Hugo and the Maiden

by S. M. LaViolette

  “Martha, be caref—”

  She smashed the vase against the back of Cowan’s skull with all the strength of a woman who’d spent the first twenty years of her life doing hard manual labor.

  Cowan grunted and crumpled, the knife slipping from his limp fingers with a clatter as he slid to the floor, trapping Fergus beneath his huge body.

  Hugo snatched up the club and strode toward the fallen man. “Get back, Martha,” he said when she reached for Cowan’s shoulder to turn him over and free poor Fergus.

  She jerked back her hand and took a step back.

  Hugo kicked the knife away from Cowan’s outstretched hand, raised the club, and nodded at Cailean, who’d crawled to the fallen man on his hands and knees. “Go ahead and turn him over.”

  Cailean grunted with the effort of rolling the huge man onto his back.

  Fergus squirmed free of his prison and gave a joyous yip as he leapt into Cailean’s waiting arms.

  Drool and blood leaked from the corner of Cowan’s mouth and more blood oozed from a nasty cut over his eye.

  Hugo lowered the club. “Go untie Albert,” Hugo told Cailean, and then turned to his disobedient wife. “And you. I thought I told you to wait in the carriage.”

  Before she could speak—and likely argue—Hugo grabbed her with the hand not holding the cudgel and yanked her close, squeezing a startled squeak out of her as he stared down into her wide blue eyes.

  “Never mind,” he said, kissing her hard on the mouth. “What I meant to say was I love you, Martha Buckingham.”

  She stared up at him, poleaxed.

  “Oh, and also thank you for saving the day with that hideous vase.” He gave her another kiss, this one a bit more thorough, and then pulled away. “But the next time you thrust yourself in the middle of danger I’m going to put you over my knee. Understood?”

  Martha’s smile grew slowly, until it illuminated the kitchen. “Yes, Hugo.”

  Hugo snorted; he wasn’t fooled for a second by her demure tone and meek expression. “We shall talk more about this later,” he promised. “In great detail. Is the hackney still outside?”

  “I paid him to wait.”

  “I’m going to stay here and watch over Cowan. Take Cailean with you and go tell the driver he needs to fetch the nearest Watch. And then come right back here.”

  “Yes, Hugo.”

  He kissed her, and then waited until the two of them left before turning to Albert, who was rubbing the circulation into his wrists. “Need a doctor?” he asked.

  Albert shook his head and then winced. “Just a bit of a goose egg. I’ll be fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “I came in through the kitchen—my key didn’t work on the front door—and he must have been waiting.”

  Cowan moaned, the eye that wasn’t swollen shut opened a crack and his hands went to his bloody trouser front. He whimpered, clutched his jewels, and then whimpered again.

  “Fancy seeing you here, Cowan.”

  Amazingly, Cowan’s battered face twisted into a sneer when he saw Hugo looking down at him, holding his club. “You filthy sod bastard.”

  Hugo grinned. “I’m glad to see that almost having your prick ripped off hasn’t dimmed your sunny nature. Why are you here?”

  “Where the hell else could I go?” Cowan shouted, and then winced at the pain it must have caused his head.”

  “Is that a trick question?” Hugo asked, genuinely confused. “How about the Continent? The Liverpool docks? Calcutta? Just about anywhere else but here?”

  “The bloody soldiers have seized everyone I know and everything I own. I got away from them at the harbor, but there were more waiting at Bev’s place. I ain’t got any money. I’m bloody trapped and will probably swing for this. So I figured I’d come here and kill your whore wife and—”

  Hugo kicked him in the side and Cowan screamed.

  “Now, now. Mind your manners, Cowan,” Hugo said, his foot twitching to kick him again. And keep on kicking until he was no longer a threat to anyone.

  Cowan clutched his side and glared up at him, fury and hatred burning in his eye.

  Hugo heard movement behind him and turned to find Martha, Cailean, and Fergus. “The Watch is on their way,” she said.

  Hugo slipped his arm around her and smiled.

