The ruthless Lord Rule

by Kasey Michaels

  His appetite for the plateful of ham and eggs sitting before him having fled as he examined the first three communications, Tristan gathered up Julian’s note in his one hand and stuck Dexter’s missive in his pocket before heading toward the front door at a near run. He’d read the letters during his first stop for fresh horses, he told himself as he vaulted onto the seat of the curricle and snatched up the reins from the waiting groom.

  But right now his years spent developing a sixth sense that warned him of impending danger served only to heighten his fears as he knew, deep in his rapidly beating heart, that Mary needed him—now!

  DEXTER WAS PACING BACK and forth across the Rutherfords’ drawing-room carpet as his cousin watched in amusement. “I tell you, Julian, I had to do it. Ever since Kitty told me about her brother’s past schemes—using her so shabbily to get himself inside the best houses and rob the inhabitants blind—I’ve been hard-pressed to keep silent. For he is her only relative, after all, and Kitty might take exception if I were to do something that would have the curst fellow clapped up in irons or something. But when she broke down and told me what Toland had said about Miss Lawrence—”

  “It’s all right, Dexter,” Julian said soothingly, very much liking this new show of maturity his cousin was evincing, even if he didn’t quite believe Dex completely comprehended the real facts in the matter.

  “All right? All right!” Dexter exploded, throwing his slim body dramatically into a nearby chair. “If that don’t beat the Dutch! How can you say so? I introduce Kitty into Sir Henry’s household and the next thing you know her rum-touch brother is loping off with the family silver! But even the shame of such a thing pales into insignificance when you think the rotter may be trying to run some rig on Miss Lawrence. Lord! Tris will have my guts for garters, and no mistake!” Dexter prophesied grimly, dropping his chin onto his chest.

  “So you felt it incumbent upon yourself then to write to Tristan directly and apprise him of a—um—situation that might require his presence in London?”

  “You may tick me off for it, coz, but I really had no choice but to write to him, considering how I thought I’d like to keep my head where it is—attached to my neck,” Dexter confessed, not caring that it was obvious that self-preservation had accounted for a good bit of his concern for Mary. “Besides, the ladies at Sir Henry’s have all been acting as queer as Dick’s hatband for the last week, always sneaking away together to whisper in corners, so it’s Carleton House to a Charley’s shelter that something havey-cavey is going on.”

  “Miss Gladwin included?” Julian pressed, finding it hard to believe anything too untoward could be occurring with that down-to-earth female around to keep Mary and Lucy from doing anything too outlandish.

  Dexter sniffed, dismissing Rachel as having anything to do with the subject. “Miss Gladwin and Sir Henry are full of April and May, coz, and I swear, it would take more than a roof falling on their heads for them to notice that anything was amiss. Not that Kitty knows anything to the point either—the poor, innocent angel. I’ve just taken two and two and made four of it, that’s all.”

  Julian allowed a small smile to escape his lips. “And they say there is nothing new under the sun. My goodness, you see me standing before you, amazed,” he drawled, lighting his cheroot with a spill from the candelabra. “As to your compulsion to write to Rule and tell all, my dear boy, I must applaud you for your decisive action, and would give a great deal to see Tristan’s face when he reads what I am sure must be quite an eloquent letter, considering your infrequent communications to me whilst you were up at school. However, as I too have felt the need to inform Tristan of the goings-on concerning his Miss Lawrence, I have no fears that we won’t be seeing the fellow’s dear, scowling face anytime soon.”

  That got Dexter’s full attention! He jumped to his feet to confront his cousin. “Julian, you plague a fellow out of his mind, do you know that! You’ve let me ramble on and on ever since I got here, confessing my dearest Kitty’s deepest secrets when there was not the slightest need for me to betray her confidence, when all the time you already knew something queer was going on. Remind me to do something especially nice for Lucy next I see her,” he said acidly, “for how she has the fortitude to put up with the likes of you I’ll never understand.”

