The Last Hellion (15 page)

Very well, let her think it, he'd decided. He would give her plenty of time.

Weeks. He'd let her enjoy her apparent triumph, while his miscellaneous gashes and bruises healed. As the days passed, her vigilance would relax while her conceited head swelled. And then he'd teach her a lesson or two, such as "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall," and "the bigger they are, the harder they fall."

She was long overdue for a fall from her vainglorious pedestal. She was long overdue for a sharp awakening from her delusion that she was more than a match for any man, that donning trousers and aping males made her invulnerable.

He knew she wasn't.

Under the disguises and bluster, she was a girl playing Let's Pretend.

And since he found this amusing—and rather adorable, when you came down to it—he'd decided to go easy on her.

He would not humiliate her publicly.

He would be the only witness to her downfall.

Which would involve, he'd decided, her falling into his arms and down onto a bed with him.

And she would like it, and admit she liked it, and beg for more. Then, if he Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

happened to be feeling charitable, he would give in to her pleadings. And then—

And then a boy burst into the dining room.

"Oh, help, help, please!" the child cried. "There's a house fell in—and people inside."

Not one, but two houses had fallen in: Numbers Four and Five in Exeter Street, Strand. More than fifty men had rushed over from their work on the sewer excavations in nearby Catherine and Brydges Streets, and quickly begun clearing away the debris.

The first victim they uncovered was a dead carman, who'd been taking in a load of coal when the house collapsed. Half an hour later, they found an elderly woman, alive, her arm fractured. An hour afterward, there was a seven-year-old boy, scarcely injured, and his infant sibling, dead. Then their seventeen-year-old sister, bruised. Their nine-year-old brother was one of the last to be rescued.

Though they found him at the bottom of the rubble, he was alive and babbling deliriously. The mother hadn't survived the accident. The father was away from home.

Lydia obtained most of the details from one of the penny-a-liners who contributed occasionally to the
Argus
. She had arrived late at the scene, having been in the Lambeth Road at an inquest. But she had not come too late to witness Ainswood's role in the rescue.

He did not see her.

From what Lydia observed from her discreet post amid a group of reporters, the Duke of Ainswood was conscious of nothing but the heap of rubble he attacked with steady, ferocious purpose, Trent working at his side. She watched His Grace heave away bricks and timbers, clearing a way to the boy, then bracing a joist on his broad shoulder while others pulled the child out.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

When the mother's mangled corpse was freed at last, Lydia saw the duke go to her weeping daughter and press his purse into her hands. Then he pushed his way through the crowd and fled, dragging Trent with him, as though they'd done something to be ashamed of.

Since one of Ainswood's lighter pushes could throw the average-sized human several feet, the other journalists retreated from him and returned to the disaster victims.

Lydia was not so easily put off.

She chased Ainswood and Trent to the Strand, reaching the street at the moment a hackney, in response to Ainswood's shrill whistle, was drawing to a stop.

"Wait!" she shouted, waving her notebook. "A word, Ainswood. Two minutes of your time."

He pushed the hesitating Trent into the carriage and leapt in after him.

In response to his command, the vehicle promptly started, but Lydia wouldn't give up.

The Strand was a crowded thoroughfare. She had little trouble trotting alongside the cab, which couldn't make rapid progress in the crush of vehicles and pedestrians.

"Come, Ainswood," she called. "A few words on your heroics. Since when have you become so shy and modest?"

This was one of the newer-model hackneys, with merely a hood, leather apron, and curtains to shield passengers from the elements. Since he hadn't drawn the curtains, he could hardly pretend to neither see nor hear her.

He leaned out from under the hood to glare at her. Above the street's din—the rattle of wheels, the cries of drivers and pedestrians, the snorts and whinnies of horses, the yapping of stray dogs—he shouted back, "Damn you, Grenville, get Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

out of the street before someone runs you down."

"A few words," she persisted, still jogging alongside. "Let me quote you for my readers."

"You may tell them for me that you are the plaguiest cocklebur of a female I ever met."

