The Last Hellion

by Loretta Chase

  The lump in His Grace’s throat was merely dust, and it was dust that made his eyes smart and his voice hoarse. He wasn’t thinking of anyone else…such as a nine-year-old boy he’d been unable to save.

  Nor had he felt tempted in the slightest to talk of what he felt. He had nothing burdening his heart, and most certainly had no idiotish wish to unburden himself to her. He had no reason to fear he’d be tempted to do so simply because he’d learned, in reading her work, that she was not so cynical and stony-hearted, not so much the dragon on a rampage, when it came to children. This couldn’t possibly matter to him, because he was cynical and stony-hearted about everything.

  He was the last Mallory hellion, obnoxious, conceited, conscienceless, et cetera, et cetera. And because he was, he had only one use for her, and seeking a sympathetic ear wasn’t it. He did not confide in anyone because he’d nothing to confide, and if he had, he’d rather be staked under a broiling sun in the Sahara than confide in a female.

  He told himself this, in several different ways, during the journey home, and not once did it occur to the Duke of Ainswood that he might be protesting too much.

  “Trent made him do it, indeed,” Lydia muttered to herself as she strode down the hall to her study. “A regiment of infantry with bayonets at the ready couldn’t make that obstinate boor cross the street if he didn’t want to.”

  When she entered the small room, she tossed her bonnet onto the desk. Then she moved to the bookshelves and took out the latest edition of Debrett’s Peerage.

  She found the first clue quickly. Then she turned to her Annual Register collection, which covered the last quarter century. She drew out the 1827 edition and turned to the “Appendix to the Chronicle.” Under “Deaths, May,” she found the epitaph.

  “At his seat, Longlands, Bedfordshire,” she read, “aged nine, the right hon. Robert Edward Mallory, sixth duke of Ainswood.” It went on from there for four columns, an unusually long death notice for a child, even for one of the nobility. But there was a poignant story here, and the Register could be counted upon to focus on it, as it did on other of the year’s curiosities and dramas.

  I’ve been to enough funerals, Ainswood had said.

  So he had, Lydia found. Moving from one information source to the next, she counted more than a dozen funerals in the last decade alone, and these were only the near kin.

  If Ainswood was the callous pleasure seeker he was supposed to be, the relentless parade of deaths couldn’t have affected him.

  Yet would a callous pleasure seeker bestir himself for a lot of peasants in distress, and labor alongside laboring men, at no small physical risk to himself?

  She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it herself: Ainswood ceasing only when assured there were no more to rescue, coming away ragged and dirty and sweating. And stopping to press his purse into a grieving girl’s hands.

  Lydia’s eyes stung, and a tear plopped onto the page she’d been reading.

  “Don’t be a ninny,” she scolded herself.

  The scold produced no sensible result.

  A minute later, though, what sounded like an elephant’s thundering approach dispelled all symptoms of ninnyness. The thunder was Susan’s. She and Tamsin were back from their walk.

  Lydia hastily wiped her eyes and sat down.

  In the next moment, Susan was bounding into the room and trying to bound into Lydia’s lap, and responding to the firm, “Down!” by slobbering on her skirts instead.

  “It seems someone’s in a good temper,” Lydia said to Tamsin. “What happened? Did she find a plump, juicy toddler to snack on? She doesn’t smell much worse than usual, so she can’t have been rolling in excrement.”

  “She has been a dreadful hussy,” Tamsin said while she untied her bonnet. “We met up with Sir Bertram Trent in Soho Square, and she made a complete spectacle of herself. As soon as she spotted him, she shot off like a rocket—or cannonball, rather, for she knocked him flat on his back. Then she stood over him, licking his face, his coat, and sniffing—well, I will not say where. She was utterly deaf to my remonstrances. Fortunately, Sir Bertram bore it all good-naturedly. When he finally got her off and himself up, and I tried to apologize, he wouldn’t have it. ‘Only playful,’ says he, ‘and don’t know her own strength.’ And then Susan—”

  “Woof!” the mastiff cheerfully acknowledged her name.

  “She had to show off her tricks,” Tamsin went on. “She gave her paw. She teased him with a stick until he played tug-of-war with her. She played dead as well, and rolled on her back to get tickled and—oh, you can imagine.”

