by Jane Feather
After an instant's hesitation Juliana obeyed with a shrug. After everything else that had happened, being divested of her hoop before the gaze of curious passersby seemed little more than a minor inconvenience. She noticed, however, that Quentin discreetly averted his eyes when she raised her skirts, revealing the frothy if now grimy folds of her underpetticoat.
Tarquin deftly untied the tapes at her waist and freed the whalebone panniers. He tossed them from him into the side of the street and once again boosted Juliana into the phaeton, climbing up beside her.
She gathered the soft folds of her gown and petticoats about her and made herself as small as possible. Tarquin's thigh pressed hard against hers as he occupied the remaining space on the bench and gave his horses the office to start. Juliana touched Lilly's hand, as much for her own comfort as to offer it. Lilly gave her a wan smile, and they both looked at Rosamund, held tightly in Lord Quentin's arms. Her eyes were open, staring sightlessly up at the sky from her deathly pale countenance. She appeared to be in a state of shock, immobile and unaware of her surroundings.
Rosamund was not cut out for the hand life had dealt her, Juliana thought. Lilly could manage to live it without loss of self. Indeed, she often enjoyed it. Most of the girls on Russell Street could take pleasure in their lot. They found plenty to laugh about; they shared a close camaraderie. They were not in want, and there was always the possibility of a grand and secure future if luck looked in their direction. But there was also the possibility of a Bridewell. Of a Marshalsea. Of spreading their legs beneath the bulks at Covent Garden for half a loaf of bread. But they chose not to brood about the consequences of ill luck, and who could blame them?
Grimly, Juliana acknowledged that alone she couldn't work miracles. She glanced sideways at the duke's unyielding countenance. He would make a powerful advocate if he could be persuaded to wield his influence. But that was a forlorn hope.
Unless… Her bruised hand touched her belly. Soon she must tell Tarquin of the child she carried. Presumably he'd be delighted. Maybe he'd be so delighted that he'd be open to suggestion. Willing to exert himself in someone else's interests for once. But then again, maybe he'd simply become even more protective of her, even more anxious that she should not be sullied by contact with Covent Garden life. Maybe he'd just keep her even more closely confined, to protect his unborn child. She and that child were his investment, after all. And he was a man who looked after his investments.
Chapter 26
George Ridge stepped out of the sedan chair, wincing as the skin on his back creased with the movement. He glowered up at the cracked stone facade of Viscount Edgecombe's town house on Mount Street. The budding had a seedy, run-down air, the brass on the door unpolished, the windows dingy, the paintwork scuffed. Despite the early hour a small group of men, whom George immediately recognized from both dress and manner as bailiffs, were gathered lounging against the iron railings at the bottom of the steps leading to the front door. As George approached the steps, their air of weary waiting dissipated, and they straightened, eyes suddenly alert.
"Ye 'ave business with 'Is Lordship, sir?" one of them inquired, picking his teeth with a dirty fingernail.
"What's it to you?" George pushed past him, scowling.
"Jest that if Yer 'Onor's goin' to get that door open, y'are a sight cleverer than we are," the man said scornfully. " 'Oled up in there, tighter than a chicken's arse."
George ignored him and hammered on the knocker. There was no response. He stepped back, looking up at the unyielding facade, and glimpsed a face in an upstairs window, peering through the grime. He hammered again and this time, after a few minutes, heard the scraping of bolts. His companions heard it too and surged up the steps. The door opened a crack. A disembodied hand grabbed George's sleeve and dragged him through the aperture. The door crashed shut on a bailiff’s foot. There was a roar of outrage from outside, then violent banging on the knocker, setting a dusty porcelain figurine on a table shivering on its pedestal.
"Viscount's upstairs." The body belonging to the hand was skinny, the narrow face weasel-like, with a pair of very long incisors that jutted beyond the thin lips. The man jerked his head toward the stairs. "First door on the left." Then he slithered away into the shadows beyond the staircase.
