The Last Hellion

by Loretta Chase

  That prospect was nearly as painful as the gallows.

  But painful or not, Francis Beaumont must bear it.

  He had enough money to hire a post chaise, and if he started immediately, he’d reach the coast long before anyone was aware he’d fled.

  He was making his way through the crowd, careful not to appear in the least hurried, when the constables approached, bearing Coralie on a makeshift litter.

  “I hope the bitch is dead!” a whore near him cried out.

  “She ain’t,” someone else yelled. “More’s the pity. The duchess only broke her jaw.”

  This news, confirmed by a constable, brought nearly universal disappointment.

  It dawned on Beaumont then that Grenville of the Argus had more friends than enemies in this quarter. Two prostitutes, half dead as they were, had tried to help her rescue Ainswood’s wards. He looked about him, saw hardened whores sobbing, cursing Coralie Brees.

  Even the street arabs were blubbering.

  It took him but a moment to discern this, and but another to make use of it. He knew how to exploit grief, how to poison minds, how to stir simpler hearts to bitterness and rage. And so he let a few careless remarks drop as he made his way through the crowd.

  In a matter of minutes, the crowd of sailors, whores, pimps, beggar boys, and other riverside scum turned into a murderous mob.

  Its roar drowned out the rattles, warnings, and threats to read the Riot Act.

  In minutes, the mob had overturned the cart that was to bear Coralie Brees to the Shadwell magistrate, knocked the constables out of the way, and attacked the prisoners.

  Moments later, Coralie Brees, battered beyond recognition, lay dead upon the cobblestones. Mick finished bleeding to death not long thereafter.

  By then the mob had melted away…and Francis Beaumont was already on his way home.

  Some hours later, Vere sat as he’d done so many times before—for Uncle, for Charlie, for Robin—holding a too-cold hand.

  His wife’s.

  “I’ll never forgive you, Grenville,” he said, his voice choked. “You were supposed to stay home and be the general. You were not supposed to go charging out on your own. I can’t trust you out of my sight for a minute. I vow, I must have died months ago and gone direct to hell—which is why I haven’t hanged myself, because it would be redundant.”

  “Lud, what a fuss you make.” Grenville treated him to one of her mocking half-smiles. “It’s the merest nick she gave me.”

  It had not been the “merest nick.” If not for layers of underwear, a sturdy corset, and Great Uncle Ste’s pocket watch, the Duchess of Ainswood would not be alive. The watch had deflected the blade, which had cut clumsily rather than fatally.

  The doctor, having treated the wound and bandaged up Her Grace, had left the room a moment ago with Lord Dain.

  “As soon as you get well,” Vere said, “I’m going to give you a good beating.”

  “You don’t hit women.”

  “I’ll make an exception in your case.” He glowered at the hand he held. “Your hand’s as cold as ice.”

  “That’s because you’re stopping the circulation.”

  He eased his death grip.

  “That’s better,” she murmured.

  “Sorry.” He started to let go.

  “No, don’t,” she said. “Your hand is so big and warm. I love your wicked hands, Ainswood.”

  “We’ll see how much you like them when I turn you over my knee and give you the spanking you deserve.”

  She smiled. “I was never so glad of anything as I was of your arrival tonight. Coralie fights as dirty as I do. And it was hard to concentrate, because I was worried about the girls. I wasn’t at all sure I’d be in any condition to help them once I was done with her. The rage. The madness. When they’re truly worked up, such people have superhuman strength. I knew it. I didn’t want to tangle with her. I knew what I’d be up against. But I had no choice. I couldn’t let her get away.”

  “I know.”

  “I did send a boy from the Bell and Bottle for help,” she went on. “But I couldn’t risk waiting for help to come. As it was—”

  “Lizzie and Em would have been dead if you’d waited,” he cut in. “She went in to kill them.” He told Lydia about the rat they’d caught and thrown at Coralie.

  “Still, their ploy only gained them a few minutes,” he went on. “Luckily for them you arrived during those minutes. You saved their lives, Grenville. You and your rag-tag army.” He bent and kissed her hand.

