London's Last True Scoundrel

by Christina Brooke

  Ever.

  * * *

  “Damnation! Bloody, bloody hell!” A string of even fouler curses issued from Davenport’s lips as the pain in his head pounded into acute agony.

  The torture wasn’t just in his head, as he discovered from a mental scan of his body. He ached all over, too.

  He lay on some kind of straw pallet in some kind of barn. He had no earthly idea where he was. For several fraught seconds in which his heart stopped and his breath suspended in his lungs he thought they’d got him. Caught up with him at last.

  The mysterious, nameless they who had been following him for some time now.

  He was unbound, at least. There was no one standing guard, ready to restrain him if he tried to escape. The door to the barn lay wide open, letting in a pale, watery light.

  When his breathing calmed and his mind cleared a little, he let his head fall back against the straw and blew out a breath of relief. He remembered now. Xavier and the drugged brandy, Lydgate and Beckenham smuggling him out of London.

  He’d woken, taken one look at his captors, and laid into them, fists flying.

  There’d been nothing stylish or controlled about that particular fight. Wouldn’t do at all in Jackson’s Boxing Saloon. He grinned as he remembered a particularly nasty uppercut to Beckenham’s jaw.

  Witness the suffering in his right hand. He might well have broken it.

  Experimentally, he flexed his fingers and swore again. Perhaps not quite broken.

  Well, that was a blessing.

  Of course they’d overpowered him. He wasn’t a match for two of his cousins, though he’d given a damned good account of himself for someone who’d been drugged and tossed in the back of a farmer’s cart and driven out of town.

  His brow creased. Steyne hadn’t been there. Left the others to do his dirty work. Typical.

  And a great pity. Davenport would have taken immense pleasure in kicking the supercilious marquis in the bollocks.

  Drugged. He hadn’t seen that coming. But he should have known that when Westruthers make up their mind to do something, it gets done. More fool he, to let down his guard. He should have told them all to go to hell when they’d cornered him at Steyne’s house that night.

  What time was it, anyway? It wasn’t exactly sunny, but what light there was told him it was daytime. He took out his timepiece, to discover the face had a crack in it. No doubt one more result of his set-to with Lydgate and Beckenham.

  He hoped they’d suffered a fraction of his wounds. He hoped they were sore today.

  He put the timepiece to his ear and heard the steady tick. Still working, then, despite the damage to the casing. He stared at the hands of the clock face. They blurred, then resolved again into a position that told him it was two o’clock. Afternoon, then.

  He needed to get up, but he was reluctant to leave the dubious comfort of the sweet-smelling straw to test his body’s capabilities. He ought to be thankful, he supposed, that they had not dumped him in a pigsty or a horse trough.

  Too much to hope they’d be somewhere nearby, waiting for him, ready to convey him somewhere more civilized, like Cribb’s Parlour, perhaps, or his town house in Mayfair.

  He wondered where the hell he was.

  In a moment, he’d get up and find out.

  Just give him a moment.…

  The moment in question passed all too quickly for his liking.

  He closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and defied every screaming part of his body to get to his feet.

  * * *

  A half hour later, Davenport rode through a light drizzle toward Stamford.

  He’d borrowed a stocky big gelding from the farmer in whose barn he’d been dumped and requested directions to the nearest posting inn.

  They’d left him in the middle of Lincolnshire, miles from his estate, with no funds and no means of transport. In the condition he was in, battered, bruised, and covered in bits of straw, it had taken a hell of a lot of toploftiness, charm, and persuasion to make that farmer part with his nag.

  Davenport would be true to his word, however. He had a few coins in his pockets, and he’d pay some ostler or other to ride the horse back to the farm.

  A cursory scan of the surrounding countryside didn’t yield any glimpse of the man who had followed him in London. Maybe the fellow had been caught napping by the Westruther cousins’ sudden kidnapping of his quarry. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony?

