The Wily Wastrel

by April Kihlstrom

  No, the lock was no problem for Juliet. But then she suffered a check. She still could not open the door. They must, she thought, have barred it from the outside. Tendrils of smoke coming under the door fed her panic. The hinges? Perhaps she should remove the hinges?

  There was no time to waste. Juliet worked quickly, trying to ignore her fear. She alternated between pounding on the door, shouting for someone to let her out, and working on the hinges. If the inn truly was on fire, they might very well forget she was there.

  And then Juliet heard what she thought must be the most welcome sound in the world.

  “Juliet? Are you in there?”

  “James! Thank God you’re free! Yes, unbar the door! Quickly, I pray you!”

  It seemed to take forever. She knew it took only a moment. And then he was there. Holding out his arms to her. Except he wasn’t. He was gaping at her.

  “What happened to your dress?” he gasped.

  “Never mind that,” she said impatiently, “we’ve got to get out of here!”

  That shook him out of his momentary shock and he grabbed her arm, pulling her toward a back stairway and down and out through the side door of the inn. “I had a boy set the fire in the storerooms near the back,” he explained.

  There was a great deal of smoke in the air and even greater confusion. It was no trouble to slip away through the crowd and back toward their inn. As they moved, James stripped off his jacket and insisted that Juliet put it on to cover up her dress. When she refused on the grounds that it would draw more attention than if she simply brazened things out as she was, he growled certain things she strongly suspected it was better she not hear.

  They had a companion. Actually two. One was the boy who had helped both of them.

  “Kin I come wif you?” the urchin asked.

  Without slowing in the least, James said impatiently, “Of course not. Your mother would no doubt, er, miss you.”

  “ ‘aven’t got a mother, ‘aven’t got a father, neither.”

  His words, said so bravely, with only the slightest quaver in his voice, tugged at Juliet. She looked at James. He sighed.

  “Yes. Very well. You may come with us. I don’t suppose you know anything about horses?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How to be a servant of any kind?”

  “No, sir.”

  The voice grew progressively smaller and glummer.

  “Never mind,” Juliet said, as reassuringly as she could, “we shall find something for you to do, won’t we, James?”

  “What? Er, yes, of course we will,” he agreed.

  But what? Juliet could feel his silent question, for it was precisely what she was asking herself.

  By this time they were approaching the inn and getting some very strange looks indeed! Still the urchin persisted. “Wot will you find for me to do, sir?”

  Juliet recognized only too well the look of exasperation on James’s face. If she could have thought of a way to intervene, she would have done so but she could think of nothing to say. What were they going to do with the child?

  “Is there anything you are good at? Anything you like to do?” James demanded.

  Hesitation. Unexpected hesitation. Then the child said, with an odd diffidence, “I likes to fix things, sir.”

  Juliet came to an abrupt halt, almost stumbling over her feet as she did so. Beside her, she felt rather than saw James do the same.

  “You like to fix things?” she echoed.

  “Yes’m.”

  Juliet and James looked at each other, their mouths gaping open. Then they grinned singularly foolish grins at one another. Then they grinned at the boy, who started to back away, having evidently decided they were completely wanting in wits.

  “Wait!” James called, holding out his hand to the boy. “We like to fix things too.”

  Now it was the child’s turn to gape at them. “Even ‘er?” he finally blurted out, pointing at Juliet.

  “Even her,” James confirmed, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

  Juliet nudged her spouse aside. To the urchin she said, briskly, “We do indeed like to fix things. And that means you could prove very useful to us. If you are willing to learn and help.”

  “Oh, I am,” he answered with a fervency they could not doubt.

  “Good. Then go inside and ask for Mr. Langford’s valet, Woods. Tell him we said he is to take you in charge for the moment,” James told the urchin.

  The boy hesitated. “Sir? There’s some’un else.”

  That was all he said. But they could see he was holding the hand of a girl. She was older than he, but it was clear he had appointed himself her protector. She seemed almost to shrink away from them and would have disappeared if the boy had let go of her hand.

  “Who is she?” James asked. “Your sister?”

  The boy hesitated, then shook his head. “Me friend. I’ll not go wifout ‘er. ‘Er father was one of them men. ‘E beats ‘er somefing fierce. I won’t leave ‘er be’ind.”

  James looked at Juliet. She looked at the boy. “That’s why you were watching the inn, isn’t it? Because you were worried about her?”

  The boy nodded. Juliet looked at James. “I do not see how we can be angry with him for wanting to protect the girl,” she said. “Indeed, I cannot help but think that you would have done the same, in his place. It is to his credit that he cared enough to wish to protect her, is it not?”

  James hesitated. He could not deny it. “But what are we to do with a girl?” he asked. “Turn her into a housemaid? Put her to work in the kitchens? We haven’t even a household yet.”

  “She can sew,” the boy told them eagerly. “A right good talent she ‘as.”

  “But we don’t need a seamstress,” James said impatiently. “What else can she do?”

