The Waverly Women Series (3-Book Bundle)

by M C Beaton

  “Worse and worse,” mocked Frederica. “Nothing but lust—no finer feelings, all intrigue… and heartless intrigue at that.”

  “You little puritan. I could shake you.” He took a step toward her.

  “Leave me alone,” said Frederica. “You disgust me. No! Do not come near me. Ever, ever again!”

  Sadly, he watched her go, and then took himself back indoors and into his library.

  “Damn,” he said aloud. “Now, what am I going to do?”

  He slumped down in an armchair and looked bleakly at the ranks of serried books. “All the wisdom of the world,” he muttered, “and yet not one volume can tell me how to get Miss Frederica Waverley as my bride. Damn, and double damn!”

  He moved over to his writing desk, pulled forward a blank sheet of parchment, dipped a pen in the inkwell, and began to write two neat columns. On the one side he put down the fact he was sure Frederica was attracted to him. On the other he put down the facts, as he knew them, of her strange upbringing. He sat back and studied the result. Because of Mrs. Waverley’s teaching, Frederica was now regarding him as a man would regard a woman who turned out to have lost her virginity. He tried to think of what his own reactions would be if he had found Frederica being escorted to a ball by a handsome man who turned out to be one—only just one, mark you—of her previous lovers. How could an innocent like Frederica ever begin to understand his affair with Lady Gaunt, or Mrs. Sommerville, as she then was? She had been witty and sophisticated and amusing, and ready for an affair. They had both enjoyed the liaison tremendously. Then she had begun to hint at marriage and he had deftly sidestepped all such hints, so that she had finally and gratefully told him their affair was at an end. No, Frederica could not possibly understand that. So how was he to see her again? If he could find out some piece of news to intrigue her, to lure her back to the garden. Damn that weedy, rank hole of a garden. He was beginning to hate it.

  Then he remembered the Prince Regent, There just might be something there.

  He went up to his room and called for his valet, and ordered the man to lay out his best clothes. He then went out to Bond Street, searching in the jeweler’s windows until he found what he wanted. It was a clockwork robin with a brave ruby chest that piped, “God Bless the Prince of Wales.” He paid a fortune for it and then traveled to Clarence House.

  The prince was still in bed when Lord Harry called, but demanded he be sent up. To the prince, Lord Harry was a cheerful, frivolous member of society who had never asked for favors and had never been anything other than witty and kind.

  Lord Harry came in and stooped to kiss the prince’s beringed hand, then handed him the present. The prince was enchanted with it, so much so that Lord Harry almost despaired of being able to put his questions before the usual retinue of toadies and dandies arrived to pay their respects.

  “We are very pleased,” said the prince, putting down the expensive toy at last.

  “Splendid ball t’other night,” said Lord Harry vaguely.

  “Tol rol.” The prince waved dismissive fat fingers. “Well enough in its way.”

  “Our heroine of the evening was quite overcome by your royal presence,” said Lord Harry. “Mrs. Waverley.”

  The prince seized the little robin in its gilded cage and started to wind up the mechanism again. “We do not know her,” he said petulantly.

  “Mrs. Waverley. The fat woman who fainted at the sight of you,” said Lord Harry, raising his voice slightly to compete with the tinkling strains of “God Bless the Prince of Wales,”

  The bird revolved. Its little beak opened and closed, its ruby chest gleamed and flashed fire in the beams of light from the oil lamp beside the great canopied bed.

  “Clever. Monstrous clever,” mumbled the prince, watching the bird.

  “Do you know Mrs. Waverley?” pursued Lord Harry.

  The prince seized the bell rope hanging beside the bed. When the Lord of the Bedchamber appeared, the prince said, “We will sleep now. Show Lord Harry out.”

  Lord Harry looked at him curiously. The fat face was as sullen and sulky as that of a spoiled child.

  He sighed and took his leave. No news for Frederica there.

