Dalton knew Con well enough to know he'd take it very hard if anything happened to his niece on his watch.
They were caught in the tangle of carriages and farm carts attempting to funnel onto the smaller side streets that led to the St. Jude's rookeries.
Somehow Thea had managed to insinuate herself into the rescue mission, clamoring in after Con, so that the three of them were wedged onto the single seat of Jones's carriage. She'd said she wasn't about to sit by herself in the inn while Molly could be in peril.
This would be a swift affair. Dalton and Con would storm the Anchor, retrieve Molly, and they'd all be back on the way to the inn within ten minutes.
"This is taking too long." Con fidgeted on the seat, tapping his boots and clenching his fists atop his knees.
"We'll be there soon," Thea soothed.
Dalton didn't relish the idea of returning to the public house. He hadn't liked Alberton's questions, or the way he'd stared at Dalton's jaw, almost as if he had been searching for Trent's cut. With any luck Albertson wouldn't be there and they could be in and out with no fuss.
Thea sat in silence, obscured by the voluminous gray cloak, hidden behind Con's shoulders, her face covered by the brim of her bonnet.
Dalton sensed her disquiet as a fourth presence in the carriage, a looming reminder of the words he'd said to her only minutes ago. The lies fabricated to drive her away.
The ludicrous notion that he preferred the company of some dashing widow to Thea.
Badly done, that.
The moment the words had left his mouth he'd regretted them. And when the teasing light faded from her eyes and her smile faltered and disappeared, he'd felt like a coward and a criminal.
Confusion, betrayal . . . and finally resentment in the shifting seas of her eyes. How could he blame her? He'd abandoned control last night, binding her to him first with linen restraints and then with kisses, and today he'd pushed her away.
He couldn't tell her the truth of why he had to sever ties, but he hated the betrayal in her eyes. It seemed no matter what he did he wounded her.
The compulsion to fold her into his arms, stroke her silken hair, whisper that he hadn't meant what he said . . . that stopped now.
His next breath would be focused. Ruthless.
Thea-less.
This carriage ride changed nothing.
Thea and Molly would still travel safely in elegant chambers on a steam packet tomorrow while he and Con stole away on the merchant brigantine leaving for Ireland tonight.
No more confessions. Or kisses.
"Have you been to the Anchor before?" Thea asked Con.
"Just came from there, actually," Con said. "Rough place. Don't like Molly being there."
"It's broad daylight," Thea objected. "How nefarious can the place be at half four in the afternoon?"
Con shook his head. "No place for a young girl, the Anchor. Crawling with sailors from every port."
"Then it's a good thing I'm here," Thea said. "I have a calming effect on unpolished sorts. I soothed those beasts outside the inn last evening quite effectively."
She stole a glance at Dalton from under her bonnet, to see how he'd taken that pronouncement.
Calming effect, his arse.
There wasn't a calm, staid bone in that lithe body of hers.
He narrowed his eyes and she did smile then, a small, triumphant curving of her lips that clearly said she knew she'd vexed him and that tormenting him was her new purpose in life.
And damn him, despite all his resolutions, he wanted to be tormented in every way her quick intellect could devise.
Before that precarious spool of thought spun too far, the carriage finally slowed outside of the soot-blackened bricks of the Anchor public house.
Dalton leaned over Con to address Thea. "You'll stay in the carriage this time, please. This won't take but a moment."
Delicate eyebrows arched disdainfully.
"Fine," Dalton sighed, even though she hadn't said anything, just shot him the nobody, especially not a duke, is going to tell me what to do glance that he was coming to know so well. "But please stay close beside me."
She nodded, tugging her gray bonnet ribbons tighter and squaring her small shoulders.
"Hurry now," Con urged, already heading for the entrance.
When the door opened, the raucous sound of sailors at play spilled into the street. The place had filled since Dalton had left. Not an empty seat in the room.
Lit by sputtering, odiferous tallow candles and hanging gas lamps, the dark, cavernous room brimmed with high-pitched laughter and slurred shouting.
Burly sailors in blue coats and red neck cloths swilled beer, joked with the barmaids, and gambled away their pay with cards and dice.
