The Last Hellion

  “I know all about his manly pride.” Lydia left her chair and paced to the fireplace and back. “He saw his chance to get even with me tonight for what happened in Vinegar Yard. By now he’s probably guzzled a dozen bottles of champagne celebrating his great victory over Lady Grendel. All he cared about was showing his friends I wasn’t too big for him to handle—lifting me straight up off the pavement and carrying me halfway to the next street as though I weighed nothing. I struggled with him all the way to the hackney and the man wasn’t even winded, curse him.”

  And her stupid heart had melted, and her brain with it, because he was so big and strong. Gad, it was enough to make one retch. She couldn’t believe the rubbishy notions she’d got into her head.

  “Then, after he’s emptied Crockford’s wine cellars and dropped several thousand pounds at the gaming tables,” she fumed, “he’ll stagger out of the club and into a high priced brothel in the neighborhood.”

  And he would take a harlot into his powerful arms, and nuzzle her neck and—

  I don’t care, Lydia told herself.

  “He’ll forget I exist, big and obnoxious as I am,” she stormed, pacing on. “And so he’s bound to forget all about a scrap of a note from a girl he probably believes asked for ruination. As though the child had any idea men could be so treacherous.”

  “Indeed, it’s most unfair that the woman is punished and the man is admired for his virility,” Tamsin said. “But we shan’t let her be punished. I know you must attend an inquest tomorrow, but I can go to Bridewell—”

  Lydia stopped short. “You most certainly cannot.”

  “I’ll take Susan. All you need do is tell me how to get Mary and her baby out. If there’s a fine to pay, you must take it out of my wages.”

  Tamsin advanced, took the bemused Lydia’s arm, and led her back to the dressing table. “They can share my room until we contrive suitable arrangements for them. But the first priority is to get them out. Her week is up on Thursday, isn’t it? And tomorrow is Wednesday.” She tugged Lydia down onto the chair. “Write down what I must do, and I’ll set out tomorrow morning. Where is your notebook?”

  “By gad, what a managing creature you are turning out to be,” said Lydia. But she reached into her pocket obediently—and somewhat amused at her docile obedience to a girl half her size and nearly ten years younger.

  Lydia found the notebook in her pocket but not the pencil. She must have dropped it in the hackney. “There’s a pencil in the drawer of the nightstand,” she told Tamsin.

  The girl quickly retrieved the pencil.

  Lydia took it, then looked up to meet her companion’s steady gaze. “Are you sure, my dear?”

  “I managed to get from the other end of England to London on my own,” Tamsin said. “And I only got into a scrape here because I couldn’t see. This time, I promise not to remove my spectacles for anything. And I’ll have Susan as a bodyguard. And I shall be so happy,” she added earnestly, “to do something useful.”

  In six days it had become clear that Tamsin liked to be useful. The time had also proved her to be no fool.

  A pity, Lydia thought as she began to write, the same couldn’t be said for herself.

  Early Wednesday morning, a hackney bearing Adolphus Crenshaw, Mary Bartles, and the infant Jemmy drove away from Bridewell prison.

  Bertie Trent should have departed at the same time, but he had fallen into a state of abstraction, which at the moment caused him to mutter, “Not Charles Two but somethin’ to do with him. Only, What? is the question.”

  A short, feminine shriek broke into his cogitations, and he looked up to see an enormous black mastiff bearing down upon him, with a smallish, bespectacled female in tow.

  The female was trying to slow the dog down. She might as well try slowing down a stampeding elephant, Bertie thought. Since she was having a hard time staying on her feet, he advanced to assist. He caught the dog by the collar, and she promptly turned on him, growling and baring her teeth.

  Bertie gazed at her reproachfully. “Now, what did I do that you want to tear my head off? Ain’t you had your breakfast yet?”

  “Grrrrrrrrr,” said the dog, backing toward the girl.

  Bertie cautiously released the collar. “Oh, that’s it, is it? Well, I ain’t going to hurt her. It’s only that you was pulling too hard on account of not knowing your own strength, my gal.”

  The mastiff paused in her growling to eye him warily.

