His Secret Heroine

by Delle Jacobs

  "Still angry with me?" Reggie asked, his arms folded.

  She pinched her lips together, not wanting to answer.

  "I do not suppose you would be willing to hear me out."

  "I do not believe I am being given much choice."

  "Did you read it?"

  "Lady Mythe read parts of it to me. The nicer parts, I presume. I cannot help but wonder about the parts she skipped."

  He winced. "I do owe you a very big apology, Chloe. I should never have used you in the way I did without at least consulting you. I suppose I thought I could keep my real thoughts concealed, and no one would know where I got my ideas. I am not sure I can even explain it. I had a story I had written, that I just could not make work. Then I went to Mythe's party, and there you were. One look at you, and a new story just flooded in. It was like nothing I have ever felt before, and I had to write it. It seemed at first like a complete contradiction to who you were, but I soon began to realize you really were my Circe, my perfect heroine."

  Her mouth felt as if she had been sucking sour pickles. "Clearly we are not in agreement regarding perfection, then. It is hardly flattering to portray me going about in men's garments and running about the deck of a ship like a hoyden. 'Wet garments molded against her ambrosially delectable form'? Reggie, what could you have been thinking?"

  He reached out to her, but she side-stepped his grasp. "Chloe, please listen. Those weren't my words. Mr. Ludwick didn't do a lot of editing, but he did attempt to spice it up."

  "Your words or his, Reggie?"

  Reggie huffed, sounding exasperated. Well, he could not be any more so than she.

  "Not my words, but they have become mine. The responsibility is mine, and I take it. But that has nothing to do with our current situation. Chloe, you must agree to marry me. Your situation will be dire if you do not."

  "It already is. And I do not see how marrying you can do anything to help my sisters."

  "It will keep you out of my father's clutches."

  "I doubt you will stand up to him for my sake, as you have not for any other reason. And you certainly will not succeed in persuading him to help free my sisters."

  "And do you think Vilheurs would? Do you have any idea what he would have done to you, once he learned you didn't have any money? I suggest you revisit the events last night, if you think he is so virtuous a man."

  Chloe knew that. "It is not as if I had other choices."

  "You do, Chloe. You have me, and it's time you accept it."

  Reggie dropped his arms to his sides and stepped closer to her. Chloe scooted back, just beyond his reach.

  He sighed. "I hoped you would like my story. I wrote about my heroine, a woman I admire, the woman I love. It is not simply an adventure story. It's a love story, Chloe. About us."

  A tear trickled down her cheek, and he wiped it away with his thumb. He just didn't understand. She couldn't sacrifice her sisters because of a man. That was the way her mother would have done it-had done it more than once-and Chloe just couldn't.

  "You'll have to trust me, Chloe. I can do this. But there is no time to waste. My father is unpredictable, and we cannot leave anything to chance. I shall ride out immediately for town and secure a Special License. I'll expect you in London for a Friday morning wedding. We'll inform the duke after the fact."

  Chloe nodded, drooping her head.

  "Two days, then." He pivoted on his heel in a move that suddenly reminded her of the duke, and walked out the door.

  As long as the duke believed her debts were her worst problem, they could manage. But could Reggie and his friends actually secure the guardianship of her sisters for her? Maybe they could defeat Cottingham, but what if the duke in his fury decided to support Cottingham’s claim?

  She was no heroine. He was wrong about that. She could not even save her own sisters without finding a man to do it for her. She was neither daring nor courageous, only deceitful. She had no other skill, and she had not even used that one wisely.

  But he was right about the rest. It was her only chance, and it was infinitely better than any opportunity Lord Vilheurs would have arranged for her.

  Reggie hadn't even tried to kiss her before leaving. She wasn't sure she could have managed a kiss, anyway.

  * * *

  The following morning Chloe and Aunt Daphne set out for London in their rattle-trap coach, trying to ignore the squeak in the springs that had re-appeared. The rode in silence, alternately watching the passing countryside and attempting to read.

  "How unfortunate that he must sell his boat," said Aunt Daphne.

