by Jo Goodman
"Yes." She blinked, recoiling from the blade that was thrust close to the tip of her nose. "Yes, I see it."
"Just so. You will have the goodness to remove your own weapon."
"I have none."
Her denial did not convince him. Lest he find a shiv between his ribs, or a bullet in his balls, West moved quickly, capturing her wrist and spinning her around so she was pressed against him. He frog-marched her into the alley and pushed her flush to the rain-slick wall of the southernmost residence. She turned her head sharply to one side so that her nose was not ground into the mortar and allowed her cheek to be imprinted by the brick. Other than an initial gasp, she did not make a sound. That was unexpected, for experienced thieves rarely came along quietly, preferring instead to protest their innocence at the top of their lungs, or better yet, make accusations of wrongdoing against the very person they were trying to rob.
"What do you want?" he asked.
For all that her response was nearly inaudible, it held the unmistakable tenor of a command. "I want you to remove your hands from my person."
"That is not what I meant." He continued his search without pause, drawing aside her cloak and running his hands impersonally along her narrow torso and under her breasts as he looked for a sheathed dagger or pistol. His large hands almost completed a circle about her waist, then spread apart as he covered her hips and the length of her thighs. He forced her legs apart and conducted an efficient search between them, all the while keeping his own knife at the small of her back.
When he was finished, he stood slowly and stepped away, returning his own weapon to the soft leather scabbard fitted inside his boot. "You can turn around." His tone was everything polite. "And you can tell me why you were following me."
She did not answer immediately, and West chose not to press, recognizing that a few moments' respite were in order for her to achieve composure. He took those moments to study her averted profile, a study that was impeded by the heavy woolen hood that covered her hair and fell low over her forehead. West reached out to push it back. She reacted as quick as an adder, striking his forearm with the flat of her hand to shove him away. She could not have moved him if he had not allowed it, at least not without a good deal more force than she applied, but he did allow it and slowly dropped his offending arm to his side.
"You will not touch me," she said, mustering quiet dignity, but also clearly mortified that she had struck him. "Not again." There was the slightest catch in her voice as she added, "Please."
It was being borne home slowly that he had made a grave error in judgment. This was no cutpurse who had followed in his wake. By the same token, the fact that she had suffered his touch as he searched her, offering no encouraging ribald commentary as he did so, made it very doubtful that she was a whore. West did not like to consider what possibilities remained. He had behaved less boorishly when he was Mr. Evan Marchman. Upon becoming the Duke of Westphal, it seemed he had taken leave of every sense of what was proper.
Just like his father.
The black, yawning mouth of hell might well be within his reach if he continued to apply himself in just this manner.
"Come," he said at last. "We will leave this place and I will find transportation for you. It seems to me that you should not be about this night." Or any night, the truth be told. He had glimpsed a fragile, fey look about her when she had offered up her soft plea to go unmolested. It was only in profile and blurred by shadow and fog, but the look of her appeared to be finely molded by a gentle hand. She had high, delicately defined cheekbones and a slender nose. The pale arch of her brow was a soft curve. It was not simply the lack of light that prevented him from determining the color of her eyes. She kept her lashes lowered so he had only a view of the thick, dark sweep of them.
West held out his elbow for her. He smiled a little grimly when she did not accept it, though it came as no surprise. They walked out of the alley together, he taking the lead, she just a half-step behind him, and came to a stop beneath a street lantern.
"I should like it," West said, "if you would state your business with me, but that is not a requirement for me to find you a hack. There is some business, I collect. You are not in the habit of stalking gentlemen." He paused the merest fraction and one dark copper brow lifted in a sardonic curve. "Or are you?"
She shook her head.
West wondered if she had lost the ability to speak, then he heard her teeth chattering and realized she was trembling with the cold and damp. He placed two fingers to his lips and whistled shrilly. The call brought an immediate response. From somewhere down the fog-bound street, a driver snapped his whip, and a horse clambered forward. West whistled a second time to guide the hack toward them. "Help will arrive shortly," he said. "Tell me where I might direct him to take you."
