The Vagabond Duchess. Claire Thornton

other arm.

      The link boy stopped abruptly, lifting his torch to illuminate the sign of the Dog and Bone tavern. Temperance was so startled by the snarling beast revealed in the flickering light she took an involuntary step backwards.

      ‘Here you are,’ said the boy.

      Temperance released a careful breath. After a second glance, she decided the sign was badly painted, not deliberately vicious. All the same, she wished her apprentice hadn’t been taken sick that afternoon. If Isaac hadn’t been near blind from the pain in his head, he could have come with her. His presence would have increased her status in the eyes of her potential customer.

      She slipped the stick through a side opening in her skirts and hung it from a concealed belt. She took a coin from the pocket, which was also hidden beneath her skirts, and gave it to the link boy. Then she braced herself and pushed open the tavern door.

      A thick fog of wine and tobacco fumes and too many closely packed bodies rushed out to greet her. Temperance stepped inside, realising at once that something unusual was happening. She’d anticipated the unpleasant smells. She hadn’t expected to be presented with an impenetrable wall of male shoulders the moment she stepped over the threshold. The men were all looking at something she couldn’t see, and blocking her from moving any further into the room. For an alarming moment she thought they might be watching a fight.

      Her first instinct was to leave. She’d rather lose the sale than risk being caught up in a brawl. Then she realised the mood of the crowd was good humoured. She edged further into the room, trying to see what the men were looking at. She was tall enough to peer over the shoulders of most of those blocking her view, but the crowd was a couple of rows deep. Heads kept getting in her way. It was infuriating.

      At last she tapped on the shoulder of one of the men. When he looked around, his eyes widened in surprise. She was about to ask him where the tavern keeper was, but he grinned and said, ‘Can’t see, lass? I’ll wager you’ll take more pleasure in looking than most of us will. Come through.’ He stepped back so she could move in front of him.

      Temperance hesitated for half a second. It wasn’t sensible to let herself be hemmed in by a crowd of strangers—but curiosity got the better of her. With a murmur of thanks she accepted his offer. From her new position she could see all attention was focussed on a figure sitting near the unlit hearth. She’d just noticed he was holding a lute when he began to play. The crowd immediately fell silent.

      At first Temperance couldn’t believe it. What kind of musician could hold a tavern of drinking men in thrall at nearly midnight? But after a few moments the music reached out to her, drawing her in as surely as it held the rest of the audience. She craned to one side, trying to get a better look at him. She saw a head of black hair and the flash of a white shirt before someone got in her way.

      Then he began to sing. To her astonishment, she felt goose bumps rise all over her body. His voice curled deep down inside her, stirring nameless urges so intimate and disturbing part of her wanted to run away and hide. The rest of her wanted to get a lot closer. Such a thing had never happened to her before. Half-angry at her inexplicable reaction, but unable to deny her compulsion to look at the singer, she pushed forward until she was at the front of the standing crowd.

      She clutched her bundle against her chest and stared at the musician. His black hair nearly reached his shoulders. It glowed like a raven’s wing in the candlelight, but it didn’t look as if it had ever been tamed by a barber. He’d taken off his coat, and his white shirt was open at the neck. She was fascinated by the movement of his strong throat as he sang. Her fingertips tingled with the urge to touch him there. To explore beneath the plain white linen.

      When she became aware of the improper nature of her thoughts she flushed and directed her attention elsewhere. It didn’t help much. The soft linen revealed the breadth of his shoulders, and he’d pushed his sleeves back to his elbows. She watched the play of sinews in his forearm as his long fingers plucked the strings. He had clever hands, she thought dazedly, watching the swift surety with which his left hand moved over the neck of the lute. It was both exciting and unsettling to watch him play with such skill. The room seemed even hotter than it had a few moments ago.

      He lifted his head and glanced around his audience. His dark brown eyes were set deep under black brows. He had a nose like a hawk, cheekbones to match and more than one day’s growth of stubble on his strong jaw. His voice might hold the allure of a fallen angel, enticing her to commit all kinds of sinful folly, but he looked like a vagabond.

      His gaze passed over her in the crowd then returned to focus upon her face. His eyes locked with hers. Temperance stood rooted to the spot. He had seen her. His dark eyes seemed to pierce straight to her heart. A hot wave of self-conscious awareness rolled over her.

      Just for a second she thought she heard a slight hesitation in his supple voice. Then she was sure she’d imagined it, because he continued to sing with utter confidence—and his lips curved in a small, but unmistakeably arrogant smile.

      That smile jarred her out of her stupefaction. No doubt he took it for granted he could turn a woman’s knees weak with a simple song. He was surely a seducer and a vagabond who left broken hearts and lives behind him without a qualm. Temperance wrenched her gaze away from him, furious and embarrassed she’d fallen under his spell for even a few seconds. She gripped her bundle of goods so tightly her knuckles turned white.

      She refused to look at the musician again, but she couldn’t stop listening. It was an irritating, tormenting pleasure. She wanted to listen to him, she just didn’t want to feed his arrogance by seeming to enjoy his song. She stared at the fireplace to one side of the musician and pretended she was indifferent to him. To her indignation a note of humour crept into his voice. Even though the taproom was full of people, she was certain he was singing to her—and laughing at her. It was insufferable. She glared at the mantelpiece. In an effort to distract herself she focussed on a crack in the plaster of the chimney breast, allowing her eyes to follow it all the way up to the ceiling. The amusement in his voice grew more pronounced; even the lute seemed to be laughing at her as he plucked a lively, teasing melody from its strings.

      She realised too late it must have looked as if she’d stuck her chin in the air in response to his initial amusement. Very slowly, by casual degrees, she allowed her gaze to drop until she was once more looking at the mantelpiece. She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead and hoped the song would soon come to an end. How many verses did it have? Was he even singing the same song he’d started with? Or had he slid seamlessly into another one so he could deliberately prolong her discomfort? She stopped looking at the mantelpiece and stared at him suspiciously.

      The fellow had the gall to grin at her! His fingers didn’t fluff a single note and his voice remained perfectly in tune—but he grinned at her!

      How dare he! The urge to box his over-confident ears was almost too strong to resist. She imagined a discordant jangle and the pleasing sight of the dark-eyed vagabond wearing a necklace of lute strings and small fragments of wood around his cocksure neck.

      A man beside her chuckled.

      ‘Jack Bow is singing for more than his supper now,’ he murmured. ‘Does he take your fancy, lass? You’ve surely taken his.’

      ‘No!’ Temperance’s denial emerged more forcefully than she’d intended. She saw several heads turn to look at her, and some men began to smile in an obnoxiously knowing way.

      Her skin burned. She forgot her reason for coming to the tavern. All she wanted to do was remove herself from the mortifying situation at once. She was about to push through the crowd to the door when the musician ended the song with a flourish.

      He was rewarded with applause and whistles. Several men called out to him, offering to buy him a drink. For a moment Temperance lost sight of him as the tavern patrons moved into new positions. She belatedly realised she wasn’t the only woman in the room—though at this hour of the night she was most likely the only respectable woman present. And she was only here because the plague that had devastated London the previous year had been so bad for business. The City was almost back to normal now, but if Temperance was to