Dukes Prefer Blondes

by Loretta Chase

  The note of distress in her voice told him the schools were a very recent and disturbing discovery for her.

  She had no idea how some ­people lived in London, practically under her nose.

  But why should she? And how odd it was, her having discovered even so much.

  She was saying, “With Bridget’s help, Toby was learning to read and write and do sums. But as you know, less reputable types hang about the ragged schools. Bridget says a gang of thieves has lured him out of school, and she hasn’t seen him for more than a week.”

  The day, which had brightened remarkably when Her Majesty sailed into his chambers, reverted to its customary grey.

  A missing child of the lower orders. Radford knew where this story led. Not to a happy ending.

  First the accursed ducal letter.

  Now another boy lost among London’s teeming thousands of unwanted children.

  Why couldn’t she have come to him because she’d murdered somebody?

  That would have been so much more promising, not to mention stimulating.

  “Bridget wishes to remove him from the gang before they get him hanged,” she went on. “She’s sure the police will take him up in short order. She does not believe her brother has the intelligence or dexterity to be a successful thief—­not for long, at any rate.”

  Oh, better and better.

  Very likely there was more to this than met the eye. It didn’t matter. The boy was doomed.

  She was wasting her time as well as Radford’s. She was completely deluded if she thought the brat could or ought to be rescued. But of course she wouldn’t believe him. She hadn’t the least idea what she was about.

  He said, “Do you know which gang, precisely?”

  “Fenwick has been unable to find out,” she said.

  “Does that tell you anything?”

  “That London holds a great many gangs.”

  “And therefore . . . ?” he led the witness.

  She regarded him with a polite expression, her gracefully arched eyebrows slightly raised.

  By now Westcott ought to have leapt in to state the obvious or at least give the don’t signal, warning Radford he went too far. He glanced at his friend.

  Westcott was gaping at her as though he’d never seen a girl before.

  No, in point of fact, he was doing the opposite: what men always did when they looked at women. He was admiring her breasts in what he must suppose was a surreptitious manner, and had become fully absorbed in that endeavor.

  Hers, Radford would readily admit, were uncommonly good. Either that or her undergarments were constructed to make them look good. He’d debated this point with himself when he met her the other day. Whatever the truth of the matter, Westcott had no business drooling over them.

  The part of him Radford kept tightly confined was developing a fantasy of pitching his friend and colleague out of the window.

  Thrusting the mental image aside, he said, “Does the phrase ‘needle in a haystack’ signify anything to your ladyship?”

  “Let me think,” she said. She screwed up her mouth and eyes in an exaggerated effort of thinking. He remembered the little girl learning to say Heptaplasiesoptron.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it does, shockingly enough.”

  “Good,” he said. “Because—­”

  “Fenwick assured me you’d know how to find Toby if anybody would. And you’ve made a name for yourself as an advocate for pauper children.”

  “I suspect that’s because advocating for paupers, being unusual to the point of bizarre, makes sensational headlines,” he said. “In fact, mainly I appear in court for very boring cases: poisonings and burglaries and assault and libel and such.” Few of these cases attracted the more respectable newspapers’ attention. The rare cases that did tended to focus on plaintiff, accused, and lurid witness statements, not boring lawyers. Until recently.

  “But the Grumley case—­”

  “Ah, yes, the sensational one,” he said. “Which demands my full attention at present. I promise you, the judge will not give me a leave of absence to hunt down this boy, even had I any hope of finding him, with a year to do it in.”

  An emotion flickered in her eyes, but even he, usually so perceptive of the subtlest facial cues, couldn’t decide whether she was disappointed or . . . relieved?

  Not that it mattered in the least.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “I’ve read about the Grumley horror. I should have realized . . . How silly of me. You have your work cut out for you there. In that case, perhaps you can advise me how to proceed.”

  “I strongly recommend you leave it alone,” he said. “These sorts of things never turn out—­” He broke off because her chin went up another notch and her posture stiffened, and he was forcibly reminded of the girl who’d kicked her brother in the ankle.

  “But how silly of me,” he said. “You’re not going to leave it alone.”

  “No.”

  He looked to Westcott. No help at all. Had the dome of St. Paul’s slid off and onto his head, he could not have looked more stupidly oblivious. You’d think he’d never seen an attractive woman before.

  Admittedly she was more than usually attractive. But still.

  His other self had something to say on this point. Radford stifled him.

  “In that case,” he said, “I should recommend, firstly, that you read Sir John Wade’s Treatise on the Police and Crimes of the Metropolis.”

  “Mr. Radford,” she said.

  “You needn’t read the whole thing, but you might wish to skim at least the chapter dealing with juvenile delinquents,” he said. “Secondly, in the event Wade leaves you undaunted, I recommend you hire a member of the Metropolitan Police as a detective. I highly recommend Inspector Keeler.” A former Bow Street Runner, Keeler was, in Radford’s opinion, the best of the best: quiet, persistent, and a genius at blending into his surroundings, no matter what disguise he donned.

