Dukes Prefer Blondes

by Loretta Chase

  He’d sent Chiver up onto the roof, ostensibly to get away. The truth was, Freame needed a diversion. While everybody was taken up with Chiver, Freame slipped into the next building, through a concealed door only he knew about.

  He stayed hidden in the china shop until the excitement died down.

  He hadn’t been able to see much, but he’d heard a few things.

  A woman’s voice, calling for Toby. A woman who spoke in toff accents.

  Raven, shouting to “Clara.”

  Freame didn’t believe in coincidences. He didn’t believe in much of anything. He could do ands, though, like putting together two and two. The tall nob female who’d called for Toby and the tall nob female who’d given Chiver a beating for bothering Toby’s sister had to be the same “Clara” Raven shouted at.

  It was a bad idea, Freame had told the late Chiver, to get mixed up with the upper orders. But Chiver hadn’t much in the way of brains. A cleverer man tallied the odds. That man measured future profit against present risk.

  Freame was in a risky business, after all. And he didn’t much care how he finished Raven Radford, as long as he finished him. Chiver was gone, but Husher wasn’t. They’d hush Raven one way or another.

  The gang leader grinned.

  If Chiver’s “bleedin’ great bitch” was the way to get to him, that would only add to the fun.

  Chapter Seven

  THE BARRISTER . . . 2. He considers the principle upon which the profession of an advocate is founded.—­From our tendency to err, the utmost caution is requisite in the discovery of truth, both in the natural and moral world.

  —­The Jurist, Vol. 3, 1832

  Radford turned Toby over to a constable, instructing him to take the boy to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in Smithfield. Unlike other hospitals, which had specific days for accepting patients, St. Bartholomew’s would admit him without difficulty. The constable would make sure no one let unauthorized persons visit the boy.

  Radford would have seen to the business himself, but he didn’t trust Lady Clara out of his sight, and he wanted her as far away from Toby Coppy as possible. Otherwise, he’d have taken the brat to a hospital nearer to their route westward to Kensington, rather than in the opposite direction.

  He told her all this when he reentered the hackney coach, which awaited him in Drury Lane, now with its proper driver installed on the box.

  “I know I took a risk,” she said as the vehicle set out. “But I could hardly leave him there. He was sick and frightened.”

  Radford gazed into her beautiful face. He remembered what his father had said about women. What his mother had said, actually.

  His two selves fought briefly and fiercely. Then, “That was a brave thing to do,” he said.

  She had been gazing out of the window, her hands folded tightly on her lap.

  Now she turned sharply toward him. Her face was white and drawn.

  Panic surged. He crushed it.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to be ill,” he said. “You had a hundred opportunities while you were in that house, and better reason. At least I hope you had better reason then than now.” He bent his head to sniff his clothing and caught a whiff of Bad Neighborhood. “Or is it me?”

  “It’s you,” she said. “You said something that sounded like praise. You said it to me.”

  “I could tell you as well, with greater fervor, that it was a spectacularly stupid thing to do,” he said. “But I’ve said that already in a dozen different ways, and the topic is beginning to bore me.”

  “I didn’t feel brave,” she said. “I was nauseated and terrified.”

  “But you did it nonetheless.”

  “I’m not sure I would have done it if he’d been an anonymous pauper boy,” she said. “But he was the brother of somebody I knew, a hardworking girl I wanted to help. I’d met him and talked to him. I thought, What if one of my brothers had got himself into trouble? Why do I say, ‘What if’? They always got themselves into trouble. And one or the other of them would go to the rescue.” She paused briefly. “They came to my rescue, too.”

  Radford remembered the little girl attacking Bernard.

  “But you’re a girl,” he said. “Given your upbringing, it was nothing short of heroic. I speak as counsel for the defense. As counsel for the prosecution, I can produce indisputable evidence of reckless stupidity and temporary insanity. Even I would think twice, thrice, ten times, before irrupting into a place like that. We’re not like those children, Lady Clara, you and I.”

  “We,” she echoed.

  “Yes, contrary to appearances, I had a gentleman’s upbringing. Frankly, I nearly lost my breakfast when I crossed the threshold. I couldn’t believe Freame lived in a place like that, as Daniel Prior insisted. But how would the boys know for certain where Freame lived? He might have his own suite in a brothel or gaming hell elsewhere. But it’s simpler to house the boys in a species of dormitory and store the merchandise near trusted dealers in stolen goods.”

  “The pawnbroker on the corner?”

  “Very likely.”

  She said no more, but turned to look out of the window again.

  The windows were clean. He’d had that seen to, and insisted on the coach’s interior being cleaned, among other things.

  The morning light gave her face a pearly glow, but her pallor remained. He let his gaze skim downward, past the long row of grim metal buttons, to her gloved hands, folded so tightly on her lap. The gloves were soiled.

  She had been brave. What other young woman of her position would have done what she’d done? Now the crisis was past, though, all she’d seen and done would become sickeningly clear in retrospect. That was why she was so pale.

