One Night with a Rake (Regency Rakes) (12 page)

She turned to Nathaniel and latched onto his arm. “I fear I’ve developed a bit of a headache. I wonder if you might see me home early, if your sister is all right, of course.”

“My parents have her well in hand now, so Caro’s fine.” Nate nodded correctly to Lord Fishwick. “I wish you continued good health, my lord. You’re something of a luck piece for me now.”

Roger’s cheeks flushed a florid red. He was obviously not at all pleased about being relegated to the status of a rabbit’s foot.

“Don’t antagonize him,” Georgette murmured under her breath as Nathaniel led her away. “You don’t know what he’s like.”

Nate chuckled. “Sure I do. Spoiled. Sulky. Always expecting others to pick up after his mess. I believe I have Lord Fishwick’s measure.”

Georgette bade the Daventrys a good evening and thanked them for inviting her. Then she smiled across the room at Lord Winthrop, who’d been not-so-covertly watching her all evening, no doubt hoping to catch her in some unroyalty-like faux pas.

“Speaking of taking someone’s measure,” Nathaniel murmured as Lord Winthrop lowered his lorgnette and nodded at her gravely.

“He’s doing his job, I suppose, but it does grate on one to be under constant scrutiny.”

“I believe that about sums up the life of a royal. But cheer up, Georgie. Looks as if you passed muster,” Nate said as he draped her short cape over her shoulders. “You were serene, elegant, and as remote as the moon. Clearly regal material. His Highness’s lapdog seems satisfied with your performance.”

Georgette snorted. The idea of the corpulent Lord Winthrop on anyone’s lap was laughable.

“So Winthrop is a lapdog and, according to Roger, you’re a wolfhound,” she said. “It seems I’m besieged by canines at every turn.”

“I won’t argue the point. As a general rule, all gentlemen are dogs and—what do you mean,
Roger
?” He had been about to pop his top hat on his head, but he stopped with the hat halfway to its goal. “Just how well do you know that dandy?”

“Don’t make a fuss,” she said as she led the way out the Daventrys’ double doors and into the crisp, starry night. “Not that it’s any of your business, but Lord Fishwick and I crossed paths as children. I know him well enough to know he can be a very unpleasant person. Let’s leave it at that.”

He offered her his hand and helped her into the waiting carriage. “Was he troubling you?”

The only man in the world who truly troubled her climbed after her into the barouche and settled on the squab beside her. “If he was, it’s none of your affair.”

“I’ll make it my affair.”

“No, you won’t,” she said in clipped tones. “Because you don’t mean any of it.”

Georgette pressed her lips tightly together. She hadn’t meant to toss his words from that night in the library back at him. The fact that she did meant they’d wounded her. And she couldn’t bear him knowing that.

She drew the velvet curtains aside and looked out the window, feigning interest in the twisted spider-leg streets of London that sheared off the main thoroughfare. So many lives intersecting in those little crooked ways.

Nathaniel took her hand, but she still didn’t turn her gaze from the window. She also didn’t pull her hand free.

“Georgette, I’m sorry I hurt you. Contrary to Lord Fishwick’s opinion, I’m not a hound of any sort,” he said. “I’m a cur.”

“Yes, you are.”

“You weren’t supposed to agree so quickly.”

Against her better judgment, a smile tugged at her lips. “I can’t help it if I’m the agreeable sort.”

“Ha! You are many things, Georgette Yorkingham, but agreeable is not one of them. In fact, I think it irks you when you have to be.”

He knew her too well for her comfort. Well, he would, wouldn’t he, seeing as how he’d all but
known
her in the biblical sense.

“If I’m not agreeable, what am I?”

His thumb circled her gloved knuckles. She let the curtain drop back into place and wished the thin silk of her gloves didn’t separate her skin from his touch.

“You’re infuriating,” he said. “Mostly.”

She jerked her hand away at that. “Careful, sir. A lady can only stand so much charm,” she said, her tone sharp with sarcasm. “You’ll turn my head.”

“I meant it in a good way,” he amended.

“How, pray tell, can one be infuriating in a good way?”

“Infuriating probably isn’t the right word. What I really mean is that you irritate me.”

She laughed mirthlessly. “Not an improvement. A word to the not-so-wise: when one finds oneself so deep in a hole, it’s generally advisable to stop digging.”