  Her head tipped slightly to one side, and she studied him with an expression that seemed to hover between patience and exasperation. He wasn’t quite sure. Along with maturity, her countenance seemed to have acquired a sort of screen or veil.

  “It seems I was misinformed,” she said. “I was told you were the cleverest man in London.”

  Westcott made a choked sound.

  “To my knowledge, you were not misinformed,” Radford said.

  She bit her lower lip, bringing the chipped tooth into sight for a tantalizing instant. “How odd,” she said. “Because I should have supposed that even a man with a very small brain and only the dimmest awareness of Society’s million unwritten rules would realize that I’m not in a position to engage detectives. Ladies, you see, Mr. Radford, are not permitted to hire professionals, except in a domestic capacity.”

  “Right,” he said. “I wonder how that slipped my mind. Perhaps it was your appearing here in cunning disguise. Most intrepid of you.”

  “I’m in disguise because ladies are not allowed to haunt the Temple in search of lawyers.”

  “But you do see how I might have thought otherwise,” he said. “Looking at you, I might suppose an upheaval in social mores had occurred while I was busy elsewhere, getting criminals hanged—­or not, as the case may be.”

  “Mores have not changed an iota from what they were in my mother’s time,” she said. “If anything, they’ve grown stricter. My grandmother—­but I digress, and I know your time is precious. You seek justice for five innocent children, a Herculean task. I apologize for taking you away from that worthy challenge for even a moment. If you have no useful advice for me, I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Might you offer a reward?” he said. “Or is that not allowed, either?”

  She gazed searchingly at him this time. She must be trying to read him. That would take some doing, since he wa
sn’t fully present, in a manner of speaking. He stood apart from himself as he always did—­or tried to do. Today he was having to work harder than usual at merely observing the proceedings.

  “Do you know nothing whatsoever about ladies and the rules they must live by?” she said.

  “Your ladyship would be amazed at how little he knows in that regard,” Westcott said. “Haven’t seen him much at Almack’s, have you? Never marked his presence at Court? A person would never guess his father was the Duke of Malvern’s heir presumptive—­”

  “As though that signified in the least,” Radford said sharply. “The beau monde and I are not well acquainted, for obvious reasons, I should think, they spending little time in criminal courts, and I being gainfully employed therein.”

  “Then I had better explain, lest the next lady you encounter decide you are deranged or brainless,” she said.

  “Do you suppose that’s of any consequence to me?” he said.

  “I should think a lady’s opinion of you would carry some weight were she considering your ser­vices to prosecute a villain,” she said. “Or, say, in a case of homicide, if she hoped to avoid the gallows.”

  “If you kill anybody, Lady Clara,” he said, “I shall be only too happy to offer my ser­vices.”

  “If I kill anybody,” she said, “I shall be far too discreetly ladylike about it to get caught. But I thank you for the offer.”

  He looked into her unusually attractive face and believed her. “May one ask—­”

  “One may not,” she said. “That would spoil the fun. In the meantime, I ought to point out to you that a nobleman’s daughter may not hire detectives or post rewards for missing children. If we were permitted to do such useful things, why, where would it stop? Why should we not hire detectives to help us find husbands? Or post rewards for same? I daresay we should have a better chance of finding our soul mates in that manner than you seem to think I shall have in finding Toby Coppy.”

  “I should think advertising would save a deal of bother,” he said. “All those nonsensical social rituals—­”

  “My lady, as my colleague has indicated, the chances of finding this boy are truly not at all good, especially in our present harassed circumstances,” Westcott said.

  Radford looked at him. Westcott made the small, quick gesture of cutting his throat, meaning don’t. Now he signaled? Just when the conversation finally took an educational and entertaining turn?

  “Even if our docket were not full,” the solicitor went on, “we should not advise attempting it. In our experience—­”

  “However,” Radford cut in before his fool friend could launch into the gory particulars, “in the event your efforts, with or without a detective, prove futile, you’re welcome to return to us. When the boy is arrested, that is. Then we might be of real use.”

  The odds were strongly against Toby Coppy’s staying alive long enough to get arrested, but she seemed to have some noble notion of Saving Him, and Radford recognized fatal obstinacy when he saw it.

  She studied him for a time, in the way she’d done before.

  Nothing in the searching blue gaze told him she remembered him from that long-­ago time.

  And why, pray, should she? A lifetime had passed since then. They’d spent together perhaps an hour in total. She’d been a child and he’d been merely one of her brother’s many schoolmates. She’d seen him only the once. Radfords were common enough in England—­or had been. Very likely, she hadn’t even known his name. Longmore never called him anything but “Professor.” Except for that hour, Radford and she had lived worlds apart. Even when she was in London with the rest of Fashionable Society, she might as well live on the moon.

  Not to mention that even he, with his famous memory and exceptional powers of observation, wouldn’t have known her if he hadn’t had a glimpse of her tooth. The one she’d chipped trying to save him from his idiot cousin.

  She said, “Thank you, Mr. Radford, I’ll bear that offer in mind as well.”