  He couldn’t shake a nagging sense of unease, however. In the years since he’d disappeared from society, he’d learned to trust his instincts.

  Davenport urged his horse into a canter. He’d be damned if he’d return meekly to Davenport, whether someone followed him or not. If he let his cousins interfere in his pleasures now, there’d be no getting rid of them. They’d have him sober as a judge and married to some straitlaced heiress as quick as he could stare. The mere thought of marriage to a proper English miss made him shudder.

  He hadn’t reached the village before he noted a figure coming toward him. Little and bedraggled, it was, on foot and lugging a pair of bandboxes.

  And female. Yes, most definitely female. Slender, but rounded in all the places where a female should be round.

  With a click of his tongue, he slowed his mount to a walk.

  “Ho, there!” he called. “Might I be of assistance, miss?”

  The rain had thickened; it dotted her face as she lifted it to peer up at him.

  Woebegone little features showed beneath the soggy straw bonnet. They were finely wrought features, delicate in a way that reminded one of storybook pictures of woodland fairies. A plush, full-lipped mouth made her face oddly unbalanced, as if the mouth had come from another place entirely. That feature made him think of bordellos and sin.

  She gave a start when she took in his face. Inwardly, he grimaced. No doubt the bruising made him look ghastly.

  “No, I thank you, sir.” Her voice was crisp, cultured. One of those prim females he so disliked.

  Despite the pressing need to get to London, he could not leave a lady alone in this predicament.

  “Let me take you where you need to go.” He gestured down at his horse. “He is big enough for two, you must agree. You will still be drenched, I’m afraid, but at least you will be home in less time.”

  He smiled at her, wondering precisely how horrible he looked. “Don’t be afraid. I met with an, er, accident, but I wouldn’t harm you.”

  She looked at him straightly. “I know precisely what those bruises on your face mean. You were drunk and fell into a bout of fisticuffs. By the looks of you, you got the worst of it.”

  “Well, there were two of them,” he murmured, after a moment of stunned surprise. What did this delicate chit know of drunken brawls?

  She set her luscious little mouth in a stubborn line. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get home before the storm breaks.”

  She stepped around him and continued trudging.

  He saw no alternative but to turn his horse and follow.

  He called after her, “How far is your home?”

  She ignored him. Trudge, trudge, trudge.

  The wind had picked up, making the rain slant into their faces. Davenport shivered. He still wore his evening kit and his bloody cousins hadn’t done him the courtesy of leaving him with so much as a driving coat to shield him from the elements. It was spring, but you wouldn’t know it, the way the rain had turned to icy needles.

  The girl’s slim shoulders remained erect as a sergeant major’s as she battled into the gale. Her hat drooped about her ears; her drab pelisse was dark with damp. Rats’ tails of honey blond hair snaked down her back, whipped free from her tight, proper bun by the wind.

  Lightning streaked across the horizon. Thunder cracked, making her halt in her tracks.

  But she didn’t look back. She lifted her chin, squared her shoulders, and marched on.

  “This is madness,” he said, pulling alongside her. “Don’t be such a little
fool.”

  He reached down to her, even though she still did not look at him. “Give me the bandboxes.”

  Her straight white teeth sank into the cushion of her lower lip. He became acutely conscious of a desire to soothe that beleaguered feature. Preferably with his tongue.

  He blinked, cleared his throat. “Come, ma’am. Surely a short ride with me is preferable to getting caught in this storm.”

  She sighed. “Very well. Thank you.” Reluctance showing in every line of her body, she handed the bandboxes up.

  He tied them securely, then reached down a hand to her. “Put your right foot on mine,” he instructed her.

  She did. Her grip tightened on his hand and he hauled her up. She might be a dab of a female, but the rain weighted her skirts. The pain in his shoulder flared, but his smile didn’t waver.

  She didn’t smile back. Her eyes flickered as she looked into his face properly for the first time, but the expression of disdain did not alter.

  “Thank you,” she said frigidly.

