Heartbreaker, page 1
Dedication
For Louisa,
the absolute best
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Adelaide
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
By Sarah MacLean
Copyright
About the Publisher
Adelaide
St. Stephen’s Chapel
South Lambeth
October 1834
Storm clouds, they said, brought good luck on a wedding day.
The bleakness of the sky over the marriage vows, they said, would mark the bleakest point of a union. Sheets of rain, they said, would wash away any ill fortune fated for the couple, leaving only the future, filled with good luck.
After all, they said, weddings were the happiest of days—times for blushing brides and fresh-faced grooms and new frocks and families full to the brim with joy at the prospect of doubling in size. What was a bit of rain against the promise of such happiness?
Bad weather, they said, would make the worst of the day and the match.
But what if the weather was not the worst of the day? What of the match then?
That late October morning, as the rain came in sheets, thunder shaking the rafters, Miss Adelaide Trumbull stood at the altar of St. Stephen’s Chapel in South Lambeth, the scents of incense and candle wax all around her, in a frock thieved in the dark of night from Mayfair’s finest dressmaker, and considered the possibility that they were wrong.
There was nothing blushing about Adelaide, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of Alfie Trumbull, a brute with a fist the size of another man’s face. Alfie had put that meaty weapon to good work as soon as he’d been big enough to pack a punch, and he’d built himself a small empire, such as it was, on the South Bank, the head of The Bulls, a gang of thugs and thieves named for the man who’d brought them together. Adelaide had learned fast that if she was to survive her father’s violent dominion, she would have to earn her keep, and by six years old, she’d been one of the South Bank’s finest nippers—with long, slim, quick fingers that could lift a pocket watch or cut a purse, her mark none the wiser.
A princess of thieves.
And when it came time to marry, there was no question that her father would choose the groom—that was the role of kings, was it not? To marry off their daughters for land or power or an army made exponentially larger by the match.
It did not matter that Adelaide was too tall and too plain, or that John Scully had absolutely no interest in her. Oh, he smiled when she came into the room, and he’d been more than willing to sample the wares, which her father had all but insisted she allow, and when he talked, he did so with the easy patter of a man who knew how to catch flies with honey. But he didn’t have any interest in catching Adelaide, so she expected that once she was caught, there’d be far less honey than there would be vinegar.
What mattered was that Scully was the leader of The Boys, a smaller, newer gang making waves on the South Bank. More anarchy than organization, The Boys posed a danger to residents, businesses, and the kingdom belonging to Alfie Trumbull—a man who believed strongly in the adage that friends should be kept close and enemies closer.
If that meant sacrificing his daughter to them, so be it.
Adelaide didn’t care for her father. And she highly doubted she would care for her new husband. But this was the life into which she was born, and if she was lucky, she would survive marriage to a monster better than her own mother had. Perhaps John Scully would die young.
A wicked crack of thunder sounded, and it occurred to Adelaide that pondering the death of one’s groom while before the parson would likely offset the good luck of the torrential rain outside.
A tiny, wild laugh bubbled out of her. No one noticed.
She adjusted her spectacles and touched her fingers to her throat, where the high lace collar of the wedding gown made for another was too tight.
The priest prattled away, his words a run of stuttering gibberish, born of fear of what might come if he failed in following his instructions, no doubt.
Adelaide made out something about Cana of Galilee as she cast a look at the man she was to marry—rocking back and forth on his heels, as though he had somewhere else to be. Her gaze slid past him, to his mother, seated in the first pew—the one hiding the entrance to the underground cellar that held half-dozen cases of weapons waiting for whatever war Alfie waged next. The older woman’s gaze was stern, as though they were before the magistrate and not the minister.
Adelaide’s attention shifted to the others in the row. Two young women, Scully’s sisters, looking as though they might be rendered unconscious from the boredom of the day. Behind them, a row of men. Scully’s brothers, one by blood and the rest by fire. Soon to be her brothers, too, she supposed. Hideously brutish, brows low over eyes, heavy enough to shade their noses, broken so many times over that smashed was a better term for their state. They, too, fidgeted.
An ordinary bystander might think the movements the result of a collective fear for souls. That a house of God was not their preferred location for a Saturday morning.
But this was no ordinary house of God, and Adelaide was not an ordinary bystander.
The priest continued, finding enough clarity to say something about hellfire, which Adelaide thought a bit much for a wedding, but perhaps he was attempting to turn the assembly to the light.
Good luck to him.
She shifted, just enough to see her father out of the corner of her eye. Just enough to see that he was not watching the ceremony. Instead, he was staring over her head, past the priest, to the stained glass in the windows beyond.
