Dukes Prefer Blondes

by Loretta Chase

  “I’d rather transportation for life,” she said. “I want them both gone from England.”

  “Not impossible,” he said. “Still, we must consider this: If Freame had the money to get himself a curricle and horses and a new wardrobe, and spend weeks in an inn, he might be able to squeeze somebody for funds for a good lawyer. But it’s no use trying the case and fretting over the sentence now. There’s time for a confession as well as for the police to gather further evidence about Freame’s various criminal enterprises. A good case may win a sentence of transportation for life. Not to mention I’m counting on the effect of your big blue eyes and the tears you’ll shed, speaking of your terrifying experience.”

  “I! Do you truly mean to let me testify?” She’d spoken boldly enough of what she’d say in court, but she knew as well as he did that ladies did not stand in the witness box of the Old Bailey, of all places.

  “You’d better, or we’re too likely to lose.”

  “Oh, Raven.”

  “Your parents will take a fit, certainly,” he said. “However, if you cared about that sort of thing, you wouldn’t have married me.”

  “Oh, my dear Raven,” she said. “I could kiss you witless.”

  “Could you, indeed? But I’m filthy and bloodstained and one side of my face is growing larger than the other.”

  “It’s dark,” she said.

  He glanced about him. “So it is. I remember having thoughts, at one time, of luring you to a sheltering patch of woodland and misbehaving in a furtive manner.”

  “What were those thoughts, precisely?”

  They were near the Richmond Gate, but night had descended—­and even if it had been full day, he wouldn’t have cared. He drew the carriage into the shelter of a stand of trees, and pulled her into his arms and onto his lap. He buried his face in her neck and inhaled the scent of her, rather musky now from fear and excitement, but it was Clara, and she was alive and so was he, battered but all in one piece. And he wanted her.

  He raised his head and grasped the back of hers and kissed her, fiercely.

  I was so afraid of losing you.

  She answered with passion, pressing her lips to his, and parting instantly thereafter, drawing him in, and this was more than homecoming. It was the end of the world and the beginning. Nonsense, his logical self would have said, but his logical self knew what they’d lived through, together. The logical self recognized fear and rage and the threat of death. It recognized the joy of surviving and triumphing, too.

  They’d won.

  And they’d come so very close to losing.

  It was all in their kiss: terror and rage and relief and joy. Feelings.

  He pulled at the ribbons of her hat, and it fell back, down her neck, and still her mouth clung to his, her tongue coiling with his. The taste of her coursed through him as though he’d drunk fine old whiskey. It burned and exhilarated and it seared away the fear and anger and confusion as easily as it seared away his body’s aches and stings.

  She moved her gloved hands over him, along the sides of his face and his neck, her touch light but inflaming. A lady’s hands, in their fine gloves—­he didn’t know why this aroused him so, but it did. He broke the kiss and grasped her hand, and peeled back the glove from her wrist. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the inside of her wrist. She trembled.

  “Oh, Raven, your wicked mouth,” she said softly.

  He drew the glove down further, exposing her palm. He kissed there, too, with his lips, and caressed the soft skin with his tongue. She moaned softly. He tugged it back further, then eased it off, finger by finger. He let the glove fall from his hand while he kissed each finger, each knuckle, and each fingertip. He took off the other glove in the same way, but more quickly, because she was moving her bottom against his thighs, and his intellect narrowed to a pinhole.

  He slid his hands under her cloak, to her narrow waist and upward, to her breasts, so tightly encased. But that was only teasing himself.

  He reached down and dragged up the cloak and the skirt of her dress together, miles of material whose rustling sounded like fireworks in the now-­serene park. He was aware of the wind soughing through the trees, and the rustle of dry leaves as they ran before the wind, but all that was a distant dream. Under the mountain of clothing he found her legs at last, her long, beautiful legs, encased in silk that whispered under his hand. Her leg quivered under his touch and he felt her hands cupping his face, and he heard her voice, low and soft as a sigh: “Yes, oh, yes.”

