The Last Hellion (24 page)

She swung away from the chimneypiece. "Whatever else I've done, I haven't used tricks or playacting to make you follow me. You're the one who's been spying on me, dogging my footsteps. Then, when I'm ready to give you what you want, you decide it isn't enough. I have to give up my freedom, my career, my friends, and vow unswerving devotion until death us do part."

"In exchange for wealth, rank, and power to do what you've been trying to do anyway," he said impatiently.

Susan looked at him, then at Lydia. She ambled to her mistress and nuzzled her Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

leg. Lydia ignored her. "The price is too high!" she raged. "I don't need your—"

"You needed me tonight, didn't you?" he interrupted. "You admitted as much, or have you forgotten?"

"That doesn't mean I want to be attached to you permanently!"

Susan sank down before the hearth, grumbling.

Ainswood leaned back against the door, folding his arms. "You might not have lived to engage in tonight's enterprise if I hadn't been about last night," he said levelly. "You might not have lived to sashay about Covent Garden last night if I hadn't taken you out of Jerrimer's before Coralie and her cutthroat minions penetrated your disguise. And if I hadn't come along in Vinegar Yard, one of Coralie's cohorts might have planted a knife in your back while you were daring and daunting the rest of the world. Not to mention that you might have killed Bertie Trent if I hadn't been on the spot to pull him out of the way."

"I came nowhere near killing him, you blind—"

"You drive in the same unthinking, headstrong way you do everything else."

"I've been driving for years and never once caused injury to human or animal,"

she said coldly. "Which is more than you can say. That demented hell-for-leather race of yours on the king's birthday ended with two fine animals having to be destroyed."

That dart penetrated.

"Not
my
animals!" He jerked away from the door.

Having finally found Lord Superior Male's sore spot, Lydia ruthlessly pressed her advantage.

"It was your doing," she returned. "That mad race on the Portsmouth Road was your idea, according to Sellowby. He told Helena that you challenged your Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

fellows—"

"It was a fair race!" His color darkened. "It was not my fault that ham-fisted idiot Crenshaw abused his cattle."

"Ah, so he was incompetent
despite
being a superior male. Yet I cannot be considered a capable whip simply because I'm a woman."

"A whip?
You
?" Ainswood laughed. "Is that what you fancy yourself—a candidate for the Four-in-Hand Club?"

"You fancy I'm no match for you or any of your clod-pole friends?" she returned.

"If you attempted that course, you'd land in a ditch before the second stage."

Lydia covered the distance between them in three angry strides. "Oh, would I?"

she asked, her voice taunting. "How much would you care to wager?"

His green eyes flashed. "Anything you name."

"Anything?"

"Name it, Grenville."

Lydia thought quickly, assessing his previous assault on her unreasonable conscience. Here was the solution.

"Five thousand pounds for Miss Price," she said, "and a thousand each to any three charitable causes I name—
and
you agree to take your seat in the House of Lords and exert your influence to pass the police bill."

He stood, hands clenching and unclenching.

"Are the stakes too high for you?" she asked. "Perhaps you are not so sure, after all, of my incompetence."

"I'd like to know how sure you are of mine," he said. "What will
you
stake, Grenville?" He advanced another pace to loom over her, his mocking green gaze slanting down his nose as though she were ever so small and inferior. "How Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

about your precious freedom? Are you confident enough to risk that?"

Well before he'd finished speaking, Lydia saw what she'd done: the corner she'd let pride and temper box her into.

She paused but a moment as the realization struck, yet it was enough for Ainswood to assume she was entertaining doubts, for the world's most patronizing smile curved his wicked mouth and the world's most aggravating glints of laughter lit his green eyes.

Then it was too late for second thoughts. The inner voice of reason was no match for the roar of Ballister pride, fueled by centuries of Ballister drive to conquer, crush, and in general pound whatever stood in its path into abject submission.

Lydia could not back down. She could not do or say anything that looked like doubt, because that was the same as admitting weakness or, God forbid, fear.

"My freedom, then," she said, her voice low and hard, her chin high. "If I can't beat you, I'll marry you."