George, his scowl deepening, stomped up the stairs, which were thick with dust. His eyes were red with drink and burned with a rage so fearsome it was almost inhuman. George Ridge was a goaded bull, only one thought and one aim in view. Vengeance on the man who had ordered him thrashed like a serf. A vengeance he would obtain through Juliana. The Duke of Redmayne had made it painfully clear that Juliana's health, reputation, and general well-being were vitally important to him. Juliana would burn at the stake in Winchester marketplace. And before she did, her stepson would possess her… would bring her arrogant contempt to the dust. He would see her humbled, he would see her protector powerless to protect. And with her conviction he would regain his own inheritance.
He pushed open the door at the left of the staircase. It creaked on unoiled hinges, revealing a sparsely furnished apartment, its air of neglect failing to mask its handsome proportions and the elaborate moldings on the ceiling.
Lucien was slumped in a sagging elbow chair by a grate filled with last winter's ashes. A cognac bottle was at his feet, another, empty, lying on the threadbare carpet. A glass dangled from his fingers.
He jerked upright as George entered. "Dick, you bastard, I told you I… oh." He surveyed his visitor with an air of sardonic inquiry. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"
"You're going to help me," George stated. He bent to pick up the cognac bottle, raised it to his lips, and drank deeply.
Lucien's eyes sharpened. Something very interesting had occurred. Sir George had lost his air of bumbling, overawed ineptitude.
"Help yourself, dear boy," Lucien invited, his languid tone belled by the arrested look in his eyes. "There's more where that came from. At least I trust there is."
"Thankee." George drank again, his throat working as the fiery liquid burned down his gullet to add fuel to the fire that raged in his belly.
"So how can I be of assistance?" Lucien took back the bottle and tilted it to his own mouth. "Damnation, it's empty! Ring the bell for Dick, dear fellow." He gestured to the frayed bell rope beside the door.
George pulled on it, half expecting it to come away in his hand, but faintly, from the bowels of the silent house, came the jangle of the bell.
"I am going to take Juliana," he said, pacing the room, each movement generating a painful stab, reminding him with hideous clarity of his humiliation at the hands of the duke's groom. "And this time I'll not be stopped."
"Oh?" Lucien sat up, the gleam of malevolent curiosity in his eye intensifying.
"I intend to abduct her tomorrow," George said, almost in a monotone, as if he were reciting a well-learned lesson. "I will have a closed carriage ready, and we'll take her immediately to Winchester. The Forsetts will be compelled to identify her if the magistrates demand it. And there are plenty of other folk in the neighborhood who'll recognize her. She won't have that devil to run to, and once she's locked up in Winchester jail, there'll be nothing he can do to save her."
Lucien tugged his right earlobe. "Something happen to rouse you, dear boy… Ah, Dick. Bring up another bottle of that gut-rotting brandy."
"Not sure there is any," the surly manservant muttered.
"Then go and buy some!"
"Wi' what, m'lord?" he demanded with a mock bow.
"Here." George dug a note from his pocket and handed it to him.
"Ah, good man!" Lucien approved. "Get going, then, you lazy varlet. I'm dry as a witch's tit."
Dick sniffed, pocketed the note, and disappeared.
"Impudent bugger," Lucien observed. "Only stays around because I haven't paid him in six months and he knows if he leaves before I'm dead, he won't see a penny. So," he continued with another sharp glance, "why the urgency about this abduction?
"
George was not about to reveal to his malicious partner what the duke had done to him. He shrugged, controlled a wince, and said, "I've an estate to get back to. I can't hang around here much longer. But I need your help."
Lucien nodded. "And what incentive are you offering, dear boy?"
George looked startled. He'd assumed that Lucien's own desire for vengeance would be sufficient incentive. "You'll have her in your hands," he said. "You can have her first… for as long as you like."
He was astounded at the look of repulsion that crossed the viscount's expression.
"I want to be rid of her, man. Not have her," Lucien pointed out disgustedly. "I thought you understood that. You lay charges against her. I can repudiate her. Tarquin is helpless and mortified. The girl is destroyed. But I ask again, what incentives are you offering for my assistance?" His eyes narrowed.
George's puzzlement deepened. "Isn't that enough?"
