Scandalously Yours

by Cara Elliott

  He was about throw open the front door when his sister burst in, clutching the hand of a disheveled Lucy Simmonds.

  “John!” Tears had traced two salty trails down Cecilia’s ashen cheeks. “Thank God you are here!’

  He froze. “What’s wrong?’ As he spoke, he caught sight of the bruise darkening the little girl’s brow. “Good Lord, Lucy is injured—”

  “Oh, don’t fret about me, sir,” interrupted Lucy in a rush. “It’s Scottie!” She paused to catch her breath.

  “Scottie has been abducted!” finished his sister.

  “It’s wrong.” Too agitated to remain seated at her desk, Olivia rose and began to pace the perimeter of the study. “I have to tell him.”

  Her late morning meeting with the earl to rehearse the speech had been a tense, awkward encounter—and not merely because of their sexual intimacies. Keeping mum about Lady Loose Screw had made her brusque and snappish, which in turn had made the earl stiff and tongue-tied. The more she thought about it, the more she felt guilty about keeping her other nom de plume a secret. She hadn’t told him an outright lie, but neither had she been completely honest.

  And somehow the oblique deception felt worse.

  “I have to tell him,” she repeated.

  Anna remained silent, a pensive frown pursed on her lips.

  Caro, however, was far more decisive. “Tell him you are Lady Loose Screw? Why? Isn’t that asking for fireworks?”

  Olivia gave an inward wince. Close as they all were, she had not yet told her sisters about the personal pyrotechnics between her and the earl. It still felt too new, too confusing.

  “I think you should wait for exactly the right moment,” went on Caro. “If I were you, I’d wait until he declared his undying love. Then I would burst into tears and say I’ve a dreadful secret to confess, which of course he’ll forgive without batting an eye.”

  “Such a scenario may make for passionate poetry,” replied Olivia. “But I’m afraid my real life conundrums are not going to be solved by a sonnet. To begin with, the Earl of Wrexham is not in love with me. We are…well, I suppose we are best described as comrades-in-arms.”

  Because I can’t think of a term that describes two rational people struck by temporary madness.

  To Anna, she added, “I think we should consider putting Byron’s works under lock and key until she’s old enough to understand that melodrama has no place, save on the theatrical stage.”

  Caro made a face.

  “Livvie has a point,” murmured Anna.

  “Ha! Sometimes real life can be far more dramatic than prose or poetry,” retorted their younger sister. “You’ve said so yourself!”

  “Be that as it may, a debate on artistic license is not helping Livvie at this moment.” Anna turned her attention to Olivia. “I agree that Caro’s suggestion errs on the side of excessive fantasy, but to be perfectly pragmatic, there are a number of good arguments for waiting until after the earl’s speech. A distraction at this point might jeopardize all the good you have worked for.”

  “True,” conceded Olivia. “I’ve been trying to convince myself of much the same thing. And yet, it somehow feels wrong. I—I can’t explain why.”

  For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the tap, tap of Anna’s pen point against a sheet of foolscap. “Then instead of trying to reason it out with your head, you must simply trust your heart.”

  Trust.

  Olivia rose, the next move in this complex chess game of politics and secrets suddenly clear as crystal. “You’re right. If I hurry, I can still pay a call at his sister’s residence during the proper visiting hours.”

  “I’ll come with you,” offered Anna. “You’ll want to request a private meeting with the earl, and my presence may help keep Lady Silliman from becoming too curious about the reason.”

  Grateful for the company, Olivia quickly accepted.

  “Drat it all,” groused Caro. “It’s grossly unfair that I must always stay at home while you two are allowed to gallivant hither and yon having exceedingly exciting Adventures.”

  “Caro, we are walking to Berkeley Square, not Kubla Khan’s fabled city of Xanadu,” pointed out Olivia. “So I don’t expect to encounter any adventure along the way. And ‘exceedingly exciting’ are not the adjectives I would use to describe the upcoming meeting.”

  Exceedingly uncomfortable was more accurate.

