London's Last True Scoundrel (5 page)

The wonder was that Davenport had wanted to kiss such a specimen. It showed a dismal lack of discrimination on his part.

Don’t think about that now—

There was no time to run upstairs. She searched for something to hide behind, but she was too late. Her unwanted guest swept into the vestibule.

Mrs. Farrington was a comfortably rounded lady of about fifty years, with improbable black hair and bright blue eyes. She had a bird-like way of tilting her head as she surveyed her surroundings.

The blue eyes widened to astonishment when they saw Hilary.

“Heavens, dear child! What happened to you?”

Hilary lifted her chin. “A trifling accident, ma’am,” she replied, modulating her voice to a semblance of calm. “I was caught in the storm and—and took a tumble from my horse.”

She curtsied with all the grace she could muster, conscious of the small pool of muddy water in which she now stood. “Thank you for calling. I, er, believe you are acquainted with my former employer, Miss Tollington.”

“Oh, the dear creature. Yes, indeed I am, for we were at school together, you know. Ha! To think of Clarissa as headmistress of the academy.” Mrs. Farrington’s eyes twinkled. “We were quite naughty when we were girls together, you know. Oh, nothing too dreadful, you know. Just pranks.”

That surprised Hilary. She’d always regarded the headmistress of Miss Tollington’s Academy for Young Ladies as the epitome of decorum. Hilary couldn’t imagine her former employer putting a frog in a teacher’s bed or dipping other girls’ pigtails in an inkwell.

Despite her frozen body, Hilary warmed to Mrs. Farrington. Miss Tollington had not let her down. If only Mrs. Farrington hadn’t responded to the headmistress’s plea with quite so much alacrity.

With a twinge of unease, Hilary wondered where Lord Davenport had taken himself off to. It would be too much to hope he’d left for good.

“It is very kind of you to come,” she said, impulsively stretching out her hand to her guest.

If Mrs. Farrington hadn’t been disgusted by Hilary’s state of dress, then the lady was unlikely to be deterred by prejudice over Hilary’s family. Indeed, if she were not predisposed to take Hilary under her wing she would not be here.

“Oh, as soon as Tolly wrote, I knew I had to help you,” said Mrs. Farrington, removing her gloves and taking Hilary’s proffered hand in hers.

“Such an unfortunate situation for you. I would have helped Tolly, too, you know, but she is of a very independent disposition. Stubborn?” She clicked her tongue and shook her head, glossy sausage curls fluttering. “As a
mule,
my dear. Tolly always would go her own way.”

When she’d imagined the lady who would take her to London, Hilary had conjured up a proud, haughty middle-aged matron. Not this lively bundle of wry humor.

Jubilation danced a jig in her breast. She beamed at her guest, then recollected her duties as a hostess. “Oh, but what am I about to keep you standing here? Tea in the drawing room, please, Hodgins.”

Hilary glanced at her manservant, who hovered nearby. His gnarled old face made several grimaces and his mouth worked strangely. She gave him a decisive nod to reinforce her order, wishing that for once Hodgins would do as he was asked without argument.

“
Not
the drawing room, miss,” he muttered.

Her irritation spiked. Hodgins was far too accustomed to having everything his own way. Well, she would not let Mrs. Farrington see that she couldn’t manage a servant properly.

“Of course the drawing room,” she said impatiently. “Where else would we go, pray?”

At least the drawing room was safe, situated in the relatively new part of the house. One never knew one’s luck in the older wing; the ceiling could fall in at any moment.

She ignored Hodgins’s mutterings. If the drawing room hadn’t been dusted since she was last here, that couldn’t be helped. At least Mrs. Farrington did not appear to be the sort to stand upon ceremony.

Hilary experienced a heady rush of confidence. She felt she could tell this comfortable little matron anything. When she explained about her brothers, Mrs. Farrington would see precisely how it was.

“I am just returned from the school myself, practically this minute,” Hilary said as she led Mrs. Farrington down the corridor. “So I’m afraid I cannot vouch for the state of the house. It is mainly a bachelor establishment, you know.”

“My dear, I have sons,” said Mrs. Farrington. “I know all about that, I assure you. They never entertain me in their town lodgings, and believe me, I am glad of it.”

