After the Scandal

by Elizabeth Essex

  “Yes. Because you stopped him.”

  He winced up one eye. “Ah. I’ve been lucky, Claire.”

  “No. I’ve been lucky. You’ve been vigilant and skilled.” She was sure of this. “And you’re going to keep on being vigilant and skilled.” She took ahold of his hand and led him onward. “And you promised me, Tanner. You said you would do anything for me. Anything I asked you to do.”

  “God’s balls.” But even his curse sounded accepting. “I did.”

  “You gave me your word,” she pressed, “so you’ll just have to keep it.”

  “God’s balls,” he swore again, but he was smiling now. “You sound just like my sister.”

  It was as close to agreement as she was like to get.

  The warmth of relief made her expansive. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  He heaved a pent-up chuckle out of his chest. “You’re nothing like her.”

  “No?’

  “No.” He shook his head, and rubbed his hand across his mouth, as if he could erase the feeling. “I never wanted to kiss her.”

  She felt it again—that suspended moment when the rest of the earth seemed to stand still, and there was only the two of them.

  Every hint of fatigue vanished. Every weary nerve came alive and tingling.

  She turned her head, and looked up at him from under her lashes. “And do you want to kiss me?”

  He shook his head again, as if he would still try to deny it. But he said, “It’s all I want to do.”

  Heat, and something far more unruly blossomed deep under her skin. Something unfettered and entirely unrefined. Something daring.

  “Then you’d best do so.”

  He didn’t kiss her immediately, there in the middle of a public thoroughfare, but clasped her hand, and pulled her at a run down the pavement. The startled mare pranced along beside them, but as soon as they made the corner, and could slip into the narrow reach of White Horse Street, he looped the rein over his elbow, and reeled Claire around into the soft ivy covering the backside of the Fenmore Stable block.

  He took a long look at her there, at her face, and eyes and lips—such a long look that she thought he might have changed his mind, and be thinking of reading her another lecture.

  But what he did instead was put one hand flat against the wall over her head, and lean in, just a little. Just enough so his breath fanned across her temple. Just enough so she tilted her face up to his.

  Within her chest, her heart had kicked up, keeping time with her shortened breath.

  When she had kissed him in the boat, it had somehow seemed right—the natural thing to do. But he had been slow to respond, and hesitant. As if perhaps he might not want to be kissed in the middle of a busy river. Or by her.

  And so she had stopped. And pulled away.

  But now it was he who was bending down from his great height to kiss her. He, who was sneaking his hand around her waist, and pulling her near. He who was finally appeasing the near painful ache of longing.

  His lips were less tentative, less passive, though they moved over hers carefully, slowly, gauging their welcome.

  She would leave him in no doubt.

  She slanted her head, and took his taut bottom lip between her teeth and bit down gently, delicately, holding him captive, baiting him with the promise of more. Teasing him into complicit compliance.

  But in the next moment she was almost sorry she had teased him so, for she was unprepared for the force of passion she had awakened in him.

  His hands cupped her chin, and he sank into her kiss with abandon, drinking in her lips, pushing her back into the verdant cushion of the ivy.

  And she was lost. Lost to everything but the smooth shock of his lips, and the comforting rasp of his incipient beard against her skin. Lost to the feel of his thumbs fanning across her cheek, urging her to open to him, and give in to the decadent soft tangle of tongue upon tongue. Lost in the depth of the hungry ache within her, that grew instead of being assuaged.

  Hungry for more of the fresh rain taste of him. More of the cedar spice scent of him. More of the careful, decorous feel of him.

  She looped her arms around his neck and held him tight, pressing herself into the comforting heat and pliant solidity of his chest, while his tongue touched and caressed hers. While his lips lulled and enticed with growing heat, drugging her with sweet need.

  His hands delved into her hair, cradling her nape, holding her head at just the right angle. And she followed suit, running her hands into his tousled hair, knocking his hat to the ground behind him.

  But he didn’t care, and neither did she. She only cared that he was kissing her with want, and need and hunger. As if she were a taste he had not known he craved, and was still hungry for more.

