Ready Set Rogue

by Manda Collins

  Marianne’s eyes narrowed. “Your damned marquess was in the way,” she spat out. “Or I’d have hit your chest, which is what I was aiming for. And I’ll soon finish what I started.” She lifted her arm and Ivy saw, to her horror, that her captor held a pistol in her hand.

  Mrs. Vance scowled at her over the gun, taking aim. Ivy prepared herself to leap to her feet, which Marianne had left untied in her haste to get Ivy into the cellar.

  But they were both startled by a loud banging on the front door of the vicarage.

  Taking advantage of Marianne’s diversion, Ivy made her move.

  Chapter 31

  There was no sign of Ivy when Quill made it back through the tunnel and out to where the cave opened onto the rocky shore. Calling out to her in the hope that she had just decided to walk a bit along the waterfront, he almost tripped when his booted foot became entangled in something.

  His heart leapt into his throat when he saw it was Ivy’s hat—a straw and ribbon confection that framed the heart-shaped face he’d come to love so well. He stooped to pick it up and was shocked to see a smudge of crimson just where the crown of her head would be. He broke into a run and was up the cliffside stairs in a trice. His horses were just where he’d tied them up what seemed like days ago, and in minutes he was driving like a madman along the road to the vicarage.

  He had no doubt now who had injured Ivy and who had taken her away.

  It was Dr. Vance’s wife, who had so cheerfully lied to them earlier when they inquired about the Reverend Deveraux’s whereabouts. Who had been so welcoming that day in the doctor’s offices, and who had mourned the loss of Aunt Celeste.

  He did not allow himself to wonder what sort of woman could do those things. Because she now had Ivy. Smart, sensible, sensual Ivy. Who had stolen his heart that first day in the Fox and Pheasant with her wry humor and her love for books.

  There was no question he would get to her in time.

  To imagine anything else was to give up.

  Torquil Beauchamp, Marquess of Kerr, never surrendered.

  And he was damned if he’d let Marianne Vance be the one to make him start now.

  He had too much he needed to say to Ivy.

  With a curse, he cried out for the horses to speed up.

  * * *

  As luck would have it, he reached the vicarage before Maitland and Dr. Vance did.

  The exterior of the little house looked as benign as ever. With its picturesque climbing roses budding in anticipation of spring and its cheerful green door, it looked like what it was—the home of a widower of middle years who served the community and lived alone.

  There was no sign that Ivy or anyone else had been here since they’d come hours earlier to pay a call on the vicar. Mrs. Vance’s horse and cart, however, were still where they’d been tied up earlier. If she’d used the cart to move Ivy, she’d done a remarkable job of placing it exactly where it had been before.

  He leapt down from the curricle, tossed the reins over a post, and hammered on the vicarage door.

  “Mrs. Vance!” he shouted. “Mrs. Vance, I’ve come for Miss Wareham. I know you have her. Let me in.”

  Whether from the force of his pounding or the fact that it wasn’t locked, the door swung inward, just as he heard Maitland and Dr. Vance approach in the doctor’s open barouche.

  Cautiously, he stepped into the dark interior and heard someone shouting from the back of the house. Caring only that Ivy might need him, he all but sprinted to the kitchen and followed the high-pitched cries to an open door at the top of a staircase leading down into darkness.

  Following the steps, he was almost to the bottom when he heard a cry of triumph.

  Please God, let that be Ivy.

  The light became brighter as he made his way down, and when he reached the damp room he saw at once that Ivy was standing over Mrs. Vance, a dueling pistol leveled at her with a hand that was steady as a summer rain.

  “You won’t do it,” Mrs. Vance sneered. “You don’t have the bottle. I doubt you’ve ever held a pistol in your whole sheltered existence. You’re just like she was. A pampered, ungrateful dabbler. You think you’re so brave for studying things that no one but your kind care about. While girls like me were working just to stay clothed and fed, you were weeping over life’s unfairness. You don’t know the first thing about unfairness. Unfair is when your aristocratic parents give you up so that you have no chance of gaining your birthright. Unfair is when your mother gives away her priceless collection and her home to a quartet of spinsters with no claims on her.”

