One Night with a Rake (Regency Rakes) (18 page)

“The line between pleasure and pain is sometimes very thin.” The madam smiled enigmatically. “You’ve never been paddled, have you? Wait until after you’ve had a good bum-warming and we’ll talk again.”

Nathaniel trudged doggedly down Lackaday Lane after deciding he’d check on the House of Sirens. He could still feel the sizzle of Georgette’s irritation with him. She’d undoubtedly be stewing after being left behind all morning, but he was in no hurry to return to her.

In fact, he was ready to tell Lord Yorkingham that he was done being Georgette’s public escort and private nursemaid. There were only days till the grand ball when she’d slip from him forever. This little melodrama could only end one way—with the infuriating woman he loved deciding to accept the suit of a royal duke twice her age.

Nathaniel decided he didn’t want to stick around and watch the final act. If he couldn’t convince her to abandon her royal aspirations with a night of loving, there was no hope he could change her mind with anything else.

There was only one consolation. At least with a royal husband, Georgette would be so hemmed about with courtiers and guards, she’d be unlikely to get herself into any more dangerous adventures.

Well, actually, there’s another small consolation,
he admitted to himself as he stepped around the trickle of yellow slime that ran down the middle of the lane.

Nathaniel had been Georgette’s first. In the years to come, even if her marriage to the Duke of Cambridge did warm beyond the state of cordial strangers, she’d still remember Nathaniel.

A woman didn’t forget the man to whom she’d given her maidenhead.

And he’d never forget her.

Lackaday Lane was even more quiet than usual. It was early enough for the streetwalkers to be abed yet. No window sashes were thrown back to reveal any young women waiting to tempt a customer to come to her love couch. The entire block seemed subdued after one of their own was found murdered.

A black wreath hung on the door to the House of Sirens. Nathaniel was pleased to discover the locksmith had already been there and he was unable to simply push his way in. His knock was answered promptly by a girl whose hair was soberly plaited and her gown demurely cut.

“Oh, my lord, we’re that glad to see you, I’m sure.” The girl gestured him in with nervous, birdlike movements. In her somber black dress, she looked more like a starling with clipped wings than a former prostitute. “Mrs. Throckmorten is in the back, supervising the dyeing. She says we’re to mourn Vesta for six weeks, good and proper, so them what didn’t have a black dress is boiling up one now. Mrs. T. will be wanting to thank ye proper for sending Mr. Hock round to replace Mr. Bagley so quick-like.”

Nate started through the narrow house after her. “Since Mr. Darling’s replacement has come, I assume he has already left for Yorkingham House.”

“Oh, no, sir,” she said. “The lady come by earlier and he left with her.”

“The lady? Lady Georgette, you mean?” he said through clenched teeth.

The girl dimpled prettily. “Yes, my lord. That’s the one.”

Even during the day, Lackaday Lane was not safe for one of Georgette’s station. Even setting aside the fact that two residents of this crooked little street had been murdered, it wasn’t unheard of for young women of good families to be abducted if they happened to wander into poorer quarters. Then they could be forcibly wed to fellows who merely wanted to get their hands on the lady’s wealth.

I
will
take
her
over
my
knee
and
paddle
her
bare
arse, so help me God.

“Where did the lady and Mr. Darling go?” he asked.

“To Madam Bouchard’s.”

***

Once Georgette recovered from her initial shock over Madam Bouchard’s candor, she was fascinated by the woman’s considerable abilities as a storyteller. Apparently, she’d been a young courtesan in Paris during the days of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror.

“Of course, I couldn’t let my noble protector be taken,” Madam Bouchard continued with her story as she plied Georgette with a plate of light scones. “So I let
le
Comte
de
Ferre
down the well in the garden. Poor man! He stood shivering in the bucket until I could talk the gendarmes back out the front door.”

“Weren’t you afraid?”

“Terrified,” the old woman admitted. “But fear only lets you know you are alive. And I was wondrously alive in those days.”

“However did you manage to distract them away from your lover’s hiding place?”

Madam Bouchard smiled slyly. “They were men, my lady. And men are very easily distracted if one knows what to use. I took them to my love couch, one after the other, and opened the liquor cabinet for those waiting their turn. Believe me, they all left with smiles on their faces.”