  Thorpe poured his cousin a drink and then slipped a soothing arm around the younger man’s shoulders. “Heavens, I do believe you are somewhat incensed, bantling,” he remarked cordially enough. “But before you go calling me out, let me tell you that although I am aware of what you call a situation, your information linking your false friend to it comes as quite a surprise. I only knew of a blackmailer. You, dear cousin, have given me a name. I commend you.”

  “Throw roses at his feet some other time, Julian,” Tristan Rule advised tersely as he stormed into the room, still clad in his travel dirt. “Right now I want the bastard’s name, so I can call him by it before I tear him into little pieces.”

  Dexter seemed to fold in on himself as he shrank inside Julian’s comforting half embrace. “You can tell him without finding it necessary to jog his memory as to just who introduced Toland to Miss Lawrence, can’t you?” he whispered pleadingly before ducking out from beneath Julian’s arm and doing his best to blend in with the furnishings.

  “Tris!” Julian covered neatly, crossing to Rule and holding out his hand in welcome. “You made good time, considering the state of the mails. I imagine you didn’t spare the horses. No matter, Tiny and Goliath will see to them, I’m sure. I vow I shall miss those two when it comes time to return them to Kit. Come sit down and I’ll ring for some refreshments. I’m sorry Lucy isn’t here to greet you, but she’s been living in Mary’s pocket this last week, you know.”

  All through this prolonged greeting Tristan had been mumbling and grumbling, darting piercing looks in Dexter’s direction that had the young man shaking in his shoes. “Did you ever try to make head or tail of anything that fellow has ever written?” he asked Julian as he accepted a glass holding a good three fingers of whiskey. “I’ve yet to decipher a word of it, or of Lucy’s message for that matter, and Rachel and Sir Henry make a good pair, considering that between the two of them they managed to say nothing at all. Thank God for your note, Julian, else I might have been out of my mind with worry by now.”

  Julian acknowledged this faint praise with a nod of his head. “I can’t tell you much more than I already have, I’m afraid. Lucy thought she could keep the blackmail scheme a secret from me, but I saw right through her, of course. She’s promised to keep a close eye on Mary for me until you could return, but the blackmailer has yet to write again setting up a time and place for the information to change hands.”

  Tristan, remembering Lucy from their youth, narrowed his eyes and asked: “Are you sure she’s holding nothing back from you? It’s not like Lucy to be quite so helpful. It would be more in character if she were to combine forces with Mary and have the two of them plotting to capture this blackmailer themselves just to prove that they could do it.”

  Julian tipped his head to one side and thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “Not Lucy,” he said firmly. “She’s a wife now, and past such nonsense.”

  “Rutherford!” Rule called, stopping the young man with the stern tone of his voice as Dexter was about to slink out of the room. “Two questions, if you please. One—considering your cousin’s last statement, have you ever seen a pig fly?”

  “Are you questioning my assessment of my wife’s character?” Thorpe began heatedly. “Let me tell you something, Rule—”

  “And two,” Tristan went on unheeding, “give me the blackmailer’s name, since you seem to have discovered it. In return I promise to try not to break your foolish neck!”

  “TRISTAN’S BACK!”

  Mary, who had been standing beside the window looking out onto the street at the ragged urchin who was running off after delivering a second missive from the blackmailer, whirled about quickly, allowing
the drapery to fall back into place.

  “When? How?” she questioned, suddenly breathless.

  Lucy dropped into a chair, fanning herself furiously with the glove she had just removed from her right hand. “I was just coming into the square when I saw his curricle pulled up in front of the house. It was a near-run thing, as Julian’s coachman didn’t take kindly to my order to have him return me to you so I could collect the glove I left behind—especially considering the fact that I had two gloves, already upon my hands—but I knew you’d want to be warned at once.”

  “Warned, Lucy?” Mary questioned, tilting her head as if to better understand. “You were the one who swore to me that once Tristan came to his senses, he would rush to me and all but fall on my neck begging forgiveness. Why do I suddenly require a warning?”

