by Jane Feather
Unless … Her bruised hand touched her belly. Soon she must tell Tarquin of the child she carried. Presumably he’d be delighted. Maybe he’d be so delighted that he’d be open to suggestion. Willing to exert himself in someone else’s interests for once. But then again, maybe he’d simply become even more protective of her, even more anxious that she should not be sullied by contact with Covent Garden life. Maybe he’d just keep her even more closely confined, to protect his unborn child. She and that child were his investment, after all. And he was a man who looked after his investments.
Chapter 26
George Ridge stepped out of the sedan chair, wincing as the skin on his back creased with the movement. He glowered up at the cracked stone facade of Viscount Edgecombe’s town house on Mount Street. The building had a seedy, run-down air, the brass on the door unpolished, the windows dingy, the paintwork scuffed. Despite the early hour a small group of men, whom George immediately recognized from both dress and manner as bailiffs, were gathered lounging against the iron railings at the bottom of the steps leading to the front door. As George approached the steps, their air of weary waiting dissipated, and they straightened, eyes suddenly alert.
“Ye ’ave business with ’Is Lordship, sir?” one of them inquired, picking his teeth with a dirty fingernail.
“What’s it to you?” George pushed past him, scowling. “Jest that if Yer ’Onor’s goin’ to get that door open, y’are a sight cleverer than we are,” the man said scornfully. “’Oled up in there, tighter than a chicken’s arse.”
George ignored him and hammered on the knocker. There was no response. He stepped back, looking up at the unyielding facade, and glimpsed a face in an upstairs window, peering through the grime. He hammered again and this time, after a few minutes, heard the scraping of bolts. His companions heard it too and surged up the steps. The door opened a crack. A disembodied hand grabbed George’s sleeve and dragged him through the aperture. The door crashed shut on a bailiff’s foot. There was a roar of outrage from outside, then violent banging on the knocker, setting a dusty porcelain figurine on a table shivering on its pedestal.
“Viscount’s upstairs.” The body belonging to the hand was skinny, the narrow face weasellike, with a pair of very long incisors that jutted beyond the thin lips. The man jerked his head toward the stairs. “First door on the left.” Then he slithered away into the shadows beyond the staircase.
George, his scowl deepening, stomped up the stairs, which were thick with dust. His eyes were red with drink and burned with a rage so fearsome it was almost inhuman. George Ridge was a goaded bull, only one thought and one aim in view. Vengeance on the man who had ordered him thrashed like a serf. A vengeance he would obtain through Juliana. The Duke of Redmayne had made it painfully clear that Juliana’s health, reputation, and general well-being were vitally important to him. Juliana would burn at the stake in Winchester marketplace. And before she did, her stepson would possess her … would bring her arrogant contempt to the dust. He would see her humbled, he would see her protector powerless to protect. And with her conviction he would regain his own inheritance.
He pushed open the door at the left of the staircase. It creaked on unoiled hinges, revealing a sparsely furnished apartment, its air of neglect failing to mask its handsome proportions and the elaborate moldings on the ceiling.
Lucien was slumped in a sagging elbow chair by a grate filled with last winter’s ashes. A cognac bottle was at his feet, another, empty, lying on the threadbare carpet. A glass dangled from his fingers.
He jerked upright as George entered. “Dick, you bastard, I told you I … oh.” He surveyed his visitor with an air of sardonic inquiry. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“You’re going to help me,” George stated. He bent to pick up the cognac bottle, raised it to his lips, and drank deeply.
Lucien’s eyes sharpened. Something very interesting had occurred. Sir George had lost his air of bumbling, overawed ineptitude.
“Help yourself, dear boy,” Lucien invited, his languid tone belied by the arrested look in his eyes. “There’s more where that came from. At least I trust there is.”
“Thankee.” George drank again, his throat working as the fiery liquid burned down his gullet to add fuel to the fire that raged in his belly.
“So how can I be of assistance?” Lucien took back the bottle and tilted it to his own mouth. “Damnation, it’s empty! Ring the bell for Dick, dear fellow.” He gestured to the frayed bell rope beside the door.