"Number twenty-four J-Jericho Mews."
West decided he could be forgiven for thinking he had not heard her correctly. He tilted his head toward her averted face and wished she would have done with the sodden shroud that made her more grim reaper than woman. "Pardon? I thought you said—"
"Number twenty-four Jericho Mews."
"Yes. That's what I thought I heard. There's nothing wrong with my ears, then. There's a bit of good news, isn't it?" He saw her head come up sharply as though she were arrested by his odd humor, but she did not swivel her face in his direction nor make a reply to his rhetorical question. "I feel I must point out," he said evenly, "that the address you mentioned is my own."
She nodded.
"That means I live there," he added helpfully.
"Yes, I understand that." A glimmer of a smile had attached itself to her lips.
"I see. You do realize you don't live there." West wondered if she were a bedlamite but then supposed it was of little consequence. No matter the outcome of this evening's encounter, it would make a diverting story in the retelling. After sitting with his friends at the club, he was more certain than ever that they were in need of a diversion. God, but they had been a glum lot. "Then you want me to take you to my home?"
"I have n-nowhere else to g-go."
West was not at all encouraged by that bit of intelligence. "Perhaps if you told me from where you've come? That would make a good start to getting you back there."
She did not reply. The hack had found them and was stopping. West hesitated, quickly identifying his options. He could leave her just where she stood and walk home himself, or he could take the hack and leave her to walk. He could put her in the hack and send her to perdition, but then what would there be to look forward to? It had been a considerably dull night until she had set her footsteps in his. He was of the firm opinion that leaving her would not change the outcome.
She knew where he lived and meant to go there. It would show a remarkable lack of manners if he forced her to make her way alone.
West opened the hack's door and gestured to her to climb inside. He gave the driver his address, then followed. The interior of the cab was dark and thwarted his attempt at a second study of her features. Even though he sat opposite her on the stiff leather bench, there was little he could discern. "You've yet to tell me anything of import," he said. "That will have to change, you know."
"I am M-Miss Ash-sh-b-by," she said around a bone-jarring shiver.
"Oh, I hope you are not," he told her, removing his coat. "That is a most unfortunate name. Far too many syllables to get the tongue around. It sounds foreign. Is it German?"
Her head came up sharply again, this time almost clipping his nose as West closed the space between them to unfasten her cloak. "You are quite m-mad," she said. "N-no one t-told m-me that."
He smiled, and even in the gloom of the carriage it was a bright enough beacon for her to see. "Then it is because you failed to ask the correct questions. I assure you, the lamentable condition of my upperworks is common knowledge. Now, Miss Ashby, remove your cloak and put this around you. You will find it considerably warmer."
West was pleased when she didn't
pause to consider the merits of his suggestion. It was a measure of how deeply cold she was. He watched closely as she finally removed the hood from her head and shrugged out of the cloak. He could make out a heavy fall of pale hair and the slim stem of her neck. He knew from his search of her person that the fabric of her gown was bombazine and that it was only a modicum less wet than her outerwear. He doubted she could be induced to remove it as well.
His caped greatcoat swallowed her whole and he tucked it around her when her shaking hands prevented her from managing the thing herself. "Put your feet under you," he told her. When she was slow to obey, he added, "Unless you want to stretch your legs in my direction and let me warm your toes." He chuckled when she drew her feet up abruptly, amused by the alacrity with which she complied. "It seems," he drawled, regarding her once again from the opposite bench, "that I have found the chink in your armor."
She made no reply, not entirely certain if he was teasing her.
"So, Miss Ashby," West said, removing his hat and placing it beside him. He stretched his long legs and crossed his arms, his posture conveying a certain negligence as well as curiosity. "You will tell me now from where you've come. We will arrive shortly at my home, and I can assure you that for very little coin our driver can be persuaded to circle the mews for hours without stopping."
