by Jane Feather
“Aye, what good’s a piece of paper when a man wants to buy ale?” The chorus swelled and the faces pressed closer to the table, glaring at Lucien.
“Devil take you all,” he swore. “My IOUs are as good as gold, I’ll have you know. Underwritten by His Grace, the Duke of Redmayne. Present them at his house on Albermarle Street in the morning, and he’ll pay you with interest.”
“Who wants to wait till mornin’?” There was a rumble around the table, and one man half rose from his seat. He had massive fists, like sledgehammers, and a wandering eye that lent added menace to his drunken squint. “Pay up, my lord,” he said with sneering emphasis, “or I’ll ’ave the coat off yer back.”
Lucien fumbled for his sword but not before Captain Frank Carson had hurled back his chair and leaped to his feet, his sword in his hand. “You dare to insult the honor of a gentleman!” he bellowed, his eyes rolling back in his head as he struggled to focus them. “Have at you, sir!” He lunged across the table. The burly man sidestepped with surprising agility, and the candlelight nickered on the blade of a cutlass. A woman screamed and the crowd in the taproom drew closer, some standing on their chairs to get a better view.
Juliana was now wide-awake. Her eyes flew to the door, tantalizingly open. But eager spectators pressed close behind them, and she was pinned to the table’s edge. The mood in the room was ugly. Lucien and his friends, with drawn swords, faced a veritable army of knife-wielding rogues. The dice lay abandoned in the middle of the table, and the rowdy clamor died as a moment of expectant silence fell.
It was Freddie Binkton who broke the menacing tension. They were hopelessly outnumbered, their retreat cut off by the spectators. “Let’s not be hasty, now,” he said with a nervous titter. “Lucien, dear fellow, you must have something about you to raise a bit of blunt. We can all contribute something.” He patted his pockets as if he could conjure coins from their depths.
“I’d put in my watch,” Bertrand said, adding dolefully, “but I wagered it on that damn red cock … had no more spirit than a mewling lamb. Gave up without a fight … lost my watch … worth all of fifty guinea … lost it for a paltry ten-pound wager.” His voice trailed off with his wandering attention, the sword in his hand drooping.
As if acceding to the truce, the ruffianly group lowered their knives, relaxed their aggressive stance, and glared at Lucien, waiting for his response.
Lucien looked around, his mouth tight, a pulse throbbing in his temples, the same febrile flush on his face, as garish as a clown’s paint. Juliana, standing so close to him, could feel the savage fury emanating from his skin, mingling with the sour smell of fear and sweat. His gaze fell on her, and she shrank back, instinctively trying to merge with the people around her. Something flared suddenly in the pale-brown eyes, and he smiled slowly with a ghastly menace.
“Oh, I believe I’ve something to sell,” he said, barely moving his lips.
“No!” Juliana whispered, her hand at her throat as she understood what he intended. “No, you cannot!”
“Oh, but I believe I can, madam wife,” he said airily. “Wives are their husbands’ chattel. You are mine, and I may dispose of you how I please. You should be glad to be of service, my dear.” His hand shot out and gripped her wrist again in that painful vise. “Someone bring me a length of rope. We should do this properly.”
“Come now, Lucien, it isn’t right,” Frank mumbled, half-apologetically. He looked uneasily at Juliana, who simply stared back at him, unseeing in her horror.
“Don’t be such a ninny,” Lucien said with a petulant scowl. “It’s not for you to say what’s right or not when it comes to my wife. Ah, rope.” He took the rope handed him by a grinning ostler and looped it into a halter. “Here, madam. Bend your head.”
“No!” Juliana pulled back from him, terrified as much by the evil embodied in the grinning death’s-head countenance as by his intention. Someone grabbed her arms and pulled them behind her so she was forced to stand still. Lucien, still with that venomous grin, roughly pulled the halter over her head. Hands tugged and pulled at her, shoving her up onto the table. She fought them, her rage now superseding her terror. She kicked and scratched, barking her shins on the edge of the table as she was pushed and pulled and dragged upward. But despite her struggles, they got her onto the table, and Lucien seized the end of the halter.
