A Christmas Gambol (8 page)

“Shall we get out and have a look around?” he asked as the carriage approached Neal Street.

“I fear that would not be wise,” Cicely said. “A cutpurse would have your money before we’d gone two steps.”

“I came prepared,” he said, lifting a stout cudgel from the floor.

She was surprised at the dandy’s willingness to involve himself in a brawl. “We might be outnumbered,” she said. “I just wanted to see the place. It’s worse than I imagined.” Certainly her heroine’s courage would be put to the test in this domestic hell.

“You need not fear, Cicely. I shall protect you,” he said and pulled the drawstring, against her repeated opposition.

“No, really. This is most unwise, Fairly.”

“It will provide excellent research for you, seeing how a gentleman handles these fellows,” he insisted.

“But how will
they
handle a lady?”

“Ha-ha. Come along,” he said, his patience wearing thin.

Cicely stuffed her reticule in the pocket of the carriage, picked up Fairly’s malacca cane and got out, looking all around her. Fairly spotted his hired henchmen and began strutting toward them. The men exchanged a quiet word and began advancing.

“Come, Fairly,” Cicely said, tugging at his elbow. “This is folly. I have seen how brave you are.”

“There are only two of them,” he said with an air of braggadocio as he quickened his pace, winking at his cohorts.

“But they’re huge!”

He had paid them a pound each, in advance. They were Lord Henry Milvern’s prize bruisers. Henry had assured him they would do as agreed. Fairly raised his cudgel menacingly and said, “Stand aside, lads.”

“Who gave you the street, mister?” one of them answered.

The bigger of the men raised his fists and feinted a blow at Fairly’s chin. Fairly dodged, lifted his cudgel, and lowered it lightly on the bruiser’s shoulder. The other bruiser grabbed Fairly’s left arm, yanked it behind his back, and said, “Hand over your rhino and we’ll not kill you.”

“Scoundrel!” Fairly said, tearing his arm free. “Desist, I say. Out of my way.”

He flailed his cudgel in the air, landing the second attacker a grazing blow on the elbow. The first made another attack. Fairly fought it off with ease. A scuffle ensued. Cicely raised the cane but the ruffians jerked about so quickly she couldn’t be sure of striking them without hurting Fairly.

After a short tussle, the larger man said, “All right. You can pass, but we’ll keep an eye out for you another time.”

Cicely was quite simply astonished that the two brutes caved in so quickly. “Let us go,” she said, pulling at Fairly’s coattails as he shouted brave abuse at the fleeing scoundrels.

“You have only to be firm with them,” he said, his chest swelling.

As they hurried back to their waiting carriage, John Groom shouted to Fairly. “Here, milord! There’s another pair of the rascals.” As he spoke, he scrambled down from his perch, raising his horsewhip.

The second pair came as a dreadful surprise to Fairly. They had not been arranged for in advance. His heart quaked to see they were every bit as big and strong as the bruisers, and with mean faces besides. Fairly had the slight advantage as one of them was entering the carriage. He grabbed him by his collar and swung him around. As the man turned, his right hand rose, bunched into a fist, with which he landed Fairly a facer. Fairly went sprawling in the dust, blood spouting from his nose. The man made a quick lunge at his pockets.

“Help, Hawkins!” Fairly called weakly to his groom.

The groom advanced, lashing his horsewhip. It was not until then Cicely noticed that the other man had gotten into the carriage and was emerging with her reticule and Meg’s bonnet in his left hand. She lifted the malacca cane and aimed it at the side of his head.

“Take that, villain!” she exclaimed, snatching at her reticule. It fell open and the contents scattered in the dust, just as Hawkins snapped his whip over the second man’s shoulder.

“Well done, mistress!” Hawkins congratulated her.

The pair of attackers took to their heels, one of them still holding Cicely’s reticule and Meg’s bonnet. She had lost her reticule, but John Groom gathered up her belongings from the street as she tended to Fairly’s bloodied nose.

“I told you we shouldn’t get out of the carriage,” she scolded. “Does it hurt very much?”

Fairly held his handkerchief to his nose, with his head back, as Cicely and the groom herded him into his carriage.

“It’s a good thing the young lady kept her wits about her, or you would have lost your purse,” Hawkins said, shaking his head at Fairly’s stupidity in coming here.