  Chloe set the little red leather book in her lap. The road was a bit too bumpy for reading, anyway. "I quite agree. It seems so much a part of him. And it is odd that Lord Castlebury has bought it. I did not think he’d showed all that much interest in sailing."

  "Nor did I. But they are close friends. Perhaps that is Lord Castlebury's way of preserving the Xanthe for his friend."

  "I cannot help but think I am betraying Madeline and Allison while bringing no end of trouble to Reggie, Aunt."

  "Stuff and nonsense," Daphne replied, patting Chloe's hand. "When one brings love to a young man who cherishes it, there can be no greater gift. It hardly surprises me that he is willing to do what he must to keep you together."

  Chloe gazed out the window of the coach at the expanse of the downs, feeling gloom descend even more heavily. Summer lingered in the drying grasses, but where they passed over a stream, the colors of autumn were beginning to show in the trees that lined its banks. The hills were not as steep here. She had not minded those few occasions when they had to get out and walk up the hills, for the activity relieved the heavy sense of foreboding that hung over her like a storm cloud.

  Ahead, she saw the chimneypots and thatched roofs of Reading, and sensed the renewed energy in the team that pulled their coach. Perhaps she would change her mind and stay at the inn, although they had meant to drive on, only changing horses in their dash toward town where Reggie awaited them.

  Tomorrow, she would become Lady Reginald Beauhampton. How terribly hard it was to believe. Perhaps she ought to have a good laugh at herself.

  The gritty sound of crushed road metal beneath the iron tires of the coach gave way to cobblestones and the ringing clip of the horses' shoes. Whitewashed, black-timbered cottages lined the street. The coach pulled up into the inn yard and stopped. Chloe and Daphne sighed together as they stepped out of the coach. Aunt Daphne looked as if she felt the long day's travel deep in her bones.

  Yes, perhaps they needed to halt for the night.

  "Would you be Miss Chloe Englefield, ma'am?" said a voice.

  Chloe looked up to see a portly man with three chins and rumpled brown garments. "Yes, I am," she replied, and wished immediately she had denied it.

  "I've come to arrest you, ma'am. For debts owed to the Duke of Marmount. You'll have to come with me."

  Chloe stared at her aunt. She was only three days past the deadline he had given her for the payment.

  "It's off to the spunging house for you. Come along now, or I'll have to take you."

  Chloe looked to either side of her, where several men of even rougher appearance were gathering. She was trapped. She could not hope to run, and the horses were too tired to go farther. She knew nothing of Reading, save that she had stayed at the inn on the way to Mythe's country place. If ever she wished she were Circe, it was now.

  But she wasn't. Reggie was wrong about that.

  Chloe grabbed the little red book and tucked it into her reticule, and turned to her aunt. "Find Reggie," she said.

  Aunt Daphne's green eyes flashed back determination.

  Chloe shrugged away the man who grabbed her arm. "I am quite capable of walking. You need only show me the direction."

  The thick scent of wool and old sweat surrounded her as the burly escorts trod like soldiers past the inn to a white-washed, half-timbered house with three stories. It looked as if the top story was a too-large
box that would tumble off it, down to the street. She hardly heard her captor as he said his name, and had to ask him again.

  "Pauncefoot, ma'am," he said. "You'll find I treats the ladies fairly. I feeds my prisoners on reasonable fare, and if you've got the blunt, there's better meals to be had. But you'll be paying for your stay."

  Looking into the parlor, she saw enough silver and plumply upholstered chairs to persuade her that Pauncefoot did a brisk business. But then they passed up an uneven staircase between two walls that grew dingier and closer as they ascended, past the second floor, and onto the third, which was none other than that tottering box that sat atop the house, just beneath a roof of old thatch that smelled of black mold.

  The box held four tiny rooms, one at each corner. Pauncefoot turned a key in the lock, and a small oak door creaked open. As she ducked her head to enter, the stench gagged her.

  "T'ain't my best," he said. "But His Grace says you're a sly one, and I ain't to let you have the run of the place."