  Lucy lowered her eyes, trying to figure out a way of saying what had to be said without unduly upsetting Mary. “I wrote to Tristan, Mary,” she began, only to be cut off by Mary’s exasperated exclamation of disbelief. “I had to!” she insisted, flinging out her hands helplessly. “After telling Julian, it seemed the only safe thing to do. Think about it for a moment, Mary,” she pleaded. “If Tris ever found out that Julian knew about the blackmailer and hadn’t told him, and if you and I, perish the very thought, are discovered trying to capture this horrid blackmailer of yours—well, Tristan just won’t like it if he finds out we all knew and didn’t bother telling him, that’s all.”

  “He’d punch your Julian square in his aristocratic nose, wouldn’t he?” Mary agreed ungraciously, for Lucy’s disclosure to Julian was still a sore subject between the two of them. “You realize, of course, that if you hadn’t told Julian about the blackmailer, we wouldn’t be in this coil now. I can only marvel that a mind so devious as to have the man believing you have told him the entire truth could have been so lamentably unable to keep the entire matter a secret.”

  “I was hoping Julian would take it upon himself to write to Tristan,” Lucy said in a small voice. “Men—you can never count on them to do what you want them to do. I checked the mailbag every morning for the letter, but in the end I had to take it upon myself to write Tristan. After all, if you said it once this week, you said it a thousand times—you can’t wait to see the look on Tristan’s face when he realizes that you’ve captured a blackmailer.” Lucy spread her hands as if she had just made everything quite clear. “Well, you can’t very well gloat over him if he’s buried deep in Surrey, can you?”

  Shaking her head in amused disbelief, Mary asked, “Are you quite sure there is no blood relation between you and Dexter? Your minds seem to work in the same illogical, harebrained way, you know.”

  Lucy snuggled more deeply into her chair and pretended to pout. “We can sit here all afternoon arguing, but what’s done is done, and now Tristan is in London, and will doubtless be here within the hour, once Julian has told him everything he knows. As Julian believes me to be a spy myself, reporting all your actions to him, I am sure he will be able to defuse my cousin at least a little bit before he comes storming in here to tear you apart for not contacting him as soon as you learned of the blackmailer’s existence. It’s a pity we’ll have nothing more to show him than that single letter.”

  “But that isn’t all,” Mary teased, waving the second letter in front of Lucy’s face. “You know how you promised to help me, Lucy? Well, here’s your chance. By the time Tristan runs me to earth I shall have taken care of the blackmailer myself—and saved Tristan from the gallows for having done the man in. Then I shall be more than happy to allow him to beg my forgiveness for having caused me all this trouble in the first place.”

  “And he will have realized once and for all that it can be very dangerous to jump to conclusions,” Lucy added, reading the letter that called for an assignation later that same day for the purpose of exchanging Sir Henry’s papers for the blackmailer’s silence.

  “It is nice to have everything coming together so neatly, isn’t it?” Mary mused, wondering if it would be good form to wear her new blue walking dress to meet a blackmailer.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CONSIDERING THAT IT WAS BORN of necessity and formulated in haste, Mary’s plan was, in Lucy’s words, “none too shabby.” Within an hour of Lucy’s arrival with the information that Tristan was back in town, the two ladies were climbing into Sir Henry’s closed town carriage, off to meet the blackmailer in a house just off Bow Street.

  But alas, their departure did not go unnoticed. For just as the carriage was about to round the corner Lord Rule, with Lord Thorpe up beside him, came by tooling his curricle in the opposite direction. There was no doubt that the ladies had been seen and identified, a fact that was quickly substantiated by Mary, who looked out the back flap of the carriage to see Tristan wheeling his horses in a sharp turn, obviously set on following wherever the ladies led.

  “We left it too late!” Lucy groaned, sinking back against the squabs in an attitude of defeat.

  “Nonsense,” Mary countered, already unbuttoning the top of her dress. “They are only following us because they know of nothing better to do with themselves. Why, we could be heading for the park for all they know.”

  “In a closed carriage?”

  Mary wrinkled her nose at this reasonable question and quickly pulled the cords that lowered the privacy shades on either side of the carriage. “Don’t quibble, Lucy, I’m nervous enough as it is. Now quickly, change clothing with me.”

