Undressed with the Marquess

by Caldwell, Christi

  So do it . . .

  Free her . . .

  Free yourself . . .

  From somewhere in the townhouse, a shout went up.

  And then silence.

  Maudlin musings immediately forgotten, Dare snapped erect. He trained his gaze on the doorway. What he’d discovered in the short time since he’d been flung into Polite Society was that any noise was nonexistent in Mayfair; quiet reigned over all. Unlike East London. There, some commotion or another always filled the Rookeries. Some skirmish saw the streets filled with cries born of violence, and the ruthless battles of men and women fighting for supremacy . . . and survival. The hint of battle hung on the air, a state a man had to always be prepared for . . . or ultimately fall to.

  But this was West London. As such, when there was no answering cry, he relaxed his shoulders.

  And then pandemonium broke out.

  “Helllllllp! Please, God, help!”

  Dare took off racing toward that cacophony.

  “How did this happen?” The housekeeper’s voice came plaintively. “I’m so sorrrrry.”

  Then one voice of calm broke through the din. “I’m sure this can be explained.” Temperance. Fiery of temper, and yet calm and collected when the situation merited.

  His heart knocking uncomfortably, and not from the pace he’d set, Dare increased his stride, following the arguing voices that came from the upstairs living quarters. What in hell?

  “Call for the constable,” Lady Kinsley cried, winded, as if she’d been racing across the household.

  “I’ll not let you,” Temperance was saying with a calm that belied the commotion. “He is a boy. Let us—”

  “He is a thief.”

  Dare took the stairs two at a time and went racing onward.

  “I’ve got him,” a triumphant servant called from down the hall.

  “Let me go.” That frantic plea, cried in Cockney tones, familiar, and not just for the street-roughened quality to it.

  Dare came to a stop, the sight halting him in his tracks. Ten servants formed a wall of sorts, and Temperance went charging forward, parting that crowd. What in blazes . . . ? From over the tops of the heads of the men and women and . . . children in his employ, Dare could see they all collectively brandished various household items, holding those makeshift weapons up and pointing them at Temperance.

  Temperance pulled a boy from a servant’s grasp, and shoving the child behind her, she wielded her favorite pair of scissors before her. With her cheeks flushed and her eyes burning with fury, she dared anyone to come between her and the boy.

  And Dare was briefly frozen by the sight of her. When he was a boy, he’d had a male tutor who’d insisted women were meant to be coddled and protected. Dare’s mother had sacked the stodgy fellow, and before he’d been shown the door, she’d told the man the tale of Boudicca, the fearless warrior who’d gathered up her people and led them on a charge of savage attacks upon anyone in their path who’d had problems with the Roman Empire.

  His breath lodged sharply in his chest. Temperance was that warrior woman of old resurrected, gloriously beautiful in her spirit and passion.

  And Dare almost felt bad for the footman advancing now.

  Almost.

  He opened his mouth to order the young man to stand down—

  Too late.

  Temperance thwacked the servant’s fingers hard with the handle of her scissors.

  The young man howled and immediately released the boy.

  “Have you no shame?” Glowering at the crowd, Temperance shoved the small street urchin behind her. “He is a boy.”

  “He is a thief,” Lady Kinsley shot back, clutching the folds of her night wrapper close. “He was sneaking into my rooms.”

  Temperance spoke calmly. “I’m sure it can be explained.” She looked down at the small boy, still concealed by the crowd.

  She may have doubts about her place in this world they’d been thrust within, but there could be no doubting she was very much, in every way, the lady of this household.

  “It can. To a constable.” Lady Kinsley looked to Spencer. “A constable, this instant.”

  Spencer bowed. “As you wish, my—”

  “What is the meaning of this?” Dare barked, striding forward. And just like that, the circle parted and silence descended upon the gathering. He stepped into the fray.

  “You’ve invited thieves into our midst, brother,” Lady Kinsley said coolly.

  Ignoring that attempt to bait him, Dare trained his focus on the small child. His face smudged with dirt, his inky-black hair slicked with grease, he may as well have been any other child in the streets. There was something, however, familiar about the child.

