Fit for tomcats and urchins. She’d been right to hide here, and right to leave.
“Pippa could do with more book learning,” Matilda said. “Perhaps in time, she can…” A shivery feeling slithered through her insides. “Helen, turn around and run as if you don’t want to accompany me. Do it now.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m almost certain Pippa can’t spell the word ‘immediately’ correctly.”
Helen wrested free of Matilda’s grasp. “I’m not coming with you! You can’t make me, and I’m tired of doing what you say.”
Matilda’s plan was to chase the child back up the alley, all the way to the Albany, but a man in plain brown leaped over her own garden wall and clamped a hand around her arm.
“Lady Matilda Derrick, good day. Fetching ensemble, and you had me fooled for a bit. Jonas Samuels, at your service. You needn’t worry about the little pickpocket. I promised her sister I’d not touch her, and I always keep my word.”
Chapter Fourteen
“That is a jackass,” Hazelton said as he and Ashton emerged into the early afternoon sunshine. “I wash my hands of you. Your pet jackass and its equally disreputable groom are arguing with your coachman on the very steps of the royal establishment. Have you any idea—?”
“Hector!” Ashton called, breaking into a run. “What’s wrong?”
Both braids had tumbled free of Helen’s cap, and her cheeks were streaked with tears.
“He has Mrs. B! The damned stinking rat plucked her from the alley, and this bloody goddamned bloated excuse for a farting disgrace of a coachman wouldn’t fetch you.”
“I’m sorry, my lord,” the coachman began. “The child has no place—”
“She has every place. Helen, who has Matilda?”
“S-Samuels. He took her to that lawyer’s office. I followed him, but I couldn’t get inside, so I ran back to the Albany, asked Mr. Tresham’s groom how to get to the levee, and grabbed Duke. She could be at Newgate by now, thanks to this ignorant, puking—”
Ashton put a gentle, firm hand over the child’s mouth and snatched her up in his arms, lest she kick John Coachman’s shins—or worse—clear to Scotland.
“A thief-taker has to take a suspect before the magistrate,” Hazelton said. “Nobody goes straight to Newgate. If Samuels took her to the solicitor’s office, he’s under orders not to create a scandal.”
“In which case, Matilda could simply disappear forever, nobody the wiser,” Ashton said, depositing Helen into the coach. “We’re for Basingstoke’s law office, John Coachman, as fast as you can get us there. Have a groom lead Marmaduke back to my stable.”
Hazelton piled into the coach and produced a handkerchief for Helen, Ashton’s being in his sporran.
“Mrs. B got a note from Pippa, but it’s my fault,” Helen said. “I heard Samuels tell Mrs. B that Sissy tipped him off, which is why he let me go. I don’t think he knows I followed him.”
“He might not,” Hazelton said. “Particularly if the suspected murderer was struggling to escape.”
“Don’t call her that!” Ashton and Helen shouted in unison.
“You did the best you could, Helen, better than I might have done,” Ashton said. “Why was Matilda on the street at all? She knows better.”
Helen finished wiping her cheeks with Hazelton’s fine linen, then passed the earl back his handkerchief.
“Keep it, child.”
She peered at him. “It’s not your lucky piece?”
“You are our lucky piece,” Ashton said. “I’ve never met a girl with such pluck and determination. About Matilda?”
“That lying, crawling, worthless rotter sent her a note that Pippa was in trouble, but pretended it was from Pippa. You know how Mrs. B is, and then there’s Samuels, like a snake from under a rock snatching her in my alley. I’ll be having words with Sissy if she really did tip him off.”
Ashton tucked Helen’s braids back under her cap. “Your sister might not have had much say. Samuels probably offered her a choice between being arrested or peaching on Matilda.”
Helen glowered out the window, blinking furiously. “Not much of a choice is right. I don’t want to be a boy, but I don’t want to be a girl much neither.”
“You don’t have to decide today,” Ashton said. “Today you’re the most loyal factotum an earl ever hired and the best friend Lady Matilda could wish for.”
“Who’s she?”
“I knew it,” Hazelton muttered.
“Lady Matilda Derrick, known to you as Mrs. Bryce.”