They would set out from Newington Gate at eight o'clock sharp next Wednesday morning, regardless of weather, illness, or Acts of Parliament or of God.

Backing out, for any reason, would equal losing—with the same consequences.

They would each take one passenger to alert tollgate keepers and hostlers and pay tolls. They would drive single-horse vehicles, commencing the first stage with their own cattle. Thereafter, they would take the best available at the changes. The finish line was the Anchor Inn in Liphook.

It took less than half an hour to settle upon the terms. It took a fraction of that time for Vere to comprehend the enormity of his error, but even then it was already far too late to retreat.

The June race was a sore point with him. It was Fate's own perversity that had Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

put the goading words in her mouth. And he, provocateur par excellence, had let himself be provoked. He'd lost his self-control along with his temper, and so lost control of everything.

In June, at least, he'd had the excuse of being three sheets in the wind when he'd challenged a roomful of men to reenact the chariot races of ancient Rome upon a busy English coaching road. By the time he came to his senses—to sobriety, in other words—it was the next morning and he was sitting in his phaeton at the starting line with nearly a dozen other vehicles arrayed on either side of him.

The race had been a nightmare. Drunken observers as well as drivers caused property damage totaling several hundred pounds; four competitors suffered broken limbs; two carriages were demolished; and two horses had to be put down.

Vere had paid for everything, and certainly hadn't forced his idiot friends into racing. Nonetheless, the papers, politicians, and preachers held him personally and solely responsible—not simply for the race in particular but, judging by their extravagant oratory, for the downfall of civilization in general.

He was well aware that, loud, rude, and crude, he made a prime target for reformers and other pious hypocrites. Unfortunately, he was also well aware that there wouldn't have been an insane race and consequent public uproar if he'd kept his big mouth shut.

At present, he hadn't even the excuse of inebriation. Stone-cold sober he'd flapped his fool tongue, and in a few moronic words undone what he'd so carefully constructed while tending the fire: the logical and virtually irresistible—

for her—argument for matrimony.

And now he could scarcely see straight, let alone think straight, because his brain was conjuring images of smashed-up carriages and mangled bodies and Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

screaming horses, and this time it was
her
carriage,
her
screaming horse,
her
mangled body.

The nightmarish images accompanied him as he exited the study and headed down the hall, and crashes and screams rang in his head as he jerked open the door… and nearly trod down Bertie Trent, who had his hand upraised to grasp the knocker.

In the same instant, Vere heard heavy doggy paws thundering behind him, and swiftly moved aside, to avoid being knocked aside, as Susan leapt upon her beloved.

"I should like to know what is so irresistible about him," Vere muttered.

The mastiff stood on her hind legs, her forepaws on Bertie's chest while she tried to lick his face off.

"Drat you, Susan, get down," His Grace commanded irritably. "
Down
."

To his amazement, she obeyed, releasing Bertie so abruptly that he would have fallen over the threshold if Miss Price hadn't grabbed his arm and jerked him upright.

"Oh, I say, much obliged." Bertie grinned at her. "By gad, you've a strong grip for such a little female—mean to say, not little, exactly," he added quickly, the grin fading. "That is—" He broke off, his gaze alighting on Vere in what seemed to be belated recognition. "Oh, I say. Didn't know you was here, Ainswood.

Anything amiss?"

Vere grasped Susan's collar and pulled her back from the doorway so that the pair could enter. "Nothing amiss," he said tightly. "I was just leaving."

He released Susan, bade the decidedly curious Miss Price a terse good night, and hurried out.

As he was yanking open the carriage door, he heard Bertie calling to him to wait.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

Vere did not want to wait. He wanted to make for the nearest tavern posthaste, and start drinking and continue drinking until Wednesday morning. But he hadn't been able to make anything happen as he wanted since the day he'd first collided with Miss Nemesis Grenville, and so he supposed he was getting used to it, and only swallowed a sigh and waited for Bertie to make his adieux to Miss Price.

