Captain Rakehell (7 page)

“Near enough at hand to lend whatever assistance may be required.”

Folding his arms, Lesley eyed the smallish, narrow-framed Runner dubiously. “Forgive my plain speaking, Fisk, but that’s not a great deal of comfort.”

“Appearances sometimes deceive, my lord,” he replied without umbrage. “And I shouldn’t worry if I were you. As neatly as you took Sir Alex, I doubt that a lone thief will cause you much trouble.”

“A moment ago we were dealing with thieves.”

“Oh, we are, my lord, for definitely the man on the inside has outside accomplices, but we have only to apprehend one.” Fisk smiled as the barouche slowed to negotiate a corner. “There may be professional courtesy, my lord, but there is no honor among thieves. Whichever one we catch up will not wish to go alone to Newgate and will be most eager to give us the names and direction of his cohorts.”

It occurred to Lesley that being himself taken up by Bow Street would certainly rid him of Amanda Gilbertson, but he’d never fancied the notion of emigration. And there was the surety that if charges were brought against him, Teddy would be caught up as well, at least as witness, and he had even less desire to live out his days a pauper.

“I clearly have no choice but to assist you, Fisk—as obviously you’ve been aware all along—but I do have one or two questions. How long will I be expected to ride about in the dead of night rattling my rapier? And, by the by, I trust that’s all you will require of me?”

“That’s all, my lord,” Fisk assured him, “and I wouldn’t think it will take longer than a few days, perhaps a fortnight at best, to bring these thieves to heel.”

A fortnight, at best, was the same amount of time Lesley had gauged it would take him to force the Gilbertson chit to cry off. This additional demand on his person would leave little time for White’s or Jackson’s, or wooing the new mistress he’d been thinking of acquiring, but better to sacrifice fourteen nights than the rest of his life.

“Very well, Fisk. Look for the gentleman in the black mask to appear at Lady Cottingham’s ball.”

“I shall be there as well, my lord, though, of course, you will not see me.”

“Just make sure the thieves, should they put in an appearance, do not see you.”

“Rest assured, my lord, they will not.”

He wouldn’t rest assured about anything, Lesley thought sourly as the barouche came to a stop in front of his house, until he’d rid himself of Lady Amanda Gilbertson and Mr. Gerald Fisk.

“Until then.” He nodded curtly, taking up his cane and moving toward the door as Tom appeared to open it.

“Instruct your coachman to drive round to the stables,” Fisk said. “My associate will pick me up there.”

Lesley disembarked, relayed the message to Ruston as he crossed the flagway, and started up the steps to his house. He was limping a bit, his leg made stiff by catching himself on the banquette, and had reached the third stair when the paneled,  brass-fitted doors burst inward. Teddy, his face flushed and anxious, appeared between them. He took in the ivory-capped stick, his brother’s faltering gait, and went pale.

“Gemini!” He gasped. “Mother lamed you even worse! She said she meant to thrash you to within an inch of your life, but I never imagined—”

“Stow it,” Lesley snapped, mounting the last two steps and brushing past him into the foyer. “She thrashed me with her tongue, you clunch, not a birch rod. The cane is but a prop,” he explained, handing it along with his hat to a footman.

“But you’re limping!”

“Yes, I know. Silly of me, isn’t it?” Lesley cocked a sardonic eyebrow at his little brother. “Now and then I just can’t seem to keep myself from it. Mayhap it has to do with the French musket ball I took in the—” He caught himself, mindful of the footman, and merely growled, “Never mind why I’m limping. What are you doing here? You and your playmates Smithers and Forbes are supposed to be on your collective way back to school.”

“I sent them ahead, for I couldn’t leave without begging your forgiveness and giving you an opportunity to ring a peal over my head.” Teddy gripped the newel post of the curved stairway with both hands and braced himself. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

“Leave off, wretched halfling.” Lesley rumpled his hair, a grudging smile replacing his frown as he moved past him and up the stairs. “I wager you’ve suffered enough at the hands of mother and Mr. Fisk.”

“Fisk! That cad!” Teddy pushed himself off the post and bolted up the steps behind him. “I shall call him out myself! He swore if I told him everything he wouldn’t make trouble for you!”

So that’s how it is, Lesley thought sourly, turning on a carpeted step to plant a firm index finger in Teddy’s neckcloth.

