair he paced away from her, needing to fill his eyes with something other than the bounty of her glorious skin, and then back toward her, already craving the sight of it. How often since they met had he secretly fantasized? How much torment had this woman already caused him? How much more could he take? “Then … why?” she asked, the boldness seeping out of her voice.

“My body could take yours until you begged me for mercy.” Her full lower lip dropped open, and the silver of her irises overtook the green as he knew it was wont to do. “Then do it,” she whispered in a quivering voice. “I’ll marry you, and you have my permission to—take me however you’d like, until I am with child.” She blinked often as she said this, and held her tiny fists tightly at her sides, but her posture, her expression, remained resolute.

“How do you kill people if you do not touch them?” she asked curiously, then shook her head, a peculiar expression twisting her mouth. “I never thought I’d ask such a question.” “I often wear gloves,” he answered honestly. “Also, not every weapon requires physical contact.” “Of course,” she said automatically, though her brows furrowed as if puzzling out a problem. “But, with your gloves on, you have come into contact with others?” “Rarely. If it can’t be avoided.”

“I—suppose if I was being completely practical, I could take a lover. That would solve both of our problems, wouldn’t it?” “I would kill any man who dared touch you,” he informed her coldly.

“Your gloves,” she murmured, as though struck with a bit of genius. “What?” The pink of her cheeks deepened and she visibly gathered her courage to explain. “I’ve spent a great deal of time over the last ten years in the company of street and dock prostitutes,” she began. “And I’ve learned from them that to conduct their business out in the open like they do they rarely have to disrobe. In fact, I gather that very little in the way of contact is required.” The idea angered Dorian, because it tempted him. “You want me to treat you like a bloody dock walker?” She leveled him a droll look, though her cheeks still burned with timidity. “Not particularly. My point was that I think we could achieve—intercourse—without a great deal of touching.” His lip curled, but his thighs clenched in response. “You aren’t serious?” “You could wear your gloves, your shirt, your kilt or trousers, indeed, your vest and evening jacket if you were so inclined.”

“Of course,” she murmured, lifting another bite to her lips, stilling the impulse to ask how he’d obtained the wound. His hand paused in the middle of bringing his first bite to his lips. “You still say that,” he breathed, a bit of the chill lifting from the air. “Pardon?” He paused. “Dougan told me that was your answer for everything. ‘Of course,’ as though all you learned was as it should be, and so you accepted it.” “He told you that?” At Dougan’s name, she opted to drink the rest of her wine. “Yes.”

His expression relaxed into a resemblance of amusement. “Why is that?” “You have the reputation of a hedonist.” “Maybe so, but you have the palate of one.” He indicated the overladen table. A reluctant smile interrupted her next bite. “Touché.”

“Everyone speculates about what goes on here at Ben More Castle,” she ventured. “I’m quite surprised at the lack of virgin sacrifices and torture chambers. Though you do have your share of interesting characters in your employ.”

“You never entertain people here?” she queried. “You mean for reasons other than ritual sacrifice or torture?” His lips twitched again, curling higher this time than she’d ever seen them.

“At any rate, a great deal of the things said about me are utter rubbish.” “Such as?” she challenged, hating the breathless note in her voice. “That I’ve killed more than a thousand men with my bare hands. That I broke out of Newgate by bending the iron bars. That I defeated the Duchess of Cork’s husband in a fit of jealous rage. Oh, and my most favorite, that I personally assassinated the infamous crime lord Bloody Rodney Granger with a quill pen.”

Finishing his last stitch, Dorian inspected his handiwork. It would heal and scar nicely. A different scar caught his eye, and he ran a finger across the long-healed wound. He had to make sure she never saw this, for it would expose a secret he could never reveal. For it could be the destruction of them both.

Hard, ruthless tyrant. Abused, wounded boy. An empty heart full of promise, and a soul of shadows in need of sunlight.

“No wonder he lit out of here this morning like the devil chased him. He knew we’d all turn on him and flay his skin from his bones with a dull knife for treating ye like this. And on yer wedding night! I doona care if he is Dorian bloody Blackwell, when I see him I’m going to—”

“Lieutenant?” Carlton Morley’s pistol was aimed right where Dorian’s heart would go, his finger caressing the trigger with sensual promise. A large blond bobby stepped from the line. “Yes, Chief Inspector?” “Arrest them.” “Which ones?” the lieutenant asked, his eyes flicking from Farah with astonished recognition to Dorian with apprehension. Morley wasn’t glaring daggers at Dorian, but at Farah. “All of them.”

“Lucy Boggs. She’s a whore, same as I, only younger and prettier. Was picked from the streets to work at some uppity place on the Strand called Regina’s. Next thing we ’ear, she’s a bloomin’ countess in all the society papers.” The wounded prostitute guffawed a few times, not appearing to feel the pain in her swollen lips and cheeks. “If Lucy Boggs is nobility, I’m the bloody Virgin Mary.” “Gemma!” For the second time that night, Farah threw her arms around the woman. “You may have just saved the day!” “Awright, awright…” The woman shrugged out of her embrace, uncomfortable with the genuine show of affection. “Can’t ’elp you out there in the real world. No one would take the word of a lot of cocksuckers like us over that of ’er magistrate ’usband, Mr. Warrington.”

Justice Whidbey turned his hawklike face toward Warrington. “Don’t you mean, for your wife to be granted what is hers?” he queried. “Surely you know that when one is not born a peer of the realm, as husband to a countess, one’s title as earl will be a courtesy only. One would be called ‘Lord’ and granted stewardship of the properties, but the other rights and privileges of peerage will only be granted your heir and issue.”

“It was a trick question. I’d forgotten your birthday was so close to mine, and shared my spice cake out of pure guilt.” His lined face wrinkled as he smiled with a fond memory. “You were a kind little soul, unspoiled for a girl raised in such wealth. You forgave me instantly and informed me that spice cake was, indeed, your favorite present ever received.”

With their intrepid and enterprising cousins across the pond to the west, and their far-reaching interests in the east, perhaps in a hundred years or so, they’d all be connected. The economy would expand. Telegraphs would improve. Technology advance. And the world would become a small and manageable place, nothing but a ball trapped in the hands of greedy men like him until they closed their fists and crushed it.

“Dorian, I know you’re cross with me,” she began. “Today was quite a victory, and I’d like to celebrate it as friends.” She came to a stop behind him. Close. Too close. “Tell me what I’ve done? What may I do to put things right between us?” She could stop torturing him in that fucking dress, for one. She could cease smelling like lilac water and springtime. She could cease being the voice in his head, encouraging his repressed humanity to take root.

He bent over her, the width of his shoulders engulfing the slimness of hers. “I’m like this all the bloody time around you. I hate it. Do you know that? I have no control. I just want to fuck and fuck and fuck until nothing matters anymore. Until we can no longer move our limbs or lift our heads to eat.” He flexed his still-hard cock inside of her. “This is supposed to go away after I come. But it doesn’t. Not with you, wife. My passion is this insatiable perversion.”

“Of course it’s possible,” she said. “It was your Gaelic spell that you said to me in the vestry at Applecross. Those last words.” May we chance to live again, May our hearts meet again, And remember that we loved. “I remember, Dougan. And I know you never forget.” She let the petticoat fall away and traced the lines of his brutal face with fingers soft as feathers, learning and memorizing this new incarnation of him. “My soul recognized your soul—and was reborn.