It seemed to Lydia that Ainswood had scarcely sauntered out of the study before Tamsin was hurrying in, Susan at her heels.

The girl raised her eyebrows at Lydia's trousers. Then her keen gaze went to the tangle on the desk. "Good grief, what is it?" She leaned over, pushed her spectacles up her nose, and peered closely at it. "Pirate's treasure? What an odd—

Oh, my!" She blinked up at Lydia. Her face worked. "Oh, d-dear." She swallowed and bit her lip, but a sob broke from her, then another. She flung herself at Lydia and hugged her fiercely.

Lydia returned the hug, her throat tight. "Please don't make a fuss," she said as the girl began to weep. "I've always wanted to be a jewel thief. This was the only way to do it more or less legally." She patted Tamsin's back. "It's no crime to recover stolen goods."

Tamsin drew back and stared, her tear-filled eyes as big as an owl's. "You wanted to be a jewel thief?"

"I thought it would be exciting. And it was. Come along and I'll tell you all about it." She beckoned the bewildered girl. "You'll want tea—and I'm starving. These knock-down, drag-out rows with thickheaded noblemen do stir up the appetite."

Tamsin listened to the tale in a daze. She nodded and shook her head and smiled in the right places, but Lydia was sure her companion wasn't entirely present in Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

spirit. "I hope I haven't shocked you witless," she said uneasily, as they ascended the stairs from the kitchen.

"No. It's Sir Bertram, who's
talked
me witless," Tamsin said. "He has muddled my brain with Charles II. The king kept wandering into the conversation on the way to the theater, during the intervals, and all the way home. I'm sure I've mentioned all the significant events of His Majesty's reign, but nothing helps.

We cannot discover the connection, and now I cannot make my mind work on anything else. Please forgive me, Lydia."

They had reached the ground-floor hallway.

She thanked Lydia again for recovering the keepsakes, and hugged her again and kissed her good night and went up to her room, murmuring to herself.

Coralie Brees was not happy when Josiah and Bill carried a battered Francis Beaumont—whom they'd found slumped against the privy—into the house shortly before daybreak.

Once upon a time she had worked for Beaumont in Paris, ruling over the brothel that formed a part of his elaborate pleasure palace, Vingt-Huit. They'd had to make a speedy exodus from Paris in the spring, and the move to England had been a downward one for her. Beaumont had been the brain behind Vingt-Huit's operations. That brain, however, was at present rotting from large quantities of opium and drink—and likely pox as well.

Why it was rotting did not interest Coralie. She counted only results, and the result for her was no grand pleasure palace in London, but a more laborious and much poorer-paying job peddling young flesh upon the streets.

Coralie wasn't clever enough to build grand enterprises on her own. Her mind was small and simple. Uncorrupted by schooling, unbroadened by experience, Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

incapable of learning by example, it was also too barren to support alien life-forms such as conscience or compassion.

She would have cheerfully killed Francis Beaumont, who was nothing but a nuisance these days, if she'd believed she could get away with it. She had more than once cheerfully garroted recalcitrant employees—but these were mere whores, whom nobody missed or mourned. To the authorities, they were anonymous corpses pulled from the Thames, causing a lot of paperwork and the bother of pauper burial, using up time and labor without recompense to the laborers.

Beaumont, on the other hand, had a famous artist wife who traveled in aristocratic circles. If he were found dead, an investigation would be ordered and rewards offered for information.

Coralie didn't trust any of those who worked for her to resist the temptation of a reward.

This was why she didn't step behind Beaumont while he sat slumped in a chair, and wrap her special cord 'round his neck.

Deciding against killing him was a mistake. Unfortunately, it was a mistake other people had made, and this time, as on previous occasions, the error had grave consequences.

By the time Beaumont had, with the aid of the gin bottle, recovered his zest for villainy, Coralie was in a screaming fit. She'd found the house servant, Mick, insensible on the kitchen floor, her bedroom ransacked, and Annette as well as money box and jewelry gone.

She sent Josiah and Bill to hunt the girl down—and bring her back alive, so that Coralie could have the pleasure of killing her very slowly.