For that, Pierre Standish would most certainly pay! She might just purchase a pair of riding boots. A very expensive pair of riding boots. She smiled wickedly. She might even kick him with them!
“Oh, look, Susan,” she exclaimed, pulling the maid to a stop in front of a shop window. “There are just heaps and heaps of lovely shoes in here. Come along. I can’t wait to get out of these uncomfortable slippers.”
“DID YOU SEE THAT? She walked straight past us, just as if we weren’t even here. Now do you believe me? She’s dicked in the nob, just like I said.”
A curiously pleased smile on her face, Amity Merrydell looked on as her quarry and the quarry’s maid disappeared into the small shop. “I never said I didn’t believe you, Ursley. Why must you malign me so? I told you—I have a plan.”
Ursley sniffed derisively and leaned against the thin railing beside the street. “Some plan. We’ve been walking up and down this village day in and day out, with you all the time muttering about this great plan you have. All I see is that we are the ones who should be in that shop, for my boots are nearly worn through.”
“Have you no faith in me? I knew she’d show up in the village sooner or later. It was too risky, trying to let her get a look at us at Standish’s house. Now, come with me!” Grabbing her son by the elbow so that she could pull him into the small lane that ran beside the shop, Amity delivered a sharp slap to his cheek, just to be certain she had gained his undivided attention, then whispered, “Now listen to me and do precisely as I say.”
“Ow! That hurt, Mama,” Ursley whined, rubbing his stinging face. “You always do that. Why do you always do that.”
Amity ignored him, leaning forward so that mother and son were nose to nose. “We can’t afford to bungle. Now, this is what you must do…”
CAROLINE WAS CONFUSED. There were so many pretty slippers and jean half boots, so many lovely colors and styles, that she couldn’t make up her mind. Some she could have worn straight out of the shop, while some would take at least a week to be handcrafted to her measurements and then delivered. She would take the black slippers, of course, and perhaps the pink satin with the lovely grosgrain bows at the toe, but could she really decline a pair of white dancing slippers without regretting their absence?
“Oh, Susan,” she said on a sigh, sitting back against the hard wooden chair to gaze down at her outstretched feet. “These are absolutely lovely. But I only have two feet, don’t I? I really mustn’t be greedy. Which do you prefer, the pink or the white?”
Susan, who had never owned more than two pair of shoes in her life—the ones on her feet and the ones she had just worn out—only shook her head. “It’s perishin’ difficult, miss, fer sure,” she agreed, then spied the cobbler leaning over his counter to get a better look at Caroline’s carelessly displayed shapely lower legs. “But, please, miss, lower yer skirts. Yer ankles are stickin’ out for all the world and his wife to goggle at.”
Caroline looked up to see the cobbler turning away, a sheepish expression on his face. “Sorry, Susan,” she said, wondering yet again if she really was a lady of quality, for she seemed sadly prone to behaving like the worst sort of wayward creature. “I think I’ll take these black ones and order the white ones. And the riding boots, of course. That goes without saying.”
The door to the shop opened and a man entered, a young man dressed in what, considering the way he strutted into the place, he must have believed to be the height of fashion. He was not overly tall—not much taller than Caroline herself—and rather underfed, even hungry-looking, with a nose that could only be called unfortunate. His hair, once he had tipped his curly brimmed beaver jauntily in her direction and tucked it beneath his arm, was revealed to be mousy brown in color, and woefully sparse for a man so young. If Pierre Standish were to stand beside him, or even Sir John Oakvale, the man would escape notice, even if his hair suddenly caught fire.
Caroline quickly took all this in, then just as swiftly dismissed the gentleman from her mind and turned her attention back to her toes, wiggling them in pleasure as she realized that the slippers were a perfect fit.
“Good morning to you, you lovely creature,” Ursley Merrydell drawled, making an elegant leg in front of Caroline. “I was just passing by this charming shop, out on the strut as it were, when I chanced to peep through the window and see you sitting here. As soon as I did my heart was smitten by your lovely face and form. Might I be so bold as to ask you to join me at the local inn for a repast—and possibly even greater pleasures?”
