Proper Scoundrel

by Annette Blair

  With no other choice but to approach the bald brute, Garrett made a disjointed journey from table to table, holding to chairs, beams, the tables themselves, as he went.

  When he arrived, he dropped into the chair opposite Baldy. “Buy you a draught?” he asked with feigned affability.

  Baldy grunted.

  Garrett took that for assent and remained silent until the giant took another long pull on his ale and appeared less hostile.

  “I seem to have misplaced my cousin,” Garrett began. “A real troublemaker; always in the stew. Saw your injury and thought perhaps he’d struck again.”

  “He alone?” the brute inquired, threateningly.

  “Yes. Yes he was.”

  “Ain’t seen him.”

  “He could have been with a serving girl, of course; that’s a given.” Though Garrett doubted it.

  “Bloke who attacked me—from behind, mind you—has him a taste for prissy boys.”

  Garrett raised an incredulous brow. “A prissy—” Finally, the dim-witted dally-boy champion of the Dragon and Claw, canes in hand ambled up to halt Garrett’s response. He thanked her and handed her a five-pound note, tipped his hat to both her and Baldy, and threw down a handful of coins to pay for Baldy’s drinks. “Sorry to have troubled you.”

  Carefully distributing his weight between the canes and his legs, Garrett made reasonable progress across the floor and in the direction of one of its several private parlours. He might be rusty, but he could walk, by damn.

  A little man, bony and bent, palsied hands and shuffling feet, reached the first parlour at the same time he did. “Not there,” the old man mumbled as he plodded toward the next, Garrett right behind him.

  “Here neither,” the little man muttered turning to Garrett and scratching his head. “You seen a Missy not fittin’ here, Sur?”

  “A Missy? No. May I ask your name?” Garrett asked, his curiosity peaked. Perhaps they could search together. He wouldn’t mind company, however feeble, if truth be told. Between the two of them, they might make one able-bodied man.

  “Stodges,” the old man said as he tipped an invisible cap and bowed barely lower than his natural stoop. “Yur, serv’nt, Sur. Them wot makes the French frocks be wurr’d ’bout the Missy.”

  “Let’s talk in here,” Garrett said, indicating the second empty parlour, for his legs begged to stop for a bit.

  Stodges sat as well, as relieved as Garrett, judging by his sigh.

  “Tell me about this Miss you’re looking for,” Garrett said. “Does she have a name?”

  His shaking head spoke of disapproval. “’T’aint nat’ral ’ur wearin’ breeches and comin’ t’such a—”

  “Breeches?” Garrett sat forward, afraid to inquire further. “A woman wearing breeches, did you say?”

  “That’s so. Bold as brass.”

  “It can’t be Jade,” Garrett disallowed, more to himself than his companion.

  The old man tossed him a hopeful look. “Mebbe.”

  “Lady Jade Smithfield?”

  “That’s ’ur!” The codger lit up. “You know ’ur? You seen ’ur?”

  Garrett cursed, the single scurrilous word making the old man cackle, slap his knee, and throw him an expression of respect.

  Garrett scoffed. Jade. ’Twas not a prissy boy his brother favoured, but a woman in leather breeches. “Stodges,” Garrett said, “I could use some assistance. Will you help me?”

  “Help ya do wot?”

  “Find the Miss, of course.”

  The man’s poor arthritic knee got slapped again. “Blimey, guv’nr, I gotta find ’ur or I can’t g’ome, anyroot.” He shook his head. “Lead the way.”

  Garrett rose, decrying scandalous vixens and disappearing brothers. “My sorry legs would as soon we take turns leading the way, if you don’t mind, but I will go first.”

  To Garrett’s chagrin, he found Baldy’s table empty, but dally-girl was happy to tell him—for free, said she with a grin and a wink—that, “Himself keeps a room up one flight, at the back of the ’ouse.”

  On his way, Garrett realized he’d walked farther tonight than he had since regaining his legs, and now faced with a flight of backstairs, he worried they’d give out before he found Marc and Jade.

  In other circumstances, those two gone missing would make him smile, given the fact that they could barely keep their hands off each other. But Marc would never have abandoned him. And Jade was supposed to think they were in Tidemills. She must have turned the tables on his brother and become the follower for a change.

  A few minutes later, Stodges beside him, Garrett gratefully knocked on Baldy’s door, a portal with its corner clipped, wedged as it was beneath a set of stairs going up.

  When he opened it, Baldy grunted, his disposition as sour as his breath, and made to shut it fast, but a wedged cane happened to keep it from closing.

  Stodges cackled.

  Baldy growled and charged like a vexed bull.

  Garrett got in a jaw-cracking punch, as supremely satisfying as walking again, and Baldy fell back swearing.

  “My cousin and the boy; where are they?”