The coach slowed, and abruptly, the rage Ashton had been trying to ignore rose like an incoming tide. Drexel’s four in hand sat before the solicitor’s offices, a coachman and two footmen at their posts.
“Hazelton, don’t let me kill anybody.”
“Kill Samuels,” Helen said. “Kill him a lot.”
“Helen will keep you sensible,” Hazelton rejoined. “As will Lady Matilda. My own feeble efforts to restrain your temper would pale compared to their good offices.”
“Don’t he talk grand,” Helen said, hopping out of the coach before either Ashton or Hazelton. She opened the door to the solicitor’s establishment before one of Ashton’s footmen could reach it. “I’m his lordship’s general factotum. Who are you?” she asked the footman.
“Helen, you’ll stay here,” Ashton said. “I need somebody I can trust to stand lookout.”
Helen stuck her tongue out at the footman. “You heard his lordship. I’m the lookout.”
She clambered to the top of the coach without another word and glowered in the direction of Drexel’s conveyance.
“Thieves tend to post lookouts,” Hazelton said. “Have you a plan for rescuing your damsel, or have you involved me in an impromptu kidnapping of a suspected felon, by daylight, while men of the law look on and take notes as you wrest the prisoner from the custody of the authorities?”
Valid point. No self-respecting Scotsman went raiding without a plan.
“You two,” Ashton said to the footmen, “get around back and detain any who seek to leave through the alley. You and you,” he said to his grooms, “stop anybody coming out the front door. No fisticuffs, but no exceptions either.”
“That’s a start,” Hazelton said.
“If you have any suggestions, Hazelton, now is the time to make them.”
“Kill Samuels a lot?”
“He’s simply a henchman. Drexel is the puppeteer, and Basingstoke the Elder dances to his tune. John Coachman, move up so you’re blocking the other coach where it stands.”
“I’ll have to back in from the corner, my lord, but our boys can do it handily, and they’ll stand until Domesday if I tell ’em to.”
“We won’t be long.”
“Your plan?” Hazelton asked again, eyeing the gray stone façade. Pots of red salvia adorned the front stoop, a brilliant contrast to the somber exterior. Once upon a time, this had been a fine town house, two small balconies fronting the street one floor up.
“I wish I could blow the place to kingdom come.” A Scotsman’s honest sentiment, a bastard’s frustrated longing. Matilda needed Ashton to be a reaver prepared to enforce some Border justice.
“We’ll speak sweet reason to another peer of the realm,” Ashton said, “and threaten the hell out of him if reason doesn’t prevail.”
“Simple,” Hazelton said. “I like it. Let’s hope it works.”
* * *
Drexel had aged in six years. His hair was thinner, his belly rounder, his jowls saggier than Matilda recalled.
This was the man who’d figured in her nightmares? This was the fiend who’d plotted to hand her over to the hangman? She’d never mistake him for harmless, though she was finished with mistaking herself for helpless.
“The situation is most unusual,” Myron Basingstoke was saying. “Most, most unusual. Samuels, you’ve done your bit. Why are you tarrying among your betters?”
Samuels was the man who’d been followin
g Matilda for the past two weeks. As Ashton had said, he was attired to blend in. Medium height, medium build, tidy brown clothes without distinguishing details. Brown hair neither short nor long. The single feature Matilda focused on was the coldness in his eyes.
“I want my fee,” Samuels said.
“You’ll get no fee until she’s been convicted,” Drexel spluttered. “For God’s sake, I shouldn’t have to tell you the terms of your trade.”
Drexel stood behind Basingstoke’s desk, while Matilda occupied a chair by the bow window. She’d have to elude three men to get to the door, but neither Drexel nor his attorney concerned her.
Samuels, who lounged by the door without an apparent care in the world, concerned her very much.
“Your terms were the usual, guv,” Samuels said. “Reward upon conviction. Mr. Stephen Derrick promised me ten pounds’ payment upon apprehension of the suspect. I’ve done the apprehending, now somebody had better do the paying.”
“Stephen offered you ten pounds to kill me,” Matilda said.