  “You said you’d treat me fairly,” she said.

  “Fairer’n most.” Pauncefoot spread an ugly grin across his face.

  Chloe put her hand over her nose. Circe would have managed it. She wouldn't have been so particular as to be sickened by mere odor. "Then I'll thank you to remove that overturned chamberpot and its contents," she said.

  "And ain't you the prissy one. You can clean it up yourself. And if you be wanting a chamberpot, you'll pay for it. A penny a day. Meals is sixpence a day. You want extras, it's a shilling." He held out his hand.

  She reached into her reticule, then closed it back up. "If it's to be a shilling, you'll clean it up."

  "An extra sixpence for the labor."

  "Then do without it. I shall manage."

  "Six pence for meals, or you don't get any."

  He could not starve her, and Chloe knew it, but she would find it hard to argue her case from the dark side of the grave. She plunked seven pennies into his hand. "Meal, chamberpot, and clean sheets for the bed."

  "Eight," he countered.

  Chloe glanced at the pile of rags and straw pallet in the corner, and fished into her reticule for another penny.

  When Pauncefoot shut the door and the lock clicked, she tore a strip from her petticoat to tie around her face, grabbed up the rags and wiped up the spilled slop. She shoved the offensive rags next to the door and crossed the room to a tiny window that opened outward. Gasping for breath, she flung it open.

  A heavy iron chain sprang tight, stopping the window after only a few inches. Chloe stared down to the cobbled pavement below and she wondered if she would ever have freedom again.

  "Won't get you anywhere, that way," said Pauncefoot behind her. "Just break your neck if you tried."

  She whirled around, glaring. "I just want the stench out of here."

  "Do you, now? You never said nothing about that." Pauncefoot dropped the pile of linens he had carried in, and a small boy set a bowl of something as foul-smelling as the chamberpot on a rickety table.

  "You'll take them if you want to see any more of my money," she replied.

  "By tomorrow night, I'll be seeing a lot more of your blunt, Miss Prim." His big belly swayed as he turned about and ducked beneath the low door frame. The door banged shut.

  Chloe suspected he could be right. All the same, she carried the stinking rags to the window and shoved them through, letting them fall to the pavement below.

  Wiping her hands on the linen scrap she had used to cover her face, Chloe tested the liquid in the bowl. It had the color and consistency of wash water after a particularly dirty bath. Two gray lumps of something unidentifiable stirred up from the bottom. Wash water it was, then. She dipped her hands in it then wiped them off, and flung the remainder out the window.

  She thought she heard a cry of protest below, but then she could not open the window far enough to see anyone. Intelligent people should not walk below the windows of a house like this.

  The straw pallet was not as bad as she had imagined it, in that it did not actually move with vermin. She spread out one sheet and curled up on the pallet, pulling the other sheet over her, and pretending she was in her own warm bed beneath snug blankets. And not in the least hungry.

  * * *

  Reggie woke to a pounding on the door. Not until he sat up did he realize the loud noise came all the way up the stairs from the front entrance of the town house where he maintained his rooms. He leapt from the bed and threw on his clothes, and before he was fully dressed, Puckett admitted a footman.

  "My Lord," said young Smith, "A Miss Hawarth is below who says she must speak with you immediately on an emergent matter."

  Foreboding gripped his throat. Chloe. Something terrible was wrong, otherwise her aunt would not come at such an hour. He dashed out the door of his chamber, still looping his cravat. At the bottom of the stairs, Miss Hawarth stood, pale as paste.

  "Oh, Lord Reginald, I beg your pardon for disturbing your peace in such a way!"

  "Into the parlor, please, dear lady. Smith, see if Mrs. Monroe can rustle up some tea or chocolate, will you? Come, tell me what is amiss."

  "Nothing, please," she said, waving her hand. "It is not at all the thing to be here, so I must not stay. But I dared not waste a moment. They have taken her, Lord Reginald, right off her own coach, and I am not sure even precisely where. They allowed me only to leave a small valise of her belongings."

