Lord of Scoundrels

by Loretta Chase

  “Ess, I reckon,” he said in his broad Devon drawl. “That muddle yesterday with that fool woman’ll be all over Dartymoor by now. But Your Ladyship don’t mind a bit of gawkin’ ’n tongue waggin’, do you? Shot him, you did.” His leathery faced creased into a smile. “Well, then. You be teachin’ the rest of ’em, too, what you be made of.”

  A few days later, when he drove her to the vicarage for tea, Phelps further clarified his position by sharing with Jessica what he’d heard at the Whistling Ghost about Charity Graves and the boy, Dominick, along with what he himself knew about the matter.

  Thus, by this fifth Sunday, Jessica had a good idea of the kind of woman Charity Graves was, and more than ample confirmation that Dominick needed rescuing.

  According to Phelps, the boy had been left in the care of the elderly Annie Geach, a midwife, while Charity wandered Dartmoor like a gypsy. Annie had died about a month before Dain had returned to England. Since then, Charity had been hovering in the Athton vicinity. Though she was rarely seen in the village itself, her son, left mostly on his own, was encountered all too often, and too often making trouble.

  About a month and a half ago, a few well-meaning folks had attempted to settle him in school. Dominick refused to settle, wreaking havoc and mayhem during the three times he’d attended. He picked fights with the other children and played nasty tricks on master and pupils alike. He couldn’t be schooled into good behavior because he answered with laughter, taunts, and obscenities. He couldn’t be whipped into obedience either, because one had to catch him first, and he was diabolically quick.

  In the last few weeks, his behavior had grown increasingly flagrant, the incidents more numerous. During one week, Dominick had, on Monday, torn Mrs. Knapp’s laundry from the line and trampled it in the mud; on Wednesday he’d dropped a dead mouse into Missy Lobb’s market basket; on Friday he’d thrown horse droppings at Mr. Pomeroy’s freshly painted stable doors.

  Most recently, Dominick had blackened the eyes of two youths, bloodied the nose of another, urinated on the front steps of the bakehouse, and exposed his bottom to the minister’s housemaid.

  Thus far, the villagers had kept their complaints to themselves. Even if they had been able to catch Dominick, they were baffled what to do with the lord of the manor’s fiendish son. No one yet had mustered the courage to confront Dain with his offspring’s crimes. No one yet could overcome codes of decency and delicacy to complain of Dain’s bastard to his wife. No one, moreover, could find Charity Graves and make her do something about her Demon Seed.

  It was this last that troubled Jessica most. Charity had not been seen in the last fortnight, during which time Dominick’s bids for attention—as she viewed his atrocities—had grown increasingly desperate.

  Jessica was sure it was his father’s attention he sought. Since Dain was inaccessible, the only way to get it was to throw the village into an uproar. Jessica also suspected the mother had instigated or encouraged the disturbances in some way. Still, the method seemed stupidly risky. Dain was far more likely to carry out his threat of having Charity transported than to pay her to go away, if that was what she wanted.

  The alternative explanation, even more disturbing, made less sense. Charity may have simply abandoned the child, and for all one knew, he’d been sleeping in stables or out on the moors, in the shelter of the rocks. Yet Jessica couldn’t believe the woman had simply left, empty-handed. She could not have snared a rich lover, else all Dartmoor would know about it. Discretion was not at all in Charity’s style, according to Phelps.

  In either case, Jessica had decided last night, the boy could not be permitted to run amok any longer.

  The patience of Athton’s inhabitants was being stretched to its limits. One day, very soon, a mob of outraged villagers would be pounding at Athcourt’s doors. Jessica had no more intention of waiting for that event than she did for a possibly abandoned child to die of exposure or starvation or be sucked down into one of Dartmoor’s treacherous mires. She could not wait any longer for Dain to come to his senses.

  Accordingly, she had come down to breakfast wearing the same tautly haggard expression Aunt Claire wore when suffering one of her deadly headaches. All of the servants had noticed, and Bridget had asked twice en route to church whether Her Ladyship was feeling poorly. “A headache, that’s all,” Jessica had answered. “It won’t last, I’m sure.”

