That was when he lifted his head and asked, “Are you all right?”
Which was evidently a tactical error, because she pushed him off with surprising strength and got her boots on and her body up off the floor and out the window while he was still trying to understand what had happened.
He had no trouble at the moment, however, comprehending that she was getting away. Pushing everything else from his mind, he swung over the windowsill and swiftly descended.
A quick scan of the garden offering no sign of her, he hurriedly retraced the route she’d taken to get in, through the back gate. In her departing haste, she’d left it ajar, sparing him the trouble and precious seconds of fiddling with the latch.
He ran down the passageway leading to the street, which he reached in time to hear her rapidly retreating footsteps.
A glimpse of skirt told him she’d just turned the next corner.
He picked up his pace and followed…and saw his mistake in the half second before the walking stick slammed against his shins.
He heard the crack of splintering bone and felt the pain shaft up his legs and saw the ground come up to meet him, all in the same instant.
Chapter 6
First he swore.
Then he laughed.
Then he swore some more.
Fists clenched, Lydia stood glaring down at the Duke of Ainswood. For one horrifying moment, she thought she’d done him a serious injury. She should have known better. It would want a herd of stampeding bulls to do this great lout any significant damage.
“Don’t expect any sympathy from me,” she said. “You can lie there until Judgment Day, for all I care. You’ve made me break my favorite walking stick, drat you.” Not his legs, as she’d feared.
Groaning, he lifted his head. “That was a damned dirty trick,” he said. “You ambushed me.”
“And it wasn’t a damned dirty trick you played me in the dressing room?” she returned. “When you knew I dared not make any strong protest? And don’t tell me a simple no would have sufficed, because words never suffice with you.”
“Can we argue about this later, Grenville?” Releasing a series of low profanities, he laboriously rolled onto his side and heaved himself up onto one elbow. “You might give a fellow a hand up.”
“No.” Smothering a stab of conscience, she backed away, out of reach. “You interfered with an assignment and could have endangered my life,” she said, as much for her unreasonable conscience’s enlightenment as his. “You also wrecked my chance to perform a service for a friend. This makes the third time you’ve complicated everything by blundering in my way. Not to mention you might have cost me my position. If Sellowby had burst into the dressing room and found me in a compromising position with England’s most notorious debauchee, he would have spread the news all over London—and I should lose the precious small measure of respect I’ve earned after months of unremitting labor.”
She bent and snatched up the remnants of her walking stick. “I know a great many more dirty tricks than this,” she added as she straightened. “Bother me again, Ainswood, and I’ll really hurt you.”
Then, before he could point out the flaws in her sermon, she turned away and strode out of the alley without once looking back.
“Behold, the dragon stalker returneth,” Jaynes announced as Vere limped in the door at three o’clock in the morning.
Trent, who’d hurried out into the hall clutching a billiard cue, stood mute, eyeing Vere up and down with a pained expression.
Vere had told them he was going to the Blue Owl this evening, “dragon hunting.”
Jaynes had lectured and Trent had babbled and Vere had not heeded a syllable.
Now he saw “I told you so” written plainly on their faces. His coat and trousers were torn and filthy, his face scraped and bruised. He’d fallen face first, hard, and though his nose wasn’t broken, it felt as though it was. The same applied to his shins, which throbbed like the very devil.
He managed a grin. “I can’t remember when I’ve had so much fun,” he said. “You missed a great lark. When I tell you—”
“I’ll have a bath drawn,” said Jaynes in martyred tones. “And I suppose I’d better fetch the medicine case.”
Vere watched him march away, then turned to his houseguest. “You’ll never guess what happened, Trent.”
“I reckon not,” his guest said sadly.
Vere started limping toward the staircase. “Come along, then, and I’ll tell you.”
The Argus arrived at Blakesleigh on Friday morning. Not until the following Friday did Elizabeth and Emily get their hands on it.
Fortunately, their aunt and uncle were entertaining a large party of guests, which kept the maids too busy to pop into the girls’ bedroom unexpectedly to chase them back into bed.
