Authors: Escapade
“Would you
stop
! God’s teeth, but you’re making my head ache!” The pistol sagged again, now being supported by just a single small hand, as the other was involved in rubbing at the young woman’s temples. “I planned, and planned, and screwed my courage up to the sticking point—and for what? To end up being talked to death by this idiot? Oh,
now
what do I do?”
Simon leaned forward, only slightly, just enough to be faintly intimate, not enough to be threatening. “If I could brook a suggestion,” he said kindly, “I would say you might begin by lowering your weapon?”
The cocked pistol was once more held between both hands, once more directed at his heart. “I don’t think so, my lord,” the young woman said cuttingly—and still in that so strangely appealing husky voice that hinted of darkened bedrooms and earthly delights, even while speaking of blood and mayhem. And why would he be thinking of such things at a moment like this? He really would have to examine his character, for it must surely be flawed. Either that, or he had developed a sense of the ridiculous that he hadn’t known he possessed. Either way, he was, frankly, enjoying himself very much.
But the brat was speaking again. “I definitely will not give you my pistol. I’ve no great desire to end this night hauled away to the gaolhouse and clapped up in irons.”
“Clapped in irons? Oh, foul, foul! As if a gentleman would do such a thing!” Moving very carefully, Simon reached to his right and dropped the shade, letting in the first light of dawn so that it could reveal the earnestness of his expression. “There has been no crime committed, I assure you. Why, I often end my evenings by ordering my coachman to take me for a relaxing drive into the countryside. Truly.”
“Don’t be nice to me,” his captor shot back angrily. “I don’t like you even a little bit, and I certainly don’t trust you. You’re too jolly by half, and, besides, I think you’re making fun of me.”
Simon’s chuckle was deep, coming from low in his throat. “Making fun of you, my dear? Why, of course I am. Bloody hell, madam, what else is there for me to do—except this!”
The pistol was in his hand a moment later, probably before his former captor could even register his intent—a happy surprise of concentration and calculated movement that surely would give Simon reason to compliment himself later, once he was shed of the girl.
“Now,” he said as the young woman cowered against the squabs, doubtless in fear for her life—so that he considerately uncocked and pocketed the pistol— “perhaps you’ll allow me to have a slight verbal exchange with Hardwick concerning our destination. Yes? I thought so.”
He leaned forward and opened the small door, all the while keeping his interested gaze on the young woman’s face. As he ordered Hardwick to turn the coach around, he conducted a cursory inventory. Figure, small and slim beneath a too-large cape and atrocious leggings and crude clogs. Face, unidentifiable beneath the slouch hat and dramatic black-silk cloth tied around the mouth and nose. Eyes—the only part truly visible—a lovely, wide, rather frightened green.
He’d always had a weakness for green eyes.
“Ah, that’s better,” Simon said once he had done speaking with his coachman, who had muttered a few none too inspiring words about lordships who drink too deep before calling the horses to a halt, then beginning to turn the coach. “Now, to pass the time on our ride back to London, perhaps you’ll be so kind as to tell me a small story?”
She pulled the silk scarf higher on her face, clearly wishing to hide her eyes, and failing. She was unable to do so and still see him, or to keep him from noticing that her brows, although dark, hinted of a hair color no deeper than chestnut—which went quite well with her remarkably clear, milky skin.
“There’s nothing to tell, my lord,” she said; her tone grudging, and not a little angry. “I thought you were someone else. Either let me go or turn me over to the Watch when we get back to the city. I owe you no explanations.”
“I hesitate to bring this to your attention, but anyone would think you were still holding the pistol, love. But let’s be pleasant, shall we?” Simon opened a small door at the side of the coach and revealed a space that held a silver decanter and a half dozen small glasses. “Would you care for some brandy? There’s always an unwelcome chill at dawn, don’t you agree?”
When she refused to speak, Simon shrugged, uncapped the decanter and poured three fingers of brandy into one of the glasses. He then threw it back, allowing his eyes to close for a moment as the liquid heat ran down his throat, warmed his belly. No wonder his mother so favored the drink, although he, himself, usually shunned it in favor of his beloved champagne. “Ah, superb. A name, fair lady,” he said quickly, skewering her with his eyes. “Just give me a name, and we’ll call quits to this entire affair. No Watch, no magistrates, no gaol. Just a name—and your freedom. Whisper it, if you wish.”
