Regency Romp 03 - The Alabaster Hip

by Maggie Fenton

  “May I help you?” the man asked with chilly politeness.

  “We are here to see the Duke of Oxley,” Montford said, equally frigid.

  The footman produced a silver salver out of nowhere and waited wordlessly until Montford finally caught on to what the man was after. He reluctantly produced his calling card and dropped it on the salver, looking as if he couldn’t quite wrap his head around the footman’s impudence. The footman turned to the marquess next for his card, passed over Mr. Soames rather pointedly, and stopped on Dr. Lucas. Once he’d collected his spoils, he shut the door in their faces.

  “The utter cheek!” the duke said, aghast.

  “I rather liked him,” the marquess murmured with a wry grin, clearly enjoying himself at his friend’s expense.

  “Is this how you mean to rescue my brother and Miss Jones? By standing on Poxley’s stoop?” Betsy demanded, unimpressed by the progress they’d made . . . or rather, the lack thereof.

  “He caught poor Montford off guard,” the duchess answered briskly. “He’s not used to anyone being insolent to him but me. He needs time to regroup.”

  Montford gave his wife, then the door, a stern look, then went to flip the knocker again. He was beaten to it by the footman, who swung open the door just as the duke was reaching for it. Montford just caught himself before he could stumble. The footman peered down his nose at the lot of them. “His Grace is not at home,” he intoned solemnly.

  Madame la Duchesse had apparently had enough, however, for she shoved Mademoiselle into Montford’s arms, swatted the footman on his finely turned calves with her stick, and toddled into the foyer, her spare wig—champagne pink and two feet tall—listing to port side. “It’s been a long day, young man. I suggest you take us to the duke before I shove my cane up your ar—”

  “He is in his bedchamber,” the footman interjected quickly, dancing well out of Aunt Anabel’s range, but not before she’d managed to land a swat on his backside. He yelped and rubbed at his injury, his cool expression finally breaking. “He’s indisposed.”

  “I’ll bet he is, the randy old codger,” Aunt Anabel muttered, then commenced to terrify the rest of the household staff that had begun amassing as she cut a determined but extremely slow swath across the marbled entrance hall with her cane’s aid. “I remember when his mother had ’im. He weren’t a year on this earth before he were molesting his nursemaids.”

  Betsy wondered just how old Aunt Anabel was.

  Madame la Duchesse waved her cane at a stout, well-dressed man coming down the grand staircase who could only be the butler. “You there, take us to His Grace’s chambers immediately.”

  The butler eyed their whole group with a horrified expression. “All of you, madam?”

  “That’s Madame la Duchesse to you, sirrah,” she said. “It might be French, but that don’t mean it ain’t real.”

  The butler was speechless.

  “I have learned to do as she says, old boy,” the marquess drawled. “It makes things much easier.”

  Aunt Anabel waved her cane at Manwaring, her expression softening. “You’ve always been my favorite. And not just because of your fine arse.”

  The marquess just grinned at her and gave her his leg. “I live to serve, Madame la Duchesse,” he murmured.

  The butler thought it best to concede defeat and led them up the staircase. For storming the lair of a villain, however, they moved at a rather glacial pace. But even Mr. Soames seemed to think it impolite to race ahead of Aunt Anabel, who was hampered by both the weight of her crinolines and her age.

  The butler hesitated on the threshold of Oxley’s bedchamber. “He really is indisposed,” he said, casting a dubious glance Betsy’s way. “And certainly not fit for a young lady’s company.”

  “We shall be the judge of that,” Montford said, his expression constipated as the ball of fluff in his arms steadily licked at his chin with its wet, pink tongue.

  Mr. Soames took it upon himself to elbow the butler out of the way and threw open the door.

  The smell of burning herbs, stale sweat, and something putrid assaulted Betsy’s nostrils even from where she stood in the corridor. The duke turned green and gave Astrid a frantic look. The marquess withdrew a delicately laced kerchief and held it to his nose. Betsy suspected he’d been waiting for just this sort of opportunity to display it, the peacock. The duchess rolled her eyes at both men and stalked into the room with her aunt.

