The Merchant and the Rogue by Sarah M. Eden

Only with effort did Vera keep herself calm and collected. In a twenty-four-hour period, she had learned the man she’d been falling in love with was lying to her, had tossed him from her shop, and had then followed her papa directly to the home of that same man. She’d slipped inside after her papa—the door hadn’t been locked—and had been quiet enough to not be detected over the conversation occurring in the sitting room. While she’d tucked herself out of sight around the kitchen doorway, they’d been discussing her papa’s involvement in something apparently dangerous and illegal involving very important and influential people.

The world around her was spinning, and she was struggling to keep her footing. She was tempted to simply slip back out again after Papa had stormed out—she knew the flat well enough by now to navigate it quickly—but she needed answers.

The men in the room jumped to their feet, clearly surprised to see her.

“Miss Sorokina,” Brogan said. “How long’ve you been here?”

“Long enough to have a vast many questions.” She walked with as much confidence as she could muster to the table where they were gathered. “My first is”—she looked at the two strangers—“who are you? And don’t lie to me. This one”—she hooked a thumb in Brogan’s direction—“already took that approach.”

The man standing nearest her, his entire demeanor filled with amused swagger, dipped his head in greeting and said, “Fletcher Walker, Miss Sorokina. A pleasure.”

Fletcher Walker.That was the author who wrote the “Urchins of London” penny dreadful series. Not a great omen.

Vera looked to the third man in the room. He was taller than his companions, and larger. His deep brown eyes studied her in a way that told her he was not one to miss any detail, large or small. Was he also a writer of penny dreadfuls? She knew of two among that fraternity who were Black: Martin Afola and Stone.

He didn’t leave her in suspense. “Stone,” he said.

She was surrounded by members of the very profession she’d been taught all her life to avoid.

She eyed Brogan out of the corner of her eye. “Let me guess, Lafayette Jones and Barnabus Milligan are in the kitchen, preparing tea?”

Brogan actually looked guilty, though whether that was because other writers were in the flat or because he felt bad about lying to her, she wasn’t certain.

Though she didn’t know the other two men, she suspected Stone was the most forthright of them all. So she directed her question to him. “Are there any others here?”

He shook his head. “No, miss. We do know them other fellas, but they ain’t here.”

Hearing him talk, she could tell Stone wasn’t from England.

“How long’ve you been in England?” she asked.

“Eight years,” was his quick reply. “From America.”

There was a story there, but she wouldn’t press for it. A person ought to be entitled to choose when and if he talked about his past.

For her part, Vera needed to talk about the present. She took the empty seat at the table. “What papers of my papa’s do you have? What do they have to do with Ambassador von Brunnow and Lord Chelmsford? And why are you concerning yourselves with it?”

“Wanna take these questions, Brog?” Fletcher tossed out.

Vera shook her head. “Not him. He might lie to me.”

“We’re talking about Brogan Donnelly, are we?” Fletcher shook his head, eyes dancing with apparent amusement. “Brogan, who despises lying?”

“He’s gained a liking for it of late,” Vera said dryly. “I haven’t a heap of time. What are these papers, and why did you say they were putting myself and the urchins that work at my shop in danger?”

Brogan paced away. While she’d said she didn’t want him explaining, she found herself disappointed that he was so readily leaving his associates to give her the details.

“The papers are a letter and a few versions of a printed document,” Fletcher said. “The letter is from Lord Chelmsford to the ambassador talking about the document.”

Nothing in that was alarming.

In three words, Stone turned everything on its head. “They’re all forgeries.”

“We’ve every reason to believe your papa created them,” Fletcher continued. “But we couldn’t get the bloke to tell us why or who hired him to do the job.”

There had to be a mistake. “Papa abhors falsehoods. He’d not be involved in anything that’d risk an innocent person being hurt by lies.”

“The man he wouldn’t identify might be strong-arming him,” Brogan said as he continued to pace. “He and Clare could likely compare experiences.”

