Kitabı oku: «Regency Rogues and Rakes», sayfa 25

Chapter Five

The baths of London are numerous and commodious, and are fitted up with every attention to the convenience of visiters. The usual price for a cold bath is 1s., or a warm bath, 3s. 6d.; but if the visiter subscribe for a quarter of a year or a longer time, the expense is proportionably diminished. The sea-water baths are 3s. 6d. each time, or if warm, about 7s. 6d.

—Leigh’s New Picture of London, 1834

The street, unlike the commercial thorough-fares leading here, was nearly empty. Longmore crossed quickly—in time to see the two men come out from behind the curricle, a squirming Fenwick between them. The taller fellow was nearly as tall as Longmore, but wider. The smaller one was not much smaller, but thin and wiry. Both had scarred faces. Both needed shaving. Both were expensively but flashily dressed.

Brute One, the burlier one, had caught a fistful of the back of Fenwick’s ragged coat collar.

“I warned you not to make me chase you,” Brute One said. “Now you’ve gone and made me mad. You ain’t gettin’ off this time, you dirty, thievin’ brat.”

“I ain’t dirty!” Fenwick snapped. “You take your filthy mitts off of me!” He struggled, but Brute One must have caught hold of more than the collar alone. The boy could have wriggled out of his clothes otherwise. “I got friends, I have, and they’ll make you sorry!” He looked up and spotted Longmore. “There!” he said. “There’s one of ‘em!”

“What the devil is this?” Longmore said. “The boy was minding my horses.”

“With respect, sir, you been took advantage of. This little bastard here ain’t to be trusted no farther ‘n you can throw a house.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Longmore said. “Let him go.”

“Beggin’ pardon, sir, but I better not,” said Brute One. “There’ll be the devil to pay, then, won’t there?”

“We warned him again and again he wasn’t to hang about the premises,” said Brute Two. “Missus don’t want him. Brings down the tone of the neighborhood. How many times we warned him off?”

“Well, I couldn’t go, could I?” the boy said. “His worship’d have me hanged, he would, for deserting my post. He said so, didn’t you, yer majesty?”

“You’ll be hanged anyway, one of these days,” said Brute One.

“Let him go,” Longmore said.

“With respect, sir, don’t you be feelin’ sorry for this one,” said Brute Two. “He’s overdue for a trip to the workhouse, he is, and that’s if he’s lucky, ‘cuz this here’s penitentiary material, you ask me. Loiterin’ and malingerin’ when he’s been told—”

“I told him to stay,” Longmore said. “I’m growing tired of this conversation. Let the boy go and take yourselves off.”

Brute One looked at Brute Two. They both looked down at the boy, then across the street at the shop.

“I’ll tell you what, sir,” said Brute One. “Missus don’t like bein’ contradicted.”

“Funny,” Longmore said. “Neither do I.”

“Why don’t I escort the boy out of the square, where she can’t see the little bugger,” said Brute One. “Farley here’ll look after your horses, sir. And you can go on about your business—”

“You ain’t taking me nowhere! I won’t go!” Fenwick kicked his captor.

Brute One cuffed Fenwick’s head, knocking his grimy cap off.

Longmore launched himself at the bully.

A muffled shriek came from the showroom.

Sophy, whose ears had been straining to detect signs of trouble outside, pulled on her cloak and ran out of the dressing room.

Dowdy and Ecrivier ran after her. “But your ladyship, your bodice,” Dowdy said.

Sophy ran to the window, where the seamstress stood, her hand over her mouth.

Sophy was in time to see a burly fellow take a swing at Longmore, who dodged the blow, and hit back hard enough to make the brute stagger.

“I do apologize for Farley and Payton, your ladyship,” Dowdy said. “But it’s that horrid little boy again, making trouble. I’ll send the girl out to—”

Sophy waved her away and looked about for a weapon.

Longmore’s walking stick leaned against a chair nearby. She grabbed it and ran out.

She heard Dowdy call after her.

She raced across the street.

