The Last Hellion

by Loretta Chase

  He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had leapt to his defense. But then, his behavior had never merited defending, he quickly reminded himself, for he was very far from saintly—about as far as a man could get without getting hanged. And so, he concluded, only a baconbrain like Trent would imagine that Vere Aylwin Mallory needed a champion…or even a loyal friend.

  Since his heart had calcified long ago, the Duke of Ainswood couldn’t possibly find Bertie Trent’s blithering on his behalf touching—any more than His Grace could admit to any niggling doubts about his actions in Vinegar Yard. He would cheerfully submit to being flayed alive before confessing, even to himself, that more than one of Lady Grendel’s verbal shafts had penetrated his thick hide.

  Instead, the duke decided that Sellowby’s blank bewilderment during Trent’s diatribe was the most comical thing he’d seen in months, and that Trent was a most entertaining imbecile.

  This, His Grace believed, was why he invited Bertie to move his bags from the George Inn to Ainswood House, and make himself at home there.

  During dinner Lydia discovered that Miss Prideaux’s table manners were faultless, her appetite good, her conversation intelligent, spiced with an agreeably wry humor. She had a musically sweet voice, which reminded Lydia of Sarah’s, though this girl was much older and clearly more resilient.

  Over cheese and fruit, Lydia commenced the interrogation.

  “I collect you’ve run away from home,” she said mildly.

  The girl set down the knife with which she’d been paring an apple and met Lydia’s gaze. “Miss Grenville, I know running away is foolish, and running away to London is probably insane—but there is a limit to what one can tolerate, and I had reached it.”

  Her story was not the usual thing.

  Two years earlier, her mother had suddenly turned religious. Pretty frocks were forbidden. Dancing and music—except for hymns—were forbidden. All reading materials except Bibles, sermons, and prayerbooks were forbidden. Miss Prideaux’s smuggled copies of the Argus constituted her sole link with the “rational world,” as she put it.

  “Having read your articles and essays,” she said, “I was fully aware I’d face difficulties in London, and I came prepared, I assure you. If it were not for being robbed of everything, I should not have dreamt of imposing upon you. I had enough to pay for lodgings until I could find work, and I was ready to do anything honest.”

  Her face worked and her huge eyes began to glisten, but she quickly composed herself and continued. “Mama and her zealot friends have driven Papa out of the house. I hadn’t seen him for a fortnight when she announced I must give up Aunt Lavinia’s jewelry. The sect wanted to print up copies of Brother Ogbert’s sermons. Unfortunately, all the printers turned out to be such tools of the devil as to charge for the work. Mama said I must contribute my late aunt’s things to save souls.”

  “Whether they wanted to be saved or not,” Lydia muttered. “There’s plenty of that sort in London. Wasting money on Bibles and pamphlets when what people need is work, and a roof over their heads, and something to eat.”

  “That is exactly how I felt,” Tamsin said. “I couldn’t possibly give up my aunt’s jewelry to those frauds. She’d left them to me in her will, and when I wore them, or simply looked at them, I thought of her, and how good she was to me and how often we had laughed together. I loved her very m-much,” she finished shakily.

  Lydia still possessed her sister Sarah’s locket. If it hadn’t been made of worthless metal, Papa would have pawned it or gambled it away. Then Lydia, who had no memento of her mother, would have had none of her sister, either.

  Lydia couldn’t wear the locket because it turned her skin green, yet she kept it in a box in her bedroom and took it out every night, and thought of the little sister she had so dearly loved.

  “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “The chances of getting your aunt’s things back are not very good.”

  “I know it’s hopeless,” Tamsin said. “I shouldn’t have minded if they’d taken everything else and left me those. But by now the thieves have torn everything apart and found them, and they’re not likely to return jewelry, I’m sure.”

  Lydia began to calculate. “They were valuable, then?”

  “I can’t say precisely,” said Tamsin. “There was a ruby necklace with a bracelet and earrings to match. Also a pretty amethyst set, rather old, in a silver filigree setting. And three rings. They were not paste, but I can’t say what they’re worth. I never had them appraised. The money value didn’t matter to me.”