  He told himself she was obstinate, and hard lessons were the only way she’d learn. All the same, he was composing soothing speeches in his mind. But before he could do or say anything to spoil the lesson, the hackney began to slow. He glanced out of his window.

  “Bedford Street,” he said. “We get out here, to change vehicles. It’s no secret I was on the scene, but there’s nothing special about that. None of them know yet who you are, though, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  They disembarked and climbed into another coach. At the next hackney stand, they changed vehicles again. Following Radford’s instructions, the drivers took circuitous routes. Finally, he and Lady Clara settled into one last hackney and began traveling more directly westward.

  They traveled in a silence he didn’t try to break.

  She was lost in her own thoughts. He had a great deal to reflect upon as well. He’d pushed these matters to the back of his mind, because, as he’d told Westcott this morning, a man couldn’t be in two places at once, and one didn’t break appointments with the Metropolitan Police, especially in an endeavor one had instigated. There would be plenty of time for dealing with Bernard after Radford took Lady Clara back to her proper world.

  That would be the end of this professional detour. He’d return to his sphere and she’d return to hers, and they’d never see each other again.

  His other self was demanding to know why, and they were having a furious argument when she said, “I trust Toby will recover?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” he said. “Nothing alarming in his symptoms. If he’d had anything resembling a proper home, I’d have sent him there to be nursed.”

  “It’s hard to find places for sick pauper children, isn’t it?” she said. “If family can’t look after them, a kindly person must take them in. Or else they go to the workhouse. Or a place like Grumley’s pauper farm.” She touched two fingers to her temple. “Such a world. I’m out of my depth, Mr. Radford.”

  “I should hope so,” he said. He wanted to take her hand away from her face and hold it and comfort her. But he wasn’t a comforting sort of person, and it wasn’t his job, and it was, in sum, a foolis
h idea.

  “The boys said Chiver went off the roof,” she said. “That’s why you ran into the alley or whatever it was.”

  “There was a chance he was alive,” he said. “I’ve heard of some surviving such falls, though not intact. But he broke his neck. He won’t trouble Bridget again, or anybody else. Cheated the hangman, certainly. And he’ll tell no tales. Very convenient for Freame.”

  “Do you think he egged Chiver on?” she said. “To run across the roofs?”

  “Yes, and easily. Chiver always liked to show off.”

  A short, taut silence. Then, “I don’t know how you do it,” she said. She gave a despairing little wave. “How you keep your balance. All the poverty and hopelessness.”

  “I don’t usually spend my time in the rookeries, believe it or not,” he said. “I’ve cultivated informants, yes, because I represent the police from time to time. But as I told you, most of my cases are boring. I receive a brief. I study the evidence and the relevant laws. The Grumley case was an exception.”

  She met his gaze. “You got involved in this gang’s business because of me.”

  “You did make a pest of yourself,” he said. “And it became clear that if I didn’t take charge, you’d attempt it alone.”

  This wasn’t the only reason. It wasn’t, in fact, the true reason. The day they’d met in the Milliners’ Society garden, he’d been . . . What? Bewitched was the way another man would explain it to himself. But that was merely metaphor.

  He’d watched her walk in the shriveled garden, in all her organdy and lace, with the flowers and sprigs shooting from her hat like rockets.

  He’d watched her walk, everything about her fluttering, while he’d listened to her and marveled at her neat summary of his strategy—­the strategy Grumley’s counsel had failed to understand until too late.

  “Not alone,” she said. “I’m not that reckless. But I would have plagued somebody else.”

  His other self decided that, whoever the somebody else was, he ought to be pitched out of a window.

  The rational Radford said, “I looked on the bright side. Here was an opportunity to get rid of Freame. It wouldn’t change the world or even a neighborhood. Another gang leader would take his place in no time. No danger of that species becoming extinct. But he’s exceptionally keen on killing me, and that’s rather a nuisance. Instead of looking upon me as a worthy adversary, he holds grudges. But that’s the criminal mind, Lady Clara. A very small thing it is. They see the world through their own narrow lenses.”

  She looked away from him. “As do I,” she said. “I had no inkling, until I saw the ragged school, how very small my world is. Today was even more educational.”

  “You don’t need these lessons,” he said.

  “Generally speaking, no. But among other things, they’ve taught me how little idea I have of how to begin looking for a place for Toby.”

  It took a moment for this to sink in, because he’d been lulled into thinking they were having a rational conversation. For once he seemed to be speaking to a sort of . . . friend. It was like talking to Westcott, but Westcott with a much more attractive exterior. But she wasn’t a friend. She was an unusually intelligent and headstrong woman. A wrongheaded woman.

  “Did I say temporary insanity?” he said. “My lord, honorable colleagues, gentlemen of the jury—­kindly permit me to point out my own grievous error. The woman in question does not suffer from temporary insanity. It is a chronic condition.”

  Her blue gaze, quizzical, came back to him. “Now what’s set you off?”

  “You will not find a place for Toby Coppy,” he said. “You’ll have nothing more to do with him. You’re not to come with a mile of him.”