  “Wasn’t looking for ’er foine things,” the child protested. He slid closer to Temperance, and she rested a protective hand on the child’s narrow shoulder. “Oi was looking for yar rooms.”

  Lady Kinsley folded her arms. “I daresay it hardly matters who this person intended to steal from.”

  Temperance frowned at the other woman. “He is a child.”

  “He is a thief,” Lady Kinsley said crisply.

  “Not a thief,” the boy retorted. “Well, not this time.” He glared at Dare. “These yar rules?” the child demanded. “Turnin’ out people from the Rookeries? Because Oi was told ya’d see me.”

  “What?” Dare asked dumbfoundedly. “Of course not. Whatever would make you say or believe that?”

  The servants shifted on their feet and made a show of studying the floor.

  Dare narrowed his eyes on the group.

  Kinsley scoffed. “I take it you know this . . . person.”

  “I don’t,” Dare frostily corrected. “But that does not mean he isn’t worthy of a meeting.”

  The child wrestled his way from the group. “Well, they wouldn’t let me see ya,” he shouted. “Been comin’ by for six days now. Six dayyyys.” And so he’d sneaked in. “They told me Oi didn’t get a meeting wit’ the marquess an’ that beggars only go ’round back for ’andouts.” The small boy turned back on the semicircle of servants behind them and cast a glare at the group. “Oi ain’t no beggar. Ya ’ear me? Oi do ’onest work.” Whipping out a small knife, he brandished the blade.

  Several of the maids screamed and squealed.

  A young woman hit the ground hard. A footman rushed over to scoop her up.

  Swiping a hand over his face, Dare let his arm fall to his side.

  Temperance spoke quietly to the child and managed the seemingly impossible—she calmed the volatile little boy. “What is your name?” she asked in the same quiet, calming tones Dare had heard her use countless times when her brother had been near in age to the child.

  More cries went up as another pair of servants appeared, dragging someone else over.

  “What now?” the butler bemoaned in aggrieved tones.

  “I’ve goooot him!” a footman cried, shoving someone toward the gathering.

  Dare squinted. What in hell . . . ?

  Temperance’s eyes widened. “Chaance?”

  Shouldered between a pair of burly servants, the young man—taller but slimmer by several stone—allowed himself to be dragged along.

  A gasp went up.

  Gwynn, the sweetheart, cried out and went running. “Release him,” she hissed, and like a feral cat, she launched her curled fingers at the men holding him.

  Rocking back on her heels, Temperance looked openmouthed in Dare’s direction.

  “Release him this instant,” Dare barked, and the servants immediately complied, but hovered close anyway.

  “Mr. Chance sent me, ’e did. He told me to come ’ere for the ’elp Oi need. Told me to just give moi name and explain that he’d sent me and that would be enough.”

  From beyond Temperance’s shoulder, Gwynn clasped her hands close to her breast.

  “I wanted to see that Lionel made it inside this time,” Chance said sheepishly.

  Temperance’s friend sighed. “There is n
o one like you, my love.”

  Chance Swift winked.

  “Your friends?” Kinsley drawled, her lip curled up in disgust.

  “My family,” Dare corrected in cool tones to rival his sister’s. “The people of the Rookeries are more family than anyone sharing my blood.”

  Lady Kinsley flinched, and for a moment he thought that statement had hit some mark . . . but it was impossible. A trick of the candlelight. She pursed her mouth. “Either way, they are intruders. Both of them.”

  “Well, technically, I am his brother-in-law,” Chance ventured. “So perhaps it isn’t a crime?”

  Kinsley shook her head and looked around the gathering before focusing on Chance. “Who is this?”

  “My brother,” Temperance murmured.

  “I found another!” a maid cried.

  “Three of them,” Kinsley muttered. “Is there anyone else here?” she cried out sarcastically as she tossed her arms up.

  As one, everyone looked in the direction of the young maid who rushed forward. The girl’s arms were filled with a small child. Slightly out of breath, she stopped amidst the gathering. “She was toddling around the hallways.”