  After disembarking, Jessica dawdled until Joseph departed, as he usually did, for the bake-house, where his younger brother was employed, and the other servants were either in church or on their way to their own Sunday morning diversions. That left only one unwanted guardian, Bridget.

  “I believe I had better excuse myself from services,” Jessica said, rubbing her right temple. “Exercise always clears a headache, I find. What I need is a good, long walk. An hour or so ought to do it.”

  Bridget was a London-trained servant. Her idea of a good, long walk was the distance from the front door to the carriage. It was easy enough for her to calculate that “an hour or so,” at her mistress’s usual pace, meant three to five miles. Thus, when Phelps “volunteered” to accompany the mistress in Bridget’s place, the maid agreed with no more than a token protest, and hurried into the church before Phelps could change his mind.

  When Bridget was out of sight, Jessica turned to Phelps. “What did you hear last night?” she asked.

  “Friday arternoon he let Tom Hamby’s rabbits loose. Tom chased him up to the far south wall of His Lordship’s park. Yester’ arternoon, the lad raided Jem Furse’s rag and bone bins, and Jem chased him up to nigh the same place.”

  Phelps’ gaze shifted northward, in the direction of the park. “The boy goes where they daren’t chase him, right into His Lordship’s private property.”

  The boy was seeking his father’s protection, in other words, Jessica thought.

  “There be one of ’em little summerhouse things not far from the place where they lose him,” the coachman went on. “His Lordship’s grampa built it for the ladies. I ’spect a lad might get in easy ’nough, if he made up his mind on it.”

  “If the summerhouse is his lair, then we’d better make haste,” said Jessica. “It’s nearly two miles from here.”

  “That be by way of the main road ’n the estate road,” he said. “But I knows a shorter way, if you don’t mind a steepish climb.”

  A quarter of an hour later, Jessica stood on the edge of a clearing, gazing at the fanciful summer-house the second marquess had built for his wife. It was an octagonal stone structure, painted white, with a steep conical red roof nearly as tall as the house itself. Round windows with elaborately carved frames adorned every other side of the octagon. The unwindowed sides held medallions of similar size and shape, carved with what appeared to be medieval knights and ladies. Climbing roses, planted at alternating corners of the octagon, artfully framed windows and medallions. Tall yew hedges bordered the winding gravel path to the door.

  Aesthetically speaking, it was rather a hodge-podge, yet it had a certain sweet charm. Certainly Jessica could see how this fanciful place would appeal to a child.

  She waited while Phelps completed his slow circuit of the building, peeping cautiously through the windows. When he was done, he shook his head.

  Jessica swallowed an oath. It had been too much to hope that the boy would actually be here, even though it was Sunday morning, and he usually limited his assaults upon the village to weekday afternoons. She was about to leave her hiding place to consult with Phelps when she heard a twig snap and the faint thudding of hurried footsteps. She waved Phelps back and he promptly ducked down behind the hedge.

  In the next instant, the boy darted into the clearing. Without pausing once or looking about him, he raced up the path to the door. Just before he reached it, Phelps leapt up from his hiding place and caught him by the sleeve.

  The child drove his elbow into Phelps’ privates, and Phelps, doubling over, let go with a choked oath.

  Domini
ck tore back down the path and bolted across the clearing toward the trees at the back of the summerhouse. But Jessica had seen immediately where he’d go, and she was already running in that direction. She chased him down a bridle path, over a bridge, and down the winding narrow pathway beside the stream.

  If he had not been running all the way up the steep hill to the summerhouse, she wouldn’t have had a prayer of catching him now, but he was winded and down to a vaguely human pace rather than his usual demonic one. At a fork in the pathway, he hesitated briefly—it was unfamiliar ground, evidently—and in the few seconds he did, Jessica pushed herself a notch faster. Then she leapt and tackled him.

  He went down—into the grass, fortunately—and she on top of him. Before he could think of trying to wriggle free, she grabbed his hair and gave a sharp yank. He let out a howl of outrage.

  “Girls don’t fight fair,” she gasped. “Be still or I’ll snatch you bald.”