  She had no idea how the earl was going to react to the revelation. But she doubted that he would be overjoyed.

  “You’ve a role to play here,” said Anna. “If Mama inquires where we have gone, you may tell her that we’ve taken a stroll to deliver a book to Lady Silliman. It’s close enough to the truth without stirring any marriage machinations directed at the earl.”

  “Oh, very well. I shall—what is the military expression—hold the fort until you return.”

  Olivia blew out her cheeks. It did feel a little like she was marching into battle. “Thank you. It won’t be for long.”

  “Abducted!” It took a heartbeat for the word to sink in. A stab of fear lanced through John’s chest, but then all of his military training triggered to full alert, emotion giving way to iron-willed detachment.

  “Tell me exactly what happened,” he said calmly.

  Steadied by his voice, Cecilia recounted what she had seen, with Lucy supplying the rest if the details.

  “You are a very brave girl,” he said when the story was done.

  “I kicked the man hard and bit his hand,” replied Lucy with a note of savage satisfaction. “But he wouldn’t let go of Scottie. Then the other man hit me and I fell down.”

  John felt a clench of cold fury inside his chest. “You could not have shown more courage, sweetheart. Now I shall take command.”

  “W-will Scottie be alright?” asked Lucy, her bravado giving way to apprehension.

  “Yes,” said the earl emphatically. “I promise you, nothing is going to happen to him.”

  Lucy looked reassured, but Cecilia’s eyes betrayed her own misgivings. “John, I fear that I and the guards saw little that might help identify—”

  He silenced her with a quick wave. “I think you should take Lucy up for a hot bath and put her to bed while I map out a strategy for what to do next.” That his sister had little in the way of clues to offer didn’t matter—he fully expected a ransom note would be arriving at any moment.

  And he had an inkling of what the price would be for the safe return of his son.

  As Cecilia shepherded the little girl upstairs, John tried to keep his thoughts in the present and not the past. It was, he knew, a waste of time and focus to second-guess his decisions. Still, he could not help but feel a knifeblade of guilt prick against his conscience. If he hadn’t let passion distract him from keeping a closer eye on his son…if he hadn’t reneged on his promise to be part of the Tower outing…

  “Yes, I have made mistakes, but all is not lost,” he reminded himself. “As in chess, I must study the board and see how to move my pieces to regain the advantage.”

  The difference between victory and defeat often came to seeing a subtle opening and seizing the moment. Prescott’s captors would demand an unconditional surrender. After all, they held the upper hand. But John had not survived the brutal Peninsular War without learning a few dirty tricks of his own.

  Improvise—strike where they least expect it.

  Fisting his hands, he returned to the study and found the small wooden chest where his brother-in-law kept a pair of deadly accurate Manton dueling pistols under lock and key.

  No doubt the dastards would promise to free his son unharmed if he followed orders, but John didn’t trust them to keep their word. During the war he had been involved in several hostage exchanges, all of which had ended badly. His son would have seen too much, heard too much for his captors to risk releasing him.

  If Scottie is to survive, I shall have to rescue him myself.

  But the question was how.

  John
closed the pistol case and began searching the cabinet for the box containing bullets and powder. He hadn’t yet formulated a plan of attack. That would depend on the first message—but when it came, he would be ready to spring into action.

  “What are you going to tell him?” asked Anna as they descended the townhouse steps and turned onto High Street.

  “The truth,” answered Olivia.

  “The whole truth?” pressed her sister.

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” she quipped. “But in answer to your question, yes, the whole truth. He is a man of integrity and principle—I think he deserves no less.”

  Anna was about to answer when her eyes suddenly narrowed as a curricle came tooling around the corner. “Speaking of integrity, here comes a man who has none to speak of.”

  It appeared that the Devil Davenport was going to fly past them when all at once his vehicle skidded to a stop.

  “Good day, ladies,” he said, jumping down from his perch. “Might I stroll with you for a bit?”

  “We are in a hurry, milord,” said Olivia. “And in no mood to socialize.”

