A Roguish Gentleman

by Mary Brendan

  ‘It was unique; fashioned to reflect the eight wonderful months we’d shared, so he said. A central octagonal diamond surrounded by amethysts.’ She choked a mournful little laugh, pressed fingertips to her eyelids. ‘I’ll own to being a fool. I had heard of his reputation as a pitiless philanderer…but when in love…we women do foolish things, isn’t that so?’

  Elizabeth was again rendered speechless. The most she could do was touch her ring finger again and again to satisfy herself that this woman hadn’t somehow craftily glimpsed the gem. But she knew quite well it lay in a drawer in her chamber. Jack’s presence had restricted her to the house for days. How could she describe it so accurately? Had Ross told her about it? Why would he? He’d said he’d finished with her a while ago. Who was lying? He? She? Both of them? Suspicions whirled faster, making a vortex of pain scour the inside of her head.

  Cecily Booth had had a relationship with Ross; her own grandmother had let slip she was his vampish brunette mistress. She might well be carrying his child. He might well have promised to marry her before Edwina schemed to trap him…for her. The ring might have been made for someone with a slightly larger finger. Was it just a horrible coincidence that it bore a resemblance to her Thorneycroft parure? It was no strict match…

  Elizabeth stood silent and still, feeling as though her clothes and the skin from her body were slowly being stripped from her, leaving her raw and bloodied. ‘I’m sorry, I cannot help you with any of this,’ she announced stiltedly. ‘Speak to the Viscount direct about his responsibilities. Good evening.’ Rigid-backed, she swept to re-open the door on legs that shook so that, on gaining it, she put a hand to the wall to steady her.

  Cecily Booth slid a crafty glance at her successor’s chalky complexion, her large shimmery eyes…amethyst eyes. Despite the blonde’s dignity she was devastated. A wedge was driven between the Viscount and his love and she revelled in the knowledge. At the very least he would have some serious explaining to do. She hadn’t realised revenge could be so sweet. Appropriating the ring had always been an unlikely bonus. Joining Elizabeth at the door, she dredged up a wan smile. ‘It seems so unfair, does it not,’ she breathed with sisterly concern, ‘that men are able to treat us so appallingly and never be marked with scandal they supply. I have heard you experienced similar misfortune when younger, and that you show sympathy to poor wretches ruined by men’s lust. My only reason in coming here at all was to beg you understand why I must keep in discreet contact with your future husband.’

  Unable to respond to that, Elizabeth closed the door, leaned back against it for a moment before folding over at the waist, her wet face cupped in quaking hands.

  ‘Are you going to call or ogle that redhead all night?’

  Guy Markham looked away from the titian-haired temptress who was fluttering her fan and her eyelashes at him and paid attention to the cards in his hand. ‘Hearts…’ he announced to Baron Ramsden with a meaningful grin.

  ‘If you say so…’ Luke responded drily, with an oblique glance at the demi-rep. He examined his hand, shifted cards about into suits.

  ‘I thought Ross was back in town,’ Guy idly remarked, laying a Jack of diamonds.

  ‘He is…’ Luke confirmed, beating it with the Queen.

  ‘Where is he, then?’

  ‘Where d’you think?’

  Guy peered at Luke over a semi-circle of trumps. ‘It’s a love match, isn’t it?’

  Luke smiled and his dark eyes strayed sideways to where his own love stood chatting with Emma Du Quesne and Victoria Hardinge. He watched her graceful fluttering mannerisms, the way she laughed with just a hint of mischievousness, and savoured anew her ability to enchant him.

  Dickie Du Quesne and David Hardinge had returned to distribute drinks to the ladies. Rebecca turned with her glass at her lips. Meeting Luke’s eyes, she slipped away from the group and came over. A slender finger shaved her husband’s lean jaw on its way to lay a card for him. Guy immediately trumped it and chuckled.

  ‘Come, hurry up with this,’ Rebecca coaxed. ‘Signora Favetti is to perform in a few minutes. And I have spoken to Mrs Sampson,’ she added conversationally. ‘She says that poor Elizabeth is still indisposed and not due to attend. But she is certain tomorrow she will be so much better! I expect it is no more than a malaise brought on by the worry over the duel. Ross is a rogue to terrify her so! I must have been asked a score or more times if Viscount Stratton will attend tonight. How famous! Ross is all the rage. Do you think he will put in an appearance?’

