The Wicked Wyckerly

by Rice, Patricia

  “I don’t have much choice, do I?” Tommy said bitterly.

  “Very few people do,” Fitz told him. “The game is to pick the best option offered, and right now, trying to run on a bad leg is a bad choice. And keeping the babies in the cold and damp is not a very good one either.”

  Tommy nodded curtly, choking back tears.

  Fitz woke the twins by lifting them from their smelly bed. They fussed as much as Penny would have done, but Jennifer and Tommy spoke to them, and they calmed down, laying a golden head on either shoulder and curling up against him. Their simple trust engendered such unaccustomed feelings, he paused a moment to try to sort them out. All he knew was that he understood why Abigail was so distraught at losing them.

  “If you can’t walk, I’ll come back for you in a few minutes,” Fitz offered. “I’ll trust your word that you’ll wait until then.”

  “It’s not broken,” Tommy insisted, pushing himself up the wall. “It just hurts, is all.”

  “I believe your sister would say it ought to make you think twice about trying this foolish stunt again. Do you have bags?”

  “The grouchy old man wouldn’t let us keep them,” Jennifer said indignantly, following him without question, while Tommy trailed behind. “I wanted to show Abby my new hairbrush.”

  Jennifer’s chatter provided a cover of normalcy as they walked through the fog and lessening rain toward the noisy inn at the end of the road. Fitz thought of iron neck collars and golden chains on delicate parts and listened to the soles of his ruined boots flap loose while the children clung close, trusting him with their safety. He scarcely had the blunt to wager in the lowliest game in the seediest tavern, yet the children would need food and beds.

  He was out of his mind to believe he could do this. And he was doing it anyway. Somewhere in the wet and fog, he’d finally turned over his shoddy leaf, and there was no turning back to his old insect ways.

  “How far ahead of us will Fitz be?” Abby asked as the carriage rattled down the turnpike.

  In the seat beside her, the maid snored lightly.

  Abby didn’t care that Mr. Montague was cross from having muddied his boots while pushing the carriage out of the mud pit they’d fallen into twenty minutes ago, or that she’d revealed entirely too much by using the earl’s name instead of his title. Her world had never been more than the children and her home. It was a simple matter to shut out the opinions of others.

  “Fitz is a bruising rider, and the Thoroughbred was made for speed. He wouldn’t have had to push a carriage out of mud,” Montague said with barely concealed disgust. “He’s been in Croydon long enough to search it from one end to the other. The real question is where we will find him.”

  In between imagining all the horrors that could befall young children among strangers, Abby had fretted over that same question. It was nearly dark. She wondered how many inns Croydon had. Surely Fitz would have had to stop at several in his search.

  And then she had wondered how he would pay for an inn for the night, and the solution seemed obvious. “I doubt that Danecroft has much money with him, so I suppose we must go to where men gamble,” she said quietly.

  Montague cast her a glance. “What makes you say that?”

  She twisted her gloved fingers and watched the lights appear in the first houses outside of Croydon. “That is what the earl does, is it not? My father once told me that gambling is for fools—and for those who can keep count of the cards. I don’t believe Danecroft is a fool.”

  Montague sat silently for a few minutes. “Your father must have been a very wise man.”

  “My father wasn’t an ambitious man, but he spent a great deal of time in London as a youth. I suspect he may have been a bit of a rakehell.”

  “Which is how he knew about men who count cards?”

  “Yes. He always beat me at whist and tried to explain how it was done, but I never had much interest in learning. Apparently Danecroft knows the trick.”

  “I don’t know whether to plant Fitz a facer, or thank him for not bankrupting me,” Montague mused. “Perhaps I shall do both.”

  Abby tilted her head to study his saturnine features for the first time that evening. “I said something I shouldn’t have?”

  “No, you have merely proved how valuable it is to have wise fathers.”

  Montague turned and instructed the driver to stop at the first inn he saw.

