“Caught a knight of the road, have you?” the magistrate asked, nodding his head knowingly. Or perhaps his head just naturally bobbed.
“I wish to question him. I suspect he and his cohorts intended to kidnap my wife.” Gavin placed Dillian proprietarily next to the inn desk and prepared to walk out, leading the magistrate after him.
Dillian refused to remain where placed. She hurried in their paths.
As the two men strode toward the carriage, her gaze caught on a furtive shadow near the paddock. With a shout, she directed their attention toward a man mounting a horse just on the other side of the fence.
“That’s him! He’s getting away!”
Gavin cursed as he raced toward the paddock, pulling his pistol from his pocket as he did so. The magistrate wandered with curiosity to investigate the waiting carriage, but Dillian already knew what he would find: nothing. She broke into a run across the muddy yard as Gavin grabbed the mane of the nearest horse and hauled himself upward, riding bareback as he took off after the fleeing figure.
A pistol barked, and she could see the flash of a firing pan against the night sky. A third horse and rider broke out of the shadows, following the escaping prisoner. To Dillian’s horror, she saw Gavin’s horse rear and fling its rider to the ground. The last she saw of him was his dark cloak billowing against the night sky.
Screaming, she raced in his direction, forgetting the magistrate, forgetting the escaping highwayman, forgetting whoever it was who had freed him. She saw only the specter of Gavin’s body flying through the air, smashing into the ground at an awkward angle. She saw the horse trotting back toward the barn and food. She couldn’t see Gavin.
Ignoring the tears streaming down her cheeks, she cried, “Where the devil are you, you stupid man!” as mud sloshed over her slippers and up her dress. The paddock was worse than the courtyard. She slid and barely avoided landing seat first in the mire.
Recovering rapidly, she raced toward the place where she had seen him last. “I’ll kill you if you’re not dead already,” she shouted, hitting a particularly smelly pile that wasn’t mud.
She wanted to kill him. She wanted to die. She couldn’t imagine how they would fare without the marquess helping them. She didn’t want him dying on her account. She damned well wasn’t finished with him yet.
She didn’t know how much of this she muttered as she climbed the other side of the fence and found his cloaked figure pushing out of the mud on the far side. She just heard his chuckles and fought the urge to shove him back down again.
“You gamble-gated clod, I suppose you think this is funny!” She stalked toward him, placing her hands on her hips rather than grabbing his hair and pulling him up to hug him to death. She had never learned a great deal about expressing affection from her father’s friends. She did know a great deal about insulting them into getting up when they were down.
“Immensely funny.” Then with a strength Dillian hadn’t expected, Gavin grabbed her arm with his muddy hand and jerked her down on top of him. “Absolutely hilarious.” Pushing her flat on her back in the mud, he kissed her until she could say nothing more.
Chapter Twenty-three
“I can’t arrive at Blanche’s townhouse wearing this,” Dillian muttered, picking at the coarse cotton skirt irritating the flesh above her stockings. A decent petticoat would have helped. The maid they’d bought the garments from apparently wasn’t given to wearing undergarments.
Gavin gave the sagging neckline of her bodice a look of interest, and she sent him a baleful glare. He apparently enjoyed the show so much he forgot to keep his hood pulled around his face. Her nipples ached in response to his heated gaze.
“I rather like it,” he replied, turning his attention back to the horse as the carriage rolled down the road in the broad light of a new day. “I’m having second thoughts about our plan. I think I would much prefer taking you with me as my simple country mistress. I wonder if Mellon has decent bathing facilities in his London house?”
Dillian sent him a look meant to be angry, but she flushed all over as she followed the direction of his thoughts. The simple pan of water they’d stood in last night to cleanse the mud off had led to some activities she hadn’t thought possible. She had taken a shameless man to her bed. And her bath. The memory of him standing there naked, dripping water and soap, still aroused her. She wouldn’t imagine what he could do with a real tub.
