Star Crossed Seduction Read Free Page A

even so, he couldn’t stop himself from scanning the crowd, searching for her jaunty bobbing feather.
    He grabbed the major’s arm. “Let’s go.”
    They’d dawdled long enough chasing after some will-of-the-wisp—a stranger, dressed in black, glimpsed for just a moment on a foggy evening, who had, for that one instant, seemed like a beacon in the gloom. He’d let his fancy run away with him. Whatever she’d done for the crossing boy, she had nothing for him. If he were to find her again, it might only be to see her pressed up against the wall servicing some wretch for a couple of pennies. Up close, she might smell like the men who surrounded him. She might turn out to be pocked and gap-toothed, barely intelligible, speaking the harsh cant of the streets.
    It was time to go on to Mother Bristwick’s. Her girls might look at him with hard eyes, but they’d do what they were paid to do—which obviously he needed. Lust did funny things to a man’s mind. When it was taken care of, perhaps he wouldn’t be so morbid.
    B ut as Trev turned to make his way out of the crowd, the tiny girl he’d seen standing by the fire approached him. She held a sheaf of papers under one arm and was waving a printed broadside, which featured a crude woodcut of horses in battle and the verses the ballad singer had just sung, with her other.
    “How much?” he asked.
    “Only two pennies.”
    He reached into his pocket. The broadsheet would entertain his mother, whose idea of military glory was not far from that of the ballad singer. The girl handed him the broadside and faded back into the crowd.
    As he watched her go, someone jostled against his side. With instincts honed in the bazaar he whipped around, one hand flying to his pocket. He knew what that jostling meant: It was the oldest trick in the book—the bump and grab—practiced by teams of pickpockets from Land’s End to Calcutta. One would do something to get the victim to show where he kept his money, then the other would take advantage of his inattention to rob him.
    But as he spun around to foil the scheme, he stopped, paralyzed, when he spotted his assailant: It was the woman in black.
    When she realized he’d seen her, she froze with one hand thrust deep into an opening of her long black skirt. Then she hid her face in her shawl, whipped around, and flung herself into the crowd.
    “Stop, thief!” howled the man standing beside Trev, launching himself after her. Others took up his cry.
    Trev’s reached a hand into his pocket. His coins were gone, every last one of them. It hit him in the gut. Why did it have to be her?
    But why should he care? He’d figured her for a whore. Why be surprised when she’d turned out to be a pickpocket instead? In the harsh hierarchy of the street, her calling might be a step up.
    With studied casualness, he checked his other pockets, careful to avoid tipping off other criminals in the crowd as to where he kept his valuables. Fortunately, the pickpocket’s prying fingers hadn’t found anything else. But though his loss was trivial, her success made him uneasy. A man who followed his calling couldn’t afford to drop his guard. He wouldn’t last long without it.
    If the woman in black had thought to find safety by hiding within the crowd, she’d been mistaken, for the men making up its outer circle had drawn together and linked their brawny arms to create a barrier. She’d not get out again. Not with the size of those brutes.
    Trev stood on his toes to add a few more inches to the height that already gave him the advantage over the men who pressed in all around him, but he couldn’t find her. Then a cry rose from the other side of the crowd, which parted to reveal a thick man wearing the leather apron of a shoemaker. He had the girl by the wrists and was dragging her toward Trev.
    “Steal from honest people, will you, missy?” he shouted. “Not while I’m about. Off to Newgate you’ll be, but not before I get my reward.”
    The