They had all night to pore over the magazine’s pages. This time, however, they did not go directly to The Rose of Thebes, but to Miss Lydia Grenville’s account of her collision with their guardian in Vinegar Yard.
At the end, they were curled up on the floor, clutching their bellies, choking out quotes from the tale in between convulsive laughter.
When, finally, they could sit up again, they gazed at each other, mouths quivering.
Elizabeth cleared her throat. “Droll. I should say she was droll.”
Emily arranged her features in a fair imitation of her uncle’s “judicial” one. “Yes, Elizabeth, I believe one might reasonably infer as much.” The judicial mask dissolved and her eyes danced. “I think it’s the best thing she’s ever written.”
“You haven’t read everything she’s written. We never have time. Besides, it’s unfair to compare serious work with comedy.”
“I think he’s inspired her,” said Emily.
“It is quite wicked,” Elizabeth admitted.
“He does bring out the devil in people. Papa said so.”
“He brought out the devil in Robin.” Elizabeth smiled. “Lud, how naughty he was when he came back. And how he made us laugh, poor baby.”
Emily’s eyes filled. “Oh, Lizzy, how I miss him.”
Elizabeth hugged her. “I know.”
“I wish we were at Longlands,” Emily said, wiping her eyes. “I know they’re not there. What’s in the mausoleum isn’t them. But Longlands is home, and it’s where their spirits are, all of them. There aren’t any Mallorys here. Not even a ghost. Aunt Dorothea’s been married so long she’s forgotten how to be a Mallory.”
“I shall contrive to marry a younger son,” Elizabeth said, “because they almost never behave properly. Perhaps, since Cousin Vere isn’t living at Longlands, he’ll let us stay there. I shall try to get a husband in my first Season—and it’s only six months away. Then you’ll come to live with us. And you’ll never wed, so that you can stay at Longlands forever. And look after the children.”
Emily nodded. “I suppose that will have to do. But you must not marry anyone like Uncle John. I know he’s good, but I’d rather you found someone not quite so stuffy.”
“Like Diablo, you mean?”
Lizzy pressed her hands to her chest. Nature had not yet gifted her with what one could properly call a bosom. “Yes, like Diablo.”
“Well, let’s study him, then, so I’ll know exactly what to look for.” Elizabeth took up the Argus and turned to The Rose of Thebes.
On the following Wednesday, Vere and Bertie sat in the Alamode Beef House, fortifying themselves after a grueling few hours of Miranda’s latest adventures in The Rose of Thebes.
“Miranda tricked the snakes to get out of the tomb,” Vere was telling his dining companion. “She’ll trick a guard, or Diablo himself, to get out of the dungeon, you mark my words.”
Bertie speared another forkful of beef. “I dunno,” he said. “I figure they’ll be on a sharp lookout for tricks now, because she already tried one and it didn’t work.”
“You can’t believe that useless court card Orlando is going to get her out of it.”
Chewing, Bertie shook his head.
“Then how?”
“The spoon,” Bertie said. “You forgot about the spoon. What I figure is, she’ll dig a tunnel.”
“With a spoon—out of a dungeon?” Vere took up his tankard and drank.
“Mean to say, she’ll sharpen it first, on the stones, you know,” Bertie said between mouthfuls.
“Oh, yes, one can do anything with a sharpened spoon. She could even saw her way through the iron bars, I daresay.” Vere eyed the magazine, which lay at Bertie’s elbow.
Vere had not, initially, intended to become acquainted with the fictional Miranda. The day after his collision with the walking stick, he had started reading Jaynes’s back issues of the Argus solely in order to learn how Miss Devious Sneak Attack Grenville’s twisted mind worked. He’d begun with the first issue to which she’d contributed. On the page facing her article about a prosecution for debt was an illustration for The Rose of Thebes. From the picture, his gaze had drifted downward to the text.
The next he knew, he’d come to the end of Chapter Two and was tearing through the piles of magazines Jaynes had left on the library table, looking for the next issue.