“I would be of little use ensconced in your bedroom as a mistress and nothing more,” she said scornfully, then blushed even more as she realized what she’d said. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He gave her a laughing look but didn’t take advantage of the opening she’d left him on the number of “uses” he might find. She liked his eyes when they laughed like that. They looked brown now and not the deep black she’d thought them. “I’d be of little use to Blanche,” she amended hastily.
“And I wouldn’t get much done, either,” he admitted. “So we’ll put ourselves in cousin Marian’s hands and hope for the best.”
Traveling in daylight, with the constant traffic of horses and wagons on this main highway, they had little to fear of the prior night’s highwaymen. But as they drew close to the mudflats on the outskirts of London, in sight of the brown smog hanging over the city, Gavin pulled the carriage off the road. Dillian looked up at him questioningly.
“My cousin Marian lives in an area well traveled by the ton. I don’t want it generally known that I’ve arrived in company with a woman. Stay inside the carriage until I can send a maid out for you. The two of you can exchange shawls or whatever, and you can come in the house carrying one of your bags, as if you were the maid returning to the house after fetching something I’d sent for.”
Dillian gave him a scathing glance at this role of maidservant, but she saw no better alternative. Reluctantly, she allowed him to help her down from the driver’s seat and install her inside with the shades drawn.
The exchange went as smoothly as planned, the maid remaining inside the carriage while a groom drove back to the mews to park it. Dillian assumed the servant slipped from the carriage then and returned to the house while she and Gavin faced the amused and heavily pregnant Marian Montague, the marquess’s cousin.
“My word, the two of you look like something from a village costume ball. Gavin, you cannot go about London in that Gothic cloak. You look like a smuggler escaped from Cornwall. And those trousers!” She covered her mouth to hide her laughter, and shook her head when the marquess growled and stormed around the room, examining her enormous collection of bric-a-brac.
“I didn’t come here to become a fashion plate. This is serious business, Marian. Now, put a cap on it. Miss...” He hesitated over the name he should use for Dillian but remembered the one they discussed in time. “Miss Reynolds is your only concern. There must be no appearance of a relationship between us, so you cannot be seen together. We merely want your advice.”
The strangeness of the situation had kept Dillian silent. She felt like a peasant next to Marian Montague’s dark loveliness. She could certainly see the Lawrence resemblance. No pink-and-white miss this. Rich brown hair dangled in elegant curls around a complexion of creamy tan, accenting a wide rosy mouth that laughed frequently. She liked the dancing highlights of eyes that matched Gavin’s almost exactly.
Throwing his anxious, pacing figure a quick look, Dillian dived into the conversation without permission. “I need only reach Lady Blanche’s house. She keeps a caretaker and his wife to look after things. I can send one around to the modiste. I just cannot conceive of how I can communicate with his lordship. I do not go about in society on my own. I can see the solicitor, and I’m certain Neville will storm the threshold at some date so I may ask about the missing papers. But how will Lord Effingham and I communicate?”
Dillian felt odd calling Gavin by his title. She had scoffed and called him beast and other names, but she had never addressed others when speaking of him. The intimacy between them was
so fresh in her mind, that this formality was awkward. From the fierce dark look he sent her, she assumed he felt the same.
“I damn well will not go about in society if you’re not there,” he growled. “And I’ll not skulk about the back alleys of London getting to you.” He turned his glare on Marian as if her pregnancy at this time was done just to annoy him. “Since you can’t go with me, you must find some other means of introducing Miss Reynolds to society.”
Laughing eyes darted from Gavin to Dillian and back again. “Of course, dear cousin, anything to appease the angry beast. I really wish Reginald were here. He would love to see this. The hermit of Effingham forced from his lair by a woman. Is Lady Blanche quite as beautiful as they say?”
“More so, Lady Marian,” Dillian answered. “She is as beautiful on the inside as the outside. I will do anything for her.”