Juliana, blinded by her wild rage, kicked at him, catching him beneath the chin with the sole of her shoe. He went reeling backward, dropping the rope. She made to jump from the table, but two men grabbed her ankles, holding her still as Lucien came up again, his eyes narrowed, one hand to his chin.
“Bitch,” he said softly. “You’ll pay for that.”
She would have kicked him again if they hadn’t been holding her ankles so tightly. She swayed dizzily on her perch, nausea rising in her throat, a cold sweat breaking out on her back. How had she walked into this nightmare? She’d known Lucien was vile, but not even in her darkest imaginings could she have suspected him capable of such viciousness. But the duke had known. He had always known what his cousin was capable of. He’d known but it hadn’t stopped him from using her … from exposing her to this evil.
Lucien was calling in a drunken singsong, “So what am I bid for this fine piece, gentlemen? Shall we start at twenty guineas?”
A chorus of responses filled the air. Juliana looked down and saw little red eyes peering greedily up at her, stripping her naked, violating her with their lascivious grins. She couldn’t move, her ankles were circled so tightly, and Lucien was pulling on the tope so that it cut into the back of her neck.
George Ridge awoke from his postprandial sleep as the shouts around him grew even more raucous. He raised his head, blinking, for a moment disoriented. He remembered where he was when he saw that he’d been sleeping in the midst of the detritus of his dinner. He belched loudly and lifted the bottle of port to his lips. There was a swallow left, and he smacked his tips, set the bottle down, and turned to call for another.
His eyes tell on the scene at the far side of the room. At first he couldn’t make out what was going on, the noise was so loud, the crowd so thick. They were wagering on something, and there was a frenzied edge to the bidding that struck him forcefully. He blinked, shaking his head to rid his brain of muzziness. Then he blinked again and sat up.
Juliana was standing on the table. It couldn’t be anyone else. Not with that tumbling forest fire of hair, those jade-green eyes flashing with such desperate fury, that tall, voluptuous figure.
But what in the devil’s name was going on here? He pushed back his chair and stood up slowly, trying to isolate the words from the general hubbub. He heard someone call, “A hundred guineas. Come, gentlemen. My wife is worth at least that.”
Wife! He approached the outskirts of the crowd. The bidding was getting livelier. A hundred and fifty, two hundred. Juliana stood like a stone. The man holding the rope, the man calling himself her husband, worked the crowd to renewed frenzy as he began to point out Juliana’s attractions.
George’s mouth was dry. He swallowed, trying to produce some saliva. The situation was unbelievable, and yet it was real. He pushed through the crowd, cleared his throat. “Five hundred guineas!” His voice sounded cracked and feeble, and at first no one seemed to hear him. He tried again, shouting. “I bid five hundred guineas for her.”
Juliana heard George’s voice, penetrating the trance into which she’d retreated from the unbearable humiliation, the waves of tenor sucking at her. Don’t look at him. Don’t react. The instruction screamed in her brain even through her daze. She mustn’t acknowledge him. If she refused to know him, then he couldn’t prove her identity. She was still Viscountess Edgecombe. She was still under the protection of the Duke of Redmayne. Dear God, was she?
“Five hundred guineas,” Lucien said, turning to George with another of his savage grins. “Why, sir, that’s a jump bid if ever I heard one. But she’s a prime article, and you’ve a fine eye.”
George didn’t seem to hear him. He was staring at Juliana, willing her to look at him. But she was a graven image, her eyes fixed straight ahead. He reached to touch her ankle, and she didn’t move.
“Any advance on five hundred for my dear wife, or shall this gentleman have her?” Lucien called out merrily. “He’s got a bargain, I’m telling you.”
“There are times, Edgecombe, when you surprise even me with the depths of your depravity.” The cool voice cut through the raucous merriment as the Duke of Redmayne crossed the room from the door, where he’d been standing unnoticed for the last few minutes.