  26

  Wearily, Abby almost didn’t climb down from the carriage at their fourth stop in Croydon. They’d found Lord Robert swilling ale at the Crown, where he’d given up the search and taken cover from the deluge. A farmer at the Swan said he’d heard the children had been found but didn’t know where. Abby didn’t place much hope in rumor and insisted on continuing down the road. At the George, Nicholas Atherton had joined them, soaked to the skin but still willing to aid their search, especially from the comfort of the marchioness’s plush carriage.

  “How can there be so many inns in one town?” Abby complained, then bit her tongue at the weariness she revealed.

  “It’s the road to Brighton,” Montague explained.

  “Dozens of coaches travel through here each day. And get stopped by mud holes,” he added in disgust.

  “Why don’t you stay in the carriage while we check this one,” Mr. Atherton said sympathetically. He was still wringing water from his lace as the horses pulled up to a large establishment that looked rather costly for a man with no purse. It didn’t appear a likely choice, so it seemed practical for Abby to remain in the carriage with the sleeping maid, but her frantic thoughts wouldn’t allow her to sit still. She dashed through the mud after them.

  Abby lingered in the inn’s lobby, hoping to find some understanding woman who might know the gossip mill better. If the children had been found, where were they? Shouldn’t there be a jubilant celebration in progress somewhere? And would Fitz have tried to return to London if he knew the children were safe?

  As if summoned by her wishful thinking, a child’s voice piped from down a dark hall.

  She glanced around, looking for the innkeeper, but he was apparently occupied elsewhere. She heard serving maids laughing in the tavern. A moment later, she recognized a familiar male rumble, and relief washed over her so thoroughly that she almost staggered with the force of it.

  Not waiting for her companions to return, she wandered down the hall, listening for more voices. She assumed these were mostly private parlors on this floor, places for the wealthy to retire to a warm fire and quiet service while waiting for the rain to stop or a coach to arrive.

  Light seeped from a crack in the third and last door. She heard more male voices, none of which she recognized. And then—she was quite certain she heard Tommy.

  She touched the door, and it swung partly open. Daringly, she peered around the edge, and she thought she might fall on her knees and weep for joy. And laugh with giddy relief. And fling herself into Fitz’s arms in everlasting gratitude.

  Rather than have hysterics, she lingered to figure out just exactly what the Earl of Danecroft was doing with four children and four well-dressed young gentlemen and a pack of cards.

  Jeremy was curled up in Fitz’s lap, sound asleep, creating a puddle of drool in the still-damp linen of the earl’s frilled neckcloth. She located Fitz’s gray frock coat draped over a heap on a daybed that she assumed to be Jennie and Cissy, judging by size and golden curls.

  Tommy sat propped against a wall with his leg bandaged and stretched out on the floor in front of him, wearily fighting sleep while he observed the men at the table.

  “Remember,” Fitz was saying impatiently, “there are only fifty-two cards in the deck. It’s not difficult. All you have to do is assign a minus one to all the cards above ten, and a plus one to cards from two to six. That’s twenty points on either end, with the cards in between having no value. When the point count is low, the high cards are out of play. When more than one deck is in use, you’ll have to add faster and the calcul
ations are a little more advanced.”

  “You have to be some kind of genius to figure this out,” one youth said in disgust, swigging from his mug of ale. “I can’t believe anyone can win this way.”

  “You paid me to show you how I do it,” Fitz said with a shrug. “You can listen and learn or just watch the pretty cards on the table.”

  Despite her exhaustion, Abby couldn’t prevent a smile. He wasn’t robbing these young lordlings. He was trying to teach them. At their expense, of course. The chamber didn’t come free, and from the looks of the tray shoved to one side, the children had been well fed. He’d had to earn the coins to feed them.

  One had to admire a man who could think on his feet and produce gold coins from thin air.

  One had to love an earl who was willing to step outside his element to rescue children who weren’t his own. She was in head over heels and tumbling fast.