His meaty fingers tapped against his knee. His jaw worked as he chewed the side of his tongue—a tell that Adelaide had learned early meant she should find a way out of the room, and fast. Squinting through her spectacles, she looked to his boots, still caked with muck from the Rookery beyond. There, touching the heel of one, was the wooden handle of the club that was her father’s preferred weapon.
And that’s when she realized that she wasn’t going to be married that day. It was not to be a merger, but a conquest; her father planned to kill her groom.
She snapped her attention back to the priest, instinct taking over. There was a chalice on the altar behind him. Likely made of pewter, though. Not heavy enough. No, she’d be better with the brass candlestick. The short one on the far side of the altar. She’d have to get there first, up two steps. Were candlesticks holy? Adelaide lowered her hand to her skirts, annoyance flaring. If she’d known she was going to have to fight, she would have protested this frock. She rolled one shoulder in the too-tight dress. There was no way she would be able to swing that candlestick hard enough to do damage. And she needed to be able to do damage.
What kind of animals turned a wedding into a turf war?
And more importantly, what were they waiting for?
“If any here assembled . . .”
Adelaide rolled her eyes. Of course. No one liked theater like a lifelong criminal, thinking himself a hero.
“. . . has reason for these two to not be joined in holy matrimony . . .”
Beside her, Scully shifted, his hand slipping beneath his coat, to where he no doubt had a blade holstered. Her father wasn’t the only one out for blood that day.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she muttered.
The priest turned censorious eyes on her, as though no bride would ever consider speaking up at this moment. “. . . speak now, or forever hold your peace.”
For a moment, silence fell, long and heavy, and for a heartbeat, Adelaide wondered if she was wrong.
She held her breath as thunder boomed, filling the church, reverberating off the centuries-old stones.
The war began.
The assembly was on its feet, fists flying, blades unsheathing, a hatpin or two entering the fray, all punctuated by grunts and shrieks.
Adelaide headed for the candlestick, nimble and quick as she’d ever been—as she’d been trained to be since she was four years old. And while she went, aiming for that brass prize, she did the other thing she’d been doing since she was four years old—she picked pockets. She was no fool, and knew that she might well be on her own after this brawl, with nothing but a stolen, too-tight wedding dress and no coin. Years on the street had taught her to plan for the fight and prepare for the flight.
She took three watches—one while ducking an impressive punch—and two purses heavy with coin, and shoved them up the tight sleeves of her gown, on her way toward her goal. Lifting her too-short skirts, she rushed up the steps, past the priest, now tucked behind the altar—the safest place for a man of the cloth to hide while his borrowed chapel
A shout came from behind her, too close—and she looked back to find one of Scully’s men reaching for her, red in the face. “Where are you goin’, gel?” He grabbed for the back of her gown, and the fabric stuck like skin, refusing him purchase.
Adelaide increased her speed and grabbed the candlestick, immediately turning and using all the force she could muster to knock him back. “Nowhere with you!”
He howled and grabbed her weapon, yanking her toward him in the moment before he lost consciousness, but Adelaide was ready, releasing it as he fell like a tree. She paused for a half second—less—to consider her options, her mind racing. Did she want this fight?
Was it hers?
She was saved from having to answer, a hand coming to her shoulder. Before she could turn and fight, she was pulled backward through a door hidden behind the altar.
It closed with a soft snick, the sound of the battle beyond fading away, muffled by wood and stone and distance and the infernal rain, pounding high on the lead-cased windows above.
The soot-covered stained glass barely filtered the dim light from the dark sky beyond. Adelaide grasped for the first weapon she could find. Spinning to face the door, she brandished the book . . . and immediately lowered it.
The woman just inside the door smiled. “Decided against walloping me?”
“I don’t imagine eternal punishment is easy for those who strike nuns,” Adelaide replied.
“Even worse for those who strike nuns with the Holy Bible.”
Adelaide returned the book to its place.
The nun moved past her, to the far side of the room, where she retrieved a hamper from a low cupboard. She set it on the table between them, next to the Bible, then stepped back from it.
Adelaide eyed the basket and the woman warily. “You ain’t like no nun I’ve ever known.”
“Have you known many nuns?”
She considered the question. She hadn’t, but that wasn’t the point. She pushed her spectacles up her nose. “Who are you for?”
The woman’s brows rose. “Is that not clear?”
“I mean, are you The Bulls or The Boys?”
The nun tilted her head. “I could ask you the same question.”
Neither.
Adelaide kept quiet.
“Imagine this, Adelaide Trumbull,” the nun said, her blue gaze sharp and full of truth. “What if I were for you?”
Adelaide lifted her chin. What if there was a third path? A better one?
Impossible. There were no better paths for girls born in Lambeth. Not even for the princesses born there. Especially not for them.
