They were staring at her. Not openly, but carefully, so as not to appear rude or ill-mannered. Most ladies found such attentions flattering. Especially when delivered by two handsome and well-dressed gentlemen. Even if the stares occurred in an ancient, rather poorly kept cemetery. Not Miss Emmaline Peachum. She’d had enough attention over the last few months to last Methuselah’s lifetime. From barristers. And bailiffs. And Bow Street Runners. And newspapermen. And victims of Reginald Peachum’s schemes.

The two gentlemen stood close enough to witness the hurried service, but not close enough to appear a part of it. They spoke to each other—short sentences, sometimes only single words. And still their eyes seldom left her. In her only remaining wool dress, dyed black, and an old bonnet covered in worn black ribbon, she resembled a brown wren in a crow’s feathers, and well she knew it. Nothing to attract the intent study of two such lordly specimens.

Emmaline had a peer or two in her family tree, but nothing like these gentlemen. They were both tall and well built, one leaner and taller than the other, but both over six feet. The slightly shorter one was pleasantly handsome. He had a face prone to laughter and good humor. He stood in the graveyard as if at a ball or strolling in Hyde Park. But it was the other who riveted her attention, when she should be heeding the words the rector spoke over her dead father.

The taller man was lean. Hair as black as a starless night sky was as carefully cut as his perfectly tailored clothes. Only when he tilted his head to attend a remark from his companion did she see the long, unruly curls tied in a neat cue at the back of his neck. His face—all slashed angles with sharp cheekbones, a squared cut of a chin, and a blade of a nose. He reminded her of a hawk, a creature of fierce nobility and singular purpose. He was a mast of a man, hewn from some ancient oak, and he stood as if defying any force of God or nature to take him off his feet. Only a sea captain planted himself on solid ground in such a way. His stance and the golden brown of his skin confirmed it—King’s Navy through and through. And a captain by the way he tilted his head and studied her. As if she had no business here at all.

She chaffed her hands and clasped them together to hide the holes worn in her gloves. Perhaps it was the cold. Ladies were considered such frail creatures. Gentlemen no doubt considered a London graveyard too dank and chill a place for a lady’s delicate constitution. Emmaline could think of no other reason her attendance at her late, not-terribly-lamented father’s burial merited such censure. She’d mistakenly assumed no one would attend the funeral of England’s latest notorious villain; otherwise, she would not have come. Especially to be delivered a silent scold by two lofty strangers.

That wasn’t quite true. Since her brother’s death at Trafalgar, Emmaline was the only child her father had left. She didn’t want to think of Ned’s disapproval had she allowed the man who sired them to go to the hereafter with no one to display at least a semblance of mourning. But then, Ned had escaped their father’s schemes and machinations at sixteen, when he ran off to join the King’s Navy, only to die in battle three years later. For Emmaline there had been no escape. Until now.

The wind galloped through St. Pancras’s graveyard, kicking shards of icy rain against the church’s towering stained-glass windows. The patter was almost musical. Which was fortunate, as Emmaline had no money to pay the bell-ringer to toll the death knell. She had no money at all. Everything from the plain wooden casket to the gravediggers had been paid for by the silver-haired rector who now droned out the burial service from the Book of Common Prayer with astonishing alacrity for a man of his years. To her surprise, the rector at St. Pancras was a distant relation of her father. Very distant. And very quick to tell her he did not want the relationship known and this last bit of charity was all he had to offer her family.

“Miss Peachum? Miss Peachum?” The rector cleared his throat and gave her an inquiring glance from across the casket waiting to be lowered into the ground. The grave diggers, caps clutched in their hands, looked up with equally questioning eyes. It was cold, spitting rain, and they were ready to be done with it. 

Emmaline swallowed painfully and nodded. The men jammed their caps on their heads, took up the ropes slung beneath the casket, and lowered it into the ground. The first clumps of dirt struck the lid. She jumped slightly, with no idea why. Perhaps it was the finality of it all. With the funeral done, her nightmare should be over. Truthfully, it had just begun.

She shivered. Her thin stockings did little to warm the blocks of ice her feet had become. She tugged her last threadbare cloak around her and turned to walk up the stone-paved path toward the front gates of the cemetery.