It was a scandalously wicked story, but against her expectations, Georgette found herself liking the madam very much for it. “What would have happened if
le
Comte
had been found hiding in your well?”

“I expect we’d have gone to Madam Guillotine together,” she said blithely. “But I was young then. I thought I would live forever.” The aging whore’s expression turned sober. “And it seems sometimes that I have, but I certainly didn’t expect to grow so old while I was doing it.”

The conversation flagged then and Georgette rose from her seat. She put her bonnet back on. She hadn’t expected to stay quite so long at Madam Bouchard’s, especially since the proprietress of the House of Pleasure hadn’t been able to say with certainty who might have been responsible for Vesta’s death.

“I must be going now, but I thank you for your hospitality,” Georgette said, extending her hand to her hostess. “If you think of anything at all pertaining to Vesta’s death, please send me word.”

“Of course.” The madam took Georgette’s hand between hers. “Thank you for caring about what happened to Vesta, my lady. Not many would.”

“It is my duty to care.”

“No, it’s not,” Madam Bouchard said. “But I’m glad you feel it so.”

Georgette took her leave, making her way down the dim staircase without being too aware of her surroundings.

What
an
odd
mix
of
light
and
dark
we
all
are.

Madam Bouchard’s protector claimed noble blood, yet he hid like a craven coward while his low-born mistress faced down a death squad with nothing more than guile and a smile. She must have cared for the
Comte
deeply.

Georgette was born a lady, yet she’d lain down with a man and spread her legs like any lightskirt on Lackaday Lane, because she couldn’t bear not to know what it was like to give herself willingly to someone for whom she cared deeply.

Cared
deeply. There’s an understatement.

She didn’t just care for Nathaniel. She was connected to him somehow. When he laughed, her heart was full to bursting. When he frowned, her own chest ached. Even when he irritated her beyond bearing, she knew she’d rather be frustrated with him than spend time in desperate, dead calm with anyone else.

She hurt when he hurt. If he suffered a cut, she wouldn’t be surprised to find herself bleeding. Something in him called to something in her and she couldn’t help but answer.

I
love
him
, Georgette realized between one step and the next.

It was the only explanation for her insanity.

She and the madam had much more in common than she would have guessed. The knowledge distracted her so fully, she was unable to pay much attention to anything else.

Which explained why she didn’t see her attacker waiting in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs. She wasn’t even aware of his presence until the burlap bag closed over her head.

***

“Now that there’s less competition on Lackaday Lane, we only see the gents we wants to,” one of Mercy’s friends told her while Mercy took tea with the girls in the little kitchen at the rear of the House of Pleasure.

“And don’t none of ’em bring out the paddles no more,” another said. “Unless it’s for
us
to paddle
them
.”

“Sounds like things have changed for the better here, then,” Mercy said as she sipped her tea and nibbled on a ginger biscuit.

“Want to come back, Mercy? There’s plenty o’ fellows who still ask about ye.”

“No, I’ve gotten used to having a bed to myself.” She was happy for the change in situation for her friends, but returning to the House of Pleasure would feel like going backward for her.

Besides, if she were no longer at Yorkingham House, it would make it difficult to ignore Reuben Darling so completely. And she was enjoying that far too much to consider other arrangements.

After they collected the footman at the House of Sirens, he’d followed her and Lady Georgette across the lane like a whipped pup. Of course, he’d straightened and scowled at the bully when they first arrived at Madam Bouchard’s door, but once milady was escorted upstairs with every courtesy, Reuben had started trying to explain to Mercy again how he’d come to spend a night with a whole houseful of lightskirts.

Even without his protestations, she knew he hadn’t intended to spend the night in a whorehouse. And she was certain sure that Mrs. Throckmorten wasn’t the type to allow any malarkey under her well-ordered, if not well-shingled, roof.

But it never hurt to keep a man begging.

And Reuben was ready to lick the sole of her boot if she’d only allow it.

She’d let him simmer a little longer. Then maybe he’d be willing to give up this silliness about love and just settle in to have a good time with her while a good time was to be had. Hadn’t Vesta’s death proved none of them could count on tomorrow?