  Susan laid her big head in her mistress’s lap and regarded her soulfully.

  “Susan, you are a puzzle,” Lydia said, petting her. “The last time you saw him, you didn’t like him.”

  “Perhaps she sensed he’d been doing good deeds this afternoon.”

  Lydia looked up to meet the girl’s gaze. “Trent told you about it, did he? Did he happen to explain what he was doing in Soho Square instead of Ainswood House, recovering from his herculean labors?”

  “When he saw you, Charles Two came into his brain box, he told me. The king bothered him so, he got out of the hackney a few streets away and walked to the square to look at the statue.”

  In Soho Square’s sadly neglected patch of greenery stood a crumbling statue of Charles II.

  After their first encounter, Tamsin had reported Trent’s associating Lydia with the Restoration-era monarch. It made no sense to Lydia, but she didn’t expect it to. She was aware that Lord Dain’s brother-in-law was not noted for intellectual acumen.

  “Speaking of herculean labors,” Tamsin said, “I daresay you had a shock in Exeter Street. Do you think the Duke of Ainswood is reforming, or was this a momentary aberration?”

  Before Lydia could respond, Millie came to the doorway. “Mr. Purvis’s here, Miss. With a message for you. Urgent, he says.”

  At nine o’clock that night, Lydia entered a small, heavily draped room in the Covent Garden Piazza. The girl who let her in quickly vanished through the curtained doorway opposite. A moment later, the woman who’d summoned Lydia entered.

  She was nearly as tall as Lydia, but shaped on broader lines. A large turban crowned her head. The face below was thickly painted. Despite the paint and dim light, Lydia discerned clear signs of amusement.

  “An interesting choice of costume,” said Madame Ifrita.

  “It was the best I could do on short notice,” Lydia said.

  The older woman signaled Lydia to take a chair at the small table near the curtained doorway.

  Madame Ifrita was a fortune-teller, and one of Lydia’s more reliable informants. Normally the two women met at a discreet distance from London, because Madame would soon be out of business if her clients suspected that she shared any of their confidences with a journalist.

  Since a disguise was necessary, and there wasn’t time for transforming into a man, Lydia had gone with Tamsin to the secondhand shops in Greek Street. There they’d hastily assembled the alleged “gypsy” costume Lydia was wearing.

  The result, in Lydia’s opinion, was more tartlike than gypsylike. Though she wore half a dozen petticoats, in different colors, she hardly felt decently clothed. Since none of the previous owners had been Amazons like her, the hems stopped well above her ankles—as did those of virtually every streetwalker in London. But she hadn’t time for alterations.

  The same difficulties of fit applied to the bodices. The one finally decided upon was scarlet, and as tight as a tourniquet—which was just as well, for Lydia’s breasts would have tumbled out of the obscenely low neckline otherwise. Fortunately, the night was cool enough to require a shawl.

  Unwilling to risk a secondhand wig, which was bound to be infested with several forms of insect life, Lydia had used colored scarves to fashion a turban. With her hair tightly bound underneath and the ends of the scarves artfully draped, it not only concealed her betraying blond hair but helped camouflage her
features.

  She wasn’t worried about anyone noticing the color of her eyes, since she was going out after dark in the first place, and wasn’t going to let anyone get close enough to notice they were blue in the second.

  A generous application of paint, powder, and cheap jewelry completed the gaudy ensemble.

  “I’m supposed to be one of your gypsy relatives,” Lydia explained.

  Madame settled into the chair opposite. “Clever,” she said. “I knew you’d contrive something. I regret the hasty summons, but the information came only this afternoon, and you may have very little time to act upon it—if my crystal ball can be believed,” she added with a wink.

  Madame Ifrita’s powers of divination stunned the credulous. They didn’t stun Lydia, who knew the fortune-teller operated in much the same way she did, with regular assistance from a network of informants, some of them unwitting.

  Lydia was also aware the information was expensive. She produced five sovereigns and set them down in a row upon the table. She pushed one toward Ifrita.