Having knocked down the bigger one, Longmore was starting for the other one. Then Fenwick decided to help, and flung himself at the smaller one, a mad little dervish, all flailing fists and kicking feet.

Ignoring his protests, Sophy dragged the boy out of the fray.

Longmore immediately picked up the thinner fellow and threw him into the fence. He bounded back, and started for Longmore. At the same time, the bigger one pulled himself up off the ground, gave a roar, and started running at Longmore.

Sophy thrust the walking stick in the ruffian’s way. He tripped and went down hard on the pavement.

Longmore grabbed the thin one and threw him into the fence again. This time the ruffian folded into a heap at the bottom of the fence.

“Time to go,” Longmore said.

Sophy climbed into the carriage. Fenwick hesitated.

The brutes were stumbling to their feet.

“You, too, Mad Dick,” Longmore said.

The boy leapt up onto the groom’s place.

Longmore quickly settled the agitated horses, and gave them office to start.

As they drove away, Sophy called out, “Tell your mistress to cancel my order. I don’t care for the people she employs.”

Bedford Square and its adjacent byways, well away from the hubbub of the major shopping streets, were practically deserted. It took Longmore only a moment to get out of the square and into Tottenham Court Road.

The area was quiet enough for him to hear his passengers breathing hard.

Even he was more winded than he ought to be.

But then, the fight had turned out less straightforward than usual.

“Good grief,” Sophy said. “I can’t leave you two alone for a minute.”

“I was bored,” Longmore said. “Didn’t you advise me to pick a fight if I got bored? I was beginning to enjoy myself, too, when you and Mad Dick had to get into it. How the devil am I to have a proper set-to, when I’ve got to look out for a pair of interferers, and make sure I don’t trip over them—or they don’t get killed accidentally?”

That had certainly added interest and excitement to what could have been a mundane mill.

“You can’t think I’d hang about the shop when you’d given me a perfect excuse to make a hasty exit,” she said. “And then another fine excuse to cancel the order for that ugly dress. Really, it couldn’t have worked out better if I’d planned it.”

“What’re you saying, Miss?” Fenwick piped up from the back. “We went to all this bother, and I nearly got drug to the workhouse—and you didn’t even want a bleedin’ dress?”

“She’s the tricky sort,” Longmore said. “You said so yourself, as I recall.”

The street being less chaotic than those they’d traveled previously, he was able to give her more than a cursory glance. She was completely disheveled, her ugly cap hanging crookedly from one side of her head, her stringy hair falling down in back and clinging stickily to her forehead and cheeks. And her bodice was hanging loose.

“Your clothes are falling off,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. She reached under the cloak to refasten her dress. After a moment’s struggle, she muttered under her breath. It sounded like street French.

More audibly she said, “That fool woman missed a hook. I don’t know what she’s done, but I can’t get the wretched thing undone. Fenwick, you’d better unhook it for me.”

“Not on your life,” the boy said. “There’s things I’ll do and things I won’t and getting tangled in females’ personal hooks and buttons and such is where I draw the line.”

“Don’t be so missish,” said Sophy. “You can’t expect Lord Longmore to stop the horses and do me up.”

“Better him than me,” Fenwick said. “I won’t touch them things with a pitchfork.”

“Coward,” Longmore said. The day simply kept getting better and better.

He turned into the nearest side street, and halted the carriage. He sent Fenwick down to hold the horses’ heads. Then he faced Sophy.

“Turn sideways,” he said. “I’m not an acrobat.”

She unfastened the cloak and shrugged it from her shoulders. It slid down to her waist. Then she turned and lifted her hair out of the way. She bent her head.

And he became aware of the air changing, humming with tension.

Her neck lay bare before him. Smooth, perfectly creamy skin, and a trace of golden down where the hairline tapered off.

He could almost taste her skin. His head bent, and all he could think of was licking the back of her neck the way a cat licked cream.

“You were brilliant in the shop, by the way,” she said.

“You told me to be myself,” he said, his voice thick. He could smell her skin, tinged with lavender and … pine?

He could barely focus on the hooks. He stared at her soft neck.

