Regency Romp 03 - The Alabaster Hip

by Maggie Fenton

  “Wrote that one myself,” he murmured.

  “I have no idea what I’m supposed to say to you right now.” She sounded either awed or in pain. It was a hard one to call.

  He shrugged. “Since you like Mr. Essex, thought you might appreciate a bit of my own talent.”

  “You are . . . this is . . . are you actually comparing your . . . your highly offensive crudity to Christopher Essex’s genius?”

  “Well, we do both enjoy a bit of bawdy verse.”

  “You’re calling Essex’s work bawdy verse?” she cried, eyebrows climbing once again.

  He felt justified in calling it whatever he damn well pleased, especially when it was eliciting such a delightful response in Miss Jones. But he thought it best to move the situation along before she started hurling books at him.

  “My library is at your disposal, Miss Jones,” he said, “since you have such a high opinion of its worth.”

  She looked as if she wanted to scold him further, but she was so surprised by his offer that she managed to restrain herself. “Thank you, Lord Marlowe,” she said instead, sounding both bewildered by his generosity and irked by his ignorance.

  “Well, someone should enjoy it,” he said briskly. “And if you do decide you might enjoy a bit of bawdy verse, that section is on the balcony.”

  Her marble-pale face turned a delightful shade of red at that. “That will . . . not be necessary, my lord,” she said primly.

  From the way her eyes kept drifting upward, he did not believe her for a second.

  Just then, the sound of something else crashing in the hallway—and Mrs. Chips’s indignant yelp—startled them both.

  “I suppose I’d better . . .” she began, backing out of the room with one last longing glance around the shelves—and the balcony.

  He waved her off while gifting her with his most infuriating grin and sat down at his desk, contemplating his newest acquisition to his household. Perhaps when the fog of his fever cleared, Miss Jones would reveal herself to be as ordinary and as short-lived as every other governess he’d ever hired, but somehow he doubted it. He had a feeling that he was going to enjoy having Miss Jones around, if only to vex her every chance he got.

  His grin didn’t fade for a very long time.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IN WHICH ANOTHER DAMSEL IN DISTRESS RESCUES HERSELF

  IN THE YELLOW light of a gas lamp turned low, at an hour when most reasonable people were abed, Marlowe, who had never been reasonable when it came to his work (or anything else, really), scribbled out one last word and scowled down at the foolscap on his library desk, unsatisfied. Half the words he’d written were marked out, just like the page before, and the page before that one.

  Come to think of it, the entire stack of paper at his elbow was one giant inkblot. He balled up all of the wasted pages and threw them one by one toward the smoldering, half-dead fire. Most of them fell far short of the hearth, but he really couldn’t be arsed to pick them up and dispose of them properly.

  He knocked his forehead against the desktop in the futile hope of knocking out some decent verse.

  It did not work.

  He didn’t know what he had been thinking, anyway. The muse had abandoned him long ago and showed no signs of returning, even though he’d felt unaccountably inspired after his trip to West Barming. The epic that had been languishing on his desk for months had also been relegated to the flames (it had been even more insipid than usual), and he had started a new one that may or may not have featured a petite, gray-eyed enchantress with sable hair.

  But while the urge to write was there, as it hadn’t been in months upon months, his output was as dismal as ever. The wellspring of inspiration in his mind had dried up, and try as he might, even he could not wring water from the stones of a barren creek bed, no matter how much he wanted to. Having never before been faced with this problem, he had no idea how to fix it. He hadn’t in nearly three years, not since he’d finished The Italian Poem.

  He stared unblinkingly at the blank page before him for so long his eyes went dry. He reached for the bottle beside him and paused as his fingers closed around empty air. The habit had become so engrained over the years that he’d forgotten his self-imposed vow for a moment.

  He glanced at the sideboard on the other side of the room, fully stocked and taunting him. The cut glass decanter full of his favorite port sparkled in the moonlight streaming in from the open window beside it, the liquid inside gleaming like a precious jewel. For one second, he was tempted, as he’d been tempted too much in the past three years when troubled by a blank page.

