Ransom Redeemed

by Jayne Fresina

  "Father, you're being a hypocrite," he would say.

  To which his father replied, "I try to save you from the mistakes I made with women, but I see it's a fruitless, thankless task."

  Yes, it was. He didn't understand why his father even made the effort at this late stage.

  "So do as you will. Just don't shoot at me again the next time a female betrays you, boy. Because I might not be able to convince the Justice of the Peace that it was an accident another time."

  His father always brought up that shooting sooner or later, and Ransom would reply, "Well, perhaps you shouldn't have bedded my fiancée." Of course, it hadn't quite happened that way, but he still went through the motions of accusing his father, and True, likewise, would repeat, yet again, his version of events.

  "I did not invite that woman into my bed. She tried to seduce me and when my rejection wounded her pride, she told me she was engaged to you and had the gall to suggest I pay for her silence, otherwise she would tell you a pretty tale. She knew, it seems, that her word would hold more weight with you than mine. Since I refused to entertain this clumsy attempt at blackmail she ran to you with her filthy lie and you, being a hothead like your mother, instantly came after me with a dueling pistol. And very bad aim. Next time you shoot at a man, sober up first."

  Ah, yes: Miss Flora Pridemore, failed blackmailer. At the age of only nineteen Ransom had made a lucky escape, and learned a very good lesson about the mercenary intentions of females.

  "Pity you had to scrape my shoulder with a bullet before you came to your senses about that one," his father would add with a dour chuckle.

  These days, Ransom managed his personal affairs with only three rules: avoid promises, remember to leave a window open for timely escape, and always keep one’s boots close by.

  "Why do I constantly feel as if we're caught in the midst of a house fire?" a lover once whined to him.

  But he always made it plain, from the beginning of an affair, that pleasure was his only pursuit and nothing was to be taken seriously. Ransom Deverell had no interest in marriage and there were, he was certain, rats scuttling around the east end of London that would make better fathers. He did not like children even when he was one. He was a man with something damaged inside, and he suspected it was so at birth.

  Born of a loveless marriage and then blamed for every discomfort and discontent his parents suffered as if he directly caused it, Ransom grew up under a dark cloud of animosity. Left often to the "care" of detached, bureaucratic nannies, the first two things he'd ever learned were the art of self-preservation and how to make his own entertainment. When his sister was born even less attention came his way. Unless, of course, he was in trouble for some misdeed.

  "You're a horrid child," Nanny Bond had hissed at him once, because he spat out some foul-tasting soup she'd tried to force down his throat. "God is watching you!"

  At ten years of age, Ransom already had a smart tongue. "But He forgives. Isn't that the way it works? If God didn't forgive sinners there'd be no one in Heaven."

  "He won't let you in, boy. There's a part missing from you and the Devil took it, so you're his creature," she'd assured him. "You have no conscience, and you'll go straight to Hell."

  "Good," he'd replied stoically. "Because I've seen some of the high and mighty folk who go to church on a Sunday and call themselves Christians, and I'd rather not go where they're going, thank you very much."

  That got him a beating about the ears.

  Now he thought of the space where his conscience should be as an untenable moor. Nothing was allowed to dwell there long. If anything tried, he chased it off with his wild pursuit of pleasure — a bacchanalian force that, in his imagination, took the form of a large, ever-hungry falcon. From its perch in the stark branches of a dead tree on hardscrabble land, this bird swooped down on any pitiful, lost creature that wandered into its sharp-eyed view. Thus Ransom patrolled his mind during waking hours, fed his imaginary bird of prey with sinful delights at night and, by never being still, kept Sally White's ghost at bay. Or tried, for as long as he could.

  Last night's party, like all others he held at the London house, had been a bright and noisy event that helped keep him awake and active well into the late hours. Ransom was a generous host who asked for nothing from his guests except to be entertained and kept awake. Nobody left until dawn had spread her petticoats across the sky, and sometimes they remained even longer. Like the trio of sirens on his bed.