  “I promised Bridget I’d find him an apprenticeship,” she said patiently. “Where on earth is the harm in that? I’ll talk to Matron, and see if we can find lodgings for him near the Milliners’ Society after he recovers. Matron will be able to advise me as well about finding work for him.”

  He gazed at her, into those innocent blue eyes, and found himself wrestling the urge to shake her. He opened his mouth, ready to call her ten kinds of idiot.

  Patience, he counseled himself. She was naïve, that was all.

  Patience, however, wasn’t one of his virtues. He had to work hard to scrape up a few bits and make himself say, with what was for him superhuman forbearance, “No.”

  She wrinkled her brows at him.

  “That is not a good idea,” he said. “You cannot bring Matron into the Coppy family’s problems. You’ll complicate Bridget’s situation at the school. The other girls will think she’s being favored. They’ll make her life difficult. More difficult. You don’t understand these ­people and their world. You admitted as much yourself, and you don’t know the half of it. They don’t think the way you do or the way you did at their age. You must keep out of it. Permanently.”

  “I promised,” she said.

  “Then keep your promise in a sensible manner,” he said. “Westcott is fully capable of finding Toby employment.”

  Her brow knit, and it was proof of the extraordinary power of her features that she only looked more impossibly beautiful.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “I must be more tired than I realized. I didn’t get very much sleep.”

  Images rose in his mind of her lying wakeful in her virginal bed. Being a man good at solving problems, he easily imagined ways to help her sleep. He crushed the images.

  “Then think of this as well,” he said. “Try to apply reason to the situation you’ve placed yourself in. A reasoning being would grasp the importance of removing herself from the neighborhood until the excitement died down. A reasoning being would understand why she needed to keep out of sight until ­people forgot what she looked like.”

  “Here’s a refreshing change,” she said. “You’re the first man who’s ever told me I’m easy to forget.”

  His other self was acutely aware he wouldn’t forget her. Ever.

  How much farther to the house in Kensington?

  He said, “For boys like that, yes. They’ve plenty of exciting distractions, like trying not to starve to death or get beaten or jailed or hanged. They drink to excess, too. Go away for a month or so, and when you return, nobody will be able to pick you out from a clump of a dozen aristocratic blondes.”

  “Only a month or so,” she said. “Fancy that.”

  “Six months or forever would be wiser,” he said, “but I know better than to propose it.”

  “You’re overreacting,” she said. “I’ve noticed this tendency in you. It comes of having to be dramatic in court, I know.”

  “Dramatic!”

  “Do try to think it through in a rational manner,” she said. “Firstly, it’s unlikely I’ll see any of those boys at Almack’s or the Queen’s Drawing Room. Secondly, most if not all of them will soon leave London for a lifelong residence in a penal colony on Norfolk Island. Thirdly, all they know of me is that I’m a lady who was looking for Bridget Coppy’s brother. What’s remarkable in that? Everybody knows ladies patronize the Milliners’ Society. Everybody knows ladies throw charity about, to make ourselves feel useful and virtuous. Everybody knows how bored we get, being rich and pampered and having scores of lovers languishing after us.”

  She was right, absolutely right.

  “You have a point,” he said.

  “Do I?” She leaned forward to peer into his face, and he caught the faintest whiff of her scent. “Did you find it painful to say that? It looked painful. All the same, I’m all aflutter.” She sat back and pretended to fan herself with a gloved hand.

  “But,” he said.

  “There’s always a but,” she said.

  “The trouble is, they know you can identify them,” he said.

  She dismissed this with a queenly wave, not at all marred by th
e dirty glove. “Very silly of them,” she said. “Everybody knows we ladies can’t tell the difference between one pauper and the next. They all look the same under the dirt and rags. Not that anybody wants to look closely at them, since it means getting near enough to smell them. Everybody knows we’re perfectly happy to let cutthroats and thieves go about their business, as long as they stay out of our neighborhoods, and stick to robbing their neighbors and cutting their throats.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you quite finished?”

  “Not nearly,” she said. “They know we’d never appear in a place as sordid as a courtroom. A lady would never be so vulgar as to stand in the witness box. She might as well stand in the dock, because her reputation would certainly be found guilty and hanged—­possibly drawn and quartered, too—­and minutely dissected thereafter.”

  She lifted her perfect chin and gazed at him defiantly.

  His other self was painfully tempted to do something the rational Radford was sure would only make matters worse.

  “Very well,” he said. “Do as you like. I haven’t time to play nursemaid. I’ve a libel to prosecute, a dying father to look in on, a funeral to attend in Herefordshire, and a mad cousin’s ghastly affairs to sort out, practically simultaneously. I shall leave you to Lady Exton, with my greatest sympathy.”

  She would go her way and he would go his.

  In a very short time, in fact. At the end of this trip across London.

  He looked out of the window, because looking at her was making him unhappy and restless and he was having the devil’s own time detaching himself. He was surprised to see how far they’d come already. “Ah, we’re nearly at Hyde Park Corner,” he said calmly.

  Clara wanted to tear her tongue out. She wanted to slap herself. But she did neither of these things because the first was easier said than done and the second was vulgar, and possibly a symptom of insanity.