Some of them would no doubt wager the clothes off their backs before the night was through and slink home, half-naked and stumbling drunk, to wives gone prematurely old and gray with worry, and a room full of cold, sad-eyed children.
Thea's eyes widened as she watched a man with pockmarked cheeks and a threadbare coat grab the skirt of a woman with hard, jaded eyes and pull her over for a smacking public kiss.
It was disconcerting having Thea here in his world. Her sweet scent clashed with the rancid stink of spilled gin.
He'd been thinking of her as some larger-than-life temptation-a monumental peril that he must ward against at all costs-but here, in this restless crush of sailors, dockworkers, and costermongers, she was too slight and fragile, too easily lost.
He placed a hand on the small of her back because the inebriated ne'er-do-wells in the room needed to know she was under his protection.
Not because he'd been dying to touch her, he told himself.
She glanced at him from under long, sable lashes and he pulled her tighter, wrapping his hand around the curve of her waist.
Mine. All mine, his clasp proclaimed.
No sign of Albertson. Or Molly.
Con scanned the room, the wary angle of his shoulders betraying his tension.
"Back again so soon?"
Dalton met the bold gaze of Pearl, the barmaid with the bright red hair who'd propositioned him earlier.
She cocked her hip and winked. "Missed me, you rogue?" She squeezed his arm, as if testing his bicep for strength.
Thea's eyes narrowed dangerously.
"You brought company." Pearl looked Thea up and down, clearly sensing a potential rival.
"Humph." Thea tossed her head, which didn't have much effect since all her glorious curls were covered by her travel-wilted straw bonnet.
Dalton gently lifted Pearl's hand from his arm. "Missed your dark porter," he said heartily. "Two more pints of the stuff for my friend and me."
"What about you then?" She glanced hopefully at Con. "You're a seaworthy hull of a fellow, if ever I saw one. Need a passenger?"
Con shook his head distractedly, intent on searching for Molly in the crowded room.
"Only the pints," Dalton said.
Pearl flounced away, her faded red silk skirts swirling indignantly.
Con jerked his head toward the back of the room. "Over there."
The crowd gathered around a corner table parted slightly, allowing Dalton to see a dice contest in progress.
Molly stood against the far wall with her shoulders thrown back and a grin on her face, shaking the dice dramatically while the captivated onlookers watched each movement of her slender hands.
A tall, towheaded man in his twenties with polished brass buttons on his blue coat and his arm around a barmaid with saucy chestnut curls glared at Molly with a murderous expression from across the table.
He looked none too pleased about losing to such a young lad. If he hadn't known she was a girl, Dalton would have been fooled as well. With her braids tucked up under that floppy blue cap and the blue coat and vest, she could be a ragged scrap of a cabin boy who ran errands and served the captain and crew of a merchant vessel.
Dalton was intimately familiar with nearly every one of London's gaming hells and the usual games of chance played against the house, but he was not sure of the game the two played here.
The sailors in rapt attendance seemed to know what was going on, however, and shouted in unison after Molly rolled the dice onto a canvas mat.
Cocky, loud, and self-assured, Molly traded quips and bawdy jests with the sailors gathered around her. "Triple anchors, boys! I told you I stowed a large anchor, and I drop it deep as well!"
Dalton had to chuckle. She even sounded impressively like a sailor. She was so intent on the game, she never even glanced their way.
The tall man's already ruddy face grew visibly redder as he slowly counted out coins and slid them toward the center of the table. Molly laughed gleefully in the man's face as she raked in the coins.
"Must be Raney," Con said, tilting his chin at the tow-headed man.
Dalton nodded.
"I don't think he recognizes her," Thea said in an astonished whisper at Dalton's side.
"Aye," Con agreed. "I don't like it. Raney's been drinking and he's angry about losing."
Molly thumped her hand on the table until her stack of coins jumped merrily. Raney's eyes narrowed and his jaw jutted.
Con grew utterly still.
Dalton knew that expression well. He was sizing up the danger. Making swift decisions about the best way to mitigate the possibility of a brawl.
Best way would be to just walk up and retrieve her. Say the captain needed her and there'd be hell to pay if she didn't snap to immediately.
Raney had had a few pints, judging by the way he swayed on his feet. A situation like this could disintegrate swiftly. Losing money never made men feel charitable.