“I think it’s somewhere in the middle,” she said.

“What is?”

“The hook she fastened to the wrong bar. It’s a stitched bar, you see? Not a metal eye.”

He hauled his attention to the dress. The fabric was bunched up near the middle of her back. Above the place where the dress was crookedly fastened, a small gap had opened. He could see a bit of undergarment. Fine muslin. Embroidered. With tiny flowers.

He swallowed a groan.

“You got right into the spirit of the thing,” she said. “You were brilliant.”

He cleared his throat. “I was being myself.”

He told himself not to rush his fences.

He wasn’t easy to persuade. Resisting temptation had never made any sense to him. But there was nothing to be gained by giving in now, in a public byway. Even a dolt like the Earl of Longmore could understand that.

Do the job and be done with it, he told himself.

Certainly it was no onerous task. He was used to doing and undoing women’s clothing. He’d done it wearing gloves, more than once. He’d done it in the dark. He’d done it at speeds that might be records for the Northern Hemisphere, while the female hissed, “Hurry, for heaven’s sake—he’s coming!”

He set to work.

It should have taken seconds. But there was some sort of tangle, and he was fumbling, and getting nowhere. His fingers felt like sausages. No matter how he tried to get at the hook, he failed, and with each failure his temperature climbed another degree.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“These hooks,” he said. “They’re the very devil.”

“That fool must have bent them,” she said. “They ought to be easy to manage. We haven’t a retinue of servants, and one can’t always count on having a sister on hand. One needs to be able to dress without help, if necessary.”

“You must be deuced flexible,” he said.

Wrong thing to say.

She went quiet and his mind started painting pictures. Just in case he wasn’t heated enough already.

He wasn’t used to behaving himself for long stretches. And she was … flexible … and his mind wouldn’t let go of the idea. And she smelled like a woman and lavender and greenery. And he could see a bit of her underthings.

His head was going to explode.

“Lord Longmore?” she said.

He gathered what was left of his wits. “The hook is either mangled or tangled,” he said. “I can’t see what the problem is.” Because he was going crosseyed, from the scent and the warmth of her body and the consciousness of his hands and how he needed to keep them at their job.

His pulse was racing, sending heat flooding downward.

Christ.

“She caught it in the seam stitching, probably,” she said. “She was in a fearful hurry. Couldn’t wait to be done with me. I’m surprised she didn’t leave it to the Frenchwoman. Ecrivier. You saw what that was all about, I don’t doubt.”

“I should have made the boy do this,” he said. “His hands are smaller.”

“Go ahead and pull, and don’t worry about breaking the thread,” she said. Her voice sounded shaky. “We can easily mend it. Or better yet, leave it. All you need to do is fasten enough to keep the bodice in place.”

“It’s only one confounded hook,” he said. “I’m not surrendering to a bit of metal—especially not with Mad Dick looking on, composing Cockney mockery.”

He squared his shoulders.

He peeled off his gloves.

This time, when he touched the back of her dress, she shivered.

His palms were sweating.

He bent closer, squinting. He found the bit of thread the hook was tangled with. He pulled it free.

He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

He heard her suck in air.

Well, then.

She’d noticed.

And not in the way of noticing a fly landing on her skin, or a dog thrusting his nose into her hand but in that special feminine noticing way.

The siege machinery had advanced.

At great sacrifice. But still.

He cheerfully did up the other hooks and buttons, pulled the cloak up over her shoulders, and turned away to pull on his gloves.

He’d fought a terrific battle with himself, with his very nature, and he’d emerged victorious.

He’d advanced.

“You can come back, you little coward,” he said to Fenwick. “She’s decent again.”

Lord Longmore drove back to St. James’s Street at death-defying speed.

As they plunged into knots of traffic, Sophy heard people scream and curse, but they got out of the way.

She only clung to the side of the carriage and wished he could go faster.

She could still feel his hands at her back and his warm breath on her neck. She could still hear his voice, so low and husky, at her ear.

Her willpower had oozed away.