In short, he, like half the world, apparently, was hooked on St. Bellair’s story. Though he hadn’t shown it, Vere had been as eager this morning as Bertie was to grab the latest issue, fresh off the presses.
Today’s cover depicted a mob of men and women crowded about a roulette table. It was titled “Miss Fortune’s Wheel.” By now familiar with the dragoness’s style, Vere was certain the caption wasn’t her doing.
Though she wasn’t above perpetrating puns, she wouldn’t have used one so hackneyed. Moreover, the feeble play on words hardly measured up to the sly humor and acid-edged commentary of her accompanying article.
In which, incidentally, the Duke of Ainswood did not figure.
In the previous issue, his caricatured image had adorned the cover in a two-panel illustration. In the first, he had his arms stretched out and lips puckered, beseeching a kiss of the dragoness. She was depicted, arms folded and nose aloft, with her back turned to him.
In the second panel, he appeared as a toad wearing a ducal coronet, looking forlornly after her departing figure. Above her head, the bubble read, “Don’t blame me. It was your idea.” The picture caption read, “Lady Grendel’s Kiss Breaks the Spell.”
She’d written the accompanying article in a parody of the style of Beowulf, titling it, “The Battle of the Titans in Vinegar Yard.”
That was just like her impudence, Vere thought. Because she’d henpecked a lot of weak-livered scribblers and doodlers, she fancied herself a Titan.
Bother me again, and I’ll really hurt you.
Oh, yes, and he, the last of the Mallory hellions, had been quaking in his boots. Yes, and wasn’t he terrified?—he, who’d stood up to Lord Beelzebub, all six and a half murderously brutal feet of him. How many times had Dain uttered similar threats in the same low, deadly tones? As though threatening tones were likely to set Vere Mallory a-tremble.
Did Miss Ivan the Terrible Grenville actually believe she could intimidate him?
Very well, let her think it, he’d decided. He would give her plenty of time. Weeks. He’d let her enjoy her apparent triumph, while his miscellaneous gashes and bruises healed. As the days passed, her vigilance would relax while her conceited head swelled. And then he’d teach her a lesson or two, such as “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” and “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
She was long overdue for a fall from her vainglorious pedestal. She was long overdue for a sharp awakening from her delusion that she was more than a match for any man, that donning trousers and aping males made her invulnerable.
He knew she wasn’t.
Under the disguises and bluster, she was a girl playing Let’s Pretend.
And since he found this amusing—and rather adorable, when you came down to it—he’d decided to go easy on her.
He would not humiliate her publicly.
He would be the only witness to her downfall.
Which would involve, he’d decided, her falling into his arms and down onto a bed with him.
And she would like it, and admit she liked it, and beg for more. Then, if he happened to be feeling charitable, he would give in to her pleadings. And then—
And then a boy burst into the dining room.
“Oh, help, help, please!” the child cried. “There’s a house fell in—and people inside.”
Not one, but two houses had fallen in: Numbers Four and Five in Exeter Street, Strand. More than fifty men had rushed over from their work on the sewer excavations in nearby Catherine and Brydges Streets, and quickly begun clearing away the debris.
The first victim they uncovered was a dead carman, who’d been taking in a load of coal when the house collapsed. Half an hour later, they found an elderly woman, alive, her arm fractured. An hour afterward, there was a seven-year-old boy, scarcely injured, and his infant sibling, dead. Then their seventeen-year-old sister, bruised. Their nine-year-old brother was one of the last to be rescued. Though they found him at the bottom of the rubble, he was alive and babbling deliriously. The mother hadn’t survived the accident. The father was away from home.
Lydia obtained most of the details from one of the penny-a-liners who contributed occasionally to the Argus. She had arrived late at the scene, having been in the Lambeth Road at an inquest. But she had not come too late to witness Ainswood’s role in the rescue.
He did not see her.