  “You go ahead and smile, Buckingham,” Cowan shouted through his swollen mouth. “You’ll get nothing out of all this, you dumb bastard.”

  Hugo kissed Martha’s cheek and then looked down at the raving man. He was tempted to tell him that he was wrong—that he got everything out of what happened tonight: Martha. But he decided that Cowan didn’t deserve to even hear Martha’s name.

  Instead, he said, “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, that’s so. There won’t be no Solange’s in a few months. Bev already sold the buildings—the money has changed hands and the new owner takes possession at the end of the year.” He laughed, and then gasped and grabbed his side.

  As Hugo stared down at the bloody, hateful man at his feet he considered the news he’d just heard and what he felt about it.

  It took him a moment to identify the emotion: it was relief.

  Hugo handed Albert the club. “Keep an eye on him until the authorities come.” He then looked away from Cowan, turning his gaze to something infinitely more beautiful and worthy: his wife.

  “Shall we go wait in that charming little sitting room, darling?”

  “I’d like that, Hugo.”

  He tightened his arm around her, and she melted against him.

  “Don’t you understand? Solange’s is gone!” Cowan shouted after him. “Everything you ever worked for. If you want it back, you’ll have to spend every penny you have on lawyers and waste years of your life chasing it through the courts.”

  Hugo smiled down at Martha. “I don’t care about Solange’s anymore,” he said, just loud enough for her ears. “And I can think of a much better way to spend the rest of my life.”

  Chapter 37

  Several hours later …

  “Laura?”

  Martha gave him an exasperated look. “Hugo, that’s the fourth time you’ve said that.”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “But … Laura?”

  Martha laughed. “Yes, it was Laura who came up with the plan.”

  He kissed her nose and then his dark gaze lowered to her chest.

  Martha looked down and saw the blanket had slipped and that one breast was exposed. She hastily covered herself.

  “Oh, Martha.”

  “Oh, Hugo.” She smiled at his petulant tone and pouty look. “Do you want to hear the rest of my story or look at my breasts?”

  “Can’t I do both?”

  “You didn’t seem to be able to do both half an hour ago when we came to bed.”

  He smirked. “You’re probably right. So, it was Laura’s plan to approach our sovereign’s brother and tell him that he was about to be a victim of extortion. For sodomy.”

  “Well, when you state it so baldly I suppose it does sound a bit, er, audacious.”

  “Yes, just a bit. Especially when one considers who Laura is, what Laura is, and where Laura now works.”

  Martha didn’t want to feel pity for the woman who’d been responsible for Hugo’s captivity, but Laura Maitland was a broken creature. While Martha couldn’t quite bring herself to forgive Laura, she respected her for doing her best to right the wrongs she’d done Hugo, even though she would never be able to restore everything she’d stolen.

  “Laura was the first one to admit she would never be allowed anywhere near his royal highness,” Martha said.

  “And so you decided to be the messenger.”

  “We all decided I should go.”

  He snorted. “I still can’t believe Daniel was part of this mad plan and kept it from me. I’m his employer.”

  “It wasn’t so mad, since it worked,” she pointed out.

  Hugo slid an arm around her bare shoulders and pu
lled her close. “I know it worked—and I’m grateful. But you could have died, sweetheart. Cowan was demented enough to kill you.”

  “But I didn’t die. And the duke didn’t get extorted, and Mr. Davies wasn’t able to sell the guns to the radicals, and you no longer need to work for that dreadful criminal.”

  “You’re right—yet again, darling.” He kissed her. “Now tell me about your meeting with the duke; that I need to hear”

  “First I had to speak to a gentleman named Gibson.”

  “Ah, yes, Gibson.”

  Martha didn’t tell him that Mr. Gibson kept her locked in a windowless room for six hours while he questioned her. Over and over and over. Nor did she tell him that she’d never been so terrified in her entire life.

  There was no reason for him to know any of that.

