Free The Perils of Pleasure by Julie Anne Long

that aloud ever again. Not even in a whisper. Not even here in St. Giles.” She was strangely furious, strangely exhilarated, strangely more terrified than she’d ever been. “In other words, don’t be a bloody fool.”
    She released his arm abruptly.
    Madeleine was the one who hailed the hackney, which had made its way up the street in fits and starts, threading its bulky way through the crowd. Hackneys were rare enough in this part of London. Not a lot of paying customers to be found in St. Giles.
    The driver took one look at the two of them and made as if to crack the ribbons again.
    “I’ve the fare, mate,” Madeleine protested in her best St. Giles patois.
    “Show me,” the driver ordered bluntly, extending an open, gloved hand and raising his gray eyebrows. Clearly she was a little too convincing as a gin-addled doxie.
    She showed him by dropping a shilling into his palm. The driver grunted and waved them inside with his chin.
    “The East India Docks,” she told him.
    He gave a bark of humorless laughter, and then a sigh, as if she’d confirmed something for him.
    Then Madeleine closed the door and pulled the cur tain shut over the miniature window, and they were alone in the relative dark. The hack lurched forward.
    It was better somehow to be moving, away from St. Giles, but still nothing felt safe about the enclosed space. Madeleine released a long breath. Her heart still rabbit-kicked inside her chest, so she breathed steadily as she tugged her bodice up once more, rewrapped and tucked her fichu around her throat and bosom, and leaned back against the seat, which was a bit like lean ing against the previous passenger, as it still smelled of rum, sweat, and poor-grade tobacco.
    The wheels ground over the cobblestones, making slow progress in these narrow streets. It would be faster going soon.
    They sat in silence for quite some time. Colin Ever-sea was looking down at the gin bottle and turning it about in his hand gingerly, slowly, as though it were an artifact.
    “I do know it’s not a lark,” he said quietly.
    And that was the extent of their conversation during the trip to the Tiger’s Nest.
    Chapter 5
    nm
    very one of the Everseas gave a start when they heard the hoofbeats thundering toward the house out in the square. The women closed their eyes tightly. Hands reached out for other hands and gripped, and Marcus had an impression of white knots against black clothing. The folded hands.
    And then it suddenly occurred to him that urgency to deliver the news about Colin was unseemly, to say the least. Dead was dead, after all.
    His father apparently had the same thought. He strode to the window with Jacob, Chase and Ian behind them. They looked down in time to see the messenger fling his reins out of his hands and bolt up the town house stairs.
    Marcus could see the man’s brilliant, face-splitting smile from the upper fl oor.
    Good heavens. Well, that was defi nitely inappropriate.
    The housekeeper let the man in, and he barreled up the stairs before being announced. They heard him shouting on the way up, and then the shouts became coherent words. “He’s gone! He’s bloody gone! Explo sions! Vanished!”
    Actually, they weren’t so much words as whooped syllables, accompanied by flailing arm gestures.
    Jacob got the man by the arm and gripped him. “Slow down. What in God’s name—”
    “Good God, but you should have seen it, Jacob—”
    The family ringed the messenger now, and hope was an agony. Breathing suspended entirely.
    “Why don’t you come to your point?” Jacob sug gested, in a tone that implied a certain underlying glee. As though he already suspected what the news would be.
    “Oh, you should have seen it,” the man said on a hush now, his face positively fulsome with the story. “Colin was on the scaffold. The crowd was cheering. And he was tied—” He saw the faces of the women and decided to forgo that part of the description. “And then there were