  “Don’t be absurd,” she said. “We should never have succeeded without reinforcements. Even if I’d managed to subdue Coralie—and I’ll tell you straight, it was no easy battle—I still would have had Mick to contend with. By the time I got to him, he might have done your wards considerable damage.”

  “I know. Tom hit him in the head with a rock. The brute didn’t even feel it. He presented no problem for Susan, though.” He frowned. “Gad, I didn’t do a damned thing. Let the dog take care of Mick. Looked on while you battled the bawd, as though it were a prize fight.”

  “What the devil else were you to do?” she demanded, edging up on the pillows. “No one with a grain of sense would interfere in such a situation. You did exactly as you ought. You can have no idea how much the sound of your voice cheered and encouraged me. I was growing very tired and discouraged—and a little anxious, I will admit. But your telling me to stop playing and finish her off was like a bracing gulp of strong liquor. At any rate, I couldn’t bear to lose while you watched. Too humiliating for words.” She coiled her fingers with his. “You cannot do everything, you know. Sometimes you must be content with giving moral support. I don’t need to be coddled and sheltered. I don’t need all my battles fought for me. I do need to be believed in.”

  “Believed in,” he repeated, shaking his head. “That’s all you need, is it?”

  “It’s a great deal to me,” she said. “Your believing in me, that is. Considering how you hold my sex in contempt, I must regard your respect for my intelligence and abilities as the most precious of commodities.”

  “The most precious?” He disentangled his hand, then stood and walked to the windows. He stared into the garden. Then he came back to the bed. He stood at the foot, his hand wrapped round the bedpost. “What about love, Grenville? Do you think, in time, you might be so graciously condescending as to endure my love? Or is love only for mere mortals? Perhaps the godlike Ballisters have no more need for it than the Olympian deities need a curricle to take them down to Delphi, or a vessel to take them to Troy.”

  She gazed at him for a long moment and sighed. “Ainswood, let me explain something to you,” she said. “If you wish to make a declaration of love to your wife, the accepted form is to say, simply, ‘I love you.’ The accepted form is not to dare and daunt and go about it in your usual belligerent way. This is supposed to be a tender moment, and you are spoiling it by making me want to throw a coal bucket at you.”

  He narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. “I love you,” he said grimly.

  She pressed her hand to her breast and closed her eyes. “I am overcome with—with something. I do believe I shall swoon.”

  He returned to the side of the bed, grabbed her hands, and trapped them firmly in his. “I love you, Grenville,” he said, more gently. “I started falling in love with you when you knocked me on my arse in Vinegar Yard. But I didn’t know, or want to know, until our wedding night. And then I couldn’t bear to tell you, because you weren’t in love with me. That was stupid. You might have been killed tonight, and I wouldn’t have had even the one small comfort: that I’d told you how dear you are to me.”

  “You’ve told me,” she said, “in hundreds of ways. I didn’t need the three magic words, though I’m glad to hear them.”

  “Glad,” he repeated. “Well, that’s better, I suppose. You’re glad to own my heart.” He released her hands. “Perhaps, when you’re feeling stronger, you might muster up more enthusiasm.
In any case, as soon as you’re quite well again, I’ll start working on capturing yours. Perhaps, in a decade or two, you might be sufficiently softened to return my feelings.”

  “I most certainly will not,” she said as he stepped back and started to undress.

  He paused, staring at her.

  “Why in blazes should I return them?” she said. “I mean to keep them. In my heart.” She pointed there. “Where I keep my own. Where it says, ‘I love you,’ comma, then all your names and titles.”

  He felt the smile tugging at his mouth, and the odd stab, at the heart she’d stolen from him.

  “You must be blind,” she went on, “not to have seen it written there long since.”

  The smile stretched into a roguish grin.

  “Well, let me get undressed, my dear,” he said. “Then I’ll come into bed and take a closer look.”

  Normally, a riot in London provoked an outpouring of indignation and the sort of panic expected upon receipt of news of a foreign invasion.

  The riot in Ratcliffe, which made all the morning papers, was scarcely noticed. This was because a more catastrophic event had occurred.