  His appetite for excess had always been the worst during the night, when most of the world was either asleep or hidden away enjoying its secret pleasures, and everything was too still, too quiet. Sleep for him had been elusive as far back as the war and his disastrous marriage, and his pleasures were few outside the bottom of a bottle. The only thing to assuage his sleeplessness besides drink had been his verse, but that too had abandoned him.

  For so long, his despair and outrage and hate of the world had fueled his poetry, but that toxic phoenix had burned to ashes far too quickly, leaving him a soused husk shattered by the war and his wife’s betrayal. The words that had flowed from his pen as effortlessly as rain from a storm cloud—as effortlessly as the rage and sorrow that had flowed through his veins—had been gone for years now. He didn’t think it was a coincidence that he’d become wordless around the same time as he’d begun to forgive—his family, the war, Caroline, himself—but he did think it terribly ironic.

  Now that he couldn’t even write one decent couplet—not one, for God’s sake!—he had no shield between the nightmares and regret but the drink, even after he’d let go of the worst of his anger and grief. He’d become a hypocrite, for after railing at Sebastian for years over the man’s self-destructive habits, he’d nearly succumbed to his own vices and lost the two most precious things in his life: his daughters.

  Well, he’d not do so again.

  It was shockingly easy to shift his eyes from the sideboard to the window when he thought of Laura and Beatrice.

  Easier still to do so when someone was climbing over the open sill, swathed in shadows and a heavy cloak, distracting him completely from his brooding. Since he’d not bothered with any lighting other than the small gas lamp on his desk, the intruder obviously didn’t see him at first, tumbling into the room in a flurry of curses and flailing limbs.

  Marlowe’s momentary alarm quickly faded into exasperation. He recognized that voice. The intruder was hardly a threat . . . a threat to his sanity, perhaps, but not to the sanctity of his household.

  He sighed wearily, for just when everything in his life had begun to take on some semblance of normalcy again, trouble had to tumble into his life. Literally. He supposed it was rather poetic, though, considering the nearly identical way he’d tumbled into Miss Jones’s life . . . though he’d rather steer far clear of any bosom groping in this particular instance.

  He cleared his throat pointedly and turned up the flame on his lamp, flooding the room with light. The intruder let out a loud, high-pitched yelp of surprise and flailed even more, one arm knocking into the sideboard so hard that it sent his prize decanter of port to the floor. The sound of shattered glass pierced the quiet room for a moment, and a pair of wide, familiar brown eyes caught his and held.

  He sighed again and shook his head at the puddle of port spreading at the girl’s feet. Even though he was a bit abstemious these days, it didn’t mean he couldn’t mourn the waste of a premium beverage.

  “Elizabeth Leighton! What the devil do you think you are doing?” he demanded.

  His little sister shoved the cowl of her cloak back and revealed a mass of dark brown curls falling out of its pins. Her shock at being discovered quickly faded, for the next thing he knew he was being gifted with a roll of the eyes. As if she were the one exasperated with him.

  “It’s Betsy,” she hissed. “And you weren’t suppos
ed to be awake.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. He was always awake these days.

  She was unimpressed, as usual, by his silent posturing. “And what are you doing, lurking in the dark? Humans have invented these things called candles, you know,” she huffed, stepping over the remains of the port and loosening the ribbons of her cloak, her native forwardness—and cheek, apparently—now totally restored.

  He indicated his desk lamp—a piece of technology that was far more advanced than a mere beeswax candle, thank you very much. “I was writing.” Not that he needed to explain himself to a sixteen-year-old girl. “And again, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Running away, obviously,” she said briskly. She slung an overloaded carpetbag off her shoulder and aimed it at a divan. It hit the edge and fell to the floor with a heavy thunk.

  “What’s in there?” he demanded. “Rocks?”

  She scowled at him. “Books, for one. Not that you’d know the difference, you philistine.”