"G-gillhollow," she said with effort. "Are you fa-familiar?"
He was. He wished he had not been. There was a tightening at the back of his neck and his discomfited senses prickled with awareness. "Near Norfolk Broads."
"Yes."
"And Ambermede."
She merely nodded this time.
"I see," he said darkly. It was little wonder, then, that she had addressed him as Your Grace. Having recently come from the environs of Ambermede she would have been privy to knowledge of the duke's death and all the considerable changes his passing brought. She had come to London remarkably quickly. His father would not be interred until tomorrow morning. As a statesman of considerable note and long service to the Crown, the duke was being accorded the honor of a Westminster Abbey burial. West was already determined to suffer the ceremony; he was not looking forward to it. "You were perhaps his mistress, then?"
Miss Ashby blinked widely.
West felt himself relax a modest amount. "You are of an age, I think."
"F-four-and-tw-twenty."
"Then mayhap a bit old for his tastes."
"You are un-k-kind," she said. "T-to b-both of us."
He merely grunted. There were other questions he meant to put to her, but even in his current state of mind he was able to recognize the unfairness of it. She was in danger of sinking her teeth into her tongue for all the chattering she was doing. The least he could do was warm her up before he continued his interrogation. If he were fortunate, she would simply spill the whole of her sordid tale, and he would not have to rouse himself to make further inquiry.
The hack slowed, and West looked out. There was a lantern lighted outside the entrance to his town house, but at every window there was darkness. The servants were all abed, he realized. Even his valet must have decided he meant to stay from home tonight, for Finch could usually be counted on to greet him, no matter the hour.
The residence was red brick, trimmed in white, and of a middling size for this section of the West End. It had not the imposing presence of his friends' homes, but then until two days ago he had not had their deep pockets. His money had come from shrewd investments and enterprise, and while his wealth could not match that of Northam, Southerton, or Eastlyn, he marked himself as comfortable and wanted for nothing materially. Now, he supposed, he would be expected to move to a larger home, more befitting of his title and fortune. The ton would be in anticipation of his entertaining. There would be callers and hangers-on. It was all too depressing for words.
"Have w-we n-not arrived?"
For a moment West had forgotten he was not alone. He glanced in her direction, taking her measure again, wondering what trouble he was bringing down on his head by inviting her inside. It really didn't matter, he decided, because he was determined to do it anyway. "We have," he said. "We have indeed."
He opened the door and alighted, then turned to her and extended his hand. It took her some time to extricate her limbs from under his greatcoat, and his patience was sorely tested. She accepted his help and made only a small sound of protest when he lifted her by the waist and set her on the ground.
West retrieved his hat and her mantle from inside the hack, then paid the driver and waved him off. He started up the walk and was halfway to the door when he realized she was not following him. Expecting to find her standing, forlorn and fogbound, at the street side, he was taken aback to discover she was stooped over like the veriest crone and rooting around in his hedgerow.
"There are several fireplaces inside where you can warm yourself," he said. "No need to burrow here."
Miss Ashby made no reply. She stayed exactly as she was for several moments before standing suddenly to reveal a large, carpeted valise clutched in her arms.
"Ah," West said, understanding. "You hid it there in anticipation of your return."
"You are very cl-clever."
He did not miss the faint sarcasm that edged her tone. "And you are very c-cold." Her mouth snapped shut, and West grinned. He turned and sprinted up the walk.
Once inside, he tossed his hat and her cloak on a table to the right of the door and lighted a candlestick before Miss Ashby stepped over the threshold. He relieved her of the valise, setting it down beside the table. It was not as heavy as it appeared when she dragged it from the hedgerow, and he decided she either had very few worldly goods or was not in expectation of remaining long in London. "This way." He saw her fingers move to the buttons of his greatcoat and he shook his head. "Do not remove it yet. Let us put you before the fire in my study first."
