How the Marquess Was Won

by Julie Anne Long

  They weren’t quite as striking as black geldings with white stockings, mind you.

  Nevertheless.

  “I’ve won several races in this,” he confided. “And nearly five hundred pounds.”

  The amount made her head swim.

  “Well done,” she decided to say, when she’d collected herself.

  She noticed the heads of other riders swiveling toward them as they rolled by. She nodded regally from atop her perch as Camber called greetings.

  “And look, Miss Vale. Everyone envies me because I’m with you.”

  It was such an extraordinary notion she didn’t even care that in all likelihood Camber was with her because he wished to be envied. All afternoon she drank in admiration and envy like wine, until she was almost intoxicated enough to forget to crane her head for a glimpse of a man on a black horse with white stockings.

  Almost.

  An hour or so after the twins and Phoebe and the young lordlings had departed for The Row, whilst Lady Charlotte was dreamily working on her embroidery in the Silverton town house, Lisbeth working beside her, Captain Nelson the Parrot began shrieking one word, over and over.

  “Singe! Singe! Ferma le Bouche! Singe!”

  Lisbeth looked up, startled. “Is the parrot shouting what I think he’s shouting?”

  “He’s shouting something about a ‘monkey.’ He’s telling a monkey to shut its mouth. Daft old bird. He’ll stop in a moment. Never fear.” Lady Charlotte continued embroidering.

  “Singe! Charlotte! J’ai faime!”

  He sounded insistent and shrill.

  Lady Silverton sighed, and settling down her embroidery and scooping Franz the dog up in her arms, as she scarcely ever made a move without him, she drifted down the stairs.

  “Good Heavens, my dear Captain Nelson, what on earth is troubling—”

  She froze at the foot of the stairs.

  Clearly the poor parrot didn’t know the French word for cat, but he’d arrived at what he clearly considered an excellent substitute.

  Charybdis was crouched below its perch, motionless apart from his fat, supple, switching tail, which was rather like a monkey tail. He and Captain Nelson were riveted by each other, their eyes locked with mutual, fascinated antipathy. Charybdis was keening low in his throat, his eyes huge and as green as parrot plumage.

  The parrot was telling him to shut up.

  “Charlotte! Singe!” the parrot squawked indignantly. It sounded very much like “I told you so!”

  “Good heavens! Now where did that creature come from? We don’t have a cat. Although, my goodness, it’s wearing such a pretty bow, now isn’t it? Heeeere, puss puss puss . . .”

  Lady Silverton stepped off the stairs, and had just put her feet on the marble of the foyer when:

  “GrrrrrrrrrUFF!”

  Franz made a heroic leap from her arms, looking like nothing more than a flying squirrel. It was his first-ever break for freedom. He landed on the marble and for a few seconds his claws scrabbled futilely for purchase and he slid sideways. When he finally managed to correct his course he made straight for Charybdis.

  “Yap!yap!yap!yap!”

  Charybdis sat up interestedly from his crouching position. Likely he thought Franz was just a noisier-than-usual rodent.

  SMACK!

  Charybdis landed a blow to the snout, sending silky, slippery Franz spiraling across the floor like a weathervane in a stiff wind.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” Charlotte squeaked, futilely trying to snatch him up again.

  Franz finally lost momentum, righted himself, staggered forward, and blinded by his own hair ran confidently into Captain Nelson’s perch. Which rocked violently to and fro.

  “Merde!” the parrot shouted with dignified disgust, and he flapped across the room to land on Charlotte’s shoulder.

  Which is when the doorbell rang.

  The footman, apparently inured to chaos, opened it. And Charybdis, perhaps smelling something alluring from his wild kittenhood, and perhaps with a cat’s loathing for confinement and passionate love for an open door, was out of the house and down the stairs like a musket shot.

  “What the devil was that?” Jules stood in the doorway, dressed for riding in The Row.