“Drive home at once,” Cicely said.

“Bow Street is just around the corner,” he advised her.

“What is the point of notifying Bow Street? Fairly will only look a fool for having got out of the carriage. No doubt there are hundreds of ruffians matching the description of those who attacked us. Just get us home.”

“Aye, aye, mistress,” Hawkins replied and jumped up to his perch. With another crack of his whip, they were off.

“I am terribly sorry this happened, Fairly,” Cicely said. “It was really foolish of you to go on foot amid such men. But you were right about it being excellent for my research. I see now that these fellows work in pairs. One crew keeps you busy while another rifles your carriage. It’s shameful that men are sunk to this sort of life. You should do something about it in Parliament.”

This was not what Fairly had expected to hear, but he heard a deal more of the same as he was driven home with his aching nose ignominiously buried in his handkerchief.

“It is really not right that such poverty is allowed to exist cheek by jowl with such wealth,” Cicely continued as they proceeded along Piccadilly. “Men having to rob to feed their families, while people like you enjoy a second dinner at an expensive hotel. I shall mention it to Montaigne. He is active in the House.”

It was another blow to Fairly’s pride that Montaigne was seen as the gentleman to do something about the situation.

“I shall certainly have a word about this with my member of Parliament,” he said.

“You’re a member of the House of Lords. Why do you not raise the question in the House yourself?”

“I shall, by the living jingo. It’s intolerable. A man is not safe on the streets.”

As they drew nigh to Berkeley Square he said sheepishly, “There is no need to mention this to Meg.”

She gave him a long look. “As I shall have to borrow a reticule from her this evening, I fear I must mention it, to say nothing of her bonnet being lost. I shall be sure to tell her how you sent that first pair of bruisers running.”

“Bruisers?” he exclaimed. “Why do you call them bruisers? They were not bruisers.”

“I only meant great hulking brutes,” she replied, surprised at his outburst.

He accepted that she was unaware that they were hired bruisers.

It was not long, however, before she began to suspect the whole. Fairly’s blows had been mere taps, and those two big men had retreated with suspicious alacrity. He had arranged that first attack to make himself look brave. Was there no bottom to his vanity and stupidity?

More excellent research for her novel, but Fairly was no longer a plausible hero. He would have to be only a suitor for the heroine’s hand, and some other character found to carry the burden of love interest.

Chapter Seven

Cicely and Fairly reached home an hour before Meg. Cicely spent the time jotting down notes on her adventure while Fairly put himself in the hands of his valet to repair the ravages of his afternoon. They had just returned to the saloon to enjoy a restorative cup of tea when Meg landed in, fire blazing in her eyes.

“I should like to know why you took my new bonnet, Fairly,” she said. “What have you done with it, eh? Given it to a light-skirt? You shall buy me two bonnets, to make up for it. You don’t fool me with this excuse of showing Sissie the slums. You dumped her on your Aunt Sophronia while you went visiting one of your bits of muslin.”

“Oh indeed, Meg, we were at Seven Dials,” Cicely said, “and were attacked by two sets of villains. We would not have come out alive had it not been for Fairly’s quick thinking and bravery in attacking them. Can you not see how red his nose is? It’s been pouring blood all afternoon.” She laid it on with a trowel to make Meg admire her husband.

Meg was distracted by this tale of dangerous doings. “Attacked by villains! I wish I had gone with you. What happened?”

“Two of them stole your bonnet and my reticule out of the carriage while Fairly was fighting off another pair. They travel in two pairs of two.”

“Shocking!” she said, turning to her husband. “And you actually tackled them, Fairly?” she asked, hardly able to credit such an unlikely tale. Yet Fairly’s nose, now that Meg took a glance at it, stood out in brilliant relief against his white face.

“With a club,” he said, peering soulfully at Meg.

She rushed forward to comfort him. “Oh, my poor
esposo.
Are you serving him tea, Sissie? Call for brandy. We all need a glass of brandy.”

Cicely duly noted that contraband brandy was readily available in noble homes—and drunk not only by the heroes but by their wives.

“You should stay home tonight and help Fairly to recover,” Cicely suggested. “He looks very peaked, does he not?”

“Stay at home?” Meg asked, and laughed. “Hardly! I shall take him to Lady Amelia’s ball and show him off.”