Lucien chortled merrily. "Good God, no, man. I'll have a thousand guineas off you. I think that would be a reasonable remuneration. Depending, of course, on what you have in mind." He leaned back, crossing his legs with a casual grin.
George struggled with himself for barely a moment. He could lay hands on a thousand guineas, although it went against the grain to throw it down before this loathsome, grinning reptile. But he needed the viscount's help.
"I need you to help me get her out of the house," he said. "We have to go in there and winkle her out."
"Good God!" Lucien stared at him, for the first time startled out of his indolent and cynical amusement. "And just how do you propose doing that?"
"At dead of night. We go into her room. We overpower her while she's sleeping and we carry her out of there." George spoke with the flat, assertive confidence of a committed man. "You'll know where her room is. And you'll know how to get undetected into the house."
"What makes you think I can perform such miracles?" Lucien inquired with a lifted eyebrow.
"I know you can," George responded stubbornly. "You lived in the house. You probably have a key."
Lucien resumed the gentle tugging of his earlobe. He did have a key to the side door, as it happened. He'd had one copied several years earlier when he'd still been a lad. Tarquin had been an exasperatingly strict and watchful guardian, and Lucien had had frequent resort to subterfuge to evade both the duke's rules and his guard.
"Perhaps I do," he conceded after a minute. "Getting in might not be too difficult, but getting out again, with that red-haired virago screeching and fighting, is a different matter."
"She won't make any noise," George asserted in the same tone.
"Oh?" Lucien inclined his head inquiringly.
"I'll make sure of it."
Lucien examined his expression for a minute, then slowly nodded. "I believe you will. I almost feel sorry for my lady wife. I wonder what could have happened to arouse such vicious urgency in your breast, dear fellow." He waited, but no explanation was forthcoming. Ridge's reticence increased his curiosity a hundredfold, but he was prepared to bide his time. "There's one other small difficulty," he continued in a musing tone. "My estimable cousin has the chamber next door to our quarry. I daresay he finds the proximity convenient."
"You know for a fact that Juliana is his mistress?" George's voice was thick. He knew it, but he wanted it confirmed.
"Why else would my cousin take such an interest in the wench?" Lucien shrugged. "I've never known him to take a woman under his roof before, either. I suspect he'll be most disconcerted to lose her." He grinned. "I think I can contrive to lure my cousin from the house tomorrow. It would be best if he was elsewhere while we're abducting his doxy… Ah, at last… Dick with the cup that cheers. We will drink a toast to this enterprise. Set it down there, man. No need to pour it. I've strength enough for that."
George took the smudged glass handed to him by his host. He drank, his eyes for the moment turned inward on his vengeance. He was a man in the grip of madness. The Duke of Redmayne had unleashed demons when he'd set out to subdue Sir George Ridge.
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The duke reined in his horses outside the house on Albermarle Street. Ted appeared as if by a wizard's conjuring, running down the steps lightly for such a big man. He'd heard the coachman's story, as had the rest of the household, and now glared at Juliana, as if personally insulted by her grim adventure.
"Take the horses, Ted." Tarquin sprang down, reaching up a hand to assist Juliana, then Lilly. He took Rosamund from Quentin so that his brother could alight unencumbered, then handed the still-limp figure back to Quentin and strode ahead of the party into the house.
"Catlett, summon the housekeeper and have these two young women escorted to a bedchamber. Send a maid to attend them. And ask Henny to come to Lady Edgecombe's apartment immediately."
"Oh, no!" Juliana exclaimed. "No… I have no need of Henny. She must look to Rosamund. Truly I can look after myself but Rosamund has need of expert care."
He took her hands, turning them palm up. "You can do nothing for yourself with your hands in this condition. If you won't have Henny, then / will attend to you."
"There's no need for you to trouble yourself, sir." Her voice was stiff. "I have no need of a nurse."
Impatience flared in his eyes. He drew a sharp breath and said. "You will have either Henny or myself to attend to you. Take your pick."
"You, then," she replied dully, seeing no option. Rosamund needed all Henny's skills.