  “Why, it was a cat, Lord Dryden, if you can countenance it,” Lady Charlotte said. “Though my parrot seems to think it was a monkey—isn’t he funny? Singe, he said. Over and over. We don’t have a cat, at least not that I can recall, so I cannot for the life of me tell you how it got in—”

  Jules swore something so heartfelt and profane that Lady Silverton gasped and crossed herself and snatched Franz up as though he was a talisman.

  And he turned and bolted out the door just as fast as Charybdis had.

  “Did you see which way the cat went?” Jules asked the footman. Who, at first was speechless when confronted with the sheer force of the marquess’s presence, at last mutely pointed to the left.

  Jules ran for it. The cat could have crossed the square by now; they were quick and slippery little beasts. It could have slipped through the gates into a garden; they were lithe as wraiths. It could have leaped aboard a hack and could very well be on its way to the docks by now.

  It was a cat. It could be anywhere.

  He halted deliberately. For that was no way to think for a man who made decisions and choices with precision. It would be, he decided, where he found it.

  When he found it.

  He was distantly aware he was leaving muttering in his wake, the breeze from his swift passage practically lifting the tails of waistcoats and blowing the hats off the heads of men passing by. He heard stifled, amazed laughter, just the once. He was aware he’d abandoned Lisbeth and he would in all likelihood be late for a critical meeting with Isaiah Redmond at White’s. They seemed frivolous concerns in the moment.

  He stopped passersby again and again with the same question: “Have you seen a cat wearing a blue bow? Striped, has lots of hair?”

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one answered him immediately. They stared, rattled by his intensity, wary of the ludicrous question, of him.

  He’d never seen that expression directed at him before in his life.

  “ ’Ave you lost a wager, then, Lord Dryden?” one man asked, who clearly recognized him, and would likely gossip about it.

  Jules scowled, which caused the man to take a step back.

  “Would that I knew where yer pussycat has got to, Lord Dryden,” he said fervently, and backed away.

  Jules heard “no” after “no” after “no.” The sun was lowering; a benign amber began to spread over the buildings, gilding wrought-iron gates, setting windows to dazzling.

  He looked toward the horizon and he cursed it, threatened it. By God, he would intimidate the night from falling before he found the cat.

  He was breathing heavily by the time he touched a stocky gentleman in a cheap blue coat on the shoulder.

  “Have you seen a cat wearing a blue bow? Striped, has lots of hair?”

  The man didn’t even blink. He looked almost pleased to at last have been asked.

  “Aye, that I did. It was ’avin’ a bath out ’ere and I stop to try to pet the wee pretty bugger and ’e ’jes keep runnin’. ’E went that way, Your Lordship. Like a streak ’e was. Five minutes ago now?”

  He pointed toward the mews of the town house nearest them.

  “Bless you!” Jules planted a kiss on the shocked man’s shiny bald head and tore in that direction like the hounds of hell, or at the very least, a Pekingese, were in pursuit.

  And then he came to an abrupt halt.

  Because there was indeed a furry creature of some kind, upside down, all four limbs in the air, sprawled on its back in the mews.

  It was wearing a blue bow.

  Oh, God. His heart sank. From the looks of things, a horse and carriage had knocked into it, perhaps stunned or killed it.

  Grief and disappointment sickened and stunned him. He put his hands to his head. He couldn’t bear
telling her.

  He leaned very carefully, very reluctantly toward it.

  The cat stretched languidly, pointing all of its toes like a ballerina, exposing a luxuriously fluffy tawny-colored stomach to the sun. It blinked enormous green eyes sleepily, and then closed them again and curled one paw under its chin, looking for all the world like a prone, somnolent pugilist. With a fat, furry, belly.

  Adorable!

  Christ. He didn’t think he’d ever used that word to describe anything in his entire life. Perhaps he ought to rethink his stance on cats. This one had a belly like a . . . like a cloud . . . one just yearned to touch it. And the blue satin ribbon tied about its neck was irresistibly whimsical.

  For God’s sake!

  He crept toward it, very slowly, cautiously lest it do something cats were famous for, like bolt. It opened one eye and watched his progress, not so much with alarm as with a sort of dispassionate curiosity. Perhaps it was too drugged from the sun to startle easily. He saw its fat belly rise and fall with a great cat sigh.

