The Last Hellion (42 page)

"What the devil else were you to do?" she demanded, edging up on the pillows.

"No one with a grain of sense would interfere in such a situation. You did exactly as you ought. You can have no idea how much the sound of your voice cheered and encouraged me. I was growing very tired and discouraged—and a Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

little anxious, I will admit. But your telling me to stop playing and finish her off was like a bracing gulp of strong liquor. At any rate, I couldn't bear to lose while you watched. Too humiliating for words." She coiled her fingers with his. "You cannot do everything, you know. Sometimes you must be content with giving moral support. I don't need to be coddled and sheltered. I don't need
all
my battles fought for me. I do need to be believed in."

"Believed in," he repeated, shaking his head. "That's all you need, is it?"

"It's a great deal to me," she said. "Your believing in me, that is. Considering how you hold my sex in contempt, I must regard your respect for my intelligence and abilities as the most precious of commodities."

"The
most
precious?" He disentangled his hand, then stood and walked to the windows. He stared into the garden. Then he came back to the bed. He stood at the foot, his hand wrapped round the bedpost. "What about love, Grenville? Do you think, in time, you might be so graciously condescending as to endure my love? Or is love only for mere mortals? Perhaps the godlike Balusters have no more need for it than the Olympian deities need a curricle to take them down to Delphi, or a vessel to take them to Troy."

She gazed at him for a long moment and sighed. "Ainswood, let me explain something to you," she said. "If you wish to make a declaration of love to your wife, the accepted form is to say, simply, 'I love you.' The accepted form is
not
to dare and daunt and go about it in your usual belligerent way. This is supposed to be a tender moment, and you are spoiling it by making me want to throw a coal bucket at you."

He narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. "I love you," he said grimly.

She pressed her hand to her breast and closed her eyes. "I am overcome with—

with something. I do believe I shall swoon."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

He returned to the side of the bed, grabbed her hands, and trapped them firmly in his. "I love you, Grenville," he said, more gently. "I started falling in love with you when you knocked me on my arse in Vinegar Yard. But I didn't know, or want to know, until our wedding night. And then I couldn't bear to tell you, because you weren't in love with me. That was stupid. You might have been killed tonight, and I wouldn't have had even the one small comfort: that I'd told you how dear you are to me."

"You've told me," she said, "in hundreds of ways. I didn't need the three magic words, though I'm glad to hear them."

"Glad," he repeated. "Well, that's better, I suppose. You're glad to own my heart." He released her hands. "Perhaps, when you're feeling stronger, you might muster up more enthusiasm. In any case, as soon as you're quite well again, I'll start working on capturing yours. Perhaps, in a decade or two, you might be sufficiently softened to return my feelings."

"I most certainly will not," she said as he stepped back and started to undress.

He paused, staring at her.

"Why in blazes should I return them?" she said. "I mean to keep them. In my heart." She pointed there. "Where I keep my own. Where it says, 'I love you,'

comma, then all your names and titles."

He felt the smile tugging at his mouth, and the odd stab, at the heart she'd stolen from him.

"You must be blind," she went on, "not to have seen it written there long since."

The smile stretched into a roguish grin.

"Well, let me get undressed, my dear," he said. "Then I'll come into bed and take a closer look."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

Normally, a riot in London provoked an outpouring of indignation and the sort of panic expected upon receipt of news of a foreign invasion.

The riot in Ratcliffe, which made all the morning papers, was scarcely noticed.

This was because a more catastrophic event had occurred.

Miranda, the heroine of
The Rose of Thebes
, had, as Bertie Trent predicted, sharpened a spoon on the stones of the dungeon. However, as Bertie was exceedingly shocked to discover on Thursday morning, when he finally got to reading yesterday's
Argus
, Miranda had not dug a tunnel with it. Instead, she had plunged her makeshift weapon into Diablo and fled.

In the closing paragraph of the chapter, the dashing villain of the story "gazed at the portal through which the girl had vanished until Death's shadow darkened his vision. Yet even then, his eyes continued fixed upon the door, while he heard the precious fluid drip from his massive form onto the cold stones. In that sound, he heard his life seeping slowly away… lost, futile, wasted."

