Lady with a Black Umbrella

by Mary Balogh

  The servant continued to grin.

  “Never tell me,” she said, “that whoever deprived you of half your teeth also had the good sense to remove your tongue. Doubtless the world has been deprived of a great orator. I demand that you let me go immediately. Where am I, anyway?”

  In a well-appointed if shabby bedchamber, anyway, she could see at a glance as the silent giant gathered up his cloak and his scarves and took himself out of the room without having the courtesy to answer any of her queries. She heard the sound of a key turning at the other side of the door. And an inspection of the window at the other side of the room revealed, as Daisy expected, that a jump to the ground would mean certain suicide.

  Not that she had any intention of jumping even if the window were ten inches from the ground and a fleet-footed hunter ready saddled were tethered there waiting for her. She had some business to conclude with Lord Powers when he deigned to put in an appearance, and he would not find her reluctant to face the confrontation.

  However, Daisy thought, looking about her as she rubbed her hands together, shook them vigorously in the air, and tried to ignore the severe pins and needles that shot through them and her feet as the blood resumed its normal course through her body, he would not find her unprepared and unarmed this time. Not by any means. If her fists were not sufficient to do more than make his speech a little breathless, then she would arm herself with some more lethal weapon. She mourned the absence of her father’s black umbrella for one moment, but she did not have it—indeed she would have looked quite conspicuous walking into Vauxhall with it tucked beneath her arm—so there was no point in wasting energy lamenting her lack.

  There was, of course, no convenient pistol or knife lying on the washstand or in any of the drawers. Indeed, she found after a swift and determined search, there seemed to be nothing at all that would assist her in running through a man’s body or smashing his skull to smithereens. Even the candles were balanced on saucers instead of being fastened into tall silver candlesticks as they ought to have been if this were any sort of respectable establishment.

  Daisy was about to conclude that she would have to rely upon her less-than-effective fists when she knelt down to peer underneath the bed and espied the china chamberpot. Not a thoroughly orthodox weapon, she thought, dragging it out, weighing it in her hands, and finding it was of a quite satisfactory weight. But it might do. The only trouble was that with her height and the weight of the chamberpot, she would find it difficult to hold it high enough for it to have built up any speed by the time it collided with the top of a tall gentleman's head.

  It took Daisy all of ten exhausting minutes to drag the washstand inch by inch across the room and behind the door. Yes, she thought, lifting her skirts around her thighs and clambering on top of the stand after first placing the chamberpot on it, this would do quite nicely. She lifted the pot with effort above her head, imagined the door opening, swung downward, and decided that Lord Powers might well see stars before hitting the floor when he came for her. Or if the half-toothed giant was the first in, then it would not matter greatly. She owed him a headache too.

  Daisy sat on the edge of the washstand and wrapped her arms around herself. It was chilly in the bedchamber with nothing to do but wait. She contemplated dragging some of the blankets from the bed, but decided that it was better to keep herself alert and unencumbered by unnecessary coverings.

  She was almost despairing of anyone’s visiting her that night when she heard footsteps approaching the door. By the time she heard the key being fitted into the lock, Daisy was poised atop the washstand, the chamberpot hovering at the extremities of her stretched arms, a look of murderous determination in her eyes.

  And then the door swung open and someone stepped inside. Daisy took a deep breath, shut her eyes tightly, and struck downward with all the weight of the chamberpot and her own meager strength behind it.

  Someone grunted and fell to the floor an instant before Daisy’s ears were assailed by the tinkling sounds of smashed china.

  Chapter 17

  Lord Powers was neither undergrown nor unfit. It took Lord Kincade several minutes of sustained, determined effort before he bent panting over his victim in the darkness, a fistful of ruined neckcloth in his hand.

  “Where has your henchman taken her, Powers?” he demanded of the dazed and bloody face below him.

  “I’ve no idea and would not tell you if I did,” Lord Powers muttered, fingering his upper lip with a hand that seemed not to be sure that it was moving in the right direction and looking rather as if he were seeing stars above the treetops. But his eyes focused a moment later on the fist poised above him and in line with his already broken nose. “To my father’s house,” he said. And eyeing the fist, which had not moved, “It is true, Kincade.”

