“If you call that mauling, my dear, you have much to learn on the subject.” He leaned past her to open the door, swung his body across, and jumped down into the street below with an agility that belied his state of inebriation. “However, I believe we have arrived at Cécile’s, so instruction on the subject will have to wait. Timms,” he yelled at the reluctant driver, “be quick and rouse the house. We have not all night.”
Responding with alacrity, one of the coachmen slid down from the box and nodded to his master, “Timms is new, sir. I’ll take keer o’ it fer ye.”
“Very well, Dobbs, but get on with it.”
After about five minutes of the coachy’s relentless pounding, they were rewarded with a glimmer of light and a spate of French words unknown to the usually conversant Ellen Marling. Finally, the bolt was drawn and the door opened to reveal a hastily dressing servant.
“Milor’!” the fellow protested. “ ’Tis after two!”
“Aye,” Ellen’s benefactor acknowledged dryly, “and now that we all know what time it is, you will be pleased to advise Madame that I am come to collect the clothes she has made for Signora Mantini.”
Ellen leaned curiously to catch a glimpse of her rescuer, but was thwarted when he stepped in front of the carriage to talk to the Frenchman. She was having second thoughts about him, particularly after his comment about instruction in mauling. It came home to her that she had not the least idea who he was and it was just possible that his attentions were not honorable in the least.
“But Madame is asleep, monsieur!” she could hear the servant protest.
“Then get her up. I am not used to waiting, fellow.”
“But, milor’—”
“Very well. You may inform Cécile when she wakes that I have taken my custom elsewhere.”
“I will see if I can rouse her, milor’,” the servant capitulated.
“Frenchies!” the coachy spat out in disgust. “And after all yer’s bought ’ere.”
Madame Cecile herself suddenly appeared in the doorway in her satin wrapper and surveyed her night visitor. “Trent! I might have known ’twas you, milord. No matter.” She shrugged with Gallic indifference. “We can box most of what you have purchased in minutes. If you will but come inside to wait, ‘twill be done with dispatch.”
Ellen sank back against the squabs in shock, unable to believe that of all the people she could have encountered in her mad enterprise, she’d fallen into the hands of a hot-tempered rakehell. For a moment, she considered yet another escape, but then realized that she knew nothing of the vast city of London except it was dangerous at night. Well, she would thank his lordship sincerely, take the mailcoach to York, and that would be that.
True to her word, the modiste reappeared to direct the tying on of no fewer than six boxes. While Ellen watched, Trent came out and said something she could not hear. The little French dressmaker’s laughter floated up to where she sat. Then the door opened and the marquess swung up his tall frame while ordering Timms to get moving again.
“The English!” Madame Cecile’s man fumed from the steps. “Their nobility have no manners.”
“Not all of them,” Cecile reminded him. “And you cannot judge any by the Marquess of Trent, Paul, for he quite lives by his own rules. La, what a man! If I were but twenty years younger …” Her voice trailed off dreamily and then she caught herself with a sigh, “But I am not. Come, let us get to bed if we are to be able to greet the customers later.”
In the carriage, Ellen shook her head in disbelief. “I cannot credit that you did that, sir.”
“Why?”
“Well, won’t the Mantini be angry that you have taken her clothes?”
“Probably.” He shrugged. “But I paid for them. Besides, I care not a jot what she thinks. She has no cause for complaint with my generosity.”
Ellen leaned forward to tell him, “Pray do not think me ungrateful, my lord, but I cannot accept them. For one thing, I have not the money to pay, and for the other, ’tis unseemly.”
“Why not? I can assure you that, with the exception perhaps of a slight fullness in the bodice, they will fit.”
“But I could not. If you would be so kind as to set me down at the posting house, my lord, I would trouble you no longer.”
“No. You cannot go racketing about in a common coach without so much as a maid or abigail with you. Besides, I have decided to accompany you.”
