The Last Hellion (11 page)

'Only listen to what your Cousin Vere has done this time, the rascal.' "

Emily smiled. " 'A hellion,' he'd say. 'A true Mallory hellion, like your grandpa and his brothers.' "

" 'The last of the old, true breed,' " Elizabeth softly quoted her father. " 'Vere, as in
veritas
.' "

" 'Aylwin—formidable friend.' He was a friend to Robin, wasn't he?"

"And formidable." Elizabeth's eyes glistened. "They couldn't stop him. They kept us out when Robin was dying, because they were all afraid. But not Cousin Vere." She took her sister's hand. "He was true to Robin."

"We shall be true to him."

They smiled at each other.

Elizabeth put the
Whisperer
into the fire.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

"Now, as to those letters," she said.

"Not so tight, drat you," Lydia snapped. "The thing's hard enough to move in.

You needn't make it impossible to breathe in."

The thing in question was a corsetlike device ingeniously designed to transform a womanly shape into a manly one.

The person Lydia snapped at was Helena Martin.*[*See
Captives of the Night
, Avon Books, © 1994.]

In the old days, when she and Lydia had played together in the London slums, Helena had a highly successful career as a thief. Nowadays, she was an even more successful courtesan. The friendship had survived years of separation as well as changes in vocation.

At present they were in the elegantly cluttered dressing room of Helena's quietly expensive residence in Kensington.

"It must be tight," Helena answered, "unless you want your manly chest going in one direction while the rest of you goes another." She gave the lacing knot a final, brutal yank, then stepped away.

Lydia surveyed her reflection in the glass. Thanks to the contraption, she now had a chest like a pigeon's. The look was ultra-fashionable. Many men padded their chests and shoulders and squeezed their waists with corsets to achieve it.

Except Ainswood. The manly form under his garments owed nothing to artifice.

For about the thousandth time in the week since the encounter at the Blue Owl, Lydia pushed his image from her mind.

She stepped away from the mirror and dressed. With the device secured, the rest of the masculine costume she quickly donned fit satisfactorily.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

Months ago Helena had worn the ensemble to a masquerade and fooled everyone. Thanks to a few alterations—Helena was smaller—Lydia expected similar success, though she wasn't going to a masquerade.

Her destination was Jerrimer's, a gambling hell in a quiet way off St. James's Street. She had told Macgowan that she wanted to write a story about the place, the kind her female readers hungered for: a woman's inside view of a world normally forbidden to them—to the respectable ones, at any rate.

This was true. It wasn't the only reason, though, and it wasn't the reason Lydia had chosen Jerrimer's.

She'd heard rumors that the place did a side trade in stolen goods. Since none of her informants had thus far learned anything about Tamsin's keepsakes from the usual fences, it made sense to try other sources.

Tamsin had not agreed that it made sense. "You've already wasted a fortnight looking for my jewelry," she'd chided Lydia this evening. "You have much more important issues to pursue, on behalf of people who truly need help. When I think about Mary Bartles, I'm thoroughly ashamed of the tears I shed over a lot of stones and metal."

Lydia had assured her that the main project was getting the gambling hell story.

If she happened upon news of the jewelry in the process, so much the better, but she would not actively pursue the matter.

Not that one could "actively pursue" much of anything in a stiff cage of buckram and whalebone, she thought as she turned to inspect the back of her disguise in the glass.

"You'll be in a good deal of trouble if anyone discovers you're not a man,"

Helena said.

Lydia moved to the dressing table. "It's merely a gambling club. The customers Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

heed nothing but the cards, dice, or roulette wheel. And the owners and employees will be watching their money." From the jumbled assortment of cosmetics, scent bottles, and jewelry she unearthed the cigar Ainswood had given her and tucked it into an inside pocket. Looking up, she met Helena's worried gaze. "I was in more danger interviewing prostitutes in the Ratcliffe Highway, yet you weren't anxious then."

"That was before you began behaving so oddly." Helena moved to the chiffonier, upon which the maid had set a tray bearing a brandy decanter and two glasses.