Strong-armed. That made more sense than voluntarily participating. Except . . . “He was happy at snatching this print job. He’d not’ve thought it the cat’s whiskers if it were something underhanded.”

“Might not’ve known at the time,” Stone said.

“And if the whole thing falls to bits, Papa’s likely to get bashed up for it.” Endangered by someone else’s scheme. Again.

“Depending on how these papers are used,” Brogan said, “he’ll find himself far more than bashed up. He’ll be locked up.”

“My papa’s fled from wrongful imprisonment once already. I’ll not sit back and simply wait for it to happen again.”

Brogan’s brows shot upward at that revelation, but Vera didn’t intend to dive into tales of the past.

She squared her shoulders. “What do we know, and how do we fix this?”

“We?” Brogan shook his head. “Everyone in this room, aside from you, are writers. And everyone we associate with are as well. That’s a ‘we’ you’d not be best pleased with.”

“You’d be surprised who and what I’ll endure to protect my papa. And Olly and Licorice. And Burnt Ricky and Bob’s Your Knuckle. And my neighbors.”

“And all of London?” Fletcher added with a laugh. “Banging on about rescuing everybody, you sound like Brogan.”

“That’s a comparison you’d do best not to make,” Brogan said. “You’ll insult the lady.”

At least he was being honest about that. And yet, Fletcher wasn’t entirely off the mark. No matter that Brogan was a liar, he did do a tremendous lot for a great many struggling people. He’d helped the urchins at the shop, the frightened people on Old Compton, the destitute families in the hidden corners of London.

“You still haven’t told me how any of this involves the lot of you.”

Fletcher answered. “A friend heard whispers that there was concern among the ambassador’s staff. To set the bloke’s mind at ease, I said I’d see if I could learn anything. I assumed I wouldn’t, but there was something to it after all. And that something proved to be connected to your father.”

“But why bother yourself with it to begin with?”

“Has Brogan, while you’ve known him, ever done things for people he didn’t know or helped with troubles that weren’t his?”

She couldn’t deny that he had.

“We’ve that in common, the three of us,” Fletcher said. “We when see suffering, we can’t simply turn away.”

That surprised her. “And all three of you are writers?”

“Why is it you think so poorly of writers?” Stone asked.

“They’ve shown themselves untrustworthy. Repeatedly.”

That didn’t appear to satisfy any of them. Brogan continued to pace, but she suspected he was every bit as curious.

She didn’t generally share any details of her family’s past, but learning Papa was in a similar scrape to the one that’d taught them all to be wary made her wonder if there might be solutions lying in the past.

“Are any of you familiar with the Petrashevsky Circle?” she asked them.

All three indicated they weren’t. She wasn’t surprised. There was a reason Papa had chosen England as a place of refuge from that horrific chapter in their lives.

Vera told them what she knew of the Petrashevsky Circle, though it wasn’t much, as her father typically refused to discuss the matter whenever she brought it up. “In the late 1840s, a group in St. Petersburg began writing of things considered treasonous and rabble-rousing,” she said. “They’d been meeting in secret, plotting things beyond the publication of incendiary tracts and pamphlets. They were called the Petrashevsky Circle. They called for improvements in the lives of ordinary Russians, but Tsar Nicholas and his ministers didn’t care for that.”

“I’d imagine not,” Stone said.

“Someone betrayed the Circle,” she continued, “and they were rounded up, arrested, and sentenced to death, though the Tsar himself intervened at the last minute and sent the Circle’s leaders to Siberia instead.”

“Was your father part of the Circle?” Fletcher asked.

“No, he weren’t.”

“He didn’t—He didn’t betray them, did he?” The idea clearly sat uncomfortably on Brogan’s mind, and well it might, he being a writer who kept a number of secrets himself.