  “And who might I expect to find there in ambush?’ ’ Lord Kincade asked, tightening his grip on the neckcloth.

  Lord Powers' eyes appeared to be rolling in his head. “No one," he said. “M'father’s gone away for the night and all the servants given the night off.”

  “So it was to be seduction full and complete,” Lord Kincade said before altering the direction of his fist sufficiently to bring it crashing down onto his adversary’s jaw and releasing him into unconsciousness.

  Lord Kincade jumped to his feet and hovered uncertainly for a moment, looking down at the figure at his feet, glancing off in the direction the giant had taken with Daisy and back toward the main path and the boxes. He stooped down at last, dragged off Lord Powers’ Hessians, peeled off his silk stockings, secured his ankles with one and his wrists with the other, looping it first around a treetrunk, and rushed off in the direction of the main path and the lights.

  Several heads turned at the strange, disheveled, wild-eyed, bloody-nosed gendeman who tore past them all, and even more turned a few minutes later when he dashed back the same way with two other gentlemen in hot pursuit, one remarkably tall and slender, the other tall and muscular and of a distinctly military bearing.

  “Yes, yes, you go, Giles,” Arthur urged his brother as soon as they came across the still-unconscious figure tied to the tree. “Go and rescue Daisy. We will see to it that Powers is well-looked-after for the rest of the night.”

  Colonel Appleby was already grappling with the stocking that had been knotted around the tree and glancing with grim disgust at the prone, blood-smeared form of Lord Powers. “It is my guess that you have dealt him a sleeping potion that will last through tiie night, Kincade,” he said, though only Arthur heard him.

  Lord Kincade was already off through the trees, in search of his carriage and his pistol inside it, and leaving with his coachman the ticklish problem of conveying his passengers home with one horse too few.

  One part of Powers’ story seemed to be correct, anyway, Lord Kincade thought more than half an hour later as he approached with caution the dark grounds and house close to the River Thames that he had never entered before. There seemed to be no one there. The house was in darkness except for one room upstairs and one downstairs, next to the main doors.

  The servant, the one who had carried Daisy off and the one who had tried to reduce him to pulp a few weeks before on the road to Bath, confirmed the fact a few minutes later as he gazed in some terror down the barrel of the viscount’s pistol. There was no one in the house or anywhere else on the grounds except him and the young lady upstairs.

  The man obligingly handed over the key to the young lady’s room and preceded Lord Kincade to the kitchens, where he was locked inside the stout pantry. As the viscount said, having satisfied himself that no one except perhaps a circus artist would be able to get himself out of that particular prison in fewer than twenty years, the man would not starve while he waited for rescue. It irked him not to be able to set down his pistol and put to the test the question of who could reduce whom to pulp in a fair fight, but under the present circumstances, he did not feel that he could afford the luxury of possibly losing.

  It w
as not difficult to locate Daisy’s room. He remembered the position of the only room abovestairs that was lighted, and indeed, as he walked upstairs with a single candle in his hand, there was only one door that had a slit of light beneath it. And he found to his relief and satisfaction that the key fit into the lock without any trouble and turned easily.

  Lord Kincade opened the door and stepped inside the room. And found himself a moment later on his hands and knees on the floor, a shower of china pieces tinkling around him, pain shooting through his shoulder, and a string of unthinkable oaths proceeding from his mouth.

  “Devil take it!” he concluded mildly, addressing the floor a few inches from his nose and not bothering to look up. “I should be locked up for a blithering idiot. Why would I not have known to wave a white flag through the doorway on a fifty-foot pole? Why would I even have expected to find you cowering at the other side of the room, awaiting your fate in terror like any other decent woman?”

  He rose to his knees and looked around him when there was no answer. Daisy was poised on top of a washstand behind the door, her hands covering her mouth, two large horrified eyes regarding him over the top of them.