  And when he was near, within distance of touching it, he lowered himself slowly into a crouch, crooning nonsense sounds like a looby, happy his knees didn’t crack like gunshots and send the beast scrambling.

  Slowly, slowly, painstakingly slowly, he extended a hand and—how could he resist?—he succumbed to temptation: he sank his hand gently into that soft fur.

  “There, wee Charbydis. Why don’t we—”

  The cat’s limbs snapped closed over his arm like a bear trap and it sunk its teeth into his hand, ears flattened evilly.

  Jules screamed like a woman.

  The cat seemed to like this. It clung harder. It kicked him like a rabbit with its hind legs.

  Jules shot to his feet. Charybdis continued to cling with all four limbs and all twenty claws. The pain was ridiculous. The cat blinked his beautiful eyes at Jules and readjusted its hold on him with jaw, gripping harder with teeth and claw, apparently intending to settle in for a while.

  His ears were so flat they looked like bat wings. He met the marquess’s eyes with something like equanimity.

  This was when he became aware that his scream had brought a crowd of worthy good Samaritans, workmen in caps and heavy boots and aprons, dashing to cluster about him, proving that not all hope was lost for the souls of Londoners.

  But they’d all come to abrupt halt at a wary distance. And now they were watching an aristocrat dance around with a cat stuck to his arm as though they’d actually paid to see it.

  “Perhaps if you dinna scream, guv,” suggested a man wearing a brown cap and a dirty linen shirt. “I think it encourages him.”

  “I know it encourages me wife!” one of them in big worn boots said.

  Chortles rippled through the crowd. Which maintained a distance, as if they were indeed watching a ring match.

  Panting through the burning pain, Jules got a grip on the cat’s nape with his other hand and gave a tug. Charybdis’s eyes went wide with indignation.

  One of the cat arms magically loosened enough to take a wild swipe across his torso.

  An impressed roar went up. “Gentleman Jackson has naught on that wee puss!”

  The bloody animal had striped him through his linen shirt! It burned like mad. He could just imagine the blood welling.

  “Ohhh! Get ’im, puss, puss!” someone shouted cheerfully.

  Jules was indignant.

  “I’ve another cat you can have, Yer Lordship. Willna fight back! I fear this one will best ye, wee bow and all!”

  Inevitably, the wagering began.

  “I’ve got a fiver on the guv!”

  “My blunt’s on the wee puss!”

  Much energetic shouting ensued. The cat’s eyes brightened. He adjusted his grip on the marquess, as though he’d only just begun to fight.

  “Will . . . any . . . of . . . you . . . help?” The marquess supported the cat’s furry, pliable spine with one hand and hoisted him up a bit, as it hurt less when the beast wasn’t hanging. An extravagant plume of a tail swished violently, thumping him in the ribs.

  It was very soft.

  “Well, ye see, Yer Lordship, we’re not certain of your goal,” said the man in the cap.

  “It . . . is . . . the . . . beloved pet of a lady and I . . . gah . . . wish to return it to her. Alive. I wish to extract it from my . . . oh God . . .” he hissed a breath “. . . flesh. Does that make it any clear . . . clearer?”

  The blue satin ribbon had come undone and was dangling almost rakishly, like a cravat.

  “Ye’ve no choice in the matter now, do ye? I think the wee beast is permanently attached to ye.”

  “Oh, no lady should ’ave a pet like that, sir. I’ve a badger what’ll suit. We can put a wee bow on it, too.”

  The comedy team of Cap and Boots had everyone laughing merrily again.

  “On the contrary,” Jules said grimly. “It suits her perfectly. I’ll give pound to each of you if you help me extricate this beast from my skin without harming it.”

  Money turned the conversation serious. Swift discussion regarding strategy and payment ensued, and Charybdis proved no match for three men, who managed to oh-so-carefully pry its claws from Jules’s arm. And when a kipper was produced from one man’s packed meal, Charybdis was finally persuaded to trade his bite of the marquess’s arm for fish. Fish had been the downfall of many a determined cat.