“Irritate isn’t quite right either. It’s like you’re…a burr under my saddle.”

“Well, what woman doesn’t live to hear that?”

He exhaled noisily. “You don’t understand. When you have a burr under your saddle, you have to stop and fix it.” He caught her with his intense gaze and for the life of her, she couldn’t look away this time. “Don’t you see? You make me…Georgette, you make me want to stop what I’m doing and fix things. You make me want to change.”

She blinked in surprise. That was possibly the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. She swallowed hard.

“What are you doing that you ought to stop?”

He leaned toward her. “Trying to seduce you.”

“Oh.” She felt herself being drawn to him and found not a particle of will to stop it. “Perhaps we could begin with other things about you that need changing first.”

His smile lit up that dimple in his cheek again. “Perhaps we could.”

When his lips met hers, all the frustrations of the evening melted. She melted. The whole world slipped away in the liquid warmth of Nathaniel Colton’s kiss.

There was no pending match with the Duke of Cambridge to fret over. No residual discomfort from her conversation with that smarmy Lord Fishwick.

There was only this moment, this man, this mingling of souls.

Until she realized vaguely that the carriage had come to a stop and someone was pounding on the door.

“Oh, my lady!” Mercy cried.

Georgette leaned across Nathaniel and peered out through the slit in the curtains on his side of the carriage. By the light of the gas lamp near Yorkingham House’s front door, she could see that Mercy’s face was wet with tears and her nose was running.

“Thank God, ye’re home.” Mercy clung to the carriage handle but didn’t wrench the door open.

“Come away from there, girl.” Mr. Humphrey, usually the picture of decorum, came bolting out of the big double doors and bounding to the street with unaccustomed speed. “You know better than to be seen in front of the house. What are you troubling my lady about?”

“It’s all right, Mr. Humphrey,” Georgette said as Nathaniel handed her down from the carriage.

“This note…it came whilst ye were gone.” Mercy waved a bit of foolscap as if it were a white flag. “Oh, they’ve gone and done it. And there ain’t no comin’ back from this.”

“Please, Mercy, not on the street,” Georgette said. Who knew if the Duke of Cambridge had other watchers posted besides Lord Winthrop? “Besides, I can’t very well read it here. Come inside.”

Mr. Humphrey gave a surprised sniff when Georgette put her arm around Mercy’s shaking shoulders, but wisely refrained from comment. Georgette paused in the foyer long enough to allow the steward to divest her of her cape before shepherding Mercy into the parlor. Nathaniel lit the wall sconces and the room blazed with light.

“You’re shaking like a leaf,” Georgette said. “Here, Mercy, have a seat.”

Mr. Humphrey had turned their outer garments over to a waiting valet and followed them into the parlor. “Begging your pardon, milady, but it’s highly inappropriate for one of the staff to be seated in your presence.”

“Would it be more appropriate to allow Mercy to collapse on the floor? Sit,” she ordered. Mercy did. Georgette ignored the fact that her maid cast a sly smile toward the steward. It was merely Mercy’s way to tweak those in authority, and besides, her expression returned to one of abject misery quickly enough. “Please bring us some tea, if you would, Mr. Humphrey.”

Once he was gone, Georgette studied the note. “It’s for you, Lord Nathaniel. The seal is broken.”

Mercy swiped her nose on her sleeve and had the grace to look chagrined. “I could see it was from Mrs. Throckmorten, and I ain’t heard from Vesta for a couple days. I thought she mighta gotten herself into a spot of trouble, so I figured if I could sort it out without troublin’ the pair of ye, well…but I can’t sort this out.” She erupted into fresh sobs.

Georgette pulled the lace handkerchief from her own sleeve and handed it to her maid.

“What’s this about, Mercy?” Nate asked.

“They killed her.”

“Killed who?” Georgette tore open the much folded foolscap and ran her gaze over Mrs. Throckmorten’s neat script. Unfortunately, Mercy’s tears were making Georgette’s vision cloud up as well. No one ever wept alone in her presence, and she found she couldn’t read the note.

“I think that was meant for me,” Nate said as he removed it from her grasp with gentleness. “I am Mrs. Throckmorten’s employer, after all.”

He skimmed over the note. “It seems Vesta was late returning from the florist’s shop, so Mrs. Throckmorten sent the girls out to look for her. Her body was discovered only a few yards away from the house on Lackaday Lane.”

