Page 15 of Again, Scoundrel

But that’s nothing, he told himself, a visit to a brothel and a gaming hell can’t fix.

He knocked on the roof for the hack to stop at a hell he visited on occasion, then made his way inside to a card table. There, he threw himself into the distraction of play and drink. He lost hand after hand, but he didn’t care. What better use for the last of his money than to find oblivion? He hardly even noticed when the man seated next to him departed and the chair was immediately occupied by another the size of a small mountain.

“Careful,” Alistair’s new companion said in a heavy Scottish brogue, “or you’ll lose all your coin.”

Alistair glanced over at the Scotsman but couldn’t fully make out his features. It was dark in the hell, and the man was darkly complected for a Scot, with bright green eyes and a hint of familiarity to his face.

“It’s no business of yours what I do,” Alistair said, mimicking his father’s iciest intonation. He wanted the man gone.

Unfortunately, the mountain didn’t take the hint. “Nay. Not yet, it’s not,” he said. “But if you’ll give me a listen, Crawford, it might become so.”

Alistair folded his cards and turned his full attention to the man beside him, his muscles twitching in anticipation. A good fight might be just what he needed tonight. A man didn’t spend a decade aboard a ship and not learn how to use his fists. Or to enjoy the release that could come from a good thrashing.

“How do you know my name?”

“How deep in your cups are you, to not even recognize a familiar face?” And then the Scot smiled a bright, stupid smile that was so out of place on his huge face that Alistair recognized him immediately, even in the dark room.

“McGann,” Alistair said.

“That’s the spirit, Crawford.” McGann slapped him jovially on the back. “Andrew McGann. At your service.”

Andrew McGann had been a higher up at the East India Company, a trusted captain and sailor before he’d commandeered one of the Company ships out of port and sailed it around the world, selling off its stolen cargo of silks and spices as he went. Then he’d scuttled the frigate in Jamaica Bay before disappearing into the interior of the island.

Alistair had met the man once, briefly, before McGann had turned to piracy, or whatever it was he’d been involved in. He’d liked him when they’d spent a few days carousing together in India. No one had been more shocked than he to learn how McGann had ended his career.

Alistair nodded briskly. This was a man he’d hear out. “Should we go to my club and speak? It’s more private.”

“Your club?” McGann’s eyebrows shot up. “Not on your life. I’d not drink the swill they served there if my life depended on it. We’ll go to mine.”

“I didn’t realize you belonged to any clubs.”

“I don’t,” McGann replied. “Not any you’d recognize, anyway.”

Chapter

6

Alistair and McGann took a hack even further into the dark, winding alleys of Covent Garden until they arrived at the seedy center of the rookery.

“Where are we going?” Alistair asked. He wasn’t afraid—he was tall and strong and could take care of himself. But all the same, he’d rather not put himself into a compromising situation if he could help it.

“Don’t worry,” McGann said, “we’re almost there.”

“And what is our final destination?”

“Nowhere.”

McGann knocked on the roof of the hack to stop the conveyance. He lumbered out and made his way to a large, nondescript building with no windows and only a single visible door, which he banged on loudly until a slot opened to reveal a set of green eyes staring back at them.

And then McGann and whomever those eyes belonged to commenced a discussion in a Scottish dialect so thick that Alistair couldn’t follow it at all. After a few moments, the door swung open to allow them entry.

“This way,” McGann said and motioned for Alistair to follow.

“Is this a gaming hell?” Alistair thought he knew every one of those in London.

“No,” McGann said. “I told you, it’s Nowhere.”

McGann led him down a long, darkened hallway and then through another door, and then another after that, which opened into a warm and cozy interior filled with men and women drinking together.