Loving Lady Lazuli (London Jewel Thieves Book 1)
LOVING LADY LAZULI
London Jewel Thieves
By Shehanne Moore
Black Wolf Books.
Kara imprint
Digital Edition Copyright © 2018 Shehanne Moore
Original publication by Etopia Press—2014
‘If he’d encountered her in a whorehouse, he’d have put down his fortune to possess her…’
LICENSE NOTES
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Other books by Shehanne Moore
Black Wolf Books
Splendor– London Jewel Thieves
The Unraveling of Lady Fury
His Judas Bride
Soul Mate Publishing
The Writer and The Rake – Time Mutants
The Viking and The Courtesan –Time Mutants
Meet the Author
When not cuddling inn signs in her beloved Scottish mountains alongside Mr. Shey, or spending time with their family, Shehanne Moore writes dark and smexy historical romance, featuring bad boys who need a bad girl to sort them out. She firmly believes everyone deserves a little love, forgiveness and a second chance in life.
Shehanne caused general apoplexy when she penned her first story, The Hore House Mystery—aged seven. From there she progressed to writing plays for her classmates, stories for her classmates, plays for real, comic book libraries for girls, various newspaper articles, ghost writing, nonfiction writing, and magazine editing. Stories for real were what she really wanted to write though and, having met with every rejection going; she sat down one day to write a romance, her way.
http://shehannemoore.wordpress.com/
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‘Together, Devorlane and Cassidy are a hot mess. Their intense and spectacular chemistry is all the more vivid for the verbal sparring that accompanies it. Ms. Moore keeps a strong grasp on the tension and friction between the two, making their eventual shared passion all the more exciting.’ - Author Erin Moore 'If you are looking for the traditional Regency period historical romance, you won't find it here. This was one of the darkest historical romances I've read in good long while. Being a little dark and twisty myself, I like this change of pace.’ - Night Owl Reviews ‘The bewitching Cassidy and the tormented but wickedly handsome Devorlane are not your every-day romantic leads - they are far more compelling.’ - Author – Kate Furnivall
A woman not even the ghost of Sapphire can haunt. A man who knows exactly who she is.
Only one man in England can identify her. Unfortunately he’s living next door.
Ten years ago sixteen year old Sapphire, the greatest jewel thief England has ever known, ruined Lord Devorlane Hawley’s life. Now she’s dead and buried, all Cassidy Armstrong wants is the chance to prove she was never that girl.
But her new neighbor is hell-bent on revenge and his word can bring her down. So when he asks her to be his mistress, or leave the county with a price on her head, Sapphire, who hates being owned, must decide...
What’s left for a woman with nowhere else to go, but to stay exactly where she is?
And hope, that when it comes to neighbors Devorlane Hawley won’t prove to be the one from hell.
DEDICATION
For Coreen, my lazuli-eyed daughter, this one’s for you.
With special thanks, as always, to John for his love and support; Eilis, my brown-eyed girl; Noelle, Antonia, Catherine and Incy—my writer buddies and bandits.
CHAPTER ONE
‘Sometimes we are drawn to people with terrible flaws in them because passion overrules reason.’
Carol Balawyder
England 1809
Ten years for a kiss. Yes. Devorlane Hawley, the fifth Duke of Chessington, could understand his companion wanting to get this straight. Ten sodding years. Imagine. What he’d have gotten for a bleeding fuck wasn’t worth considering, especially given he’d just finished indulging in the said activity.
“Probably more.” Edging himself free of the woman facing opposite, he let the clatter of hooves fill his head. “But let’s keep this decent, shall we, Charlie? I have sisters.”
“Sisters?”
“For now anyway.”
It was bad enough the first time he’d told that story, ten years ago, in his crass, blundering naivety, to those he’d thought might help him. Now that the coach clattered up the driveway, he was hardly about to expend further precious time wondering just how many more years might have been lost, when he needed to prepare himself for what lay ahead.
Nor, when his immaculately pressed trousers had cost a fool’s fortune, did he want them creased or stained.
Chessington. The place he had sworn never to return to, not even in a box.
Chessington. The place of ivory turrets and golden crenulations.
Chessington. Whose front door had been slammed in his face so acrimoniously that frost-flecked Christmas Eve.
Chessington …
Devorlane glanced through the steam blighted window. Not eagerly exactly—at least, he tried not to be, for all a thousand memories drew his sleeve.
Chessington—damn it all to hell—seemed to have shrunk since that door had reverberated inches from his nose, despite the glowing palette of late autumn sunlight painting the stone. He remembered it bigger, grander, with ornate statues on the sweeping lawn and, beyond the bare trees, spaces that boasted gilded cupolas, bowers festooned by a scented myriad of roses, that even on a winter’s day held fascination in their black roots and thorny stems.
Memory? A kittle thing for all it didn’t alter his plans one jot. Whether the building was small or large, was no odds to him.