London was devastated.

The fictional event made the front pages of several morning papers. Only the most sedate, like the
Times
, chose to disregard it, merely mentioning, in an obscure corner of the paper, "a disturbance outside the offices of the
Argus
," late on Wednesday afternoon.

The disturbance was caused by a large gathering of outraged readers. Some threatened to burn down the building. Others offered to tear the editor to pieces.

Macgowan arrived at Ainswood House early Thursday afternoon to report that S.

E. St. Bellair had been hanged in effigy in the Strand.

Macgowan was in raptures.

He pronounced the Duchess of Ainswood a genius.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

Ainswood had carried Lydia to the drawing room sofa, and she had a crowd with her. Consequently, Macgowan's announcement was perfectly audible to Emily, Elizabeth, Jaynes, Bertie, and Tamsin—as well as the servants near the door.

Oblivious to Lydia's frown, the editor went on rhapsodizing, and consequently leaving no one in the slightest doubt who S. E. St. Bellair really was.

Carried away by excitement, he was slow in realizing what he'd let slip. At the moment he did, he clapped his hand over his mouth. Above the hand, above the scarlet face, his alarmed gaze met Lydia's.

She waved a hand dismissively. "Never mind. The world knows the rest of my secrets. It might as well know this one." She shook her head. "Hanged in effigy.

By gad, people do take their romantic fables seriously. Well." Her gaze swept the onlookers, whose expressions ranged from incredulity to consternation… to polite nothing whatsoever. "Sentimental swill it may be, but it's popular swill, it seems, and it's mine."

"Oh, but it's so disappointing," said Emily. "Diablo was my favorite."

"And mine," said her sister.

"And mine," Bertie said.

Tamsin held her tongue. She had faith in Lydia.

Ainswood had been standing in a corner of the room by the window, observing his guests, his face one of the "nothing whatsoevers" but for the devils dancing in his eyes. "I thought the choice of weapon was a lovely touch, Grenville," he said. "I can think of few more ignominious ends than being stabbed to death with a spoon."

She acknowledged this dubious compliment with a gracious nod.

"More important," her husband went on, "you've caused a sensation. When word leaks out of the author's true identity, the ensuing clamor will drown out the Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

present one. All those benighted souls ignorant of Miranda and her doings will be forced to make up for lost time."

He turned his attention to Macgowan. "If I were you, I'd begin bringing out bound volumes of several chapters apiece. One cheap edition for the masses, and one handsome leatherbound with gilt for the nobs. Capitalize on the excitement before it fades."

Lydia quickly masked her surprise. Ainswood was the last man one would expect to care about, let alone devise ways of exploiting, the commercial potential of her "scribbling." But then, he loved an uproar, she reminded herself.

"That's what I was thinking," she said. "Though not about bound volumes—

which is a brilliant idea. Still, we don't want the readers to lose interest in the rest of the story, now their favorite is en route to hell."

She considered briefly. Then, "You must put out a notice, tomorrow morning,"

she told Macgowan. "You will announce a special edition of the
Argus
, to be available on Wednesday next, containing the four concluding chapters of
The
Rose of Thebes
. If Purvis complains that he can't do the illustrations in time, you must get someone else."

Macgowan already had the next two chapters. Lydia sent Tamsin for the final ones, which were locked up in the study desk.

Very shortly thereafter, the editor departed with the precious chapters, even more excited than when he'd come. Doubtless this was because he'd discerned another leap in profits in the very near future.

After he'd gone, Ainswood shooed the others from the room.

He plumped the pillows behind Lydia and rearranged the lap robe. Then he drew up an ottoman and perched upon it. His elbow resting on his knee, his jaw resting on his knuckles, he gazed at her reproachfully.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

"You are evil," he said.

"That's just as you deserve," she said.

"It's a damned dirty trick," he said.

She shaped her expression into limpid innocence. "What is?"