  He gripped her around the waist and settled the wet, bedraggled bundle more comfortably across the saddle before him.

  “You are freezing,” he said.

  She sat as straight as she could under the circumstances, as if she had a poker rammed down the back of her gown.

  He chuckled. Really, she was absurd. “Relax. I won’t bite.”

  Much as he’d like to.

  “I am perfectly relaxed,” she said stiffly.

  “If you lean against me, you will be more comfortable,” he murmured provocatively, his breath warming her ear. “Shared body heat does wonders against the chill.”

  She glanced at him suspiciously.

  “I assure you, it’s true. It’s all to do with thermal conduction.”

  He went on to explain the principles of heat transference, but despite all of the obscure, multisyllabic words he threw in to impress her, she refused to participate in his proposed experiment.

  “Thank you. I do not regard the cold.”

  She didn’t regard him, either, but stared ahead. Clearly, the affront to her dignity of allowing some nameless ruffian to escort her home—and at such scandalous proximity—was insurmountable.

  With a mental shrug, he set the horse into a brisk walk, enjoying the way she was forced to move against him in rhythm with the motion of their mount. Despite the icy damp of her, despite his own aches and ails, his body went on full alert for action.

  At close quarters, he noticed the warm, creamy perfection of her skin. That her irises were not blue, as he’d expected from her fair coloring, but light brown, flecked with hints of gold.

  She had a lovely, queenly neck, he discovered, sadly shadowed by the high collar of her pelisse. She dressed like a spinster aunt, but she couldn’t have long left her teens.

  “I believe it is customary in such situations to make polite conversation with your rescuer,” he said, teasing her.

  She turned her head to look at him. Who knew warm brown eyes could turn so cold?

  “We have not been introduced,” she said. “Therefore, I cannot converse with you.”

  He wanted to laugh. Her bottom was so near to his groin as to make them very close acquaintances indeed. Yet she would be a stickler for the proprieties.

  “Allow me to rectify that error,” he said. “I am—”

  “Pray, don’t trouble yourself.” She flicked a repelling glance at him. “I don’t expect we shall meet again after today.”

  He did laugh then. “Oho! If you think that, you don’t know much about men, Miss…?” He ended on a note of inquiry.

  “Persistent, aren’t you?” She cocked an eyebrow but did not turn her head. She seemed quite determined not to look at him any longer than necessary. Did he present that much of an ugly spectacle?

  Persistent? He thought about that. “I can be.”

  In the pursuit of science, he’d been dogged. Some might say obsessed. And yet, since his return, he’d found little worth his extended attention. However, he would persevere with this lady, if only to ruffle those dignified feathers of hers.

  She ignored him.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “If you will not give me your name, I shall be obliged to make one up.”

  “Can your horse not go any faster?” she asked.

  “Let’s see, shall we?” He nudged the gelding into an easy canter, taking the opportunity to hug her in tight against him, ostensibly to save her from falling.

  She squawked a furious protest. He ignored her.

  “I might call you Joan,” he decided. “You have a certain air of the burning martyr about you. But I daresay that is merely because you are obliged to ride in the embrace of a reprobate such as me. If you smiled, you would not look like a Joan at all. You do smile, on occasion, I trust?”

  No answer. Silent outrage poured from her in waves.

  “Not Joan, then. Hmm. Something from the Greek pantheon, perhaps. Aphrodite? Or is that wishful thinking on my part?”

  “You are ridiculous!” she burst out. “Even if we were introduced, I should never give you leave to use my given name.”

  She’d colored up quite nicely now, torturing that poor, pretty underlip with her teeth. A sudden yearning startled him in its sharp urgency. What the Devil was wrong with him? She was not the type of woman he usually favored. He couldn’t conceive of her ever sticking her hands down his trousers, moonlight or no.

