It was late when he reached London, but he didn’t hesitate. The warrens of the West End were well-known to him—it didn’t take him long to track down the Wart in their old hunting grounds. He leaned against a lamppost, surveying the world he had once known so well, and waited.
“Well, look at the toff, wandering down in the gutter with us lowlifes.” The rough voice came from just behind him, but Luca didn’t jump. He and the Wart had perfected the art of silent movement, and he would have expected nothing less. “Why no, I think it’s nothing but a gyppo, come amongst us city dwellers.” Wart moved around to the front, and Luca didn’t give a damn, he pulled the man into his arms for a heartfelt embrace. It had been too long since he’d seen him, but Wart liked to keep his distance. Luca had grown up with him, picked pockets, and serviced gentlemen with him, but Wart had been faster than he was when the press gangs had come, and Luca had found the sea.
“Lemme alone,” Wart said, shoving him back a moment after returning the embrace. “I’ve got me reputation to consider. They’ll think I’m a nancy boy, and I’m done with that lay.” He spat into the filthy street. The sky over London was thick with greasy smoke from the manufactories, and the soot had covered everything in the Seven Dials area, including Wart, who was half Luca’s size nowadays. “So how does it feel to be a contributing member of society?”
He grinned, giving Wart a punch to his thick shoulder. “Smothering.”
Wart laughed. “I should think so. Too bad the gangs caught you and made an upstanding citizen of you.”
“Not quite. I was a pirate before I turned honest.”
Wart rolled his eyes. “Never say it, mate! The very word honest makes me shudder.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t torment you with it.”
Wart settled one haunch on the remains of a broken wagon. They were deep in the back alleys near the notorious Dials, where filth and despair were taken for granted and the police never showed their faces, and the air smelled of refuse and human waste and the stench of life rotting. At one time it had smelled like home, and Luca could still feel a faint tugging.
“So what are you wanting from me, Luca, me boy? It won’t come cheap, not when you have the blunt to spare,” Wart said amiably. “And don’t be expecting me to change me ways—I ain’t leaving the Dials to be your bloody pensioner. I like me life here.”
“I’ve given up offering,” Luca said. “But I’ve got a job for you.”
“That’s different then,” Wart said. They both knew that Wart would do anything he could for his old pal, free of charge, and Luca would give him the shirt off his back, but it was a game they played.
“It’s about a woman,” Luca said.
Wart shook his head. “It always is. Though not so much with you. Women have always been besotted by that pretty face of yours; I can’t believe you’ve finally found one who’s immune to it. More power to her.”
“What makes you think it’s a woman I want?”
“What else could it be? You wouldn’t be looking for your mother—that gypsy trull was long gone after her old man sold you to Morris the Sweep. No, you’re wanting to get between someone’s legs, and I can’t imagine anyone saying no to you.”
“Ah, Wart, I didn’t know you felt that way about me,” he shot back, unruffled by the slight against his mother. It was a fair enough description.
“I don’t care how pretty you are, you’re not my type,” Wart shot back. “Only if you paid me.”
“I thought you said you’d given that up. How about I pay you not to?”
Wart laughed. “I miss the old days, I do. We were a devilish pair around here, weren’t we? No pocket was safe. Too bad you couldn’t run as fast you could talk.”
Luca shrugged. “It all worked out for the best. We both know it’s a waste of time to think about ‘what ifs.’ Do you want to hear about this woman or are we going to keep talking about the good old days of sodomy for hire?”
Wart grinned at him. He still looked like a boy in the dim light of the Dials, a very bad boy. “You think I’m going to weep over it? We did what we had to do to survive, neither of us are squeamish, and we don’t complain. Unless you developed a taste for it?”
“Sod off,” Luca said amiably.
“Tell me about the woman then. What do you need from me? I can always kidnap and tie her down for you, but if I remember rightly you were never much for rape.”
“No,” he said shortly. Not when he’d had to endure it himself. He’d take no one by force. Of course, despite Wart’s jibes he had little doubt he could talk anyone he wanted into his bed, including his lying maidservant.
And that was definitely where he wanted her. Soft and naked beneath him. Though she wouldn’t be a sweet, gentle fuck. There was something about her, something beneath her meek exterior that was so fiery that he expected she’d almost be able to keep up with his unexpectedly fierce hunger for her.
“There’s a young woman who’s just come to work for me down in Devonport,” he said, leaning against the broken wagon with a complete disregard for the state of his clothes. “She calls herself Mary Greaves, and she’s been hired as a maidservant. Recommended by one of my solicitors, Matthew Fulton. But she’s not who she says she is. She tries for a Northern accent but half the time she sounds like Mayfair.”
“That’s what comes from soft living, me boy,” Wart said with a contemptuous sniff that was only half playful. “Maidservants and solicitors! Next thing we know you’ll be getting leg shackled to some virgin and making up to the bloody queen.”
“Victoria’s not my type,” he said, deliberately not mentioning Gwendolyn. Indeed, he was beginning to wonder why’d he’d thought respectability had been such a good idea.
“Maybe the girl saw you on the street and followed you home for y