  Another growl, a lunge that backed Garrett against the wall, and Baldy got in a lip-splitter with an unexpectedly clean and powerful left hook.

  Garrett tasted blood and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. With the wall taking some weight off his legs, he was able to concentrate on the fight, rather than keeping upright, and got in two quick jabs, one realigning Baldy’s nose, the other, shutting his eye.

  His glass-jawed opponent fell back and wavered on his feet just out of range.

  “You come back here, you weak livered bully,” Garrett taunted.

  Stodges cackled and jumped behind the giant, pushing him forward for Garrett to hit again.

  Garrett crowed when knuckle met bone and flashed the old man a grin as Baldy wobbled and teetered.

  “This is the best fun I’ve had in a twelvemonth, without a woman,” Garrett said as his comrade set up another shot.

  Stodges appreciated his wit. Baldy was in no way amused.

  Three more times the old man placed his opponent before Garrett like trout on a platter; three more times Garrett feasted on the boon.

  Though Baldy’s blows missed their mark more often than not, however upright Garrett remained, the tenacious giant would not give up.

  Old Stodges laughed so hard, ’twas a wonder he dodged the single blow Baldy sent his way.

  Garrett was fairly certain it was the old man’s laughter that made their foe rear up like an avenging gargoyle, roaring and furious, to get in a hit to finish him.

  The last thing Garrett saw before he hit the floor was Stodges climbing out a window.

  Some battle being waged at least two floors above awakened Jade to her dark surroundings, firing both indignation and determination in her breast.

  She worked at her gag like a hound at a bone, pulling with her teeth to tear it, inch by slow inch, grateful the fabric was old and threadbare, resolved not to consider its origin.

  She perceived she was tied to someone else. With her wrists bound to her torso, and to the other someone’s wrists, she stretched her fingers as far as they would go. Encountering the front placket on a pair of breeches, she confirmed that her partner was male, the same way Onion Breath had discovered she was not.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Unable to discern a spearmint scent through the high reek of spirits, she was loathe to awaken a man she could not identify. Then again, liquor covered Marcus when that bottle broke over his head, though, a man smelling of spirits at an inn did not make for conclusive evidence.

  Along her length, her unconscious partner fit like Marcus, and they were of a height, also a good sign.

  The fact that he remained unmoving worried her. She wished she could speak to him, at least, or he to her, but like her, he sported a gag.

  When it occurred to Jade that she had no choice but to remove his gag the way she had done hers,
the dual use of the word “gag” came to her quite readily, and she tried desperately not to be ill.

  Ultimately, she controlled her stomach’s need to spasm and attacked the foul cloth.

  After several failed attempts to tear the fabric, Jade yanked so hard she managed to pull the gag down to hang about his neck.

  Despite all that, the poor man did not awaken.

  Jade exercised her sore jaw as she pondered the situation, hesitating to speak before she knew something more about her unwitting partner.

  The only way she could determine whether the face so near her own might belong to Marcus, or not, was to discern its shape. She would look for a dimple in his chin.

  Searching with the tip of her nose, she did find a very distinctive valley in the centre of her partner’s chin and perhaps a familiar, but elusive, scent to his skin as well. She would like to check the depth of the dimple, but could think of no real way to judge it, except with her tongue, which she did not care to do, until she was certain.

  This must be Marcus, common sense told her. Who else would she be tied to, but the man who attempted her rescue.

  Then again, why would a dastard like Onion Breath tie her to the one man in the world she’d want to be bound to? Jade sighed in frustration.

  She’d have to discern the shape of his lips as well. No one else had a mouth as perfect as Marcus.

  Again nudging his face with her nose, Jade found his lips well shaped, but perhaps not perfect, then certainty came in a flash, for the man kissing her, thanking God she was alive, was Marcus.

  Jade pulled away, loathe to do so, but a bit light-headed, a good deal grateful, and in need of air. “You were unconscious,” she said, fighting for breath. “Though you seem fine now. Are you?”

  “What about you?” he asked. “For a while ’twas the other way ’round.”

  “I do have the headache, which is not to be construed as the excuse you tell me genteel ladies offer in a certain circumstance.”

  Marcus chuckled, warming her and reassuring her of his well-being. “There’s blood by your ear. I was worried sick.”

  “Likely from the gash on my head. Onion Breath dropped me down the stairs before you came to my rescue. Nothing else hurts.”

  “Some rescue. Onion Breath?”

  Jade imagined Marcus’s raised brow. “I dubbed him that for obvious reasons.”

  “My head hurts some as well,” Marcus said. “Did he drop me down the stairs too?”

  “He hit you with a bottle.”

  “That explains it. He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Marcus asked. “I mean ... he didn’t try anything ... you know? After he knocked me out?”