The small figure grew a full inch as her back went stiff and straight against the squabs. “I would die before I gave you my name, sir!’’
“Good God, girl, what would I do with
your
name?” Simon asked, enjoying the young woman’s daring high dudgeon in the face of total ruin. It would be easy enough to ferret out that information later—as he didn’t plan on allowing her to disappear from his life quite yet. But, for the moment, another name interested him more. “I want the identity of the man for whom you planned a murder most foul this evening. After all, I might wish to warn him. Then again, if he really is a cardsharper, I might just wish to stand back and enjoy the show. I’m a well-loved man, and with a reasonably good heart, or so I’m told, but I am not without my small vices.”
She spread her hands as if in surrender, saying, “If it will shut you up, I’ll be more than happy to tell you. His name is Noel Kinsey, the Earl of Filton, and a more odious, horrible, heartless—”
“Vile, despicable,
dangerous
man would be difficult to find,” Simon interrupted, shocked to his toes although he would not allow this young girl to know it. “Are you out of your infinitesimal mind? I could have had your weapon anytime I wanted. Filton would have not only had it, he would have used it on you in a heartbeat. I begin to think you’d be safer if I turned you over to the Watch, truly I do. Or I could order Hardwick to drive us past Bethlehem Hospital and we could have you fitted with your very own strait-waistcoat. You are most definitely quite mad.”
“Your opinion means less than nothing to me, my lord,” the infuriating girl announced even as—showing herself to be much more resourceful than he had given her credit for being—she pulled a second pistol from beneath that damned cape. The small sound that followed told him that the pistol had been cocked. “Now, my lord, if you’ll consider my apology already rendered, I believe it is time we said good night.”
And then, perhaps simply to reinforce his rueful conclusion that he had been outmaneuvered, perhaps because she seriously wished to do him an injury without having to resort to actually pulling the trigger of her pistol, she kicked out with one leg, sharp and hard, sending a damnable heavy clog winging straight at his head.
Chaos instantly reigned supreme inside the coach.
Simon, acting more from a sudden anger than any attack of common sense, caught the clog before it could do any harm and made a move toward the girl as she reached over to open the off door of the coach. The cocked pistol fired as she struggled to depress the handle, nearly taking his left ear as the ball whizzed past him and plowed into the rear of the coach. Hardwick gave a shout and yanked on the reins, causing the tired, already–slow-moving team to halt even as the young woman threw open the door and launched herself out of the coach.
His ears ringing from the report of the pistol, his throat clogged with blue smoke and the stench of gunpowder, Simon reacted a full second slower than usual. He bounded out of the coach only in time to observe the young woman, now minus both clogs, effortlessly vaulting onto the back of one of two horses that obviously had been following close behind the coach. With a yell to the person holding the reins to “follow me!” she was gone.
As exits went, this one was fairly dramatic, even if Simon did not consider the fact that the damned stocking-clad female had mounted the horse without bothering to use the stirrups, landing astride on its back, and all with a fluid grace many of his male acquaintance would envy.
As it was, all he could do was watch as the two horses wheeled and sped away. He then approached his groom, who was still wiping sleep from his eyes as he cowered in the boot, and sweetly inquired of him if he hadn’t thought it bloody odd that a man riding one bloody horse and leading another had been bloody following the bloody coach ever since they’d
bloody left London
?
The clogs, that had somehow ended up in Simon’s hands, had gone winging into the trees lining the roadway, one following closely after the other during the course of his questioning of the footman, both shoes flung away in some heat, and with impressive force.
“Milord?” the groom exclaimed, visibly wilting under Simon’s rare physical exertion, his even rarer verbal attack. “Oi thought they wuz yours, m’lord.”
Simon pushed himself back under control. He even smiled. “Mine?