  On and on they kissed, giving and taking, asking and exploring, until the mare grew bored and restive, and tugged him away with a toss of her impatient head.

  They broke apart, gasping for breath, and Tanner stepped away, and swept up his hat before it could be trod under the horse’s hooves.

  “That was instructive.” His voice sounded amused and baffled and surprised. “Damn me, but I like kissing you.”

  He said it as if it were a revelation, as if he had not been sure he would when he had first set his lips to hers.

  How like him, to be so blunt and honest.

  Joy was a heady, giddy, generous feeling bubbling through her. “I like kissing you, too.”

  She was rewarded by that lovely, can’t-help-himself, boyish smile. “Lady Claire Jellicoe. What am I going to do with you?”

  She smiled back. “You’re going to take me back to Richmond, and catch a killer.”

  All Tanner could do was agree. And smile. It was as if having tasted her lips, his mouth wanted to do nothing else.

  But he had to take care of a more pressing matter first.

  Like proposing marriage. Best to get to that straightaway.

  “I will do that, just as I promised. And then I’m going to kiss you some more. But I need to get this mare back to the stable first.”

  And all of those things were going to be bloody, damned difficult.

  Because as he had so thoroughly kissed, and been kissed by Lady Claire Jellicoe up against the stable wall, he had heard the unmistakeable sound of a carriage being driven through the gates, and into the very private grounds of Fenmore House.

  The short hairs at the back of his nape stood to prickling attention, as if he were a cur dog—but the truth was, he was a motley cur dog of a duke, slinking around his own back alley, watching the premisses. And the more he listened, the more strongly his instinct cautioned him toward stealth.

  Because the situation warranted extra caution—Lady Claire’s reputation was at risk. If he got this wrong—this delicate and incredibly difficult navigation of human interactions—she would suffer the most.

  Wariness flooded his skin with pricking, itchy heat, and he led Claire and the mare toward the end of White Horse Street, where the Fenmore House mews gate met the lane just as it widened into Shepherd’s Market, with caution riding hard on his back.

  He was all watchful vigilance—his palms were sticky with apprehension. And with good reason—there was an inordinate amount of bustle in the stable yard.

  Inordinate in this case being any bustle at all, for he was not in residence.

  But there was a carriage with the crest of Sir Nathaniel Conant, the Beak of Bow Street, idling in the yard, and a red-breasted Bow Street Runner milling about his gate.

  Tanner’s body reacted even before his brain, sending a rush of blood through his veins, and making his pulse kick hard against his chest.

  He had mis-calculated badly—a very different game than merely stealing a wife was now afoot.

  “Keep moving. Into the market.”

  Claire was acute enough to comply instantly—following him into the anonymous comfort of the milling shoppers picking through the afternoon’s produce. “What is wrong?”

/>   Nothing he wanted to speak of in a public place.

  Tanner wove his dextrous way through the market stalls, winding around produce seller with their bushels of leeks, and poulterers with their crates of fluttering guinea fowl, until he reached a vantage point where he could see both the gates of Sanderson House—to the west up Chapel Street—and the mews gate of the ducal home, Fenmore House—east at the far end of the market at the top of White Horse Street.

  Sanderson House was quiet, but Fenmore House was not.

  There were two Bow Street Runners idling about—one leaning against the wrought iron gate post, and the other milling about the yard, talking to his stablemen. Who were all, Tanner would wager his last groat, loyal to a fault—they would say not a word, as they had little respect for the law, though they were no doubt petrified of the nick themselves.

  Fenmore House was rather over-staffed with what could only be described as former members of the criminal classes—thieves, rogues, whores and cutpurses alike. The Tanner, it was known, was a soft touch for old friends.

  It was an interesting life.

  The coach idling in the drive looked, if not official, then magisterial in all the senses of the word he had learned at Eton and Oxford—masterly, authoritative, and commanding. They did not look like they had come to give him a commendation of any sort.

  They looked to bid him no good.

