“Oh, good sirs, ’elp us please!” Tizzie cried as Montague moaned and lapsed into incoherent French. “We wuz set upon by footpads,” the actress informed her audience, “and they ’ave done murder to Misyoor Montague. ’elp us, do, ta get ’im inside.”
“’elp us, ’elp us,” Lizzie parroted, allowing her low neckline to droop just a bit more under the strain of lugging the ample Montague toward the gin-shop door, and the sight of her buxom figure prompted three slightly built beggars to break from the crowd and offer their assistance to the ladies.
“’ere now,” said one of the beggars, a man covered head to foot in hideous running sores meant to illicit pity from passersby who would then drop pennies in his cup, “Oi’ll ’elp ya, girlie.”
“Hard to believe those sores aren’t real,” Kit commented, watching Ben take charge of the situation, Bob and Del assisting him as all five moved inside the gin shop and commandeered center stage by means of Montague’s bloody appearance and the women’s loud lamentations of woe and impending disaster.
“’e’s dyin’, ’e’s dyin’,” Tizzie screeched, ripping at her hair as Montague groaned and allowed his tongue to loll obscenely from the corner of his bloody mouth.
“Not ’ere, ’e ain’t!” the tapster contradicted angrily. “Get ’im the bloody ’ell outa m’shop afore Oi finish the job wot the other coves started. ’ave ’im do ’is ruddy bleedin’ somewheres else.”
“Lizzie,” Tizzie shouted loudly as the tapster moved to make good his threat, “show ’em the beans. Iffen they sees the lour mebbee summun will ’elp us fetch pur Misyoor Montague a autem bawler—’tis too late fer naught else but the eternity box for ’im anyways.”
At Tizzie’s reassuring wink, Lizzie reached deep inside her bodice and pulled out a leather drawstring bag heavy with gold. The crowd of raggedy beggars and narrow-eyed cutthroats concentrated their attention on the bag Lizzie held aloft, and it took no more than a second for one of their number to make a grab for it—the man with the open running sores, to be exact.
Instant pandemonium broke loose in the gin shop on the ground floor of number fourteen as the leather pouch came undone and a shower of gold guineas rained down among the crowd, who dropped to their knees to scrabble in the filth after the bouncing, rolling coins.
“Now!” Kit hissed to Ozzy, breaking from the shadows as Del stood in the doorway and waved the all-clear. As Tizzie and Lizzie, their part in the scheme completed, were led out of the shop by Bob, who had been commissioned with the job of returning the ladies safely to Berkeley Square, Kit and Ozzy slid into the gin shop undetected, squeezed past the mass of humanity pummeling each other on the floor, and passed through the door Ben had promised them led to a stairway to the upper floors. When Kit took one last look back into the shop it was to see Montague, his gunshot-rent, bloody shirt easy to spot in the fray, happily knocking heads together as if it were the greatest of good fun. “Come to me, little cabbage,” Kit heard the chef croon, stalking the tapster who had refused a dying man sanctuary, and the earl only wished he could stay and watch more of the melee.
The sounds of the fight reached the ears of Tiny and Goliath, who had been standing at the rear of number fourteen waiting for precisely that signal to begin their part of the rescue. “Up we go,” Goliath chortled as Tiny boosted his small friend up to the windowsill far above them. Goliath disappeared for a moment, only to reappear at the back door into the alley, which he had opened from the inside. “In ya get, Tiny,” he whispered from the darkness. “Hoist me up now, friend—we’s ta track up the dancers afore that Ives cove can trig it outta ’ere. We’ll teach ’m ta snaggle our missus!”
IVES HAD BEEN BUSY composing an inspired note to Lord Bourne detailing instructions on the delivery of the ransom when the commotion from the ground floor reached the apartment on the fourth floor. Sending one of his fellows downstairs to check on the noise, Ives was not best pleased to see his captive smiling at him, obviously certain that her rescue was at hand.
“I warned you, Mr. Ives,” Jennie said pleasantly. “You will soon be prodigiously sorry you have gone up against my husband. He’s been mentioned in dispatches, you know, for his bravery in battle. I do believe you are about to see all your nasty plans fall to pieces. Perhaps he will go easy on you if you release me now. Else—” she shrugged diffidently “—I vow I will not be held accountable for the consequences. Lord Bourne has a fearsome temper when he’s been crossed.”