  “We do greatly regret that we can’t offer your ladyship more help,” Westcott said.

  Of course he regretted. He couldn’t get enough of gawking at her.

  She gave a little wave. “I quite understand. My foolish mistake.” She started for the door, and Westcott hurried to open it. She paused there and smiled, and a ray of light seemed to brighten the somber room. “Well, then, no injuries, gentlemen?” she said. “No swooning? No tears? Excellent. Good day, Mr. Westcott.”

  “Good day, my lady.”

  “Good day . . . Professor,” she said. She gave a little laugh, and left.

  Professor?

  “Professor?” Westcott said.

  Radford was staring at the closed door.

  He started toward it, then stopped.

  “What did she mean?” Westcott said. “About the injuries and swooning? That sounded like you.”

  “It was me.” Radford brought his attention back—­from Vauxhall and wherever else it had wandered to—­to his friend. “The other day in Charing Cross, when Freame tried to run me down, the lady stepped in the way. Even he could see she was quality. Murdering annoying barristers is one thing, but an aristocratic female is an altogether different article. He swerved away, no doubt cursing vehemently, and plotting future violence.”

  Radford had been instrumental in sending six of Freame’s favorite minions to permanent residence in penal colonies and two to eternity.

  “Freame tried to kill you again?” Westcott said. “And you did not see fit to mention it to me? Attempted murder?”

  “Good luck proving he aimed for me.” Radford faced a more difficult problem of proof in the Grumley case, one the defense was taking full advantage of, with the lackwit judge’s eager assistance.

  “You did not see fit to mention the lady, either, I notice,” Westcott said.

  “The incident did not strike me as important.”

  Westcott’s eyes widened.

  “Had she been injured, naturally, I should have had him taken up,” Radford said. “The swine killed a cur on its last legs, but the world regards stray mongrels as a nuisance. Scavengers collected it in no time, and the excitement was soon over. The lady and I did not introduce ourselves. She went her way and I went mine.”

  Westcott gave him one of his looks. It wasn’t altogether unlike Lady Clara’s—­the one of mingled exasperation and patience and perhaps, yes, there was an element of wonder in it, too. On Lady Clara’s face, however, the expression was more arresting.

  Of course, he was used to Westcott.

  And she was prettier. By a factor of six hundred.

  “At first, she seemed surprised to see you,” Westcott said.

  “She came to see us,” Radford said. “Why should she associate the fellow in Trafalgar Square with the pedant who wastes the court’s time with tiresome pauper children? But it happened only the other day. Small wonder she remembered. Clearly it amused her to quote my own words back to me.”

  “I should like to know how anyone who’d met you would forget,” Westcott said. “Unless you kept silent, which I am certain is a physical impossibility. And Professor?” Westcott’s eyebrows rose in a most annoying manner.

  “A nickname her eldest brother gave me when we were at Eton. She must have put two and two together and concluded I was the Radford he and Clevedon called Professor.”

  He’d been positive she hadn’t remembered him from Vauxhall. He was deeply, painfully curious how she’d worked it out and how she’d contrived to do so without offering the smallest clue she was doing it.

  A most intriguing veil or screen.

  He couldn’t remember encountering such outside the criminal classes, and even there it was rare. Most criminals were not intelligent. They could be sly, yes, and they lied splendidly, but they were by no means difficult for a practiced eye to read.
<
br />   She was intelligent and . . .

  He became aware of himself following this path of thought and stopped. He hadn’t time for pointless speculation, especially about women who belonged to another universe. The Grumley trial was in its very last stages, and matters looked extremely unpromising.

  She’d known that, too. How did she—­

  No, he did not have time to think about her.

  He had windmills to tilt at.

  The Old Bailey

  Three days later

  Not guilty.

  Radford glanced up at the visitors’ gallery, where Lady Clara Fairfax sat, in disguise once more, the bulldog maid in attendance. Her ladyship had appeared there every day since their encounter in Westcott’s office.

  She wore more or less what she’d worn that day. But for court, she’d done something to make her silken skin appear rough and dull, and she’d perched spectacles on her perfect nose. Still, he had no trouble recognizing her or the signs she gave of dismay. When the verdict was read, her mouth sagged, and she put her gloved hand up to her eye. Only a moment passed before the invisible screen came down, but that was more than enough time for him.

  He became distantly aware of having failed her, and images rose in his mind of tearing the wig from his head and stomping on it, leaping into the dock and throttling Grumley, grabbing the judge and dashing his head against the bench.

  That was his other, irrational self.

  The rational Raven Radford would have been astounded had the verdict gone the other way.

  All the same, it bothered him. He detached himself in the usual way, but the method didn’t work in the usual way. Even detached, he saw her mischievous smile when she’d exited his chambers the other day, and heard the short, light laugh she’d given at the startled expression he must have worn.

  He did not understand how she’d found him out then and he did not understand why she’d appeared in court. Her disguise told him she oughtn’t to be there, and must have come at some risk. Why?

  St. James’s Street

  Monday 7 September