  He treated her to a breathless stream of obscenities.

  “I’ve heard all those words before,” she said between gulps of air. “I know worse ones, too.”

  There was a short silence while he digested this unexpected reaction. Then, “Get off me!” he burst out. “Get off me, you cow!”

  “That is the wrong way to say it,” she said. “The polite way is ‘Please get off me, my lady.’”

  “Bugger you,” he said.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “I fear I shall have to take desperate measures.”

  Releasing his hair, she planted a loud, smacking kiss on the back of his head.

  He gave a shocked gasp.

  She dropped another noisy kiss on the back of his grimy neck. He tensed. She kissed his dirty cheek.

  He let out the breath he’d been holding in a stream of obscenities, and furiously squirmed out from under her. Before he could scramble away, though, she caught the shoulder of his ragged jacket and quickly came to her feet, hauling him up with her.

  His shabby boot shot out at her shins, but she dodged, still holding fast.

  “Quiet down,” she said in her best Obedience or Death tones, giving him a shake for good measure. “Try kicking me again and I shall kick back—and I won’t miss, either.”

  “Piss on you!” he cried. He made a violent effort to wrench away, but Jessica had a firm grip, not to mention plenty of practice with squirming children.

  “Let me go, you stupid sow!” he shrieked. “Let me go! Let me go!” He was pulling and twisting frantically. But she grasped one scrawny arm and managed to draw him back firmly against her and wrap her arms about him.

  The squirming stopped, but the outraged howls did not.

  It occurred to Jessica that he was truly alarmed, yet she could not believe he was afraid of her.

  His cries were growing more desperate when the answer appeared.

  Phelps came round a turn in the bridle path with a woman in tow. The child broke off midscream and froze.

  The woman was Charity Graves.

  It was the boy’s mother who had been chasing him this time and, unlike the hapless Athcourt villagers, she had a very good idea what to do with him. For starters, she would beat him within an inch of his life, she announced.

  He’d run away a fortnight ago, and Charity claimed she’d been looking for him everywhere. Finally, she’d ventured to Athton—though she knew it was as much as her life was worth to come within ten miles of His Lordship, she said. She’d come as far as the Whistling Ghost when Tom Hamby and Jem Furse came running out, leading a dozen other angry men, who quickly surrounded her.

  “And they give—gave—me an earful,” Charity said, bending a threatening look upon her son.

  Jessica no longer had him by the collar. At his mother’s appearance, the boy had grabbed her hand. He was gripping it hard now. Except for the fierce pressure of that little hand, he was immobile, his body rigid, his dark eyes riveted upon his mother.

  “Everyone in Dartmoor knows what he’s been up to,” Jessica said. “You cannot expect me to believe you heard nothing. Where were you, in Constantinople?”

  “I’m a working woman,” said Charity, tossing her head. “I can’t be watching him every second, and I got no nanny to do it for me, neither. I sent him to school, didn’t I? But Schoolmaster couldn’t make him mind, could he? And how am I to do it, I ask you, when the boy bolts on me and I don’t know where he’s keeping himself?”

  Jessica doubted that Charity cared where the boy was keeping himself, until she’d heard his refuge was Athcourt’s park. If His Lordship found out the “guttersnipe” was hiding out in the second marquess’s ornate, immaculately maintained summerhouse, there would be hell to pay, and Charity knew it.

  Even now, she was not so boldly defiant as she pretended. Her green glance skittered away from time to time to take in their leafy surroundings, as though she expected Dain to explode through the trees at any moment.

  Uneasy she was, yet she did not seem in any great hurry to be gone, either. Though Jessica could not guess what exactly was going through the woman’s mind, it was clear enough that she was sizing up the Marchioness of Dain and adjusting her approach accordingly. Having quickly perceived that the threats of dire punishment for Dominick were not meeting with approval, she had promptly shifted to blaming her difficult circumstances.

