The Last Hellion

by Loretta Chase

  The girl raised her eyebrows at Lydia’s trousers. Then her keen gaze went to the tangle on the desk. “Good grief, what is it?” She leaned over, pushed her spectacles up her nose, and peered closely at it. “Pirate’s treasure? What an odd—Oh, my!” She blinked up at Lydia. Her face worked. “Oh, d-dear.” She swallowed and bit her lip, but a sob broke from her, then another. She flung herself at Lydia and hugged her fiercely.

  Lydia returned the hug, her throat tight. “Please don’t make a fuss,” she said as the girl began to weep. “I’ve always wanted to be a jewel thief. This was the only way to do it more or less legally.” She patted Tamsin’s back. “It’s no crime to recover stolen goods.”

  Tamsin drew back and stared, her tear-filled eyes as big as an owl’s. “You wanted to be a jewel thief?”

  “I thought it would be exciting. And it was. Come along and I’ll tell you all about it.” She beckoned the bewildered girl. “You’ll want tea—and I’m starving. These knock-down, drag-out rows with thickheaded noblemen do stir up the appetite.”

  Tamsin listened to the tale in a daze. She nodded and shook her head and smiled in the right places, but Lydia was sure her companion wasn’t entirely present in spirit. “I hope I haven’t shocked you witless,” she said uneasily, as they ascended the stairs from the kitchen.

  “No. It’s Sir Bertram, who’s talked me witless,” Tamsin said. “He has muddled my brain with Charles II. The king kept wandering into the conversation on the way to the theater, during the intervals, and all the way home. I’m sure I’ve mentioned all the significant events of His Majesty’s reign, but nothing helps. We cannot discover the connection, and now I cannot make my mind work on anything else. Please forgive me, Lydia.”

  They had reached the ground-floor hallway.

  She thanked Lydia again for recovering the keepsakes, and hugged her again and kissed her good night and went up to her room, murmuring to herself.

  Coralie Brees was not happy when Josiah and Bill carried a battered Francis Beaumont—whom they’d found slumped against the privy—into the house shortly before daybreak.

  Once upon a time she had worked for Beaumont in Paris, ruling over the brothel that formed a part of his elaborate pleasure palace, Vingt-Huit. They’d had to make a speedy exodus from Paris in the spring, and the move to England had been a downward one for her. Beaumont had been the brain behind Vingt-Huit’s operations. That brain, however, was at present rotting from large quantities of opium and drink—and likely pox as well.

  Why it was rotting did not interest Coralie. She counted only results, and the result for her was no grand pleasure palace in London, but a more laborious and much poorer-paying job peddling young flesh upon the streets.

  Coralie wasn’t clever enough to build grand enterprises on her own. Her mind was small and simple. Uncorrupted by schooling, unbroadened by experience, incapable of learning by example, it was also too barren to support alien life-forms such as conscience or compassion.

  She would have cheerfully killed Francis Beaumont, who was nothing but a nuisance these days, if she’d believed she could get away with it. She had more than once cheerfully garroted recalcitrant employees—but these were mere whores, whom nobody missed or mourned. To the authorities, they were anonymous corpses pulled from the Thames, causing a lot of paperwork and the bother of pauper burial, using up time and labor without recompense to the laborers.

  Beaumont, on the other hand, had a famous artist wife who traveled in aristocratic circles. If he were found dead, an investigation would be ordered and rewards offered for information.

  Coralie didn’t trust any of those who worked for her to resist the temptation of a reward.

  This was why she didn’t step behind Beaumont while he sat slumped in a chair, and wrap her special cord ’round his neck.

  Deciding against killing him was a mistake. Unfortunately, it was a mistake other people had made, and this time, as on previous occasions, the error had grave consequences.

  By the time Beaumont had, with the aid of the gin bottle, recovered his zest for villainy, Coralie was in a screaming fit. She’d found the house servant, Mick, insensible on the kitchen floor, her bedroom ransacked, and Annette as well as money box and jewelry gone.

  She sent Josiah and Bill to hunt the girl down—and bring her back alive, so that Coralie could have the pleasure of killing her very slowly.