  She drew her tongue along his lips and teased while he stroked up her thigh, above the garter, and upward. The way he’d done that day, the day he’d asked to marry her in that stupid way.

  Yes, she’d said then.

  Yes, she said now.

  He slid his hand between her legs and found the place, warm and soft and slick with desire. For him. He caressed her and she opened to him so easily, and “Don’t wait,” she said. “I can’t wait. I’m so wicked.”

  “Yes, you are,” he said. He unfastened his trousers, and dragged his shirt out of the way, and his swollen cock sprang free. Then her hand was there, holding him, and it was all he could do to keep from giving way then and there. Her hand, her soft, warm hand, the hand he’d kissed so lovingly—­and this was the first time she hadn’t been shy, but touched him all on her own.

  He had no mind left. It was all love and lust and the whiskey fire racing through him. Her hand closed round him, and he groaned. He drew her hand away—­her touch would send him over the edge—­and pushed into her. She cried out softly, then eased herself down on him, and he thought he’d die of it, of the feel of her, closing about him and squeezing . . . letting go as she rose a little . . . riding him . . . smooth as she would have ridden her mount, and killing him by slow degrees.

  “By gad, my dear, I think you’ve got the hang of it,” he managed to gasp.

  She laughed a little, and that set off feelings he couldn’t describe and wouldn’t try to. The world was dark and hot and filled with the scent and taste of her, his beautiful girl. The most beautiful girl in the world, and she was his.

  He kissed her, ferociously and tenderly, and they rode together, faster and faster, until they could go no farther. Release came, like a rainstorm of pleasure, and they clung to each other while the storm passed.

  And when at last they’d quieted, and he began to help put her clothing to rights, he said, “I love you, Lady Bredon. You know that, don’t you?” He’d thought she’d be killed, and would never know, because he’d never said it to her, fool that he was.

  She said, “I deduced as much, Lord Bredon.”

  Later that night

  No, you don’t!” Freame shouted.

  “Your lower leg is badly shattered,” the surgeon said. “It had better come off.”

  “It better not! Don’t play your games with me. It’s the hawks’ doing. I know them. You set it.”

  “No reputable surgeon would attempt to set this,” the surgeon said. “No one would risk trying to save it. Any medical man would tell you infection is bound to result.”

  “Bugger your eyes, you lying clodhopper. Stokes, get me out of here! I want a London surgeon, none of these bumpkin quacks.”

  Against the bumpkin quack’s advice, Stokes took Freame to London. The Marquess of Bredon wanted the man alive and well for his trial. He’d pay the costs. Stokes hoped Freame would listen to a London surgeon.

  He wouldn’t.

  Stokes wrote to Lord Bredon, “The doctor in London said the same as the one in Sheen. Freame wasn’t having it. He demanded another surgeon. Same verdict. Freame wouldn’t give in. You ask me, my lord, he’s more afraid of being a cripple than dying. In the end, the two doctors set it the best they could and told him he was signing his death warrant. They made me be a witness, so he couldn’t blame them later, if he had to lose the w
hole leg.”

  Reports continued to arrive from London. Inflammation soon set in, as predicted.

  “He has good reason to fear being a cripple,” Lord Bredon told his wife, after they’d read the latest report. “He won’t last long on the streets, defenseless, and he has enemies who’d make sure he died slowly and painfully. But I suspect he’s considering, too, the advantage he’ll have in court, looking sick and weak and pathetic.”

  “It’s rather a risk,” Clara said. “It looks more like suicide to me.”

  Her husband shook his head. “He knows his way round the justice system. If he didn’t, we’d have tried and transported him years ago. He’s counting on making his pathetic appearance at the January sessions. No doubt he’s hoping to win damages from me, given the lawyer he’s hired. Then he’ll decide about amputation. Well, he’d better calculate again. I’ll make sure he isn’t tried in January.”