Ives did not like the effect Jennie’s calm assurance had on his two remaining hirelings. Damn the woman anyway, he thought fiercely. She’s supposed to be crying and swooning, not sitting there grinning like a child who’s just been handed a birthday treat. Didn’t the chit know anything? So far the only fear she’d shown at all was to worry that everyone else would be worrying about her. It just wasn’t natural, Ives reflected, giving the countess a nasty look, and besides, it took all the fun out of the thing. If he was going to have to gather up the ransom and flee the country the least she could do was act as if he intimidated her a little bit.
When his cohort came back to say that it was a big to-do about nothing, only some fistfight among the customers of the gin shop, Ives felt it was his turn for a little gloating. “So much for your awe-inspiring soldier husband, madam. There’ll be no rescue, only a gentlemanly exchange—his money for your life. No one knows you’re here, you know, and even if they did it wouldn’t do them any good. I can just see it now—the high and mighty Earl of Bourne sauntering down Cow Cross Street, sticking out like a sore thumb. He’d have his throat slit in a minute for his trouble.” The man’s features turned hard as he attempted to wipe the smile from Jennie’s face once and for all. “Now shut up, or your husband is going to be paying good money for a lifeless corpse.”
But it was Jennie who got in the last word. “I doubt it, Mr. Ives. Kit wouldn’t pay a bent penny for you—dead or alive!”
THE STEEP, NARROW STAIRS led up into the darkness, twisting and turning as they rose past three floors of apartments that Ben told his master were rented out by the month, the day and, at times, the hour, for any number of reasons—none of them very savory. By the time the small party reached the fourth floor, Ozzy was holding a scented handkerchief to his nose to smother the combined smell of cooked cabbage, old sweat, and human waste. The tilted floor creaked slightly as they tiptoed across it, heading for the nearest door. Kit put his ear to it, listening for some sound, and then stepped a few paces back, clearly intending to break down the barrier with his shoulder, but Ben stopped him just before he could fling his body against the wood. “’ere now, guv’nor, iffen ya wants ta dub the jigger, ’ow ’bout usin’ the locksmith’s daughter?” the former pickpocket asked quietly, dangling a large set of keys in front of Kit’s eyes invitingly.
“Ben’s a right fine dimber damber man, ain’t ’e, guv’nor?” Del whispered, obviously proud of Ben’s talent in relieving the tapster of his keys. “It’s proud Oi am wot knows ’im.”
While Ozzy stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth to stifle his mirth, Kit bowed his head to Ben and took possession of the keys. Silent as a band of mice tiptoeing over cotton wadding, Kit turned lock after lock along the long hallway, trial and error showing him that a single brass key fit all the doors. All but two of the rooms were empty, with a snoring drunk and a couple lost in each other and unaware of any intrusion being the sole inhabitants of the other rooms.
But when they reached the second-to-the-last door near the end of the hall, Kit motioned that he could hear voices on the other side of the wooden barrier. Pocketing the set of keys, Kit chose to crash through the door by running against it full tilt with his shoulder, a move that caught the four men inside the room unawares and served to set loose a rousing cheer from the female tied up in the corner. Unfortunately, this move also caused Kit to cannon out of control all the way to the far wall, and while Ozzy quickly nabbed one of Ives’s hirelings and Ben and Del succeeded in tackling and sitting on the second,
the third man and Ives scrambled out the doorway untouched.
Dropping a quick kiss on the end of his wife’s nose, Kit ran back the way he had come in time to see that Ives and the last man had split up, the hireling heading for the back stairs (and the waiting Tiny), and Ives choosing to escape via the front stairs that led to the gin shop. “Watch Jennie!” Kit called back over his shoulder as he made a grab for the rickety stair rail and set off in pursuit of Ives, anger lending wings to his feet.
Ives had reached the ground floor and had taken two steps into the gin shop when Kit, launching himself like a pouncing tiger, caught him from the back, the two of them tumbling into the middle of the fight that was just then winding down. As Kit dragged Ives to his feet and set himself in a sparring attitude, the crowd quickly formed a circle around the two combatants, eager to see what looked to be a fine display of cross-and-jostle work.
