Dance of Seduction Read Online Free PDF Page B

relations in the country, he’d been settling in here, coaxing her children back into crime. And she’d actually thanked him for letting Johnny go. How could she have been so stupid?
    A shop for sailor’s goods, indeed. She ought to know better. Fences often marketed their stolen wares under the guise of legitimate shops. Especially in Spitalfields, where legend said you could “lose” a snuffbox in one street and buy it backa few minutes later in another. No doubt that’s why he’d set himself up here.
    Devil take him! Until now she’d been fortunate to have no fences operating so close to her Home. This end of the street held mostly taverns and rag shops, neither of which tempted her children to stray. Having a fence half a block away would be disaster.
    “Did the cap’n say how much he’d give you?” queried a feminine voice. Mary Butler, no doubt. She worshipped Johnny the way Johnny worshipped fat purses.
    “No, we didn’t get to it before m’lady came up.”
    “When you go back to the shop, tell us how much he offers,” David said. “’Cause I heard it’s more than any of the fences who work for the Specter. And the cap’n might be less rough to deal with than them.”
    The Specter? The hair rose on the back of her neck. Rumor had it that every fence in Spitalfields worked for the master criminal. His nickname came from his ability to run his business in utter anonymity. Wearing a hooded cloak that hid his face, he handled transactions in dimly lit rooms that changed with each encounter. Even his fences didn’t know who he really was, which was why he’d eluded the authorities for years.
    The pickpockets, being superstitious by nature, thought his uncanny ability to escape capture was supernatural. Rumors abounded that he could fly over the water, that he’d once floated from one building to another while being pursued.
    Nonsense, all of it. But his reputation for ruthlessness was not. Anybody who crossed him eventually turned up in some forgotten alley with a slit throat.
    “We don’t know for sure he ain’t in league with the Specter,” Johnny said. “That cap’n looks as hard as any of the Specter’s men. I heard he was once a pirate.”
    “I heard he was a smuggler,” Mary said in a whisper. “I’llwager he could slip a knife in a man’s belly as easy as any of the Specter’s men.”
    Was that just the typical exaggeration of children? Or was this captain really so dastardly? Clara strained closer, hoping to hear more.
    “You should stay away from him, Johnny,” Mary went on plaintively. “Let that cap’n keep the watch. Why would you want to return to the old life? There ain’t naught but trouble in it.”
    Clara smiled. At least one of her children had good sense.
    David snorted. “You only say that ’cause you’re jealous, Mary. You couldn’t lift a watch off a cully even if he was blind, deaf, and dumb.”
    “Could so!” little maligned Mary cried. “I once took a lace wiper off a gentry mort while she stared right at me!”
    A “wiper” was a handkerchief. Stealing them had been Mary’s specialty.
    “It don’t count when the lady offers it to you to blow your nose,” David retorted.
    “She didn’t, you arse! I stole it fair and square!”
    “And anyway, a wiper don’t compare to a gold watch like Johnny told us about. You know how hard it is to filch a tick like that? And Johnny here lifted a ten-pound note from a wrestler once and got away without a scratch. You never done nothing like that.”
    Wonderful. Now they were competing for the title of Most Talented Pickpocket.
    Johnny said offhandedly, “Leave her be, David.”
    “Why? Is she your flash-girl?”
    “At least I do my own filching,” Mary shot back. “I don’t hide behind Johnny while he does all the work.”
    “Odsfish, I’ll get you for that!” David cried.
    At the sounds of scuffling, Clara decided she would hear nothing more of use and hastily pushed open the door. Davidand Mary