“You’ll do no such thing. You’ll take yourself back to school and let me deal with Mr. Gerald Fisk.”

“But, Lesley, this is all my fault!”

“Indeed it is, but having yourself carted off to gaol for demanding a Bow Street Runner name his seconds will do nothing to absolve you. It would only—although it seems impossible just at the moment—make things worse.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Teddy granted slowly, a thoughtful frown puckering his brow.

“And wipe that look off your face. I’ve had a belly full of schemes and plots, thank you.”

With Teddy on his heels, Lesley climbed the rest of the stairs and traversed the upstairs corridor.

“Packston!” he called, turning through the doorway into his bedchamber, where his harried-looking valet was woefully regarding the garments laid out on the counterpane. “Good man.” Lesley smiled expansively. “I see you’ve done with the shopping.”

“Yes, my lord.” Suppressing a shudder, Packston looked away from the horrid wardrobe laid upon the four poster. “Your tailor will arrive shortly to make the necessary fittings.”

“Excellent.” Lesley picked up the quizzing glass that had been at the top of the list he’d given Packston that morning and gazed archly through it at Teddy. “Do you think this will make Amanda Gilbertson swoon?”

“Dead away,” Teddy assured him, gazing slack-jawed at the wildly patterned waistcoats strewn upon the bed.

“And this, sprig.” Lesley snatched one up and held it to his chest. “Will I look the handsomest, bravest cove that ever lived in this?”

“No!” he cried, appalled. “You’ll look the veriest fop! Or worse you’ll look—” Speech failed him then, but comprehension dawned. “Oh, Lesley. You
are
clever,” he said admiringly as he began to laugh.

Teddy laughed, in fact, all the long way back to his school in the Midlands.

Chapter Seven

Lord Hampton was a happy man. With the morning papers spread on his knee, seated in his favorite chair by the fire in his study, he sipped his after-luncheon coffee and smiled.

Amanda had come sweet and sunny to the breakfast table, all traces of the tears and sulks of the day before vanished with the dew. Cheerfully she had gone with her mother to pay morning calls, an obligation she loathed and found odiously boring, and upon her return, had smiled at the receipt of Lord Earnshaw’s note inviting her to drive with him this afternoon.

Presently, she was closeted with Lady Hampton and her abigail, selecting the perfect gown to wear, dressing her hair—for Lord Earnshaw would arrive within the half hour—and behaving as a proper female should.

Disaster with the Blumfield creature had been averted. Just how, Lord Hampton had been unable to ascertain from his wife, who’d been quite overwrought (understandably) during the interview, and afterward quite vague (characteristically) about the details.

But a thoughtful note from Eugenia Earnshaw (who knew Cornelia as well as he) had divulged the particulars: so long as she omitted the fact he’d kissed Amanda, the old dragon could gossip freely about the gentleman in the black mask; in exchange, the duchess swore to tell no one the baroness had been caught eavesdropping at the saloon door.

Skillful as Her Grace’s handling of the crisis was, it would have been totally unnecessary if only she and Cornelia had consulted him in the first place. Lord Hampton would have advised them not to breathe a word about young Earnshaw to Amanda, simply to introduce them and leave the rest to Fate; or perhaps to Nature.

They were birds of a feather, his daughter and Eugenia’s in-between son, both headstrong and without caution. He agreed with his wife and Her Grace that they were eminently suited to one another, but he wouldn’t have said so.

Nor would he have voiced his wish to see the Earnshaw and Gilbertson families united by marriage. And the absolute last thing on earth he would have done was declare to Amanda and Earnshaw—as Cornelia had told him the duchess had done in a letter sent to him in Brussels shortly after news of his wounding at Waterloo had arrived—that the two of them had been elected by their parents to consummate (so to speak) such a union.

Despite their initial mishandling of the affair, the two ladies had, as cats always do, landed on their feet. Though a bit chagrined that they’d pulled it off, Lord Hampton was, more than anything else, relieved that it was all water under the bridge and that peace had been restored to his household.

Sighing contentedly, he raised his cup to take another sip. But as the rim touched his lips, a bloodcurdling shriek from upstairs caused him to fling it from his hand. The steaming coffee which splashed down his shirtfront did as much as the scream to propel him from his chair and up the steps, scattering sheets of newsprint in his wake.

“Bennett!” Lady Hampton wailed from Amanda’s bedchamber. “
Bennett
!”