  ‘No,’ her husband succinctly supplied, with a smile for his talkative wife. He turned his face so his lips discreetly brushed the delicate wrist bone close to his shoulder.

  ‘Baron Ramsden…an urgent message for you, my lord.’ One of Lady Conyngham’s bewigged footmen was proffering a silver salver.

  Luke frowned and took the note, breaking the seal. His thoughts were immediately with his mother at Burlington Parade. She had not accompanied them to this recital, preferring to spend all her time with the grandsons she infrequently saw. The message was from Demelza, simply to enclose another note that had been delivered that evening.

  Luke’s lips thinned to a tight white line as he read Elizabeth’s hastily penned anxieties over Ross’s safety at ten o’clock that night. He handed the note to his wife, simultaneously checking his watch.

  ‘Oh, no! You must go to him, Luke! Stop him! Do something…!’

  Sensing vital goings on, Sir Richard Du Quesne and Lord Courtenay joined them. Rebecca’s stricken countenance and Luke’s cards suddenly skimming the baize prompted the two friends to exchange a look then, abandoning proprieties, read the Baron’s letter. It was handed on to Guy.

  Rebecca rushed to quickly impart news of a threatening catastrophe to her friends.

  Emma was soon at Richard’s side. ‘You must go and help,’ she told her husband, her elfin face turned up appeallingly to his. She was terrified for Ross. It was too cruel he might be in mortal danger and never know wedded bliss with the woman he loved. She recalled all the drama and laughter they had shared. He had courageously saved her from the clutches of a sadistic suitor, he had protected her, charmed her…helped becalm the stormy passion between she and her darling Dickie in the advent to their marriage. He had ever been the man she secretly would like to have married…could she not have had the man she loved.

  Richard’s thoughts were treading a similar path to Emma’s as he dwelt on the gratitude, the unpayable dues he owed Ross Trelawney, friend, comrade-at-arms, business associate. His lips lingered at his wife’s fingertips, then, wordlessly, he was striding behind Luke who was already threading through the throng towards the exit.

  ‘Be careful…’ was the sum of Victoria’s encouragement to David. He smoothed her raven’s-wing hair, smiled as she turned her face into his palm. Then he, too, was gone.

  Guy was examining the cards strewn on the table with great interest. Gathering them all up, he laughed. ‘I would’ve won.’ The few guineas were scraped together and he pocketed them. An easy smile was flashed at the three anxious ladies watching him. ‘No rush,’ he said airily, reading their collective thoughts. ‘Unless there’s a dozen of these dockers, injured or not, Ross’ll see them off.’ He pushed out of his chair and sauntered away, detouring past the redhead. She smiled, triumphant, as he dipped his head to murmur something to her on his way to the door.

  At the first faint sound he crouched instinctively, hands going to cold metal in his pockets. He listened to the low guttural hum become distinct voices, heard the shuffle and pat of footsteps. He individualised them. At least six men, with all the stealth and finesse of a herd of elephants. He grimaced a smile. Sometimes enthusiastic amateurs were the worst to deal with. He had no desire for any carnage. His desire lately seemed to run solely in one direction, he mocked himself as he came fluidly upright then came out behind them. He watched their scruffy backs for a moment: it could be so easy. Like taking candy from a baby. If the runt had brought the candy
with him of course. He saw the small woman being pushed in front of a thug toting a torch. A line of yellow undulated on the oily swell parallel to the jetty.

  ‘Leach?’

  They sprang about in unison, clumsily…except one. One knew what he was about and was balancing on the balls of his feet, hand at his pocket, already shifting sideways out of weak light into shadow.

  Nathaniel Leach stepped forward, holding high a flare. He bowed mockingly but his eyes were up and vigilant, peering past Ross’s solid silhouette into a nebulous murk.

  ‘I came alone,’ Ross volunteered drily. ‘Is that the boy’s mother?’

  Leach beckoned and a henchman urged Jane forward for inspection. Oddly, the fact that Trelawney was unaccompanied yet undaunted by his burly accomplices unnerved him. Even with the Viscount’s reputation as a fearless fighter, one against six was poor odds. Leach could feel the flare’s cone sliding as his palm leaked sweat.