  ***

  Before the Souter family were borne off to Australia, they had talked to their fellow criminals on board the hulks about the Waverley jewels, and as they talked, the jewels grew in size and magnificence. And so the news of the Waverley jewels spread from the hulks and out through the rookeries and steaming alleys of London’s underworld. Still, the idea of making an assault on a lady made famous by the newspapers and printsellers caused all to shrink from making the attempt. All except Mr. Oscar Tooley.

  The young bucks and blades of London were fascinated by the underworld. Tooley was the son of respectable middle-class parents, brought low in the world by a natural streak of viciousness combined with sloth. He preyed on the rich who frequented the low dives, seeking the young men out, fleecing them at cards, supplying them with drugged drink and stealing their valuables, and occasionally hiring some doxy to lure one of them into a dark alley and killing his victim, not only for the trinkets and money he could get, but for the sheer joy of killing. His face was his fortune. He was handsome in a boyish way, with clear honest-looking blue eyes.

  He picked up all the gossip he could about the Waverley household and then, dressed in his finest, took to strolling around Hanover Square and watching the house. He waited and watched and marked down one of the prettier housemaids as his prey. As there were no footmen, the women servants were often sent out on errands. He tracked the pretty housemaid and then left to dive round alleys and back streets so that he came out again just in front of her and pretended to bump into her. Her basket went flying. He retrieved it and begged mercy for having bumped into her in such a comical and contrite way that the housemaid, Mary, began to laugh. She had been with Mrs. Waverley for some time, but she was still in her early twenties and often longed to move to a household where there were some handsome footmen to flirt with. But common sense told her that the wages were good and the position secure.

  It had been a long time since she had had an opportunity for a little innocent dalliance. The gentleman was finely dressed and had a pleasing, honest, boyish air about him. She let him persuade her to join him in drinking chocolate at a pastry cook’s. She was a wonderful source of information. In order to impress this fine beau, she bragged about her mistress’s great wealth and of the fabulous jewels she and the girls possessed. “Of course, they don’t wear them no more when they go out,” said Mary, “on account of some wicked people trying to rob them afore.”

  And as she sipped chocolate and prattled on, Tooley’s agile brain was working hard. This Lord Harry Danger, who lived next door, had set himself up as a sort of watchdog, as had that colonel who had shot the highwayman. Then Mary began to talk about the restricted life the young misses led. “But they sneak out,” she said. “Mrs. Ricketts, the housekeeper, she told us they wasn’t doing no harm and to say nothing of it to madam. They gets out through the garden of the house next door most afternoons when madam isn’t looking.”

  Tooley leaned back in his chair, a beatific smile on his face. Ransom. That was the game. He would kidnap one of the girls and hold her to ransom. He would rent a room and keep her there… and when he had the money, he would kill her. Very simple. Betty wondered if she had said something to offend the gentleman, for he immediately appeared to lose interest in her and suggested, quite coldly, that she should be busy about her duties.

  Lord Harry was standing at the window of his drawing room, looking down into the square, when his butler entered. “One of the young ladies has just climbed over the wall into our garden, my lord,” he said.

  “Which one?”

  “The dark-haired lady.”

  Lord Harry darted down the stairs to the basement and out into the garden, but there was no sign of Frederica. He ran round the narrow passage at the side of the house and up the area steps.
He could see Frederica’s slim figure hurrying around the square. And then as he watched, a carriage drew alongside her and the door opened. She was jerked bodily off the pavement and into the carriage, which set off at high speed.

  Lord Harry started to run in pursuit. Every time he seemed to be gaining on the carriage, there would be a break in the traffic and off it would go again, leaving him far behind. He did not dare call for help for fear the villain who had abducted Frederica would knife her. Through Westminster he raced, down the long length of Whitehall and Parliament streets, across the front of the Abbey, down Tothill Street, into New Tothill Street, and just in time to see his quarry disappearing around a corner which led into New Pye Street. Jeering men tried at one point to block his way, but with a mad strength born of desperation, he plowed through them. By the time he got to where the carriage had disappeared, he found no trace of it. Everyone appeared to have fled indoors, leaving him suddenly alone in the midst of evil-smelling, broken-down buildings.