  The boy scuffed his foot in the dirt, not answering. Juliet put a hand on her husband’s arm. “I think I know a lady who could employ the girl,” she said slowly. “And this woman would understand about the need to get away from her father.” To the girl she said, “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  Juliet nodded decisively. “Old enough, then, to be leaving your father’s care. Mrs. Wise will be very happy to have your help, I should think. It is all right with you, isn’t it, James? Mrs. Wise is the woman I told you about, in London, who made my new dresses.”

  At that the girl eyed her odd attire doubtfully but James nodded. “Yes, I do remember. And you are right. It might answer very well.” He stopped and looked at the boy and the girl. In a kindly voice he said, “Yes, of course the girl may come. What are your names?”

  “Daniel and Abigail, sir.”

  “Well, Daniel and Abigail, my valet, Mr. Woods, will look after the both of you for the moment. Ask for him inside. And for heaven’s sake, try to keep the girl out of sight in case her father comes looking for her!”

  Then, almost as an afterthought, James tossed the boy a coin and said, “Get yourselves something to eat while you are at it.”

  Daniel caught the coin in midair, thanked them profusely, then tugged at Abigail’s hand and disappeared into the inn with her, as though afraid the couple might change their minds. Neither James nor Juliet could blame him. Nothing they had done so far this day, after all, could have given the child any impression other than that they were a very strange pair.

  Conscious of all the stares they were attracting, Juliet hurried into the inn and up the stairs to their room. James followed, his tread becoming heavier with each step. Juliet began to dread the confrontation she had a sinking feeling they were about to have.

  Sure enough, the moment the door was closed behind them, James crossed his arms over his chest and said, “I trust you have an explanation for your outlandish appearance?”

  “I most certainly do!” Juliet replied. “I was trying to rescue you. And it appears my ruse succeeded.”

  “What ruse? Pretending to be a… a woman of the streets?”

  “P
recisely. Except, well, the smuggler recognized me,” Juliet added, a trifle mournfully.

  His shoulders shook. Was he laughing at her? Perhaps, but if so he recovered quickly and took a step toward her, anger not laughter in his eyes.

  “How dare you behave in such a way?” he demanded. “If I needed rescuing, it was for me to rescue myself!”

  Juliet rolled her eyes. “Oh, to be sure. Locked in with a bar at the door, I’ve no doubt you were going to rescue yourself,” she said in a scathing voice.

  “Well, I might have,” he insisted. “But we shall never know, shall we?” He paused, then curiosity got the better of him. “How did you persuade them to let me go?”

  She told him. She could not resist a tiny sigh as she said, “The leader of the smugglers seemed to find me quite feminine.”

  James looked at her in a way that made her feel very odd inside. In a voice that was husky with emotion he said, “So do I.”

  And then he told her his side of the story. By the end, they were no longer on opposite sides of the room, no longer giving each other angry looks. “We ought to report them,” Juliet said firmly. “There must be a magistrate or constable or someone we could tell.”

  James hesitated. “That might not be wise,” he said slowly. “We do not wish to draw such attention to ourselves or what we have been doing up at the castle.”

  “But what if they attack us again?”

  “I do not think that likely. I should think it more plausible that they will leave Dover with the greatest haste. Or at least disband for now.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked doubtfully. “I cannot like the thought that they will go unpunished.”

  “I think perhaps,” James grinned again, “that our friend, the chaplain’s assistant, may be able to have something to say to that. I shall send a note with Woods up to Dover Castle and let him know what happened. He will do whatever is right and necessary.”

  “I suppose that will do.”

  Her voice was hesitant. It was very difficult to think clearly when James held her hand in such a way and gently, absentmindedly, stroked the back of it with his thumb as he was now doing. But he seemed to have no trouble thinking or speaking.

  “I did, when I first saw you, with your dress so altered,” he said diffidently, “wonder if you had lost your wits. Or I had mistaken your character.”

  Juliet snatched her hand out of his. “Indeed?” she asked, a martial glint in her eyes. “Was it not obvious that only the most dire straits would have driven me to such a thing?”

  Balked of her hand, James traced a pattern on the bed with the tip of his finger. “I did not think it for long,” he offered as apology.

  “Even a moment was too long!”

  He looked at her, his expression solemn. “Yes, but you see, I have been thinking. It is very easy to mistake appearances. The smugglers were mistaken, they believed in your disguise.”

  “They did not know me,” Juliet said, still glowering.

  He brightened. “Precisely! And I have been thinking, you see, that perhaps the Frenchman who wrote that letter did not know my father very well.”

  Juliet blinked, then her mind raced along with his. “So perhaps your father was also playing a role and the Frenchman was deceived?”

  James nodded. “Try as I might, I cannot believe my father would have consorted with the rebels. He valued life too highly, had too great a sense of honor, and I know that he was appalled by the deaths from the revolution.”

  “Perhaps the letter was not even meant for him,” Juliet said slowly. “Could he have obtained it from someone else? Intercepted it, perhaps? You suggested such a thing before and intrigue does appear to run in your family.”