  ‘The money?’

  ‘The necklace?’ Ross mimicked sardonically.

  The glittering collar emerged, sinuously, from a pocket to swing tauntingly between thumb and forefinger. ‘Come and get it, m’lord.’

  Ross’s long fingers curled about the gun in his right pocket. It was a four-barrelled duck’s foot, and he knew, at this distance, he could incapacitate at least three of them with no problem…four if they moved closer together. There again, if they liked the idea of returning him the gem, releasing the boy’s mother, and getting nothing in return, they could all walk home. The hackles on the back of his neck stirred, causing him to smile wryly. Obviously it wasn’t going to be that easy. He crouched, bringing the duck’s foot out of one pocket and a dagger-fitted flintlock out of the other.

  ‘Don’t shoot…I’m on your side…’ Dickie drawled, emerging from between tarpaulin-shrouded pallets on his left.

  Ross was already lowering the weapons and pushing out a string of expletives through scraping teeth. He could identify this man quite easily in darkness. They’d fought side by side too often for him not to react to his stature and pale hair. ‘You infernal idiot! I could’ve given you a belly full of lead!’

  ‘Why…reflexes shot to pieces?’

  Ross curled a sarcastic lip at him. There was a troubling truth in that. Other familiar figures were now visible approaching along the wharf.

  Close to, Dickie could read the naked disbelief in Ross’s eyes. ‘Don’t blame me,’ he said. ‘I thought it was just Luke and me didn’t like sopranos…’

  Ross’s dark head tilted back. ‘This is embarrassing…’ he told the stars.

  Luke strode up with belligerent speed. ‘Embarrassing?’ he snarled. ‘You damned lunatic. You’ll only take one direct blow on that arm and the stitches will burst open. That would be bloody embarrassing! The way I feel, I might land you one myself.’

  ‘You could try…’ Ross bit out but with conciliation in the challenge. He could feel his brother’s anxiety radiating from him with blistering intensity; as it always had his life through when he did something Luke deemed needlessly reckless.

  Now he understood: commitment made you cautious. But it was a strength, not a weakness. From the age of twenty when their father died, Luke had been dogged with responsibility. Luke lived to live and provide. Ross had lived to die and provide himself with all manner of self-indulgence until that day…until now.

  Coming here alone with a fresh wound hampering him, knowing Leach intended cheating him, had been idiotically reckless. For quite some time now he’d been thinking with his heart, not his head, and it was a foreign and disorientating phenomenon. He didn’t want to go back and tell Elizabeth he’d killed or maimed men tonight. He just wanted to go back to her…whole…strong enough to be a good husband and father…in his brother’s image. But for his own sake he couldn’t return without taking those things she wanted: her necklace and her friend.

  ‘The notorious Ross Trelawney needs a few nob friends to help him,’ Leachie sneered, but he was frustratingly aware that his cronies were not looking quite so confidently aggressive now the odds had evened. ‘Togged out in fine duds, too,’ he mocked the gentlemen’s sartorial splendour.

  ‘That’s a point,’ Guy moaned, sotto voce. ‘These threads are new…first time aired.’

  ‘I reckon yer’ve a yella streak, Trelawney. Yer lucky I’m jus’ int’rested in the colour of yer money,’ Leach blustered, keen to get the cash in his hand, before incidentals like brawling or chicanery, robbed him of it.

  ‘I don’t buy back my own property.’

  ‘Yer said yer would,’ Leach bellowed in rage.

  ‘I said I’d negotiate. I’ll do so now. I get the necklace in one piece, you get to go home in one piece.’ Ross turned to fully face him, conscious of men fanning out behind him.

  Leach’s lips strained back over stained teeth. He could hear the disgruntled muttering of his pack. He’d promised them a tidy bit of blunt from this night’s work. In sheer exasperation he flung his shaggy head about. His savage gaze alighted on Jane, visibly quaking against a backdrop of rocking water. In fury and frustration he strode towards her and slammed the heel of a hand against her breastbone. ‘You an’ yer fancy friends!’ he snarled.

  With little respect for his excellent tailoring, Guy hit the Thames within a second of Jane disappearing, with a shriek, beneath the oil-filmed water.