  “The girl Coralie brought with her from Paris came to me today,” the fortune-teller said. “Annette wishes to return to France, but is afraid. With good reason, as you may know. One of Coralie’s runaways was pulled from the river ten days ago, her face cut to pieces, and the mark of the garrote on her throat. I told Annette about this and a few other things she thinks are secrets. Then I look in my magic crystal and tell her I see Coralie, and there is a curse upon her. Blood drips from her ears and droplets circle her throat, her wrist.”

  Lydia lifted her eyebrows.

  “You were not the only one who saw Madam Brees wearing rubies in Jerrimer’s,” Ifrita said. “The one who told me about them described them much as you had done.” She paused briefly. “I heard more than this: how the Duke of Ainswood appeared, and met up with a beautiful young man he knew, though no one else did. The duke saw through you, did he?”

  “It was his bloody damned cigar,” Lydia said. “That’s what gave me away, I’ll wager anything.”

  “And he gave himself away today, in Exeter Street,” the fortune-teller said.

  “Did he?”

  “Does it matter?”

  It did, but Lydia shook her head. “At the moment, it’s Coralie I want to know about.” She pushed another coin toward the older woman.

  “The bawd keeps the jewelry her minions steal,” Ifrita said. “She has a weakness for sparkling trinkets, like a magpie. While Annette feels this is very foolish, it is not the reason she means to run away. She says she has bad dreams about the murdered girl. Yet the little runaway wasn’t the first they’ve made an example of. I think Annette’s trouble is that she either saw or participated in the killing—”

  “And it distressed her delicate sensibilities,” Lydia put in with heavy irony. “Annette is hardly an innocent lamb, as we both know.”

  “That’s why I was in so great a hurry to talk to you. If she has nightmares, it is most likely her own pretty face she sees cut up, and the wire or rope circling her own pretty throat. Perhaps she saw what she was not meant to see. Perhaps there is another reason. Whatever the cause for her alarm, it is genuine. I have no doubt she will make a run for it. What matters is, she isn’t fool enough to do it as other girls do—on foot and penniless. She’ll steal as much as she can carry.”

  “So she can hire the fastest post chaise to take her to the coast.”

  Ifrita nodded. “Tonight she helps Coralie and the bully boys break in a new girl, so there is no opportunity to slip away. Tomorrow night she must service a special client. She might be able to run away afterward, depending on how long the customer requires her. The only time she can rob Coralie with any degree of safety is between nine o’clock at night, when the bawd goes out, and the early morning hours, well before the bawd’s return. Annette will need a good head start of them, and their pursuit will be more difficult if she travels under cover of darkness.”

  The fortune-teller paused. “I cannot say absolutely that she will take the jewelry. I told her the rubies were cursed. But if she can’t put her hands on enough money, she’ll probably overlook the curse.”

  “Then I’d better get to the jewelry before she does,” Lydia said, showing none of the uneasiness she felt. She would have to enlist Helena’s help on very short notice, and she doubted Helena would be enthusiastic.

  Lydia pushed another coin forward.

  Ifrita pushed it back, shaking her head. “There’s little left to tell you. Coralie at present lives at Number Fourteen, Francis Street, off the Tottenham Court Road. She usually leaves about nine o’clock with her two brutes. One servant, Mick, also a brute, remains to guard the house. Often, a girl stays as well, to entertain him or one of a select group of clients.”

  Helena definitely was not going to like this, Lydia thought. Too many people on the premises. But she was the only professional thief Lydia knew intimately, and there wasn’t time to locate someone else with the necessary expertise. This job was not one for an amateur. Lydia couldn’t risk bungling it. If she got killed, Tamsin, Bess, and Millie would be on their own—and likely on the streets in very short order.

  It had to be done right, and Helena was the one to see that it was. She only had to be talked into it, and that would want a lot of talking. Which meant Lydia had no time to waste.

  A few minutes later, she took her leave of Madame and hurried out.

  She slowed down when she emerged from the building. Though she had a hackney waiting only a few streets away, she did not allow herself to make a mad dash for it.

  While it was too early for the demimonde to be out in full force, the denizens of the night were beginning to gather. A hasty departure was too liable to invite pursuit by drunken bucks. Lydia forced herself to stroll casually through the piazza.