She chuckled. “Men, even the best of them, need ladies to civilize them.”

Better and better. Hilary was almost delirious with glee. Almack’s, such a far-off mirage at Miss Tollington’s, now seemed to loom before her, solidly within her grasp.

But before she reached the double doors that led to the drawing room, Hodgins nipped around in front of her to bar her way, arms outstretched. His face was the picture of agonized entreaty.

“Believe me, miss, you do
not
want to go in there.”

A feminine shriek of laughter punctuated this sentence.

It came from inside the drawing room.

Oh.

Hilary’s mind blanked. At the most inopportune moment, her happy aplomb deserted her completely.

She couldn’t think. She knew what those shrieks meant, and she couldn’t think. All she could bring to mind was that her brothers were hosting an orgy
inside
the drawing room and she had the one lady whose good opinion meant the world to her, standing here, with her,
outside
the drawing room and …

Where? Where could they go? A falling ceiling would be preferable to what she suspected awaited them in the room at whose pocket doors she stood.

Why, oh, why
hadn’t she listened to Hodgins?

Hilary had a sudden vision of Almack’s, shimmering on the horizon, fading slowly into the night.

Pull yourself together, Hilary. You’re made of sterner stuff than this.

Another shriek, followed by a chorus of giggles and dirty masculine laughter.

She jumped, darted a glance at Mrs. Farrington, whose blue eyes were wide with surprise, and hurried into speech. “Oh! I did not realize, my brothers must have taken over the drawing room to rehearse a—a play.” She stammered over the ridiculous fable.

“I’m surprised you didn’t mention it, Hodgins,” she added.

The manservant coughed. “Sorry, miss. I tried.”

The astonished Mrs. Farrington glanced curiously at the closed doors.

“Come, ma’am,” said Hilary, desperate to escape. “We won’t disturb them.” She addressed the manservant. “We’ll go to the south parlor instead, Hodgins.”

She nodded at him that she understood, belatedly, the message he’d intended to convey. With a lugubrious sigh, Hodgins stomped off to order tea.

On an ingratiating, apologetic smile Hilary said, “So sorry, ma’am. Shall we?”

They turned to go.

The doors to the drawing room were flung wide.

“Ah,” said a familiar, irritating voice. “There you are, Honey.”

All the hairs stood up on the back of Hilary’s neck.

Horror flooding her senses, she turned, to see that her imagination had not played her false. The drawing room resembled a bordello—or, at least, what she imagined a bordello must look like.

Half-naked women, mostly clothed men, empty wine bottles strewn about, articles of clothing festooned over the furniture …

And in the doorway that big, gorgeous ruffian of an earl, standing solid and tall as the trunk of a tree, with two females—
two!
—twining around him like vines.

He grinned down at her. “Care to join us?”

Hilary would never know if she could have saved that situation.

Perhaps Mrs. Farrington, that broad-minded mother of sons, might have comprehended that Hilary did not ordinarily live in this den of sin, that the most unfortunate combination of circumstances had conspired against her this afternoon.

Maybe, just maybe, a lady with that decided twinkle in her eye could have been brought to understand.

And if the Earl of Davenport had not been standing there, dripping in whores, grinning at her and calling her
Honey,
that is undoubtedly the outcome Hilary would have worked her utmost toward.

But.

The image of Almack’s winked out, replaced by that grinning, disreputably handsome face.

Hilary gave a bloodcurdling cry of berserker-style rage and launched herself at the Earl of Davenport.

*   *   *

Even cold, wet, furious, and fighting like a wildcat, an armful of Honey beat two armfuls of blowsy bits of muslin any day.

“Excuse us.” With an apologetic glance at the stunned faces of his cohorts, Davenport disentangled himself from the two girls, picked up the raging mass of mud and wet wool, and put both himself and her outside the drawing room.

As she rained blows on his back and shoulders, he turned and shut the drawing-room doors behind them.

“Now, now, Honey,” he said soothingly. “What seems to be the problem? I’m sure we can sort this out.”

“Sort this out?”
She launched herself at him again.

Suddenly he noticed that tears streamed down her face. She was genuinely distressed.