  Ross advanced as Leach backed away; they paced in unison until Leach abruptly turned tail and fled. Ross sprinted after him along the jetty, idly tripping and kicking a henchman off-balance and into the river as he tried to block his path.

  David Hardinge grinned at Dickie, with one eye on the remaining rabble. They were shifting, goading each other with jeering comments on the fighting ability of the dandies. ‘I think they mean Corinthians.’ David allowed them the benefit of the doubt. ‘Shall we oblige them? It’s been a long time…’

  With Luke sighing resignedly behind them, Dickie and David took off their elegant jackets, discovered the best place on the pallets to lay them, then strolled forward.

  ‘Come away…you’ll go blind…’ David mocked as Guy gravitated towards a trio of ample-bosomed strumpets lounging against brickwork. The women immediately scuffled competitively as Guy’s eyes swept over them. The stoutest flung off her colleagues and began to hip-sway forward, undeterred by the fact that her prospective punter was sopping wet.

  Along with a good deal of the other residents of this Wapping tenement, the women had emerged from the building to see what the commotion was all about. The heap of groaning bodies slowly disentangling on the jetty drew few curious glances. Five society gentlemen of obvious wealth and prominence strolling off Cinnamon Wharf, and up the alley, all bloodied and dishevelled, was a far more unusual and intriguing sight.

  Dickie shrugged into his tidy coat that a moment ago had hung over his shoulder on a crooked finger. ‘Who trod in that heap of dung?’ he ribbed his closest friend. ‘We all avoided it. I’ll buy you a lorgnette…’

  At the reminder, David lifted his boot and grimaced distaste at the mucky sole as he hopped along. The foot found the ground again with a scrape of leather against cobble.

  Ross flexed his aching shoulder. His other arm drew the shivering, dripping woman close to his side to warm and calm her as they made for his carriage. In his pocket the weight of gold and precious stones was comforting. He felt content. His mind turned again to that blissful interlude earlier that evening in Elizabeth’s bedroom. He felt himself growing so warm that he carefully shifted away a little from Jane in case she started steaming, before again allowing himself to picture Elizabeth on his lap. A few more minutes and she would have said she loved him, he knew it. And he would have shown her just how much he loved and wanted her…in a time-honoured way that would have been the first of her many trips to heaven. He thought of her white silk wedding gown and smiled ruefully.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ten minutes ago, the chaos of getting Jane out of her wet things, and into a hot tub had
taken every scrap of Elizabeth’s time and attention. It was paramount that mother and son were settled out of sight before Edwina walked back through the door.

  Josie had excelled herself; dealing with drabs fished from the Thames might have been a mundane duty for a lady’s maid at Number Seven Connaught Street. Good naturedly the young maid had responded to Jane’s plea to know how Jack fared with, ‘Little lad’s never stopped eating, m’m. You’ll hardly recognise him, he’s plumping out so.’

  But now the hallway was quiet again; the brackish water that had seeped from Jane’s hem to pool on the marble was a sole reminder of the pandemonium. It pulled between them now, widening an unbridgeable gulf.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Ross repeated, cracking the tense quiet. ‘You’ve barely spoken to me or looked my way since I walked through the door. Has the vicar been back to warn you I’m a godless villain?’

  ‘I don’t need Hugh to tell me that!’ was snapped out before she could even think, let alone act, judiciously.

  Ross smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.

  She took a steadying breath, determined to act with dignity and prudence. ‘Are you injured?’ was the first example of it. Her eyes scanned his face and body. Apart from a mark close to an eye and his fine clothes appearing torn and muddy, he seemed undamaged. ‘I hoped Luke would intercept you. I feared you might be ambushed by a mob.’

  ‘I was. It’s cheering to know my safety worries you.’ His ironic tone heightened her colour, otherwise she seemed unmoved. ‘Had it not been for Luke and the others arriving at the eleventh hour, the outcome might have been very different. As it was, little blood was shed on either side. I owe my brother and my friends a great debt of thanks. And you, too, for sending them after me.’

  ‘And I owe you a great debt of thanks,’ she returned with acid equity. ‘You’ve reunited Jane and her son and reclaimed my necklace. But then you had a vested interest. The necklace is part of my dowry, and thus well worth retrieving, and I know you were keen to eject cuckoos from the nest.’