The Last Hellion (12 page)

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

She only blinked once, then coolly withdrew the cigar from her mouth. "By gad, is that you, Ainswood? I haven't seen you in a dog's age. How's the gout? Still troubling you?"

Since he'd already spotted Coralie Brees—along with a pair of burly bodyguards

—Vere dared not unmask Miss Sarah Siddons Grenville in the gambling hell.

She kept up the act, and he played along with it while he swiftly escorted her from the premises. Even after they were clear of the place, he kept a firm grip on her arm, and marched her up St. James's Street toward Piccadilly.

She continued to swagger along, the stub of the cheroot—
his
cheroot—clamped between her white teeth, the walking stick swinging from her free hand.

"This is getting to be a habit with you, Ainswood," she said. "Whenever matters are moving along smoothly, you come along to muck them up. I was on a winning streak, in case you didn't notice. Moreover, I was working. Since gainful employment is not within your range of experience, let me explain a bit about basic economics. If magazine writers fail to perform their assignments, there are no articles for the magazine. If there are no articles, the customers won't buy it, because, you see, when they pay for a magazine, they expect it to have writing in it. And when the customers won't pay, the writers don't get paid."

She looked up at him. "Am I going too fast for you?"

"You'd stopped playing roulette before I interrupted," he said. "Because you'd decided on a different game. While you were watching the bawd, I was watching you. I've seen that look in your eyes before and know what it bodes: mayhem."

While he spoke, she coolly puffed on the cigar, to all appearances the unflappable young Cit-about-town her costume declared her. He fought an irrational urge to laugh.

"Let me point out something you apparently failed to notice," he went on. "The Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

bawd had a pair of bully boys in attendance. If you'd followed her outside, those brutes would have dragged you into the nearest dark alley and carved you up into very small pieces."

By this time they'd reached Piccadilly.

She tossed away the remains of the cheroot. "You refer to Josiah and Bill, I collect," she said. "I should like to know how anyone who wasn't blind could overlook that pair of gargoyles."

"Your eyesight is hardly reliable. You overlooked
me
." He signaled to a hackney leaving the water stand down the street.

"I trust you're summoning that carriage for yourself," she said. "Because I have an assignment to complete."

"You'll have to assign yourself someplace other than Jerrimer's," he said.

"Because you're not going back there. If I found you out, others might. If, as you suspect, any illegal activities are going on there, those conducting them will make sure Grenville of the
Argus
not only doesn't complete her assignment, but is never heard from again."

"How did you know I was looking for illegal activities?" she demanded. "This assignment was supposed to be a secret."

The hackney pulled up. It was not one of Mr. David Davies's compact new hackney cabriolets but a cumbersome vehicle which had evidently done service as a gentleman's town coach about a century ago. The coachman sat in front, not in back as in the modern cabs. At the back was a narrow platform upon which a pair of footmen—long dead and buried by now—would have stood.

"Where to, gentlemen?" the driver asked.

"Soho Square," Vere said.

"Are you mad?" she cried. "I can't go there in this costume."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

"Why not?" He eyed her up and down. "Will you scare your sweet-tempered puppy?"

"Campden Place, Kensington," she told the driver. She yanked free of Vere's grip, adding in lower tones, "You've made your point. I'm not going back to Jerrimer's. If you figured out who I was, any moron might."

"But you live in Soho," he said.

"My clothes are in Kensington," she said. "And my carriage."

"Gentlemen?" the driver called. "If you ain't comin'—"

She stalked to the vehicle, pulled open the door, and climbed in. Before she could shut it, Vere caught the handle.

"It's been a dog's age since I've visited Kensington," he said. "I wonder whether the country air will heal my gout."

"Kensington is very damp at this time of year," she said in a low, hard voice. "If you want a change of climate, try the Gobi Desert."

"On second thought, maybe I'll travel to a nice, warm brothel." He slammed the door shut and walked away.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

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By the time the hackney passed through the Hyde Park Turnpike, Lydia was well aware she had mainly herself to blame for this evening's vexations.

At the Blue Owl last week, she'd spotted Ainswood the instant he came to the doorway. Naturally, her pride wouldn't let her exit the stage at that point. While only half a Ballister by birth, she was every inch one by nature. She couldn't possibly curtail her performance or feel in the least embarrassed merely because a clodpole of a duke was watching.

Still, she might at least have resisted the inner devil urging her to make sport of him, and chosen another target. Since, instead, she had asked for trouble, she should have realized, when it didn't come then, that it was sure to come sooner or later. Like her, Ainswood had put on an act. He'd feigned good humor because he hadn't wanted all those men to think a mere female could upset him.

Lydia had upset him, though, and he must have returned to the Blue Owl this evening to get even in some way. There, someone who'd been at the last
Argus
staff meeting must have let drink or a bribe loosen his tongue, and told Ainswood where she was. His Grace had come to Jerrimer's merely to disrupt whatever she was doing—whether it was work or play was all the same to him.

Then, having wrecked everything, he could go on his merry, depraved way.

And so, thanks to her own childish behavior—and his childish spitefulness—

she'd lost a chance to get back Tamsin's ruby set.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

Meanwhile, Ainswood would be congratulating himself for putting Lady Grendel in her place. He would probably make an amusing anecdote of the event, to entertain the company at the whorehouse he went to.

He would probably still be laughing while he wrapped his powerful arms round a voluptuous tart, and nuzzled her neck and…

I don't care
, she told herself.

And perhaps the sensible and reasonable part of her truly didn't care what he did with other women, and considered it far better that he'd gone.

The devil inside her cared, though, because that part of her was as wild and wicked and shameless as he was.

And that part of her, at the moment, was making her want to leap from the hackney and hunt him down and tear him from the anonymous harlot's embrace.

