Read Star Crossed Seduction for Free Online Page B

captain to take you under his protection.”
    “Well, I didn’t. And it’s too late to change that now.”
    “It’s too late to change a lot of things,” Becky said bitterly. “If only Randall hadn’t taken every penny we stole for him these past three years.”
    “You know he needed it to pay for the conspiracy. Why do you have to bring that up as if he’d done something wrong? He died fighting for liberty.”
    “Oh, yes. Liberty,” Becky said scornfully. “It came dear, didn’t it? No matter how much we brought him, he took it all and wanted more. He’d have sent us all to Mother Bristwick if it would have brought in more than the prigging lay.”
    He wouldn’t. Randall had had even higher principles than her own. That had been what first attracted her to him.
    But her friend’s angry tone drained her last bit of energy. She hadn’t expected it. Of all the girls in his gang, Becky was the only one who had offered her real friendship. The others had never quite accepted her, especially after Randall made it clear she was to be his favorite. But when another girl had made fun of Becky’s twisted spine, Temperance had stood up for her, and, in return, Becky had explained to her the meaning of the cant words the crew used and helped her change the way she spoke until every word out of her mouth didn’t remind them that she came from the ranks of the oppressors.
    It had been Becky, too, who had hung the bell on an old coat, suspended it from the doorway, and shown her how to remove a handkerchief from its pocket without causing the bell to make the slightest sound. Her friend had kept at her, making her practice until she could draw a fogle or nim a ticker as well as any of them, even the ones who’d learned their trade as children.
    She’d paid her back, of course. When Randall had died, Temperance could have moved on—there were other crews who would have welcomed her for her nimble fingers. But she’d stuck with Becky and tiny Clary, whom Becky had found half-beaten to death, knowing the other crews were unlikely to want to take them on. So why did Becky always have to be so waspish about the man who had brought them together? Running away from home with Randall had been the best thing Temperance had ever done. Instinctively, her hand flew to the locket that held his portrait.
    It was gone.
    The officer must have snapped the chain. It served her right. It was as if Randall himself had reached down from wherever he was now and had judged her no longer worthy of wearing it.
    She stumbled over to the pile of broken furniture and pawed mechanically through the broken remains of their possessions. The pile made visible the failure she’d been trying so hard to ignore. She’d tried to keep the girls going with her dream that they would go to America and start new lives. But without Randall to push them, they hadn’t been able to steal enough even to keep themselves in the rookeries.
    Randall might have been stern with them—too stern, at times, she’d sometimes thought. But his severity had ensured they’d brought home the money they needed. She’d been too kind, so now they were destitute, and she was completely at a loss to know what they should do next.
    “I magine that,” Trev’s mother announced the next morning, putting down her paper as he folded his tall frame into one of her dainty breakfast chairs. “Lady Pemberton has recovered her emeralds—the ones everyone thought the maid stole. It turns out her husband lost them at cards and kept it secret from her, and it was an astrologer who found them for her—that odd little woman Lord Hartwood wed last year. I say, I should rather like to have her read my fortune. Perhaps she can tell me when you will wed.”
    “Why stop at that. Why not have her find me a wife and be done with it?”
    “I hadn’t thought of that, but it would be an excellent idea. Scorpios are always so difficult to find a match for, and so demanding. Perhaps she might