  She was stepping out from under the portico and turning away from the marketplace into James Street when a tall figure emerged from the shadows of the portico opposite and turned in the same direction.

  It wanted but one glance to ascertain his identity, and exactly two seconds to decide against traveling the same route.

  Pretending to recognize someone in the marketplace, Lydia redirected her steps thither.

  Chapter 7

  The Duke of Ainswood was about to give up searching Covent Garden for his prey. Even if the Grenville gorgon had come out alone, as Purvis claimed, that didn’t mean this was the one and only opportunity to snare her. There was no hurry, Vere reminded himself. He could bide his time, choose the perfect moment for the lesson he meant to teach her. It wasn’t as though he lacked ways to amuse himself in the interim.

  Seeing her today hadn’t made him impatient. It wasn’t as though he missed her pestering, provoking company. Or the sound of her haughty voice. Or the sight of her exasperatingly beautiful face. Or that body, that devil-designed, curvaceous, long-legged…

  The thought hung uncompleted and he stopped midstride, stunned, as a wench strolled out from the shadowy piazza, hips swaying, petticoats lapping her shapely calves. As she turned away from James Street and started into Covent Garden—apparently having spied someone who took her fancy—the night breeze lifted her rainbow-colored shawl, revealing a mouth-watering expanse of generously rounded bosom.

  For an instant, all Vere could do was stare, dumb-founded, and wonder if he’d got drunk without knowing it. But he hadn’t had time to get drunk this night, and his eyesight was in working order.

  Which meant that the wench sauntering through Covent Garden in the middle of the night was Lady Grendel, very much in the flesh.

  Instantly he was on the prowl, weaving in and out of the shifting clusters of men and women on the east side of the marketplace. He saw her slow, then pause, at the passageway next to Carpenter’s Coffee House. Then the turban disappeared from view.

  Believing she must have entered the passage, he was turning that way when he happened to glance to his left.

  Before a crippled flower girl who sat on a
rotting upended basket, the would-be gypsy crouched, holding the girl’s hand and studying the palm.

  Vere drew nearer. Intent on their conversation, the two women didn’t notice his approach.

  “My future’s all crooked, isn’t it?” he heard the flower girl say. “Like me. All twisted and crooked. I heard of a doctor in Scotland who might help me, but it’s very far, and the coach fare is ever so dear. And all the fancy doctors come dear, too, don’t they? Last night, a gentleman said he’d give me a guinea to go into a room in the piazza with him. I said no, but after, I kept thinking maybe I was foolish. He’ll come again tonight, he said. I wish he wouldn’t, because it’s easier to be good when no one promises you money to be wicked. And a guinea is so very much.”

  Vere did not want to think about the sort of cur who tried to seduce defenseless cripples. He hadn’t time for it, anyway. He had only a moment to devise his tactics.

  Then it flashed in his mind: an image of Mistress Melodrama impersonating him at the Blue Owl, pretending to be drunk.

  “Only a guinea?” he exclaimed, his voice slurred. “For such a beauty?” Two lovely, startled faces—one painted, one not—looked up at him.

  Swaying woozily, he advanced. “By gad, I’d give”—he pulled out his purse—“twenty, simply for the privilege of looking at you, little blossom. Here.” He bent and clumsily pushed the purse into the flower girl’s hands. “Now give me your posies. Poor things are embarrassed, don’t you know? Next to you, they look like weeds. No wonder no one’s buying ’em.”

  Miss Gypsy Queen Grenville rose, while the little flower girl remained huddled upon her rotting basket, the purse clutched to her belly, her wide-eyed gaze riveted upon him.

  “Best go home,” Vere told the girl, “before someone comes along to relieve you of your profits.”

  With the exaggerated care of the catastrophically intoxicated, he helped her up and onto her crutch. While Miss Half-Naked Painted Harlot Grenville assisted the bewildered girl in secreting the purse in her clothing, he added, “You go tomorrow to Mr. Hayward. He’s a very good doctor.” He gave the address, then fished a crumpled card from his waistcoat pocket. “Give this to him, and tell him I’ll answer for you.”