  So this was how he kept up the brazen image expected of True Deverell's eldest legitimate son and hell-raiser. He gave the "punters"— to use one of his father's gambling terms— what they anticipated, nothing more or less. He was firmly entrenched as the worst of men, the Determined Malefactor, as that old Oxford professor had once labeled him.

  For most women, so he'd found, that description appeared to be a fascinating lure rather than a warning.

  There was one young lady, however, who was not drawn in. And Ransom caught her eye now, as he sleepily surveyed the untidy room. Like the crack of a whip, her gaze, staring coolly down at him from an oil painting on the far wall, brought him sharply upright. He pushed himself away from the doorframe and brushed down his shirt sleeves.

  "Yes, yes," he muttered, wincing up at her, "I know I must be a pitiful sight this morning. But if I lived in a painting and never actually collided with real people, I could stay as pristine and self-satisfied as you, Contessa."

  A woman of mystery and eternal distance, she remained mildly scornful, of course. She did not need words to communicate her opinion of him and the various problems he got himself into.

  When he first moved into the house, Ransom had found her portrait hanging downstairs in the hall, but he'd moved her to his bedchamber because there was something about her countenance that made him think she read all his secrets, all his sins. Such an intimate confidant ought to be kept in a less public area of the house, he'd quickly decided.

  Occasionally his female guests complained that they felt her disapproving gaze even in the dark. He knew what they meant, but he never got around to moving her elsewhere.

  He called her "La Contessa" because, although he knew nothing about her, she had a very noble mien. Her complexion was olive, the hair very dark, tightly framing an oval face, and she posed beside an arched window, through which some medieval town could be seen, a cluster of rounded bell towers and tall, narrow houses of bleached stone, with terracotta roofs jumbled against a coppery, almost sinister sky.

  But Ransom's gaze always went to her hands, which were gloveless and held a long-stemmed thorny rose. The proximity of her small fingers to those vicious-looking thorns troubled him every time he looked at the picture.

  "Think you're so clever, don't you?" he grumbled. "You look down on me for my mistakes, but clearly you don't even know the first thing about thorns." Had nobody warned her? Perhaps, by the time the portrait was completed, she had learned her lesson about pricks, he mused.

  Her eyes—pale and clear—observed his antics with guarded amusement. Her mouth was softly curved in an almost-but-not-quite smirk.

  Look at yourself, Deverell, she seemed to chide softly. For pity's sake, pull yourself together. Don't you know what today is?

  No. Should I?

  She seemed to think he should know. Something important was supposed to happen, but she would give no further clue. Her smug lips were sealed.

  Catching sight of his scowling reflection in a mirrored wall panel, Ransom finally realized that his shirt was badly stained with red wine. Like a large bloodstain. He tore it off over his head and returned to his dressing room. There he splashed his face and chest with water from the washbasin, drew fingers hastily through his hair, and looked around for a clean shirt.

  But his head hurt too much, his mouth was dry, and the need for sustenance was so overwhelming he felt certain he'd lose his stomach any minute if he didn't soon fill it with something. Driven by a new burst of urgent steam, he grabbed an evening ja
cket instead of a shirt. That was good enough for a quick visit to the kitchen, and while there he'd put a tray of food together for his companions too. They must need replenishment.

  But he was only half way down the stairs, when a clattering of the front door bell halted all thoughts of breakfast. Tripping to a halt, he looked down through the window at the landing.

  A Hansom cab waited in the street below and when he opened the window to peer farther out, he saw a young woman in a chartreuse silk coat and bonnet, waiting patiently at his door. Ah, it must be Wednesday.

  He called out a hasty "Good morning", and his visitor glanced upward. At once he recognized the pretty, doe eyes and warm brown skin of the woman he should be expecting today for their standing appointment. Before he could complete his course to the front hall and let her in, however, a second Hansom cab rattled to a halt behind the other and amid a great deal of clucking and fussing yet another woman appeared— this one far less inclined to wait patiently at his door. She marched up the steps in an extremely large, extravagantly trimmed bonnet that could only belong to a woman with both a bold fashion sense and the greedy desire for attention.