  Neither of them noticed where Quill stood silently, his heart in his throat as he watched Ivy glaring at her erstwhile captor.

  “Try me,” she said to the woman on the floor. “You’ve killed who knows how many people now. And you intended to kill both your father and me just now. If you make a sudden move, make no mistake, Marianne, I will shoot you. I might not have practiced as you did, but we’re quite close now. I should be able to hit you somewhere.”

  Without turning around, she said to Quill, “Darling, would you please get the rope from the cart there and tie her up. Then you’d best see to the vicar.”

  He shouldn’t have been surprised she’d known he was there, Quill realized with a grin, but he was. Clearly he needed to learn that Ivy was up to any rig. Even capturing murderers.

  “With pleasure, my dear,” he said as he stepped farther into the room and retrieved the rope that had been used earlier to subdue Ivy.

  When Mrs. Vance was trussed up like a Christmas goose, Ivy lowered the pistol with a sigh and would have collapsed if Quill hadn’t been there to catch her. Taking the gun and placing it on a high shelf where it would do no harm, he carried Ivy to a nearby chair.

  The sound of boots alerted them that Maitland and Dr. Vance had arrived on the scene.

  “Good god!” Dr. Vance cried out. “It’s true, Marianne You tried to kill Miss Wareham and Reverend Devereaux. And did kill Lady Celeste and her former maid, Elsie.”

  “See to Devereaux, Duke,” Quill told his cousin, who had looked to him for guidance on what to do. “He may need Dr. Vance’s attention.”

  With a nod, Maitland crossed over to where the vicar was tied up.

  Quill turned his attention back to Ivy. He crouched before her, and when their eyes met, she launched herself into his arms, throwing them both to the cellar floor.

  “I was so afraid,” she whispered against his neck, the solid weight of her in his arms a relief after the terror he’d felt when he found her hat. “She would have killed us both. Even you, if you’d come a few minutes earlier. I was only able to overtake her thanks to your pounding on the door. Oh, Quill. I thought I’d never see you again.”

  He didn’t even know what he said to her, crooning reassurances and words of love and devotion that bubbled up out of him like a newly discovered sweet water well finally set free from where it was hidden underground. And he let her cry. Which he knew even the strongest of ladies—and men—needed to do sometimes. Especially when they’d endured the sort of hell Ivy had.

  “I love you, Quill,” she said, moving her head back so that she could look him in the eye. “I love you so much. And I was so afraid I’d never see you to tell you how much.”

  “I love you too,” he said kissing her eyelids, then her cheeks, then her nose, then, finally, her lips.

  They were kisses of love, but also promises.

  That no matter what else happened, he loved her. And she loved him. And they would be together.

  “When I realized she had you, Ivy,” he said against her cheek, “I thought all was lost. But I should have known better. My sweet, brave, bluestocking. You are made of sterner stuff than that. And I should have trusted you to save yourself.”

  He felt her thumb softly stroke beneath first one, then the other, of his eyes, gliding in the moisture there. “My sweet marquess,” she said with a smile in her voice. “You do love me.” There was affection in her voice, but als
o wonder. As if she couldn’t quite believe it.

  “More than life itself,” he said solemnly. “Which is why we will leave for London tonight so we can be married by special license at once.”

  “What about asking my father for permission?” she teased, a little breathlessly.

  “All respect for your father, my dear,” he said pulling her closer, “but he will just have to wait.”

  And there, on the floor of the vicarage cellar, he kissed her properly.

  Until, that is, the sound of a throat clearing broke the spell.

  “I do not like to interrupt,” Maitland said, clearly lying. As Quill well knew, his cousin loved to interrupt. “But we’re taking the vicar and Mrs. Vance upstairs now. And I thought perhaps you’d like to, I don’t know, take yourselves back to Beauchamp House so that you can continue this”—he made a gesture in the air with his hand—“there.”

  Sighing, Quill knew that any continuation would have to wait until the other bluestockings and Serena were informed about what had happened here.

  Pushing up to her feet, Ivy offered him a hand, which he took with a smile.