  “If they’re not paste, there’s a good chance they’ll be fenced,” Lydia said. “I have informants connected with the trade.” She rang the bell and, when Millie appeared a moment later, asked for writing materials.

  “We shall make a detailed list,” Lydia told her guest when the maid was gone. “Can you draw them?”

  Tamsin nodded.

  “Good. That will improve our chances of tracking them down. Not that we can count on getting them back,” Lydia warned. “You mustn’t get your hopes up.”

  “I should not fuss about them at all,” the girl said unsteadily. “But it’s so horrid that I tried to save them from Mama’s lot of pious thieves only to lose them to a lot of impious ones. If she found out, she’d say it was a judgment on me—but I shan’t have to listen to that, or any of her galling sermons, ever again.” She colored, and her lower lip trembled. “That is to say, you won’t feel duty-bound to tell them where I am, will you? I left a note saying I’d run away with a lover. They think I’m upon the sea at present, en route to America. I was obliged to devise something desperately immoral and irrevocable, you see, to forestall pursuit.”

  “If you can’t honor thy father and thy mother, that is your affair,” said Lydia. “And their misfortune. It has nothing to do with me. If you want to make sure they don’t get word of where you really are, though, I recommend you change your name to something less distinctive.”

  That wouldn’t protect her from London’s evils, however. She looked younger than she was and all too vulnerable.

  After the briefest of pauses, Lydia went on, “It occurs to me that your present predicament is to my advantage. I’d been planning to hire a companion.” She hadn’t, but that hardly signified. “If you would be so good as to stay on with me, you’ll spare me the bother of looking for one. The terms are room, board, and—”

  The girl began to weep. “Please forgive me,” she said, wiping her eyes futilely. “I don’t mean to be v-vaporish, but you are so g-good.”

  Lydia rose and went to her, and stuffed a handkerchief into her hands. “Never mind,” she said. “You’ve had an upsetting time of it. Another girl would have fallen into hysterics. You’re entitled to bawl a little. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “I can’t believe you’re not in the least overset,” Tamsin said after wiping her eyes and nose. “You were the one who had to contend with everybody, yet you never turned a hair. I don’t know how you did it. I’ve never seen a duke before—not that I could see him very well. Still, I shouldn’t have known what to say to someone so grand, even if I had guessed what to make of him. But everything was a blur to me, and I could not tell whether he was truly joking or truly cross.”

  “I doubt he could tell, either,” Lydia said, ignoring the hot prickling along her spine. “The man’s a cretin. He belongs in Exeter ’Change with the rest of the menagerie.”

  The writing materials arrived then, and Lydia had no trouble turning her guest’s mind away from Lord Ainswood.

  Lydia’s own mind was not so accommodating.

  Hours later, alone in her bedroom, she still couldn’t shake off the memory of the brief kiss, or altogether stifle the old yearnings it stirred.

  She sat at her dressing table, holding Sarah’s locket.

  During the grim days in the Marshalsea prison, Lydia had entertained her sister with stories about Prince Charming, who’d one day arrive on a white charger. At the time, Lydia had
been young and romantic enough to believe that one day a prince truly would come and she would live with him in a beautiful palace whose nursery would be filled with happy children. Sarah would also marry a prince, and live with her happy children in the castle next door.

  In the real, grown-up world, unicorns were more plentiful than Prince Charmings.

  In the real world, a duke—the next best thing to a prince—couldn’t be bothered to take the wickedest of witches to the dungeon where she belonged.

  In the real world, no kiss could turn a confirmed spinster back into a dreamy-eyed girl. Especially not that kiss, which was obviously a substitute for the punch in the mouth His Grace would have given her if she’d been a man.

  In any case, Lydia told herself, she had far more important issues to consider, namely, Miss Prideaux. Who was probably weeping into her pillow at this very moment, poor dear. Her clothes could be replaced, along with the spectacles, if they couldn’t be repaired. And she wasn’t alone and friendless, because she’d stay with Lydia.