  Belle Saint Clair.

  He had forgotten her return to England today. But why was she there so early?

  Perhaps it was not as early as it felt.

  Even while pulling on the bell rope, she embarked upon a screaming interrogation of the girl in chartreuse silk, but her efforts were wasted for the first young lady knew only a handful of English words and Belle, being French and in a temper, spoke a mixture of languages that would confuse anybody.

  Barely waiting for the last ring to finish echoing through the house, she pulled on the bell cord again, before thumping hard with her knuckles and shouting his name at the door like a landlord looking for overdue rent.

  Uh oh.

  Ransom had never led her to believe he promised exclusivity, yet today he heard a tenor of possessiveness in her voice, and in the way she abused the poor girl on his steps, that suggested she might have formed dangerous expectations of their affair.

  That wouldn't do at all.

  Ransom swore softly and glanced upward to the ceiling, on the other side of which his lovely trio still slept peacefully. It was most unfortunate for Belle if she had assumed their relationship to be exclusive, but, should that be the case, the tableau upstairs would immediately assure her otherwise. Nothing he could say would persuade her that he had spent his night alone in a hipbath, but the last thing he needed anyway was a woman foolishly thinking he had any capacity, or desire, to be monogamous. Better she get that straight in her pretty head at once.

  He heard the footman opening the front door, then her voice.

  "Why do you take so long, imbecile? Where is 'e? Je vais ecraser ses noix!"

  Something about his nuts.

  For the past few weeks Belle had been away, performing in her home land, but today the delicate, darling flower of the music hall stage returned. She must have dashed to his house directly after arriving on the train from Southampton. And her ribald declarations of what she meant to do with his various body parts suggested that it was not a loving eagerness for his company that brought her there so swiftly.

  Oh, yes, she had definitely formed the wrong expectations for their relationship, despite the fact that he thought he'd made himself clear. He'd assumed, in fact, that they both wanted the same thing from their affair and nothing more. She was as little suited to monogamy as he.

  Ransom was in no fit state to confront her this morning without losing his own temper. Two people in a rage at the same time was never a good thing, as he had witnessed too often in youth when his parents fought. Indeed, the idea of facing Belle this morning was about as appetizing as a bowlful of Nanny Bond's dumplings and broth.

  Alas, he had no choice. Her voice—usually so melodious, but today raucous enough to render cracks in the plaster— echoed through his walls.

  "Deverell! Where are you? Sors du lit! Get up! 'Ere I come to find you, Monsieur Infidele!"

  The sound of her little feet clip-clopping up the stairs quickly followed. If any servant tried to stop her, they would be unsuccessful. Belle might be small in stature, but she could be very forceful when in the mood. She was also remarkably inventive when it came to expressing her wrath, for which anything sharp would be put to use. That large hat she wore looked as if it required several pins to keep in place, and Ransom was not keen to discover how many.

  Putting on his most cheerful, amiable expression, he met her on the small landing between flights. "Bonjour, my sweet. I wish I knew to expect you so early! You should have sent a message. As you see I was just on my way out."

  "Donnez-moi un couteau. Je vais lui couper fier coq!"

  Ah. Cockerel. Cut off. And knife.

  That was plain enough.

  He attempted to grip her by the arms and deliver a kiss to her cheek, but she was having none of it. Slapping his hands away and stamping on his booted foot, she started up the second flight of stairs toward his bedchamber.

  "I know you 'ave a woman 'ere, you pig!"

  "Belle, why don't you come down to breakfast and we'll discuss—"

  "Non!"

  He followed her. "Is it necessary to make such a fuss, my sweet?"

  "Oui!

  "But Belle, we did not promise exclusivity. I ought to warn you—"

  She swung open his bedchamber door and marched in. The three women on the bed were in various stages of awakening at that point, and the state of the room— wreckage of last night's indulgences— looked much worse now that more daylight crept in.

  Immediately Belle launched into a stream of French curses and tried to drag the women off his bed. They, however, fought back. His threesome of lusty beauties were capable of looking after themselves, full of vigorous cockney spirit and with lungs just as robust as those of Mademoiselle Saint Clair.