  “Neither am I.” He drawled an order to his tiger to walk the horses and then quickened his steps to catch up. “Allow me to cut to the chase,” he said, “an apt expression—seeing as Lord Wrexham’s son has just been abducted from the grounds of the Tower menagerie.”

  “Abducted!” Much as Olivia itched to slap the supercilious smile from his handsome face, she kept her temper in check. “Why the devil are you dawdling here with us when you should be flying to Berkeley Square,” she demanded.

  “Oh, don’t bother quizzing him, Livvie,” snapped Anna, her eyes sparking with ire. “Everyone knows the Devil doesn’t exert himself unless he sees a profit in it for himself.”

  “I was, in fact, exerting myself far more than I usually do. If you’ll notice, my team is in quite a lather.”

  Anna made a rude noise.

  “However, there are complications. So when I spotted you two,” he went on with infuriating sangfroid, “I saw the chance to solve several problems all at once.” Moving with deceptive quickness, he slipped between Olivia and her sister and linked arms with them. “Do hear me out, ladies,” he murmured, setting off at a brisk pace toward the east side of Berkeley Square.

  “You had better have more to say than your usual sardonic quips, sir,” said Olivia. “This is no laughing matter. We must alert the earl—”

  “His sister is doing so as we speak,” assured Davenport. “However, the information will be of little value to him, for she knows naught about the deed, save that the bantling has been snatched.”

  “And you know more?” demanded Anna.

  “I do,” he answered. “And if you will kindly refrain from interrupting, I shall explain.”

  Two hot spots of scarlet bloomed on Anna’s cheeks, but to Olivia’s relief, she kept her mouth shut.

  “Please hurry, sir,” urged Olivia, feeling her insides tangling into a tight knot.

  Davenport’s drawl steeled to a sharper edge. “I happened to be driving by the Tower grounds when I saw a little girl tussling with two grown men…” A darting glance at Anna. “…And even an indolent wastrel like myself could not ignore the child’s cries—she was, by the by, screeching loudly enough to wake the dead. However, just as I was about to leap down from my perch, the varlets pushed her down and fled to a waiting carriage. It was then that I saw they had a lad in their clutches.”

  “How do you know it was the earl’s son—” began Olivia, but he waved her to silence.

  “At that same moment, Lady Silliman came bolting out of the archway, followed by two of the Tower guards,” he explained. “As she was very vocal in raising the alarm that her nephew had been abducted, I put two and two together…”

  “The saving grace of a debauched gamester is the fact that he knows how to add,” muttered Anna under her breath.

  To his credit, noted Olivia, Davenport ignored the jibe. “Lady Silliman gathered up the girl, and I assumed that she would inform Wrexham of the situation just as quickly as I could. So I decided to follow the abductors.”

  “Oh, well done, sir!” she murmured.

  “With all due modesty, I must say that my skill with the reins is not half shabby, so I managed to catch up with them just as they pulled to a halt in the coaching yard of The Dirty Duck Tavern. The boy—he was now trussed and gagged—was transferred to another vehicle.”

  “And no one tried to stop them when clearly something havey-cavey was going on?” burst out Anna.

  “It is a rough part of Town, Miss Anna. People tend to mind their own business.”

  “Including you,” she snapped in reply.

  “Unlike the Earl of Wrexham, I am no hero,” he shot back. “There were four men there, all armed. The noble sacrifice of my humble self seemed likely not only to ruin a rather expensive coat but also to prove useless in freeing the bantling.”

  Olivia was suddenly aware that as he had been talking, the marquess had quickened his pace and was now guiding them into the central gardens of Berkeley Square. Edging off the pathway and into the secluded shelter of a grouping of holly bushes, he drew to a halt.

  “I have no time to linger, so listen carefully, ladies. The important thing is that I recognized the waiting carriage. Though stripped of any identifying crest or decorative touches, it’s familiar to me because Lord Lumley uses it for making the rounds of his carousing spots in the stews of Southwark.

