Along Came a Lady

by Christi Caldwell

  “Shh!” His color grew heightened, and he stole a frantic look about. “I’ve told you, it is essential my mother is not hurt, and your mere presence threatens her well-being. Your mere presence endangers that.”

  “No, my saying something, or your saying something does. I’ve no intention of outing myself as your father’s bastard.” How was she so calm? How when inside she was trembling? At having to defend herself . . . at the feeling of being somehow less, a shameful secret to be hidden away. “As I see it, you’ve sought me out this time.”

  “You pledged to leave my family alone.”

  “And I maintain still, that I’ve not forced myself in any way upon your family.” No, but you had thought that if your father saw the success you had, that he would accept you.

  Only to find . . . in this moment, facing down the half-brother so very ashamed of her, that she didn’t need their approval. She . . . had left that household, built a career and future, and found security all without the support or acknowledgment of the man who’d sired her. Rafe had helped her to see that, and it was that which gave her the courage to bring her shoulders back and cross over to Lord Blakeney. “I owe you no apologies. I’ve done nothing you can or should take fault with. As I see it, your seeking me out, interfering in my leisure, puts you in the wrong.”

  His jaw tensed. “Why are you here then?”

  “I owe you nothing, and certainly not answers to any questions you might put to me,” she said evenly, adrenaline pumping, her heart racing, and somehow all the more strengthened for it. “I have every right to be in London. I have work here.”

  He eyed her suspiciously. “What manner of work?”

  By the slight emphasis he placed on that word, she well knew what opinion he’d already reached. “Do you fear I intend to make a scandal of myself and drag you into public shame?” she taunted him with that ask.

  A vein at the corner of his eye bulged. “Yes, that is precisely my worry. I have a mother and a sister whose sensibilities and reputations I seek to protect above all else.”

  Hearing those words and witnessing the fear that marched across his features should not hurt her. And yet it did. She hated him. This man with his dark hair and hazel eyes, so very much like her own. As such, she shouldn’t care even now that his opinion of her was as low as . . . this.

  And she would be well within her right to drag out his panic, to torment him with the possibility of some hidden purpose to her being here. But . . . she could not. “It is respectable work,” she murmured. Why, why was it so very important that he know that? “Work among the peerage.” The color bled from his cheeks. She left him to his worry, a deliberate moment born of resentment. “Work that requires I be respectable, and as such, you needn’t worry about me revealing the truth of my birthright and upsetting your mother. I have even more reason to not reveal the truth about my . . . existence.” She’d thought she’d found peace with living a life in secret . . . only to find herself exhausted by it . . . and just then, she not only understood but admired and appreciated Rafe who’d never made any secret about his bastardy.

  Lord Blakeney moved a searching gaze over her face. “Do you want money?”

  “No!” the exclamation burst from her. “I don’t want his money. I don’t want yours. I told you that.” He’d offered her funds then. And he’d do so again. To make her go away? Because his father felt guilty? Obligation? Whatever it was, she didn’t care. And neither did she intend to take a pence from these people.

  “What have we here?” a booming voice called out, and as one, they looked to the approaching gentleman. Attired in puce trousers and a waterfall cravat of brown silk, with his hair arranged in the Brutus cut, he’d all the makings of a dandy.

  The earl cursed, and made to step in front of Edwina. “Nothing, Frimount. If we can—”

  The other man, undeterred by those attempts, stopped before them. “And here, you insisted you wished to see my father’s collection here for a potential purchase, and all the while . . .” The gentleman settled a leering gaze upon her mouth. Men always liked her mouth. “You had intentions of meeting this lovely number.”

  Revulsion scraped over her skin, and she made herself absolutely still, kept her features even under that repulsive scrutiny as all her previous encounters with lecherous pigs came rushing back. No matter how many improper looks or innuendos she’d had directed her way, they always grated. They always left a woman alternately wanting to slap the smug face of the gentleman and slink away in shame. With Rafe, however, it had never been that way. With him, she’d only felt . . . beautiful.

  “We were just remarking upon the . . .”

  Edwina stole a glance at the little placard before them. “Artemision Bronze,” she supplied for a still-tongue-twisted Lord Blakeney.

  Good, let him be equally miserable. Had he not sought her out, then neither of them would be in this discomfiting situation.

  And yet, his friend proved undeterred. “Oh, indeed.” He smirked. “I expect I might know what has attracted your interest.” He gestured less than subtly to the statue’s genitals.

  Her cheeks flamed hot. The part of her that wished to send him on to the devil was also cognizant of the fact that any scandal attached to her name would also be calamitous to her reputation working among the peerage. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said stiffly, and turned to go.

  Lord Blakeney’s friend slid into her path . . . ending her attempt at extricating herself. Her heart knocked against her chest.

  “That is enough, Frimount,” Lord Blakeney said sharply, that challenge of his friend, on her behalf, unexpected. Or mayhap it was just that he wanted to avoid further questions as to her identity. “It is we who should leave. The young woman is a stranger, and I would allow her to her examination.” He took the other man by the arm, and attempted to steer him away.

  His partner, however, proved tenacious.