That part of her fretted and fumed all the way to Campden Place—not about Tamsin's jewelry or an assignment interrupted, but about the taunting comment with which Ainswood had taken his leave and the way he'd slammed the coach door in Lydia's face.

Between composing a host of crushing setdowns she wished she'd administered and conjuring infuriating scenarios involving His Grace and painted harlots, it took Lydia a moment after the hackney halted to realize where she was.

Hurriedly she disembarked, paid the driver, and started toward Helena's house.

Then she froze, her churning mind belatedly registering what her eyes had taken in: the handsome equipage standing a few yards from the gate.

Helena had a visitor.

And Lydia knew who it was because she'd made it her business to recognize the vehicle, in order to avoid its owner, Lord Sellowby.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

She glanced down the street, but the hackney was already beyond hailing distance.

She swore under her breath.

Then, after a furtive glance up at the house windows, she sauntered over to Sellowby's carriage, exchanged pleasantries with his tiger, obtained directions to the nearest public house, and ambled on, ostensibly in that direction.

Standing on the back platform of the ancient hackney for some three miles had not been the most comfortable mode of traveling. The sight before Vere at present, however, made up for the bone-shaking ride.

Since he'd had the presence of mind to disembark while the hackney was slowing, he'd managed to duck into the shadows before his prey emerged.

Obviously, she hadn't the smallest suspicion that he'd followed her.

Admittedly, he hadn't had the smallest suspicion he'd be following her to the home of London's priciest courtesan. When the blue-eyed gorgon had said her clothes and carriage were in Kensington, Vere supposed she'd done her costume change at an inn, where her comings and goings would attract little attention. He had envisioned an interesting encounter at the inn.

But this, he decided, promised to turn out to be far more interesting.

From his hiding place in the tall hedges of the garden he was watching her struggle out of her coat. Though the moon wasn't full, it emitted enough light for him to observe the process.

The coat was fashionably snug, and the armor she'd donned to conceal her shape hampered her movement to a comical degree. After a good deal of hopping, twisting, and jerking about, she finally got out of it and flung it down. Then she pulled off the hat, the wig underneath, and the skullcap under that, revealing the Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

fair hair flattened and wrapped about her head.

She scratched her head.

Vere waited with bated breath for her to unpin her hair. It was thick, he knew, and must be long enough to tumble over her shoulders—and you'd think he was a schoolboy, to stand here breathlessly waiting for such a simple thing, as though he hadn't watched hundreds of women take down their hair and take off their clothes.

She was still fully covered, in shirt and pantaloons, yet his temperature climbed all the same. He told himself the hot reaction arose out of the depravity of what he was doing, hiding in the shadows watching her disrobe.

But she didn't take out so much as one hairpin or take off any more garments.

What she did next was creep to the corner of the house, grasp the drainpipe, and swing herself up.

Vere blinked once in disbelief, then ran toward her, heedless of the gravel crunching underfoot.

Starting at the noise, she slipped and fell, landing with a soft thud upon the grass.

Before she could scramble up, he grasped her upper arms and hauled her to her feet.

"What in blazes do you think you're doing?" he whispered.

She wrenched free of his grasp. "What does it look like?" She rubbed her bottom. "Plague take you, I might have broken a leg. What the devil do you mean by creeping up on me? You're supposed to be in a brothel."

"I lied," he said. "I can't believe you fell for that old going-to-a-brothel ruse. You didn't even look out the window to make sure I'd gone away."

She didn't try to hide her incredulity. "I don't believe this. You can't have hung on the back of the hackney the whole way."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

"It's only three miles," he said.

"Why?" she demanded. "What score are you trying to pay now?"

He gave her a wounded look. "I was not trying to pay any scores. I was consumed by curiosity."

Her eyes narrowed. "About what?"

"How you did it." He let his gaze fall to her manly chest. "It isn't binding, is it?

What have you done with your breasts?"

She opened her mouth, then shut it. She looked down at herself, then up at him.

Then her jaw set and between her teeth she said, "It's a specially designed corset.

The front is shaped like a man's torso. The back is like any other stays."

"Ah. Back lacing."

"Yes. Not in the least interesting. Nothing you haven't seen many hundreds of times before." She turned away and returned to the drainpipe. "If you want to make yourself useful, you could give me a boost up."

"I can't," he said. "I can't aid and abet your burgling a house."

"Since when have you become a champion of law and order?"

"Since you pointed out my failure to provide an example of high moral tone," he said. "I'm studying to become a saint."

"Then study someplace else. I'm not going to steal anything. I only want to get my clothes."

"If Miss Martin has them, why not go to the front door?"

"She has company," she answered in an impatient undertone. "A man. She didn't expect me back so early. My clothes are in the dressing room. The window is open."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

She pointed upward. "I only need to get in and out without disturbing the lovebirds."

Vere's gaze went to the window, then back to her. "That's a goodish climb."

"I can manage it," she whispered indignantly.

His gaze slid down the pantaloons lovingly hugging her long, shapely legs.

"I'll do it," he said. "Quicker that way."

Some minutes and a short, furious argument later, the Duke of Ainswood was pulling Lydia through the dressing room window. She wouldn't have needed to be pulled if it weren't for the dratted corset, which made it impossible for her to heave herself up from the ledge below.

He slid his arms under her shoulders and hauled her none too gently over the sill, then let her tumble in a heap on the floor.

But Lydia did not break easily, and being pushed and pulled and dropped didn't bother her. If she'd needed delicate treatment, she would not have become a journalist. If he really wanted to injure her, he could do much worse than this.

He was cross, that was all, because she'd refused to do it his way.

He had expected her to wait in the garden. As though she had all night to wait while he bumbled about looking for her clothes in the dark, and collided with doors and knocked over furniture in the process, alerting everyone to the intrusion.