“Oh, no! That is, I could not presume. Pray do not—’tis most unnecessary, my lord. Really, if you will but set me down—”
“Can’t. We are already on our way, my dear, and I am decided. Who knows? A little rustication might be just the ticket. London’s become a deuced bore these days.”
“What? Oh, but you cannot! I mean, we are not even acquainted, sir.”
With a hint of amusement in his voice, he swept off his hat and leaned forward. “Alas, my lamentable manners, my dear. Allow me to present myself. I am Alexander Deveraux, frequently called Trent by many, although my intimates call me Alex.”
“I still cannot presume on your kindness, sir,” she repeated firmly. “Besides, I cannot arrive at my aunt’s in your company—or any gentleman’s, for that matter. ’Tis not certain that I shall even be welcome by myself.”
“That being the case, Miss, er, Smith, I should consider it incumbent on me to support you when you beard the old lady.”
She sank back in dismay, unable to even consider her aunt’s reaction to her arriving in the company of a man like Trent. The street lanterns were passing more quickly as the coach picked up speed, and she had absolutely no means of getting out of it. With a sinking feeling, she realized that her companion, although appearing moderately sober, was too far gone for reasoning.
As if reading her thoughts, he repeated, “We are already on our way, my dear. And who knows? By light of day, I might find you attractive enough to keep you for a while.”
“And despite the strange circumstances of our meeting,” she replied stiffly, “I must ask you to believe that I am not that sort of female.”
“No? We shall see, Miss Smith. But, as for now, I am more than a little foxed and need to sleep off Brockhaven’s champagne.”
2
ELLEN NAPPED OFF and on as the carriage sped through the night and well into the morning. The sun came up finally and afforded her a better opportunity to observe her carriage mate, so she studied the sleeping man opposite. He did not look so very dangerous, after all. In fact, the relaxation of sleep gave him the appearance of being younger and almost vulnerable. The cold blue eyes that had given him such a forbidding aspect at her wedding dance were closed, leaving only the dark smudges of thick black lashes against rather fair skin. The planes of his face were not so rigid or pronounced either, and he seemed more youthful. The night before, she had judged him to be somewhere in his thirties, but now he appeared several years younger. Yet, awake or asleep, she had to admit he was a strikingly handsome man. He stirred slightly and pillowed his head more comfortably against the corner of his seat. His thick black hair was ruffled in charming disarray.
Almost as if by intuition, he became aware of her scrutiny, opening one eye slightly and wincing at the sight of her. He closed it and blinked several times, as if unwilling to credit what he’d seen. Finally, he straightened up in his seat and ran his fingers through his rumpled hair. He eyed her irritably now.
“Your pardon, madam, but were you not last night’s bride?” His eyes traveled over her wrinkled wedding dress with its grass and champagne stains, and he sighed heavily. “I am afraid I must have been even more foxed than I thought, so you will have to enlighten me with the whole, if you please.” He shook his head as though to clear it, and stared briefly at the rolling countryside through the coach window. “And pray do not leave out where we are.”
“Well, I am not precisely certain as to where we are, my lord, except that it is somewhere on the road to Yorkshire. And in spite of my protestations, you would insist on coming
with me when all I asked was escort to the nearest coach house. I am running away, you see.”
“No, I don’t see,” he snapped irritably. “The whole, if you please, and spare me any enactment of a Cheltenham tragedy, for my head aches like the very devil.” Clearly his gallantry of the night before was forgotten and replaced with ill humor. He leaned forward, fixed her with those cold blue eyes, and waited.
She briefly sketched the improbable events of her escape and his assistance, remembering to include their stop at Madame Cecile’s. “So, you see, sir, that is quite the entire tale,” she told him. “I did not ask you to come—’twas you who insisted.”
He sank back with a groan. “And now what the devil am I to do with you? I have done some incredibly stupid things in my life,” he admitted, “but this is surely the worst. And you are not even a beauty, so I have not that excuse.”
She bristled at his rudeness and was on the point of retorting hotly that her appearance had nothing to do with her very real need to escape a loathsome husband, but he raised a hand to silence her before she could speak.