Only to be confronted by a shouting, gawking crowd of confirmation that all her assumptions about attendance at her father’s funeral had been utterly incorrect. She’d not darkened the doors of the Old Bailey a single day of his trial for this very reason. Every newspaperman, scandalmonger, and gawker content to waste his half-day off in London had fought for seats in the courtroom. She’d not have subjected herself to that circus had she wanted to do so. She’d never dreamed her father’s funeral would be the same. Then again, she’d never thought he’d die after only a few weeks in prison. Like Ned, he’d made his escape. She was well and truly alone.

How in God’s name was she to get home? The cemetery gates nearly groaned at the weight of people pressed against them. The mass of humanity screaming her name stood between her and any chance of finding a hackney, if she had the money for one. She’d not survive trying to fend them off should she attempt to walk to the Sloane Street house from which she’d be evicted any day now. She chewed her lower lip and tapped her foot a beat or two.

“Miss Peachum?”

Emmaline started and turned to find one of the gentlemen who’d studied her. It was the pleasantly handsome one, the one with the open countenance and almost indolent demeanor. His eyes were kind and his voice held the hint of a Scottish burr. He executed a brief, elegant bow.

She stepped back. “Newspaperman, bill collector, or angry gentleman my father swindled?” she challenged with the last bit of confidence she retained.

He smiled. “Marriage maker.”

“I beg your pardon?” When had she last eaten? Perhaps a lack of food accounted for this hallucination.

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Sir Stirling James and I am aware of your late father’s crimes.”

“Who in London isn’t, sir?” Emmaline wanted only to go home, sit down in her favorite chair—before the bailiff came for it, and enjoy a cup of tea as if her world was not sinking into the seventh level of hell.

“His death has left you without a protector, resources, and soon, no place to lay your head, unless my sources are mistaken.”

“Your sources?” She shook her head and made to step around him. Perhaps she might find a hackney or a way home on the other side of the churchyard. “His death ended his troubles, Sir Stirling. His counterfeit lottery tickets and his bilking everyone from a duke’s heir to a bawdy house madam was only the beginning of mine.” She walked past the other gentleman who’d watched her so carefully from just beyond her father’s grave. Something about the way he looked at her sent a shiver down her spine.

Sir Stirling caught her arm and pulled it gently through his own. He patted her gloved hand as it rested in the crook of his elbow. The other gentleman gave her a curt nod and fell into step several paces behind them. She and this Sir Stirling James continued toward the church and then veered around it past the small rectory toward the gates just beyond, where a crested carriage and four stood waiting. A striking black thoroughbred, tied behind, pawed the cobblestones in irritation. The unsettling navy man strode silently to the horse and in one fluid act of grace swung into the saddle.

“Does he speak?” Emmaline nodded in the direction of the horse and rider.

Sir Stirling grinned. “At random intervals.”

She shook her head. “I appreciate your gallantry, sir, but I prefer to take care of my own troubles.” She tried once more to pull away.

“I may have a solution for your troubles, Miss Peachum, if you are willing to trust me,” Sir Stirling said.

“Trust you? In truth we have not even been properly introduced.” Emmaline pushed back the brim of her bonnet as he led her to the carriage. A footman lowered the steps and held open the door. “Unless you are a solicitor who has come to tell me I have inherited a fortune from some long, lost relation or a hackney driver who can slip me past that crowd of jackals who are coming this way—”

The navy man brought his horse alongside her.

“I’ll handle them.”

He spoke! Three words in a rich baritone that seemed to rumble up from an ocean’s floor. Or the bowels of hell. Emmaline stared up into eyes the blue grey of an evening mist. A London mist one dared not venture into for fear of becoming lost, body and soul. She felt those eyes on her even after he rode back through the cemetery to head off the crowd that had pushed past St. Pancras’s front gates.

Sir Stirling handed her into the carriage and took the seat behind the horses. “If I may be so bold,” he started. “You don’t need a fortune, Miss Peachum. Your troubles require more drastic measures. You need a husband.”

 

 

“You need a husband.”

Sir Stirling James had said a great deal on the carriage ride from the cemetery to Sloane Street. Emmaline even remembered most of what he’d said. But those four words stood out in her mind and circled her thoughts like the refrain to a child’s nursery rhyme. She heard them as he helped her out of the carriage. She heard them as he escorted her to the door of the house her family no longer owned. And she heard them as he took his leave and asked her to consider his proposition.

“What did that one want?” Birdie asked even as she followed Emmaline into the front parlor and divested her of her damp cloak and somewhat bedraggled bonnet. “Money or blood? He’s got some cheek dunning a lady at her father’s funeral. Even if the father was a conniving thief of the first order.”