  Mr. Montague slipped up behind her and leaned his hand against the doorjamb to glance over her shoulder. “He could have offered to teach me,” he grumbled.

  “If you weren’t bright enough to figure out he was counting cards, then you’re probably not bright enough to learn how,” Abby retorted. “Perhaps you should find what you are good at and give up cards.”

  Even though she spoke softly, Fitz looked up. Instead of sending her one of his beaming grins, he studied her warily, waiting for her reaction to his introducing minors to professional card sharking.

  She knew gambling was wrong. She knew people lost fortunes over the gaming tables. She didn’t want Tommy thinking he could make a living at playing games.

  But she couldn’t fault Fitz for doing what he must to survive. He wasn’t shallow, as everyone would have her believe. The man had so much compassion, so much energy and life—and very few options for expressing them. Her burden lighter by no small amount, she entered the room, pressed a kiss of more than gratitude to Fitz’s hair, then knelt to hug Tommy.

  Her heart was much too full to complain about Fitz’s idea of child care. The children were safe, which was all that mattered now.

  Fitz was certain a choir of angels exploded into song when Abby brushed a kiss on his head with the whole world watching. His chest tightened with unwarranted pride as he watched her with the children. He had managed the rescue rather well. Spending his youth as a perennial reprobate had taught him a few lessons.

  He tried to act nonchalant when he noted Montague’s questioning look at Abby’s intimate gesture. He knew Tommy hadn’t missed a thing, but Fitz simply didn’t care who knew that Abby was his. To hell with propriety. His prim and proper Rhubarbara approved his handling of the situation, and all was momentarily right with his world.

  “There aren’t any rooms left in the inn,” he told Montague, while watching the happy reunion. The child curled up in his lap hadn’t woken, but the girls stirred when Abby pressed happy kisses to their cheeks. “You can join us, if you like.”

  “Nick’s here, too. Do I have to pay for lessons?”

  “Depends on whether you want to bleed Ath dry or give him a fair chance.” Fitz supposed he ought to feel shame at having taken advantage of his friends, but he’d just used his brain, not done anything illegal. “The advantage is only slight.”

  Abby swooped in to reclaim Jeremy from Fitz’s lap. “Your friends have been kind enough to spend the evening in the rain and mud to help me,” she reminded him. “I will pay for their lessons.”

  Not caring who watched, Fitz slid his hand to her nape, dragged her head down, and planted a firm kiss on her lovely mouth. He liked a woman who knew how to use her tongue, in all senses of the phrase. Logic had fled the room when she had entered it.

  She blushed and looked delightfully tousled as she lifted Jeremy and stepped away. Fitz seemed to have left her speechless, which made him even happier. Of course, with Abby that condition never lasted long.

  “We will have to take them where the Weatherstons can’t find them,” she whispered in his ear, before taking a soft chair one of the young men offered and settling down by the coal fire.

  Filth and feathers. She was right. But they couldn’t go anywhere in the dark of night with the rain flooding the roads. At least he’d managed to hide them for a few hours.

  “I’ll see if there is a bed in the attic for your maid,” Montague told Abby, before warning, “I’ll be back with Atherton.”

  Fitz would have loved to dismiss his “students” in favor of Abby’s company, but they had paid for supper and this room and deserved the lessons he’d promised. Without Jeremy cuddled in his lap, he could move more freely. He expertly shuffled the cards and scattered them across the table.

  Even after Blake returned with Nick and a fresh round of drinks, Fitz was aware of Abby settling Jeremy in beside Tommy, speaking to the innkeeper about bedding, and otherwise turning the plain room into her own little nest. She had more food brought up from the kitchen so no one filled up on ale and got too boisterous. She stroked small brows when the children stirred in their sleep, and examined Tommy’s leg to pronounce it badly bruised but not broken. Nibbling on cheese and bread, she lingered at Fitz’s shoulder to watch his cards. She acquired pillows and a footstool so she might stretch out and doze in a chair if they played until dawn. And not once did she flirt with his imposing friends or wealthy students. He was the only man who won Miss Merry’s cautious smiles. She was a gem among women.