  He glanced pointedly around his library but said nothing to her ridiculous statement.

  “And clothes,” she continued. “I may have run away, but that’s no reason to wear the same frock every day. I’m not a street person. Though I shall need to visit a modiste soon. Space was limited, and I could only bring my best ball gown.”

  Of course. Only his flighty half-sister would think it sensible to run away with a sack of books and a ball gown—only his sister would think it sensible to run away.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and prayed for patience. “Tell me you didn’t travel here from West Barming. Unchaperoned.”

  “I didn’t travel here from West Barming unchaperoned?” she said with a much too innocent expression.

  “Except that you did.”

  “Of course I did!” she said brightly, tossing her cloak in the same direction as her bag. It slithered to the floor as well. Underneath, she seemed to be wearing a ratty old gingham dress more suited to a milkmaid than an earl’s daughter. Well, at least she had attempted some sort of discretion.

  “I couldn’t very well run away in Father’s chaise,” she continued. “I caught the mail coach in the village. Never has my nose been so offended in my life. I swear, does no one else but me understand the purpose of soap?”

  “Most people can’t afford soap, Elizabeth,” he growled.

  She scoffed and waved away his comment as if it were ridiculous. “How can one not afford soap?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose to try to contain his annoyance. She reminded him so much of Evander at that moment—though blessedly without the cruel streak. But he was not about to educate his sister on the myriad injustices of the English class system and the bloody soap tax at such an ungodly hour. Besides, she would have listened just as well as Evander would have—which was not at all.

  “And once you reached London, how did you find your way here?”

  She arched her brow at him as if she thought him quite dim. “A hack, of course.”

  “Of course. You hired a hack in London in the middle of the night. Do you know how dangerous that was?”

  She waved her hand at her clothing dismissively. “I borrowed my maid’s dress . . . well, I say borrowed . . . No one recognized me, I assure you. My reputation is intact.”

  He ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. He hoped to God his daughters did not grow up to be so damned bird-witted.

  “I don’t give two figs about your reputation,” he said. “I care about your life. At any point you could have been accosted or abused by those unsoaped, unwashed men who couldn’t care less whose daughter you are.”

  Her expression went slack with surprise, as if she’d not once considered this. Which she probably hadn’t. Damn his father for raising his daughter in such a rarified bubble.

  But then Elizabeth pulled a knife from one pocket and a pistol from another. She brandished both at him with a wicked grin. He ducked when she waved the pistol’s barrel a little too cavalierly in his direction.

  “I’m not an idiot, Evie,” Elizabeth said briskly. “And I resent the implication that I am some completely helpless female who needs the protection of a man. Honestly, you’re as bad as Father.” She wiggled the gun at him again, and he ducked once more.

  “Would you put that down before you shoot me?” he hissed.

  She shrugged and set the pistol on the edge of his desk with less care than he thought wise. She returned the knife to her pocket, however. He decided to pick his battles and let her keep the blade. With the trouble she was likely to get into, she’d probably need it. He snatched up the pistol, unloaded it, and shoved it in his desk drawer. “Do you even know how to shoot this thing?”

  She sniffed haughtily. “Of course. What else is there to do in West Boring but hunt? I am an excellent shot. Cracking, in fact.”

  He was afraid for England. Truly. The idea of Elizabeth—clumsy, impulsive, flighty, little Betsy—shooting at things was a frightening prospect indeed.

  He scowled at her. “I don’t care how prepared you thought you were, it was still dangerous to travel alone,” he said, coming around the edge of his desk and leaning against it.

  She just smiled and patted his cheek. “You’re just soft and fluffy underneath all of that bluster, aren’t you? And I’m sorry I compared you to Father. You’re nothing like him. You couldn’t care a whit about damage to my reputation, while I’m sure that is all he’ll think about when he realizes I’ve run off. He couldn’t give a toss about my safety.”

  She was, unfortunately, not wrong.