Mine
. Oh, I see now Mine. Of course you did. Forgive me for not realizing that, seeing as how I often have two rented nags tagging along behind my coach, in the slim chance I might wish to take a ride between Curzon Street and Portland Place.” He turned back to the coach. “Take me home, Hardwick, if you please,” he ordered wearily, knowing that he had probably seen the last of the mysterious young woman.
It was only the discovery of a small, crumpled white handkerchief on the floor of the coach that served to cheer Viscount Brockton at all. A small white handkerchief embroidered—fairly clumsily—with the letter “C.” He raised it to his nostrils to find that it smelt of lavender and horse—and bread and butter.
Still holding the handkerchief, Simon drew down all the shades and began searching the coach. He soon espied a stale crust of buttered bread wedged into a fold of the velvet squabs. He picked it up, gingerly holding it between thumb and index finger, eyeing it owlishly.
And then he smiled again, a slow, lazy smile that grew to all but split his face. He even, much to the surprise and consternation of both Hardwick and the groom, laughed aloud. Aloud, and long, and hard.
“What cheek! I’ve
got
to find her,” he said at last, talking to himself. “She spent the time waiting to shoot me by having herself a bloody picnic.” He shook his head even as he sighed contentedly, then stretched out his long legs on the facing seat and crossed them at the ankle, a gentleman once more feeling fully at his ease.
“God, now I have to find her,” he mused aloud, chuckling low in his throat as he drew the handkerchief beneath his fine, aristocratic nose once more. “Armand will positively adore the chit!”
justly, tell me whom you live with,
and I will tell you who you are.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Chapter Two
P
ortland Place was located in a most advantageous area of London and populated by some of the
ton
’s most interesting and powerful personages. Admiral Lord Radstock resided at Number Ten and Sir Ralph Milbanke, father of the woman who had married and then cast off George Gordon, Lord Byron, resided at Number Sixty-three. And then there was, of course, Simon Roxbury, the Viscount Brockton, who, along with his widowed mother, made the elegant mansion at Number Forty-nine his principal place of residence during the Season.
There were certain drawbacks to Portland Place at the moment, thanks to the Prince Regent’s penchant for building, and also thanks to the prodigiously intricate dreams of his personal architect. John Nash had taken over the construction of Park Crescent, a project to the north of Portland Place that had been begun and then abandoned when its original builder had broken ground, then promptly gone bankrupt.
For nearly a half dozen years the view to the north had been one of mounds of dirt and rubble bordered by a lovely expanse of open land. But now the area had been ambitiously renamed Regent’s Park and, if Prinny had his way, the entire area would soon cast Hyde Park into shame.
Soon. Anytime now. Except that “anytime now” had stretched into months, into years, and the view to the north of Portland Place remained less than heartening. But the address was still impressive, the massive private residences definitely so. The Brockton mansion was its jewel.
This was a rather insular world. The pampered ladies and gentlemen who lived in Portland Place would scarcely ever be found more than a few blocks from the area of London known as Mayfair. They drove out to Hyde Park and Bond Street and to visit other fashionable folk at their equally fashionable residences. In other words, although he had most definitely
seen
Westminster Bridge from a distance, Lord Brockton had seldom found reason actually to cross over the thing to the other side of the Thames.
If he bad, he might have driven his fine team along Westminster Bridge Road, and eastward, to Horsemonger Lane, home of Horsemonger Lane Gaol. He would find the area a fine place to visit if he was of a mind to view a hanging or see residences that someone such as he would not deem fit for stables.
It was there, in one of those tumbledown houses only a scant few miles and yet a world away from the gleaming palace Simon Roxbury called home, that one Miss Caledonia Johnston could be found. She paced the bare boards of what the landlord had laughingly called the “drawing room.” She paced, and she cursed her own stupidity as her friend and co-conspirator, Lester Plum, variously watched her progress and munched on a street vendor’s hot cross bun.
“You did your possible, Callie. Nobody could ask more, not that anyone asked in the first place, mind you,” Lester said now, sucking on one finger after another, trying to get the last of the sweet icing into his mouth. “We’ll just toddle off home now, that’s what we’ll do. My papa says a week in this Solomon says Good-morrow city is more than enough to damn a delicate person forever.”