High above, Adelaide found the face of one of the stained-glass figures and found herself envious of the shrouded woman’s position. Unidentifiable. Unseen by all but a very few. Unimportant. Rain pounded on the window, threatening to shatter the already cracked panes of blue glass that made the figure’s body.
A scream from beyond penetrated the quiet of the room.
“You need somewhere to put your loot, do you not?” The nun who did not seem so nunnish indicated the hamper once more.
Adelaide met the woman’s eyes, the trio of pocket watches heavy and warm against her skin up her sleeve. “What loot?”
The nun lifted a knowing brow.
Adelaide approached the basket, uncertain of what it would reveal, and knowing that whatever it was would change her life. Possibly not for the better.
Though, to be honest, it could not get much worse.
She lifted the lid to reveal a small portrait in a round silver frame. She looked to the woman watching her carefully from across the room. “Me.”
“So you know what is within was for you all along.”
Adelaide considered the door and what was beyond it. “You knew what he planned,” she said. Her father. The battle beyond. The war that would come.
A nod.
“You, and who else?”
A little head tilt. “That comes later.”
“How do I know there is a later?”
“How do you know there is a later out there?”
The nun made a fair point.
Adelaide reached into the hamper and extracted a pile of clothing. Trousers. A peaked cap. A shirt and waistcoat and coat. A black umbrella.
“They’ll be looking for a bride,” the other woman explained, lifting a chin in the direction of the altar, where half of Lambeth’s muscle no doubt turned the church stones red. “One in a stolen frock.”
Adelaide didn’t misunderstand. The clothing was a disguise—one that would never work in the long run, but would absolutely work for the next thirty minutes. For the next thirty yards, once she opened the door and stepped into the rain.
Except . . .
“There’s nowhere to go,” she said, shaking her head. Princesses didn’t leave their kingdoms. Who were they without them?
The nun nodded to the hamper. “Are you sure?”
Adelaide peeked inside the now-empty basket to find a small blue calling card at the bottom, thick and lush—the finest paper she’d ever seen, inked with a beautiful indigo bell. Though the rectangle was the size of a calling card, there was no name on it. Only that bell, and an address in Mayfair.
The bell, the address, and, when she turned it over, the message.
It is time for you to disappear, Adelaide.
Come and see me.
Duchess
And like that, the third path rolled out before Adelaide, clean and clear. And coveted.
Turned out, they were right.
Rain made luck on a wedding day, after all.
Chapter One
The South Bank
Five years later
There were any number of words London might use to describe Adelaide Frampton.
North of the river, in Hyde Park and on Bond Street and in Mayfair ballrooms, when people spoke of the bespectacled distant cousin to the Duchess of Trevescan, which was rare, they used words like plain. If pressed, they might add tall. Or perhaps ordinary. Certainly spinster was not out of the realm of possibility for the twenty-six-year-old woman who had absolutely no hope of prospects, what with her flame red hair always tucked tightly beneath a pristine cap and the way she wore her collars high and out of fashion, her frocks drab, and her face common, without rouge or kohl.
Barely seen, rarely heard, neither titled nor rich, never droll, lacking in charm or extraordinary skill. Uninteresting. Unassuming. Unremarkable and therefore unnoticeable, allowed into Mayfair thanks only to a faraway bloodline.
South of the river, however, in warehouses and laundries and workhouses, in the rookeries and streets where Adelaide had been raised not Adelaide Frampton but Adelaide Trumbull, she was legend. Little girls across Lambeth would tuck into their beds at night, hungry for hope and the promise of a future, and their mothers and aunts and older sisters would whisper the stories of Addie Trumbull, the greatest nipper the South Bank had ever seen—fingers so fast she’d never once been caught—and a future so bright that she’d fought in the war that had merged The Bulls and The Boys, ensuring her father was king of both before she’d left for a future beyond the coal clouds and the mud puddles and filth of Lambeth.
Addie Trumbull, the story went, had left a princess and become a queen.
Remarkable how legends grew without proof, even in places where the soil was salted and the fields lay fallow. Especially in those places.
It did not matter that Addie had never returned. Someone’s cousin’s friend’s sister worked as a maid in the new queen’s court, and had seen Addie there. She was married to a good, rich man, and slept on goose down and wore silk frocks and ate off golden plates.
Sleep well, little ones; if you are good and learn early to cut purses and move fast, you, too, might have a future like Addie Trumbull.
Legend. Myth. Luminary.
Unimaginable.
But like all gossip from north of the river, and all stories from south of it, the truth was a little of both and a lot of neither. And because of that, Adelaide remained a mystery in both places, which suited her quite well, as unnoticeable and unimaginable endowed her equally with the only quality she cared to have—invisibility.
And so, here is the truth: Adelaide Frampton was the greatest thief London never saw.
