“Percy Vere in forty volumes,” Atherton added languidly. “That should name the rest of them.”
“Acck! Stick it up her bum! Roger her, boyo!” the parrot declared.
“That’s quite enough of that!” Mr. Montague said in frustration, swirling to glare at Ogilvie. “Remove that rude creature or I will!”
“Perhaps it will be best if the ladies withdraw, Blake,” Frances suggested shyly. “We’re keeping the poor thing awake.”
Hurray for Frances!
The woman showed a little sense after all. The men gallantly protested but the ladies demurred, and eventually, the scents and sounds of perfumes and silks wafted from the room, accompanied by a few more of the gentlemen, including Lord Quentin.
“Now see what you’ve done, old boy,” Mr. Atherton protested. “Who wants to look at your ugly mugs without the ladies about?”
“I won’t have a bloody parrot insulting my sister,” Blake protested. “Ogilvie, you need to tie the bird’s beak shut or remove it to a barn, where it belongs.”
“Can’t,” Bernie argued morosely. “I’m to guard it with my life.”
“Fair enough. Then I’ll shoot you before I shoot the bird.”
Jocelyn’s eyebrows soared upward. Mr. Montague sounded bored, hostile, and frustrated, always a volatile mixture when combined with alcohol. Should she intervene?
“Codswallop!” the bird screeched.
“Did anyone bring their weapons?” Montague asked ominously.
Jocelyn shuddered at the image of the soldier using Percy as a target.
“I’ve my weapons with me. Prime Mantons, they are,” one of the more drunken chaps cried happily. “Surely you won’t shoot the creature in here?”
Jocelyn buried her head in her hands and wondered if there was any beast on earth more stupid than a man full of brandy. She waited for Mr. Montague to tell them all to jump off a cliff. She had a feeling they would do anything he suggested.
Instead, Mr. Montague drawled a bored, “Why not? Whatever it takes to stop the bird from insulting ladies.”
“Montague, you idiot, you cannot shoot a bird,” Ogilvie shouted in protest.
“Did you just insult me?” Mr. Montague asked in a dark tone.
“A card game,” Atherton interjected. “He who wins the set decides the bird’s fate.”
Mr. Ogilvie protested, but he’d lost control of his guests. Various gentlemen rushed off to find their cards and their pistols. Disappointed that Mr. Montague did not assert his leadership skills, Jocelyn decided she did not care if a bunch of drunken sots killed one another, but she could not allow them to kill Richard’s bird.
Just as she thought they’d all gone away, and she was free to take Percy and run, Mr. Montague’s shadow fell over her chair. “Are you lost, Miss Carrington? Shall I send your maid to find you?”
Now
he deigned to notice her, when he was foxed and she was preoccupied with birdnapping. She threw her book aside. “I am not lost. Nor am I the
idiot
fighting over a bird.” She emphasized the insult Mr. Ogilvie had used. That was unlike her, but the knowledge that Mr. Montague couldn’t call her out for the offense gave her childish pleasure.
Without looking back, she stalked from the room, cursing interfering men. She would have to hide elsewhere until she had a chance to retrieve poor Percy. Her bags were packed. Lady Belden meant to leave at the break of day so they’d be home in time for an evening engagement. She could sleep while they traveled. She need only wait until they left the bird—
At a cry from Percy, she swung around to see Ogilvie carrying the parrot with him as the men strolled from the room in search of cards, weapons, and presumably more sensible heads.
Well, drat. That complicated matters.
Refusing to give up on Richard’s parrot, she settled into a window seat and drifted off to sleep while waiting for the men to return with the bird. At some point, she heard the drunken louts arguing over the card contest and some significance of the code of duello, but they still had Percy.
She woke up again when Mr. Ogilvie roared someone was a bloody cheater, and he’d shoot the cheat before he’d let the bird be shot. Glancing outside, she couldn’t see dawn, but she did see raindrops on the glass.
Percy screeched a protest as someone carried him out the front door into the cold drizzle. They would kill the bird in this weather, of a certainty! Finding her bonnet and cloak in the closet beneath the stairs, Jocelyn slipped out after them, determined to put an end to their bird depredations.
Standing in a field outside a duke’s mansion, in a drenching predawn downpour, surrounded by a crowd of equally drunken young men, Blake Montague decided that getting shot by an overbearing imbecile over a rude parrot and a card game possessed potent symbolism, if only he could fathom what it might be.