Trust her faithful maid to get straight to the heart of the matter. As she was the only servant who remained and had been with Emmaline for twenty of Emmaline’s twenty-six years, she had earned the right to be… forthright.

“Neither.” Emmaline stepped to the window overlooking the street. The drapes were gone so the view was clear. She sidled behind the wall and peeked around the window frame. Sir Stirling sat in his carriage and conversed with the navy man who had caught up to them on horseback once they turned onto Mount Street. “He wants me to allow him to auction off my hand in marriage.”

“Hmpf!” Birdie came to stand beside her. Hands on hips, she made no attempt to hide, but stared blatantly out at the street. “He doesn’t look like a cock bawd.”

“Birdie!” Emmaline’s face blazed with heat. “His name is Sir Stirling James. He’s a gentleman.”

“Doesn’t mean he ain’t a cock bawd. Riding in a first-rate carriage, he is. Who’s the toff on the horse? His bodyguard?”

Emmaline sidled out of her hiding spot to stand next to her maid. Sir Stirling and his friend, deep in conversation, didn’t look back at the house. “I don’t know. That one didn’t have a great deal to say.”

“A man with little to say?” Birdie stepped closer to the window. She shook off Emmaline’s restraining arm. “And criminal handsome too. I’d bid on him.”

“Who?”

“The man on the horse.” She turned to give Emmaline one of her irritating perusals. “You’re not dead yet, Miss Em. You’d have to be not to notice a man that fine.”

Emmaline snorted. “He has the look of a navy man.”

“Happen he knew Mr. Ned. God rest his soul.” Birdie rubbed the fog from the windowpanes.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t find out how many sailors Papa swindled with his lottery.”

“Are you going to take the gentleman up on his offer?”

Emmaline peered out the window. The Navy man had routed the rabble at the cemetery and caught up with the carriage in short order. Apparently, he was as pointed and quick at command as he was with words.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she murmured. “Even if this Sir Stirling could find a gentleman foolish enough to marry Reginald Peachum’s daughter, I’m not some prize heifer to be sold at auction. I neither need nor want a husband, thank you very much.”

“I don’t know about a husband, but even a heifer needs a place out of the rain with winter coming.” Birdie fumbled under her skirts and withdrew a key. “The bailiff and his men came by while you were seeing Mr. Peachum put to bed with a shovel. They tried to get into the library, but I told them I didn’t have the key.” She dropped it into Emmaline’s outstretched hand.

“They can’t take the books. They’re my property, not father’s.” She started for the parlor door. “I have my grandfather’s will and—”

 Birdie stayed her with a gentle hand on her arm. “They didn’t come to take the books, Miss Em. They came to throw them out into the street so they can prepare the house for the new owners.” She took Emmaline’s hands and squeezed them gently. “They are coming back by the end of the week.”

“So, it is well and truly over.” Emmaline looked around the forlorn parlor. She patted Birdie’s hand and walked back to the window. Sir Stirling’s carriage pulled away. The mysterious gentleman with the intriguing eyes turned his horse in the opposite direction. He looked at the house, into the window, directly at Emmaline. She did not have the power to turn away. He nodded once and set his mount in motion. Her gaze followed him until he turned the corner out of sight.

“Like I said,” Birdie said as she joined her at the window. “Criminal handsome.” She grinned her wicked Birdie grin. The one she used to cajole Emmaline into a more hopeful mood when all was lost.

“We’ve had enough of the criminal in this household, Birdie.”

“Hmpf! There’s criminal and then there’s criminal.” The maid left the parlor, her merry laughter following her into the foyer and down the corridor to the kitchen.

Their lives were reduced to this. Birdie pretending to be cheerful in spite of their perilous position. Emmaline feigning courage when she had none at all. Sir Stirling and all his talk of making good matches, the sort where love bloomed and the marriage was a happy one. He said he wanted to help her. Marriage had not helped her mother. It had bound her and her children to a criminal. Emmaline would be forced to live with that legacy all her life. Unless…

She dropped her scrunched up shoulders and marched out of the parlor, across the foyer, and down the far corridor to a set of double doors. She fit the key into the lock and opened the doors into the house’s small library. With each step she took into the room her anxiety fell and her willingness to consider the ridiculous rose. She pulled the expensive calling card from the pocket of her dress.

No, what she needed wasn’t criminal. What she needed was one step above criminal. Sir Stirling James was right. What Emmaline needed was a husband. But on her terms.