  “Once Mr. Gibson ascertained that I wasn’t lying, the duke came to see me.” She’d waited almost twenty-four hours before the duke finally came. Martha suspected they’d kept her in that windowless room so that nobody would ever see the two of them together.

  “He was very polite and asked only a few questions about everything that I’d already told Mr. Gibson, so I assumed he’d informed the duke thoroughly.” She hesitated, and then said, “He seemed far more interested in my relationship with you.”

  Hugo gave a noncommittal hmmm.

  Well, what else could he say? What was there to say? Her husband had been a royal duke’s lover. He had worked as a prostitute all his life; he’d had hundreds, if not thousands, of lovers—male and female.

  And there wasn’t a thing Martha could do to change that.

  She strove not to be judgmental or jealous or hateful, but unpleasant emotions roiled in her belly while she’d sat there looking at a man who’d been intimate with her husband. Those same feelings were stirring right now as she looked at her beloved Hugo and thought about all the people who’d known his magnificent body and enjoyed his magical skills.

  “Martha?”

  Fear, shame, and defiance lurked in his beautiful dark eyes. “I want you to know that I went to the duke last night and told him no. It is who I was, not who I am.”

  His words rendered her boneless with relief. She sagged against his body and pressed her face into the hardness of his chest, kissing his silky, hot skin and nuzzling him until her lips brushed against a small, hard nipple and he jerked.

  “Mmmm.” She fastened her mouth over the little bud and sucked.

  Hugo shivered. “Martha,” he warned.

  She reluctantly detached herself from his delicious body and looked up at him. “I had hoped that was what you would do, Hugo. Thank you.”

  “I didn’t do it for you, Martha. I did it for us. You are the only good thing that has ever happened to me. And just like you, the vow I took means something to me.” His arm tightened. “I will be faithful to you until I die, Martha—even if it means I have to go hat in hand to Melissa’s bloody husband and beg him for a job wrangling orphaned French brats.” He kissed her and then held her gaze. “But there is nothing I can do about all the years behind me.”

  “I know that, Hugo.” Martha swallowed, struggling to find the right words. “I’m not going to lie and claim that learning the truth about your past won’t take time to understand and adjust to, but I love you and nothing will change my mind about that.” She opened her mouth, but hesitated.

  “What is it, darling?”

  “You really mean it? I mean about the orphanage?”

  He traced her lower lip with his thumb, his eyelids heavy. “Yes. I’m very serious about finding another way to make money. I’ll dig ditches before I sell myself again.” His mouth quirked into a smile. “My body now belongs only to you.”

  Her eyes burned and she blinked rapidly.

  “Please don’t cry,” he begged.

  She gave a gurgle of a laugh. “I’m just so happy.” She shoved her face into his chest again and sniffled.

  Hugo stroked her shoulder and held her close. “Tell me the rest of your story, Martha.”

  “There’s not much else,” she said, her voice watery. “Laura had heard Cowan complaining that his half-brother—Elis, I think his name is—had impressed their father by bringing guns from France to sell to some group here. We all agreed that was something the government should know. Gibson and I both argued to arrest them all beforehand, but it was the duke who wanted to catch Davies in the act, so to speak.”

  Hugo snorted. “Ah, the dramatic approach.”

  “Hugo?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Will you try to get Solange’s back?”

  “No. That’s over. Cowan was right about it taking years and lots of money. It would make for a miserable life.” He sighed. “I’m not happy about it, Martha—it took years to earn enough to purchase my half and I poured even more money into the place during the three years I was co-owner. It … pains me to let it go. But it pains me even more to have you associated with such a place.”

  Martha hesitated, and then said, “Thank you, Hugo. I shouldn’t care to think of you continuing to work in such a place, either. I don’t believe it comes without cost.” She smiled. “And I don’t think it would be good for our child, either.”

  ◆◆◆

  Hugo blinked. “I’m sorry, darling—did you say our child?”

  She nodded, her soft hair tickling his chin.

  Hugo straddled her blanket-covered body and grabbed her shoulders. “Our child?”