The nightmare had such a grip upon her that for a moment Juliana didn’t react. Then the clear tones of salvation pierced her trance. Slowly she turned on her perch, George forgotten in the flood of incredulous relief. He’d come for her.
“Tarquin …” It was more plea than statement, as if she still didn’t dare to believe that he was there.
“I’m here,” he affirmed. His voice was a caress, the soft reassurance balm to her agonized soul. His gray gaze encompassed her, all-seeing; then he turned on Lucien.
Lucien shrank back against the table as his cousin’s livid eyes blazed at him. A muscle twitched in the duke’s cheek, but he said nothing, merely tapped one clenched fist into the palm of his other hand. Then, very slowly, he brought up the fist and—almost gently, it seemed—touched Lucien on the edge of his chin. The viscount fell back into the crowd without a sound.
A murmur passed through the throng as the duke’s eyes ran slowly around them. Suddenly a wicked blade flickered in his hand at the end of the swordstick. He still said nothing, but the crowd fell back, and the two men holding Juliana’s ankles stepped away from the table.
George Ridge cleared his throat. He didn’t know what was going on here, but he could see his prize slipping away from him. The newcomer spun round at the sound, and George flinched from the piercing stare, as cold and lethal as an arrowhead. He dropped his gaze in involuntary submission to this unknown but infinitely more powerful force.
Tarquin turned back to Juliana. He reached up and lifted her to the ground. He removed the halter and threw it into the crowd.
His eyes were still those he’d turned upon Lucien, cold and deadly, but he touched her hair, brushing a strand from her forehead. His long fingers moved fleetingly over the curve of her cheek. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. Her voice was barely a whisper, but she managed to say frankly, “Only my pride.”
Surprise glimmered in his eyes, softening the implacable steadiness of his gaze. Any other woman would have broken down in tears and hysteria. But Juliana was unique. “Can you walk?”
Her knees were quivering uncontrollably, but there was something in his appraising scrutiny that gave her strength to say “Of course,” even as she clutched his arm for support. Somehow she put one foot in front of the other as the crowd fell back. Then they were outside. Dawn was breaking, and a curious quiet had fallen over the Piazza and the square. A few bodies lay sleeping under the colonnades, a pair of slatternly women leaned in a doorway, drinking ale between yawns. A shout and a crash came from Tom King’s coffeehouse as a man flew through the door to land in the gutter, where he lay in a heap, clutching a stone jar of gin.
The duke raised a finger and a hackney appeared as if by magic. Tarquin gave Juliana a boost into the interior with an unceremonious hand under her backside and followed almost in the same movement, pulling the door shut with a slam.
For the first time in hours Juliana was no longer terrified. The gloomy, musty interior of the carriage was a haven, private and utterly protected. Faint gray light came through the window aperture, showing her the duke’s countenance as he sat opposite, regarding her in reflective silence.
“What are you thinking?” Her voice sounded shrunken, as if the events of the night had leached all strength from it.
“Many things,” he replied, running his fingertips over his lips. “That you are the most perverse, stubborn, willful wench it’s ever been my misfortune to have dealings with…. No, let me finish answering the question.” He held up an arresting hand as Juliana’s mouth opened indignantly. “That Lucien’s evil tonight surpassed even my expectations; and most of all, that I should never have let you set eyes on him.”
“So you’re sorry you devised this demonic scheme?”
“No, I didn’t say that. But I deeply regret involving you.”
“Why?”
Tarquin didn’t immediately reply. It was on the tip of his tongue to say simply that she wasn’t cut out for the role, not sufficiently compliant. It was how he believed he would have responded just a few short hours ago. But something had happened to him when he’d seen her on that table, exposed to the sweating, lusting, depraved gaze of London’s vicious underworld. When he’d seen her freshness, her simplicity, her ingenuous candor mentally fingered by that vile mob, he’d known a rage greater than any he could remember. And to his discomfort and confusion that rage was directed at himself as much as at Lucien.