“The Circle betrayed him.” She breathed against the flood of remembered retellings and the pain that always filled her papa’s face when he spoke of it. “He weren’t one of them, but he’d done a spot of printing for them. He was an innocent, a provider of a service was all. They named him as part of their group, though they knew he had as much to do with them as those who served up tea at their weekly meetings.”

“What happened to him?” Fletcher asked.

“We fled St. Petersburg,” she said. “Dozens of men were arrested. How he escaped the raids, I don’t know. He rushed us from the house in the middle of the night. I was a very small child, too young to remember anything else about our flight. We’ve been in London ever since.”

“Is he still in danger of being arrested?” Stone asked.

“Russia may have a different Tsar than when all this happened, but Alexander is unlikely to shrug off a fugitive from the law. If Papa returns, he’ll be arrested. If he makes too many waves, even here, they’ll find him.”

“And all on account of a group of writers turning on an innocent man.” Brogan sighed. He met her eye. “I’d say you have ample reason for not trusting members of our profession.”

Stone’s expression was one of deep thought. “Maybe whoever’s twisted your papa into making these forgeries knows about this Circle and is threatening him with it.”

The possibility had occurred to her. “It’d be a powerful threat. Though I cain’t say how the person behind it all learned of Papa’s connection to the Petrashevsky Circle.”

“Does the ambassador know?” Fletcher asked.

Vera shrugged. She hadn’t the first idea.

“Perhaps we’d do well to find out.” Fletcher exchanged looks with his companions. He, it seemed, took a leadership role in this group.

“None of us knows von Brunnow,” Brogan said. “Even if we could invent a reason for seeing the man, we’ve no guarantee he’d allow it.”

Vera leaned back in her chair, hope warring with wariness in her chest. “I know someone on his staff. If I asked, she might be able to get me in to see the ambassador. But if it proves true that he knows Papa’s history and is using it against him, I don’t know that I’d be wise to visit him alone.”

“One of us can go with you,” Fletcher said. “Who that ought to be will depend on what reason you give for calling on the man.”

What reason could she give? “I could say I’ve some worries about the immigrant communities in London. I spend time with enough.”

“That’d do it, I’d wager.” Fletcher hooked a crooked smile. “You’d do best, though, to bring with you a fellow immigrant. That eliminates me.”

Stone tossed in his thoughts. “And there’s too great a risk that I’d prove . . . let’s just say, too much of an immigrantfor the fella’s comfort.”

“I wish that weren’t as true as it is,” Vera said.

His mouth tightened. “As do I.”

Fletcher stood. “We’ll leave you and Brog to sort out how you mean to make this call and do your digging.” He dipped his head. “A pleasure meeting you, Miss Sorokina.”

She rose at the same time Stone did.

He also nodded in her direction. “Hope your efforts are successful.”

“Thank you.”

While Brogan saw his friends to the door, Vera took long, deep breaths, trying to release some of her tension. Only a couple of hours earlier she’d tossed Brogan firmly from the shop, and now she needed to plan a risk-filled mission to uncover information, one that required they trust each other. At the moment, that felt impossible. Everything felt impossible.

When he returned to the room, he had his hands stuffed in his trouser pockets, watching her with a look of wary uncertainty. “If you’d rather, I’m certain we can find someone else to go with you to the embassy. Móirín would, I’d wager. And she speaks a spot of Russian. That might prove handy.”

She shook her head. “I’d rather not have anyone else know about my papa’s entanglements.”

“Then it seems you’re stuck with me.”

“Seems that way.”

He lingered in the sitting room doorway, hovering with palpable awkwardness. “I know you’re enduring this out of love for your da and the people you feel responsible for. I’m sorry that it’ll be a misery for you.”

Heaven help her, he looked sincere. But how could she believe him?

“Why did you lie to me about your name?” she asked.

“Would you’ve hired me if I hadn’t?”

She held her hand up to stop him. “This won’t be pegged on me. I ain’t the one who lied.”

