Regency Rogues: Outrageous Scandal: In Bed with the Duke / A Mistress for Major Bartlett
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‘Will you? I mean...thank you very much,’ she added doubtfully.
If he really did mean to take her to the home of a female relative who lived in some comfort, even if she was a touch difficult to get on with, and contact people on her behalf to right the wrongs done her, then it was the best thing she could think of.
It was just that coming from a man with a black eye and bruised knuckles it sounded a bit too good to be true.
He shot her a piercing glance. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘I am sorry,’ she said, a touch defiantly. ‘But I am having trouble believing anything that has happened today. But if you say you mean to help me, then I shall...’ She paused, because she’d been brought up to be very truthful. ‘I shall try to believe you mean it.’
‘Of course I mean it. Your guardians picked the wrong man to use as their dupe when they deposited you in my bed. I will make them rue the day they attempted to cross swords with me.’ He flexed his bruised, grazed hands.
‘Did you make them rue the day as well?’
She’d blurted out the question before she’d even known she was wondering about it. She looked up at him in trepidation. Only to discover he was smiling. True, it wasn’t what she’d call a very nice sort of smile. In fact it looked more like the kind of expression she imagined a fox would have after devastating a henhouse.
‘Yes, I made a whole lot of people sorry yesterday,’ he said.
She swallowed. Reached for the teapot.
Something about the way she poured her second cup of tea must have betrayed her misgivings, because his satisfied smile froze.
‘I don’t generally go about getting into brawls, if that’s what you’re afraid of,’ he said.
‘I’m not afraid.’
He sighed. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you were. Look...’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’ll tell you what happened, and why it happened, and then you can judge for yourself.’
She shrugged one shoulder, as if she didn’t care, and took a sip of her tea. This time, thankfully, it had much more flavour.
‘It started with a letter from a man who worked in a...a manufactory. In it he described a lot of double-dealing, as well as some very unsavoury behaviour towards the female mill workers by the foreman, and he asked the owner of the mill whether he could bear having such things going on in his name. He couldn’t,’ he said, with a decisive lift to his chin. ‘And so I went to see if I could get evidence of the wrongdoing, and find a way to put a stop to it.’
So he was employed as a sort of investigator? Which explained why he had a secretary. Someone who would help him keep track of the paperwork while he went off doing the actual thief-taking. It also explained why he was reluctant to speak of his trade. He would have to keep a lot of what he did to himself. Or criminals would see him coming.
She took a sip of tea and suddenly saw that that couldn’t be the right conclusion. Because it sounded like rather an exciting sort of way to make a living. And he’d said he had lived a dull, ordered existence. She sighed. Why did nothing make any sense today?
‘I soon found out that it wouldn’t be possible to bring the foreman to trial for what he was doing to the women under his power, because not a one of them would stand up in court and testify. Well, you couldn’t expect it of them.’
‘No,’ she murmured, horrified. ‘So what did you do?’
‘Well, Bodkin—that’s the man who wrote the letter—said that maybe we’d be able to get the overseer dismissed for fraud if we could only find the false ledgers he kept. He sent one set of accounts to...to the mill owner, you see, and kept another to tally up what he was actually making for himself. We couldn’t simply walk in and demand to see the books, because he’d have just shown us the counterfeit ones. So we had to break in at night, and search for them.’
‘Aunt Charity said you looked like a housebreaker,’ she couldn’t help saying. Though she clapped her hand over her mouth as soon as she’d said it.
He frowned. ‘It’s funny, but I would never have thought I’d be keen to tell anyone about Wragley’s. But you blurting out things the way you just did... Perhaps it’s something to do with the drug we were given. We can’t help saying whatever is on our minds.’
‘I...suppose that might be it,’ she said, relieved that he wasn’t disposed to take her to task for being so rude. ‘Although...’ She paused.
‘What?’
‘Never mind,’ she said with a shake of her head. She didn’t want to admit that for some reason she felt as though she could say anything to him. ‘You were telling me about how you tried to find the second set of books?’
‘Oh, yes. Well, long story short, we found them. Only the night watchman saw the light from our lantern, called for help and came after us. It was touch and go for a while, but eventually we got clean away,’ he ended with a grin.
So even if he wasn’t a professional thief-taker, he certainly enjoyed investigating crime and seeing villains brought to book. A man who could speak of such an adventure with that look of relish on his face would be perfect for helping her untangle whatever it was that Aunt Charity and Uncle Murgatroyd thought they’d achieved last night.