Georgette sank into one of the Sheraton chairs because her legs would no longer support her.

“They done for her,” Mercy muttered.

“Mrs. Throckmorten does suspect foul play.” Nathaniel refolded the note and thrust it into his waistcoat pocket.

How could the man be so maddeningly calm at a time like this? “We must summon the magistrate,” Georgette said.

Mercy’s laugh was like the tinkle of broken glass. “For a whore? Bless me if sometimes I don’t think ye’re a bit simple, milady.”

Georgette glowered at her maid. “Vesta is…was…no longer a prostitute. But even if she was, she still deserves justice.”

“You’re right,” Nathaniel said. “But Mercy’s right too. No magistrate is going to appreciate being rousted from his bed for the sake of a dead whore, reformed or not. And even if we could get a Bow Street runner to take the case, they’re more effective in the better part of town.”

“Then we’ll have to see to it ourselves.” Georgette stood, feeling less shaky for taking action. “You said, ‘they done for her,’ Mercy. Whom did you mean?”

“Ye don’t think I know, do ye?” Mercy blew her nose noisily. “I suppose Vesta might have gotten crosswise of someone she owed.”

“But I just paid off her debt,” Nate said.

“The debt she owed Madam Bouchard. That don’t signify that she didn’t go out and get herself into dun territory with someone else,” Mercy said. “Being a flower girl don’t pay near as much as kicking yer heels over yer head. And Vesta always did like nice things.”

“It doesn’t seem as if there’s been enough time for her to accumulate that much debt,” Georgette said.

“When a body don’t have any blunt, ye’d be surprised how fast the debt grows,” Mercy said dryly. “Oh!” She straightened and scooted to the edge of the seat. “A passel of people stand to lose when a girl stops liftin’ her skirt. Could’ve been any number of folk what don’t appreciate your new House of Sirens, my lord.”

“And you think killing Vesta might be a warning to the others?” Nate said.

Mercy shrugged. “Wouldn’t surprise me. Hearts is hard on Lackaday Lane. Always look to the main chance and feather yer own nest. Them’s the watchwords.”

Nathaniel started toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Georgette asked.

“Mr. Bagley has quite a bit to answer for. I hired that old pugilist to protect those girls.” Nate’s jaw clenched in a determined line. “Mrs. Throckmorten may know more than she was willing to commit to paper. It’s not much, but it’s all we have to go on.”

“Then I’m going with you.”

“Bloody hell,” he said with a snort. “You most certainly are not.”

“There’s no need to be vulgar.”

“Yes, there is. There’s every need. If ever there was call for vulgarity, murder is one of those times. And if a little foul language upsets you, you should take it as a sign that the rest of the evening is not likely to meet with your approval either.”

“Nevertheless,” she said, advancing to stand almost toe to toe with him, “I will accompany you to Lackaday Lane.”

“You forget yourself, princess,” he said. “I’m not your hired man and you’re not royalty yet. I do not take orders from you.”

“Fine.” She fisted her hands at her waist. “Go ahead, but once you’re gone, I’ll only send for a hackney and go by myself.”

He stared at her for a moment and she willed herself not to blink. Finally, he swore again. Georgette wasn’t sure what the unfamiliar words meant, but she suspected it was something a good deal more offensive than “bloody hell.” He slapped his gloves against his thigh.

“Mercy, stop blubbering and get your mistress changed into something a little less conspicuous than a gown fit for a princess.”

“You won’t leave without me?” Georgette said.

He glowered at her as if his dark frown would convince her to stay when his words hadn’t. “No. I have something else to do while you change your clothes.”

“What?”

“Load my pistol. Someone chided me once for wandering into that neighborhood without one.” He stomped away. “Sounds like prudent advice now.”

Nathaniel commandeered Reuben Darling and another footman to accompany them to Lackaday Lane. Darling would form their rear guard, and the other fellow could help the driver protect the carriage while they were gone from it. Georgette had pleaded that she needed her maid to come as well, but Nate put his foot down about bringing Mercy.

One out-of-place female to protect was already one too many.