  Husher was, though, and found guilty on several counts, including: “feloniously assaulting and striking and beating the Marquess of Bredon, putting in fear the Marchioness of Bredon, feloniously assaulting with a sharp instrument Police Inspector Sam Stokes, striking and beating him and stating his intent to be to resist and prevent his lawful apprehension and detainer.”

  This, as Radford had predicted, might not have amounted to much. However, at the same sessions Husher was tried for two separate incidents of robbery with violence. The police found eyewitnesses as well as a victim willing to testify.

  He was sentenced to transportation for life.

  Late in January, Freame was taken to St. Bartholomew’s.

  His case, put off to the February sessions, was put off again.

  His condition continued to worsen, and he began to show symptoms of what he claimed was jail fever. According to the surgeon who wrote to Lord Bredon, these were symptoms of gangrene.

  Bredon went to see him.

  “You’d better give up the leg,” he told the gang leader. “I’ll keep putting off the trial until you’re fit.”

  “Fit!” Freame said. “When you set them to torturing me? This is your doing, Raven. And you’ll pay.”

  “Try thinking with your head. Minus a leg, you’ll win a bit of jury sympathy. Your favorite accomplice got off with transportation. You must know we haven’t as much solid evidence against you as we’d like. What we have, a good lawyer will raise doubts about. The odds of your going to the gallows are small.”

  Miniscule was more accurate.

  Freame could claim Husher had tried to assault him, and he’d run into the road for help. He could claim the Bredons tried to run him down. It would not be terribly difficult to raise doubt in the jury’s mind. He knew how to look and sound more or less respectable. Even if they found him guilty, the penalty was unlikely to be harsh, since he had no criminal record.

  If Freame knew this, he didn’t let on. “Oh, smooth words,” he said. “You think I was born yesterday? You think I don’t know what it’s like for nobs? You whisper a word, drop some coins where the right ­people find them, and they’ll make sure I dangle.”

  “If it worked that way, my lady would have made sure Husher’s neck had a snug relationship with a rope.”

  “Your lady,” Freame snarled. “I wish I’d run down the pair of you when I had the chance.”

  “You didn’t, and it was a mistake,” his lordship said. “Try not to make another. The leg badly needs to come off. Judging by what the doctors tell me and what I see for myself, you might have left it too late already.”

  As Lord Bredon later told his wife, he might as well have talked to the chamber pot.

  He had the case put off again.

  More weeks passed, and the pain grew to beyond what Freame could endure in spite of large doses of laudanum. At last he consented to the amputation, but by then it was too late. The gangrene had spread, up his leg and into his pelvis.

  It took him agonizing weeks more to die, on the fourth of April.

  Westcott brought the news to the Marquess and Marchioness of Bredon, now residing at Malvern House.

  Though still undergoing refurbishment, the house was livable, and they’d recently moved in with a modest retinue of servants.

  Most of the main floor was completed by this time. Clara and Bredon met with Westcott in the library.

  Though the news wasn’t unexpected, it took Clara a moment to digest it. She hadn’t realized how much the villains had troubled her until now, when she wanted to weep with relief. Then came her husband’s sharp, logical voice, like a brisk breeze breaking through a sultry fog.

  “What an idiot,” he said. “If only he’d consented to the amputation at the start, he might have got off with a few months in prison. Still, it does save the police the trouble of building additional cases against him.”

  “He’s gone,” Clara said, her voice perfectly steady now. “That’s what matters. He can’t harm you or anybody else again. And it seems a satisfactory justice, his having brought it on himself.”

  “That’s one more would-­be assassin out of the way,” Westcott said. “Only a few score more to go.”

  “You underestimate his lordship,” said Clara. “In the years to come, I confidently expect great numbers of highly placed persons to nourish murderous fantasies.”

  “I’m not worried,” said his lordship. “I have Clara to protect me.”

  “And as her ladyship pointed out some time ago,” said his friend, “if worse comes to worse, you can always talk them to death.”