  He looked down at himself. He had rushed out without his coat. He was standing in the middle of a thieves’ quarter in his shirtsleeves, breeches, and top boots, and without a weapon. He could sense, rather than see, hundreds of eyes observing him from every rat hole of a tenement. But if he wasted time going in search of the police, then Frederica might be killed. He knew the pattern. Abduction, ransom note, and death to the victim before the note had even reached its destination.

  Frederica was hustled up a rickety staircase with a knife at her ribs. She was thrust into a dark room. Tooley slammed and locked the door behind them. “Sit down,” he ordered. Frederica sat down on a stool. There was a table in the room and a chair. On the table was pen and ink and paper. “Don’t move,” said Tooley. He sat down and wrote a letter demanding six thousand pounds, addressed it to Mrs. Waverley, sanded it and sealed it, went to the door and unlocked it, handed the letter to someone who stood outside, and then relocked the door.

  “What do you want with me?” asked Frederica.

  “Money,” he said briefly. “Ransom. Faith, nothing to drink in this sewer.”

  “Release me and I shall give you money,” pleaded Frederica. “I can see you are a gentleman. You cannot abduct someone from the middle of Hanover Square in broad daylight without bringing the whole of the militia down on your head.”

  “No one saw me,” he said curtly. He picked up his long knife and tested the blade. “Sharp enough,” he muttered.

  It was then that Frederica saw how pale and merciless his eyes were.

  Outside, Lord Harry searched and searched. Fear was making him frantic. Time seemed to be racing past. He knocked furiously on doors of tenement hovels, but the few individuals who answered took one look at him and slammed the rickety door in his face.

  They were all terrified of Tooley. It was not an unusual occurrence to have a wild-looking aristocrat demanding to know where Tooley lived. But Tooley had never any fixed address. He rented rooms here and there throughout the warren, never staying in one very long. The inhabitants were afraid of him, knowing he would kill for pleasure.

  Lord Harry was at the point of despair as he descended one of the tenement stairs and nearly trod on a mite of a child who was sitting cradling a bundle of rags which she had tied into the semblance of a doll. “Pretty lady,” crooned the little girl.

  Lord Harry was about to step around her when something made him say, “Where is the pretty lady?”

  The girl looked at him vaguely. She rocked her makeshift doll. “Pretty lady go to sleep,” she said in a singsong voice. Lord Harry groaned. The pretty lady was obviously only the child’s doll. He stepped carefully round her and went down the stairs. “Pretty lady up the stairs,” said the little girl.

  Lord Harry turned and went slowly back up to her. He stretched down a hand. “Show me,” he whispered. Outside the rain had begun to fall and pattered on the broken roof far above his head. The wind sighed through the holes in the old building.

  The child put a dirty paw of a hand in his and together they went up the stairs. “There, mister. Pretty lady there,” she said, pointing to a stout door on a first-floor landing.

  Lord Harry sprinted down the stairs and ran hell-for-leather to Parliament Square. He ran wildly up and down the ranks of hackney carriages, picking out the tallest. “Do as I tell you,” he called to the driver as he clambered up onto the roof, “and you may name your price. New Pye Street. Fast!”

  “What’ll you give me?”

  “The best and strongest carriage horse Tattersall’s has on offer.”

  “I’d do murder for that,” said the driver cheerfully. “Hang on.”

  The tall hackney rattled off in the direction of New Pye Street.

  Inside the room, Frederica said sadly, “You are going to kill me.”

  “Yes,” said Tooley.

  “I shall scream.”

  “Scream away. No one will come. Not here.”

  “I didn’t know there were places like this,” said Frederica. “What a place to die.”

  I should have married him, she thought bleakly. I’ve been a fool. What if he had tired of me? At least I should have known bliss.

  Tooley stood up and Frederica got to her feet at the same time. She took off her bonnet and unpinned her hair. Afterward, she did not know why she did such a thing, but she felt as if she were mounting the steps of the scaffold. She edged round the room toward the window, her back to the wall, watching him.

  “You can’t get away,” he said, advancing on her. A smile of pure pleasurable anticipation lit up his face.