  “I know you said you didn’t want children, but—”

  “Our child?”

  She laughed. “You’re doing it again—sounding like a demented parrot.”

  Hugo crushed her against him for the third time that night. “How could you think I wouldn’t want our child? Whatever I said back on Stroma—before we were married—was spoken in ignorance.” He kissed her head, squeezing his eyes shut and inhaling her scent, which intoxicated him. “When did you learn this, sweetheart?”

  “The day you told me to leave.”

  Her words were like a punch to his heart. “Oh, darling. I’m so sorry. How terrified you must have been.”

  “It was not a good night.”

  Hugo released her so he could see her face.

  “No,” she said, before he could speak. “Don’t apologize again. What you said that night hurt me—greatly—but you did it for the best of reasons.” Her lips twisted. “However misguided. I forgive you for the pain you caused me.” She gave him a chiding look. “Just never do it again.”

  He gave a breathless laugh. “I will be a model husband for the rest of our lives.”

  “I hope not, I like you the way you are.”

  Hugo shifted so that he could strip the blankets off her.

  “Hugo! What are you doing?”

  “I want to see your belly.”

  “But—”

  He pushed open her thighs, knelt between them, and laid his head on the gentle swell of her stomach.

  “Hugo.”

  “Now you sound like a demented parrot,” he teased. “I can’t hear anything,” he said a moment later, and then pushed up onto his elbows to meet her gaze.

  She laughed. “What did you expect to hear?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know a thing about babies or childbirth.” He left unsaid his only knowledge of subject, which was avoiding making clients pregnant. “When will you show some sign of your condition?”

  “It’s early—only six weeks. It will be a few months.”

  Hugo stroked the soft skin of her belly as his brain struggled to absorb the fact that there was—at this moment—a child beneath his hand. His child. Their child.

  He experienced a sudden rush of primal pride and his cock—already half hard from being so close to her—throbbed as he imagined her swollen with his baby.

  “Do you want a boy or a girl?” she asked, interrupting his primitive preening.

  “Either is fine. What about you?”

  She smiled down the length o
f her delicious body at him. “I just want a fat, healthy baby.”

  He stared at her stomach as he caressed her, utterly stupefied that a tiny human would be living in there for nine months—he knew that much about babies, at least.

  “Hugo?”

  He looked up. “Yes, darling?”

  “Won’t you tell me about your family—about what happened to you?”

  He groaned and rolled onto his back, the raging erection he’d been sporting already shriveling. “It’s so sordid, Martha.” Not to mention humiliating.

  “Is it too painful for you to speak of it?”

  For years his father’s abandonment had bled like an open wound. But now?

  “No, it’s just an old ache now.”

  She scooted down the bed, until they were shoulder to shoulder, and then took his hand in her much smaller one. “Please?”

  Hugo sighed. “When I was fourteen my father took me on a hackney ride across London. My mother had died just the week before and—” He snorted and turned back to the ceiling; it was too difficult to tell this story while looking into her beautiful eyes. “The one thing that Bev Davies gave me was the truth about my parents—and about me. I didn’t learn until a month ago that my mother was a prostitute before marrying my father. She gave up whoring for years, until desperation forced her back. I was conceived during that time.”

  “Oh, Hugo.”

  “You’d have thought that I would have guessed years ago. After all, I looked nothing like my father and shared few characteristics with my siblings, or even my mother.” He shrugged. “I had always believed that my father disliked me because I was such an inconvenient afterthought. He wasn’t cruel to me. In fact, he just ignored me until that hackney ride.”

  Hugo could still recall his anticipation that day. Perhaps his father might start to like him? After all, Hugo was the only one who still lived at home and Evan Dinwiddy had seemed broken by his wife’s death—maybe they would help each other through their grief?

  He almost laughed as he recalled how naïve he’d been.

  “He took me to a whip-maker, a man named John Caton.” Hugo chewed his cheek, wondering how to phrase what came next.