That made him feel a twinge of … something.

But he did not want to search for the nearest exit as he usually did when a female had a fit of the vapors. He wanted to know what was wrong.

Surely her brothers’ habits were known to her. He couldn’t be brought to believe she’d never witnessed a scene like that one before.

Then he remembered. There’d been someone with her. Who was, now, conspicuous by her absence. “Where did your friend run off to?”

Honey stopped hitting him and whirled around to stare down the empty corridor.

Moments ticked by, with only her heavy, ragged pants breaking the silence.

Then she wailed, “Oh, dear Heaven, what have I done?”

She slumped against the wall, covering her face with her hands.

He gathered her into his arms. “There, there,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “I’m sure we can—ooph!”

She’d punched him in the solar plexus.

“Was that necessary?” he wheezed.

“Keep your hands off me.” She spoke viciously, through her teeth, and he caught a glimpse of her deVere ancestry.

She was a virago in tiny, fragile, fairy form.

Conscious of an absurd pleasure that he’d managed to irritate her until the tears dried on her cheeks and those pretty eyes flashed with fire, he said, “What’s wrong? Who was that female?”

“
That female
was the one chance I had to get to London. She called to satisfy herself that I was a genteel, virtuous young lady. And look what happened,” she cried. “I was so close. So. Close.” She pinched her forefinger and thumb together, held them up near her narrowed eyes. “
This
close, to achieving my heart’s desire.”

He blinked at her.

“Almack’s!” she wailed. “I could have danced at Almack’s. I could have found a decent, gentlemanly husband. And
you
ruined it.”

He tilted his head. “Do you know what you need? A nice hot bath and a change of clothes. You’re frozen.”

“The only thing I need right now is to skin you alive!”

She raged on about what a cretin and a dastard he was, but that wasn’t exactly news, so he didn’t listen. He was too busy applying his mind to the problem of her heart’s desire.

They both wanted the same thing: to go to London.

“I’ll take you to Town,” he said.

What could be better? He’d made up his mind to make a nuisance of himself around Wrotham Grange until the novelty of baiting Miss deVere palled. But truthfully, he wouldn’t vouch for the bed linen in this establishment and the whores were a distraction he didn’t need.

If he took Honey to London, he’d kill two birds with one stone.

She hadn’t heard him. “I only hope I may not be ruined,” she was saying miserably. “I should be obliged to marry you after all, and then I’d likely murder you before the wedding breakfast was over.”

“Steady on,” he protested. “I said I’d take you to London, not take you to wife.”

She stared up at him, deflated. “I would rather drown myself than go anywhere with you.”

“Bath,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and turning her about. “Hot bath, dry clothes. Then we’ll talk.”

He propelled her down the corridor. She let him, suddenly listless, as if the catastrophes that had befallen her today had crushed her spirit.

He didn’t like that, so he said hopefully, “Come to think of it, I’m cold and wet, too.”

She didn’t answer.

“We could save your servants the bother and pool our resources, so to speak—”

“I know what you are trying to do, but it won’t work,” she said dully. “I will have a bath.
Alone
. I will put on dry clothes. And when I come back downstairs, Lord Davenport, I expect you to be gone.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The bath helped calm Hilary to the point where she ceased imagining various and original forms of torture for a certain peer of the realm.

There was no use casting all of the blame on him. She was responsible for her own fate. If only she’d listened to Hodgins. If only she hadn’t flown into such a dreadfully unbecoming rage with Davenport.

Looking back, she wasn’t sure why she’d done it. If it had been any other of her brothers’ loutish friends standing there, inviting her to an orgy, she would have coldly requested him to leave and then ushered her guest to a different room.

She would not have flown at him and tried to scratch his eyes out.

Seeing Davenport with those women had set her alight. Why, ten minutes before he’d been kissing
her
.

She suspected such behavior was entirely typical for the Earl of Davenport. Thank goodness, once again, that she’d never married him as her mother had planned.

She slid down in the tub, tilting her head back to wash her hair, and grimaced at the new spiderweb of cracks in the ceiling. Dry rot, wet rot, death watch beetle, they had it all here. The place was falling down around their ears and her brothers did nothing to stop it.