  Betsy followed despite the foul miasma inside, determined to be there for the confrontation with her former fiancé. If he’d done something to her brother and Miss Jones, she’d know immediately from one glance at his smug face.

  But the slim hope of finding Evie and Miss Jones at the duke’s mercy soon dwindled to nil. Inside, all was dark and unbearably stuffy. The drapes were drawn, and a fire roared in the grate despite the warm weather. Upon the large four-poster bed, a lump stirred beneath lurid scarlet-colored bed linens. The smell grew even worse the closer they came to the bed, and she buried her nose in her sleeve, wishing she’d had one of the marquess’s fiddly handkerchiefs.

  Montford deposited Mademoiselle in his wife’s arms and stalked to the draperies. He threw them back, sending light flooding into the room. The lump moaned in agony and muttered curses, and seconds later, a head as bald as Aunt Anabel’s underneath her wig peeked out from underneath the bedclothes. Two angry, bloodshot eyes glared out from a face nearly unrecognizable as the one she’d last seen at that disastrous dinner party.

  Poxley had not been a particularly agreeable-looking man even then, his countenance, even beneath the heavy maquillage, ravaged by too many years and too many vices. Now, however, he was ravaged all over with pestilential boils. When he propped himself up and the bedclothes fell down, revealing the reddish bumps and boils continuing down over his torso, Betsy nearly cast up her accounts.

  No wonder he’d worn so much lead paint.

  Montford retched, and Betsy feared the weak-stomached duke might faint for the second time that day.

  “What the hell are you lot doing in here?” Oxley demanded blearily. His eyes landed on Betsy and widened. He tugged the sheets up to his chin, which she counted a small mercy for all of their eyeballs.

  “We’ve come for Marlowe and the governess,” the marquess said through his handkerchief. “I don’t suppose you have them tied up underneath your bed?”

  Oxley didn’t even try to dignify that with an answer.

  “You are supposed to be abroad,” Montford accused, breathing carefully through his mouth.

  Oxley scowled. “I decided to return home. The viscount’s threats mean little to me now. As you can see, there’s no hiding it any longer,” he said bitterly.

  “What is wrong with you?” the duchess demanded, not bothering to hide her disgust.

  “He’s dipped his tallywacker in a contaminated well, I’d say,” Aunt Anabel observed. “Hoisted upon your own petard after all these years, eh, Poxley?”

  Poxley looked at Aunt Anabel askance. “Is that . . . are you . . . Anabel Honeywell? You’re still alive? Why are you here?”

  “I am the Duchesse de St. Aignan to you, boy. And never mind why I’m here. Where is the viscount?”

  “Tallywacker?” Betsy asked, because, really, someone had to.

  Dr. Lucas blushed next to her.

  Aunt Anabel waved her cane in the general direction of the duke’s nether regions. “His tackle, gel. He has the French Disease. Had it some time by the look of it. Would have given it to you too, had your brother not sent him packing.”

  Now she was the one to turn green.

  Despite her parents’ best efforts to censor her education in such matters, Betsy knew precisely what the French Disease was. She felt something break inside her, for despite everything her father had put her through, she had never really been able to believe he didn’t love her somewhere deep inside his rusted heart.

  But this—this was irrefutable proof otherwise. He didn’t love her. He
didn’t even loathe her as he did Evelyn, and this absence of emotion seemed even crueler somehow. Barming would have sold her to a man who would have killed her, whether it had been through violence or this slow, agonizing disease.

  “You were going to marry him?” Dr. Lucas exclaimed, sounding as appalled as she felt.

  “Not willingly,” she gritted out.

  “He’ll not be marrying another woman by the time I’m finished with him,” Montford growled out.

  Oxley looked unimpressed at the duke’s posturing. “Do your worst, Montford,” he said, scratching at a sore on his face. “I shall not be alive to care. And as for the viscount, I have no idea to what you are referring. Nor do I care. Now good day.”

  “We ain’t goin’ nowheres until ye give us proper answers. Ye may be all poxy, but that don’t mean ye can’t of solsticed an abduction,” Mr. Soames said cryptically.