  “We’ll be gone by the time you get back,” he informed his cousin, who rather than looking surprised simply nodded. “See that all of this is taken care of.”

  “Northman will wish to question you both,” Maitland said as they started up the cellar stairs.

  “Northman can bloody well wait until we get back,” Quill called back over his shoulder.

  He and Ivy had important business to attend to.

  Chapter 32

  Some few weeks later, having been assured by a beaming Greaves that the residents of Beauchamp House were assembled in the library, Ivy and Quill stood in the doorway of the now-familiar chamber and saw, to their surprise, the Duke of Maitland lecturing the others.

  “I think it’s highly likely that my man will find evidence of more crimes when he visits Marianne Vance’s childhood home next week,” he said with a flourish. “I’ve been reading Bentham on the criminal mind, and it seems to me that—” Seeing Ivy and Quill in the doorway, he broke off with a wide grin.

  “I see you’ve taken up a new hobby since our departure,” Quill said as the assembled household gathered around the newlyweds to welcome them.

  Grinning, Maitland shrugged. “Beauchamp House is full of books, would be a shame not to take advantage of it.”

  “Don’t be modest, brother,” Serena said with a roll of her eyes. “You’d think he was on the verge of becoming a Bow Street Runner with the amount of attention he’s devoted to explaining what made Marianne snap.”

  “I suspect we’ve all found our own ways of dealing with what happened,” Ivy said quietly as she accepted a hug from her erstwhile chaperone. “Perhaps Maitland’s is just different from ours.”

  “Always so wise, Ivy,” said Serena with a warm smile. “We’ve missed your level head these past weeks. I’m glad you’re back.”

  “So am I,” the new Marchioness of Kerr said, a feeling of contentment settling over her at being back amongst the inhabitants of Beauchamp House. “It was lovely to be away for a while, of course. But I found I missed you all.” She raised a saucy brow. “Even you, Jeremy,” she said as she spotted the boy lingering behind the sofa.

  “You did?” he asked, looking pleased with himself.

  “I did.” She confirmed with a nod. “Quill and I even brought you back a present.”

  The boy’s eyes grew wide. “You did?”

  “Is there an echo in here?” Quill asked, striding over to the boy and lifting him into his arms. “Let’s us gentlemen leave the ladies together so that they can gossip. I have a feeling Maitland will enjoy your gift just as much as you will, Jem.”

  Leaning down, he gave Ivy a quick kiss and the men left, shutting the doors behind them.

  A few minutes later, a tea tray between them, the four bluestockings and Lady Serena were deep in conversation. “He’s smitten, I think,” Serena said with a grin as she looked to where Ivy and the rest of the bluestockings had gathered at one of the library tables. “And so are you,” she continued. “Lady Celeste was quite brilliant to throw the two of you together.”

  “I hardly think it was that calculated,” Ivy said, though in some moments she did wonder if her benefactress had anticipated Quill’s strong objection to the way she left her estate. “Surely not?”

  “She asked you to find her killer,” Serena reminded her. “And you did. She chose correctly. And she knew Quill better than anyone. She always lamented that he was so remote. So alone. I think she must have hoped one of you would catch his interest.”

  “I suppose we’ll never know,” Ivy said with regret. She had so much to thank Lady Celeste for. If only they’d been able to meet. Even if only for a moment.

  “No. Thanks to her daughter, we won’t,” Serena said sadly. Then, brightening, she smiled. “I’ll just go have a word with the cook about dinner, since there will need to be two more places at the table. I’m so glad you’ve returned, Ivy.”

  And without waiting for an argument, she slipped out of the room.

  Now, surrounded by the other ladies whom she’d come to love as well as her own sisters, Ivy continued relating the story of how Quill met her father.

  “I don’t know that Papa was surprised I’d married so much, but that I’d married the son of his childhood crony,” she said with a grin. “Neither Quill nor I knew it, but apparently Papa, as the younger son of the Duke of Ware, had visited Kerr Castle any number of times and even played at soldiers with Quill’s father. He remembered the late marquess as a bit of a tyrant, which Quill found not at all surprising. But Papa was quite pleased to note that Quill seemed to have taken more of his temperament from his mother than his father.”