  But Tanner was a creature of stealth and guile. And he knew a thing or two that all the magistrates in London did not.

  “Stay here,” he instructed Claire. “Buy some food.” He pulled out his sueded pouch again, and fished out some coins. “Something we can take with us downriver. And keep this.” He looped the leather cord around her neck. “If I’m not out again in a ten minutes—take what’s inside, put it on, and go home.”

  “Take what?” She reached up to feel the contents through the soft suede of the bag.

  This was not the time, or place, but he had run out of time. There was nothing for it.

  “Look. I am an idiot. Here.” He took the ring out himself, and held it up before her. “This ring. With it, we are betrothed, and you are protected. Whether I come out of there in ten minutes. Or not. But I will come out eventually. I will sort it out, and I will come for you. But in the meantime, you will be protected.”

  He could not read the look on her face—another one of those combinations of shock and excitement and fear and hopefully happiness that left her pale and trembling.

  “I— Whatever happens, I’d be much obliged if you would wear the ring, and consider us betrothed.”

  As a declaration of love, it lacked a certain finesse and passion, but it was the best he could do.

  And as he, himself, felt such an confusing mixture of fear and dread and excitement and hopefulness humming through his veins that he thought his heart would pound its way right out of his chest, he shoved the ring into her hand, and fled.

  Except that he didn’t allow himself to actually run—he pulled his uniform tricorn hat down low over his eyes, and proceeded to walk across the market with the unhurried, confident air of a man who knows what he’s doing.

  Which was the biggest lie of them all.

  But it worked, for he walked unmolested by the Runner at the gate in his Fenmore livery until he was safely hidden in the stable, out of sight of the Robin red-breasts.

  “Pip.” He called to a stableboy hauling water.

  “Shite.” The boy all but bit his tongue. “Ye scared me there, yer gr—”

  “Stuff it, there’s a good lad.” Tanner spoke to the lad with a casual tone, and kept moving down the row of stalls. “Walk along with me, as if you’re going to help me with the mare. How goes it with the carriage pair?”

  The boy was disconcerted by the bland nonsensical question. “Fine, sir. Do you want me to have ’em put to harness? Or fetch a horse for you? They say they’re after you, sir.”

  “Do they now? That’s fine. Fine and dandy.” Tanner edged a bit of Billingsgate Irish into his voice. That’d help the red breasts see and hear what they expected to—an Irish groomsman fresh back from an errand. Just as he wanted them to see. “And in a bit, I’ll be after having you find Beamish for me. No, don’t look at him”—he kept his own gaze away from the second Runner who sidled into view and leaned on the side of one of the idle coaches—“just keep on with me, there’s a good lad.”

  He handed Pip the lead rope, divested himself of his livery, and donned a sturdy, checked stable apron.

  Pip did his damnedest to comply, but Tanner could see he was nearly bursting at his worn seams with both questions and information.

  “So what do you know, then, Pip?” he asked once he judged they were beyond earshot.

  “They come for you. Word is you done something awful bad.”

  “Hurt a man, perhaps?”

  “Worser. They was saying murder, sir. They’re talking the noose.”

  So he had killed Rosing after all. Fuck all.

  Tanner was surprised to find himself feeling something that had to be remorse—his chest felt tight and achy. But it was remorse for the fact that he now seemed to have involved Claire in not one but two murders.

  But he wasn’t hanged yet, and wouldn’t be if he kept his wits about him.

  He would need a diversion. “Right then. Best ask Moore to put the tall bays to the town carriage,” he instructed Pip, “and await His Grace, the duke, at”—Tanner consulted the map in his brain—“at St. Giles Churchyard this half hour.”

  St. Giles Churchyard was located a convenient distance away in the middle of a God-awful slum. But Tanner had no doubt that Moore could handle both himself and the high-spirited bay team, and that the jaunt there might pull the constables and Runners crawling about the place in the opposite direction from where he himself intended to go.

  And it was always lovely fun to mislay the law.