“It is the plain truth, ma’am. If you did not have those unusual eyes, you would not attract a second glance. You are too slight of form to intrigue a man,” he pointed out bluntly.
“Listen, you, you insufferable oaf,” she choked out when she found her voice. “As though I care about such things! I find the lot of you disgusting, boorish, and self-centered. And you are wrong, anyway. I attracted Brockhaven despite all my attempts to discourage the man.”
“A fat, aging roué,” Trent scoffed.
“Listen, my lord,” she managed to reason in a calmer voice, “if you will but set me down at the next posting house with enough money for my passage, as I asked you to do from the very beginning, I shall not trouble your lordship further. You may even have my wedding ring for surety that you will be repaid.”
“Set you down without a maid or abigail?” He raised a disapproving eyebrow. “My dear, every manjack on the stage would be sure to think the worst of you.”
“As you were prepared to do yourself?”
“Acquit me! I admit to many liaisons with your sex, ma’am, but I have never resorted to rapine. I am not totally lost to propriety, no matter what you may have heard. But you have landed us both in the basket with your rash actions. I ought to—”
Before he could finish the thought, she leaned forward in alarm. “You would not try to return me to Brockhaven! You could not!”
“Lud, no! I should look the veriest fool bringing you back in the morning, shouldn’t I? While a man may be forgiven any number of little affairs with soiled doves, widows, and even other men’s wives, it is outside the bounds of decency to run away with another man’s virgin bride. Even I should draw the line at that,” he told her in disgust. “But now that you are here, what the devil am I to do with you?”
“My lord, if I have to repeat one more time that it was you who insisted on bringing me this far, I shall scream in vexation.” She drew herself up disdainfully and added with an affronted sniff, “It was not your affair, after all. And even an unfeeling cad could not have wished my fate on anyone. I could not go through with it. The husband chosen for me is old, fat, and disgusting. I could not bear the sight of him.”
“Then why did you agree to marry him?”
“You do not know how it is. You think we all have a Season to parade around London, attending balls, musicales, and whatever, until some lord declares himself smitten with our charms and offers marriage, don’t you? Well, in my case, I had not even one Season. My father considered it a waste of his money, if you must know. And then, when I was past twenty-two, it occurred to him that I was on the shelf. Then he whisked me off to Bath for the Short Season, pushed me at Brockhaven, and considered his paternal duty done.”
“And you took Brockhaven because no one else came up to scratch, eh?”
“No, it was not that way at all, my lord. The very first assembly I attended, Sir Basil attached himself to me, and my father was overwhelmed at his good fortune,” she remembered bitterly, “for it meant he would not have to buy me any more finery. And when Brockhaven offered twenty thousand in settlements, my father said I should be happy to accept without so much as consulting me. When I refused, my father offered him my seventeen-year-old sister. You cannot understand, but Amy is sweet and kind and so beautiful, I could not let them do that to her.”
“I see. You were sacrificed for twenty thousand pounds.”
“Yes. My father called me ungrateful, my lord, and starved me for three weeks before he came upon the idea of giving Sir Basil Amy instead. I guess I was weak and thought I was being noble. But when it came to—to living with Brockhaven, I could not.”
“Well, it would have been better for both of us had you just blown out the candles and pretended he were someone else.”
“Quite easy for you to say, sir, for you have not the dubious distinction of being Lady Brockhaven. I, on the other hand, would have had to look at the disgusting popinjay for the rest of his life. And with my current fortune, he would live to ninety just to plague me.”
“I doubt he could make it another ten years, given his fat,” Trent hazarded. “But what is done is done, I suppose. We can only hope that this aunt of yours will support you in this.”
“My aunt is Lady Sandbridge.” She had the satisfaction of seeing his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Until now, I have been quite her favorite relation, and I can only hope that she can prevail on Papa to seek a separation between Brockhaven and me.” She looked up and met his eyes soberly. “Though it will be difficult to explain this if I arrive in your company, my lord.”