The first time she heard a scuffle in the front of the house, she wasn’t a bit concerned. For all his faults, Reuben was a handy lad in a pinch. Whatever was afoot, she was satisfied he could handle it.

But then she thought she heard a woman cry out. There was a pounding of rushing feet and a door slammed hard enough to knock it off its hinges.

Mercy let her teacup clatter back into its chipped saucer and ran into the front room.

Mr. Duggins was slumped in the corner, his chin sagging to his chest. Judging from the way one of his eyes was swelling shut, someone had knocked him into next week.

Mercy felt a twinge of satisfaction over that. The bully had always terrified her more than a little.

But the sight that greeted her eyes near the door wiped away any smugness. Reuben Darling was face down on the scuffed hardwood.

She flew to his side, calling his name. A goose-egg-sized lump was forming on the back of his skull. With help from the other girls she managed to turn him over and cradled his head in her lap. His eyes were half-open, but he didn’t seem to see anything. Only the steady rise and fall of his broad chest confirmed that he was still alive.

“Oh, Reuben,” Mercy chanted, rocking him softly. “Who did this to you? Quick,” she ordered Ninian, the youngest of the House of Pleasure whores, “run up to Madam’s and tell Lady Georgette what’s happened. Someone go for a doctor.”

“Won’t no doctor come to Lackaday Lane.”

“They will when you tell them a lady of quality is here and she’ll pay,” Mercy spat out. “Christ Almighty, do I have to think of everything?”

The girl who’d run up to Madam’s parlor came pounding back down the stairs. “Your mistress is gone.”

If Lady Georgette had been there, she’d have probably swooned dead away at the way Mercy swore over that bit of news. But milady wasn’t there. And Mercy knew as surely as Reuben and the bully were out cold that Lady Georgette hadn’t left the House of Pleasure willingly.

Someone had abducted her mistress.

She’d ought to run screaming back down the lane to the hansom Lady Georgette had hired for the day. She ought to raise a hue and cry to search for the well-bred lady to whom she owed so much.

But she couldn’t leave Reuben’s side. Not till the big lummock opened his eyes so she could tell him how angry she was with him. How stupid he was to let someone whack him from behind like that.

How hopeless her life would be if he didn’t wake up so she could continue to bedevil him.

“Bring a blanket. We need to put him to bed,” Mercy said, taking charge of things, just like Lady Georgette would have done if she were there. The women rolled Reuben onto the heavy wool and, between five of them, managed to cart him up the stairs to one of the bedchambers.

No one lifted a finger to tend to the bully who was still slumped in the corner of the common room. Evidently Mr. Duggins hadn’t endeared himself to any of the girls he was supposedly there to protect.

Mercy still had her mistress’s coin purse. She could pay a doctor if one could be found and persuaded to come. In the meantime, she wet a cloth and cradled it under the lump on the back of Reuben’s head.

“Where’s that doctor?”

She fretted with the sheet, tucking it around him as if that would help somehow. She growled so at the others, the rest of the girls scurried out of the room, leaving her alone with the unconscious footman. Mercy picked up one of his limp hands and brought it to her lips.

“Oh, Reuben,” she whispered. “Don’t ye dare leave me like this. I’ll never forgive ye an’ ye do.”

“This is monstrous!” Georgette protested as her assailant carried her bum first out of the House of Pleasure and down the cobbled street. She seemed destined to be transported from the crooked lane in this undignified manner with alarming frequency. If the situation weren’t so deadly serious, she’d have laughed.

Her captor had looped a stout length of rope around her waist after he covered her head with the burlap bag. Her arms were pinned to her sides, so she couldn’t pummel him as he deserved.

Georgette could, however, kick with all her might and she landed a few solid digs of her pointy toes into the man’s thighs. But when he delivered a stinging smack to her buttocks, she was shocked into holding still. That didn’t stop her from shrieking for help, however.

Where was Reuben? Where was Mercy? For pity’s sake, was there no one to come to the aid of a woman being abducted in broad daylight?

Not on Lackaday Lane, evidently.

She was rudely deposited into some kind of a conveyance. After she heard the door slam, the vehicle lurched forward.