  Miranda, the heroine of The Rose of Thebes, had, as Bertie Trent predicted, sharpened a spoon on the stones of the dungeon. However, as Bertie was exceedingly shocked to discover on Thursday morning, when he finally got to reading yesterday’s Argus, Miranda had not dug a tunnel with it. Instead, she had plunged her makeshift weapon into Diablo and fled.

  In the closing paragraph of the chapter, the dashing villain of the story “gazed at the portal through which the girl had vanished until Death’s shadow darkened his vision. Yet even then, his eyes continued fixed upon the door, while he heard the precious fluid drip from his massive form onto the cold stones. In that sound, he heard his life seeping slowly away…lost, futile, wasted.”

  London was devastated.

  The fictional event made the front pages of several morning papers. Only the most sedate, like the Times, chose to disregard it, merely mentioning, in an obscure corner of the paper, “a disturbance outside the offices of the Argus,” late on Wednesday afternoon.

  The disturbance was caused by a large gathering of outraged readers. Some threatened to burn down the building. Others offered to tear the editor to pieces.

  Macgowan arrived at Ainswood House early Thursday afternoon to report that S. E. St. Bellair had been hanged in effigy in the Strand.

  Macgowan was in raptures.

  He pronounced the Duchess of Ainswood a genius.

  Ainswood had carried Lydia to the drawing room sofa, and she had a crowd with her. Consequently, Macgowan’s announcement was perfectly audible to Emily, Elizabeth, Jaynes, Bertie, and Tamsin—as well as the servants near the door. Oblivious to Lydia’s frown, the editor went on rhapsodizing, and consequently leaving no one in the slightest doubt who S. E. St. Bellair really was.

  Carried away by excitement, he was slow in realizing what he’d let slip. At the moment he did, he clapped his hand over his mouth. Above the hand, above the scarlet face, his alarmed gaze met Lydia’s.

  She waved a hand dismissively. “Never mind. The world knows the rest of my secrets. It might as well know this one.” She shook her head. “Hanged in effigy. By gad, people do take their romantic fables seriously. Well.” Her gaze swept the onlookers, whose expressions ranged from incredulity to consternation…to polite nothing whatsoever. “Sentimental swill it may be, but it’s popular swill, it seems, and it’s mine.”

  “Oh, but it’s so disappointing,” said Emily. “Diablo was my favorite.”

  “And mine,” said her sister.

  “And mine,” Bertie said.

  Tamsin held her tongue. She had faith in Lydia.

  Ainswood had been standing in a corner of the room by the window, observing his guests, his face one of the “nothing whatsoevers” but for the devils dancing in his eyes. “I thought the choice of weapon was a lovely touch, Grenville,” he said. “I can think of few more ignominious ends than being stabbed to death with a spoon.”

  She acknowledged this dubious compliment with a gracious nod.

  “More important,” her husband went on, “you’ve caused a sensation. When word leaks out of the author’s true identity, the ensuing clamor will drown out the present one. All those benighted souls ignorant of Miranda and her doings will be forced to make up for lost time.”

  He turned his attention to Macgowan. “If I were you, I’d begin bringing out bound volumes of several chapters apiece. One cheap edition for the masses, and one handsome leatherbound with gilt for the nobs. Capitalize on the excitement before it fades.”

  Lydia quickly masked her surprise. Ainswood was the last man one would expect to care about, let alone devise ways of exploiting, the commercial potential of her “scribbling.” But then, he loved an uproar, she reminded herself.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” she said. “Though not about bound volumes—which is a brilliant idea. Still, we don’t want the readers to lose interest in the rest of the story, now their favorite is en route to hell.”

  She considered briefly. Then, “You must put out a notice, tomorrow morning,” she told Macgowan. “You will announce a special edition of the Argus, to be available on Wednesday next, containing the four concluding chapters of The Rose of Thebes. If Purvis complains that he can’t do the illustrations in time, you must get someone else.”

  Macgowan already had the next two chapters. Lydia sent Tamsin for the final ones, which were locked up in the study desk.

  Very shortly thereafter, the editor departed with the precious chapters, even more excited than when he’d come. Doubtless this was because he’d discerned another leap in profits in the very near future.