"Plaguiest cocklebur," she repeated dutifully. "Yes, but about the victims in Exeter Street—"

"If you don't get back to the walkway,
you'll
be a victim—and don't expect me to scrape up what's left of you from the cobblestones."

"May I tell my readers that you're truly studying to become a saint?" she asked.

"Or shall I ascribe your actions to a transitory fit of nobility?"

"Trent made me do it." He turned back to roar at the driver, "Can't you make this accursed plod of a horse move?"

Whether the driver heard or not, the beast picked up its pace. In the next instant, an opening appeared in the crush of vehicles, which the cab promptly darted through, and Lydia had to jump back to the curb as those behind the hackney hastened toward the break in traffic.

"Plague take her," Vere said after a backward glance assured him she'd given up.

"What the devil was she doing here? She was supposed to be at an inquest in the Lambeth Road. And that was supposed to take all day."

"There's no tellin' how long them things'll take," Trent said. "And speakin' of tellin'—if she finds out Joe Purvis been spyin' for you, there's goin' to be an inquest on his dead body." He leaned out and peered 'round the carriage's hood.

"She's given up," Vere said. "Settle back, Trent, before you tumble out."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

Grimacing, Trent settled back. "Now she's gone and planted Charles Two in my brain box again. What do you reckon it means?"

"Plague," Vere said. "You associate them both with plague."

"I can't think why you'd say that to her face," Trent said. "She were bound to think well of you, after what you done back there. And why you should tell her it were me made you do it when you were the one who rushed out of the Alamode first—"

"There were fifty other men at it with us," Vere snapped. "She didn't ask them why they did it, did she? But that's just like a female, wanting to know why this and why that and imagining there's some deep meaning to everything a fellow does."

There wasn't any deep meaning, he told himself. He hadn't brought the nine-year-old boy back to life, merely freed him from a premature burial. And that boy's plight had nothing to do with anything else. He was only one of several victims.

Saving him had meant no more to Vere than had rescuing the others.

The lump in His Grace's throat was merely dust, and it was dust that made his eyes smart and his voice hoarse. He wasn't thinking of anyone else… such as a nine-year-old boy he'd been unable to save.

Nor had he felt tempted in the slightest to talk of what he felt. He had nothing burdening his heart, and most certainly had no idiotish wish to unburden himself to her. He had no reason to fear he'd be tempted to do so simply because he'd learned, in reading her work, that she was not so cynical and stony-hearted, not so much the dragon on a rampage, when it came to children. This couldn't possibly matter to him, because he was cynical and stonyhearted about everything.

He was the last Mallory hellion, obnoxious, conceited, conscienceless, et cetera, Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

et cetera. And because he was, he had only one use for her, and seeking a sympathetic ear wasn't it. He did not confide in anyone because he'd nothing to confide, and if he had, he'd rather be staked under a broiling sun in the Sahara than confide in a female.

He told himself this, in several different ways, during the journey home, and not once did it occur to the Duke of Ainswood that he might be protesting too much.

"Trent made him do it, indeed," Lydia muttered to herself as she strode down the hall to her study. "A regiment of infantry with bayonets at the ready couldn't make that obstinate boor cross the street if he didn't want to."

When she entered the small room, she tossed her bonnet onto the desk. Then she moved to the bookshelves and took out the latest edition of Debrett's
Peerage
.

She found the first clue quickly. Then she turned to her
Annual Register
collection, which covered the last quarter century. She drew out the 1827 edition and turned to the "Appendix to the Chronicle." Under "Deaths, May," she found the epitaph.

"At his seat, Longlands, Bedfordshire," she read, "aged nine, the right hon.

Robert Edward Mallory, sixth duke of Ainswood." It went on from there for four columns, an unusually long death notice for a child, even for one of the nobility.

But there was a poignant story here, and the
Register
could be counted upon to focus on it, as it did on other of the year's curiosities and dramas.

I've been to enough funerals
, Ainswood had said.

So he had, Lydia found. Moving from one information source to the next, she counted more than a dozen funerals in the last decade alone, and these were only the near kin.