  And Fitz intended to make her his own. He didn’t think it was foolish impulse to decide Abby was the best he could do for himself and Penny. Logically, it was the wrong thing to do. Even though he knew he could take care of her siblings, Abby would hate how he lived.

  But in all other ways, he knew his decision was right. If only he could persuade her to agree.

  Finally, his students gave up and went to their beds or to the tavern. Fitz checked to see that Abby was sound asleep in her chair, her cheeks flushed with the heat from the fire she’d fed earlier. Now all he had to do was decide how to persuade her to his thinking.

  After the departure of their guests, Montague eyed him as if he knew what Fitz was contemplating. Straddling his chair with the lithe grace of his dark Norman ancestors, he rested his arms across the back and swilled the last of the ale. “I have Lady Belden’s carriage in the yard. You can deliver the lot to her in the morning and let her figure out what to do with the children. I’ll be happy to return on Barton’s impressive steed.”

  Blond, elegant Atherton sprawled his long legs indolently from a wing chair in the far corner. Never one with a regard for propriety, he countered, “You’d do better to take them back to Miss Merriweather’s farm. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and all that. Let the courts fight it out.”

  Fitz shuffled the deck. “The children were afraid Weatherston would beat them if he found them. I think I need to take them somewhere safe until the situation is sorted out.”

  “You’re about to do something beef-witted, aren’t you?” Montague asked, snatching the cards away and spreading them out, apparently trying to visually memorize the point counts Fitz had taught him earlier. Montague believed in law and order, but he also believed in staying out of other people’s business. He wouldn’t interfere with Fitz’s decisions.

  Fitz removed another deck from an inside pocket and tapped it against the table before shuffling. He thought better with cards in his hands. “Miss Merriweather needs to hide her siblings until her father’s executor is notified of our complaint against their guardian. I’m thinking my estate is larger than her farm.”

  He had a number of other thoughts about Abby and his home, all of them prurient, but until he knew whether his staff had sold off all the beds to cover their wages, he tried not to get ahead of himself.

  Atherton snorted. “You think she’ll agree to abscond to your estate unchaperoned? She seems the proper sort to me. She may take the children back to the dragon lady, but hiding them? I don’t think so.”

  Fitz glanced over at his sleeping Miss Merry
and knew he was right and Atherton was wrong. Abby might look small and sweet, but she would fight tooth and nail to keep her siblings now that she had them. If they complained of being beaten, she’d go after Weatherston with a big stick and a horsewhip. Fitz had the more delicate task of preventing Abby from killing the man.

  Other men might object to a wife as intimidating as Miss Merry, but Fitz was completely confident that he could handle her and enjoy every minute of it. His Rhubarbara had the appearance of an angel and the fierceness of a lion, and he wanted her contrary self for his own.

  He knew how to do it. He simply couldn’t decide if he had earned the right to follow his crass desires instead of what his extremely respectable wits told him society expected of him.

  First, he had to be assured he could keep Abby and the children safe. “I’d like the two of you to go back to Tattersall’s. This time, search for an Irish ruffian not much bigger than Tommy, wearing clothes that look as if he’s slept in them. He’s either a lackwit or Geoff may have hired him, although if my cuz hopes to drive me out of the country by having ruffians fling bricks at me, he’s as dim-witted as the rest of my family.”

  Atherton and Montague perked right up at this appealing enterprise.

  Beating cads into pulp held little appeal to Fitz with Miss Merry on his horizon. But if he ever got his hands on Geoff, he’d have a fist ready, if only for thinking Fitz was such a sapskull as to kill himself and for celebrating his death with carriage crests. His heir needed some sense beaten into him.

  Abby awoke to the heavenly aromas of hot chocolate and bacon and the even more delightful sound of childish whispers. Her neck ached from sleeping upright, but joy was her first reaction. She had the children back!