“Why?” Juliana repeated. “Am I not sufficiently biddable, my lord duke?” As her terror receded, her bitterness grew. On one level Tarquin was as guilty of that hideous violation as Lucien had been. “I’m sorry to have put you to such inconvenience this evening.” She tore angrily at a loose cuticle on her thumb, stripping the skin away with her teeth.
Tarquin leaned over and took her hand from her mouth. He clasped the abused thumb in his warm palm and regarded her gravely in the growing light. “I’m willing to accept a hefty share of the blame for this night’s doings, Juliana, but you, too, bear some responsibility. You chose to cultivate Edgecombe to be avenged upon me. Will you deny it?”
Honesty forced her to shake her head. “But what else would you expect me to do?”
The exasperated question brought a low, reluctant chuckle to his lips. “Oh, I expected you to be good and obedient and allow me to know what’s best for you. Foolish of me, wasn’t it?”
“Very.” Juliana tried to extricate her hand, but his fingers closed more firmly around hers.
“I will ensure that Lucien doesn’t come near you ever again. Do I have your assurance that you won’t seek him out?”
“I learn from my mistakes, sir,” she said with acid dignity.
“I shall endeavor to learn from mine,” he said wryly, releasing her hand as the carriage came to a halt on Albermarle Street. “And maybe we can look forward to a harmonious future.”
Maybe, Juliana thought, but without too much optimism. She’d finished with Lucien, but after tonight she was more than ever determined to help the women of Covent Garden.
Her head swam suddenly as she stepped to the pavement. Her knees buckled under an invincible wash of fatigue, and she reached blindly for support. Tarquin caught her against him, holding her strongly.
“Easy now, mignonne” His voice steadied her, and she leaned into the warmth and strength of his hold.
“I’m all wobbly,” she mumbled apologetically into his coat. “I don’t know why.”
He laughed softly. “Well, I do. Come on, let’s get you to bed.” He lowered his shoulder against her belly and tipped her over. “Forgive the indignity, sweetheart, but it’s the easiest way to accomplish the task.”
Juliana barely heard him. She was almost asleep already, her body limp and unresisting as he carried her inside.
Chapter 18
Tarquin awoke to filtered sunlight behind the bed curtains. The covers had been thrown back, and his naked body stirred deliciously as he felt the moist, fluttering caresses over his loins. Juliana’s skin was warm against his, her hair flowing over his belly, her breath rustling on his inner thighs. Her fingers were as busy as her mouth, and he closed his eyes on a wave of delight, yielding to pleasure. His hand moved over her curved body, caressing the small of her back, smoothing over her bottom, tiptoeing over her thighs. He felt her skin quiver beneath his fingers and smiled.
He’d helped her
undress and tumbled her into bed in the clear light of a rosy dawn, and by the time he’d thrown off his own clothes and prepared to join her, she’d been sleeping like an exhausted child, her cheek pillowed on her hand. He’d slipped in beside her, wondering why he chose to share her bed only to sleep when his own waited next door. He made it an invariable practice never to spend an entire night with his mistresses, but there had been something so appealing about Juliana. The deep, even breathing, the dark crescent of her eyelashes against the pale cheeks, the dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the turn of her bare shoulder against the pillow, the vibrant cascade of her hair escaping from her lace-trimmed nightcap. Unable to resist, he’d slid in beside her, and she’d stirred and nuzzled against him like a small animal in search of warmth and comfort.
He’d fallen asleep smiling and awoken with the same smile. Now he smacked her bottom lightly. “Mignonne, come up.”
Juliana raised her head and turned on her belly to look up at him. “Why?” She pushed her hair away from her face and gave him a quizzical smile.
“Because you are about to unman me,” he replied.
Juliana reversed herself neatly and stretched her body over his, her mouth nuzzling the hollow of his throat, her loins moving sinuously over his. “Better?” she mumbled against his pulse.
With a lazy twist of his hips he entered her as she lay above him. He watched the surprise dawn in her eyes, to be followed immediately by a wondering pleasure. “This is different.”