  Eyeing her in the same way, Bertie presented his gloved hand. The dog sniffed it, grumbled something to herself, and sat down.

  Above the canine’s huge head, Bertie met the girl’s startled gaze. Behind the very little pair of spectacles perched on her tiny nose was a pair of very big brown eyes.

  “Oh, I say, that were you, weren’t it, in Vinegar Yard the other day!” Bertie exclaimed. “Only you wasn’t wearin’ gogglers then. I hope the tall gal didn’t get in an accident afterwards and knock somethin’ loose in your eyeballs.”

  The girl stared at him for a moment. “I’m shortsighted,” she said. “I wasn’t wearing them the—er—last time because they’d been broken. Miss Grenville was so kind as to have them repaired.” She paused. “You were there when she rescued me, it seems. I thought you looked familiar, but I couldn’t be sure. Without my spectacles, the world is rather a blur.”

  “She kept you, then.” Bertie nodded approvingly. “Well, speak of the devil. I were thinkin’ about her this minute. I seen her last night and she put me in mind of somebody, only I can’t think who it is. Charles Two keeps comin’ into my brain box, though it beats me why.”

  “Charles Two?” The girl stared very hard at him.

  “Not the one they took the head off of, but the next one, when the fire was.”

  She stared some more. Then she said, “Ah, King Charles II. Perhaps it’s because Miss Grenville is so majestic.”

  “Woof,” said the dog.

  Absently Bertie petted her.

  “The dog’s name is Susan,” the girl said.

  Bertie remembered his manners then and introduced himself. He learned the girl was Miss Thomasina Price, and she’d become Miss Grenville’s hired companion.

  After the introductions, she turned her keen gaze upon the building behind him. Her brow creased. “It isn’t very welcoming, is it?” she said.

  “Not the jolliest place I ever been in,” said Bertie.

  But it had to be less jolly for the girl Crenshaw had made the baby with—which was how Bertie had put the matter to the man last night.

  After Ainswood had gone off to wrestle with Miss Grenville, Bertie had taken Crenshaw to a public house for a drink—“bein’ ambushed by females bein’ hard on the nerves,” as Bertie had told him.

  Finding a sympathetic ear, Crenshaw had poured out his troubles. At the end, though, Bertie pointed out that facts were facts, however disagreeable, and the fact was, the man was accused of fathering a bastard, and they had to look into it, didn’t they?

  And so Bertie had come with him to Bridewell this morning, where it became clear that Crenshaw was guilty as charged. Then there was a good deal of blubbering and the upshot was, Crenshaw said he’d take care of Mary and Jemmy. And that was that.

  Though many wouldn’t think so, Bertie could put two and two together. Here was Miss Price, companion of Miss Grenville, who had ambushed Crenshaw on Mary Bartles’s account last night. There was Bridewell behind him, where Mary had been confined.

  “You wouldn’t be here to spring a gal and a baby from the Pass-Room, by any chance?” he asked. “Because if it’s the ones Miss Grenville was in such a lather about last night, you can tell her Crenshaw came and got ’em. I were with him, and they went off not a quarter hour ago, the three of ’em, and—By Jupiter, what’s he doing up at this hour?”

  The girl turned in the direction Bertie was looking. The Duke of Ainswood was indeed up and about, though he hadn’t come in, Jaynes had said, until daybreak—and drunk as a wheelbarrow.

/>   Which would explain, Bertie thought, why His Grace was looking like six thunderclouds at once.

  Though it took Vere a moment to place the girl, he recognized the black mastiff immediately. He would have turned and gone in the opposite direction then, because if the dog was here, the gorgon must be. However, the animal was staring fixedly at Vere, her teeth bared, and she was emitting a low, steady snarl. If Vere made an exit now, it would look as though she’d scared him off.

  So he advanced and coolly gazed at the growling canine. She was splendidly muscled under the glossy black coat, and unusually large for a female. “I see she wasn’t the runt of the litter,” he said. “And such a charming personality she has.”

  The mastiff strained at the leash. Trent grabbed her collar.

  “Grrrrrrrr,” said the dog. “Grrrrrrrrrr.”