  But the jewelry, the precious keepsakes…oh, that loss must pain the child deeply.

  If only that dolt of a duke had taken the bawd to Bow Street, they would have had an excellent chance of retrieving the girl’s things. Obviously the thieves had been working for Coralie, because she’d played this game before. Several of her girls were adept pickpockets, and the bawd’s bully boys had no scruples about assaulting defenseless girls.

  But Ainswood hadn’t been interested in Miss Prideaux’s problems because he wasn’t a noble and chivalrous hero. He only looked like Prince Charming, and a dissolute wreck of one at that.

  If there were any justice in the world, Lydia told herself, he would have turned into the toad he was the instant his wicked mouth touched hers.

  It would have soothed Miss Grenville’s troubled spirit had she known that Lord Ainswood suffered worse indignities than turning into a toad.

  He was used to causing talk. Being a born troublemaker, he was almost constantly at the center of one spectacle or scandal or another. Since he’d come into the title, the world—and especially the newspapers—followed his doings more avidly than before.

  His contretemps with Dain on the latter’s wedding night, an episode featuring Beelzebub’s bastard son a week later, and a debacle of a carriage race in June had used up miles of paper and tons of ink. Vere’s acquaintances had roasted him unmercifully as well.

  The published satires and caricatures, along with the private jokes at his expense, had rolled off him as easily as he rolled off an endless series of harlots, and were as easily forgotten immediately afterward.

  But on previous occasions, Vere’s opponents had been men, and the affairs were conducted according to manly, sporting rules.

  This time, his opponent had been a woman.

  And now Vere didn’t know which was worse: that he’d stooped to arguing with a female—when everyone knew they were the most irrational creatures on God’s earth—or that he’d fallen, literally, for one of the oldest fighting tricks in history. What Lady Grendel had done was the same as playing dead, and he—who’d been scrapping since he was a toddler—had dropped his guard.

  He was soon wishing he’d dropped her, right on her obstinate little head. That might have made up in some small way for the chaffing he endured in the following days.

  Everywhere he went, his fellows couldn’t resist exercising their limited wit upon him.

  When he took Trent to the Fives Court in St. Martin’s Street, for instance, someone had to ask why Vere hadn’t brought Miss Grenville as sparring partner. At which every would-be pugilist in the place fell down laughing.

  Everywhere Vere went, some sapskull wanted to know when the next match would be, or if His Grace’s jaw had healed enough to allow him to eat soft foods, or if he reckoned so-and-so’s grandmother was up to his weight.

  Meanwhile, all the illustrators in London vied with each other for Most Hilarious Portrayal of the Great Battle.

  Three days after the event, Vere stood, simmering, before a bookshop window. Displayed therein was a large print whose caption read, “Lady Grendel Gives the Duke of A_____a Drubbing.”

  The artist had drawn him as a great, hulking brute wearing a stage villain’s leer. He was reaching for the gorgon, portrayed as a dainty slip of a female. Above his caricatured head, the bubble read, “Why, my pretty, haven’t you ever heard of droit de seigneur? I’m a duke now, don’t you know?”

  Miss Grenville was posed with her fists upraised. Her bubble said, “I’ll show you a droit—and a gauche as well.”

  The feeble play on the French words for “right” and “left,” he explained to a baffled-looking Trent, was intended to pass for wit.

  “I got that part,” Bertie said. “But that droy dee sig-new-er—ain’t it French for two sovereigns? I thought you only offered a pound for the little gal.”

  The droit de signeur, Vere explained through stiff jaws, was the right of the feudal lord to deflower his vassals’ brides.

  Trent’s square face reddened. “Oh, I say, that ain’t funny. Virgins—and new-wed besides.” He started for the bookshop door, doubtless intending to set matters straight in his own inimitable style.

  Vere drew him back. “It’s only a picture,” he said. “A joke, Trent, that’s all.”

  Recalling the adage “Out of sight, out of mind,” he steered his would-be champion to the curb and started to cross the street with him.