  "Ladies, please!" he attempted to intervene while dodging a swinging pillow. "Belle! For pity's sake—" He received a sharp elbow to the stomach that left him momentarily winded. As he bent forward, wheezing, another pillow flung savagely at his head, split open to release a snowy cloud of goose-feathers.

  And so his day had begun. Not that much different to any other, truth be told.

  But he found himself detached from it all, as if he viewed the spinning feathers and flying limbs from a distance, like 'La Contessa' who watched complacently from the wall, waiting for him to figure it all out.

  Just one more annoying bloody woman who couldn't say what she meant and expected him to understand her expression, he thought angrily.

  Finally he gave up trying to make anybody listen to him. They seemed to have forgotten he was even there. In fact, he began to suspect they were all rather enjoying themselves.

  Ducking a flying vase and brushing feathers from his shoulder, he left them to it and went down to the kitchen, where he hoped to find his groom at breakfast. But the staff had already eaten and gone about their business. Only the cook remained.

  "Mr. Deverell, sir? Is anything amiss?"

  "I'm afraid it's much the same as usual, Mrs. Clay. Where's Ben?"

  "He took your horse to the smithy first thing, sir, to be fresh shod."

  Damn. He'd have to go out on foot.

  "Shouldn't Smith go upstairs, sir, and stop the fight?" his cook asked tentatively, turning her gaze upward as another loud crash shook the house.

  "I wouldn't want him to put himself out... or get stabbed in the arbor vitae by a hatpin. Let them get it out of their system, Mrs. Clay. Let them exhaust themselves. Far be it for me to try and speak sense into any woman."

  "No, sir. I don't suppose you can speak sense."

  He shot her a sideways glance, but she got on with her pastry, not looking at him."Ah, I almost forgot. There is a young, polite, probably very confused, Indian lady in the hall, Mrs. Clay. Please provide her with a cup of tea, and tell Smith he will find some coins within the inner pocket of my old, dark gree
n cutaway, some bank notes under the Tantalus in the library and, I believe," he scratched his head, trying to remember, "there should be a small amount tucked behind the reclining nude with the ugly babies. If not, definitely a few notes inside the Wedgewood urn. Make sure Smith gives it all to the Indian lady. Her rent is due today."

  "Yes, sir. I'll see to it."

  This duty discharged, Ransom left via the tradesman's entrance behind the kitchen and leapt up the steps, into the street.

  Above him, through that window he'd left open on the landing, the ruckus could still be heard, causing several passing pedestrians to glance upward in wonder.

  Belle's face appeared, and she looked down.

  "Deverell! Ou allez-vous?"

  "I told you I was on my way out, my dainty flower. Simply can't stay, but lovely to see you as always."

  "Reviens! T'es rien qu'un petit connard!"

  Although tempted to shout back that he was, in fact, one of the few children sired by his father within wedlock and therefore legitimate— most definitely not a bastard— he thought this might not be the ideal time to worry about correcting her. Women could be completely unreasonable at moments like these. They simply didn't have a sense of humor. So he merely waved. "Au revoir, mon ami!"

  "I will pluck out your eyes and feed them to your own donkey!"

  Curious. He was quite sure he didn't own a donkey, so she had clearly got her English mixed up again.

  Nevertheless, probably best not to hang about and find out what she meant.

  He took off across the street on foot, seeking a narrow alley down which he might escape— somewhere Belle, in a Hansom cab, would not be able to follow. Unfortunately, Ransom had fewer navigational skills in sober daylight. Nothing seemed familiar.

  But then, while hurrying along and looking back over his shoulder at the same time, he slipped on the wet pavement and collided, like a blundering idiot, with a gas lamp that stood beside an arched entrance in the wall. Beyond this there appeared to be a small, cobble-stone passage, leading to an arcade of shops and offices. He would not otherwise have noticed the alley, had he not cracked his head on the lantern and been forced to stop, but there it was, the sooty brick brightened by a painted advertisement for laundry soap.