Caroline’s jaw dropped a fraction as she stared up at the author of such an audacious speech. How dare he accost a gently reared female in this way? The man didn’t look bosky. Or was it obvious that she wasn’t what she hoped she was, and this strange man had instinctively recognized her as the sort of fast female who would welcome his less than innocent advances?
She was figuratively nailed to her chair by his words, and before she could think of a reply, Susan, who was standing behind Caroline, rushed into angry speech. “Away with yer now, yer filthy beast. This here lady’s under Mr. André Standish’s protection.”
Ursley leered down at Caroline. “Standish’s turtle-dove, are you? Well, from what I hear, he’s away from home right now. And while the cat’s away—” He didn’t finish his sentence, only reached down to take hold of Caroline’s upper arm and pulled her to her feet.
Caroline tried to shake him off, turning her head to yell to the cobbler, “Do something, for pity’s sake!” just to have the cobbler retreat at once through the curtain at the back of his shop, leaving her alone with only Susan for protection. “Oh, that’s just fine!” Caroline exploded, realizing that if she were going to be shed of this manhandling brute she would have to do it herself.
Her attacker now had both his hands on her, drawing her toward his descending mouth. “You’ll get no order from me!” she yelled to the cowardly shopkeeper, twisting her head from side to side, trying to elude Ursley’s lips. Why did she have to be so small? Even this skinny snake could hold her immobile with ease. Tears of frustration stung her eyes, which made her even angrier. “Let go of me, or I’ll bite your ugly nose!” she warned impotently, for she could not move so much as an inch, his grip was so firm. Then, suddenly, her body went very still. Didn’t she know this man? Hadn’t they met somewhere before? No, it was impossible. If he knew her he would have immediately said something, would have called her by name.
Susan raced around the chair to begin whipping pieces of rock-hard candy straight at Ursley’s head, screaming for him to “leave go, afore I brains yer!” while Caroline did her best to kick her attacker in the shins. It was unbelievable! She was being attacked right in the middle of the village, and in broad daylight.
The door to the shop slammed open and an older woman bounded through the door, her reticule already swinging above her head much the way David must have swung his slingshot as he prepared to slay Goliath. “Away with you, you nasty varlet!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, the reticule connecting with Ursley’s head for at least a half-dozen bruising blows. “Is there no safety for poor unguarded females in this terrible place!” With her free hand drawn into a tight fist, she then began beating against Ursley’s back, causing him to stagger slightly and ease his hold on Caroline.
“Hey, not so hard!” he protested, turning to look at this new threat.
“If I were a man, I’d horsewhip you!” the lady warned fiercely, brandishing her reticule yet again. “I’m weary unto death with watching you young jackanapes assault unprotected females. A dozen years or more I’ve chaperoned young ladies of good birth and breeding, keeping them safe from the likes of you. Run along, varlet, or I’ll have the constable on you!”
Ursley, who was feeling battered, threw the woman a foul look and made a break for the door, only to slip on one of Susan’s pieces of candy ammunition, sense his feet sliding out from beneath him, and go crashing to the floor. His curly brimmed beaver, his most recent and therefore
most prized possession, broke his fall, giving its life to save its owner. “Oh, no, not my beaver!” he exclaimed, sounding perilously close to tears.
By this time Caroline had recovered and was the next one to attack, picking up a nearby wooden clog that had obviously been fashioned to fit a very large foot and promptly tapping Ursley sharply atop his sparsely haired head. “Assault defenseless women, will you? Sit still, so I can hit you again!”
Scrambling on all fours, Ursley reached the doorway and quickly hauled himself up by grabbing on to the still open door. “Fie on you!” he shouted dramatically, waving a fist in the air, his other hand clutching the worse-for-wear headgear. “I wouldn’t have tried my evil wiles on you had I known you had a chaperone.”