George pulled on it, half expecting it to come away in his hand, but faintly, from the bowels of the silent house, came the jangle of the bell.
“I am going to take Juliana,” he said, pacing the room, each movement generating a painful stab, reminding him with hideous clarity of his humiliation at the hands of the duke’s groom. “And this time I’ll not be stopped.”
“Oh?” Lucien sat up, the gleam of malevolent curiosity in his eye intensifying.
“I intend to abduct her tomorrow,” George said, almost in a monotone, as if he were reciting a well-learned lesson. “I will have a closed carriage ready, and we’ll take her immediately to Winchester. The Forsetts will be compelled to identify her if the magistrates demand it. And there are plenty of other folk in the neighborhood who’ll recognize her. She won’t have that devil to run to, and once she’s locked up in Winchester jail, there’ll be nothing he can do to save her.”
Lucien tugged his right earlobe. “Something happen to rouse you, dear boy … Ah, Dick. Bring up another bottle of that gut-rotting brandy.”
“Not sure there is any,” the surly manservant muttered.
“Then go and buy some!”
“Wi’ what, m’lord?” he demanded with a mock bow.
“Here.” George dug a note from his pocket and handed it to him.
“Ah, good man!” Lucien approved. “Get going, then, you lazy varlet. I’m dry as a witch’s tit.”
Dick sniffed, pocketed the note, and disappeared.
“Impudent bugger,” Lucien observed. “Only stays around because I haven’t paid him in six months and he knows if he leaves before I’m dead, he won’t see a penny. So,” he continued with another sharp glance, “why the urgency about this abduction?”
George was not about to reveal to his malicious partner what the duke had done to him. He shrugged, controlled a wince, and said, “I’ve an estate to get back to. I can’t hang around here much longer. But I need your help.”
Lucien nodded. “And what incentive are you offering, dear boy?”
George looked startled. He’d assumed that Lucien’s own desire for vengeance would be sufficient incentive. “You’ll have her in your hands,” he said. “You can have her first … for as long as you like.”
He was astounded at the look of repulsion that crossed the viscount’s expression.
“I want to be rid of her, man. Not have her,” Lucien pointed out disgustedly. “I thought you understood that. You lay charges against her. I can repudiate her. Tarquin is helpless and mortified. The girl is destroyed. But I ask again, what incentives are you offering for my assistance?” His eyes narrowed.
George’s puzzlement deepened. “Isn’t that enough?”
Lucien chortled merrily. “Good God, no, man. I’ll have a thousand guineas off you. I think that would be a reasonable remuneration. Depending, of course, on what you have in mind.” He leaned back, crossing his legs with a casual grin.
George struggled with himself for barely a moment. He could lay hands on a thousand guineas, although it went against the grain to throw it down before this loathsome, grinning reptile. But he needed the viscount’s help.
“I need you to help me get her out of the house,” he said. “We have to go in there and winkle her out.”
“Good God!” Lucien stared at him, for the first time startled out of his indolent and cynical amusement. “And just how do you propose doing that?”
“At dead of night. We go into her room. We overpo
wer her while she’s sleeping and we carry her out of there.” George spoke with the flat, assertive confidence of a committed man. “You’ll know where her room is. And you’ll know how to get undetected into the house.”
“What makes you think I can perform such miracles?” Lucien inquired with a lifted eyebrow.
“I know you can,” George responded stubbornly. “You lived in the house. You probably have a key.”
Lucien resumed the gentle tugging of his earlobe. He did have a key to the side door, as it happened. He’d had one copied several years earlier when he’d still been a lad. Tarquin had been an exasperatingly strict and watchful guardian, and Lucien had had frequent resort to subterfuge to evade both the duke’s rules and his guard.
“Perhaps I do,” he conceded after a minute. “Getting in might not be too difficult, but getting out again, with that red-haired virago screeching and fighting, is a different matter.”
“She won’t make any noise,” George asserted in the same tone.
“Oh?” Lucien inclined his head inquiringly.