Georgette couldn’t see him, but she knew her captor was there on the opposite squab. She could hear him breathing.

“I hope you know,” she said, trying mightily to keep her tone even, “that the law frowns on the abduction of the daughter of a marquis. You’ll be fortunate if you don’t hang.”

He didn’t answer. He hadn’t said a word to her, not even to order her to be quiet.

His silence was more unnerving than a threat.

The burlap bag allowed in a little light but was woven too thickly for her see anything but vague shadows through it. The strong fibrous hemp smell masked all other scents.

“If it’s a ransom you seek, no doubt my family will pay,” she said. “Though I warn you that you will likely be caught and be unable to spend any of the money.”

There was only silence.

The seat on which she’d been deposited was reasonably soft. When she clutched at the upholstery, short bristles of velvet rubbed her gloved palms. She was in a private carriage then instead of a hired cab. Her abductor had means.

Money was not his motive.

“This can only end badly for you,” she said. “However, there is still time to salvage matters. If you release me now, I promise not to breathe a word to anyone of this unfortunate incident.”

The man said nothing.

Her thoughts darted like a swarm of midges, too many crowding to the forefront for her to focus on one for very long. Finally, she settled on the fact that just because she was riding in a gentleman’s equipage, it did not signify that the man with her was the owner of the carriage. More likely he was a hired lackey, and therefore perhaps susceptible to a higher offer.

“Whatever you are being paid for this, I will double the amount if you release me now,” she said.

The man snorted.

At least it was better than stony silence. Either he doubted she had access to ready cash or he was being paid such an astronomical sum, he didn’t believe she could deliver on her promise.

Who would want to abduct her in the first place?

Perhaps the motive was political. Was there someone who didn’t want her match with the royal duke to proceed?

In that case, she was hopelessly out of her depth. She drew herself up to sit as tall as possible and decided to play the only card of that suit she had.

“My father is the Marquis of Yorkingham. He wields a great deal of influence in the House of Lords and is a confidant of the Crown.” Of course, King George III was hopelessly mad most of the time, but her father did still have His Majesty’s very unreliable ear. “Trust me. You do not want to make so formidable an enemy.”

In the silence that followed she heard only the clop of the horse’s hooves and the creak of the wheels. In the distance, St. Paul’s great bell tolled noon.

Her initial reaction had been outrage. Now panic was creeping up the scale to form a close second.

The carriage slowed and her heart rate sped up. If they were nearing their destination, she was losing her opportunity to win free. When the conveyance stopped, another possibility pushed its way into her mind, one she’d been trying to keep at bay.

There was every chance that her abductor and Vesta’s murderer were one and the same.

***

The doctor, if that’s what the quack actually was, took every last farthing in Mercy’s little coin purse. In exchange, he’d lanced the growing lump on Reuben’s head and let the accumulated blood flow into his little porcelain bowl. Then he bound up Reuben’s head with a length of clean muslin—at least, Ninian had claimed the chemise it was torn from was clean—and left orders that the patient be allowed to sleep until he woke naturally.

Well, what else would they do? Hire a brass band to wake him?

Once the doctor left, Madam Bouchard shooed the rest of the girls away. Before she slipped out of the room as well, she gave Mercy some parting advice.

“Sometimes,” Madam Bouchard said, “a patient with a head wound will rally if he hears a voice he recognizes. Talk to him.”

Mercy skewered her former employer with a frown. In what lifetime had the madam spent any time in a sick room? “But what if he can’t hear me?”

“It doesn’t matter. You need to say the words. Now.”

While
there
is
still
reason
for
you
to
say
them
shimmered unspoken in the air. The door closed behind Madam Bouchard with a soft snick of the latch.

Mercy hitched a hip on the side of Reuben’s bed, sinking a bit into the feather tick. He didn’t stir.

“Most fellows give me a better welcome when I sit on their beds,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. Her brittle smile faded as he continued to lie still as stone.

Normally Reuben had so much color in his tanned face, Mr. Humphrey was after him to use rice powder to give himself a more fashionably pale complexion to go with the fancy livery the Yorkingham footmen wore.

