Too Scot to Handle

by Grace Burrowes

  He’d got their attention, which was the point of the digression.

  “I thought you were firmly in the Tory camp on this issue,” Elizabeth said. “Let the poor humbly accept the will of the Almighty or work to better themselves, that sort of thing.”

  Percival humbly accepted the will of his duchess, on most matters. Let the Almighty bear the challenge of arguing Her Grace around, for only He was equal to the task when that good woman was convinced of her position.

  “Those are reasonable, even kindly sentiments,” Percival said. “To inflict expectations on the lower orders that they have no way of realizing only damns them to greater disappointment.” Or so his cronies in the Lords would argue. “However, your aunt points out that your cousins Devlin and Maggie were born very much among the poor.” To Percival’s mistresses, before he’d met his dear duchess. “When transplanted to a household where abundant love, nourishment, and education were available, they thrived magnificently.”

  The duchess, born to wealthy if common stock, had made those arguments in the privacy of the ducal apartment. In all honesty Percival couldn’t offer a suitable response from the Tory side of the aisle. His children—illegitimate and born into relative poverty—were now of the peerage, despite their maternal antecedents.

  And Percival could not be more grateful.

  While Charlotte and Elizabeth debated the divine right of kings like a pair of ambitious back benchers, Percival sipped his tea and pretended to read the paper.

  He hoped Anwen had galloped over every acre of Hyde Park with some handsome gallant at her side. Rosecroft would of course be absorbed with schooling whatever mount he’d taken for the outing, but he was also a former intelligence officer.

  Nothing would transpire in the park without Rosecroft to bear witness and report the goings on back to his papa. Nothing.

  * * *

  Nothing penetrated Anwen’s awareness except pleasure.

  Pleasure, to be kissed by a man who wasn’t in a hurry, half-drunk, or pleased with himself for appropriating liberties from a woman taken unawares by his boldness.

  Pleasure, to kiss Lord Colin back. To do more than stand still, enduring the fumblings of a misguided fortune hunter who hoped a display of his bumbling charms would result in a lifetime of security.

  Pleasure, to feel lovely bodily stirrings as the sun rose, the birds sang, and the quiet of the park reverberated with the potential of a new, wonderful day.

  And beneath those delightful, if predictable pleasures, yet more joy, unique to Anwen.

  Lord Colin had bluntly pronounced her slight stature an advantage in the saddle—how marvelous!—and what a novel perspective.

  He’d listened to her maundering on about Tom, Joe, John, and Dickie. Listened and discussed the situation rather than pontificating about her pretty head, and he’d offered solutions.

  He’d taken care that this kiss be private, and thus unhurried.

  Anwen liked the unhurried part exceedingly. Lord Colin held her not as if she were frail and fragile, but as if she were too precious to let go. His arms were secure about her, and he’d tucked in close enough that she could revel in his contours—broad chest, flat belly, and hard, hard thighs, such as an accomplished equestrian would have.

  Soft lips, though. Gentle, entreating, teasing…

  Anwen teased him back, getting a taste of peppermint for her boldness, and then a taste of him.

  “Great day in the morning,” he whispered, right at her ear. “I won’t be able to sit my horse if you do that again with your tongue.”

  She did it again, and again, until the kiss involved his leg insinuated among the folds and froths of her riding habit, her fingers toying with the hair at his nape, and her heart, beating faster than it had at the conclusion of their race.

  “Ye must cease, wee Anwen,” Lord Colin said, resting his cheek against her temple. “We must cease, or I’ll have to cast myself into yonder water for the sake of my sanity.”

  “I’m a good swimmer,” Anwen said, peering up at him. “I’d fish you out.” She contemplated dragging a sopping Lord Colin from the Serpentine, his clothes plastered to his body.…

  He kissed her check. “Such a look you’re giving me. If ye’d slap me, I’d take it as a mercy.”

  “I’d rather kiss you again.” And again and again and again. Anwen’s enthusiasm for that undertaking roared through her like a wild fire, bringing light, heat, and energy to every corner of her being.