  “Lumley—he is one of the leaders of the faction opposing Lord Wrexham’s reform bill,” interjected Olivia.

  “Correct. Not only that, I recognized the viscount himself as he took the boy from the original abductors, despite his wearing an oversized hat and driving cloak.”

  If Lumley were part of the plot, it was likely that the Duke of Sommers was also involved. Swallowing hard, she tried to keep the bitter taste of fear from tainting her tongue.

  Ruthless—most men turn ruthless when their self-interest is threatened.

  As Davenport gave them a detailed description of the carriage, he pulled a paper from his pocket. “And here’s another bit of information that may prove useful. Lumley has a hunting lodge in the wilds of Dartmoor, southwest of Exeter, near Tavistock. Very few people among Polite Society know of its existence, for he uses it mainly to entertain his dissolute cronies. I would think it’s a good bet that he will take the earl’s son there.”

  “As a hostage?” said Olivia as she watched the marquess smooth the creases from a hand-drawn map.

  “Yes. It stands to reason, don’t you think? The viscount and his friends wish to silence Wrexham’s voice in the upcoming Parliamentary debate, but the Perfect Hero cannot be bribed or bullied. So they must strike at the only spot where he is vulnerable.”

  To give the Devil his due, allowed Olivia, his smirking show of indolent boredom appeared to mask a sharp-witted mind.

  “The dastards!” she exclaimed, sure that he was right. “It’s imperative that the earl know all of this without delay! There is a good chance that he might catch up with the coach before it reaches the lodge.” Freeing Prescott would be a good deal easier on the road.

  “That,” said Davenport, “is exactly why I stopped you two ladies. You see, it so happens that I have a very pressing engagement, and it would cause some rather unpleasant consequences if I were to be late.”

  “An amorous encounter, I presume,” muttered her sister. “Or do you have several planned for the evening that depend on precise timing?”

  “Presume what you wish, Miss Anna,” he answered evenly. “Suffice it to say, you two will be doing both the earl and me a great favor if you would consent to serve as messengers in my stead.” From inside his coat, the marquess withdrew a cylindrical package encased in a felt bag. “You might also give him these two items. One is a telescope fitted with special set of powerful lenses, and the other is a weapon that strikes silently but is just as effective as a pistol in putting an opponent ou
t of action. Wrexham might find both of them useful in his pursuit of the villains. Stealth and the element of surprise can be a distinct advantage in the line of battle.”

  “Where did you get them?” asked Anna.

  “Never mind,” he replied. “They are a trifle complicated, so let me show you how they work.”

  “I accompanied my father on several of his expeditions,” said Olivia. “I am well acquainted with scientific instruments like telescopes.”

  “Excellent.” Davenport quickly explained how to maneuver the dials and levers.

  “Yes,” she murmured, “I understand. How ingenious.”

  “Thank God you are clever, Miss Sloane. But I had a feeling you would be.”

  “The weapon, however…” She stared at the hinged rods and the odd cording wrapped around them in consternation.”

  “It’s not really as puzzling as it looks,” he said, unfolding two metal arms upward from the center shaft to form a ‘Y.’

  Olivia was still mystified.

  “Click these levers and rotate the bezel to lock the arms in place,” he explained. “As you see, the cord is fastened securely to the arms, and then can be stretched, like so.” He grasped the small leather square centered on its length and pulled it back. “There’s a sack of steel balls inside the felt bag. You place one of them on the leather patch, then take aim and release.” A sharp, snapping thwang rent the air. “It’s nearly as effective as a bullet, but far more silent.”

  “Good Lord. It’s a sling of sorts, but what is the cord made of? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “It made from the sap of the Hevea brasiliensis tree, which grows in Brazil.”

  “And how—” began Anna.

  “I don’t have time to explain.” Quickly rebagging the two items, he pressed them and the map into Olivia’s hands. “Tell Wrexham that the instruments are borrowed, so he must return them when he is done, or else pay me the full value—which is bloody expensive.” A jaunty salute. “And now, I really must be off.”