The laughter left their hostess’s eyes as she regarded Dillian more carefully. “Just Marian. I do not use my honorary title. Lady Blanche must be a saint indeed if you wish to sacrifice yourself for her. Personally, I think sacrifice highly overrated, but I understand the concept. Since we have agreed it is best that we give the appearance of never having met, I cannot offer any of my family or Reginald’s as your introduction. Perhaps we can ask my half sister’s husband if he knows of someone. That would be sufficiently distant, wouldn’t it?”
“I hate to impose...” At the militant gleam in Marian’s eyes, Dillian accepted her proposal. “I think that would work. He wouldn’t be a complete stranger to Lord Effingham, in that case, so it would make sense if such a person introduced us in public. We can take it from there.”
Gavin interrupted. “A caretaker and his wife isn’t sufficient protection. I want a burly footman at every door, around the clock. And you will need a maid to go about with you. You’re not to leave here until they’re hired.”
“That is the most ridiculous—”
“You’ll do it, or I’ll move in with you,” Gavin threatened. “No more burning houses or kidnappers. You obtain the papers. I’ll make the proper connections. We transfer the papers to the connections. Then we’ll get the hell out of here. That’s it.”
Both women stared at him, but he remained adamant. Dillian suffered an odd fluttering in her midsection as she translated the look Effingham fastened on her. She’d become his property, and he protected what was his. She hadn’t bargained for this. She didn’t know if she liked it. She just knew she’d run up against an elemental force that she couldn’t control any more than she could control the wind or fog.
* * * *
“I’ve brought you the lady’s maid you requested, miss.”
Dillian looked up with irritation at the hunchbacked footman Gavin had evidently hired off the street. Unkempt black hair hid his face, and his clothes hung like sacks from his arms and legs. She didn’t intend to stay long enough to buy livery for his hirelings, but she wished she had some excuse for clothing this beggar.
She wished she had some excuse for throwing him out. Something in his manner was not only too familiar, but too insolent for a servant. Still, if Gavin thought him competent, she couldn’t quarrel. Only one other footman had applied for the position. That scarcely made for adequate protection in a house this large.
She’d thought the service would send over several maids for an interview. Evidently a temporary position attracted few applicants. Dillian would have preferred waiting until the modiste had finished pinning the gown she wore, but the faster this charade was ended, the better she would feel.
“Show her in, Grimley.” Dillian gestured to a place among the bolts of cloth and scattered accoutrements, where the maid might stand without scattering the modiste’s haphazard arrangement.
Dillian thought her eyes might fall out when the apparition appeared in the doorway. Even the modiste stopped to stare at the newcomer. Her assistant gasped, then giggled. The apparition merely stood where placed. Grimley lingered in the doorway, rubbing his hands with satisfaction.
“Indira Muhammed, miss,” he announced proudly, as if he’d sought her out himself.
The figure cloaked in white robes and veil didn’t move or say a word. Suddenly, the very bizarreness of the situation struck Dillian.
The modiste kneeled at her feet, staring, her mouth full of pins. The assistant buried her giggles in a bolt of spectacular peacock blue cloth. The unsightly footman in beggar’s clothes and hunched back preened like the most supercilious butler she’d ever encountered.
And the lady’s maid—the lady’s maid who was to rig her out in the height of fashion, dress her hair, guide her in the rigors of society—that lady’s maid, stood before her in white sheets and covered head to toe in veils. Unless the whole world had gone mad, something was seriously amiss.
Battling hysterical laughter Dillian focused her sharp gaze on the obnoxious footman pinning him in place as she spoke to the modiste. “Madame, if you and your assistant will leave me now, I would talk to the maid alone. You should find tea in the sitting room.”
The footman’s eyes widened, and he began to back out beneath Dillian’s scrutiny.
“Grimley, keep your posterior where it is. Don’t move a muscle.”
As the modiste and her assistant departed, chattering laughingly, Dillian turned her gaze to the passive white-garbed maid, but her words were for the footman. “Grimley, shut that door—now.”
As soon as the door shut, Dillian stepped down from the chair, dragging her half-pinned hem through the debris of fabrics and lace. “Blanche, so help me, if that is you, I’ll scalp you alive. And if that wretched excuse for a footman is O’Toole, I’ll go after him with a butcher’s knife, I swear I will.”