  “You are a bonfire in disguise,” he said, smoothing a hand over her hair. “An ambush of a woman, and you have all of polite society thinking you’re the quiet one.” He studied her, his hair sticking up on one side. “Am I the only man who knows better, Anwen?”

  She smoothed his hair down, delighting in its texture. Red hair had a mind of its own, and by the dawn’s light, his hair was very red.

  “No, you are not the only one who knows better,” she replied, which had him looking off across the water, his gaze determined.

  “I’m no’ the dallyin’ kind,” he said, taking Anwen’s hand and kissing it. “I was a soldier, and I’m fond of the ladies, but this is…you mustn’t toy with me.”

  Everlasting celestial trumpets. “You think I could toy with you?”

  “When you smile like that, you could break hearts, Miss Anwen Windham. A man wouldn’t see it coming, but then you’d swan off in a cloud of grace and dignity, and too late, he’d realize what he’d missed. He wouldn’t want to admit how foolish he’d been, but in his heart, he’d know: I should ne’er have let her get away. I should have done anything to stay by her side.”

  I am a bonfire in disguise. “You are not the only one who knows my secret. I know better now too, Colin.” She went up on her toes and kissed him. “It’s our secret.”

  A great sigh went out of him, and for a moment they remained in each other’s arms.

  This embrace was lovely too, but different. Desire simmered through Anwen, along with glee, wonder, and not a little surprise—she was a bonfire—but also gratitude. Her disguise had fooled her entire family, and even begun to fool her, but Lord Colin had seen through all the manners and decorum to the flame burning at her center.

  “I’ll guard your secret,” Colin said, “but if we don’t get back on our horses in the next five minutes, I’ll be guarding your secret as the late, lamented Lord Colin. Your cousins have a reputation for protectiveness.”

  Anwen stepped back and plucked her millinery from the branch above. “We were looking for my hat, which was blown into the hedge as I galloped past.” Along with her wits, her heart, and her worries.

  Most of her worries.

  “Just so.” Lord Colin took her hat and led her past the bench and back to the bridle path. “Hat hunting, a venerable tradition among the smitten of an early morning in Hyde Park. That excuse will surely spare my life.”

  By the time Rosecroft trotted up on a handsome bay, Anwen was back in the saddle, her skirts decorously arranged over her boots, her fascinator once again pinned to her hair. The grooms trundled along at the acceptable distance, and the first carriage had rolled by, the Duchess of Quimbey at the reins.

  “Anwen,” Rosecroft said. “My apologies for losing track of the time. Denmark here was going a bit stiff to the right, so a few gymnastics were in order. Lord Colin, good morning.”

  “My lord,” Colin said, bowing slightly from the saddle. “That’s a beautiful beast you have, and it’s a glorious day for enjoying nature’s splendors, isn’t it?”

  Rosecroft’s mother had been Irish, and when he wasn’t being an overbearing big brother and meddlesome cousin, he claimed a portion of Gaelic charm. His smile was crooked, his pat on the horse’s shoulders genuinely affectionate.

  “I’d rather be admiring nature’s splendor back up in the West Riding,” he said, “but I can report to my superior officers that today’s outing was in every way a success.”

  He turned his smile on Lord Colin, who smiled right back.r />
  Anwen had been raised with four male cousins in addition to Rosecroft, and grasped that some sort of masculine communication was in progress, though a commotion closer to Park Lane caught her eye.

  “Somebody’s in trouble,” Rosecroft said as a boy shot across the green at a dead run.

  “Somebody’s mighty fleet of foot,” Lord Colin observed as a corpulent man pursued the boy, shouting words snatched away on the morning breeze.

  “Somebody’s chasing my Johnnie,” Anwen retorted, driving her heel into her mare’s side and taking off at a gallop.

  Chapter Six

  “But why, John?” Tom asked, for the third time.

  They were all back in the detention room, because Dickie had failed to appear for breakfast before grace had begun. Dickie said in front of all the little ones that he’d been in the jakes, waiting for Nature to pay a call.

  Hitchings had delivered him a proper smack for that, though Dickie had spoken the God’s honest truth. Even the bowels seized when a boy sat for too long, day after day.