"Until very recently, you controlled your temper better. And used more finesse in handling those who dared disagree with you." She lifted the decanter and poured. "Your dust-up with Crenshaw, on the other hand, reminds me of the fight you had with a street arab because he called Sarah names and made her cry.

You were eight years old at the time."

Lydia approached to take the glass Helena held out to her. "I overreacted with Crenshaw, perhaps."

"Thwarted desire can make one overemotional," Helena said with a small smile.

"I've been irritable myself these last few weeks. I usually am, between lovers."

"I'll admit my desire to do murder to certain persons is thwarted by the present penal codes."

"I meant sexual desire, as you well know," Helena said. "The instinct to mate.

And reproduce."

Lydia drank, eyeing her friend over the glass's rim.

"Ainswood is exceedingly handsome," Helena went on. "He has brains as well as brawn. Not to mention a smile that could make roses bloom in an Arctic winter.

The trouble is, he's also the kind of libertine who despises women. We females have but one use, and once used, we're worthless. If he's awakened any thoughts Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

of straying from virtue's path, Lyddy, I recommend you stray with a substitute.

You might consider Sellowby. He doesn't hold women in contempt, and you definitely intrigue him. You've only to crook your little finger."

To Lydia's knowledge, no whore in London commanded a higher price than Helena did, and for very good reason. She could size up a man in an instant and respond accordingly, becoming the woman of his dreams. Her advice was not to be taken lightly.

Lydia couldn't consider the recommended substitute, however, because she knew why Lord Sellowby was "intrigued" with her.

London's champion gossip had noticed Lydia among the crowd of journalists camped in front of St. George's on Dain's wedding day. Days later, Sellowby had told Helena about glimpsing a female who "might have stepped out of the ancestral portrait gallery at Athcourt." Athcourt, in Devon, was the home of the Marquess of Dain. Lydia had given Sellowby a very wide berth since then. A close look at her might lead him to make inquiries at Athcourt and dig up what her pride demanded remain buried.

"Sellowby's out of the question," Lydia told her friend. "A Society gossip and a journalist are bound to be competitors. In any case, this isn't a good time for me to get involved with any man. While scandal does sell magazines, whatever small influence I exercise over public opinion would vanish if I were known to be a fallen woman."

"Then maybe you should find another line of work," Helena said. "You're not getting any younger, and it would be a great waste—"

"Yes, love, I know you wish to be helpful, but can we discuss whatever's wasted and thwarted at another time?" Lydia emptied her glass and set it down. "It's growing late, and I do need to get back to Town."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

She put on her hat, gave herself a final check in the mirror, picked up her walking stick, and started for the door.

"I'll be waiting up," Helena called after her. "So make sure you come back here and not—"

"Of course I'll come back here." Lydia opened the door. "Don't want the neighbors to see a strange man entering my house in the small hours of the morning, do I? Nor do I want to wake Miss Price or the maids to help me out of this beastly corset. That dubious pleasure will be all yours. I'll expect you to have a nightcap waiting for me."

"Be careful, Lyddy."

"Yes, yes." Lydia turned and threw her a cocky grin. "Deuce take it, wench.

Must you be forever pesterin' and plaguin' a fellow?' "

Then she swaggered out, Helena's uneasy laughter trailing behind her.

This Wednesday night, the publishing hacks' gathering at the Blue Owl was a dull affair, for Grenville of the
Argus
was absent.

Joe Purvis was there, though, and returning from the privy when Vere met up with him in the hall.

It should have taken more than one glass of gin to loosen Joe's tongue regarding his co-worker's whereabouts. But the
Argus's
illustrator was already the worse for drink, which exacerbated his sense of injury.

In the first place, he complained to Vere, the fellows had taken to calling him

"Squeaky" ever since last week, when Grenville had pretended to mistake his voice for a mouse's. In the second, she'd as usual managed to hog a plum assignment all to herself.