The coach rumbled to a halt and he strove, when so much was required of his dignity, not to throw open the door in anything less than a leisurely fashion. Lucifer re-ascending to heaven would take his time. So would he.
Although, standing on the rough stone of what was now his doorstep, he admitted the house looked … poorer … dilapidated. A place from where the soul had fled, as opposed to a place he fully intended flaying the soul from. The plant pots crumbled around their desiccated contents. Grime from the week’s earlier storms coated the windows.
Eyeing his reflection darkening the coach window, he drew his brows the tiniest fraction, straightened his cravat. He looked like an uncertain prince of darkness perhaps. But damned diabolical as ever.
Ten years. To think there were times he’d been on the verge of letting go. How damnably glad he was he had resisted the temptation. Would he stand here now, staring at himself in the plate glass, older, harder, if he had done anything so inconceivably foolish? No. Which was why he squared his jaw and smoothed the tendril of flat, dark hair the wind had coaxed free. He had come to do this and he would. Keep this decent? Hell wouldn’t just crust with ice first, its fiery core locked in subterranean depths for centuries to come. Hell would be obliterated.
“Hell and damnation, Guv.” When it came to admiration, Charlie could barely suppress his, as he stumbled from the coach. “You got a flagpole’n everything. My lot would have counted themselves lucky ter have afforded the bleedin’ flag.”
True. Which was why Devorlane’s veins sang that his current good fortune could be shared with those less fortunate than himself. Charlie. And this … striving to find the words to describe the rare jewel he had scouted the sewers and whorehouses of London to find, he came up short enough as to be speechless. An exceptional occurrence, but one that boded well, where the present occupants of Chessington were concerned.
“‘Ow! A cut above moine then. He’ll be wanting us ter call him His bleedin’ lordship now, Charlie. Just watch this space. And him a bleedin’ thief.” The rare creature adjusted her voluminous pink skirts.
He extended a hand and drew her from the coach. He didn’t know her name. He didn’t need to. He didn’t want to know, any more than he wanted to know any of their names. Those cheaply perfumed whores. Those exotic creatures of the night, who satisfied his every whim. Every craving and carnal requirement.
All he knew was that none, no matter the essence of their perfume, or accomplishment of their ruby lips, were her.
The name he’d remember till the day he died.
The name he cursed to the furthest regions of hell.
Sapphire.
***
“Surprise!”
It had been ten years since that door had last opened to him and the shock could have been no greater had Devorlane limped across the damaged stone threshold into the wrong house.
That Tilly, damn her, should still be able to do this to him—and more. This wasn’t just about her outmaneuvering him. How much of his precious inheritance had been squandered on this damned wasteful nonsense? On making absolutely certain each and every one of those present was prepared to be in the same room as him?
Recognizing not one in the sea of faces, he could only assume it might be the whole damn lot, every brass farthing of it. In addition to the carriage loads of people she must have wheeled from London, scoured the hedgerows, the workhouses, the cottages of the poor, to find, she must have spent hours putting them through their dull but important paces. Now can we, all of us, please just remember? Devorlane’s a soldier, not a thief.
“Guv …”
He turned his head. “Make one move and I’ll kill you before you reach the door.”
Of course he wouldn’t. He had known Charlie too long and owed him too much. But to turn on his heel and walk out now would be admitting that the stabs of memories knifing from every candlelit corner were too great. He would, if Charlie didn’t damn well stand beside him. Chloe too, he thought, naming her in that second, whether it was what she was born with or not.
How foolish would that be, when he was no longer a humble pawn standing on this checkered floor, but king of this particular castle.
“Devorlane.”
He frowned. The kiss plastered on his cheek was so gin sodden, it almost knocked him sideways. Tilly? Tilly … drunk? So much couldn’t have changed since he last stood between the Ionic columns his late father, the third Duke, possessed such fondness for that he’d had them installed in every nook and cranny, could it? She couldn’t be so foxed she hung on his shoulder like a piece of paper? Plastering kisses? On him?
“I can’t tell you—hic—how very galad, glad, I am—hic—how glad we all of us gathered here today are, you’ve finally come home, Devorlane.” She waved an empty champagne flute beneath his nose.
Tilly, more lined than a rutted farm track and soused worse than a pickled herring, were two shocks.
For heaven’s sake, he hadn’t scoured London, its underworld dregs and whore palaces, seeking the most delectable creature he could find, for her not even to be noticed. By any of them. For him to stand here feeling vaguely as if his behavior wasn’t just expected, it was perfectly acceptable. He narrowed his eyes. With this crowd it probably wasn’t just acceptable, it was every bit as typical of their own.
Well, he wouldn’t be outmanoeuvred. The sooner Tilly learned what his plans for Chessington were, and how she would be leaving within the next half hour, the better. Provided she could stand up, that was. Her present inability didn’t give him much cause for hope.