A moment later he was gone, running down the flagway toward the safety of the inn, cursing his mother’s heavy-handedness with the reticule and wishing he had not allowed himself to be a part of this charade.
Caroline, seated once more in her chair, fanned herself with her new handkerchief. “Where is your chaperone, miss, so that I might put a flea in her ear for leaving her charge unguarded?” her rescuer asked, dabbing at her damp upper lip with the edge of her sleeve.
Caroline looked up at the tall, angular, rawboned woman who had so recently wielded her reticule like a regular Trojan, and smiled. “I have no chaperone, ma’am,” she told her. “I am the ward of André Standish, but it is a male household. However, I should very much like to take you to meet Pierre Standish, who is in charge of me in his father’s absence. I do believe he would like to deliver his thanks to you in person, for he is endlessly concerned for my well-being.”
Ignoring this invitation, the woman frowned, bringing her heavy black brows crashing together over the bridge of her nose. “No chaperone? It’s unthinkable!” She fell silent, biting her bottom lip as if considering something known only to her. “Excuse me, miss, but are you happy without a proper chaperone, without some other gently raised female to bear you company and instruct you in how to go along? I am between positions now, having had my last charge married off quite successfully. If you would wish to engage my services, at least until your guardian can find a suitable chaperone of his own choosing, I should be happy to show you my references.”
It was Caroline’s turn to frown. She hadn’t really thought about it. Susan was her companion, of sorts, although she wasn’t much of a conversationalist. Then again, Susan couldn’t sit at the dinner table as a buffer between her and Pierre. She most certainly couldn’t have saved her from Pierre’s kiss last night in the drawing room.
A chaperone. Caroline smiled. What a splendid idea. A chaperone would go a long way toward putting a spoke in Pierre’s wheels, wouldn’t it? Rising, she held out her hands. “Excuse me for being so rude, but I do want to offer you my heartfelt thanks for saving me from that brute. My name is Caroline Addams, and you’re—?”
“Caroline Addams? If you say—er, I’m Mrs. Merrydell, Mrs. Amity Merrydell,” Amity offered quickly, taking Caroline’s hand in her much larger one and shaking it heartily as a smile split her long, horsey face. “I know the way of it was unfortunate, Miss Addams, but I must say that it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Caroline tipped her head to one side, gazing up at the tall, rather formidable-looking woman whose strong grip was in danger of crushing her fingers. Pierre would dislike the slightly overwhelming woman on sight. Wasn’t that just terrible? Caroline smiled, feeling very pleased with herself. She would do nicely. Oh, yes, Mrs. Amity Merrydell would do very nicely indeed. “Oh, on the contrary, Mrs. Merrydell,” she corrected sweetly, “I do believe that, in this case, the pleasure is entirely mine.”
“I HATE MY MOTHER,” Ursley Merrydell muttered morosely, staring drunkenly at his battered hat as he sat in a corner of the common room at the small inn. “She’s mean, and she’s nasty, and she likes hitting me. She’s a hateful, hateful woman.”
He picked up his mug of ale, his fourth in less than an hour, and drained its contents in one long gulp. “Nasty woman,” he said again, gingerly touching his fingertips to the side of his head, tracing the edges of the small lump that had been raised by something heavy in his mother’s reticule. “Probably a rock she put in there, just for me. She’s a nasty woman. Nasty, nasty, nasty.”
She always had a plan, his mother did. Ursley had grown up listening to his mother’s plans, the endless schemes she had concocted, designed to make them rich with only a minimum of effort. She and his father had once worked together, but that was all over now because his father had learned to love his gin too much and had bungled one too many of those neverending schemes.
“Poor Dada,” Ursley said, his lower lip quivering as he considered his dead father, this time with sympathy for what must have been a wretched lifetime spent with Amity. “Why did I have to take after you? Why couldn’t I have been big, like Mama? She hits so hard, Dada. I don’t like it when she hits me. And after I was the one who figured out all about this losing her memory business in the first place. Mama wouldn’t have had a plan at all if it weren’t for me.”