  Even while Jessica was noting these matters, Charity was making further adjustments.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” the woman said, her tones softening. “That I don’t look after him proper and a child don’t—doesn’t—run away unless he’s wretched. But it weren’t—wasn’t—me made him so, but the stuck-up brats at school. They told him what his mama’s trade was—as though their own papas and brothers didn’t come knocking at my door, and mamas and sisters, too, to get their ‘mistakes’ fixed. And them precious little prigs made it out like I was nothing but filth. And they called him names, too. Didn’t they, lovey?” she said with a pitying glance at Dominick.

  “Do you wonder, then, he was vexed and made trouble?” she went on, when the boy didn’t respond. “And it’s just what they deserve, for picking on a poor tyke and giving him nightmares. But now he don’t like his own mama no more, either, and won’t stay. And look where the fool child comes, my lady. And won’t his pa have my head for it?—as though I done—did—it on purpose. He’ll have me taken up, he will, and sent to the workhouse. And he’ll cut off the boy’s keeping money, and then what’s to become of us, I ask you?”

  Phelps was gazing at Charity in patent disgust. He opened his mouth to say something, but caught Jessica’s warning glance. He relieved his feelings by rolling his eyes heavenward.

  “You’ve spent a good deal of breath telling me nothing I hadn’t figured out for myself,” Jessica said crisply. “What you have not told me is what you proposed to gain by coming to Athton in the first place, when you understood His Lordship’s sentiments, or why, in the second place, you have lingered in the vicinity, when you were aware of Dominick’s distress and the means he chose of expressing it. There must be something you want very badly, to take such risks.”

  Charity’s hunted expression instantly vanished. Her countenance hardening, she gave Jessica an insolent head-to-toe survey.

  “Well, then, Dain didn’t marry no feather-wit, did he?” Charity said with a smile. “Maybe I did have plans, my lady, and maybe the lad spoilt ’em. But maybe there’s no harm done, either, and we can fix it, you and me.”

  A few minutes later, Dominick having been persuaded to release his death grip on Jessica’s hand, the group was slowly making its way back toward the main road. Phelps had drawn the boy a discreet distance ahead of the two women, so that the latter could negotiate in private.

  “I’m no feather-wit, either,” Charity said, with a furtive glance about her. “I can see easy enough that you want the little devil. But Dain don’t want him, else he’d ’ve come and took—taken—him by now, wouldn’t he? And you know you can’t just up and steal my boy from me, becau
se I’ll make a fuss—and make sure Dain hears it. And there’s no one hereabouts’ll hide Dominick away and mind him for you, if that’s what you’re wondering. I know. I tried it. No one’ll have him, because they’re scared. They’re scared of Dain and they’re scared of the boy, because he looks like a little goblin and acts like one, too.”

  “I am not the only one with a problem,” Jessica said coldly. “When Dain finds out you’ve been letting that child run wild in Athton, you’ll wish the workhouse were your next residence. What he has in mind is a one-way voyage to New South Wales.”

  Charity laughed. “Oh, I won’t be staying to find out what he has in mind. You should’ve heard Tom and Jem a while back—and the others. They won’t be waiting on His Lordship’s wishes. They want me gone, and they’ll hunt me all over Dartmoor, they say, and have the dogs helping ’em. And if they don’t chase me into a bog, they’ll have me tied to a cart and whipped from here to Exeter, they promised. So I decided I’ll be on the first London coach tomorrow.”

  “A wise decision,” said Jessica, suppressing a shudder at the prospect of little Dominick roaming the thieves’ kitchens of London. “Having encountered me, however, you have guessed that you need not leave empty-handed.”

  “Gracious me, if you aren’t the quick one.” The smile she bent upon Jessica was perfectly amiable. Charity, clearly, was a businesswoman, and she was delighting in the challenge of a tough customer. “Being so quick, I guess you’ll figure out what to do with my little lovey if I give him up easy-like, with no fuss. Just like I’ll figure out what to do with him in London if you decide he isn’t worth the trouble.

  “I do not wish to hurry you, but I am obliged to be at the church when services end,” Jessica said. “Perhaps you would be good enough to describe my ‘trouble’ in simple pounds, shillings, and pence.”

  “Oh, it’s much simpler than that,” said Charity. “All you have to do is give me the picture.”

  Chapter 17