  “I haven’t a bloody idea what you just said,” Oxley said with withering contempt.

  “Nor I,” the marquess murmured.

  Montford sighed. “You could have paid someone to abduct the viscount,” he clarified.

  Oxley snorted. “If I paid anyone to do anything, it would be to kill the viscount outright. Besides, how would I fund such a scheme? Between the Continent and this one”—he stabbed a poxy finger at Soames—“extorting me, where would I find the blunt for it?”

  “I ain’t extortioned you,” Mr. Soames lied with a haughty sniff.

  “No, you just send around your bullyboy. Only this morning, that ruffian who claims to be your cousin came lurking around demanding money. I had my staff run him off, but not before he stole my coach and two of my best horses.”

  Mr. Soames went a bit shifty eyed at this.

  “This wouldn’t be the infamous Jem, would it?” the marquess drawled. “I’ve been meaning to ask after him, Soames, but it sounds as if he’s just the same as ever.”

  “Do you think your cousin is involved in this, Soames?” the duke demanded.

  Soames looked very reluctant to open his mouth, but one look at Aunt Anabel’s cane had him rethinking his reticence. “We may or may not ’ave lost the gen’rous donation ’Is ’Ighness ’ere bestowed upon us. On the ’orses. It were only in a contempt to raise more blunt for our Jenny. It weren’t my fault our pick went lame on the second turn . . .”

  “Your point, Soames,” Montford interrupted.

  “My point is, Jem were sore over it an’ wanted to find another job. ’E said ’e had an opportunity presentated to him by some old geezer ’e met down Jacob’s Island way. Something about abductioning a nob. I says to him I wanted no part in it, as I am a legitimate businessman these days.”

  The marquess snorted his disbelief.

  “I’m a reformed soul,” Soames insisted, undaunted, eyeing Mademoiselle with no small amount of trepidation. “I learnt me lesson long ago.”

  Oxley just waved his hand around wearily. “There; you see I didn’t take Marlowe or the woman. Obviously this Jem fellow did so. If you find my equipage and horses, kindly return them. Now if you don’t mind, may I die in peace?”

  “If I find out you had any involvement in this, Oxley,” Montford growled, “I’ll have your head.”

  “Please do,” Oxley retorted, slumping back on his pillow. “Better than this slow end.”

  As they left the residence, Betsy almost felt sorry for the man . . . until she remembered what a loathsome pig he was. She’d leave the sainthood to Dr. Lucas, who’d arranged with Oxley’s butler to return the following day in a more doctorly capacity. He really was too noble for his own good. And she didn’t admire him in the least for it.

  Not in the least.

  Soon enough, they found themselves precisely where they’d started, on Oxley’s stoop with the footman slamming the door behind them.

  “Well, Poxley’s finally lived up to expectation,” Manwaring said dryly. Which was rather cold, considering the man’s sorry state, but not, Betsy thought, undeserved, all things considered.

  That, upstairs in that putrid bedchamber—that could have been her fate, if not for her brother. She shivered and wondered if she’d ever feel warm again.

  “As educational as that was,” the duchess said, handing off Mademoiselle to her aunt, “we are no closer to locating Marlowe and Miss Jones.”

  “I’ve an idea where they are, Yer Gracefulness,” Soames said grudgingly. “I ’ave . . . er, that is, Jem ’as a bolt-hole in the rookery, an’ I’d wager that’s where we’ll find ’em.”

  “You shouldn’t be wagering on anything, Soames,” Montford snapped, then sighed grimly. “Jacob’s Island? Must we really?”

  “I’m afraid we must,” Manwaring said, slapping his friend’s back.

  The duke turned to his wife. “I suppose there’s nothing I can say to stop you coming along, is there?”

  “Oh, there probably is,” the duchess said breezily, “but I doubt you’ll think of it soon enough.”

  Montford turned to Betsy, but she just arched her brow at him, and he didn’t even bother trying to change her mind.

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand, though,” the marquess said as they retreated to the carriages.

  “Just one?” Montford muttered.