  Then he had to haul Bertie back, out of the way of the black vehicle bearing down upon them.

  “Well, I’ll be hanged!” Trent cried as he stumbled back to the footway. “Speak of the devil.”

  It was she, the cause of the unceasing stale jokes and witless caricatures.

  As she barreled past, Miss Boudicca Grenville saluted them in coachman style, touching her whip to her bonnet brim, and flashing a cocky grin.

  Had she been a man, Vere would have hurtled after her, pulled her from the vehicle, and knocked that cocksure smile down her throat. But she wasn’t a man, and all he could do was watch, smoldering, until she turned a corner a moment later…out of sight but far, perilously far, from forgotten.

  Chapter 3

  The Duke of Ainswood’s mood might have lightened had he known how close Lydia came to driving into the corner—and the shop standing there—rather than ’round it.

  Though she collected her wits in time, it was in the very last tick of time, and she narrowly averted overturning as it was.

  Not to mention she’d nearly run the two men down only seconds before.

  This was because Lydia had no sooner recognized the tall figure at the curb than her brain shut down. Completely. No idea where she was or what she was doing.

  It was only for a moment, but that was a moment far too long. And even afterward, she hadn’t fully recovered. Though she’d managed the cool salute well enough, she had a horrible suspicion that her smile had been far too wide and…well, stupid, not to mince matters. A stupid, moonstruck smile, she reflected angrily, to match the idiotish pounding of her heart. As though she were a silly girl of thirteen instead of a hardened spinster of eight and twenty.

  She lectured herself all the rest of the way to Bridewell prison.

  When she entered the fortress of misery, though, she put her personal troubles aside.

  She went to the Pass-Room. Here, pauper women claiming residence in other parts of England were held for a week before being sent back to their own parishes, the prevailing philosophy being, “Charity begins at home.”

  A row of low, narrow, straw-filled stalls lined the wall facing the door. The door and fireplace interrupted a similar line of stalls on that side. About twenty women, some with children, occupied the chamber.

  Some had come to London to seek their fortunes; some had been ruined before they came and fled disgrace; and some had run away from the usual assortment of troubles: grief, poverty, brutality.

  Lydia would describe the place for her readers
in her usual style. She would sketch in plain and simple terms what she saw, and she would tell these women’s stories in the same way, without moralizing or sentiment.

  This wasn’t all Lydia did, but she didn’t think it was her reading public’s right to know about the half-crowns she surreptitiously distributed to her interviewees, or the letters she wrote for them, or the people she’d later speak to on their behalf.

  If, moreover, it frustrated Grenville of the Argus that she could do so little, or if her heart ached the whole time she listened to the women, these emotions would not enter her published work, either, for such feelings were nobody’s business but hers.

  The last interview was with the newest arrival, a fifteen-year-old girl who cradled an infant too weak and scrawny even to wail like the others. The boy lay limply in his mother’s arms, now and then uttering a weary whimper.

  “You must let me do something for you,” Lydia told her. “If you know who his papa is, Mary, tell me, and I’ll speak to him for you.”

  Pressing her lips together, Mary rocked to and fro upon her dirty heap of straw.

  “You’d be amazed at how many fathers agree to help,” Lydia said. After I’m done with them, she could have added.

  “Sometimes their pas take ’em away,” the girl said. “Jemmy’s all I got now.” She paused in her rocking and gave Lydia a troubled look. “You got any?”

  “Children? No.”

  “Got a man?”

  “No.”

  “Ever fancied one?”

  “No.” Liar, liar, liar, Lydia’s inner devil mocked. “Yes,” she amended with a short laugh.

  “I was yes and no, too,” Mary said. “I told myself I was a good girl and it was no use wishing for him, as he was miles above my touch and such like don’t marry farm girls. But all the no was in my head, and every way else I fancied him something fierce. And so it ended up yes, and here’s the tyke to prove it. And you’ll be thinking I can’t take care of him as he needs, which is true.” Her bottom lip trembled. “All right, then, but you needn’t speak for me nor write for me. I can write it myself. Here.”