“Words finally failed you, have they? That must be a first.”
“Oh, s’not at all, Devorlane. S’in fact, s’it’s probably a hundredth. A thousandth even. But come in, come in. Bring your friends. Then you can all be drunk too.”
“I’ve no wish to be damn well drunk too.”
He lied. Of course. Drink. Drugs. Women. It would be very nice to deny it, but he didn’t imagine she was unacquainted with the facts. Or perhaps it was simple shock he was no longer the little brother she could bully that made her widen her eyes.
“But surely you can see—hic—you have guests.”
“I’m sure I do, but as I didn’t ask them particularly, I don’t see why I should have to be particular about entertaining them either.”
“But your friends here, Devorlane, wouldn’t they s’like to be s’introduced?”
The creature it had taken two weeks to find extended her grubby paw. “‘Ow sin? ‘Ow very kind of yer. I’m always up for a bitta sin. Ain’t I, Dev? You know, we both are.”
“How very good that is to know—hic. After all, Devorlane, what would our dear papa say if I didn’t make your dear guests welcome?”
“Not a hell of a lot, I imagine. He’s been dead two years. Now this place is mine—”
“S’of course, Devorlane. S’of course. It’s yours. S’it’s what dearest Papa and dearest Mama and dearest Ardent, God rest them, all their souls, wanted. You to have it. All of it.”
“Is that so? Ardent dropped down dead just to oblige me, did he? Quite a feat, even for Ardent.”
“On his death bed Papa said—hic.”
Devorlane was quite sure he hadn’t—certainly not as Tilly did, since the old duke was completely tee-total, which was why, mastering the bolt of agony that seared his thigh, he strode forward. Anything rather than listen to this soused horse piss.
“He regretted it.” Tilly followed on his heels, like a puppy. “Driving you away. Papa spent a fortune trying to find that, that girl. You know the one.”
As if he could forget. As if he could ever forget.
“A fortune wasted then, dearest sister. We all know who took the emeralds. Me.”
He halted. When he gained his revenge as he was about to do, it would be good to look into her eyes. “But I will say it’s kind of you to lay on the champagne. Your departure should be toasted.”
“Sapphire.”
Damn it. Didn’t she hear him? Or did she choose not to, dragging that damn bitch’s name into the equation? As if she had somehow only suddenly remembered it.
“Yes,” Tilly said. “But never mind her. Or all this s’nuff and nonsense about departure. You and your friends will s’like the crowd in here. They’re young.”
She swayed past him and wrenched the library door open. No brothel madam showing him a larder-load of tarts could have looked prouder, except these were marriageable virgins. A shudder swept up his spine. To think she believed this was the way to sew his future up for the next ten years. As if he had any use for virgins. It must be bad though, that she’d given up trying to stitch him up with their mother’s ward, Belle.
“As you can see Lady Armstrong’s widowed. This cursed war. But as for the rest …”
Devorlane didn’t care to look at the rest. While he did his best to fight it, his stare was lured across the silken sea to the most amazing curves he had ever seen, being kissed by a sheath of dazzling black bombazine, in his entire life.
A crow sitting among doves that way. Nothing like a widow. Nothing like any widow he’d ever seen. In fact, never mind the sheath of black. Neither the severe scraping of her hair into
a tight topknot from which it tried to escape, nor the meek set of her face, could disguise her boldly hot-house air. Her skin glowed like creamy alabaster. Brilliant shards of lapis lazuli seemed to glitter beneath finely winged brows. Not that his gaze exactly lingered. Why would it when her wayward lips beckoned?
Their coral ripeness perhaps best explained her allure in that he just wanted to kiss them. In fact he could think of only two words for them: sin incarnate. He could also imagine them clinging in all sorts of ways to his body. But it wasn’t just the lips. There was a brassy confidence, a vitality he recognized. A slight commonness that made her face interesting—her nose and chin a shade too pronounced to be truly beautiful. He’d lay odds on her voice possessing a provocatively uncultured note.
If he’d encountered her in a whorehouse, he’d have put down his fortune to possess her. But here, in rural England, at afternoon tea with every well-bred virgin the county had to offer …
Ridiculous.
Who the blazes was this creature? Flaunting the idea of widowhood with these eyes that spoke of dark, intimate, sexual knowledge.
Her husband—whoever he’d been—must have gone kicking and screaming to his grave, to be dragged from this bird of paradise. Any man would. Even he, standing in the doorway, only able to imagine how it would feel to possess that ripe sin of a mouth, felt his blood burn with painful longing, his groin tighten at … that ripe sin of a mouth.
Memory stirred from its lavender press, stirred faintly like autumn leaves rustling along the alleyways of his mind. Christmas Eve. Ten years ago.
Lady Wentworth had been such a generous hostess, the best in the county, and her parties had always been bright, glittering affairs. Especially her Christmas ones. It had taken him no time at all to dance too little and drink too damned much.