  “Yes, your gr—” The lad stymied himself, and tugged the brim of his cap. “Done.”

  “There’s a good lad. Now get along, and speak to Moore all on the quiet, mind you. And then send Beamish to me.”

  Tanner kept on with the mare, taking up a curry brush and rag to strode down the filly, until Beamish found him.

  Beamish, was a mostly-reformed, one-handed former thief who acted as major domo and all around fixer at Fenmore House, and who didn’t so much as bat an eye at the sight of his master the duke dressed like a groomsman—he’d seen stranger, and he knew well enough how to run a rig. “Jesus God. There’ y’are.”

  “What’s the lie, Beamish?”

  “Ah, fook me, but I’m glad to see you, lad. There’s a raft of beak coves idling about the ken. Looking fer you and a mort.”

  “She’s safe. Safe as houses. It’s all my eye and Betty Martin.”

  “Dunno.” Beamish winched up one side of his face with doubt. “They’re talking the drop, they are. Mean to see you in Newgate, if they dare. They’re after saying you’ve kidnapped two ladies, and all but kilt a man. There’s talk of murder.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Which fooking one?” What Beamish lacked in deference for the dignity of the dukedom, he more than made up for in loyalty.

  “The one I all but ‘kilt.’”

  “Bashed up awful bad they say, but not so nears death as he couldn’t screech like a ha’penny whore, and name you to the beak at Bow Street.”

  There is was then—Rosing was alive enough to have accused him. Tanner could feel the anger growing in him like a weed—anger at himself for not anticipating such an accusation. He had been so blinded by his own plan to steal Lady Claire Jellicoe that he didn’t see anyone else’s plan coming. “Well, damn me. So.”

  “So?” Beamish gaped at his understatement.

  “So Lord Peter Rosing has laid evidence—if he was capable, which I doubt—so perhaps his father, the bloody Marquess of Hadleigh laid evidence in his son’s name for a charge that I tried to rape a lady, and that Rosing tried to stop me? And failing
to rape her, that I kidnapped the lady against her will?”

  “You’ve the gist of it. Complete shite. Anyone knows you knows that.”

  “I imagine there’s a magistrate or two in the drawing room, who say otherwise?”

  “The Beak of Bow Street himself. They’ve a warrant they say. Writs and the like. A lot of fooking palaver, if you ask me.”

  Tanner had to smile at Beamish’s colorful language—with such a major domo, life at Fenmore House had never been boring. But he couldn’t laugh at the charges, spurious though they were.

  The Beak of Bow Street would be Sir Nathaniel Conant, a well-respected man, with a reputation for fairness, but also mildness of person. Just the sort of man that someone with a reputation for authoritative behavior—like the Marquess of Hadleigh, or the Earl Sanderson for that matter—might be able to take advantage of.

  “This is indeed a right tight jam.”

  “Bloody well right it is.”

  “There’ll be a load of work and mischief unraveling it all.” Work that was already underway—across the yard the Coachman Moore was putting the bay pair to the traces of the small town carriage. And both of the Runners were on their feet, watching avidly.

  “Pass me a few bob, as if you’re sending me to the market. Ta.” He put the coins in his shoe. “Put out word on ‘Change and with Elias Solomon, that I’m after some profiteers—profiteers in gold specie in particular. A club, or a syndicate of gentlemen, hedging their bets against the recoinage.”

  “Gentlemen,” Beamish scoffed. “Them that can breaks the law by bending it to their will.”

  “The very same, Beamish. Just that type.” Another thought struck hard between Tanner’s eyes. “And have my broker, Mr. Levy, see what he can do to follow the money from young Paul Walker’s yard at number eighty-nine St. Catherine’s Dock. See if he can find who holds the lease. Or who paid for a load of Mendip ore.”

  “Right ho. I’m right onto it.”

  “Take your time. I’m off to Richmond, but I’d rather know I’ve a cushion of time before they think to look for me there. Send me off to the market sharp-like for the runners to hear, to get a bushel of eels. And then keep the beak busy. Assure him I’m expected back any time.”