All three men gawped at her as if a potted palm had spoken.
“Madam, you will remain silent,” Drexel snapped. “You’ve caused enough trouble as it is, gallivanting about in that ridiculous getup, leading your family a dance, and involving the likes of a thief-taker.”
“You will address me as your ladyship, he’s not my thief-taker, and I’m dressed as you are,” Matilda retorted as a racket came from the street below. A second coach had pulled up behind Drexel’s four-in-hand, perhaps another wealthy—
She knew that team of chestnuts, and she knew very, very well the child and the kilted man who emerged from the coach. Matilda rose. She wanted to open the window and shout out her location, but the best she could do was try to catch Ashton’s attention.
“You presume to judge me,” she said, sweeping an arm in Drexel’s direction. “You who did nothing to provide the authorities the truth and instead suborned Stephen’s perjury. If that’s not a felony, it should be.”
Basingstoke glanced uneasily at his client. “Perhaps it’s time we paid Samuels, my lord. The matter under discussion is delicate.”
“I was delicate six years ago,” Matilda retorted. “I’m considerably tougher now, and more resourceful, thank you.”
“You will be silent,” Drexel snapped. “My brother is spinning in his grave at all the trouble you’ve caused. Had you remained out of sight for another year, I might have been able to help you.”
“Don’t believe him, missus,” Samuels said. “Man’s going to get you killed, he should at least be honest about it.”
“I am being honest,” Drexel bellowed. “I had no intention of pursuing that damned woman. The less seen of her the better.”
“About my money?” Samuels said.
“Basingstoke.” Drexel waved a hand in Samuels’ direction. “Get rid of him.”
Basingstoke withdrew a form book from his desk drawer and uncapped an ink bottle.
“None of that,” Samuels said. “Cash, gentlemen, just like on all those lovely flyers Mr. Derrick had me put up.”
“I will kill Stephen,” Drexel muttered.
“Him, I’d do for ten bob,” Samuels said, “me having a civic nature and all. Missus, best of luck. Plead your belly. Pretty as you are, transportation is the worst you’ll face.”
He pocketed coins Basingstoke had set out on the desk and departed with a tip of his hat.
“Now that the closest thing to a gentleman has left the room,” Matilda said, turning her back on both men, the better to spy out the window, “I can speak freely. You had best see me hanged, Drexel, because if you don’t, I will see you held accountable for suborning perjury, stealing from me, stealing from Kitty, encouraging your disgrace of a brother to drink himself to death, and your idiot nephew to molest me. I will, as publicly as possible, make it apparent that I sought the advice of midwives, physicians, and even a madam in an effort to find a solution to Althorpe’s impotence, and if that’s not enough—”
Helen waved from the top of Ashton’s coach, which now sat directly below the window and in front of Drexel’s vehicle.
“If that’s not enough,” said a soft male voice, “I’ll kill ye where ye stand.”
Ashton Fenwick stood in the doorway in all his Highland finery, save for the fancy sporran. Another sizeable, dark-haired gentleman in court attire stood with him.
“Basingstoke,” Drexel said, “what manner of establishment are you running that strangers can interrupt confidential discussions unannounced?”
“My Lord Hazelton.” Basingstoke rose and bowed. “If you would introduce us to your companion?”
“My lady,” Ashton said, “you’re well?”
“I’m furious,” Matilda replied, blowing him a kiss. “I rather liked your first idea better than this small talk. In other regards, I’m fine.” Matilda was also relieved—vastly, enormously relieved—and pleased. She’d spoken up for herself, and she’d meant every word.
Let the whole matter come to trial, let it be over with. Drexel, Stephen, and the fear they’d traded on, had ruined enough of her life. She had the resolve to fight them now, and she had an ally who’d never desert her.
“Ashton, Earl of Kilkenney,” Hazelton said, “may I make known to you Myron Basingstoke, whose privilege it is to own this establishment. He used to be honest. I can’t vouch for his principles now.”