Reuben would need no rice powder now. His skin held a chalky, gray undertone. He looked as if he were leaving her by inches, slipping farther away with each shallow rise and fall of his great chest.

Tears trembled on Mercy’s lashes and she began to speak. At first she chided him lightly for being careless enough to let someone get the drop on him like that, but then she decided he’d paid dearly enough for that lapse in judgment.

“Ye’re a good man, Reuben Darling. But not a very smart one. Ye were wrong when ye told me…” Her voice faltered. “When ye told me I deserved to be loved. Ye don’t know what ye’re talkin’ about, truly ye don’t.”

She told him how it had been for her, how men had used her since she was barely old enough to have sprouted breasts. “So I decided I’d use ’em right back.”

She confessed to stealing from her customers and making it seem as if they’d misplaced their valuables elsewhere. Then when she’d learned to twist men to her will, she conned them into buying her little baubles she could sell without the madam’s knowing. That way Mercy could collect the whole amount without letting her employer take her cut.

“I even cheated Lady Georgette countless times since I came to work for her. Does she really think her dresses wear out as quick as I tell her they do? I rip a seam here or lose a bit of lace there and sharp as ye can say Bob’s yer uncle, I’m nippin’ off to the secondhand shop to sell a lovely gown for every last shilling I can get.”

Tears spilled over her lower lids, but she brushed them away angrily.

“The only reason I haven’t lifted any of her jewelry yet is because I ain’t figured out how to have paste copies made first. And you, Reuben Darling.” She moved up and propped herself over him, letting her hair fall down to tickle his face. He didn’t twitch a muscle. “I call ye names and make fun of ye, but when I crook my little finger to ye, ye hop along to me bed, biddable as a lamb. And I think to myself, I’ll have me a bit o’ sport with this one before I toss him back.”

Her chin quivered.

“Only ye ruined it for me.” She laid her head on his chest and sobbed. “Ye told me ye loved me. Worse, ye said I deserve it. Ye stupid, stupid man.”

Mercy didn’t mean for it to happen, but the rest of the words poured out of her along with the tears. She’d never have said them if she’d thought he could actually hear her, but once she started, she couldn’t seem to stop.

She told him how her chest pounded each time she happened to round the corner and see his handsome face. How she arranged her days so that their paths would cross more often than needed. She confessed that even though she knew he was wrong, she longed for him to be right, that somehow even if she didn’t deserve it, she might still be able to make-believe that he loved her in any case.

“Because if ever a man had a shining soul to match his fine face, it’s you, Reuben Darling.” She lifted her head and looked down at him again, willing him to open his big brown puppy dog eyes.

She pressed a kiss on his lips, but there was no response.

“I don’t know if I can love anybody. I’d probably be hopeless at it,” she admitted with a ragged sob. “But if ever I was to try to love someone, it would be you.”

One of his eyelids moved and she sucked her breath in over her teeth.

“If you’ll try to love me, that’ll do, Mercy Atwood,” Reuben said softly. “That’ll do.”

***

Once Georgette was dragged from the carriage, she was forced to walk. She heard a door opening before her and she was ushered inside, surrounded by the bustling noises of a busy kitchen.

“Oh, my! What are you—” a matronly-sounding voice started and then stopped abruptly, as if her words had been strung on a thread snipped off by an unseen seamstress.

“Help me, whoever you are. I promise you’ll be rewarded,” Georgette pleaded. “I’m Lady Georgette Yorkingham and I’ve been taken against my will.”

Well, of course you have, ninny. Anyone can see that. You’ve a burlap bag over your head and your arms are bound.

She silently cursed herself for her outburst. Naturally, whoever had spoken was in her captor’s employ. No help would be coming from that quarter.

So she not-so-silently cursed her assailant with a number of choice phrases she’d picked up from Mercy’s colorful vocabulary as he forced her up a set of stairs. She was done pleading. She wouldn’t take another step willingly.

Which was how she found herself being carried upward with no gentleness at all. The man kicked a door open and they passed into a room. He dropped her without ceremony but instead of the hardwood she expected to land on, she sank into a mattress.

She’d been outraged. She’d tried to reason with him. She’d pleaded for help.

Now for the first time, real fear snaked down her spine.