“Aye.” He nodded in resignation. “She will think you have eloped with me. The tale gets worse the more I hear of it.”
“You hold too fine an opinion of yourself!” she snapped in exasperation. “I should not have gone as far as the nearest corner with you had not my situation been desperate. I am no opera dancer—or any other kind of trollop!”
“We were not speaking of your good name, ma’am, but rather of mine. But the more I look at you, the more I am certain I shall be acquitted of any such intent.”
“You, sir, are insulting.”
“But truthful.”
“And stop calling me ‘ma’am’—I abhor it!”
“Since I have not met you, I have not the least notion of what to call you.”
“I am Ellen Marling—or I was until yesterday—and I prefer to be called Miss Marling.”
“Well, Miss Marling, then. We shall not have a shred of reputation left if this gets out.” Without warning, he began to chuckle a warm, throaty chuckle. “But I must say, my dear, that you are vastly calm about it. Most gently bred females would be treating me to fainting spells or vapors or tantrums. You, on the other hand, seem positively proud of yourself.”
“I am.” She smiled ruefully. “I have come to realize that I should rather have no reputation at all than be Lady Brockhaven.”
He sobered suddenly. “There will be a terrible scandal, you know, and Brockhaven may even divorce you.” He paused as another thought struck him. “And do not be thinking I can be brought up to scratch with some farradiddle that I compromised you. I warn you right now that I am not a marrying man and I cannot be made into one. Any effort to lead me into parson’s mousetrap would be wasted, Miss Marling. And now that ’tis settled who you are and where we are going, I have a devil of a headache to sleep off.”
“I would not have you if you begged me, my lord, so we are quite safe with each other, are we not?” she retorted acidly. “I should prefer a worthy gentleman.”
“A foolish dream, girl. If this gets out, no respectable man would have you.”
“Go on to sleep, my lord, and leave my future to me.”
He covered his eyes with his hat and settled back. In a matter of minutes, he was breathing evenly, and his features softened with sleep. She watched him enviously as she shifted her cramped body into
various positions, vainly seeking comfort in the confines of the carriage. After an hour or so, the coach rolled to a halt in an innyard and one of the coachmen jumped down to bang on the door.
“Yer pardon, yer lor’ship, but ’tis the Hawk we’ve come on.”
The marquess straightened up and surveyed his surroundings sleepily. As his eyes again took in Ellen’s crumpled appearance, he shuddered and remembered his absurd situation.
“Best bespeak a private parlor, Dobbs, and get a room where Miss Smith may refresh herself.”
His man disappeared into the inn for a few minutes and then returned with word that his lordship’s requirements could be met. Without waiting for the order, the, coachey began untying one of the boxes on top of the carriage.
“You go on, ma’am, and follow Dobbs,” Trent directed her. “Hopefully, he has chosen a box with something you will dare to wear publicly”—he grinned—”for I’ve a notion that much of what was ordered for the Mantini was of a more intimate nature.” He opened the door again and jumped down to assist her out. Reaching up to her, he caught her at her waist and set her down as easily as if she had been weightless. “You are the merest dab of a girl for one so tall,” he observed.
“Thank you.” She smiled sweetly. “And you are a veritable lummox.”
“You are certainly the first to say so.”
She gathered up her skirt hem disdainfully and followed the coachman into the inn, where she was directed to a room by the innkeeper’s wife. Once alone, she rummaged through the box of the Mantini’s clothes and was dismayed to find that Trent had been right. She finally found a relatively plain lavender muslin day dress and some underwear. Peeling out of her despised wedding gown and petticoats, she reached for the fine, flesh-colored silk pantaloons and the zona. As she fitted the latter around her, she was disgusted to find that it provided very little support for her bosom at all. With a sigh as to the injustices of nature, she pulled on the lavender dress and found that the signora’s tastes ran to the revealing even for daytime wear. She sat down before a mirror and began repairing the damage to her coiffure while pondering what to do about the dress. An impatient knock sounded sharply at the chamber door and the marquess’s voice carried through it.
Anita Mills Page 2