The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(87)

“Any’fing,” he’d vowed, fighting for breath against a young lad’s lust. “I’ll give you whatever you ask.”

“A kiss.” It hadn’t been a request, but a command.

The kiss had been his first, but not hers. Not Caroline. She’d been kissed too early and too often. They’d been sixteen in that alley, and she’d been charging money for her favors for two years.

Cutter hadn’t liked that. There had been a new frenzy to their theft after she’d taken to the streets. A sense of urgency. If they could make enough to pay for a regimental commission, their lives could drastically improve. They could send their wages home.

Cutter. Cutter “Dead Eye” Morley. Caroline’s twin brother. The stickiest fingers in Spitalfields. Maybe in all of London. He could throw a pebble in a pail at fifty paces and break a window with his slingshot from down the row. He’d been light and fleet-footed, scaling buildings and scanning the city from rooftops while Ash—then called Dorian—had been the brute on the ground. Lifting, beating, or breaking what he had to.

“You could marry Caroline,” Cutter’s young self suggested earnestly as he balanced on a dock rail while they’d dawdled through the markets smelling worse than the wares of dead fish. “Then we’d be brothers. If you died, she’d get a widow’s pension.”

“Could do,” Ash had agreed. He could marry the pretty Caroline. He could save her from the streets. If he excelled, she’d be an officer’s wife. “Could do,” he’d repeated, liking this idea more and more. “But if I was supporting your sister, who’d get your pension if you were killed?”

“Easy.” Cutter’s slim shoulders shrugged as he slid his friend a sly look. “Your mother. She’s still got her charms, hasn’t she? Think she’d marry me?”

“Buggar off!” Ash had snagged at Cutter and he’d jumped away, laughing.

“Don’t be sore at me. I won’t make you call me Papa.”

They’d chased through the markets, upsetting both crates and fishmongers in their mad dash. Ash had been fast, but no one could catch Cutter. If he had, he’d have done the boy no true damage. They’d have grappled and brawled, as brothers are wont to do, before one of them cried peace.

Theirs had been a merry threesome. Cutter, Caroline, and Dorian. He couldn’t remember all their years together. He couldn’t recall their meager meals or their magical moments. But an innocent, boyish love speared his chest with a point so exquisitely sharp, it robbed him of breath.

They’d been family.

Until there had been blood.

Blood and water. Always blood and water.

And gold.

Gold hair waving like reeds in the soot and soil of the Thames.

Caroline.

With a raw sound, Ash’s knees gave out. He pressed both his palms to his temples as he groaned her name with the same anguish he’d felt the morning they’d lost her.

Word spread that a body had been pulled out of the river by Hangman’s Dock, so he and Cutter had drifted to that part of Wapping to catch the spectacle and maybe pick a few pockets.

Once they’d lazily made their way to the front of the crowd, he’d amassed nearly two shillings’ worth.

Then Cutter had screamed. A pitch of agony which he couldn’t believe he’d ever forgotten. A sound like that left scars on one’s soul.

Caroline. Saucy, seductive, resourceful Caroline. Her wit and smile had both been quick as her brother’s feet.

Quick enough to draw the attention of a killer.

Cutter had gone mad. He’d knocked out two bobbies and had to be restrained by seven more to keep away from his beloved sister’s body.

A part of him had died that day.

As inconsolable as Cutter was, that was Ash’s first taste of cold, calculating fury. He didn’t want to grieve. He didn’t want to talk to the coppers. He wasn’t interested in justice.

He wanted vengeance. Blood for blood.

He’d dragged the disconsolate Cutter around the city, asking the right questions, sussing out the exact customer who’d enticed her home that night.

They’d found him at the docks not two days later.

And Ash had held the fucker down while Cutter … well, he did the cutting.

It had been a first kill. For both of them. And the screams had drawn the constable from his watch. To protect Cutter, Ash had broken a window and nabbed something valuable in plain view of the police. He’d taken off, leading the patrolman away from the site of their revenge.

He’d even allowed himself to be caught.

For Cutter.

For Caroline.

They’d thrown him in Newgate for a handful of years. He hadn’t cared. Justice had been served with a blade in the dark. As it would ever be for the subsequent two decades.

“Caroline,” he groaned, wiping at his face, startled that his hand came away wet, though whether from sweat or tears he couldn’t tell.

His first love. His first blood.

The memories began to flood him like a dam breaking. The cold overwhelming his veins as year after year returned in fragmented images and broken emotions. Faces. Names. Scents. Sounds.

With a raw breath, he reached out for his anchor. For the one soul he needed to ground him back to this time. To this place.

Lorelai.