He had attempted to divert the sots with cards, but Bernie Ogilvie’s second insult had only added fuel to the flames, and Blake’s honor came into question. Over a bird. That had to be the effect of too much brandy on both their parts. He could not think why else a duke’s nephew would intentionally insult someone so far below him on the social scale.
Damn Jocelyn Carrington and her flirtatious eyes and bold insults. He should not have partaken of that last glass of brandy while attempting to ignore the arousing effect that vivacious Venus had on his frustration. He was a hopeless mutton-head when it came to champagne-colored curls and blue eyes.
More likely, he should not have attempted his friend Fitz’s trick with counting cards. Bernie didn’t like to lose.
Blake examined the assortment of bloodthirsty weaponry placed at his disposal. Shooting anything might relieve some of his many irritations. He’d far prefer to find a woman than a weapon for physical release, but he’d take what he could get.
Hair tied unfashionably at the nape, whiskers in need of scraping, and torso stripped to shirtsleeves, embroidered vest, and loosened neckcloth, Blake was aware that he looked the part of disreputable highwayman. Perhaps if he accidentally killed Bernie, he’d take up thievery for a living. But he had no intention of hitting a target as wide as Bernie. The dolt merely needed a layer or two of privilege removed from his hide.
“‘He’s a most notable coward,’ ” Blake pronounced, the words tripping effortlessly off his well-oiled tongue while he held up a pistol and checked the length of the barrel, “ ‘an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of not one good quality.’”
Oblivious of his opponent huddled with friends farther down the hedgerow, Blake pointed an ornate Manton at the moon. “ ‘I desire that we be better strangers.’”
“Damnation, he’s quoting Shakespeare.” Staying dry beneath the spreading branches of an oak, Atherton did not seem overly anxious about Blake’s impending confrontation with death. “We could all drown out here before he’s done.”
Blake would miss his callous friends if he took up thievery. He wouldn’t, however, miss Miss Carrington’s infectious laugh. Or that riveting cleavage she’d flaunted all evening. Ladies be damned.
Bernie’s second sounded more concerned than Nick. “We’re supposed to resolve this, not let them further insult each other.”
“We tried,” Nick noted. “Ogilvie’s the poor sport here.”
“Montague cheated!” Ogilvie protested, as he had done ever since the drunken party had whooped its way from the duke’s mansion to this distant field. He ignored the proffered box of weapons while he affixed the duke’s molting parrot on a perch he’d planted in the ground. “It’s a matter of honor.”
The wet creature flapped its wings and squawked a bored protest. “Acck! Friggin’ cock snatcher. Roger her, boyo!”
The very words that had set Blake off this evening.
“‘Methink’st thou art a general offense, and every man should beat thee,’ ” Blake quoted, filling his weapon with powder.
Shoulders propped against the oak, Nick sighed in exasperation. “You’re not on the battlefield anymore, old friend. Let the poor boy toddle to bed and sleep it off. You may not mind fleeing the law for a stint on the Continent, but it’s a damned poor way to treat your host.”
“That’s Bernie’s choice, not mine,” Blake corrected, testing the sight on the barrel. “It is my duty to defend the delicate sensibilities of the ladies. How can I find a rich one so I might return to war if I allow them to be insulted?” Blake asked. “Although it is hard to come by a wife who wants me dead,” he added with drunken wisdom.
Bernie’s second lifted a questioning eyebrow.
“Not a quote,” Nick explained. “Blake needs a dowry to buy colors. He thinks he can run the war better than the current crop of hen-hearted rattle-pates.”
“You’re serious?” the other man asked in disbelief, water dripping from the brim of his hat.
Nick shrugged. “He possesses the intellect to run the country but hasn’t a ha’pence to his name. What do you think?”
“War heroes get titles.” Bernie’s second nodded in understanding.
“Acck, tup her good, me lad!”
Maintaining the deadly focus that had kept him alive on the battlefield, Blake ignored Nick’s idea of repartee. In boredom, he aimed the loaded pistol at the half-featherless creature, which was barely discernible against the backdrop of yew. “ ‘Scurvy, old, filthy, scurry lord.’” He fired a test shot in the general direction of the bird and hedge. A flurry and scuttle shook the evergreen branches, as if some animal’s sleep had been disturbed, and the parrot squawked incomprehensible curses.