She’d actually felt her brain melting, and her muscles going the same way, and she had very nearly leaned back into his hands and let him do whatever he wanted to her.

He hadn’t, apparently, wanted to do anything, luckily for her.

Luckily, too, she was done with him. He’d served his purpose, and she hadn’t done anything catastrophic, and now all she had to do was get home and pour herself a glass or four of brandy and tell her sisters what she’d learned.

When they reached the shop, she practically leapt from the curricle.

She turned to run into the shop when she remembered the boy. Good grief! How could she forget him?

She turned back. “Well, what are you waiting for? Come along, Fenwick.”

He eyed the shop warily, but he started to climb down.

“No, you don’t,” Longmore said.

The boy paused, looking from her to him.

“You’ll come along with me,” Longmore said. “I’ll see that you get fed and find a berth. There’s a fine pie shop over—”

“Absolutely not,” Sophy said. “I was the one who made the promise.”

“She did, yer highness,” Fenwick said.

“Would you trust her before you’d trust me?” Longmore said. “You know what that is?” He nodded toward Maison Noirot. “A dressmaker’s shop. All women.”

“Maybe I better stay with him, miss,” said Fenwick. “He’s bigger than you.”

“No, you won’t,” she said. “I found you first.” She strode toward the curricle. The boy drew back to the far corner of the seat.

“No offense, miss, but he saved me from being drug to the workhouse,” said Fenwick. “Not to mention he could squash me like a bug if he took it into his head.”

“I saved your life by pulling you out of that fight before one of them accidentally stepped on you,” Sophy said. “And if his lordship was meaning to squash you, he would have done it right after you tried to rob him. Now come along, and stop being ridiculous.”

She reached up to grab Fenwick’s arm. He shrank back.

“I don’t have time for this nonsense,” Longmore said. “Good day, Miss Noirot.”

Then she had to back away because he signaled the horses and they started eagerly.

He drove away. Hands clenched, she watched him go.

Longmore knew it wasn’t a good idea to leave her fuming on the pavement. It was a far worse idea, though, to let her harbor young felons. Who knew who the boy’s confederates were? Who knew how hardened in crime he was? Hardened or not, he could be intimidated by more calloused individuals, and unlock the shop’s back door to a gang of thieves and cutthroats.

After a moment, Fenwick spoke. “I thought her name was Gladys.”

“She has a hundred names, as suits her convenience,” Longmore said. “Don’t try to keep track of them. You’ll only hurt your head.”

He heard a high-pitched cry.

He looked in that direction. Sophy/Gladys was trotting alongside the vehicle. “You give that boy back!” she cried.

“Go home!” he shouted.

She let out an unearthly shriek. Then she swayed and sank into a heap on the pavement.

Instantly, people hurried to the spot.

Longmore stopped the carriage, threw the reins to Fenwick, and thrust through the rapidly gathering crowd. “Get out of the way, confound you! Are you trying to trample her?”

He scooped her up. She lay completely limp in his arms.

He told himself not to panic. Women always fainted. They were used to it. It hardly ever killed them.

Yet he knew she worked long hours, and she’d been in a fight only a short time ago—a fight that had left him winded. She’d thrown herself into the fray and she’d done splendidly, demonstrating unusually quick thinking, especially for a female.

His conscience smote him. As smitings go, it wasn’t much, his conscience being in poor fighting condition.

“Damn me, damn me, damn me,” he muttered.

He carried her down St. James’s Street, a small parade following, and turned into Bennet Street. At that point he looked over his shoulder at the gawkers. “Be off,” he said.

The parade melted away.

He carried her into the narrow court and kicked the private door.

One minute.

All Sophy had needed was one more minute, and she would have been able to get Fenwick away. As soon as she shrieked, people got interested. The onlookers would have taken her side because she’d play the helpless mother whose child had been torn from her. And she could make herself so piteous that the boy would have felt sorry for her and come, she knew.

But Longmore, curse him, hadn’t given her the minute, or even an instant to think. He’d scooped her up as easily as if she’d been a packet of ribbons.