  “How romantic,” Sophia said with a happy sigh. “It’s almost as if you and Quill have righted some old quarrel between the two families. Like Romeo and Juliet, only without all the dying.”

  “I’d call it inevitable,” Lady Daphne said with a frown for Sophia’s sentiment. “There are only so many aristocratic families in the kingdom. That the grandchildren of dukes fell in love and married is hardly a great surprise. If anything, it’s to be expected. If Ivy had been the daughter of the late marquess’s valet? Now, that would have been romantic.”

  “Oh, Daphne,” Ivy said, giving her a quick hug, which Daphne clearly did not enjoy, “I’ve missed you.”

  “Thank you, Ivy,” Daphne said, pulling away from the embrace as quickly as possible. “I admit that I have missed you and the marquess in your absence. Especially when Sophia and Gemma are teasing me about the duke.”

  At the mention of Maitland, Ivy exchanged a wide-eyed look with the Hastings sisters. “And how goes your friendship with the duke, Daphne?” she asked carefully. When she and Quill had left, the duke was still avoiding Lady Daphne as if she were wearing a noxious perfume.

  “There is nothing of note,” Daphne said with dignity. “I have given up my quest to make love to him. He is not the carefree gentleman I thought when we first met. He is instead just as hemmed in by the ridiculous rules of society as any other man. Though as a duke he could quite likely ride his horse naked through Hyde Park without risking social ostracism, he cannot bend his moral code enough to engage in a simple, straightforward affair with me. I am disappointed, naturally. But resigned.”

  It was a long speech for Daphne, who tended to speak in short sentences. And Ivy felt a pang of sympathy for her. It cannot have been easy to accept Maitland’s rejection. She was a lovely woman, and had likely not suffered such a fate much in her life.

  “I have turned my attention to other matters,” Daphne continued, with a spark of enthusiasm that soothed some of Ivy’s worry for her friend. “There are far more intriguing mathematics books here in the library than I’d formerly thought. So I have immersed myself in reading the journals of Sir Isaac Newton and have been reacquainting myself with the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathemati
ca. It is quite a brilliant achievement not only for mathematics but also for England. No matter what that plagiarist Leibniz had to say about it.”

  “We shall have to take your word for it, dearest,” said Sophia patting the other lady’s hand. “For I must admit, I don’t even know who those men are.”

  Daphne looked as if she would tell them, so Ivy spoke up again. “I presume Mrs. Vance has been taken to the gaol in Brighton by now?”

  “Yes,” Gemma said with a nod. “I must confess that it was a great relief to know she was taken away from here. I know she was unable to do any more harm from where she was being kept in Squire Northman’s cellar, but just knowing such an evil person was nearby made me feel a little ill.”

  “The duke has determined that she likely killed her parents—her adoptive parents, that is—as well as Lady Celeste and Elsie,” Sophia said with a shiver. “I know it must have been upsetting to learn that but for the intervention of the old Duke of Maitland she’d have been born into a much higher social class, but I cannot understand how it would turn her mind so.”

  Ivy thought back to that day in the vicarage. “I don’t think she is mad,” she said thoughtfully. “Or rather, not mad as we understand it to be. She wasn’t ill, or unable to care for herself. She is, rather, prosaically efficient. I daresay if Lady Celeste hadn’t left her letter telling me what she suspected, Mrs. Marianne Vance would have kept on killing.”

  “What of the vicar?” Ivy asked. When she and Quill left for London, the Reverend Devereaux had still been unconscious. She would visit him at the first opportunity, if only so that she could tell him how sorry she was that he’d lost Lady Celeste. It had been difficult to forget his silent, stricken gaze at her as they both listened to Marianne rant.

  “He has recovered,” Sophia said sadly, “but I think he will not be able to forget what happened for a long, long while.”

  “To know that his own daughter killed the love of his life,” Gemma said aghast. “If only the old Duke of Maitland hadn’t been so determined to keep Lady Celeste and the reverend apart all of this might have been avoided.”