She cried out for him a third time as he came through the door, his heart pounding with exertion and his neckcloth dripping, to find his wife and the abigail Marie standing over Amanda, who was still in her wrapper and seated at her dressing table. Blackened bits of something were sprinkled among the crystal vials and jars, and Amanda’s eyes glittered defiantly at him in the cheval glass.

“Oh, Bennett!” The countess wailed, her body beginning to sway and her eyelids to flutter at the sight of him.

“Cornelia, don’t even think to swoon!” Lord Hampton threatened, leaping too late across the room to prevent her collapsing in a billow of skirts at the foot of Amanda’s bed. He looked helplessly at her prostrate form for a moment, then wheeled on his daughter. “What is the meaning of this?”

Raising her chin and folding her arms, Amanda compressed her lips into a hard, stubborn line and refused to answer.

“Marie?” Lord Hampton queried of the plump, apple-cheeked abigail. “What do you know of this?”

“Best see f’yourself, m’lord,” she replied grimly, and took a firm hold on her spirited little mistress.

But other than to grimace and close her eyes, Amanda struggled not at all as Marie peeled back her upper lip to reveal blackened gaps in her perfect white teeth.

“What
is
that?” Lord Hampton cried.

“Harcargh,” Amanda said.

“Marie, if you please.”

The maid took her hand away. “Sorry, m’lord.”

‘‘Again?’’

“Charcoal,” Amanda repeated.

“And the purpose?” Lord Hampton demanded, striving to keep his temper in check.

“To make myself look the veriest hag!” she declared, turning on her bench to glare at him proudly.

“Scrub it off this instant, and finish dressing to receive Lord Earnshaw! Marie, don’t leave her alone for so much as one second!” He leveled his index finger at Amanda, then bent to collect his wife. “Once I’ve seen to your mother, I’ll send a footman to clean out the grate!”

Puffing a bit, he turned away with Lady Hampton dangling from his arms, and Marie scooting ahead of him to hold the door open. She closed it behind him and frowned disapprovingly over her shoulder.

“Told you it wouldn’t work,” she said.

“Drat! And it was ever so hard to make it stick!” Turning again on the bench, Amanda bared her teeth to admire her handiwork in the glass, then made a face. “But it tastes vile.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Marie replied without sympathy. “Best scrape it off and rinse your mouth.”

“Poor Mama.” Amanda sighed and got up from her table. “I’m a trial to her, I know, although I vow I don’t mean to be.”

“That you are,” Marie agreed, then shook her head and clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “It’s a wonder her ladyship don’t hurt herself hittin’ the floor ten times a day.”

“Not to worry,” Amanda laughed. “Mama swoons so often, I’m sure she knows precisely how to fall and not hurt herself.”

Though why she’d want to, Amanda couldn’t fathom, other than to own it sometimes was, as it had proven to be in the Duchess of Braxton’s garden, a most effective method of escape. Hmmm, she thought, as she moved toward the washbasin, perhaps swooning was an art she’d have to perfect. What, she wondered with a grin, would happen if she fainted dead away at the sight of Lesley Earnshaw?

At that moment, Lord Hampton, having entrusted his wife to her abigail and hastily repaired his toilette, was standing speechless in the parlor, facing Captain Lord Earnshaw and wondering the very same thing.

“My dear Lord Hampton,” Earnsaw said, offering his beringed hand at an angle that made the earl wonder if he meant it to be clasped or kissed. “How very nice to see you after such a long time.”

“So good of you to call upon Amanda,” Lord Hampton replied numbly, making quick work of the handshake. “May I offer you a brandy while you wait?”

“A sherry or ratafia, perhaps,” replied Lesley with a sniff. “I find that stronger spirits so early in the day invariably leave me with the headache.”

Lord Hampton felt his temples begin to thud. “But of course. If you please.” He indicated a chair with a distracted wave, and all but fled to the drinks tray set on a cherry sideboard.

His hands shook as he uncapped a decanter of ratafia and filled a crystal goblet. He poured himself a brandy, eyed it a moment, then downed it, poured another, and drew a deep breath before lifting the glasses and turning to face his guest. But the smile he forced crumbled at the sight of Lord Earnshaw brushing a handkerchief deeply edged with lace over a cut velvet chair with an excessively fastidious flick of his wrist.