"I don't know exactly what it is," he said, "but I know you've played the world a trick, because I know you. No one sees the devil in you. I do."

"I reckon it takes one to know one."

He smiled then, the killer smile. Beyond the windows, the sun could make no headway through heavy grey clouds. Where she lay, though, golden sunshine penetrated every pore and cell, and its warmth stole into her brain and melted it to syrup.

"That's not going to work," she told him, aware of the blissful, thoroughly stupid smile with which she helplessly answered his lethal one. "I'm not going to tell you the rest of the story. All you're doing is making me amorous."

He let his rogue's gaze travel slowly from the crown of her head to the toes curling under the lap robe.

"If I could get you panting with lust, you'd tell me," he said. "But that's against doctor's orders."

"He said only that I was to avoid exertion, and put no strain on the wound." She shot him a sidelong glance. "Use your imagination."

He got up and started walking away.

"It seems you don't have any," she said.

"Think again," he said, without turning. "I'm merely going to secure the doors."

As it was, Vere had barely enough time to restore his wife's and his own clothing Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

to rights after the intimate interlude. This was because the girls—who apparently had no sense of discretion—decided to start banging on the drawing room doors at the precise moment he was starting to interrogate his wife about Miranda.

"Go away!" he commanded.

"What are you doing? Is Cousin Lydia all right?"

"Woof!" This from Susan.

He heard the panic in their voices and recalled that they'd been shut out of their brother's room when he fell mortally ill.

He went to the door, pulled away the chair he'd fixed under the handle, and opened it.

He looked down into two pale, worried faces.

"I was only beating my wife," he said. "In a friendly way."

Two sea-green gazes shot to Lydia, who rested in a dignified semirecumbent posture upon the sofa. She smiled.

"How can you—ow!" Emily cried, as Elizabeth elbowed her in the ribs.

"He means you-know-what," Elizabeth whispered.

"Oh."

Susan sniffed him suspiciously. Then she went to the sofa to sniff her mistress.

Then she grumbled something to herself and flopped down at the foot of the sofa.

Emboldened, the girls advanced upon the duchess as well, and flopped down on the carpet next to Susan.

"Sorry," Elizabeth said. "It never occurred to me. Aunt Dorothea and Uncle John never locked themselves into the drawing room for that purpose."

"Or any other room," Emily said. "At least not that I ever noticed."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

"In the bedroom," Elizabeth said. "They had to do it sometime. They've nine and three-quarters children."

"When you have nine and three-quarters," Vere said, approaching them, "I reckon the bedchamber is the only place you can have a prayer of privacy—if you bolt the doors."

"You can do it wherever you want," Elizabeth said magnanimously. "We shan't interrupt again. We didn't realize, that was all."

"Now we do," said Emily, "we'll keep away—and try to picture it," she added with a giggle.

"She is very young," her sister said. "Just ignore her."

"We like Susan," Emily told Lydia. The girl commenced scratching behind the mastiff's ear. This was all the encouragement Susan needed to drop her big head into the girl's lap, close her eyes, and subside into canine bliss.

"When she's not hunting villains, she's very sweet," said Elizabeth. "We've half a dozen mastiffs at Long-lands."

"I missed them," said Emily. "But we couldn't bring even one to Blakesleigh, because they drool too much, Aunt Dorothea says, and dogs put their tongues in improper places. She prefers dogs that don't slobber so much. They are more sanitary, she says."

"She believes Robin caught diphtheria from one of the dogs," Elizabeth amplified. "The boys had gone out to catch rabbits, and they had the dogs with them. No one knows what the dogs got into, but Rolf—he was only a puppy then

—came back covered with muck and stinking. Still, two women in the village caught it, too, and they weren't with our dogs."

"And none of the other boys got it, though they were with Robin," said her sister.

"It doesn't make sense."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

"No one is exactly sure how one contracts the disease," Lydia said. "They don't understand why sometimes it will devastate an entire town, and other times it attacks only a handful of people. Even then, one cannot predict who'll have a mild case and who'll have a fatal one. It's dreadfully unfair," she added gently.