  “As amiable as her mistress,” Vere went on above the hostile commentary. “Who has no business, by the way, leaving her puppy in the keeping of a slip of a girl who obviously can’t control her. But that’s typical of Miss Grenville’s irresponsible—”

  “Miss Price, this here’s Ainswood,” Bertie broke in. “Ainswood, Miss Price. And this one who’s tryin’ to tear my arm out of the socket is Susan. Beautiful mornin’, ain’t it? Miss Price, why don’t I hail a hackney for you, and you can go back and tell Miss Grenville the good news.”

  Trent dragged the snarling mastiff away. Miss Price bobbed a hasty curtsy and followed. A short while later, girl and dog were safely tucked into a hackney.

  When Trent came back, he gave Vere a searching look. “Why don’t we go somewheres and find you some hair of the dog that bit you?” he said. “You ain’t lookin’ exactly flourishin’ this mornin’, Ainswood, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so.”

  “I already had Jaynes telling me how I look, thank you.” Vere started down the street. “If I hadn’t stayed in Crockford’s forever waiting for you last night, I shouldn’t have been obliged to swill a vat of bad champagne and listen to a lot of morons calling me Beowulf.”

  The truth was, Vere had been awaiting Crenshaw there in order to complete the job the Amazon had started.

  Thou shalt support thy bastards was the commandment the Mallorys substituted for the ones about not coveting others’ wives and not committing adultery. Even Dain—who wasn’t a Mallory, had no conscience to speak of, and lived entirely by his own rules—supported his illegitimate offspring.

  Confronted by Mary’s note, Crenshaw should have puffed out his chest and said, “By gad, I seem to be a father again. Much obliged for the information, Miss Grenville. I’ll toddle down to Bridewell and collect them first thing tomorrow.”

  Then Miss Attila the Hun Grenville would have gone away, swaying her arrogant rump, and Vere wouldn’t have seen her, let alone tangled with her and had to listen to her sarcasm and keep his hands to himself the whole aggravating way to the dragon’s lair.

  But Crenshaw hadn’t done what he should, and hadn’t turned up at Crockford’s to get pummeled properly, and all those bottles of champagne hadn’t been enough to flood away the aggravation.

  Now, just in case Vere hadn’t been plagued and goaded enough last night or didn’t have cannon blasts going off in his head at present on account of getting up at an ungodly hour, Miss Guiding Light of Civilization would learn he’d come to Bridewell and would have no trouble figuring out why. And she’d think she’d won. Again.

  “I should’ve asked one of the fellows to tell you not to wait for me,” Trent said apologetically. “But I didn’t figure you was comin’ back, bein’ more agreeably engaged for the night.”

  Vere stopped short and stared at him. “Agreeably engaged? With Lady Grendel? Have you lost your mind?”

  Trent shrugged. “I thought she were deuced handsome.”

  Vere recommenced walking. Only Bertie Trent, he told himself, would imagine the Duke of Ainswood had made off with the blue-eyed dragoness for purposes of dalliance. The thought had never crossed the minds of the men with whom Vere had spent the evening. They thought—and rightly—that it would make as much sense to bed a crocodile.

  It was merely one of the perverse jokes of the malign powers ruling his life that she should possess a long, lusciously feminine body instead of the humpbacked, shriveled, and scaly one that would have complemented her personality.

  That’s what he’d told himself through bottle after bottle last night, and what he’d told himself when he came home and couldn’t sleep.

  That’s what he’d told himself this morning when he spotted the dog and his heart began to pound, even while he prepared to turn away to avoid meeting its owner.

  And that was what he’d told himself moments ago, when he’d discovered the dragoness wasn’t nearby and something mortifyingly like disappointment had entered his heart.

  He told himself so again, for the troublesome feelings lingered there yet…under the breast pocket of his waistcoat…where he kept the stump of a pencil she’d left behind last night.

  Chapter 4

  Entering the Blue Owl on this chill, damp night was like descending into the infernal regions.

  Vere was used to inns and taverns filled with raucous, drunken men. Those, however, were normal human beings.

  The Blue Owl was filled with writers, and the din of their voices was beyond anything he’d ever encountered in his life.