  Only after the boys had gone did Beaumont remark that it was a waste of time, since Annette had fled hours before—with a bully of her own who would easily make mincemeat of Josiah and Bill.

  “And you only thought of it now they’re gone?” Coralie shrieked. “You couldn’t open your mouth before, while they was here? But no, you had the bottle in it, didn’t you?”

  “That’s the second time in six months I was obliged to eat a large fist,” Beaumont said, wincing as he spoke. “It was the same as Dain did to me, in Paris, remember? If I didn’t know he was in Devon, I’d swear he was my accoster. Big fellow,” he explained. “More than six feet, easily.”

  His bleary gaze drifted to the jade stickpin fastened to Coralie’s bodice.

  Instinctively, Coralie’s hand went up to cover it.

  “The French trull stole my stickpin, along with the rest of your magpie’s nest,” he lied. “I’ll take your new acquisition as restitution. It’s small enough payment, considering I nearly got killed trying to stop the bitch from robbing you. The devil only knows why I didn’t help her instead, considering the tricks you’ve played me. You stole my stickpin. You made the flower girl disappear, too. What brothel have you stowed her at? Or did the little cripple fight your bullies off with her crutch and escape their loving attentions?”

  “I never went near the little crookback!” Coralie cried. “Didn’t anyone tell you what happened last night? That’s all them sluts was talkin’ about in Covent Garden—how Ainswood was throwin’ money about, and chasin’ some Jack whore gypsy—”

  “Ainswood?” Beaumont said. “With a tall female?”

  “That’s what I said, didn’t I? It were him give me the pin.” She stroked the new treasure. “On account she knocked me over against a pillar post.”

  Beaumont’s bruised mouth twisted in an ugly smile. “There’s one tall female he’s been chasing for weeks. Ever since she knocked him over. In Vinegar Yard. Don’t you recall how she stole the little dark-haired chit from you?”

  “I remember the bitch,” Coralie said. “But she was in widow weeds. The one last night was one of them filthy, thievin’ gypsies—some kin to the fat sow who pretends she can tell fortunes.”

  Beaumont gazed at her, then shook his head, took up the gin bottle and applied it to his swollen lips. When he’d emptied it, he put it down. “I do believe there isn’t a stupider woman than you in all of Christendom, I truly do.”

  “I’m clever enough not to get my face smashed in, though, ain’t I?”

  “Not clever enough to see that it was Ainswood who helped your little French tart rob you blind last night.”

  “A dook? Takin’ to forkin’? When he got more money than he knows what to do with and runs about London givin’ purses full of sovereigns away, like they could burn him if he held on to ’em too long?”

  “What I like about you, Coralie, is your refreshing freedom from all processes of logic. If you tried to put two and two together, it would hurt your head excessively, wouldn’t it, my little charmer?”

  Coralie had no more idea what he meant than if he’d spoken to her in Latin, Greek, or Chinese. She ignored him, went to the cupboard and took out another bottle of gin, opened it, and poured it into a grimy, smeared glass.

  Watching her drink, Beaumont said, “I can’t think why I should enlighten you. Ignorance is bliss, they say.”

  In fact, one would wonder why he tried to speak at all, since it hurt acutely. The trouble was, when Francis Beaumont was in pain or in trouble or experiencing anything in any way disagreeable, his favorite treatment—which was usually
mixed with opium and/or alcohol—was making someone else much more miserable than he was.

  Consequently, he did enlighten Coralie.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “That rat’s nest of baubles you hoard contained, along with everything else that didn’t belong to you, something belonging to the dark-haired chit Miss Lydia Grenville relieved you of.”

  Coralie slumped into a chair, her eyes filling. “Yes, and very nice they was, too. Rubies and emmyfists.” A tear splashed onto the hand clutching the gin bottle. She refilled her glass. “And now all I’ve got left is the dook’s stickpin and you want it.”