  “What in thunder are you doing up there, Daisy?” he asked, his hand going to his shoulder. “No, don't answer. You are doubtless learning to fly. And I should be thanking Providence that your aim was not all it should be, or perhaps I would be learning to fly by now too, or to stoke furnaces, depending on which place I would have ended up in. Have you turned to stone, girl? Get down from there at once.”

  “Oh,” she said, not removing her hands, “I might have killed you.”

  “You might indeed,” he said, looking down at the ruined china at his feet. “What was it? Some priceless ornament?”

  “A ch—” Daisy gulped. “A chamberpot.”

  “A what?” Lord Kincade said, looking down again. “Empty, I hope.”

  “Oh yes.” Daisy’s shoulders began to shake.

  “Oh, don’t cry,” Lord Kincade said, his voice softening. He reached up his arms for her and winced. “Don’t cry, Daisy. It is all over now. You are safe.”

  But when he took her by the waist and lifted her down, it was to find her helpless with laughter. “ ‘A what?’ ” she said, pokering up and doing a tolerable imitation of his look of horror. “ ‘Empty, I hope. ’ ” She dissolved into giggles again.

  Lord Kincade ground his teeth, took the key from the keyhole, shut the door firmly, locked it from the inside, and dropped the key into his pocket.

  “Now, my girl,” he said grimly, “an explanation. Why did I find you in Powers’ arms in Vauxhall?”

  She sobered immediately. “Judith,” she said, looking wildly at him. “Is Judith safe? Has Lord Powers run off with her?”

  “With Judith?” he said, frowning. “Of course not. Judith put an end to that affair days ago. And he did not argue. He must have another wealthy . . . ” He stopped and scratched his head. “Daisy, what in the name of all that is wonderful have you been up to?” he asked. “Have you been on a crusade to save Judith from a fate worse than death, to be followed by a marriage worse than death?”

  “Have I succeeded?” she asked eagerly. “Have I saved your sister from that worm?”

  He shook his head and stared down at her. “Daisy Morrison,” he said, exasperation in his voice, “what am I going to do with you? Yes, you succeeded.”

  She clasped her hands to her bosom and beamed at him. “Where did the bruises and the blood come from?” she asked.

  “From Powers’ fists and my nose, I would imagine,” he said, fumbling in his pocket for a handkerchief.

  Daisy took it from him and dabbed at the dried blood. She lifted the handkerchief to her mouth, stopped, told him to stick out his tongue, moistened the linen, and cleaned off the blood to her satisfaction. Then she smiled and put the handkerchief back, in his pocket.

  Lord Kincade watched her all the while. “You did this for my sister,” he said. “Did you not realize what might have happened to you, Daisy? You would not have left this room with your virtue intact.”

  “Oh, nonsense!” she said. “I can look after myself.”

  “Daisy,” he said, taking her hands in his, “what am I to do with you? I think I had better marry you.”

  “No, no,” she said, smiling warmly back at him, “there is no need. You really do not owe me anything. I did it because I like Judith and strongly dislike that toad.”

  “I would be doing the world a favor,” he said. “And besides, only if I am your husband will I feel justified in giving you a good walloping one of these days. Daisy, I could shake you until your teeth rattle in your head. You might have been ravished, you foolish, impulsive, utterly brainless little innocent.” He took her by the shoulders and did shake her two or three times.

  “I will break off our betrothal immediately,” she said kindly. “I see that I upset you. And though you have no cause to worry about me at all, I can understand that as a gentleman you feel responsible for my safety as long as you are sort of betrothed to me. Well, sir”—she smiled warmly up at him—“you may consider yourself free.”

  He shook his head and held her at arm’s length. “I should be feeling like a condemned man who has been granted a reprieve as the noose is being settled over his head,” he said. “The trouble is that I have grown accustomed to worrying about you. And I think perhaps I would worry more if I were not close to you and did not know what folly you were up to. I think I had better keep you near enough to be able to rush to the rescue in time. Will you marry me, Daisy?”