  So was the smoke, roiling through the rooms like the heavy fog outside rolling in from the Thames. Every single customer in the place had a pipe or cigar in his mouth.

  As Vere turned into the hall leading from the bar parlor, he half expected to see leaping flames, and the Old Harry poised on cloven hoofs in their midst.

  But the forms Vere saw were unquestionably mortal. Under a lamp whose light the enveloping smoke had turned a sickly greyish yellow, a pair of young, reed-thin men shouted in each other’s ears.

  Beyond them a door stood open, from which clouds of smoke occasionally billowed forth, along with thunderous roars of laughter.

  As Vere neared, the roar was subsiding to semideafening merriment, and above that noise he heard someone bellow, “Another! Do another!” Others took up the cry.

  When he came to the threshold, Vere saw gathered about a few tables a crowd of some thirty men, most sprawled upon chairs and benches, a few slumped against walls. Though the smoke was thickest here, he saw her clearly enough. She stood before the great hearth, and the firelight behind sharply outlined her stern black attire.

  The drama of her costume had not struck him before. It did so forcibly now. Perhaps it was the smoke and hellish noise. Perhaps it was her hair. She’d left off her bonnet, and without it she seemed troublingly unprotected, too exposed. Her thick hair, a soft pale gold, was coming loose from the untidy knot at the nape of her white neck. The tumbled coiffure softened her starkly beautiful features, made her look so young, so very young. A girl.

  Above the neck.

  Below was the dramatic contrast of her black armor, with the line of buttons sternly marching from waist to chin, ready to defeat and destroy all invaders.

  He’d undone those buttons, again and again, night after night, in his dreams.

  He wondered how many men here imagined undoing them.

  All, naturally, since they were men.

  She was the only woman, and there she was, parading herself in front of this mob of low-minded scribblers, every last one of whom was picturing her naked, in every lewd position known to the human species.

  He watched her move forward to lean over one of the drunkards and talk to him while he gaped at her bodice.

  Vere’s hands fisted at his sides.

  Then she moved away, and he saw she had a wine bottle in one hand and a cigar in the other. She’d taken only a few steps when he realized she was foxed. She swaggered unsteadily toward a group of men to her left, then paused, swaying, to direct a drunken leer at one of them.

  “Big, yes, but not up to my weight,” she said, her voice carrying easily over the
hubbub. “I make her at five and three-quarter feet. And ten stone, stripped. Which I should pay fifty guineas to see, by the way.”

  It took Vere a moment to place the words, then another to place the voice, which wasn’t hers. And because the audience exploded into laughter, it took him another moment to believe his ears.

  Those were his words. In Vinegar Yard.

  But that could not be…his voice?

  “As much as fifty?” someone called out. “I didn’t know you could count so high, Your Grace.”

  She stuck the cigar in the corner of her mouth and cupped her hand to her ear. “Was that a mouse squeaking I heard? Or was it—By gad, it is. It’s little Joey Purvis. And here I thought you were still in the asylum.”

  It was something eerily like Vere’s voice, deep and slurred with drink, coming out of her ripe mouth. And those were his gestures. It was as though his soul had entered this woman’s body.

  He stood frozen, riveted upon her, while the audience’s laughter faded to the edges of his consciousness.

  She withdrew the cigar from her mouth and beckoned to the heckler with it. “Want to know if I can count, do you? Well, come along, lad, and I’ll teach you how I count teeth—while you pick yours up from the floor. Or would you rather a chancery suit on the nob? You know what that is, don’t you, my little innocent? It’s when I hold your head in place under one arm while I punch it in with the other.”

  There was little laughter this time.

  Vere dragged his gaze from her to the audience.

  Every head had turned toward the doorway where he stood.

  When he looked back again, his impersonator’s blue glance flicked over him. Evincing not the smallest quiver of discomfiture, she raised the bottle to her lips and drank. Then she set the bottle down. After wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she acknowledged him with a slight dip of her head. “Your Grace.”

  He made himself grin. Then he lifted his hands and clapped. The room grew quieter still, until the only sound was the steady slap of his palms.