Another patron paid the man and walked inside. I chewed my lip and stared after him. My entire reason for making the journey from Russia to London seemed further away now than it had on the icy Moscow street. I wet my dry lips and cleared my throat again. “Sir,” I began, stepping nearer to the brutish doorman, “I cobbled streets in Moscow for a year to save up enough to buy myself passage here to London. Didn’t count on having to pay extra fees once I arrived.”
The man shifted his uncaring gaze to me, spurring me on.
“I have business with a man inside, I’ll only be a moment.”
He sighed loudly. “If you are entering the chocolate house, the entry fee is one pound.” His gaze hardened. “Except for you. For you, the fee is two pounds.”
“Pardon?”
His stare turned frosty. “One pound for the establishment. One pound for me. For having to listen to your sad tale and look upon you, you tatterdemalion.”
I glanced down at my shirt and breeches, each made by my mother’s own hand before her death. Patchwork, they were, consisting of pieced together squares of wayward calico. The man was right. I was a disheveled sight to look upon.
A man, dressed in shiny black silk and a large white wig, sporting golden rings in a rainbow of colors on his fingers, strode up. He and his entourage, all sporting golden earrings, stopped short and stared.
“I don’t have two pounds, I don’t even have one pound—” I began.
A sharp slap from the man stung my face. “Then be gone with you!”
I set my throbbing jaw. “My business inside will take but a moment—”
The man drew back his hand again, but this time I was ready. I ducked his open-handed slap and readied myself into a fighting stance, eliciting a whistle and whoop from the group of ogling men.
“Two pounds on the blond boy,” one of the men yelled.
Another answered, “Five on the lobcock—er, the money-taker!”
The group of rapscallions, headed by the man in black, burst into a drunken cacophony of laughter. The burly doorman’s face went scarlet as the men waiting to gain entrance made sport of our predicament.
I swallowed back the hot fear that burned my throat and tried to figure a way out of this mess. The man in black, thankfully, stepped to my side.
“Good heavens,” he began. “For a sprout the likes of you having the gall to take on an oaf the likes of him—” He turned and gave a stony glance to the money-taker. “Your business must be quite important inside. It will be quite a sport just to see what becomes of you on the other side of these walls.”
The man in black slid his arm around my shoulder and nodded to one of the men behind him, who paid the money-taker for the lot of us. He guided me inside, my heart still pounding.
“My name is Teach, Charles Teach.” He gestured to the men who flanked us. “And these are my men. We are, how would you put it politely, regulators of goods that traverse the seas.”
One of the men with next to no teeth leaned down near me with a grin. “We be pirates, we be.”
I tried not to look afraid. All the way from Moscow to London, I’d heard of bands of sea-roving pirates who’d cut your throat as soon as look at you. Teach’s name was one I’d heard of most. Night after night, I’d imagined what would happen when I finally arrived in London. Never had I figured I’d manage to fall into favor with Teach and his nest of pirates.
“I much appreciate your paying my entrance fee,” I began, but Teach cut me off.
“I do not have a habit of loaning money to strangers without exacting something in return.” His eyes glistened. “Tell me, what is your business here? If I am amused, consider your debt paid. If I am otherwise—” He shook his head and drew his finger across his neck.
I gulped as the other men laughed. My mother, despite her many flaws, had raised an honest son. “I am here to seek out my father.”
Teach looked bored. “For what purpose?”
“After my mother died, it was my job to go through her things. I discovered a bundle of letters. And this.” I withdrew the wanted poster from my pocket and held it out to Teach, who accepted it with renewed interest.
“I read the letters, all of which were to my father. They began as love letters, then turned to angry letters. Threatening, even. Stating if he ever came back to see us, she’d kill him. After reading more, I discovered that my father left her maimed after a night of beatings, during which his goal was to kill me. Now that I’m bigger and my mother is dead—”
I accepted the poster back from a speechless Teach. “I figured I’d give him the chance to try again.”
“You say that your father is depicted here, on this poster?”
“I do.”
“So your father is Stenka Razin, the most infamous Russian pirate in the world?”
“He is.”
“Young man, I have sailed with your father many times, taken many ships. He is as cunning and ruthless—and deadly—as they come.” A chorus of aye’s rang out in harmonious tandem from Teach’s men. “You won’t kill him.”
I blinked.
“He’ll kill you.”
I breathed in the scent of the chocolate house. It smelled as rich as its patrons. “Perhaps. Not much left for me to live for, aside from to kill him.”
“Are you armed?” Teach asked. “With steel, I mean?”
“I plan to kill him with his own blade.” I studied the ground, realizing how green my romantic plan, concocted under the stars amid vodka and smoke, sounded. I hoped I wasn’t flushed schoolgirl red, as I had a tendency to do when embarrassed. “He deserves the humiliation,” I mumbled.
“No doubt he does.” Teach drew a thin blade from the sash about his middle. “Here, take this. I want to see entertainment, not a bloodbath. Now, at least you have a fighting chance.”
I nodded and accepted the blade.