  “God in Heaven have mercy on my soul,” said Frederica.

  Tooley threw back his head and laughed.

  And then the whole world seemed to erupt into glittering shards of flying glass as Lord Harry Danger leaped from the roof of the tall hackney carriage outside, straight through the window. He hurtled to the floor, blood gushing from innumerable cuts, and howling with rage and fury, twisted away just as the equally cut and gashed Tooley leaped at him with the knife. Lord Harry kicked him savagely in the groin. Tooley screamed and doubled over. Lord Harry kicked out savagely again, and Tooley went flying out through the broken window.

  I suppose it’s worth an ’orse, thought the cabman gloomily, glad he had moved his carriage a little away as Tooley’s body came flying out and struck the cobbles with a sickening thud.

  Frederica had miraculously only sustained one cut on her arm. She ran into Lord Harry’s arms, kissing his bloody face and crying out her thanks over and over again.

  From the end of the street sounded the rattle of the watch.

  “You will bleed to death,” sobbed Frederica.

  “No, don’t cry. No arteries cut. Don’t cry. Kiss me again. You see what happens without my protection?”

  “Oh, Harry, I will be your mistress.”

  “No, Frederica, you will be my bride.”

  “She won’t let me. Mrs. Waverley, I mean. Not even after this. The ransom. He sent someone with the ransom note.”

  “The deuce. Come with me until we tell the authorities. We may catch him on the return.”

  Frederica was bundled into the hackney carriage. The driver was commanded to sit beside her and keep intruders away. Tooley had broken his neck when he hit the cobbles. Lord Harry hurriedly explained the situation to the police who had arrived on the scene.

  He climbed in beside Frederica and told the driver to move the carriage around the corner out of sight.

  As the man Tooley had sent to fetch the ransom appeared at the corner of the street, it was once more totally deserted. The man, a small-time thief who often did work for Tooley, was whistling through his teeth. He was carrying a bag full of jewels. Mrs. Waverley had cried out that it would take time to get such a large sum of money from the bank and so he had demanded the jewels. He did not see why Tooley should get the lot and had cached several of the finer pieces about his person.

  He had just turned into the vile-smelling stairway when he w
as arrested.

  Frederica clung tightly to Lord Harry through the whole affair. At last the bag of jewels was dumped in her lap by a smiling police constable. “Stay with her,” ordered Lord Harry. “There is something I have to do.”

  He was gone for what seemed a very long time, but at last returned carrying a small, dirty child. “Had it not been for this mite,” he said, lifting the child into the carriage, “you would not be alive, Frederica. She told me where to find you. I shall find a home for her. She does not have any parents.”

  All the way home, Frederica felt her heart swell with gratitude, not only to Lord Harry, but to Mrs. Waverley. She herself might have ended up living in a hole such as the one in New Pye Street after her time at the orphanage was over.

  But her newfound gratitude was to have a quick death. Mrs. Waverley ran down the steps and hugged and kissed Frederica, but when Frederica at last pushed her gently away and pointed out that Lord Harry had once more risked his life to save her, Mrs. Waverley’s face hardened.

  “Frederica would not have been out in the square alone unless you had persuaded her to meet you.”

  “That is not true!” cried Frederica. “I went out of my own accord.”

  “Go, my love,” whispered Lord Harry. “I shall see you soon.”

  When they got indoors, Frederica raged against Mrs. Waverley, finally bursting into tears of sheer frustration when Mrs. Waverley tried to say that Lord Harry had probably arranged the whole thing so as to look like a hero. Frederica threw the large bag of jewels at Mrs. Waverley’s feet, crying she never wanted to see one of the baubles again. Mrs. Waverley was contrite at last. She knew she had behaved very badly. But her relief at having Frederica delivered back to her safe and well had been quickly replaced by the sharp fear that another of her girls would escape her and leave her to a lonely old age. Frederica refused to listen to any apologies and was finally hustled out by Mrs. Ricketts to have the cut on her arm attended to.

  “Frederica had the right of it,” said Felicity quietly. “You showed a most ungenerous spirit, Mrs. Waverley.”