They were not to be disappointed. Both Bourne and Ives had studied under Gentleman Jackson, and being much of the same size and weight, the men put on a much better show than any mill in recent memory. But anger lent strength to Kit’s punches, and it was not long before Dean Ives lay sprawled against the bar, his legs splayed out in front of him as he lapsed into unconsciousness. While Kit stood at the ready, more than willing to go a few more rounds, Ben entered the room and, looking about happily, spied a nearby slop jar, the contents of which he dumped over Ives’s head, supposedly to revive him.
The ring of onlookers, still cheering over the spectacle, parted then, and Goliath came bounding into the room, doing handsprings as he made a path for the giant Tiny, who was carrying the third hireling under his arm like a sack of grain. “I be done wit ’im now,” Tiny told the earl, dropping the unconscious man at Kit’s feet. “D’ya be wantin’ ’im dead, master? ’e’s jist sleepin’ fer now, but I be ’appy ta fix that iffen ya jist give Tiny the word.”
Sight of the huge black man had the customers of the gin shop at number fourteen thinking wistfully of their homes and beds, and the crowd thinned rapidly, leaving the tapster quite alone to face the strangers in his midst. “Makes me no never mind,” that man piped up helpfully to answer Tiny’s question. “Jist git ’em outta ’ere, an’ Jack Gooden’ll keep mum about it.”
“I’ll just bet you will,” Kit opined thinly, his level stare effectively wiping the smile from the tapster’s face. “Why don’t you be a good fellow and play least in sight for a bit, hmmm?” Kit suggested smoothly, and the man, wiping his broad hands nervously on his leather apron, backed hurriedly toward the open door to the street.
“Take care of things here,” Kit ordered Ben, turning toward the stairs once more, looking every inch the earl even dressed as he was in Renfrew’s shabby gardening clothes, intent on returning to his kidnapped bride and thus missing Tiny’s actions as, following Ben’s orders, the giant picked up Ives with one hand and hung the man on a hook by the collar of his stylish jacket.
Kit ran up the stairs two at a time, dabbing a trickle of blood from the cut on his cheek lest Jennie fly into the boughs demanding he see a doctor. Bursting into the room down the hall from the fourth landing, a bit breathless from both the fight with Ives and his long climb, his eyes searched out Jennie, who was rubbing her wrists where her bonds had so recently been. “Kitten!” he shouted, breaking into a wide grin as the sound of his voice had her blond head jerking upward, her beautiful face alight with joy.
“Kit!” she exclaimed, hopping to her feet and pitchforking herself into his widespread arms. “I knew you would come for me.”
Raining kisses over her face and neck, Kit at last gave in to the fear that he had felt at thinking he had lost her—lost his darling kitten—and as Jennie’s arms closed tightly around his neck he growled fiercely, “Oh, my love. My dearest, dearest love. I’ll never let you out of my sight again! I adore you, my little kitten.”
Ozzy clamped his hands down over Del’s ears and turned the footman toward the door. “Come with me, my good man. You’re too young to see this. Besides, it does me a bad turn to see one of my own kind drooling and slobbering like some lovesick calf.” So saying, Ozzy Norwood shepherded his charge and their two captives out of sight of the loving couple and in the direction of the gin shop and more manly pursuits—like trussing up the baddies and hauling them off to the roundhouse before going somewhere private and getting themselves roaring drunk.
IT WASN’T UNTIL MUCH LATER, shed of their well-wishers, bathed, fed, and snuggled up together in the large bed in the master chamber in Berkeley Square, that Jennie brought up a subject that had been teasing at her mind. “Kit, darling,” she crooned, lazily marching her fingers up his bare chest, “about Mr. Ives’s helpers. They were not a very nice sort, you understand, but there was this one young one…”
“Oh?” Kit urged, his intuition telling him he had better gather his wits about him before she spoke again.