  “A young woman, unattended, in the naughty section of a museum,” Lord Frimount shot back. High color splotched the man’s clean-shaven cheeks, as he shrugged off Blakeney’s hold. She shivered, inherently knowing the matter wasn’t at an end. It couldn’t be. Because wounded pride in a man was a dangerous thing. “Seems to me you duped me into coming to this miserable place, under false pretenses. Visit my father’s collection so you might make a purchase, you said. All the while, you’re interested in a different sort of fun.” In a shocking display of forwardness, he brushed a hand along her exposed right shoulder.

  Then, it came . . . more ominous growl than shout; it rumbled off the walls of the Gallery: “You there!”

  Oh, hell.

  Edwina’s heart sank for altogether different reasons. She looked on at the tall, dark, and avenging figure now striding towards her. She briefly closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see him now. Not like this. Not confused and weak and just trapped with her brother.

  And with that, Rafe’s appearance managed that which the earl’s had previously failed at: the cad released her.

  * * *

  • • •

  Rafe had left Cailin with her maid, and gone off in search of Edwina . . . to be sure she was well. Even as he’d known that reasoning was ridiculous in his own mind. Perils in a museum were likely few, and the real truth compelling him to seek her out being—the moment she’d gone off her own way—that he’d missed her.

  Only to find . . . he’d been wrong.

  She hadn’t been so very safe, after all.

  All Rafe’s energy, all his attention was tunneled on the man who’d dared touch her.

  Rage had clouded out reason within Rafe’s head, so that he knew only one thing in that moment: he was going to sever the arm of the man who’d grabbed Edwina.

  And he was going to do so viciously. Bloodily. And more so, happily.

  And then when he was done with the blighter, he was going to beat his lifeless body wi
th that bloody appendage.

  At Rafe’s approach, the shorter, stockier fellow who’d dared to put a hand upon Edwina’s shoulder sputtered, “Wh-what is the meaning of this?”

  Rafe didn’t break his momentum; he came forward and let his fist fly, felling the dandified fop with one blow. The young man cried out, and crumpled into a cowering heap.

  Edwina buried a gasp in her hands. “No!” she pleaded softly, as Rafe reached for the cowering, blubbering mess at their feet. “Please, do not.”

  “. . . I’m bleeeeeding,” the gent sobbed.

  Bypassing the fellow with his fractured nose, Rafe turned his attention on the other nob. “Has this one hurt you, as well?” he asked her, hungry to destroy his next target. “Has he offended you in any way?”

  Edwina and the gentleman exclaimed at the same time. “No!”

  She turned to the gentleman, standing over his friend. “Please, take him out of here.”

  And yet, it did not escape Rafe’s notice that there was a sense of familiarity with which she spoke to that particular gentleman. Jealousy, impotent, stark, and biting, coursed through his veins.

  Nodding quickly, the young man helped the still-sobbing scoundrel to his feet, and steadying him with an arm about his shoulder, led him off. All the while, the gent continued to steal uneasy looks over his shoulder at Rafe.

  So the cad wasn’t completely empty in the head.

  Rafe narrowed his eyes all the more on him. “You are certain he did not hurt you?” Say the word, so I can destroy him . . .

  Because Rafe wanted to. Desperately . . . and violently.

  “He . . .”

  At that tangible hesitation, he whipped his attention Edwina’s way.

  Tension continued to whip through Rafe, his muscles coiled tight, braced for the fight he so desperately craved with the pair slinking off like the cowards they were. And yet, this was not about how he felt and his need to have his bloodlust slaked. This was about . . . Edwina. He forced himself to reign in that volatile emotion, and looked at her. Truly looked at her.

  Edwina, who’d always been ready with a smile, now unsmiling, as he’d never seen her . . . and he wanted to bloody the bounders responsible for her upset, all over again.

  “Rafe.” She touched his arm, staying him, and then as if she recalled what she did and where they were, removed her hand. “You cannot simply go about reacting this way when someone offends me.”

  That is what she’d say? “Are you mad?” he whispered. “Do you truly believe I will stand by and allow you to be treated so?”

  Her lips softened, parting a fraction. “Rafe, I have a reputation to maintain, and your responding as you did, only jeopardizes it.”

  “You believe I am the one who placed you in jeopardy on this day?” He gnashed his teeth and railed in silence that she should care so about her reputation and less for her actual well-being.

  “Neither of them hurt me. It was . . . nothing.”

  “Nothing?” he snapped. “That one put his hand on you.” That skin Rafe had worshipped with his mouth, sullied by the unworthy hands of a pale, dough-faced fellow who wasn’t worthy of kissing her heels.

  “That is . . . just the way it is sometimes, Rafe,” she said simply, lifting her shoulders in a shrug.

  A shrug?

  As if it were entirely normal for a stranger to put their hands on her. Or commonplace for her to be accosted while . . . The air stuck in his chest, as the truth slammed into him like a ton of coal dropped upon him. She was . . . not shocked by that earlier treatment because she was . . . accustomed to it. It offered a deeper glimpse than anything she’d said prior about the manner of abuses she had put up with in her work.