  John had barely made the breakfast bell. His knees had been grass stained and his palms smeared with dirt, but Hitchings had been too busy ringing a peal over Dickie’s head to notice that John had been taking the air again.

  “Why, if you have to roam, did you nick some half-drunk nob’s purse?” Tom pressed.

  “Nick ’em when they can barely stand,” Dickie said. “Didn’t our da teach you anything? When the nobs are wandering home at dawn, after they’ve been at the cards, the drink, and the whores all night. Never an easier time to lift a purse than at daybreak, unless you choose the wrong cull.”

  John sat, back braced against the wall beneath the window. Joe, who’d said nothing thus far, had his nose in a French dictionary somebody had forgotten from a previous incarceration.

  Or maybe Joe had left it here on purpose, because he was that canny.

  “I go crazy here,” John said. “It’s spring. Winter’s over, the air is clear for a change, and outside, I can breathe.”

  Tom knew all too well what he meant. Being cooped up like laying hens all night was bad enough, but then the sun came up, the birds sang, and a boy felt the urge to move, to ramble, to see what was afoot at the docks, maybe set a snare for an unsuspecting rabbit in the park…

  Life was meant to be more than grammar, sermons, and birchings.

  Tom leapt up to catch the top edge of the enormous empty wardrobe in the corner of the room and swung himself atop it. The high vantage points helped with the restlessness, though nothing made it go away entirely.

  “Orangutan,” Joe said, without looking up from his dictionary.

  He got a laugh for that observation.

  “Tom likes to climb things,” Dickie said. “John likes to steal the occasional purse from them as can afford it.”

  “Robin Hood’s going to end up in Newgate.” Tom rolled to his back and studied the stain spreading from a corner of the ceiling. The mark was old, suggesting somebody had long ago patched the leak causing it. The shape put him in mind of Hitchings’s fat arse.

  “I ditched the purse,” John said. “I won’t be taken up, because Miss Anwen was ready to tear a strip off the cull for calling me a guttersnipe.”

  “Ooooh, a guttersnipe!” Dickie smacked his forehead and pretended to stagger against the table. “Our darlin’ young Johnnie, a guttersnipe!”

  John ignored his brother’s humor. “If you’d seen Miss Anwen with that sidesaddle whip, you’d not be making sport of her. Cull shut his gob and started bowing on the spot. Miss Anwen’s flash gent were with her, and some other cove who looked like the god with the hammer.”

  “Thor,” Joe said, turning a page.

  “Not him, the blacksmith one,” John went on. “Miss Anwen came galloping across the grass, dirt clods flying out behind her horse, the two gents bringing up the rear. She put her mare between me and the cull, and I have never been so glad to see that woman in all my life.”

  They were all, always glad to see Miss Anwen.

  “Then what?” Dickie asked.

  “Then her flash gent flipped the cull a sovereign. The cull winked at me, bowed to the lady, and charged off as if he’d landed a whole pot o’ gold.”

  “He nearly did.” Most of Tom’s acquaintances would go their whole lives without holding one of the recently minted sovereigns.

  “How’d you get back here?” Dickie asked.

  Joe stopped turning pages and aimed a look at John, just as John might have launched into what Miss Anwen called an embellishment on the truth.

  “The flash gent brought me back.”

  “Miss Anwen wouldn’t even talk to you,” Tom guessed. “D’you think she’ll tell Hitchings?”

  John drew his knees up and hung his head. “She looked like she wanted to cry. She told Lord Colin—that’s the red-haired gent with the smart phaeton—to get me back here as soon as may be, before my adventure became common knowledge.”

  “Your adventure was stupid,” Tom said. “You can be hung for stealing, or transported, and that’s assuming enough of you survives a couple of weeks in Newgate. Newgate is no place for a pretty boy, John Wellington.”

  The horrors awaiting such a boy were easy enough to imagine, not so easy to endure. Tom was fairly certain Joe could describe them firsthand, and Tom had had a few narrow escapes himself.

  “This place is making us soft,” John said, raising his chin. “The cull knew I’d nicked his purse only because I’ve lost my touch. I was clumsy, and he wasn’t as drunk or tired as I’d thought. Stupid and clumsy, I was, because of this place.”