“Fairly is in no condition to dance.”

“Indeed no. We shall sit out all evening. I shall wear a black shawl, to show how serious your condition is, Fairly. And you, a black sling on your arm.”

To Cicely’s amazement, Fairly entered into this foolishness with the greatest enthusiasm. She had no doubt that by the time they reached the ball, Fairly would be in a Bath chair and the four attackers (two of them hired, she was now convinced) would be a whole band, armed to the teeth.

“Well, you were very fortunate that Fairly was there to protect you, Sissie,” Meg said. “But you have still not explained why you took my bonnet.”

Cicely studied the pair and decided this was the strategic moment to push their reformation a step further.

“Fairly was returning it to the milliner, Meg,” she said, darting a commanding look at Fairly. “He realizes, if you do not, that borrowing from the cents-per-center will ruin you both. You are not to buy any more clothes this season.”

Fairly looked in horrified alarm, first at Cicely, then at his wife, who—strangely—was batting her eyelashes furiously and smiling at him in a coquettish way he had not seen for a twelvemonth.

“You have enough bonnets,” he said sternly. “The best turned-out lady in London. Everyone says so.”

“Do you really think so, Fairly?” Meg asked, sitting down and taking his hand. She felt a warm gush of something stronger than mere pique at his high-handedness.

“Common knowledge.”

Meg directed a speaking smile at him. “I must go abovestairs to change for dinner. Come with me, Fairly. I want you to help me choose what I should wear tonight.”

Fairly flushed in pleasure. “You haven’t asked my opinion on such things in a long time, Meg.”

She turned to Cicely. “I have had my dresser put a gown for the dinner party in your room, Sissie,” she said.

The couple walked upstairs together, arm in arm, whispering and smiling. Cicely was also smiling. Now if Montaigne would do his part and give Meg a good talking-to, this shambles of a marriage might yet be pulled from the fire.

She finished her tea; then, when the brandy arrived, had a sip of it for research purposes. Medicine! She left it and went abovestairs to see what she would be wearing to Mr. Murray’s dinner party.

Montaigne had sent his sister a note informing her he didn’t want Sissie to look like a light-skirt but a provincial lady. To Meg, this meant a gown a couple of years old, not in the empress style that currently ruled. She had scoured her closet for the most likely gown she possessed. Its provincialism was solely in its age. Neither its cut nor its lack of adornment was in the least dowdy. The gown was a dark green and silver net that shimmered under the light with the effect of water seen by moonlight. It clung closely to the body above, flaring out in a full skirt below. Once again a shawl was required to conceal the paucity of material from the waist up, but the shawl had to be arranged with care to display Anne’s diamonds. As Meg had not provided a shawl, Cicely used Anne’s white wool.

The Fairlys were having guests to dinner that evening. Before they arrived, Lord Montaigne came to escort Cicely to Murray’s party. His eyes turned to her at once to judge her toilette. His somewhat strained expression softened to pleasure as he studied her.

With her shawl firmly wrapped around her shoulders, she looked modest. Her dark gown was a matronly shade, and that white shawl had a whiff of the country in its sturdy material. The coiffure was pretty, without reaching such heights of elegance that it competed with Meg’s do.

“You will never guess what, Monty!” Meg exclaimed. “Fairly is a hero! I am going to Lady Amelia’s ball with him this evening.” She studied her brother eagerly for his reply to such shocking news.

“I hardly know which piece of news is more startling,” he said in a bored drawl. He suspected that Sissie was involved in both events. He looked a question at her. Her laughing eyes belied her innocent expression. “What heroic deed has he done? Not a duel in your honor, I trust, Meg? That is a shade too heroic for Society. Duels are out of fashion this year.”

“No, silly. He beat up a whole gang of armed bandits who attacked him and Sissie at that horrid place with all the dials. Was there ever anything so shocking! They got away with my new bonnet,” she added with a moue.

Montaigne turned in alarm to Sissie. He was reassured to see she was not only unharmed but having some difficulty controlling her amusement.

Before Montaigne could learn the real story, Fairly came limping in with his arm in a sling to help his nose recover. He at once delivered a much-embroidered version of the attack. As Sissie had anticipated, the four men had grown to an indeterminate number, but certainly more than four.