“Fair.” He stepped into the room but watched her with clear discomfort. “I needed the job. But you sell stories I wrote in m’own name right there in the shop. I wasn’t expecting that. I feared it’d make things complicated. Ganor O’Donnell’s a name I used in Ireland. It popped in m’ mind, and I tossed it out.”

“Why’d you use a false name in Ireland?” She’d been told truths about his life there that he wasn’t aware she knew. How honest would he be about that?

“I’m not able to tell you all the history of that, lass. It ain’t my place to.”

“I am so weary of secrets, Brogan Donnelly. I need a moment’s honesty from you.”

He came closer, not in a threatening way, but quiet and considerate. “I’ll tell you the bits of it that’re mine to tell, like you did with your da’s history.”

She nodded.

He motioned her to the settee. She sat at one end. He took a seat on the opposite side. “Móirín and I grew up in County Offaly, the countryside of Ireland. The Hunger came when I was eight, and Móirín was nine, and our parents starved to death, like millions of our countrymen. Móirín and I made the harrowing walk to Dublin, a week’s journey. We lived on the streets for a time until we could begin scraping together money. I took up running messages for people—I was fast and agile, and I could read, which not many Irish children can do. Móirín took up as a crossing sweep.

“In time, we’d money enough to be off the street. Then enough to eat regularly and replace our ragged clothes. By the time we were approaching adulthood, we had a humble flat in the Liberties. She worked at the Guinness factory, like most people did in our neighborhood. I was working as a courier and messenger still, but also writing columns for local papers. Life wasn’t easy, and that corner of Dublin was rough to say the least. ’Twas a fight to survive, often literally.”

Unbidden to her thoughts came the memory of sitting in this very room, brushing her fingers over his scars, and, later, tending his bleeding knuckles in the shop the day he’d rescued Licorice. She’d been utterly fascinated by the touch of his rough but gentle hands.

“A short few years back, someone started making trouble for m’sister,” Brogan continued. “She’s a fetching thing, though she would disagree. Her fiery personality adds something to her striking looks. Men have often found her intriguing and alluring, often too much so.”

Vera began to suspect where this was headed.

“I’ll not betray her secrets by telling everything connected to that,” Brogan said, “but suffice it to say, the situation grew more than merely annoying. The confrontations were frequent and increasingly combative. This bloke pushed the boundaries, threatened, endangered, and eventually did physical injury toher. He made clear he didn’t mean to stop.”

Vera listened, heart aching, mind spinning.

“Again, without details, I’ll say only that the man’s dead, not of natural causes, and I’m not sorry he’s gone.” Brogan pushed out a breath. “If that makes you think poorly of me, I’ll have to endure that, but she’s not the only woman he . . . Had there been another way . . .”

“Were you still in Dublin, the blue-bottles would round both of you up for the man’s death?”

“They would,” he said. “The charges are murder and harboring a murderer.”

“And the Peelers don’t care that the man’s death came about as a result of saving your sister from him?” Vera was growing increasingly angry on his and Móirín’s behalf.

He met her eyes. “How often does the law care when women are persecuted by men?”

Every woman who’d lived even a day in Soho knew the answer to that question. “Not often at all.”

He slumped on the settee. “I can’t tell you more than that, Vera—it ain’t m’story to tell in full—but that’s more than I’ve shared with anyone. ’Tis possible you think even less of me now, knowing the axe that hangs over my family, but that’s the truth of it.”

“You realize I could hand you over to people who could force you back to Dublin.”

“I know it,” he said quietly. “You may have no faith in me, but I have faith in you.”

Despite herself, that declaration touched her. It shouldn’t have. She wished it didn’t. But it did.

“You’ll help me sort out a means of helping my papa?” she asked.

His smile was soft and a little uncertain. “I’ll do anything I can for you, Vera Sorokina. You need only say the word.”

The fluttering of her heart triggered warning bells in her mind. She was not at all indifferent to this man she was struggling to trust. It’d be best to keep a distance until she knew if she’d be better off stepping closer or running the other way.