“I’ll make sure of it.”
Lucien examined his expression for a minute, then slowly nodded. “I believe you will. I almost feel sorry for my lady wife. I wonder what could have happened to arouse such vicious urgency in your breast, dear fellow.” He waited, but no explanation was forthcoming. Ridge’s reticence increased his curiosity a hundredfold, but he was prepared to bide his time. “There’s one other small difficulty,” he continued in a musing tone. “My estimable cousin has the chamber next door to our quarry. I daresay he finds the proximity convenient.”
“You know for a fact that Juliana is his mistress?” George’s voice was thick. He knew it, but he wanted it confirmed.
“Why else would my cousin take such an interest in the wench?” Lucien shrugged. “I’ve never known him to take a woman under his roof before, either. I suspect he’ll be most disconcerted to lose her.” He grinned. “I think I can contrive to lure my cousin from the house tomorrow. It would be best if he was elsewhere while we’re abducting his doxy…. Ah, at last … Dick with the cup that cheers. We will drink a toast to this enterprise. Set it down there, man. No need to pour it. I’ve strength enough for that.”
George took the smudged glass handed to him by his host. He drank, his eyes for the moment turned inward on his vengeance. He was a man in the grip of madness. The Duke of Redmayne had unleashed demons when he’d set out to subdue Sir George Ridge.
The duke reined in his horses outside the house on Albermarle Street. Ted appeared as if by a wizard’s conjuring, running down the steps lightly for such a big man. He’d heard the coachman’s story, as had the rest of the household, and now glared at Juliana, as if personally insulted by her grim adventure.
“Take the horses, Ted.” Tarquin sprang down, reaching up a hand to assist Juliana, then Lilly. He took Rosamund from Quentin so that his brother could alight unencumbered, then handed the still-limp figure back to Quentin and strode ahead of the party into the house.
“Catlett, summon the housekeeper and have these two young women escorted to a bedchamber. Send a maid to attend them. And ask Henny to come to Lady Edgecombe’s apartment immediately.”
“Oh, no!” Juliana exclaimed. “No … I have no need of Henny. She must look to Rosamund. Truly I can look after myself, but Rosamund has need of expert care.”
He took her hands, turning them palm up. “You can do nothing for yourself with your hands in this condition. If you won’t have Henny, then I will attend to you.”
“There’s no need for you to trouble yourself, sir.” Her voice was stiff. “I have no need of a nurse.”
Impatience flared in his eyes. He drew a sharp breath and said, “You will have either Henny or myself to attend to you. Take your pick.”
“You, then,” she replied dully, seeing no option. Rosamund needed all Henny’s skills.
“Very well.” He nodded briefly, then turned back to Catlett. “I want a bath, hot water, salve, bandages, and lye soap taken up to Lady Edgecombe’s apartment immediately…. Quentin, you’ll see the other two installed?”
“Of course.”
“Come, Juliana.” The duke took her wrist in a firm encircling grip and set foot on the stairs. Juliana followed him up willy-nilly.
Her bedchamber was filled with sunlight; the bowls of roses were replenished daily, and the air was heavy with their scent. The sight of the bed with its crisp, lavender-fragrant sheets, the downy invitation of the feather bed and plump pillows, drew her toward it as the nightmare images of Bridewell became smudged by the familiar comforts of home.
Home. This was home? It felt like home. Her own place. The duke’s voice broke into her train of thought.
“Bed will have to wait, Juliana. There’s no knowing what you might have picked up in that filthy hole. Vermin, infection …”
“Vermin?” Her hands flew to her tangled hair, her eyes widening in disgust. That was why he’d ordered lye.
“Stand still. I don’t want to touch your clothes any more than I must, so I’m going to cut them off you.” He went to the dresser for the pair of scissors Henny kept to make minor repairs or adjustments to Juliana’s wardrobe.
Juliana stood rigid, shuddering with disgust. She remembered the woman Maggie touching her dress, tearing Rosamund’s fichu, her gnarled, filthy, bleeding hands sullying as they clawed and fondled. A wave of nausea rose violent and abrupt in her throat. With an inarticulate mutter she pushed Tarquin aside as he approached with the scissors, and dived for the commode.