He led the way down the hall and pushed aside the pocket doors. Standing back, he ushered her inside. This was the one room besides his bedchamber where he knew he could depend upon a warm hearth. The fire that had been laid for him earlier was small now, but it only required a little kindling and one log to bring it to a proper blaze. Satisfied with his effort, he motioned Miss Ashby forward and lifted his greatcoat from her shoulders.
She was hugging herself beneath the heavy coat, and this posture did not change when she was relieved of it. She came to stand as close to the fire as she dared and let its considerable heat flood her. Where her gown was damp, steam actually rose from the fabric.
Watching her, West was struck by how slim she was. She was not small of stature, only slightly built. The top of her head came as high as his nose, he noted, making her rather tall for a woman. She was reed slender, with rather more bosom than one might expect, given the delicacy of her frame. It was not that the severity of her black bombazine gown emphasized the curve of her breasts, but that West already knew the fullness of their shape by virtue of his earlier search. He would not have been able to guess at the perfect roundness of her hips and buttocks if he had not had cause to feel them in the cup of his palms. The mourning gown she wore defied even a careful observer to suppose what form of woman might be under it. He, however, had already discovered the length of slim legs and the lithe turn of her calves and ankles. In truth, West could not bring himself to be fully repentant of his earlier actions. She had carried no blade or pistol, but it didn't mean that she couldn't have.
Her hair was drying quickly. She had finally been moved to unwind her arms and raise her hands to untangle it. West thought it was even paler than it had looked in the carriage. It absorbed some of the reds and golds of the firelight, but that was only because, like sunshine, it had so little color of its own. Children sometimes had hair that was as light and fine a corn silk texture as this, but he could not recall seeing such a cascade on a woman grown.
Four-and-twenty, she had told him. Standing before the fire, tugging on the damp curls of her unbound hair with fingers made clumsy b
y an awareness of his open regard, she looked no more than six-and-ten.
"Perhaps you are Tenley's mistress," he said of a sudden.
Her fingers stilled in her hair. "No," she said quite firmly, if only on a thread of sound. "I am not your brother's mistress."
"Half-brother."
"Yes, of course, your half-brother. I was not his half-mistress."
A wry smile lifted one corner of West's mouth and a dimple appeared. "You are feeling more the thing, I take it"
"Yes."
Her stuttering had stopped, and he was heartily glad of it. "Good. Will you take a brandy?" He went to the drinks cabinet and found the decanter he wanted. "You would prefer sherry?"
"I prefer brandy."
"Just so." He poured a small amount into two crystal snifters and handed one to her. He watched her cup her hands around the bowl of the glass to warm the brandy, then sip delicately. "Better?"
She nodded.
"You will want to turn round," he said.
She stared at him blankly.
"To pull the dampness from your backside."
"Oh."
Seeing her flush, West found it difficult to believe she had journeyed all the way from Gillhollow to London unmolested—if one did not refine upon what he had done to her in the alley. He lighted several lamps in his study while she turned her back to the flames. He could feel her eyes following him, though each time he turned she quickly averted her gaze and regarded the floor.
Had she expected someone with the same imposing presence of his father? he wondered. Until the cancer had finally weakened him in the last months of his life, West knew his father had enjoyed robust health and the vigor of many men half his age. The duke had been tall and broad of shoulder. He had carried himself with a certain correctness of posture, as if he were always aware of his consequence and would have it that others were aware of it also. His countenance was severe but not unhandsome. He had aged well, the lines creasing his face at the eyes and mouth only adding to the definition of his character.
West had taken great pains to see as little of his father as was possible. That had been the duke's wish as well. Neither of them had been unhappy with the arrangement, and no attempt had ever been made to alter it. Still, his father had loomed rather larger than life. It was not possible to be unaware of him, given his services to the Crown. He might have been prime minister had it not been for Liverpool's deft handling of the opposition during the war with Napoleon. The defeat in the parliament had rankled him, West knew, and he imagined his father had been plotting a new stratagem when the cancer struck and made this final ascent to power impossible. England mourned. West did not.