  Silence met that revelation. When no one spoke, moved, or blinked, the servant held the small, dirt-stained girl out.

  “Oh . . . my,” Lady Kinsley whispered.

  Dare’s focus, however, wasn’t on his sister but on Temperance.

  Temperance, who stared with stricken eyes at the child. No more than two or three, and covered in dirt and grime, the babe squirmed, resisting that hold.

  And then the child began to cry.

  Kinsley was the first to find her voice. “Wh-what is th-this?”

  And for the first time, the biting young lady possessed sobering tones.

  “A choild. Oi take it ya ain’t ever seen one before?” Lionel asked smartly.

  Temperance seemed to break free of whatever fog had held her frozen. Stalking over, she reached for the wild-curled babe and drew the child into her arms. The child instantly stopped crying.

  Dare pointed to his butler. “Going forward, I’m to be informed of whomever is requesting an appointment with me. I’ll determine who does and does not receive an audience. Is that clear?”

  The young butler nodded wildly. “As you wish, my lord.” Giving his hands two quick claps, Spencer managed to clear the gaggle of servants. “Is there anything else you’ll require?”

  “See that refreshments are brought to my office for me and my guests.”

  Lionel jutted his chest out. “Did ya ’ear that, Spencer?”

  Dare would hand it to Spencer—the other man gave no outward reaction to that insolence from Dare’s unconventional guest.

  “And milk,” Temperance quietly put in. “The babe will require milk.”

  Dare nodded. “And milk. Temperance? Will you accompany Lionel and me?” There were answers needed as to why Chance had helped sneak a child inside Dare’s household.

  “But what of me? This is my household.” Lady Kinsley’s cries echoed behind them, growing distant and then fading altogether.

  Side by side, with Temperance accompanying them, they made their way back to Dare’s office. While they walked, Dare peeked at Temperance. She offered her index finger to the child, who tugged and played with the digit. Periodically, she lowered her thumb, concealing the digit . . . and then let it pop up, startling a little laugh from the girl. And the sight of the two together sent something moving and shifting in Dare’s chest. As for a second time that night, he allowed a thought he’d previously forbidden himself from entertaining: a family. One made up of him and Temperance and . . . some nameless, imagined babe. One with Temperance’s dark curls and large round eyes and temper and . . .

  And it was everything he’d not allowed himself so much as a thought of. People reliant upon him, a thief from the Rookeries, who’d invariably hang for his crimes one day.

  Perhaps it was the unexpectedness of one of those small babes about. Or mayhap it was the return of memories of his own childhood. But the yearning for that dream of folly washed over him.

  “Why ya lookin’ loike that?” Lionel asked on an outrageously loud whisper that brought Temperance’s gaze flying over. “Ya look queer. Ya don’t ’ave a problem with babes, do ya?” The boy didn’t give Dare a chance to answer, but looked quickly over at Chance, who, hand in hand with Gwynn, followed close behind. “Ya didn’t say ’e ’as a problem with babes, Mr. Chance.”

  That managed to break the spell over the smitten couple.

  Chance frowned. “Of course Dare doesn’t have a problem with children.” The lines at the corners of his mouth stretched lower. “At least . . . he didn’t.” He looked to Dare. “You don’t of a sudden have a dislike for—”

  “Of course not,” Dare said gruffly.

  The group reached Dare’s office, and he motioned a babe-carrying Temperance on ahead, then Lionel. And lastly, Chance and Gwynn. “Why don’t we sit?” Dare said when he’d closed the door behind the eclectic little gathering of people.

  As Temperance settled onto the chair, Gwynn went wide-eyed. “Never been invited to sit by a marquess before,” she whispered.

  Chance clasped her hands in his, then one at a time brought them to his lips for a kiss. “You are more worthy than any woman. Never doubt your place because of your birthright.”

  The depth of emotion that moved between the couple—love freely passing, and love freely shared—was so foreign to what Dare had ever known. No, that wasn’t completely true. They’d once been like Chance and Gwynn . . .

