A Pirate’s Price

The Vicar

Villains protecting good people from villains?..A fanciful notion indeed..

Rickon Brady, better known as the Vicar of Whitechapel, poured himself a tankard of beer. Some might find it strange—his taste for beer—seeing as how he controlled the distilling of damn near every drop of gin in Whitechapel and indeed the whole East End of London, but there it was. Rickie liked beer, so beer he drank. And if anyone did find his taste in drink strange, well… no one was foolish enough to tell him so to his face.

“What have you found?” he asked, watching as the foam in the pewter tankard slowly subsided. He didn’t need to look up to know that Freddy, standing before Rickie’s table, was studying his own big feet.

“ ’E moved the babe into ’is palace today.” Freddy was a big bruiser, smarter than he looked, but not much for expansive talk.

Rickie grinned, only half of his face moving. “Always a smart one was Charming Danny. He must have a real fear for what I’d do to the babe to take her out of his hiding place and move her to the palace.

Freddy shuffled uneasily. “There’s more.” “Aye?” “A wench came to see ’im.” Rickie laughed, the sound a strange sputter. “That there isn’t news.”

His gaze flicked up in time to see Freddy look hastily away. Freddy flushed, the red mottling his pitted face. “This one is different.”

“How do you figure?”

“She’s the one ’oo lived in the orphan’s ’ome—the respectable one. The one takin’ care o’ the babe.”

Rickie c****d his head, feeling the pull of old scars on the left side of his face and neck. “Ah, but that is news. Charming Danny don’t like the respectable ones much, now does he?” Freddy knew better than to answer, so Rickie took a sip of his beer, the tart taste of hops washing down his throat.

He set his tankard back on the table and picked up the dice with his left hand—the one with the thumb and forefinger turned to claws. He’d had the dice for long years now and they were worn smooth, the paint gone from the carved pips, the edges rounded. They were old friends in his palm and when he threw them gently, they rolled with barely a sound on the bare plank table. Deuce and trey. A five. Ah, now, five could be good or very good, depending. Depending.

Last fall he’d had plans to move into St. Giles. Take over the gin distilling there and become king of gin in all of London. Those plans had stumbled because of an aristocrat not afraid of blowing up his own still—and taking half of Rickie’s men with it. But Rickie’d had time to regroup since then. And besides, he had another focus now.

“My Gracie’s dead and buried. What she wanted, what she kept me from doin’… now that’s dead, as well.” Rickie stared with fascination at the greasy bits of bone. They seemed to wink up at him slyly. “All bets are off and Charming Danny O’Connor would do well to look after his females.”

He looked up in time to catch Freddy’s horrified gaze directly. “Best have our spy find out how much the lady means to Danny, hadn’t ye?”

****************** *******************

It was dusk by the time Raine, Harry, and Bert made it back to Danny O’Connor’s gaudily opulent “palace.”

The moment they stepped inside Raine heard the screams.

She knew that angry shriek.

Raine took the stairs two at a time, not even slowing at Harry’s worried, “Oi!” from behind her. The screams were growing louder the nearer she got to Mr. O’Connor’s throne room.

She pushed open the great double doors and swept right past Bob, the skinny guard, and marched to where Danny O’Connor stood in the middle of the room with a bawling Anne in his hands.

No wonder the little girl was crying!

The pirate held his screaming daughter out at arm’s length as if she were a stinking chamber pot. “What have you done?” Raine demanded and snatched the baby from his hands.

Anne had stopped shrieking at the sight of Raine, but she still cried,

her little face red and swollen, her shoulders shuddering with uncontrollable sobs.

Raine recognized this state of affairs: Anne had been wailing for quite some time. She kissed the baby’s damp cheek, murmuring soothing nonsense and then turned an accusing eye on Danny O’Connor.

He threw up his hands. “Don’t be lookin’ at me like that. I didn’t touch the brat and no one could get her to stop wailin’!” Raine covered Anne’s ears. “How dare you?”

Danny O’Connor scowled, for once looking less than charming. “She started bawlin’ the moment ye left. Like a great, barmy banshee, she was. Near to deafened me, I tell ye.”

“Well, perhaps she doesn’t like it here.” Raine tucked Anne’s still shaking head under her chin and cuddled the baby. “Perhaps she doesn’t like you.”

Mr. O’Connor snorted. “I don’t like her, and that’s a fact, no perhaps about it.”

Raine gasped. “But she’s your daughter!”

“And what does that have to do with the matter?” Danny asked with a sardonic twist to his lips. “Her dam was a w***e I kept for less than a sennight. The first I was hearin’ o’ the babe was when the wench died and left a note that I was the father. An old bawd came and dumped the babe on me, but not afore demandin’ a guinea for the pleasure. For ought I know her mam lied and the babe is none o’ me flesh at all.”

Raine stroked a hand over Anne’s soft curls, truly shocked.

Had he no feelings at all?