"Very well." He nodded briefly, then turned back to Catlett. "I want a bath, hot water, salve, bandages, and lye soap taken up to Lady Edgecombe's apartment immediately… Quentin, you'll see the other two installed?"
"Of course."
"Come, Juliana." The duke took her wrist in a firm encircling grip and set foot on the stairs. Juliana followed him up willy-nilly.
Her bedchamber was filled with sunlight; the bowls of roses were replenished daily, and the air was heavy with their scent. The sight of the bed with its crisp, lavender-fragrant sheets, the downy invitation of the feather bed and plump pillows, drew her toward it as the nightmare images of Bridewell became smudged by the familiar comforts of home.
Home. This was home? It felt like home. Her own place. The duke's voice broke into her train of thought.
"Bed will have to wait, Juliana. There's no knowing what you might have picked up in that filthy hole. Vermin, infection…"
"Vermin?" Her hands flew to her tangled hair, her eyes widening in disgust. That was why he'd ordered lye.
"Stand still. I don't want to touch your clothes any more than I must, so I'm going to cut them off you." He went to the dresser for the pair of scissors Henny kept to make minor repairs or adjustments to Juliana's wardrobe.
Juliana stood rigid, shuddering with disgust. She remembered the woman Maggie touching her dress, tearing Rosamund's fichu, her gnarled, filthy, bleeding hands sullying as they clawed and fondled. A wave of nausea rose violent and abrupt in her throat. With an inarticulate mutter she pushed Tarquin aside as he approached with the scissors, and dived for the commode.
Tarquin put down the scissors and went over to her. His hand was warm on her neck, soothing as he rubbed her back. Distantly he realized that if anyone had told him a few weeks ago that he wouldn't think twice about ministering to a vomiting woman, he'd have laughed. But that was before Juliana had swept into his life.
"I beg your pardon," she gasped as the spasms ceased. "I don't know what came over me." She envied Rosamund Henny's calm, attentive presence. Vomiting in front of a man, even one's lover-especially one's lover-was a wretched mortification, and she cringed at the thought of what he must be thinking. But his hand on her back just then had been ineffably comforting.
"There's no need for pardon," Tarquin said gently, dampening a washcloth with water from the ewer. He wiped her mouth and brow, attentively matter-of-fact, and when she searched his face, she could see no inkling of his ear
lier rage. There was a rather puzzled frown in his eyes, but his mouth was relaxed. He tossed aside the cloth, picked up the scissors, and swiftly cut the laces of her bodice.
She was naked in a very few minutes, his hands moving with deft efficiency, cutting away her petticoats, her chemise, slicing through her garters. She rolled down her stockings herself, tossing them onto the heap of discarded clothing. Then she stood, awkward and uncertain, wishing for Henny, not knowing where to put her hands, wanting absurdly to cover herself with her hands, as if she'd never shared glorious intimacies with this man; as if he hadn't touched and probed every inch of her skin, every orifice of her body; as if his tongue hadn't tasted her essence; as if his hard, pursuing flesh hadn't taken and possessed her fragility; as if she hadn't, in yielding the ultimate secrets of her body, possessed his.
His gaze was not in the least desirous; in fact, he seemed to be going out of his way to be matter-of-fact about the whole business. But that made things all the more confusing. How she wanted Henny. A woman; a nursemaid. Someone whose attentions would be straightforward and uncomplicated, and she could receive them in the same way.
A bang at the door yanked her out of her reverie. She looked in panic at Tarquin, who merely handed her a wrapper and gestured toward the shadows of the bed curtains at the head of the bed. Juliana retreated, drawing the folds of the muslin wrapper tightly around her, listening as two footmen labored with a porcelain hip bath, copper jugs of steaming water; a maid followed with bandages, salve, the pungent lye soap, a heap of thick towels.
No one spoke. No one glanced toward Juliana's retreat. The duke remained perched on the windowsill, arms folded, watching the preparations. Then the entourage withdrew, the door was closed. Juliana stepped forward.
"I'll bandage your hands first." He poured hot water into the basin on the dresser.
"How can I wash myself with bandaged hands?" Juliana objected.