And now she was crushed against his big, hard, warm torso, one muscled arm under her knees, the other bracing her back.

She opened her eyes. “You can put me down now.”

She felt him tense. Then a narrowed black gaze met hers. “How hard?” he said.

He didn’t let go of her.

“You’re not taking that boy,” she said. “I found him. You would have taken him to the police.”

“I should have done,” he said. “He’s no use minding horses, what with being wanted by the authorities. I’ll wager we’ll find handbills seeking his capture.”

His body was very warm and her muscles were softening and her body wanted to melt itself all over his big, hard one. “Put me down or I’ll scream,” she said.

“That’s playing dirty,” he said.

“That’s the way I play,” she said.

He let her down, but not hard and not quickly. He made a show of taking excessive care, easing his grip only a bit at a time, so that she slid down slowly against his body, traversing a large expanse of wool and linen and silk, all imbued with the dizzying scene of male, before her feet quite touched the ground.

She’d known he was dangerous. He had that reputation.

She’d assumed he was dangerous merely in the obvious way: big and wild and reckless.

This wasn’t merely. This was deadly.

“I recommend you save yourself a great deal of bother and stop fighting me,” she said. “I want that boy, and I will stop at nothing.”

She watched while he took this in and mulled it over, his dark gaze growing distant.

After a moment, he said, “Do you know, I don’t find that hard to believe.”

“We need a boy for the shop,” she said.

“You told me you don’t need them. You said so a moment before he crashed into our lives.”

“We don’t need bullies,” she said patiently. “But we do need a lad to run errands and carry messages and packages. He’s not too young or too old to train. He’s quick and clever and well-looking. With a bath—”

“And de-lousing—”

“And proper clothes and a little instruction, he’ll be perfect.”

Longmore grimaced with what she had no doubt was the pain of cogitation.

She waited, aware of sweat trickling between her breasts. If she hadn’t been a Noirot, she would have clenched her hands and gritted her teeth to keep herself from doing something fatally stupid.

Given that she was a Noirot, it was amazing that she could keep her mind on the boy at all.

But thanks to Cousin Emma, Sophy and her sisters were made of sterner stuff than many of their kind. She stood and waited, and wondered why the devil no one came to the door. She could use some sisterly reinforcement about now.

“Very well,” he said gruffly.

His voice had dropped a full octave, and the sound made her head thick.

“I’ll admit it’s not a completely lunatic idea,” he said. “But you’d better let me break it to him. I’ll feed him first and soften him up. Then I’ll bring him back.”

“This had better not be a trick,” she said.

He gave her an exasperated look.

“What?” she said.

“Trickery is your department, Miss Noirot,” he said. “Mine is knocking people about. But I’m flattered that you imagine I’m clever enough to trick you.”

He gave a short laugh and left.

“Tell my sisters I’m back,” Sophy said, moving quickly past Mary, the maidservant who’d finally opened the door.

She hurried up the stairs and on to her room. She needed to wash and change. She needed to wash in cold water.

She tore off the ugly cloak and the ugly dress and then had a struggle with the corset strings. The struggle reminded her of that endless, tormenting time while Longmore had been working on her dress hooks.

She didn’t need reminders.

She stomped to the chimneypiece and pulled the bell cord.

She moved away and filled a bowl with water. She peeled off the mole and scrubbed her face.

She hadn’t time to wash her hair. That was a time consuming project. But she needed to get out of these clothes. Where the devil was Mary?

The door flew open. It wasn’t Mary but Marcelline.

“My dear, are you all right?”

“No. Undo me, will you? I hate these clothes. They’re nothing but trouble. When I get them off, I want them to go straight into the fire.”

“Sophy.”

“I need to get out of this corset,” Sophy said. “I’ve three extra layers underneath and I think I’m going to suffocate.”

“Sophy.”

“I’ll talk when I get these blasted clothes off,” Sophy said.

Marcelline went quickly to work on the corset. A moment later, Sophy flung it to the floor.

“I take it that matters didn’t go well,” Marcelline said.

“Matters went beautifully,” Sophy said.