"I should be at Jerrimer's with her," Joe grumbled, "seeing as it's to be the lead story next issue and wants a cover picture. But Her Majesty says there isn't a Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

gambling hell in London doesn't know my face and I'll give the game away. Like anyone was likely to overlook a Long Meg like her in a poky little hole like that."

Small as Jerrimer's turned out to be, Vere very nearly did overlook her.

It was the cigar that caught his attention.

Otherwise, he would have walked by the young man with little more than a glance, noting only that he was dressed in the style young clerks aspiring to dandyism customarily affected, and seemed to be doing well at roulette. But as he passed behind the fellow, Vere caught a whiff of the cigar, and it stopped him in his tracks.

Only one tobacconist in London sold those particular cheroots. As Vere had pointed out to Mistress Thespian a week ago, they were unusually long and thin.

He also could have told her that the tobacco was a special blend, and the limited stock was reserved exclusively for him. At certain social gatherings, among a select group of men who could appreciate them, Vere was more than happy to share.

He had not joined such a gathering in months.

And Joe Purvis had said she'd be here.

Swallowing a smile, Vere moved closer.

Roulette—or roly-poly, as it was commonly known—was all the rage in England.

It was certainly popular in Jerrimer's, Lydia discovered. The roulette room was thick with bodies, not all of them recently washed. Still, the air of the Marshalsea prison had been fouler, like that of many other places she'd known, and the cheroot clamped between her teeth helped mask the worst of the odors. Chewing on it also helped relieve her gnawing frustration while she pretended to watch the wheel.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

While she was aware of the heap of counters growing in front of her, they hardly signified, compared to the prize dangling a table's length away.

Coralie Brees stood at the end of that distance.

Ruby drops hung from her ears. A ruby necklace circled her throat and a matching bracelet her wrist.

The set matched Tamsin's description and sketch perfectly.

The small room was packed to suffocation. Amid the general jostling and elbowing, Madam Brees was unlikely to notice the few deft moves that would strip her of her stolen valuables.

The problem was, those particular moves were not within Lydia's range of skills but Helena's, and she was miles away in Kensington.

While knocking the bawd down and ripping the jewelry violently from her poxy body was well within Lydia's repertoire, she knew this was neither the time nor the place for such methods.

Even if she hadn't been wearing a corset that severely hampered movement, she could list several excellent reasons for exercising self-restraint: dark, cramped quarters; no potential allies; a great many potential foes—especially if she were unmasked, which was bound to happen in a brawl—and the unmasking itself, which at best would re-suit in humiliation and at worst severe, possibly fatal, injury.

Yes, it was infuriating to see Tamsin's jewelry adorning London's most villainous bawd. Yes, it made one wild to think of the girl, and her beloved aunt, and what the jewelry represented.

But no, Lydia was not going to let her temper get the better of her again. She most certainly would not let "thwarted desire" for the woman-despising Ainswood turn her into a temperamental eight-year-old.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

Thrusting away his image, she made herself focus coolly and calmly on the problem at hand.

The wheel stopped at red, twenty-one.

The croupier, stone-faced, pushed Lydia's winnings toward her. At the same moment, she heard Coralie's shrill stream of oaths.

The procuress had been losing steadily for the last hour. Now, finally, she moved away from the roulette table.

If she was out of money, she might trade in her jewelry as others had done their valuables, Lydia thought. She'd already discovered where those transactions took place.

Swiftly she counted her winnings. Two hundred. Not much by the standards of some clubs—Crockford's, for instance, where thousands were lost in the space of minutes—but perhaps enough to purchase a set of ruby jewelry from a trull with gaming fever.

Lydia started pushing through the crowd.

Intent on keeping her quarry in sight, she reflexively dodged a red-haired trollop who'd tried to attract her notice before, and elbowed aside a pickpocket. What Lydia failed to notice, in her haste to close the distance between her and Coralie, was the boot in the way.

Lydia tripped over it.

A hand clamped on her arm and jerked her upright. It was a large hand with a grasp like a vise.

Lydia looked up… into glinting green eyes.

Vere wondered what it would take to crack her polished veneer of composure.