Page 1 of Hooked By a Hero
One
LONDON – AUGUST 1840
The docklands of London were teeming with life and frantic activity as the cheerful morning sun smiled down. Everywhere one turned, burly men with their sleeves rolled up or their shirts removed entirely loaded heavy cargo and baggage aboard the dozens of ships that moored along the jetties that thrust into the River Thames. Other men rowed small boats out to those ships who were not able to secure a spot closer to the riverside, making the water seem alive with movement. Enterprising young women plied their wares to the passengers, merchants, and workers alike, not all of them selling buns or beer.
Some of the more refined passengers waiting to depart for foreign shores gathered slightly to the side, blinking and gaping at the swirl of life, sound, and scent that was as much a part of London as their more restrained existences. Their looks of shock resembled that on the faces of the livestock that were being loaded onto some of the ships with cranes and pulleys.
The scene was awash with noise—men shouting, women talking and laughing, dogs barking, costermongers calling outabout their wares, ships’ captains directing their crew, and the occasional merchant losing his temper as he received goods that were not what he thought they would be. In amongst the chaos, carriages and wagons attempted to push through, taking their passengers as close to their intended ships as they could. A few of those carriages contained chained convicts bound for Australia.
Dr. Elias Pettigrew felt like the opposite of those convicts as he leaned slightly forward in his seat within the hired carriage taking him to theFortune. Like them, he was bound for Australia, though whether for a short time or for the rest of his life had yet to be determined. He bounced his knee and muttered slightly under his breath, “Hurry, hurry! They’ll catch me.”
“Easy, man,” one of Elias’s companions for the journey, Lord Charles Aspenden, Viscount Broxbourne, said, humor in his voice that Elias did not share. “From the terror in your eyes, one would think the law was chasing you.”
Elias pulled his eyes away from the carriage’s window and stared at his friend. “It is not the law,” he said warily. “It is something far worse than the law.”
“It is,” his other companion, Mr. Grayson Hawthorne, agreed with mock seriousness. “It is the inescapable horror of the marriage noose.”
Broxbourne laughed, and though the sound was merry, Elias was not certain he appreciated it. “Yes,” Broxbourne said. “I will admit that Lady Eudora and her mother, Lady Sandridge, are terrifying in the extreme.”
“When I purchased the passage to Australia, I had no idea it would be used to help a friend make a desperate bid for freedom,” Hawthorne said with a broad grin.
“I am very grateful to you for this concession,” Elias said, gazing out the window again to see whether Lady Sandridge’s carriage was still following them. Horrifically, it was. “I do notknow what I would have done had you not generously offered to let me take your place on theFortune.”
“You would have married Lady Eudora,” Broxbourne said with a teasing shrug. “And you would have spent the rest of your days in misery.”
“We could not have had that,” Hawthorne said, sending Broxbourne a smile. He reached for Broxbourne’s hand and took it tenderly. “I am more than happy to have given up my adventure to Australia so that I might remain here and have an even grander adventure of my own. Love is the best adventure of them all.”
Elias smiled for his friends, his fear softening just a bit as he looked at them. The two men kissed, knowing they were safe within the confines of the carriage, which Elias had borrowed from The Chameleon Club. He’d been staying at that home of The Brotherhood for the past week while waiting for theFortuneto depart so that Lady Sandridge and Lady Eudora could not call on him. It warmed his heart to know that Broxbourne and Hawthorne had resolved their conflict from years ago to fall in love with each other again.
Being who they were, Broxbourne and Hawthorne would face intense scrutiny over their connection as they moved forward with their life together. But between the fact that Broxbourne’s sister had married Hawthorne’s brother, which legitimized their close connection, and the secrecy and discretion provided by The Brotherhood, they would be able to live happily with their love as long as they were discreet.
Elias longed for the same sort of enigmatic, society-defying love. He’d known from the time he was a lad of fourteen, experiencing an awakening of the flesh for the first time, not when he thought of ladies, but when he thought of the other boys, who and what he was. Like him, his father had been a physician, which had allowed him to view more than his fairshare of naked male bodies, all under the auspices of his father teaching him “the family trade”, and he’d very much liked what he’d seen.
His father had never known about his proclivities, of course. Elias had been as discreet as possible, to the point of denying himself more than a few opportunities for fun that had come his way through his adolescence and at university. He hadn’t been a complete monk, but now, at the ripe age of one-and-thirty, he had less experience with sin than he wished he had.
He wished he’d had more experience putting his foot down when he needed to and standing firm in defense of himself. It would have stopped him from walking into the trap Lady Sandridge and Lady Eudora had set for him in the month before, at Lord and Lady Felcourt’s house party at Hawthorne House. He’d attended as a family friend, and as soon as Lady Sandridge had learned of the substantial inheritance that had recently come Elias’s way through a relative on his mother’s side, she and Lady Eudora had pounced.
Elias supposed he did not need to bow to societal pressure by agreeing to an engagement for the sake of preserving Lady Eudora’s reputation after the two of them had been caught in a parlor alone together with Lady Eudora partly in a state of undress. The wicked young woman had chased Elias for the entire duration of the house party, and Elias had finally made the fatal mistake of worrying that the woman might be suffering from a coronary complaint when she drew him into the parlor. He moved to feel the beating of her heart, she quickly tore away the front of her bodice, exposing her breasts entirely, and Lady Sandridge had caught them at precisely the moment when Lady Eudora had grabbed his hand and forced him to caress her naked breast.
The scene that was caused moments after the fact would live in Elias’s memory forever. He’d touched female anatomy before,but that particular touch had been the touch of doom. Lady Sandridge had accused him of impropriety, Lady Eudora had wept copious amounts of false tears, and Elias had no way of defending himself. What would he have said? That he preferred men? That he’d spent the previous night in the bed of one Howard Bradford, having his prostate pounded by the alluring, talented older man as he moaned like a wanton and spilled himself across the sheets? That would have caused even more harm.
He'd been lucky Hawthorne had just reconciled with Broxbourne and that Hawthorne had been more than willing to give Elias his place on theFortune. Moving his life to Australia was in no way how Elias had imagined things turning out, and arranging his affairs within a fortnight had been difficult. Once again, he’d been saved by his connections with The Brotherhood, where he’d found a solicitor who had swiftly stepped in to manage things for him.
After that, he’d packed his belongings into a single trunk, waited for the day of departure, and now rattled along the crowded and noisy dockland to his ship of freedom. Everything had resolved itself within a shockingly short amount of time.
Except for the fact that Lady Sandridge and Lady Eudora were still following him.
“Will they never give up?” Elias sighed as the carriage stopped at the wharf where theFortunewas docked.
“They are damnably persistent,” Broxbourne said, twisting to look out the window at the rear of the carriage. “You’d think that there were no other gentlemen in London Lady Eudora could marry.”
“For her, there is not,” Hawthorne pointed out as the carriage jostled in response to the driver climbing down. Elias turned to him, and Hawthorne went on with, “She debased herself inorder to win you, and she has foolishly made no secret of what happened to secure your engagement.”
“Gray has a point,” Broxbourne said. “The silly woman has besmeared her own reputation in the way she has gloated about nabbing you.”
Elias grunted. “All the more reason for me to flee. God only knows what sort of stories she might end up telling about me once our marriage proved a failure.”
Broxbourne and Hawthorne hummed and grew serious. They also knew how important absolute discretion was for men like them.