  “Amethysts, not emmyfists, you illiterate cow,” Beaumont said. “And they must be gemstones, not paste, else no one would trouble to get them back. Don’t you see? The tall female got Ainswood to help recover them for her precious little chick, and they enlisted Annette. She’d never have the nerve to do it on her own. She’d already dosed Mick with laudanum when I got here, and she was none too pleased to see me an hour ahead of time. I practically had to drag her upstairs by her feet. When I saw what she’d done to your room, I understood why. That’s when she panicked and ran—and chasing after her, I ran straight into Ainswood. I’ll wager anything they split the take and helped her get out of London. And he and Miss Lydia Grenville are laughing themselves sick. Well, why shouldn’t they? They’ve stolen two girls from you, all your sparkly treasures, and all your money.”

  Having emptied one bottle and noticing Coralie’s jealous hold of the other, Mr. Beaumont left her to brood over what he’d said.

  He was not, in any case, the kind to watch over the poison seed he’d planted. He didn’t need to. He knew exactly what to say, and chose his remarks according to the nature of his listener. He left the listener to fertilize the noxious garden and reap the evil he had sown.

  On Friday, Elizabeth and Emily read in the pages of the Whisperer of their guardian’s heroics in Exeter Street, which included the very interesting fact that Miss Grenville had chased him into the Strand.

  On Saturday, a letter arrived express from London, while the family were at breakfast. The girls had time to recognize the exceedingly bad penmanship, along with the Duke of Ainswood’s seal, before Lord Mars left the breakfast table and took the letter with him into his study. Lady Mars followed him there.

  Her shrieks, despite the thickness of the study door, were audible. A maid hurried in, moments later, with smelling salts.

  On Saturday night, the eldest of Dorothea’s three older sisters arrived with her husband. On Sunday, the other two came with their spouses.

  By this time, Elizabeth and Emily had already sneaked into their uncle’s study, read the missive, and sneaked out.

  Through numerous ingenious contrivances, Elizabeth and Emily managed enough eavesdropping in the course of the day to grasp the essentials of the family crisis. After dinner, they had only to open their bedroom window a crack and, concealed in the drapery, listen to the men talking on the terrace while smoking—and answering the call of nature, by the sounds of it. The eldest uncle by marriage, Lord Bagnigge, being well into his cups, held forth longest.

  “It’s a pity,” he was saying, “but one must think of Lizzy and Em. United front, that’s what one wants. Can’t lend the thing countenance. Scandal’s bad enough. Can’t be a part of it, looking on. Drat the boy. Ain’t it like him? A gel with no connections to speak of, and probably not fit to be spoken of, else someone would’ve heard of ’em by now. And a race. He’ll win her in a race, like a purse. Poor Lizzy. Ready to make her comeout, and how’s she to hold her head up? A common scribbler, the Duchess of Ainswood—and won in a race, no less. Even that old rip, Charlie’s pa, must be turning in his grave.”

  Elizabeth beckoned her sister away from the window.

  “They’re not going to change their minds,” she whispered.

  “It isn’t right,” said Emily. “Papa would go.”

  “Cousin Vere was there for Papa, when it mattered.”

  “He was there for Robin, when no one else dared.”

  “Papa loved him.”

  “He made Robin happy.”

  “One little thing. Cousin Vere has asked his family to be with him at his wedding.” Elizabeth’s eyes flashed. “I don’t care about her connections. I shouldn’t care if she was the Whore of Babylon. If he wants her, that’s good enough for me.”

  “Me, too,” said Emily.

  “Then we’d better make it clear, hadn’t we?”

  Chapter 11

  Wednesday, 1 October

  The sun had heavy going in its climb from the horizon. It struggled through the fog rolling from the river, sparkled fitfully through the mist, then was swallowed up in a grey morass of clouds.

  Thanks to the morning fog and a last-minute—and futile—attempt to talk Tamsin out of accompanying her, Lydia arrived at Newington Gate with only a quarter hour to spare.

  Despite the early hour, not all of the small crowd gathered there was of the hoi polloi. Along with the expected reporters, miscellaneous ruffians, and streetwalkers, she spotted half a dozen male members of the Beau Monde—all drunk, apparently. They were accompanied by representatives of the aristocracy of whoredom—minus Helena, who had a cold and would rather be hanged than seen in public with a red nose.

  The bulk of Ainswood’s associates, however, would be in Liphook. According to Helena, Ainswood had sent notes inviting all his friends to help celebrate his victory.