The laughter from behind the veil was very distinctly Blanche’s.
“See, I told you, Michael. Dillian has eyes like a hawk. It would never work.” The figure in white threw back the veil, revealing the fading burns of Blanche’s fair cheeks and eyes undisguised by bandages or scarf. She blinked rapidly in the daylight, then adjusted the veil to shield her eyes again.
The hunchbacked footman collapsed cross-legged amid the billows of petticoats and netting scattered across the settee. Shoulders straightened, he lost the hump and a few dozen years. Dancing eyes regarded the disarray and the two women in its midst. “But wasn’t it worth the try? The expression on her face was worth its weight in gold. I’ll treasure it always.”
Dillian grabbed a pair of sewing shears and came at him with points upended. “I’ll murder you, O’Toole. I’ll cut your throat and slice you into little bits and mail what’s left back to your brother.”
His eyes went wide at this mention of Gavin. “Damn you, Whitnell, where’d you hear that piece of nonsense? I have no brother.”
She grinned malevolently. “Oh, no? Want to keep it quiet a little longer? Or shall I broadcast it to the streets? Gavin won’t mind.”
“That’s not funny. I didn’t figure you for a spiteful witch.” Michael turned to Blanche, who listened with amazement and curiosity. “I’ll leave you in her hands. I’ll be about. If you need me, just call loud enough. Someone will hear and get word to me.”
He stood to go, but Dillian planted herself in front of the door. “If that means you’ll have the household permeated with your spies, forget it, O’Toole. Or shall I call you Lawrence? It makes no difference to me, but Blanche deserves better. How dare you endanger her by bringing her here?”
O’Toole halted and regarded her warily. “Is that what this is about? Blanche? Did you seriously think I would do anything to endanger her?”
Lilting laughter drifted from the other side of the room, where Blanche wrestled with the ungainly veil, trying to remove it from her hair. “I wrapped myself in sheets and went down and told the Arinmede cooks I needed to visit the nearest coaching inn. They went into hysterics, but the one called Matilda patted my hand and said she’d see I reached town. I almost escaped without Michael knowing.”
“Matilda’s practically blin
d. Half the time, I think she believes Gavin is the late marquess. She probably thought Lady Blanche the marchioness dressed for a ball.” Michael relaxed his shoulders and eyed the shears in Dillian’s hand with interest. “Could you really use that thing like a sword?”
“I’d rather have a sword,” she replied grumpily, throwing the shears on a heap of material and retreating to the settee. “I’d rather you dressed me in gentlemen’s clothes, gave me a sword and pistol, and let me go after Neville. This is ridiculous.” She glared at Blanche. “What the devil did you think you could do here dressed like that?”
Blanche shrugged. “When Mac came racing up telling Michael you’d almost been kidnapped, I figured I had to do something. I couldn’t think of a better way of disguising myself.”
“Your eyes? Don’t they hurt? It’s bright in here.”
Dillian noted Michael already moved toward the draperies, pulling them closed even as they spoke. The veil had served two purposes then: disguise and bandage.
“I can see,” Blanche replied defensively. “It stings a little, but I’ll live with it. I can’t go around in scarves for the rest of my life.”
“You could go around blind the rest of your life,” Michael said harshly. “If you must do this your way, you have to keep the veil on. I told you that.”
Blanche stuck her tongue out at him, then draped her head in one of the pieces of shimmery see-through material. Dillian wasn’t certain she could believe her eyes. Blanche never did anything so improper. Blanche had no idea what kind of ideas that gesture might give a man.
She turned and caught enough of Michael’s expression to know the notion hadn’t escaped him. She’d seen that hungry gaze on Gavin’s face often enough.
This couldn’t be happening. At least, Blanche didn’t seem aware of her footman’s feelings. Or did she? Of course, if O’Toole was really a Lawrence, he wasn’t precisely a footman—although being the bastard brother of a bankrupt marquess didn’t raise his desirability any great extent.
The Marquess Page 23