  “Oh, how very kind you are,” she said, patting the front of his waistcoat with both hands and leaving them there to pursue the absorbing task of twisting one of his silver buttons. “But you really must not worry about me, you know. You would not wish to be married to me. I would not be at all biddable.”

  “I know,” he said, finding a spot beneath her ear so fascinating that he had to bend his head to kiss it. “But the trouble is, Daisy, that I am thinking perhaps I would find life dull with a biddable wife.”

  “You must not think so,” she said. “And you must not be blinded by your gratitude over what I have been able to do for Judith.” He was nuzzling her earlobe, an activity that seemed to be responsible for the fact that her toes were curling themselves up inside her dancing slippers.

  “I am not grateful,” he said. “In fact, I think I might still wring your neck over that particular folly. But I think I will have to marry you in order to see your hair down. I have wanted to see it without the braids since I first set eyes on you.”

  His mouth had found the pulse at the base of her throat. Daisy felt her knees weakening. “What a silly reason for wanting to marry me,” she said. “All you have to do is ask. Shall I take it down now?”

  “Yes, please,” he said. His mouth was feathering kisses along her bare shoulder.

  “You had better put this in your pocket, then,” Daisy said, coloring up and handing him one silver button. “I am afraid it came off.”

  “Daisy,” Lord Kincade said, standing back from her as her hands deftly unpinned her braids and then unraveled them, one by one, “you are a walking disaster.”

  “No, no,” she said, her hands going to the second braid. “It is just that your tailor did not sew it on firmly enough. Why did you lock the door from the inside?”

  “There is no one in the house,” he said, “except for a certain giant with half a mouthful of yellow teeth, which are probably busy at present eating the marquess out of house and home. And no one is like to be here until morning. But there is no harm in being doubly sure. I think I intend to make love to you.”

  “Do you?” she said, dropping her hands and giving her head a vigorous shake. “There. Is it not ridiculous? My big vanity. Mama and Papa have always tried to bully me to have it cut, but I have been mulish and refused.”

  “Thank heaven for stubborn women,” Lord Kincade said fervently, lifting a hand to touch the fair wa
ves that cascaded down her back to her bottom. “You are beautiful, Daisy. Will you marry me?”

  “Silly,” she said with a bright smile. “It is just the hair. But it is rather splendid, is it not?”

  “I think I love you,” he said.

  “Oh, nonsense,” said Daisy. “You do not.”

  “You are right,” he said, twining his hands through her hair and around her waist and drawing her against him. “I don’t think I love you at all. I do love you. Will you marry me, Daisy?”

  The look she gave him was very strange. He hardly recognized her. She looked lost and uncertain suddenly. “You can’t love me,” she said. “I am a twenty-five-year-old spinster and I am loud and managing. I am unfeminine.”

  “Lord help me if you were feminine, then,” Lord Kincade said, his mouth touching hers as he spoke. “I am burning up with desire for you as it is, Daisy Morrison, and eyeing that bed behind you with a lecherous eye. Make love with me. Marry me. Preferably in that order, love. I can’t wait. Though I will if it is what you wish.”

  Daisy was still not herself. She hid her face against his neckcloth. “Make love to me, then,” she said, “and get this silly nonsense out of your system. And then you can take me back home and I can pack to return to the country.”

  A very firm hand beneath her chin forced her face up and her eyes to meet his. They were angry. “Do you think it is lust only?” he said. “Do you think I can bed you and go on my way satisfied? You are in my blood, Daisy, in my soul, in my heart. I will never be free of you, and now at last, and totally to my surprise, I know that I will never want to be. You will be the torment of my life and my everlasting joy. You will promise to marry me before I take you anywhere near the bed. Daisy, what on earth is happening? You are not crying, are you?”

  “Ye-e-e-es,” Daisy wailed inelegantly. “Gi-i-i-iles.” He was holding her head against his shoulder. She gulped noisily. “Make love to me, then. Marry me. But promise me, oh, please promise me that you will not always give in to me. I will try to dominate you, you know, and I will hate it when you will not allow me to. And I will hate you if you do.”