Unlike the well-lit St. James’s neighborhood where Georgette lived, there were no streetlamps in Covent Garden. Lackaday Lane would be black as Satan’s heart. As they rumbled through Piccadilly, Nate managed to snag a linkboy. The lad scrambled up to sit next to the driver, his pitch-daubed torch waiting to be lit when they reached their destination.

Georgette had been uncharacteristically quiet on the journey. Some women became chatty when they were upset or nervous, but she seemed to fold in on herself. It was a calm quiet, a restful quiet. A quiet that said, “I trust you to have the matter well in hand.”

Nathaniel was relieved. Even though he didn’t deserve it, he wanted her trust very much indeed.

When the carriage stopped at the mouth of the narrow lane, Georgette finally broke the silence. “I’m proud of you for doing this, Nate. Not many men would have.”

“Let’s see if I actually accomplish anything before you hang a medal on my chest.” He climbed from the carriage and handed her out.

The linkboy had already swung down from his perch and was fumbling with a sulfur match. The torch caught and flared with a yellowish light as the lad started down Lackaday Lane.

“Stay close,” Nate said softly.

He didn’t have to tell Georgette twice. She latched onto his left arm so his pistol hand would be free. She was less than successful at matching his stride since her narrow skirt restricted her gait. Still she trotted gamely beside him, skittering along taking two steps to his one as they entered the lane.

Reuben Darling followed close on their heels, carrying the only weapon he’d had at hand: a cricket bat.

Nate hoped they’d present a formidable enough front to discourage anyone with nefarious intent.

Footpads were out, slinking from one shadow to the next, but they didn’t approach Nate’s little party. Music and laughter spilled out of several open doors onto the lane, but only occasional narrow shafts of light. Beyond the flickering circle of yellowish light thrown by the linkboy’s torch, the way was a veritable abyss.

Murder could be easily done in the blackness of Lackaday Lane with no one the wiser.

When they reached the House of Sirens, they found all the windows dark. Nate tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He rapped smartly on the thick oak.

“Open up!”

A curtain in the window next to the door fluttered briefly and they heard a scraping sound. Finally, the portal opened wide enough for Mrs. Throckmorten to peer through the crack.

“Oh, Lord Nathaniel, it’s you. Thank you for coming. One moment, if you please.” The door closed again and they heard more scraping and scrabbling. Finally, it reopened.

“We had no lock, so we had to make do,” the matron said, waving them in past the oversized chifforobe that had been wedged against the door. Reuben Darling shoved it back into position once they were all in. Then Mrs. Throckmorten led the way through the dark house to the kitchen in the rear, which was lit by several tallow candles.

Vesta was laid out on the long table, her hands folded serenely over her breasts. The rest of the residents of the House of Sirens were gathered round, weeping or merely staring in shock.

Probably
reckoning
it
could
have
just
as
easily
been
them
stretched
out
on
the
table
, Nate thought.

“We did the best we could for her till morning comes,” Mrs. Throckmorten said.

After this night’s simple wake, Vesta would be stitched into a sheet. Then with the dawn, she’d be loaded onto the wagon that picked up the poor who had the misfortune to die without benefit of the Church. Her body would be taken to the Potter’s Field outside the city and dumped into the unmarked mass grave reserved for the penniless.

“Where’s Mr. Bagley?” Nate demanded.

“We don’t know.” Mrs. Throckmorten smoothed her iron gray hair back. “He left this afternoon to go to the market for me, but he never returned.”

Nate’s fingers balled into fists. Bagley had admitted to having a gin habit in the past, but he’d assured Nate that he was sober now and swore to remain so. It was the only reason Nate agreed to hire him. If that hulk had taken the money meant to feed the girls at the House of Sirens and drank it away when he was supposed to be protecting them, Nate would take it out of his miserable hide.

Especially since one of the young women had died on Bagley’s watch.

Georgette stepped a little closer to the table and peered down at the body. She worried her lower lip and looked so stricken, Nate wished he could wrap his arms around her and whisk her away from this squalid scene.

“Vesta was only nineteen,” she said softly. “She hadn’t taken sick, had she?”

“No. She was perfectly healthy,” Mrs. Throckmorten said. “So far as anyone could tell.”

As Georgette slowly circled the table, Nathaniel couldn’t take his eyes off her. Most ladies of quality would be useless in this situation, flapping their hands like broken wings and succumbing to an attack of the vapors, but Georgette merely became more quietly determined to uncover the truth of the matter.