If Ainswood was the callous pleasure seeker he was supposed to be, the Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

relentless parade of deaths couldn't have affected him.

Yet would a callous pleasure seeker bestir himself for a lot of peasants in distress, and labor alongside laboring men, at no small physical risk to himself?

She wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it herself: Ainswood ceasing only when assured there were no more to rescue, coming away ragged and dirty and sweating. And stopping to press his purse into a grieving girl's hands.

Lydia's eyes stung, and a tear plopped onto the page she'd been reading.

"Don't be a ninny," she scolded herself.

The scold produced no sensible result.

A minute later, though, what sounded like an elephant's thundering approach dispelled all symptoms of ninnyness. The thunder was Susan's. She and Tamsin were back from their walk.

Lydia hastily wiped her eyes and sat down.

In the next moment, Susan was bounding into the room and trying to bound into Lydia's lap, and responding to the firm, "Down!" by slobbering on her skirts instead.

"It seems someone's in a good temper," Lydia said to Tamsin. "What happened?

Did she find a plump, juicy toddler to snack on? She doesn't smell much worse than usual, so she can't have been rolling in excrement."

"She has been a dreadful hussy," Tamsin said while she untied her bonnet. "We met up with Sir Bertram Trent in Soho Square, and she made a complete spectacle of herself. As soon as she spotted him, she shot off like a rocket—or cannonball, rather, for she knocked him flat on his back. Then she stood over him, licking his face, his coat, and sniffing—well, I will not say where. She was utterly deaf to my remonstrances. Fortunately, Sir Bertram bore it all good-naturedly. When he finally got her off and himself up, and I tried to apologize, Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

he wouldn't have it. 'Only playful,' says he, 'and don't know her own strength.'

And then Susan—"

"Woof!" the mastiff cheerfully acknowledged her name.

"She had to show off her tricks," Tamsin went on. "She gave her paw. She teased him with a stick until he played tug-of-war with her. She played dead as well, and rolled on her back to get tickled and—oh, you can imagine."

Susan laid her big head in her mistress's lap and regarded her soulfully.

"Susan, you are a puzzle," Lydia said, petting her. "The last time you saw him, you didn't like him."

"Perhaps she sensed he'd been doing good deeds this afternoon."

Lydia looked up to meet the girl's gaze. "Trent told you about it, did he? Did he happen to explain what he was doing in Soho Square instead of Ainswood House, recovering from his herculean labors?"

"When he saw you, Charles Two came into his brain box, he told me. The king bothered him so, he got out of the hackney a few streets away and walked to the square to look at the statue."

In Soho Square's sadly neglected patch of greenery stood a crumbling statue of Charles II.

After their first encounter, Tamsin had reported Trent's associating Lydia with the Restoration-era monarch. It made no sense to Lydia, but she didn't expect it to. She was aware that Lord Dain's brother-in-law was not noted for intellectual acumen.

"Speaking of herculean labors," Tamsin said, "I daresay you had a shock in Exeter Street. Do you think the Duke of Ainswood is reforming, or was this a momentary aberration?"

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

Before Lydia could respond, Millie came to the doorway. "Mr. Purvis's here, Miss. With a message for you. Urgent, he says."

At nine o'clock that night, Lydia entered a small, heavily draped room in the Covent Garden Piazza. The girl who let her in quickly vanished through the curtained doorway opposite. A moment later, the woman who'd summoned Lydia entered.

She was nearly as tall as Lydia, but shaped on broader lines. A large turban crowned her head. The face below was thickly painted. Despite the paint and dim light, Lydia discerned clear signs of amusement.

"An interesting choice of costume," said Madame Ifrita.

"It was the best I could do on short notice," Lydia said.

The older woman signaled Lydia to take a chair at the small table near the curtained doorway.

Madame Ifrita was a fortune-teller, and one of Lydia's more reliable informants.

Normally the two women met at a discreet distance from London, because Madame would soon be out of business if her clients suspected that she shared any of their confidences with a journalist.