  Still, he made himself say it anyway . . . ask it. Even as he didn’t want the answer. Not the real one, because he was a coward, and her confirmation would ravage him. “Has this happened to you before?”

  “I am fine,” she said with such an insistence, he almost believed her.

  He did not doubt it. She was stronger than any of the hardened coalfield workers he knew, and yet, neither had she answered his question. And that evasion did not escape his notice. “Has this happened to you before?” he repeated, quieter, forcing a gentleness that went against all the volatile emotion pounding in his chest.

  She nodded.

  He closed his eyes. This was why, when he’d made to inspect her injured ankle, she’d beat him over the head with her silly parasol, transformed into a makeshift cudgel.

  “I’m fine. Really,” she said with a slight emphasis there, meant to calm him. “I’m quite capable, you know. I do fend them off. Eventually.” She was attempting to reassure him? “I just have to be . . . careful about how I do it, you know . . . because . . . because . . .”

  “Because of your work,” he murmured. “And the need for maintaining your reputation.”

  She smiled. “Yes. That is it exactly.”

  Except, this smile she wore was strained with all the resentment—the deserved resentment she carried for a life where women were at the mercy of men, bounders, the lot of them. Rafe himself not excluded from their ranks.

  He wasn’t naïve. He knew the way of the world. And yet, neither had he allowed himself to think about Edwina out there in the world, on her own. Truly on her own. Perhaps then, if he had, it would have been harder to resent her for the determination with which she’d approached her job for the duke.

  And this time, when his fury spiked, it was not only with those two strangers, but with himself, as well. It was, however, easier and safer to have a target for his rage. Rafe seethed. “How many have there been?”

  “Too many to name. Even more whose names I don’t know,” she said. “It is how women are treated, and as such, we become adept at . . . navigating such situations.”

  His eye twitched. “I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all.”

  “No, you won’t,” she said quietly and composed in ways that he wasn’t . . . and felt he’d never again be. “There is a way to conduct yourself in society, and this isn’t it, Rafe,” she said quietly.

  By God . . . was she lecturing him? Doling out another lesson about propriety and properness in the wake of that offense committed against her?

  “That doesn’t make it acceptable,” he said between his teeth.

  “No,” she said. “But neither does it mean you should go about beating a man down.”

  “He deserved it.” And he’d beat the cad again, happily and harder.

  “Yes, however, you can’t be the one . . . going about thrashing people who offend you or do something you take exception with.”

  Rafe stared incredulously at her. That was how she’d liken what that fop had done? Taking her lightly by the arm, he steered her behind the enormous Greek statue, stealing them that privacy. “He put his hands on you,” he repeated.

  “I am aware of that,” she spoke with a calm that contradicted all the violent energy simmering inside him.

  A moment later, with her staring expectantly at him, it became apparent that she intended to say nothing more. “That is it?”

  “What would you have me say? I know what this world is. It isn’t the first time it has happened.” And it would not be her last. That unfinished thought hung there. Edwina angled her head back to meet his gaze; it was a warrioress’s stare that enthralled him. “I handled those situations myself and I’ll continue to do so . . .”

  She’d do so when he and Edwina parted ways. And he despised that with all he was. Both the idea of her leaving, which left him achingly and strangely bereft. That, coupled with the idea that she’d fought all those battles on her own, and it suddenly became a chore to get air into his lungs.

  “I don’t want you to be in a position where you have to defend yourself,” he said quietly. A wrong that she’d faced time and time again to the point it had bec
ome a common occurrence she expected, and had to learn how to deal with. “I wouldn’t want it for you, or my sister, or any woman.”

  “Then, how fortunate that as a duke’s son, with his influence behind you now, you are in a position to challenge how society allows women to be treated.”

  He stiffened. She’d steered him into that trap. “I see what you’ve done there.”

  Edwina smiled, the first real one he’d seen her wear since he’d come upon her and those two strangers. “Always be working.”

  Some of the tension went out of him, and he shook his head wryly. “You are . . . something, Edwina Dalrymple.”

  She winked. “I shall take that as a compliment from you, Mr. Audley.”

  And it was one. Because there wasn’t a suitable compliment to capture his appreciation and awe of her will and dedication to that which she believed to be of import—him and his joining Polite Society, being one of them. That admiration could only be what accounted for his next question: “I’m not saying I intend to stay, but what . . . manner of change could I bring?”

  “Well,” she explained, “there are charities and institutions dedicated to the betterment of causes that you feel matter. Anything you choose to put your weight and name behind allows you the power to exact change . . . and to give strength and support to those who might benefit.” People like his mother, who’d survived without the assistance of a husband.

  “Who was the other gent?” he asked quietly, diverting her back to that which he cared most about in that instant—her.

  * * *

  • • •

  It had been too much to hope that he’d have let the matter rest as to the identity of the two gentlemen.

  Not that with her suggestion she’d set out to deliberately distract him. She truly yearned for Rafe to see that there was no shame in claiming a rightful place among this world he was so determined to shun. To show him that with power and money came influence with which to make change.

  And that change included a better future not only for him and his siblings, but others to whom he extended his support.