“I can,” Ashton said, “if such as that is Basingstoke’s favored client.” That being Drexel, whose complexion was more choleric by the moment. “The best we can say about Mr. Myron Basingstoke is that he’s incompetent and lazy, has no respect for the law and even less respect for the ladies. He might be a solicitor, but he’s no sort of gentleman, and I’m not much impressed with his intellect either. Because a lady is present, I’ll not favor you with my opinion of Lord Drexel.”
“Oh, please,” Matilda said. “Favor us.”
Ashton bowed, the gesture painfully courteous, though a rage burned in his eyes that took Matilda aback. He wasn’t merely angry, he was furious, and holding on to his temper by a thin skein of decency.
“Who the hell are you?” Drexel spat, “and what gives you the right to insult people who know a damned sight more about Matilda Derrick’s sordid past than you?”
“I am her ladyship’s intended, if she’ll have me, and you are, to quote another female I esteem, a lying, crawling, worthless rotter. Sit down, and I’ll enumerate the reasons why you and your weasel of a nephew are going to jail.”
Drexel apparently wasn’t used to being addressed like a sluggardly boot boy. He took a chair, more falling into it than sitting.
Lord Hazelton locked the door.
A woman was safer when she could bolt at the first opportunity, and that meant Matilda stayed right where she was: on her feet.
* * *
Too many times, Ashton had responded with his fists to taunts about his legitimacy. He was a damned fine pugilist, but had perceived even as a young man that violence was as dangerous for those who relied on it as for those upon whom it was inflicted. Bloodshed could become a drug, as intoxicating as opium, and as readily available.
Matilda watched him with a steady, trusting gaze, and that alone kept his fists at his sides.
Time to ply sweet reason, then. “Drexel, you will explain how a murder warrant came to be issued for your sister-in-law.”
“She killed my brother, that’s how.”
Hazelton took the chair next to Drexel’s. “Saw it with your own eyes, did you?”
“Of course not. I was in the library across the corridor from the family parlor. My nephew is the one who swore out an affidavit.”
Ashton propped an elbow on Basingstoke’s mantel. “Do tell.”
“Stephen was in the game room, which shares an interior door with the library. He heard Mrs. Derrick—”
“Lady Matilda,” Matilda said with ominous sweetness.
“Matil—Lady Matilda, shouting at my broth
er, threatening him, vowing to kill him. Stephen burst through the door, fearing for his father’s life, and found her ladyship abusing poor Althorpe terribly with a wrought-iron poker. Before Stephen could wrest the murder weapon from her, his father lay on the floor, bludgeoned to death.”
Now for the interesting part.
“So you summoned the magistrate,” Hazelton said, “because all of the evidence supported Stephen’s version of events?”
Drexel jerked down his waistcoat. “It most certainly did.”
Matilda had turned her back to the room and waved, probably to Helen.
“What time of the evening was this?” Ashton asked.
“After supper, about ten,” Drexel said, “and a horrible end to the day, I must say.”
For Matilda. “Ten o’clock is a busy time in most fashionable households. The staff would have been right down the corridor, clearing the dinner table. The footmen would have been filling the lamps, trimming wicks, replenishing coal buckets. The chambermaids would have ensured fires were lit in the bedrooms, and at any moment, somebody might have rung for a final pot of tea, meaning the kitchen help was still at their labors. Am I right?”
“You’re right,” Matilda said over her shoulder.
“How many servants did you have the magistrate speak to?” Ashton asked. “Such a great, uncivilized row had to have been overheard by somebody besides the men who benefitted enormously by accusing her ladyship of a crime she didn’t commit.”
Drexel’s brows twitched. He opened his mouth. He closed it.
“You failed to make any other witnesses available to the authorities,” Ashton said. “Well, no matter. I’m sure the blood all over the carpet spoke for itself. Perhaps there was even blood on her ladyship’s hems.”
“There was not a drop of blood,” Matilda reported with ferocious good cheer.
“So,” Ashton said, “Mr. Stephen Derrick alleges that Lady Matilda whacked poor Althorpe repeatedly with a cast-iron poker, in a towering rage, and yet… no blood. No servants recalling her ladyship shouting threats. None.”
“It’s possible,” Hazelton said. “In theory.”
Ashton: Lord of Truth (Lonely Lords Book 13) Page 23