  Manwaring ignored his friend. “If Poxley isn’t behind this, then who is?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  IN WHICH ANOTHER VILLAIN IS CONFRONTED

  MARLOWE THOUGHT IT bang out of order that someone had the audacity to rouse him from the first decent doze he’d had in days by screaming in his ear. He attempted to turn away from the noise and seek refuge under his pillow, but for some reason he couldn’t move his arms.

  The twins had taken after him so much in the mischief department that he thought it likely his present immobility was part of one of their more elaborate pranks (they still were rather cross with him for chasing off Minerva). And if that were the case, he was really going to have to put his foot down the next time the duchess tried to foist off her sisters onto his household. The Honeywells had given his girls entirely too many ideas when it came to troublemaking. The twins were no saints, but Bea and Laura would have never thought to tie someone up before those misanthropes corrupted them. Probably. Hopefully.

  In fact, he’d have words with Astrid that very day—just as soon as he woke up. Which would not be anytime soon, despite all of the shouting. And the dull throb in his skull—though he didn’t recall going on a bender. He was rather certain, in fact, that he’d resolved not to do so just the night before. But Minerva Jones did have the unfortunate effect of making him forgo his nobler resolutions to himself. Hence why he could very well have drowned himself in a bottle, despite his intentions otherwise. His heart was taking her repudiations rather poorly, after all.

  He’d never known a hangover to feel quite like this before, however—as if he’d been coshed over the head with a cricket bat and then trampled by a pack of wild dogs. And he’d certainly never experienced a hangover that kept bashing itself against his shins with all the concentrated fury of a woodpecker on the trail of a wily ant.

  He squinted his eyes open and found weak afternoon light pouring into the room from a window half-covered in faded newsprint. The dull throb in his skull immediately spread into the back of his eyeballs, and he groaned in misery.

  As he was fairly sure the windows of his bedchamber were paned in glass, he came to the swift conclusion that he was not there. In fact, judging from the stained and crumbling plaster walls, the half-rotted floorboards beneath his boots, and the much too familiar stench of the Thames nearby, he was not even in Mayfair anymore.

  He was also, much to his bewilderment, bound to a chair—though whoever had done so was obviously an idiot, since he’d not even bothered to tie up Marlowe’s legs. And his daughters could tie better knots than the ones binding his wrists behind him, for with just a few tugs he could already feel them start to give.

  It was a sad testament to his life thus far that he’d
regained consciousness in worse situations than this. When he was eight, the earl had pulled him from his slumber to mete out punishment for some imagined transgression—likely Evander’s doing—and he’d not been able to sit down for a week afterward. His first year at Harrow, the older boys had yanked him from his bed for a trip to the privies—an initiation he would have gladly forgone—and the stench in his hair had lingered for days.

  In Spain, he’d come around after a battle to find himself a prisoner in a French camp, and though he’d managed to escape a few days later, the intervening time had not been pleasant. He still lost sleep whenever his unconscious mind touched on those carefully suppressed memories, even after all these years.

  Then there had been that morning he’d woken up to find his wife had run off with his brother, leaving him with a careless note and month-old twins. That memory, worse in many ways than that of his brief imprisonment, was nothing, however, compared to coming out of his fever to discover his daughters had been taken from him by the earl.

  So waking up to miserable situations was rather old hat to him, though the present one was rather unique in his experience. He just hoped he lived through it unscathed. Or mostly unscathed, since he suspected a concussion rather than a hangover was to blame for his brainbox’s current incapacitation.

  He closed his eyes again to block out the light and concentrated on loosening the knots around his wrists.

  Suddenly, the kicking and shouting recommenced, sending a lancing pain through both temples and shins. He groaned and cracked his reluctant eyes open once more, turning his spinning head to the right just enough to spot his tormentor.

  He’d admit to a few idle daydreams over the past few miserable days, featuring Minerva Jones tied up and at his mercy (or, honestly, vice versa; he wasn’t picky), but this was not quite what he’d had in mind. His imagination had featured a lot less clothes and scowling on Minerva’s part . . . and perhaps a feather bed and a few declarations of forgiveness and undying love thrown in for good measure.