“Yes,” she went on thoughtfully. “They gagged me, you know, until I promised not to scream. The young one—I think his name was Hughie—he used my own handkerchief when I protested about the dirty rag they were planning to use. He was so young, Kit,” she went on, shifting slightly to look up into her husband’s eyes imploringly. “Not a hardened criminal, surely. So I was thinking…”
The Earl of Bourne, feeling a comforting warmth growing deep in his chest, merely smiled and sighed, “Go on, kitten. I’m listening.”
EPILOGUE
SIR CEDRIC MAITLAND was in his glory, dandlying his grandson Christopher on his knee while his proud parents looked on fondly. “Do you like that, Christopher?” the man asked the toothless, smiling infant. “One day soon I’ll take you riding to hounds with me.”
“What?” Kit asked, feigning shock. “With your disky heart?”
“What disky heart?” his father-in-law blustered before ducking his head sheepishly. “Oh, that. I was only funning with you, son, didn’t you know?”
“I knew,” Kit answered softly, lifting his wife’s hand to his lips.
Sir Cedric relaxed and decided to take credit for his daughter’s happy marriage. “You’d have gotten around to marrying my baby girl sooner or later. I just helped things along a bit.”
Jennie laughed at her papa’s silliness and went back to the mail sitting in her lap. Spying her cousin Lucy’s childish scrawl, she opened the letter and steeled herself to decipher the crossed lines dotted with inky blotches and crossed-out words. “Oh dear,” she sighed at last, putting the letter down.
“What’s your cousin up to this time?” Kit asked, taking in his wife’s frown. “Don’t tell me she’s still chasing poor old Thorpe all over creation.”
“It’s ten times worse than that, darling. It seems Lord Thorpe has somehow been turned out of society in disgrace and Lucy, that dear, sweet girl, has sworn to clear his good name.”
Kit cocked his head to one side. “That’s our Lucy—never say die.”
“Well, I think she’s wonderfully brave!” Jennie declared, rising to pick up Christopher and kiss him before handing the child over to the loving care of Tizzie and Lizzie. “Time for your nap, sweetness,” she crooned, nuzzling the infant’s chubby neck, “and time for our luncheon.”
As they adjourned to the dining room arm in arm behind Sir Cedric, Kit kissed Jennie’s temple and soothed, “Don’t fret, kitten. If I know Lucy, and I’m afraid I do, London is about to be set on its collective heels!”
“Yes, love.” Jennie smiled back happily. “And Lord Thorpe—I wonder how he’ll fare, once Lucy gets the bit between her teeth.”
Kit chuckled at the thought. “I can’t say for sure, but I’ll wager my best hunter the toplofty Lord Thorpe will never know what hit him!”
“Poor man,” Jennie giggled, her green eyes dancing. “What I wouldn’t give to be there when his lordship realizes Lucy intends to become a dragon in his defense.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to miss the fun, pet, as Christopher and I have need of you here. Most especially me. Didn’t you
say you were going to show me your secret place in the Home Wood this afternoon?” he said, waggling his eyebrows at her conspiratorially. “The place nobody else can find where you like to lie on the soft grass and gaze up at the sky through the overhanging trees?”
“Why, Christopher Wilde,” Jennie simpered suggestively, leaning into his shoulder as he pulled out her chair. “Whatever do you have in mind?”
“Dessert, my dear,” he whispered in her ear, sending a delicious tingle up her spine. “Just a little dessert.”
“What a lovely idea,” Jennie breathed softly, blushing like a young maiden as her papa discreetly coughed into his napkin, pretending he hadn’t heard a single word of the lovers’ exchange.
Supremely satisfied with himself and the world at large, he then leaned back comfortably in his chair, silently hoping that Montague had prepared his favorite strawberry tarts for dessert. To each generation its own idea of pleasure, Sir Cedric heartily believed, and at his age, downing three strawberry tarts—his and Jennie’s and Kit’s—in one sitting was all the adventure he could stand. With any luck at all, he then told himself complacently, making yet another wish as out of the corners of his eyes he watched Kit and his daughter gazing into each other’s eyes like moonstruck calves, young Christopher is not destined to be my only grandchild.
Happily, as it turned out, Sir Cedric was not to be disappointed on either account.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8179-4
THE BELEAGUERED LORD BOURNE
Copyright © 1985 by Kathryn Seidick.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
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