If You Give a Rake a Ruby by Shana Galen Read Free Book Online Page A

lascivious looking woman on it—but he was no gentleman.
    â€œLet’s be done with this.” She swept past him and pushed through the bawdy house’s red door. Really, did the owner not realize a little subtlety could go a long way?
    Inside was precisely what she had expected. A drab common room with threadbare chairs and couches hunched around a dying fire boasted two or three downtrodden men, standing with hands shoved in pockets. The place smelled stale and vaguely as though something had died. Fallon put a scented handkerchief to her nose partly to disguise the smell and partly to hide her face. As soon as they’d entered, the men had glanced her way. Two of them looked right back down again, but one stared at her with undisguised interest. She certainly hoped he didn’t write for The Morning Post . The last thing she needed was this latest escapade tidbit making the rounds of the press.
    â€œYou need a room?” a hard high voice asked from a dark corner. Fallon jumped and whirled in the direction of the sound. She hadn’t seen the small, dark…person standing there. She squinted and studied the…was it a man or a woman? His or her clothes hung limply around an indiscernible figure that was reed thin. The face was hairless and ugly—too ugly for a woman but far too delicate for a man. The dun-colored hair was cropped in no particular style and hung in shaggy clumps around the small face, which was thin and narrow. It could have been the face of a young man or an old woman.
    â€œGet your abbess,” Fitzhugh directed, using the slang for the proprietor of a bawdy house.
    â€œAnd who should I say is calling?” the person said with something of a sneer in its voice.
    â€œWarrick,” he answered.
    The person nodded and melted into another dark corner and then was gone.
    â€œWarrick?” Fallon whispered. “I thought you were going to give her—him some sort of code name. You know, Jackal or Raven or Fluffy Bunny.” She detected the ghost of a smile on his lips.
    â€œI don’t have a code name. I wasn’t that sort of operative.”
    â€œYou mean to say Fluffy Bunny was taken?” She knew she must be extremely tired to jest with him so. She should be annoyed that she was standing in a rotting brothel in Seven Dials at—she squinted at the tall case clock on the wall—half past three in the morning. Oh, she did hope that clock was not accurate.
    â€œPrecisely. And pray you never meet the man. Fluffy Bunny is terribly dangerous.”
    â€œWhy else would he be called Fluffy ?”
    â€œThis way, sir. Madam,” the little person said from behind them. Fallon shuddered. How had it gotten behind them? It gestured to a door at the far end of the room and Fitzhugh motioned for her to go first.
    She shook her head. “Oh, no. This is not the time for chivalry. You go first.”
    â€œThere’s nothing to be worried about.”
    â€œSo says the man who’s failed to earn a code name. Why, even I have a sobriquet.”
    â€œYes, and we all enjoy conjecturing on how you earned it.”
    â€œThe same way as Fluffy Bunny, I imagine.” She followed Fitzhugh across the room, feeling the eyes of the men loitering there on her. She was almost relieved when he opened the door and she was away from that depressing place.
    Except this room was far worse.
    ***
    Warrick knew the onslaught of roses was coming, and he tried to take a last breath of flowerless air to compensate, but it didn’t help. He didn’t understand Daisy’s need to be surrounded by the flowers, but he could overlook the peculiarity because she was so valuable. He knew the moment Fallon entered because he could hear her gag quietly. He thought she’d looked rather ill in the common room. She hadn’t known what was coming.
    â€œWarrick!” A tall, handsome woman rose from a settee and walked gracefully to greet him. Her