“There doesn’t seem to be any visible wound,” she finally said. “Why do you suspect foul play?”

Mrs. Throckmorten opened Vesta’s high collar to reveal an angry red weal across her throat. “She was strangled.”

“Whoever did it didn’t break the skin.” Nate leaned over to take a closer look, edging Georgette out of the way. He picked up one of Vesta’s cold hands to examine it more closely. Rigor mortis had set in, so her fingers were stiff. She’d been dead a few hours. “She didn’t fight. No bruising on her knuckles.”

“True.” Mrs. Throckmorten nodded. “But her neck has been broken as well. Snapped like a dry twig.”

One of the girls whimpered, but Mrs. Throckmorten shushed her.

“If the break was done quickly,” Nathaniel said, “that explains why she didn’t fight or cry out.”

Given the skillful efficiency of the kill, Nate had to wonder if the murderer had military training.

But why strangle her too? It seemed unnecessarily vicious to do both.

“If it’s any consolation,” Mrs. Throckmorten said, “she probably didn’t suffer long.”

“No, it’s no consolation at all,” Georgette said, her tone flat.

Nate looked around the room at the huddled clumps of young women, two or three in each bunch of sniffling mourners. “Are all the other girls present and accounted for?”

Mrs. Throckmorten sighed. “They are, but Meg Pritchard wants to leave at first light.”

The girl in question rose to her feet and bobbed a shallow curtsy. With a smattering of freckles across her pert nose and a thick head of auburn hair, she was pretty in a speckled pup sort of way. “If it so pleases you, my lord.”

“It doesn’t so please me,” Nate said. “This world is a hard place for a young woman on her own. Where will you go, Miss Pritchard?”

“My family’s gone, but I’ll take my chances in the shire where I was born.”

“You’re the vicar’s daughter, aren’t you?” When she nodded, Nate fished a sovereign from his pocket. “Take a coach. If you find your welcome in your home shire is less warm than you hope, present yourself to the steward at Colton Hall in Wiltshire. Tell him I said he was to find a position for you there till we can sort you out with something more suitable.”

Meg Pritchard dropped to her knees and pressed a kiss on the back of his hand. “God bless you, my lord. You’ll be in my prayers every day for as long as I live.”

Privately, Nate thought the prayers of a reformed whore were more than he deserved, but he thanked her in any case. Then he asked the rest of the girls what they intended to do.

“Gorblimey, I h’ain’t never set foot outside o’ London town and, please God, I don’t rightly want to,” one of them declared, voicing the sentiments of the others. “All that empty sky and cows munchin’ and crickets chirpin’…it’d be the death of me. Better the devil ye know.”

“Very well,” Nate said. “You’ll all continue here with Mrs. Throckmorten, following your chosen fields of study. I’ll send a locksmith to fix the front door and find a replacement for Mr. Bagley first thing in the morning.”

He did a slow turn around the room, meeting each pair of eyes that were fastened on him. “It won’t be easy, but I mean to get to the bottom of this. Vesta will have justice, I promise you. But in the meantime, Lady Georgette, I wonder if you’d loan me your footman.”

“My footman?” She snapped out of her quiet brooding and finally looked away from Vesta’s body. “What do you want with Mr. Darling?”

“I can think o’ any number of things I’d want with ’im, ducks,” the little cockney whore said with a toothsome grin at the tall footman. “Mr. Darling, eh? ’E certainly is, h’ain’t he, girls?”

Reuben blushed deeper than a debutant who’d stumbled at her “come out.”

“Bedelia, mind your manners. I suspect Lord Nathaniel wants Mr. Darling to stay with us for your safety, not your entertainment,” Mrs. Throckmorten snapped, then turned to Georgette with a softer tone. “Provided my lady agrees, of course.”

“Oh, of course.” Georgette seemed to emerge from the morbid spell Vesta’s death had cast over her and turned to her footman. “I’ll explain to Mr. Humphrey that you’ll be staying in Covent Garden for the night and can’t be expected to help serve at breakfast.”

“That’s fine, milady. I’m happy to help,” Reuben said, hooking a finger under his collar as if his cravat had been done up too tight. “Only, I’m thinking you’ll have to explain what I’m doing here at the House of Sirens to Mercy, too. And she might not be as understanding as Mr. Humphrey.”