  I’m going to marry you if it’s the last thing I do, Temperance Swift . . .

  His eighteen-year-old voice echoed in the chambers of his mind, paired with her joyous, unrestrained laugh.

  His stare strayed over to Temperance, and their gazes locked. They shared a private smile, an intimate one that came from the place of knowing one another.

  “Oi’m gonna dirty up yar foine stuff,” Lionel blurted.

  And the moment was shattered as Dare looked over to the little boy Chance had sent. The child who now eyed the remaining leather button wing chair warily.

  Dropping to a knee beside the boy, Dare flashed a gentle smile. “You don’t know me, aside from what Mr. Swift has shared.”

  “’e said yar a good man. That ya loike to ’elp people loike me.”

  “I like to help people,” Dare confirmed. “It was a mistake you were sent away when you did come. I promise that shall not happen again.” He flashed a gentle smile. “And I certainly don’t care about the furniture and whether or not you or anyone else ruins it, Lionel.”

  The boy hesitated another moment and then pulled himself up onto the chair, wafting a soft cloud of dirt.

  Over the years, Temperance had observed Dare’s interaction with all number of people. Where some had ruled in the Rookeries through putting up an armor of coldness, he’d met the people there with kindness. It had been just one of the first reasons she’d fallen in love with him.

  And then she’d witnessed him . . . with her brother. When Chance had been just five, Dare had been patient and teasing and kind, and everything Temperance had never seen any man in the Rookeries be toward any child. She’d not even known a man could be that way. After all, her earliest and almost only memories of her own father all included her being viciously beaten or slapped.

  Seeing him kneel down beside this ragged street urchin and speak in hushed tones, her heart remembered all over again why she’d fallen in love with him.

  And she hated it.

  Because it was easier to resent the man who’d paraded her before his duke and duchess grandparents . . . and his former betrothed . . . than to face the man who was so tender and so perfect with little children.

  A man who should have children of his own . . .

  Oh, God. It is too much.

  The child in her arms squirmed, and she relaxed the unintended tight grip she’d had upon the girl.

 
“Now, Chance,” Dare was saying. “I take it you have some manner of explanation about the babe?” Ever so gently, he stroked the top of the child’s head.

  “It’s a girl,” Lionel piped in.

  The sight of him, so tender with the child, ravaged Temperance’s already weak heart.

  Clearing his throat, Chance released Gwynn’s hand. “He is the younger brother of Joseph Gurney.”

  At last the reason Lionel was so familiar made sense. He’d the look of his older brother, Chance’s best friend from the Rookeries. The pair had hero-worshipped Dare, looking to him to teach them how to thieve.

  “And . . . was he caught stealing?” Dare asked.

  “No,” Chance said instantly. “Joseph followed the honorable path, like myself.” Color filled the young man’s cheeks. “No offense, sir,” he said gruffly.

  “None taken.”

  He’d never been the manner of man to be offended . . . or possessed of an ego. “Gurney is a carder at another mill,” Temperance murmured, bringing them back to the matter of Lionel’s brother.

  Chance’s mouth flattened. “Joseph’s proprietor is not nearly as kind or generous as Mr. Buxton. Punishing fellow. Cuts wages for imagined offenses, and keeps the differences for himself. He accused Gurney of stealing . . . but he was only keeping what he had coming to him. And now he’s stuck in gaol.”

  And yet . . .

  Quizzically, Dare looked to the little girl. “And the babe?”

  “She’s moi brother’s babe,” Lionel interjected. “But Joseph’s been put in Newgate, and it doesn’t look loike he’s returnin’, and my da didn’t . . . doesn’t want ’er,” Lionel said with a matter-of-factness that made Temperance’s chest ache for altogether different reasons.

  Wasn’t that the way of the Rookeries, though? Daughters were of little value until they were of an age where they could be whored to the depraved . . . or somehow found other skills to justify their existence, as Temperance had with her sewing.

  The boy shrugged. “She’s just a girl,” he added, as if it’d not been perfectly clear as to why the child had been rejected.