  “You might as well know I was thinking of doing that, regardless,” said Lord Bredon. “Clara has dropped unsubtle hints about my standing for Parliament. I think it’ll be fun.”

  “All you have to do is win over the constituency,” Westcott said.

  “All I have to do is have my wife stand beside me on the hustings and bat her blue eyes,” said his lordship. “The voters are men, after all.”

  “That’s your election strategy?” Westcott said.

  “It’s probably better if he doesn’t speak,” Clara said.

  “You have a point,” Westcott said.

  “In any event, I’ll have plenty of time to speak once I’m in the House of Commons. You may be sure I’ll make use of the time.”

  “In that case, I should move assassination from the ‘possible’ to the ‘probable’ column,” said Westcott.

  “By no means,” Clara said. “There’s a small difference between Society and the London underworld. Gentlemen may cultivate elaborate fantasies or even challenge my husband outright. They may wish to kill him, but they won’t be sneaking and plotting about it. Too, if all goes as I intend, their ladies won’t let them kill him.”

  Westcott smiled. “Lady Bredon, I admire and appreciate your affection for your husband. However, speaking from experience, I ought to point out that he can stir the gentler sex to violence without even trying.”

  She smiled back. “Not when I’m done with them.”

  “You’re in over your head, Westcott,” said her husband. “Clara has a plan. A mad, beautiful plan. She’s going to bring me into fashion.”

  “You’re roasting me,” Westcott said.

  “Not at all,” said Bredon, his face sober but for the infinitesimal twitch at the corner of this mouth. “She’s throwing a ball for me. I’m to be a debutante, you see.”

  “I certainly shall have to see it, with my own eyes,” said Westcott.

  “Of course,” said Clara. “You’re at the top of the invitation list.”

  “Just before the King,” said her husband. And laughed.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  At length, with conjugal endearment both

  Satiate, Ulysses tasted and his spouse

  The sweets of mutual converse.

  —­The Odyssey of Homer, translated by William Cowper, 1791

 
The King’s levee commenced promptly at two o’clock on Wednesday the fifth of May. Fairly early in the proceedings the Duke of Clevedon presented the Marquess of Bredon to His Majesty.

  “About time,” the King said. “You must stop loitering about the Old Bailey, you know. Make yourself useful elsewhere.”

  “Indeed, sir,” said Lord Bredon. “My wife has some ideas about that.”

  His monarch smiled. “I look forward to seeing Lady Bredon tomorrow.”

  Their Majesties were coming to look at Malvern House, which they, like nearly everybody else, had never entered.

  The King went on to ask after the Duke of Malvern’s health, and promised to visit him as well, before next he returned to Windsor.

  Then it was on to the next presentation.

  Those near enough to hear the conversation repeated it, and word soon traveled through the vast company of men, who went on to repeat it later to their wives, mistresses, mothers, and sisters. The gentlemen offered as well detailed reports on what Lord Bredon wore to the levee: as much black as Court rules could accommodate, naturally.

  At Almack’s that night, as a result, heads turned to the entrance time and again, only to be disappointed.

  As Lady Warford explained to her friends, “Oh, no, it was out of the question. Clara gives her supper ball tomorrow night, you know, and she must try to get as much rest as possible beforehand. The King and Queen visit Malvern House in the afternoon, to view the improvements. They’ve always been fond of Clara, and His Majesty has a regard for the Duke of Malvern.” Though the King and Queen would not attend the supper ball, she explained, other royals would.

  If Lady Bartham was gnashing her teeth, she did this invisibly, in the most ladylike way, and even she couldn’t invent a suitably poisonous retort—­not that she could have got a word in edgeways, with the other ladies so busy currying favor with Lady Warford.

  Not everybody had received an invitation to the ball, but those who hadn’t could hope to be invited to another event before long. The Marchioness of Bredon was expected to carry on in her mother’s style of superior entertainment.