  Bleeding and punctured with a variety of little holes, the Marquess now held the untenably fluffy, preternaturally strong cat in his arms like a spring lamb—firmly but without squishing it. Its limbs paddled futilely below his crossed arms, but his bare flesh was out of snapping reach of the feline’s jaw.

  Charybdis finally seemed resigned to his fate and settled in more or less comfortably, almost agreeably, and ceased thrashing. One might have thought he was the picture of the content feline. Apart, that was, from an occasional unearthly malevolent yodel that seemed to begin in the depths of his body before it emerged from its mouth.

  It had the men who’d helped him crossing themselves and backing away uneasily.

  “Keep yer pound notes, guv, and best of luck to ye now. I suspect the young lady in question lives in Hades, as that thing is demon spawn in a bow. And as there’s hope for my salvation yet, so I willna be takin’ yer money.”

  He bowed, and spun on his big boot heels, and hurried off as fast as his sturdy short legs could carry him.

  But the others extended their palms. Which is how Jules gave away his available cash, and had none for a hack to get him to White’s, or to anyplace else, for that matter.

  He had no choice.

  And so the Marquess Dryden walked to White’s with an intermittently yodeling cat in his arms.

  Chapter 24

  “How . . . long ago?”

  Phoebe’s limbs gave way, and she sank down onto a settee and stared blankly into the parlor. She’d returned from her exhilarating ride in The Row on a sunny day to . . . the end of life as she knew it.

  Charybdis was gone.

  “An hour ago or so. Right out the door he went after molesting the parrot.” Having delivered her news, Lady Charlotte drifted out of the room again, dog tucked under her arm.

  “One of the maids likely left your chamber door open. We shall fire all of them,” Lady Marie assured Phoebe.

  Good God.

  “That won’t solve it,” Phoebe said dully.

  “It might be amusing to do anyway,” Antoinette suggested to her sister. “It would certainly put the fear of God into the rest of the maids.”

  Phoebe looked up at her, astounded and not entirely certain she was jesting.

  “We’ll get you another pussycat.” Marie patted her knee.

  Phoebe turned her head slowly, incredulously, toward Marie. It was her nightmare, to be stripped this vulnerable in front of these people. People who thought a cat was like a pelisse, and could be replaced by placing an order somewhere.

  Her palms were ice. Her stomach a cauldron
of misery.

  “I have to go looking for him.” She stood up. Sat down. Stood up again.

  She who fancied herself so strong felt cut off at the knees and panicky as a child. Who knew that all that remained between her and helpless devastation was a cat?

  “He could be anywhere by now,” Marie soothed.

  “You must be a joy at funerals, Marie,” Phoebe said tightly.

  Antoinette frowned faintly at her sister. Then shrugged. It was clear that they hadn’t a notion what to do about this sudden interjection of a dreary minor chord into their gaiety.

  Lisbeth drifted into the room and game to an abrupt halt, as though she’d noticed a stench. Clearly the atmosphere was funereal.

  “What in God’s name happened?”

  “Phoebe’s cat left,” Lady Marie explained.

  Phoebe jerked her head up. “Left! For God’s sake, it wasn’t as though he boarded a hack bound for Drury Lane. He seems to have escaped from my room and run out the front door.”

  Ah, she realized. And here it was. In fairy tales and myths, some terrible sacrifice is endured for wanting the forbidden, the out-of-reach. Please not Charybdis. Please please please.

  “Someone must have left the door to your room open,” Lisbeth said mildly, searching out a reflective surface in the room to nervously admire her reflection. “A maid, most likely.”

  Phoebe looked up at her slowly then.

  And knew.

  Lisbeth’s head inevitably drifted back around, drawn by the force of Phoebe’s stare.

  They stared at each other so long that the Silverton sisters began to shift restlessly.

  You have everything, Phoebe thought. And still you feel so powerless that you had to best me, somehow. You had to take my cat from me. You’ll have Jules in the end, and still.