  After he’d gone, Ainswood shooed the others from the room.

  He plumped the pillows behind Lydia and rearranged the lap robe. Then he drew up an ottoman and perched upon it. His elbow resting on his knee, his jaw resting on his knuckles, he gazed at her reproachfully.

  “You are evil,” he said.

  “That’s just as you deserve,” she said.

  “It’s a damned dirty trick,” he said.

  She shaped her expression into limpid innocence. “What is?”

  “I don’t know exactly what it is,” he said, “but I know you’ve played the world a trick, because I know you. No one sees the devil in you. I do.”

  “I reckon it takes one to know one.”

  He smiled then, the killer smile. Beyond the windows, the sun could make no headway through heavy grey clouds. Where she lay, though, golden sunshine penetrated every pore and cell, and its warmth stole into her brain and melted it to syrup.

  “That’s not going to work,” she told him, aware of the blissful, thoroughly stupid smile with which she helplessly answered his lethal one. “I’m not going to tell you the rest of the story. All you’re doing is making me amorous.”

  He let his rogue’s gaze travel slowly from the crown of her head to the toes curling under the lap robe.

  “If I could get you panting with lust, you’d tell me,” he said. “But that’s against doctor’s orders.”

  “He said only that I was to avoid exertion, and put no strain on the wound.” She shot him a sidelong glance. “Use your imagination.”

  He got up and started walking away.

  “It seems you don’t have any,” she said.

  “Think again,” he said, without turning. “I’m merely going to secure the doors.”

  As it was, Vere had barely enough time to restore his wife’s and his own clothing to rights after the intimate interlude. This was because the girls—who apparently had no sense of discretion—decided to start banging on the drawing room doors at the precise moment he was starting to interrogate his wife about Miranda.

  “Go away!” he commanded.

  “What are you doing? Is Cousin Lydia all right?”

  “Woof!” This from Susan.

  He heard the panic in their voices and
recalled that they’d been shut out of their brother’s room when he fell mortally ill.

  He went to the door, pulled away the chair he’d fixed under the handle, and opened it.

  He looked down into two pale, worried faces.

  “I was only beating my wife,” he said. “In a friendly way.”

  Two sea-green gazes shot to Lydia, who rested in a dignified semirecumbent posture upon the sofa. She smiled.

  “How can you—ow!” Emily cried, as Elizabeth elbowed her in the ribs.

  “He means you-know-what,” Elizabeth whispered.

  “Oh.”

  Susan sniffed him suspiciously. Then she went to the sofa to sniff her mistress. Then she grumbled something to herself and flopped down at the foot of the sofa.

  Emboldened, the girls advanced upon the duchess as well, and flopped down on the carpet next to Susan.

  “Sorry,” Elizabeth said. “It never occurred to me. Aunt Dorothea and Uncle John never locked themselves into the drawing room for that purpose.”

  “Or any other room,” Emily said. “At least not that I ever noticed.”

  “In the bedroom,” Elizabeth said. “They had to do it sometime. They’ve nine and three-quarters children.”

  “When you have nine and three-quarters,” Vere said, approaching them, “I reckon the bedchamber is the only place you can have a prayer of privacy—if you bolt the doors.”

  “You can do it wherever you want,” Elizabeth said magnanimously. “We shan’t interrupt again. We didn’t realize, that was all.”

  “Now we do,” said Emily, “we’ll keep away—and try to picture it,” she added with a giggle.

  “She is very young,” her sister said. “Just ignore her.”

  “We like Susan,” Emily told Lydia. The girl commenced scratching behind the mastiff’s ear. This was all the encouragement Susan needed to drop her big head into the girl’s lap, close her eyes, and subside into canine bliss.

  “When she’s not hunting villains, she’s very sweet,” said Elizabeth. “We’ve half a dozen mastiffs at Longlands.”

  “I missed them,” said Emily. “But we couldn’t bring even one to Blakesleigh, because they drool too much, Aunt Dorothea says, and dogs put their tongues in improper places. She prefers dogs that don’t slobber so much. They are more sanitary, she says.”