From what Lydia observed from her discreet post amid a group of reporters, the Duke of Ainswood was conscious of nothing but the heap of rubble he attacked with steady, ferocious purpose, Trent working at his side. She watched His Grace heave away bricks and timbers, clearing a way to the boy, then bracing a joist on his broad shoulder while others pulled the child out.
When the mother’s mangled corpse was freed at last, Lydia saw the duke go to her weeping daughter and press his purse into her hands. Then he pushed his way through the crowd and fled, dragging Trent with him, as though they’d done something to be ashamed of.
Since one of Ainswood’s lighter pushes could throw the average-sized human several feet, the other journalists retreated from him and returned to the disaster victims.
Lydia was not so easily put off.
She chased Ainswood and Trent to the Strand, reaching the street at the moment a hackney, in response to Ainswood’s shrill whistle, was drawing to a stop.
“Wait!” she shouted, waving her notebook. “A word, Ainswood. Two minutes of your time.”
He pushed the hesitating Trent into the carriage and leapt in after him.
In response to his command, the vehicle promptly started, but Lydia wouldn’t give up.
The Strand was a crowded thoroughfare. She had little trouble trotting alongside the cab, which couldn’t make rapid progress in the crush of vehicles and pedestrians.
“Come, Ainswood,” she called. “A few words on your heroics. Since when have you become so shy and modest?”
This was one of the newer-model hackneys, with merely a hood, leather apron, and curtains to shield passengers from the elements. Since he hadn’t drawn the curtains, he could hardly pretend to neither see nor hear her.
He leaned out from under the hood to glare at her. Above the street’s din—the rattle of wheels, the cries of drivers and pedestrians, the snorts and whinnies of horses, the yapping of stray dogs—he shouted back, “Damn you, Grenville, get out of the street before someone runs you down.”
“A few words,” she persisted, still jogging alongside. “Let me quote you for my readers.”
“You may tell them for me that you are the plaguiest cocklebur of a female I ever met.”
“Plaguiest cocklebur,” she repeated dutifully. “Yes, but about the victims in Exeter Street—”
“If you don’t get back to the walkway, you’ll be a victim—and
don’t expect me to scrape up what’s left of you from the cobblestones.”
“May I tell my readers that you’re truly studying to become a saint?” she asked. “Or shall I ascribe your actions to a transitory fit of nobility?”
“Trent made me do it.” He turned back to roar at the driver, “Can’t you make this accursed plod of a horse move?”
Whether the driver heard or not, the beast picked up its pace. In the next instant, an opening appeared in the crush of vehicles, which the cab promptly darted through, and Lydia had to jump back to the curb as those behind the hackney hastened toward the break in traffic.
“Plague take her,” Vere said after a backward glance assured him she’d given up. “What the devil was she doing here? She was supposed to be at an inquest in the Lambeth Road. And that was supposed to take all day.”
“There’s no tellin’ how long them things’ll take,” Trent said. “And speakin’ of tellin’—if she finds out Joe Purvis been spyin’ for you, there’s goin’ to be an inquest on his dead body.” He leaned out and peered ’round the carriage’s hood.
“She’s given up,” Vere said. “Settle back, Trent, before you tumble out.”
Grimacing, Trent settled back. “Now she’s gone and planted Charles Two in my brain box again. What do you reckon it means?”
“Plague,” Vere said. “You associate them both with plague.”
“I can’t think why you’d say that to her face,” Trent said. “She were bound to think well of you, after what you done back there. And why you should tell her it were me made you do it when you were the one who rushed out of the Alamode first—”
“There were fifty other men at it with us,” Vere snapped. “She didn’t ask them why they did it, did she? But that’s just like a female, wanting to know why this and why that and imagining there’s some deep meaning to everything a fellow does.”
There wasn’t any deep meaning, he told himself. He hadn’t brought the nine-year-old boy back to life, merely freed him from a premature burial. And that boy’s plight had nothing to do with anything else. He was only one of several victims. Saving him had meant no more to Vere than had rescuing the others.
The Last Hellion Page 11