Someone who could fight for her. Defend her. And he was certainly capable of that. She only had to think of all those bulging muscles. The ones she’d seen that morning as he’d gone stalking about the bedroom, stark naked and furious.
Oh, dear, there was that word again. The one that made her blush, since this time it wasn’t just her own nudity she was picturing but his.
She pushed it out of her mind. Instantly it was replaced by the memory of him handing her his jacket. And that after she’d almost brained him with a rock.
Which helped her come to a decision.
‘I should like you to make Aunt Charity and Uncle Murgatroyd sorry, too. Because I think you are right. I think they are trying to take my money. Trying to make me disappear altogether, actually. If it was them who put me in your room—’
‘Who else could it have been?’
‘I know, I know. You’re clearly very good at working out how criminals think. It still isn’t very pleasant to accept it. But...’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Very well, when they put me in your room,’ she said, although her stomach gave a little lurch, ‘they probably did take advantage of the way the rooms were isolated up there—particularly after they saw the way you looked and behaved at dinner. I do think they believed that of all the men in that place you looked the most likely to treat me the worst.’
‘For that alone I should break them. How dare they assume any such thing?’
And that was another thing. He had a vested interest in clearing his own name, too. Now that she’d heard the lengths to which he’d gone to right the wrongs being done to the women at that mill, she felt much better about going to the house of which he’d spoken. They would need somewhere to go and hatch their plans for...not revenge. Justice. Yes, it was only justice she wanted.
‘So you will help me track them down and make them pay?’
Make them pay? ‘I most certainly will,’ he said.
He would set his people on their trail. He would tell them it was their top priority. From what Prudence had told him so far, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn they’d actually been heading for Liverpool. Possibly with a view to leaving the country altogether, if her uncle had actually swindled her out of all her money. On the off-chance that the case was not as bad as all that, he’d make sure his staff found out everything about their business dealings, too, and gained control of any leases or mortgages they had. He would throw a cordon around them so tight that they wouldn’t be able to sneeze without his permission.
And if it turned out that they had stolen Prudence’s inheritance, and hadn’t had the sense to get out of the country while they could, then he would crush them. Utterly.
Just then the door opened and the landlord came in.
‘Next coach’s due in any time now,’ he said without preamble. ‘Time for you to make off.’
Gregory deliberately relaxed his hands, which he’d clenched into fists as he’d been considering all the ways he could make Prudence’s relatives pay for what they’d done. ‘Bring me the reckoning, then,’ he said. ‘I am ready to depart.’
He turned to see Prudence eyeing him warily.
‘Hand me my purse, would you, niece? It’s in my pocket.’
She continued to stare at him in that considering way until he was forced to speak to her more sternly.
‘Prudence, my purse.’
She jumped, but then dug her hand into one of the pockets of the jacket he’d lent her. And then the other one. And then, instead of handing over his purse, she pulled out the stocking he’d thrust in there and forgotten all about. She gazed at it in bewilderment.
Before she could start asking awkward questions he darted round the table, whipped it out of her hand and thrust it into his waistcoat. And then, because she appeared so stunned by the discovery of one of her undergarments that she’d forgotten to hand him his purse, he decided he might as well get it himself.
It wasn’t there. Not in the pocket where he could have sworn he’d put it. A cold, sick swirl of panic had him delving into all the jacket pockets, several times over. Even though it was obvious what had happened.
‘It’s gone,’ he said, tamping down the panic as he faced the truth. ‘We’ve been robbed.’
Chapter Six
‘Ho, robbed, is it?’ The landlord planted his fists on his ample hips. ‘Sure, and you had such a fat purse between you when you come in.’
‘Not a fat purse, no,’ said Gregory, whirling round from his crouched position to glare at the landlord. ‘But sufficient. Do you think I would have asked for a private parlour if I hadn’t the means to pay for it?’
‘What I think is that there’s a lot of rogues wandering the highways of England these days. And one of them, or rather two,’ he said, eyeing Prudence, ‘have fetched up here.’
‘Now, look here...’
‘No, you look here. I don’t care what story you come up with, I won’t be fooled, see? So you just find the means to pay what you owe or I’m sending for the constable and you’ll be spending the night in the roundhouse.’
There was no point in arguing. The man’s mind was closed as tight as a drum. Besides, Gregory had seen the way he’d dealt with that bunch of customers in the tap. Ruthlessly and efficiently.