  James did not answer at once. Indeed, he seemed lost in his thoughts for several long moments. Juliet reached out and placed her hand over his.

  “Trust your own heart, James,” she said. “If you believe that your father could not have been a traitor, then trust that feeling and look for other answers. We have already thought of two possibilities and there may well be more.”

  A wry smile appeared on James’s lips. He pulled Juliet to him and kissed her soundly. In a voice oddly unsteady he said, “Bless you, my love! I think you have given me my father back!”

  Juliet did not perfectly understand what James was talking about, but at the moment it did not matter. What mattered was that the trouble between them seemed to be at an end, at least judging by the enthusiasm with which James was embracing her.

  And when his hands began to undo the fastenings of her gown, Juliet made not the least objection. Indeed, she began to work on his shirt buttons.

  “What shall we do about the letter?” Juliet asked, her head resting on James’s bare shoulder.

  He stroked her hair even as he said, “I would tell Harry about our thoughts but no doubt he is long gone. And he may figure it out himself. In any event, it does not matter. The letter can in no way affect him before he returns again to England. But I think perhaps I shall ask Sir Thomas about my father’s activities. It is possible that he knows more than he has ever said. Sir Thomas, after all, seems to know the oddest things.”

  Juliet nodded, perfectly content with this reply. After all, it left her free to concentrate on the matter at hand. Which was James.

  Hesitantly she asked, “You don’t regret marrying me, James, do you?”

  He gaped at her. Then he pulled her even closer. With a firmness in his voice that she could not doubt he said, “Never! And how you can ask, after what we have just shared, is beyond me.”

  Juliet traced a path on his bare chest with her fingertip. In a small voice she said, “I did not think so but I had to ask. This marriage was not, after all, what either of us had planned.”

  With a growl James hugged Juliet so tight that she could scarcely breathe. “I shall never regret marrying you,” he said. “Indeed, I shall be grateful every day of my life to be wed to you.” He paused then added softly, “Juliet, I did not, could not, know beforehand how right our marriage would be. But never doubt that I feel the most fortunate man in the world because of you.”

  He held her eyes with his and Juliet caught her breath at the intensity, the sincerity she read there. And then she reached out to bring his face closer to hers and she kissed James with a fierce intensity of her own.

  “I,” she said softly, “am the most fortunate woman!”

  And then, they had no further need for words.

  Chapter 24

  Margaret and Woods received the news that they were to return to London without the least change of expression. It did not go unnoticed by James and Juliet, however, that their eyes strayed more than once to the rumpled bed.

  “To what address will we be going, sir?” Woods did venture to ask.

  James colored up. “I have not yet heard from my man of business,” he admitted.

  “You have been distracted by other matters,” Juliet said soothingly.

  “Yes, but if we do not return to London, then where are we to go?” James replied. “I cannot think it wise to linger here in Dover.”

  Juliet hesitated. Then drawing him over to the window on the far side of the room so that neither Margaret nor Woods would overhear, she asked, “Do you think perhaps we could visit some of the factories that have your inventions? And then you could show them to me? While your man of business finds us a house in London.”

  “Are you certain that is the sort of wedding trip you wish?” he asked doubtfully.

  “I think that I should like it above all else,” she replied. “It is part of you and something that I hope, in the future, we shall share.”

  He smiled down at her wryly. “Then that is what we shall do. And perhaps we could also stop and visit your parents first. I think I should like to see the place where you grew up.”

  It was Juliet’s turn to hesitate, but then she smiled up at him as well and he could not help but kiss her. An action greatly approved of by both her maid and his
valet, if their grins were anything to judge by. Nor did either object when told what James and Juliet had planned.

  Indeed, the journey was surprisingly easy to arrange. Woods offered to travel to London to check on the question of a London town house and then meet them along the way. He was agreeable to the notion that he should take both the boy and the girl with him.

  “Take them to Sir Thomas and Lady Levenger’s house. I shall write a note for you to give them and I think they will be willing to have the pair. Later, when we return to London, Mrs. Langford will take charge of Abigail and I shall take charge of Daniel.”

  “Perhaps Margaret should go as well. We can manage together, you and I, until they join us,” Juliet suggested. “It will look better if Abigail does not arrive simply in the company of men.”

  James nodded. “I must also write a note to the chaplain’s assistant up at Dover Castle and I suppose I had best deliver it myself. But I shall be back within the hour,” he promised Juliet. “Be ready to leave when I get back. It will be late to set out then but I should like to see how far we can go before dark. Dover is not, I think, the safest of places for us just at the moment.”

  “We shall be ready to go,” Juliet promised.

  “And I shall have the boy and girl ready to leave for London,” Woods said. He permitted himself a thin smile. “I do not think they will object, either, to seeing the last of this town.”

  “And I shall not mind a quick trip back to London,” the maid added. “The poor girl is that frightened of her father finding her and will be glad of my company, I should think.”

  ———

  If it was more than an hour before they were on their way, it was not much later. And then Juliet and James were alone together. The coachman had his orders and they rattled along at a shocking pace that was a relief to both of them.