Ursley was seven and twenty, old enough by far to be on his own, if only he knew it, which he didn’t. He had relied on his mother for all of his life, and it hadn’t occurred to him to do things any other way. Most of the time she treated him very well, telling him how she loved him and buying him pretty things. It was only at moments like this, when she was hot on a plan, that she turned mean. And it was only at times like this, when Ursley was hurting, that a small, niggling thought having something to do with putting an ocean between himself and his battering mother appealed to him.
But there was all that lovely money to consider. He waved his hand halfheartedly at the barmaid, who plunked another heavy mug of ale in front of him, some of the dark, foamy liquid slopping over the top to splash on his hat. “Cow,” he said, sneering as her generously rounded hips swished away from his table toward a group of men who had just come through the door. Ursley sneered not because he was angry but because he had earlier asked her to come up to his room after closing and she had laughed in his face.
Money. That’s what he needed. The barmaid wouldn’t laugh at him if he had gold to dangle in front of her greedy little face. Nobody would laugh then. And nobody would hit him, not ever again.
He lifted the mug and drank deeply. He’d go along with his mother’s plan for now. He had seen her ride out of the village in the Standish carriage, and he acknowledged her plan certainly appeared to be working. If the rest went as well, they’d soon have more money than they’d ever dreamed of—lovely money, and a house all their own. Then his mother would take him to London for a Season, and he would marry a beautiful heiress who would bring them even more lovely money. It was a marvelous plan, a wonderful idea, and he still believed it, because it was a nice thing to believe.
But he wouldn’t wait forever. If his abused head hadn’t taught him anything else, it had taught him that he was all but through listening to Mama.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PIERRE PACED the Aubusson carpet that covered the floor of his father’s study, mentally ticking off the passing seconds on the mantel clock with each long, impatient stride and idly wondering if he was fast on his way to losing his senses.
Caroline had not been gone above two hours, surely not an unconscionable amount of time for a trip to the village and back, with space in there somewhere for whatever wildly expensive purchases she had decided upon as a perfect punishment for his unseemly advances last night before dinner. Besides, Susan was with her, as were his own coachman and a burly groom he had sent along for good measure. What could possibly happen to her?
Nothing could happen to her. He was overreacting, that was all, scratching around the barnyard like a hysterical old hen with but a single chick. He was taking this Good Deed thing beyond the bounds of common sense, and it was all his beloved father’s fault. His beloved, absent father.
André’s defection bothered Pierre, not because the man had
gone to London, but because it had not occurred to Pierre that he would. He was slipping; he should have seen it coming. But Pierre, as his father had accused, had become overweeningly arrogant, and had forgotten that André had taught him everything he knew.
Obviously the teacher had thought it was time to give the student another lesson: never assume. Pierre knew he had assumed his father would react in a certain way and had proceeded to base his own actions on that assumption. He should have known his father had always made it a point never to do the expected.
André was off somewhere, doing typical André things, which could mean anything from selecting just the sort of chaperone he would wish for Caroline, to discovering, in his own inimitable way, his ward’s true identity.
“Both, probably,” Pierre said aloud, shaking his head. “While reducing his son to the role of nursemaid.” He stopped his interminable pacing for, besides making him look silly, the exercise was wearying, and he sank into a chair. This wasn’t like him; it wasn’t like him at all. He enjoyed being an observer, but a contributing observer, not just an impotent bystander relegated to a minor role.
He could have hired a man, a dozen men, to ensure Caroline’s safety. That was elementary. Discovering who she was, who was intent on harming her, and why—those were important things.
“Obviously too important to entrust to a mere son,” Pierre remarked to the empty room. “I do believe I am insulted. Now, what in blazes was that?”
He had heard the sound of something breakable hitting the tiled foyer floor, followed by a deep, masculine shout. Pierre only had time to turn his head toward the sound before the door crashed open, banging loudly against the wall, and Jeremy charged into the room, looking back over his shoulder as if the hounds of hell were after him.
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