She told herself not to be a nitwit. Longmore didn’t matter. He was a means to an end. What mattered was the shop.

She started pulling off her clothes. While she removed layer after layer with Marcelline’s help, she told her sister how splendidly Longmore had been himself: the thickheaded, overbearing aristocrat. She explained how, thanks to him, she’d had a good look at the pattern as well as the silk Lady Warford had selected. She told Marcelline about Dowdy’s refurbishment and the French modiste.

“That’s not good,” Marcelline said.

“It isn’t what I’d hoped for, but it could be worse,” Sophy said. “Our furnishings are still superior to Dowdy’s. All we need to do is make them even more beautiful and exciting. Maison Noirot needs to look different. It needs to look ten steps ahead of Dowdy’s. People don’t notice subtle differences.”

That would take money they didn’t have. But Leonie would think of something. She had to. Sophy couldn’t think of everything.

“And the patterns?” Marcelline said. “Lady Warford’s dress?”

“We’d give it to the girls at the Milliners’ Society to pick apart and remake,” Sophy said. “Of course, Lady Warford won’t see its flaws.”

“How can she stand next to her daughter and not see the difference?”

“She’s the way Lady Clara was before we took her in hand,” Sophy said. “Her eye is untrained. And at the moment, I don’t see a way to train her. I’m thinking I need to give my attention to Lady Clara’s problem first. Right now, she’s all that stands between us and failure. If she continues to shop with us, we have a prayer. If she marries Adderley, she can’t shop with us.”

Marcelline paced for a few minutes.

“Leonie would say we need to set priorities,” Sophy said. “We’ve three problems, and rating them from simplest to hardest, I’d put Lady Warford as the hardest nut to crack, Lady Clara’s difficulty as next hardest, and Dowdy’s as the most manageable. Do you agree?”

Marcelline nodded, still pacing.

“We know what to do about Dowdy’s—at least for the moment,” Sophy said. “So I’m tackling Lady Clara next.”

Marcelline paused in her pacing. “It would help to know what’s going on in her head.”

Lady Clara had come by on Wednesday, to order another riding dress and two more hats, but Sophy had been busy with Lady Renfrew, one of their earliest and most loyal customers of rank.

“Can we bring her in for a fitting tomorrow?” Sophy said. “If I can get her to myself, I’ll get her to talk.”

“We can send a seamstress with a message,” Marcelline said. “But I hate to remind anybody at Warford House that she’s patronizing her mama’s enemies.”

“We can ask Lord Longmore to take the message,” Sophy said. “He’s supposed to come back in an hour or so.”

Marcelline’s eyebrows went up.

Sophy told her sister about Fenwick, and about Longmore’s attempt to make off with him.

“How sweet of him!” Marcelline said with a laugh “He’s trying to protect you from the dangerous criminal. If only he knew.”

Fenwick was a little innocent, compared to them. Not that they’d ever picked pockets. But there wasn’t a game or a trick of the streets they didn’t know. In Paris, they’d had to deal with every sort of knave and villain, from minor to major. For a time, during the cholera, Paris had been almost completely lawless. But they’d survived.

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Sophy said. “I was too furious with his highhandedness. So angry that for a moment I couldn’t even think what to do. But it was only for a moment. Then I made a scene, and fainted. Unfortunately, I had to faint on the pavement, which is vile.”

Marcelline smiled. “I can picture it. But couldn’t you have thought of a less disgusting measure?”

“Maybe, but I hadn’t time. I was afraid he’d get away. He drives like a drunken charioteer, headlong, and never mind what might be in the way.”

Marcelline kicked to one side the heap of ugly clothing on the floor. “I agree we’d better burn them. And I’ll send Mary to run you a proper bath.” She eyed Sophy’s stringy tresses. “We ought to wash that mess out of your hair.”

“That will have to wait until tonight,” Sophy said. “I’ve left you and Leonie on your own all day, and I have a customer expecting to see me this afternoon. I’ll pin it up tight and put on a pretty lace cap, and no one will notice.”