  But . . . soft and fluffy indeed! She was getting as bad as Elaine.

  He cleared his throat. “You better have a good explanation, Elizabeth.”

  “Betsy,” she corrected. “Please. Do I look like a three-hundred-year-old monarch?”

  “You look like you traveled by mail coach across the country, Elizabeth,” he said, refusing to grant her any ground. At least not yet. He knew from bitter experience that Betsy would eventually wear him down to the point where he’d agree to anything just to get her to stop talking, just like Elaine did, but he didn’t want to make it easy for her. And if she insisted on calling him Evie, he was damned if he’d concede on her own name quite yet. “What the devil has brought you here?”

  “Can’t I visit my favorite brother?” she asked, the picture of innocence.

  He ground his teeth. Her cow eyes and compliments would not sway him. Besides, it was hardly a compliment, as the only other option was moldering in the family mausoleum.

  “You could have arranged a visit. Properly.”

  She snorted. “That is never going to happen. Father would never allow it. He hates you, you know.”

  Oh, did he ever. He refused to give in to that small niggling hurt in his heart he felt at hearing the truth so blatantly pointed out to him. He’d never understand his father’s enmity, though—how the earl could have loved one son so utterly while loathing the other. “The feeling is mutual, I assure you,” he grumbled.

  “And I’m stuck in West Boring anyway. Father never lets me go to London. I was supposed to have my debut this Season, you know. But he decided it was unnecessary.”

  “Is that what this is about?” he demanded. “You’re upset about your coming-out? Really, Elizabeth, did missing a few parties and balls warrant running away?”

  Her glare deepened. “He canceled my coming-out because he has found me a husband. A completely odious specimen, might I add. And I refuse to tie myself to that toad for the rest of my life. The banns were begun last Sunday, Evie, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I couldn’t stay a moment longer.”

  Marlowe’s heart sank to his toes at this news. Surely even his father wouldn’t be so callous. “You’re only sixteen!” he cried.

  “That argument did not work on Father,” Betsy said wearily, throwing herself on the divan dramatically. “He reminded me that plenty of girls my age have husbands.”

  “It’s archa
ic.”

  She shot him a knowing look. “Our father is archaic. He also reminded me that Elaine married at my age.”

  “He forgot to add that Elaine pursued poor Brinderley until the man had no choice but to concede to her will,” he muttered. “And still I say she was too young.”

  “It was a love match,” Betsy said firmly, as if this excused everything, which showed how distressingly young she was. His had been a love match too. Or at least he’d thought so. “Whether she was too young or not, she and Brinderley are very happy. But I most certainly will never be with the Duke of Oxley.”

  His blood ran cold with horror, then immediately began to boil with fury at his father.

  “Poxley Oxley?” he cried. “He’s sixty, if he’s a day!” And one of the most depraved men Marlowe had ever had the misfortune of knowing, even if only by association.

  Oxley had certainly come by his nickname honestly. His perversities were legendary among certain circles, and if rumor could be believed, he’d been barred from every halfway reputable establishment due to his propensity for breaking his playthings. Marlowe would not let his sister anywhere near such a brute. Oxley had already gone through three wives, and Marlowe shuddered to think what that monster had put them through in the marriage bed before they’d died.

  There was no way Marlowe’s father didn’t know these same rumors, as he was Oxley’s confederate (another reason to loathe the earl). And yet he was willing to give his sixteen-year-old daughter to that villain. Marlowe shouldn’t be surprised by anything his father did at this point in his life, but this was a new low, even for the earl.

  “Tell me Poxley didn’t touch you,” he demanded, taking her by the shoulders and examining her as closely as he could in the moonlight, looking for any sign of abuse.

  “I’m fine. He has never touched me,” she said, enduring his inspection grudgingly. “Though I certainly don’t like the way he looks at me.” She shuddered. “He would be a perfect villain for a gothic novel. Besides, I am perfectly able to take care of myself. Cracking shot, remember? So you see why I’ve run away. I can’t marry him.”