  The rain had eased a little, but lightning still frolicked about them. The storm was about to break around their ears and he didn’t give a damn. There was something about this young lady. He couldn’t put his finger on precisely what it was, but he wasn’t about to let her slip from his grasp too easily.

  They’d covered two miles or so before it occurred to him he could use the storm to his advantage.

  “I fear we might be obliged to take shelter nearby,” he commented. “It probably isn’t safe to be out.”

  “I’d rather be struck by lightning than go anywhere private with you,” she declared in a stifled voice. “Ride on, if you please. My … destination is just down that lane, up ahead.”

  He noticed the slight hesitation. Hadn’t she said she was going home before? Was she so prejudiced against him that she didn’t want him to know where she lived?

  He hadn’t realized they were so close to the end of this delightful journey. He wanted to know more about her, to keep teasing her until he broke through all that dreadful propriety to the flesh-and-blood woman beneath.

  He wondered who awaited this prickly little creature. Not a husband or a lover. For one thing, she didn’t have a ring on her finger. For another, he could see she was a virgin as clearly as if it had been stamped across her forehead.

  Indeed, virtue never had such a staunch defender as this young lady. Despite the danger of falling from the saddle as their speed increased, she held doggedly to the pommel rather than lean back against him and accept his embrace.

  Her profile was finely wrought. Enchanting. Perhaps it was just as well she did not smile. His heart might not have stood it.

  Temptation gnawed at him. He’d had many women since his return from exile, but despite the intricate games aristocratic coquettes liked to indulge in, not one had left him in any doubt that those games would end in bed.

  This lady gave him no quarter. The hunter in him found her complete disinterest—indeed, her antipathy—irresistible.

  He glimpsed a sprawling manor house at the end of the lane. This was it. He halted his steed and stared down at his fair passenger.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “What do we stop for?” Even now, much as she longed to do so, Hilary could not bring herself to look this dreadful man in the eye.

  He presented the most shocking figure. She recognized all too well the familiar signs of a scoundrel. She’d had considerable experience of them in her own family.

  But this one was a slight variation on the theme, she had to admit. He possessed a sense of humor, f
or one thing. Intelligence, too. He did his utmost to hide it, but there was a disquieting expression in his gaze when it rested on her, as if he saw her more clearly than he’d any right to do. She wasn’t sure she liked that.

  He was chivalrous in his own audacious, careless way. She was not stupid enough to believe he’d rescued her out of pure altruism, however. She knew the look in a man’s eye when he wanted her. She’d dealt with plenty of those while living in her brother’s house.

  He was covered in bruises, but even beneath his swollen jaw and the purple contusion that flared across his cheekbone, she could tell at a glance he was a remarkably handsome man.

  Liquid brown eyes framed with thick lashes, a head of dark brown hair that, even windblown and wet, fell romantically over his brow. A handsome, strong jaw that spoke of determination, perhaps even a streak of stubbornness, belied by his easygoing manner.

  There was something about a man garbed in evening dress and looking utterly disheveled that awoke in her a dormant heat.

  Confusion seethed in her brain. How could she find him in the least attractive? She knew his type from bitter experience. He was precisely the kind of man any lady with the least common sense would avoid.

  His situation shouted a debauched personality. How on earth had he come to be riding about the countryside in his evening clothes at three in the afternoon? Perhaps he had not yet gone to bed?

  Bed.

  No. She ought not to think of this man in connection with a bed.

  She’d tried not to notice how large his shoulders were, how strong the arm that encircled her. How broad the thigh that brushed hers now and then as he steered his horse.

  He was a brute, a rogue, and most probably a libertine, too. He was everything a deVere trying her best to maintain her own standards in the face of an impossible handicap did not need.

  But her pulse raced. Her body longed to melt against him, to draw warmth from that big, masculine form. Thermal conduction, he’d called it. Whatever the terminology, remaining aloof from him was like staying away from a roaring fire when one was frozen to the marrow.

  If she could just get home without giving the fellow any hint of her disquiet, she would be safe. Not far now.