“Not the bird, Montague!” Ogilvie shouted, seeming in more fear of the parrot’s life than his own. “His Grace will disown me! Someone move Percy behind the hedge.”
One of Bernie’s companions obligingly pulled up the perch and moved the scurvy lord out of sight, if not out of hearing. Obscenities and squawks screeched against the silent dawn, raising songbirds into protest.
“The ladies are leaving this morning,” Nick called from his position beneath the oak, making no effort to verify the safety or accuracy of the next pistol Blake hefted. “Shooting Ogilvie won’t do you any good now. Apologize and have done.”
“‘I must be cruel only to be kind.’” Blake again sighted along the length of a barrel, in the direction of the hedge where the bird now resided.
The shrubbery rustled as if retreating from his aim.
“Shakespeare?” Bernie’s second asked.
“One never can be quite certain,” Nick concluded. “Montague’s brainpan is stuffed with an encyclopedia.”
Eager to escape the chilly September rain, one of the onlookers finally herded the duelists into position, back to back, and gave the signal for them to begin pacing off their distance. As Blake took long strides across the wet grass, a demonical shriek from the hedge—
Ackkkk, kidnapper, murderer, help, hellllppppp!
—dispersed the tension of the final count.
Undeterred by the parrot’s warning, Blake swiveled steadily at the count of ten and aimed his pistol. But Bernie was no longer in position.
Instead, coattails flapping, the duke’s stout nephew was racing for the shrubbery. “She’s stealing Percy!” he roared.
Sure enough, a dark, cloaked shadow—with a silly plume bouncing on its head—could be seen darting up the hill, into a grove of trees, the bird perch with it.
In disgust, Blake fired at Bernie’s hat, sending the inappropriate chapeau bouncing across the saturated grass with a hole through its middle. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and a glimmer of predawn light appeared on the horizon. His opponent’s balding pate glistened as he fought yew branches in hopes of reaching his pet.
The bird screamed again from the field beyond the hedge.
Pointing, looking for all the world like a shorter version of the Prince of Wales, Bernie shouted, “A thousand pounds to anyone who catches her. Devil take the damned witch!”
“I say, did he promise a thousand pounds for that paltry poultry?” Blake asked, reloading the smoking pistol.
“He did, old boy, he did.” Nick unfurled himself from the oak’s trunk. “But everyone knows Ladybyrd took him. He’ll never see the creature again.”
Blake snorted. “For a thousand pounds, I’ll follow her to the Outer Hebrides.” Chasing Jocelyn Byrd-Carrington anywhere was just exactly what he needed. At this point, he would do so for nothing. He could still smell the damn woman’s exotic scent. Shooting her might be good for the soul and relieve the world of a foolish, bird-stealing widget.
“For all your education, you have ale for brains, Professor,” said Nick. “With that game leg, you can barely walk. You’re supposed to be recuperating. Haring after a crackbrain will only get you killed all the sooner.”
“She’s carrying a squawking damned parrot. How far can she get?” Donning his coat, Blake tucked the loaded pistol into his trouser band and trudged toward the hedge.
He had despised his enforced idleness. The last fumes of liquor evaporated with the exhilaration of action priming his blood. He didn’t know a woman alive who would travel without bags and boxes. If she was fleeing with the parrot, she wouldn’t part easily with them.
Voilà
, she and the parrot would be found with the baggage.
Even if idle Bernie didn’t actually possess the full reward he’d offered, the duke might. Just five hundred pounds would buy Blake’s colors and free him from the need to marry for money. For the first time in recent memory, his spirits soared, and the thrill of the chase was on.
4
“Methinks he thinks too much,” Jocelyn crooned to the parrot, stroking it beneath the dark cloth covering the warm dry box she’d appropriated for the mistreated creature. The parrot batted its head against her soothing finger, then settled into sleep.
Shivering in her wet cloak, her mangled bonnet plume sticking to her cheek, Jocelyn tried not to think too hard about Blake Montague aiming a pistol in her direction, looking the part of a dangerous rogue.
Tucking the bird’s box among the rest of the baggage in the wagon, she heard the uneven crunching of gravel up the carriage drive and glanced toward the towering ducal mansion nearly a quarter mile from the stable where she stood. She had hoped the combatants were all too drunk or involved in the duel to follow her, but she didn’t underestimate the provoking soldier’s determination. The angry stride with a halting limp was probably his.