  “What? Have you run entirely mad?”

  “If we change clothes before we alight from the carriage, Julian will recognize your outfit and think I am you, that way I can meet up with Ben at the Bazaar as we have planned and you can lead your husband and Tristan off in another direction.” Mary’s bodice was completely undone by this time, and she was wiggling inelegantly as she tried to slip her dress down past her hips.

  Lucy had chosen to pull her gown off over her head, so that her protest was faintly muffled. “But I’m supposed to go with you! How do you know the servants will be enough?”

  Stopping what she was doing for the moment, Mary delivered Lucy a leveling stare. “Tiny will not be enough? Come now, dear, even you know that with Tiny and Goliath and Ben, you were only coming along for the thrill of the thing. Now hurry, I believe we’re almost there.”

  “These bonnets are a godsend,” Lucy said breathlessly, still huffing and puffing a bit after the exertion of completely changing her outfit within the confines of the carriage. “I vow I’ve never before seen such a profusion of ostrich plumes. No one will be able to recognize either of us from any distance.”

  Mary nodded, tying the ribbons of her own bonnet under her chin and arranging the plumes in concealing fashion around the left side of her face. “I thought much the same thing when I saw them on Bond Street the other day. Poor Aunt Rachel, she couldn’t understand my sudden ecstasy for drooping bird feathers, telling me youth has no reason to hide behind such frippery stuff.”

  The carriage slowed to a stop, and within moments the door was opened and the steps were let down for the ladies to descend to the flagway directly in front of the bazaar. Mary poked her head out first and immediately espied Ben standing off to one side, a resigned look on his face. “Hurry, Lucy,” Mary then instructed, chancing a quick peek down the street to see Tristan furiously berating the driver of a wagon-load of wooden casks who was blocking the way.

  Immediately after entering the bazaar, Mary thought, So far, so good, as Lucy went off in one direction and she and Ben in another. It may have been bad form to have gone into public without the protection of a maid or footman, but Mary didn’t wish to involve anyone else in her conspiracy. Besides, as she was meeting Ben at the not quite so tonnish bazaar anyway, rather than at Sir Henry’s house, there didn’t seem to be too much danger involved.

  Now that Lucy was to be set loose alone, however, Mary did take the time to experience a slight qualm about her friend’s safety, but the thought that Julian and Tristan would soon
catch up with her alleviated some of her guilt. All that mattered now was to get to the house near Bow Street, confront her blackmailer, and have Tiny hoist the man on his shoulders and carry him off to the constable.

  She’d show Tristan that she was loyal to England, by God, and that she didn’t need a constant watchdog to take care of her either! If she and Tris were to ever have a chance at happiness, they would have to begin as equals.

  “Ben?” she asked, after following the bandy-legged servant onto a side street and entering the hack he had waiting for them there. “How far is it to Bow Street? Are Tiny and Goliath already in position? You are armed, aren’t you?”

  Ben answered her last question by patting the bulge that showed through his clothing. “Be there a’fore the cat ken lick ’er ear,” he assured her as they bumped along the road. “We’ll be met.”

  “DEVIL A BIT OF IT, where are they?” Rule asked, exasperated.

  Julian looked around again, trying in vain to pick out either his wife or Mary among the throng of shoppers, clerks and pickpockets that jammed the narrow aisles of the large building. “Wait a moment, I think I see Lucy over there,” he said, pointing off to the left.

  “No,” Tristan disagreed, narrowing his eyes for a better look. “But it’s good enough, for it’s Mary you’ve found. I think I recognize that gown. God, Julian, but that’s a deucedly ugly hat. Why do women persist on wearing such things?”

  As Tris spoke they were moving steadily in the direction of the weaving ostrich plumes, closing in on the object of their search. “Mary’s gown or nay, that’s my Lucy,” Thorpe persisted. “I may have overshot myself a bit thinking my wife above hoodwinking me, but I’ll not have anyone tell me I don’t know Lucy’s body better than any man alive.”