  “I fought like a Bedlamite for a while, until it seemed the harder I fought, the more excited he became. I’m ashamed to admit that when I suspected he was ... you know, eager, I began to cry.” She couldn’t bear to tell him that the brute had cupped her breast, looked for boy parts, and finding none, he’d gone furious and wild. “Then I saw his fist coming. After that, I don’t remember a thing.”

  “God.” Marcus buried his face in her hair. “It’s a wonder he didn’t ... when I think what might have—”

  He kissed her face wherever he could reach and she revelled in his attention, until he pulled back and growled. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  Jade decided to forego defence for offense. “Me? Why are you here? You’re supposed to be in Tidemills. Or did you have Beecher tell me that to throw me off?”

  “Did you follow me, then?”

  “Of course not. You’re the one who’s bound and determined to follow me.”

  “Not this time.”

  “Marcus Fitzalan, tell me what you’re doing at the Dragon and Claw in Lewes when you’re supposed to be in Tidemills.”

  “It’s a s ... surprise.” Marcus felt the warmth of the lie climb his neck and for the first time since he woke, he praised the pall of darkness.

  “Hmm. What a coincidence,” Jade said. “The reason I’m here is a surprise as well.”

  “Lord, I’m glad you’re all right. But what will Emily think if you’re not in your bed? She’s still tormented by her mother’s desertion.”

  “Topped by your desertion.”

  Marcus groaned. “Don’t remind me. I never imagined as much when I went to London.”

  “She fell in love with you Papa Bear. She reminds you of it every time she follows you or goes looking for you.”

  “You’re right, and she’ll probably go looking for me tonight when she can’t find you.”

  “Lacey’s sleeping in my bed.”

  Marcus sighed gratefully. “Smart, but I’m glad you didn’t try that until now. I’d hate to have climbed into Lacey’s bed instead of yours.”

  Jade giggled, warming him, despite their situation.

  “Shall we try calling for help?” he suggested.

  She agreed and they yelled so loud, for so long, they were both hoarse, but alas, no one came. “It’s no use,” Marcus said. “Save your breath.”

  They quieted then, lost in thought.

  “Have we actually agreed to keep our reasons for being here to ourselves?” Jade asked, cutting the silence.

  Marcus pondered the ramifications of his explanation and shrugged. “I hate to admit it, but I think that’s best for now.”

  “For now,” she said. “In that case, I can think of a better use for our energy.

  “Really?” he asked, considering several worthy possibilities. “What do you suggest?”

  “I suggest we try to untie these ropes about us.”

  “Frankly, Jade, I expected something more original. And pleasurable.”

  “I’m certain you did. Here, allow your wrists to move with mine and let me see if I can untie you. I can still move my fingers.”

  Sighing with disappointment, though bowing, mentally, to her greater wisdom, Marcus did as Jade bid and let her make an attempt.

  “Ouch, ouch, ouch!”

  “Stop squirming,” Jade said. “I’m trying to get a grip on the rope.”

  “Our wrists are tied together here,” Marcus said. “You’re shoving my wrists against me and making me crack my own bullocks!”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “This isn’t working,” he said. “Frankly, I’m afraid to let you try again.”

  “You don’t usually have a problem with having me near your ... softer parts.”

  “It’s been a long time, but I do vaguely remember that. Why don’t we just cut the ropes, then I’ll let you near my parts as often as you—”

  “Aren’t you brilliant,” she said, her sarcasm not lost on him. “Got a knife handy?”

  “In my pocket.”

  “What?”

  “I always carry my Sportsman’s Friend in my pocket. Never know when you’ll need scissors, a corkscrew or a farrier’s blade for paring a hoof. The knife is quality steel. Garrett gave it to me last Christmas. It’s got a pearl shell handle.”

  “You carry it all the ... when was the last time you used the foolish thing?”

  “Two weeks ago, to cut orchids for you on the downs. Remember the day I took Emmy and Mucks for a walk and you found out about Abby?”

  “Just tell me where the bloody thing is. Honestly, I don’t know why you didn’t think of it sooner.”

  “Well, first you were unconscious, then I was unconscious, then we were kissing—”

  “Where is it, damn it!”

  “Don’t get testy. It’s in the lower pocket of my frockcoat, to the left of our bound wrists, and watch out for my—”

  “Bullocks. I know.”

  She had trouble reaching his pocket. Her hand didn’t stretch far enough, so she began to walk her fingers, pulling the fabric of his coat nearer and nearer, until—

  “Um, Jade. That’s not my knife.”

  “I figured as much. I didn’t expect the bloody knife would swell when I touched it ... on top of all the other handy things it does.”

  “It has b
een two weeks, you know. I’m more than a little—”

  “Lustful. Eager. I do know. I’m feeling rather randy, myself.” She sighed. “I’ll try to be more careful, but I can hardly help it if—”