Tarquin put down the scissors and went over to her. His hand was warm on her neck, soothing as he rubbed her back. Distantly he realized that if anyone had told him a few weeks ago that he wouldn’t think twice about ministering to a vomiting woman, he’d have laughed. But that was before Juliana had swept into his life.
“I beg your pardon,” she gasped as the spasms ceased. “I don’t know what came over me.” She envied Rosamund Henny’s calm, attentive presence. Vomiting in front of a man, even one’s lover—especially one’s lover—was a wretched mortification, and she cringed at the thought of what he must be thinking. But his hand on her back just then had been ineffably comforting.
“There’s no need for pardon,” Tarquin said gently, dampening a washcloth with water from the ewer. He wiped her mouth and brow, attentively matter-of-fact, and when she searched his face, she could see no inkling of his earlier rage. There was a rather puzzled frown in his eyes, but his mouth was relaxed. He tossed aside the cloth, picked up the scissors, and swiftly cut the laces of her bodice.
She was naked in a very few minutes, his hands moving with deft efficiency, cutting away her petticoats, her chemise, slicing through her garters. She rolled down her stockings herself, tossing them onto the heap of discarded clothing. Then she stood, awkward and uncertain, wishing for Henny, not knowing where to put her hands, wanting absurdly to cover herself with her hands, as if she’d never shared glorious intimacies with this man; as if he hadn’t touched and probed every inch of her skin, every orifice of her body; as if his tongue hadn’t tasted her essence; as if his hard, pursuing flesh hadn’t taken and possessed her fragility; as if she hadn’t, in yielding the ultimate secrets of her body, possessed his.
His gaze was not in the least desirous; in fact, he seemed to be going out of his way to be matter-of-fact about the whole business. But that made things all the more confusing. How she wanted Henny. A woman; a nursemaid. Someone whose attentions would be straightforward and uncomplicated, and she could receive them in the same way.
A bang at the door yanked her out of her reverie. She looked in panic at Tarquin, who merely handed her a wrapper and gestured toward the shadows of the bed curtains at the head of the bed. Juliana retreated, drawing the folds of the muslin wrapper tightly around her, listening as two footmen labored with a porcelain hip bath, copper jugs of steaming water; a maid followed with bandages, salve, the pungent lye soap, a heap of thick towels.
“I’ll bandage your hands first.” He poured hot water into the basin on the dresser.
“How can I wash myself with bandaged hands?” Juliana objected.
“You aren’t going to, mignonne. I am doing the washing.” A flickering smile played over his mouth, reminding her vividly of the last time they’d made love, when he’d looked down at her, looked into her very soul, with so much wonder and warmth. Where had his anger gone? Juliana was plunged anew into the chaos of bewilderment. What was he feeling?
He gestured to the dresser stool. “Sit down and give me your hands.” As deft and gentle as an expert nurse, he bathed the raw strips of flesh, smoothed on salve, then wrapped around bandages, tearing the material at the ends to make a knot. He was as surprised as Juliana at this newfound skill, and his smile deepened with an unlooked for pleasure and satisfaction.
Juliana nibbled her bottom hp. “Were you concerned for me when you heard where I was?” The question was tentative, and it was only as she asked it that she realized she hadn’t intended to.
“Sit in the tub,” he responded. “Keep your hands well clear of the water.”
“But were you?” she persisted, one foot raised to step into the hip bath. Suddenly the question was more important than any she’d ever asked.
“I wouldn’t leave my worst enemy in such a place,” he said flippantly. “Are you going to sit down of your own accord?”
Juliana hastily slipped into the water. It was not a satisfactory answer. She stared down at the water.
Tarquin caught her chin, bringing her face up. “I have never been more concerned in my life,” he stated flatly, both expression and tone now devoid of flippancy. “You frightened the living daylights out of me, Juliana. And if you ever scare me like that again, I can safely promise that you will rue the day you were born.”