  “Sellowby claims that His Grace has obtained a special license, and a ring, and that there will be a minister waiting at the inn to perform the ceremony,” Helena had reported on Saturday.

  Lydia had been seething ever since.

  Now, however, she wondered whether Sellowby had merely passed on idle rumor.

  It was a quarter to eight and Ainswood wasn’t here.

  “Perhaps he has come to his senses,” Lydia said as she steered her carriage into position. “Perhaps someone has made him recollect his position and responsibilities. If his curst family cared anything about him, they would not let him make such a ridiculous spectacle of himself. Only think of those two girls, his wards, and how mortified they must be by his methods of winning a wife. He doesn’t consider how the eldest must face Society when she makes her comeout in the spring. He never considers how his scandals affect others, and they’re mere females, after all,” Lydia added tartly. “I doubt he even recollects their names.”

  Elizabeth and Emily. Seventeen and fifteen respectively. They lived with their paternal aunt, Lady Mars, at Blakesleigh in Bedfordshire. Lord Mars was one of Peel’s staunchest allies in the House of Lords.

  Lydia did not want to think about the two girls, the elder on the brink of entering the social whirl, with all its pitfalls. Unfortunately, she had already opened Pandora’s box last Wednesday, when she’d opened Debrett’s Peerage.

  By now she’d collected almost as much information on the Mallory family as she had on her mother’s. While Lydia worked on The Rose of Thebes and the articles and essays needed for the next issue of the Argus, Tamsin had continued what Lydia had begun. After exhausting Debrett’s, the Annual Register, and the standard genealogical resources, Tamsin had turned to the numerous Society publications.

  The Mallorys were not Tamsin’s sole research project. She was also becoming knowledgeable on the subject of Trent’s family.

  Initially, she’d been trying to discern an event or persons, past or present, that would explain his obsession with Charles II. In the process, she’d discovered that his family had more than its share of unusual characters. She found them fascinating, and regaled Lydia with stories about them during mealtimes.

  This took Lydia’s mind off the Mallorys, but never for long. Her thoughts kept returning to Robert Edward Mallory, the young duke, and she found herself grieving for a little boy she’d never met. Soon her reflections would move on to his orphaned sisters, and that was worse, because she often caught herself fretting about them, as though she knew
them personally and was somehow responsible for them.

  Worrying about them was absurd, Lydia tried to persuade herself. While Lord and Lady Mars had a large family of their own, that didn’t mean the wards Ainswood neglected weren’t happy and properly looked after.

  Lydia told herself this scores of times. Her mind was convinced; her heart was not.

  She took out Great Uncle Ste’s pocket watch and frowned. “Less than ten minutes to starting time. Drat him, if he means to default, he might at least send word. Bellweather will claim I made it all up. A shameless bid for publicity, he’ll call it.” She put the watch away. “As though it wasn’t Ainswood who blabbed about the race first, to all his idiot friends. As though I wished all the world to know I let that obstinate, patronizing brute goad me into this ridiculous situation.”

  “It was very bad of His Grace to bring me into it,” Tamsin said, smoothing her gloves. “No matter how desperate he felt, he should not have been so unscrupulous—not to mention completely unreasonable—as to work upon your too-kind feelings towards me. One tries to understand, but there is a limit, as I told Sir Bertram.” She let out an impatient huff. “A dowry, indeed. I can well understand why you became so incensed with His Grace, for Sir Bertram did not at all comprehend the principles at issue, and I was strongly tempted to box his ears. Charles II or no Charles II, he might grasp the simple and obvious fact that I can earn my keep. But they will see. They will eat our dust, Lydia, and my ludicrous five thousand will be used to aid those who need help, which I most certainly do not.”

  Once Tamsin had recovered from an evening of Bertie Trent—and Charles II—and the shock of getting back jewelry she’d philosophically given up for lost, she’d taken umbrage at the part of the wager connected to her. With what must be the same singleminded determination that had taken her from her Cornwall village to London, she had insisted upon accompanying Lydia. Moreover, Tamsin remained as vexed with Trent today as she’d been on Friday, the last time she’d spoken to him.