  Reggie's throat closed down. "Why? Where?"

  "Arrested for debts. I knew they were substantial, but I had no notion she might be taken up. It was in Reading, but I cannot imagine where they have taken her."

  His father. Cold fear gripped him. "I should not have left her. I should have seen to the debts first, but I did not realize it, either." Reggie stood and paced. "Deuce take it, Miss Hawarth! My father owns her notes now! She told me!"

  "Yes, I am afraid so."

  "He cannot be so spiteful!" But yes, he could. He was the Duke of Marmount, who recognized no limits to his power. Chloe was suffering because she had dared defy the duke, no matter that Reggie had forced her to the choice.

  Miss Hawarth's small hands shook. "But he has done it, Lord Reginald. I know you do not wish to believe so ill of your father, and my niece did not wish you to know, for she knows how you love him. But he has threatened her before."

  "Threatened her?"

  "He has come to our house on two occasions and warned her to stay away from you. The last time, he offered her a substantial sum if she would persuade you to marry your cousin, but she would not take it. He gave a hint of knowing other things about my niece, perhaps things that might ruin her. And he warned her if she did not persuade you, she might have a single month to begin repayment, at a thousand a month."

  Reggie felt the color drain from his face. Chloe would not have been able to meet those terms, and his father had to have known it. "The month has passed, then?"

  "By nearly a week. She does not have the thousand, of course, and I am unable to help her."

  "I should have sent Castlebury after the special license and stayed with her at Mythe's."

  "But you still would have had to return to London for the wedding if you meant to use a Special License."

  "True." Reggie rubbed his forehead. "I have never known my father to do such a thing as this. But never fear, dear lady, I shall find her. My friends and I will scour the country. You must give me all the details you have. For the nonce, go home and stay where I may find you so you may serve as contact between us."

  He took the lady's hand to assist her from the chair, and glanced at the clock. It was already six in the morning. "Get some rest," he said. "I shall call on you later. I promise you, I will find her, and put an end to this bumblebroth."

  So the time had come for the confrontation he had always dreaded. He would be forced to choose between his father and his true love, and the truth he had always dreaded would come out, that perhaps his father loved only his own consequence and did no
t really love h son at all.

  And Chloe was suffering now because he had not had the fortitude to face down his father before this.

  Drawing a deep breath, Reggie took up his hat and gloves and started out the door to his gelding which he knew Puckett would already have waiting. Thank heaven for Puckett.

  Marmount House was not far, yet the ride north to its strangely isolated location near Primrose Hill seemed blocked by every waggoner, cartman, and drover in London. Reggie rode up the long drive with its rows of tall poplars like opposing ranks of soldiers to the somber gray-stoned mansion sitting in silence upon an isolated rise. None but the duke and his hand-picked servants stayed here and almost no one ever visited. His father was the singularly most solitary man Reggie had ever known.

  Four times Reggie pounded the knocker before a sleepy footman responded by cracking the door and peering out.

  The door opened quickly. "Lord Reginald."

  "Where is my father?" Reggie demanded.

  "He is not in, My Lord."

  "Not in. Be damned, fellow, where is he?"

  "I am sure I do not know, sir."

  Reggie doubted that, but the duke hired only the most loyal of servants, so he was not likely to discover his answer that easily. Reggie slapped his hat into the footman's hands and strode down the wide corridor.

  "Here, My Lord, I have said he is not here. You cannot go wandering about as if—"

  "I am the duke's son. Do not even consider telling me what I can do," he replied, and kept walking in an exact replica of his father's purposefully arrogant stride. He rushed up the central staircase and along the first floor corridor to the suite of rooms the duke used for business purposes.

  He tested the door. It was locked.

  "Unlock it," he demanded.

  "My Lord, I cannot."

  "Your choice is to unlock it, or watch as I break it down."

  The footman shook as he inserted the key in the lock.

  "You are dismissed," he said to the footman, and the man cowered away. Soon, Nash, his father's formidable butler, would appear, but Reggie did not intend to let anyone stop him.