  Tom waited for Dickie to chime in, because brothers were loyal and talk cost nothing. Tom was tempted to sing out the usual chorus of frustrations and indignities that went along with life at the House of Urchins too, but Joe’s steady stare stopped him.

  If John was a clumsy, stupid thief, that was nobody’s fault but his own.

  “Miss Anwen deserves your thanks,” Tom said. “So do the gents who were with her. We get locked in detention together, but you’d go to jail—or Van Diemen’s Land—alone. I’d hate that.”

  “You’re going soft,” John shot back. “I can’t wait for this place to close, so I can have my freedom back. Dickie and me will—”

  Joe rose and opened the window. He bowed and gestured to John, then crossed his arms.

  Freedom awaits.

  John was on his feet, nose to chin with Joe. “I can’t just up and leave. I promised Lord Colin I’d not pike off again until he and I had a talk. That’s all he said. No more larks for you until you and I talk, young man. I gave my word and I don’t go back on my word.”

  Joe appeared to consider this, then offered a come-get-me-little-man gesture, and tousled John’s hair. John knocked his hand aside, and Dickie leapt up onto the table, which would give the combatants room to air their differences. John had just spit in his palms and put up his fives when the door swung open.

  The flash gent stood there, looking like the thunderbolt god with red hair.

  “Gentlemen, using the term loosely, good day. Come with me.”

  Joe shot a longing glance toward his dictionary, but Dickie was already off the table, and John had pulled the window closed—but not locked it.

  “You too,” the gent said, aiming a glance at Tom’s perch atop the wardrobe. “There will be some changes around here, starting now, and you will either learn to accommodate them, or leave so another boy wise enough to take advantage of his good fortune can have your place.”

  Like it or lump it, as near as Tom could translate. This fellow sounded like MacDeever, but sharper, more dangerous. Tom leapt down from the wardrobe and fell in behind Joe as his lordship took off down the corridor.

  “Master John and I have an errand to see to later today,” Lord Colin said. “I happened to find a gentleman’s purse in the undergrowth at the park, and I require John’s assistance to return it to its rightful owner. Before he and I can undertake that tas
k, you will assist Mr. MacDeever to clean the mews. I expect to hear nothing but good cheer and excellent manners from you all for the duration.”

  Lord Colin drew up at the back door. “Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Dickie said, though he’d smirked, the stupid git.

  Lord Colin smoothed a hand gently over Dickie’s hair, but Dickie had ducked—too slowly. The blow would have landed had the gent been in a smacking mood, and his lordship’s point had been made.

  “Do I make myself clear, gentlemen?”

  “Yes, sir,” John said, elbowing his brother.

  “Yes, sir,” Tom echoed.

  Joe nodded and pulled his forelock.

  “Joey don’t talk much,” Tom said, lest his lordship get to using his fists on poor Joe.

  Lord Colin peered down a whacking great nose at Joe. “I admire a man who can keep his peace. You’ll be in charge for the morning, Joseph.”

  Joe stood taller, though how he would be in charge when he couldn’t give orders was a mystery.

  “In charge of what, sir?” Tom asked.

  “In charge of what recruits do best, which is shovel shite, of course. I’m ashamed to stable my horse in yonder mews, lads, and a gentleman always takes good care of his cattle. Do you agree?”

  Many a gentleman couldn’t afford a donkey, much less a horse, but that didn’t seem to matter at the moment.

  “Yes, sir,” Tom said, as Dickie and Johnnie muttered their assents.

  “Then you will all do your bit as gentlemen of the House of Urchins, and take up pitchforks and shovels until that stable is the cleanest in the neighborhood.”

  Tom knew nothing about tidying up a stable, but he knew he’d rather muck out stalls, get dirty, and take orders from Joe than spend another minute in the detention room. Trying to keep peace, preventing John from going to jail, and dealing with his own temptations was doomed to failure when the drainpipe sang its siren song.

  Because John had a point. Winter was behind them, the streets were full of culls, and Latin conjugations had never kept a boy fed, clothed, or safe.