There was nothing for it. He stood up and reached for the watch he had in his waistcoat pocket. A gold hunter that was probably worth the same as the entire inn, never mind the rather basic meal they’d just consumed. The very gold hunter that Hugo had predicted he’d be obliged to pawn. His stomach contracted. He’d already decided to go straight to Bramley Park rather than wait until the end of the week. But that was his decision. Pawning the watch was not, and it felt like the bitterest kind of failure.
‘If you would care to point me in the direction of the nearest pawn shop,’ he said, giving the landlord a glimpse of his watch, ‘I shall soon have the means to pay what we owe.’
‘And what’s to stop you legging it the minute I let you out of my sight? You leave the watch with me and I’ll pawn it if you don’t return.’
Leave his watch in the possession of this barrel of lard? Let those greasy fingers leave smears all over the beautifully engraved casing? He’d rather spend the night in the roundhouse.
Only there was Prudence to consider. Spending a night in a roundhouse after the day she’d had... No, he couldn’t possibly condemn her to that.
‘I could go and pawn it,’ put in Prudence, startling them both.
‘That ain’t no better an idea than to let him go off and not come back,’ said the landlord scathingly.
He had to agree. She was sure to come to some harm if he let her out of his sight. He’d never met such a magnet for trouble in all his life.
‘You do realise,’ he said, folding his arms across his chest, and his gold watch to boot, ‘that I have a horse and gig in your stables which would act as surety no matter which of us goes to raise what we owe?’
The landlord gave an ironic laugh. ‘You expect me to believe you’d come back if I let either one of you out of my sight?’
‘Even if I didn’t return you’d still have the horse.’ Which would serve him right. ‘And the vehicle, too. I know the paint is flaking a bit, but the actual body isn’t in bad repair. You could sell them both for ten times what we owe for breakfast.’
‘And who’s to say you wouldn’t turn up the minute I’d sold ’em, with some tale of me swindling and cheating you, eh? Trouble—that’s what you are. Knew it the minute I clapped eyes on yer.’
‘Then you were mistaken. I am not trouble. I am just temporarily in a rather embarrassing state. Financially.’
Good grief, had he really uttered the very words he’d heard drop so many times from Hugo’s lips? The words he’d refused to believe any man with an ounce of intelligence or willpower could ever have any excuse for uttering?
‘What you got in that case of yours?’ asked the landlord abruptly, pointing to his valise.
Stays—that was the first thing that came to mind. And the landlord had already spied the stocking Prudence had extracted from his jacket pocket.
‘Nothing of any great value,’ he said hastily. ‘You really would be better accepting the horse and gig as surety for payment.’
The landlord scratched the lowest of his ample chins thoughtfully. ‘If you really do have a horse stabled here, I s’pose that’d do.’
Gregory sucked in a sharp stab of indignation as the landlord turned away from him with a measuring look and went to open one of the back windows.
‘Jem!’ the landlord yelled through the window. ‘Haul your hide over here and take a gander at this sharp.’
Gregory’s indignation swelled to new proportions at hearing himself being described as a ‘sharp’. He’d never cheated or swindled anyone in his life.
‘It’s horrid, isn’t it?’ said Prudence softly, coming to stand next to him. ‘Having persons like that—’ she jerked her head in the landlord’s direction ‘—doubt your word.’
‘It is indeed,’ he replied. It was especially so since, viewed dispassionately, everything he’d done since entering this inn had given the man just cause for doing so.
‘Though to be fair,’ she added philosophically, ‘we don’t look the sort of people I would trust if I was running this kind of business.’ She frowned. ‘I put that very clumsily, but you know what I mean.’ She waved a hand between them.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do know exactly what you mean.’
He’d just thought it himself. Her aunt had marked him as a villain the night before just because of his black eye. Since then he’d acquired a gash, a day’s growth of beard, and a liberal smear of mud all down one side of his coat. He’d been unable to pay for his meal, and had then started waving ladies’ undergarments under the landlord’s nose.
As for Prudence—with her hair all over the place, and wearing the jacket she’d borrowed from him rather than a lady’s spencer over her rumpled gown—she, too, now looked thoroughly disreputable.
Admirably calm though, considering the things she’d been through. Calm enough to look at things from the landlord’s point of view.
‘You take it all on the chin, don’t you? Whatever life throws at you?’
‘Well, there’s never any point in weeping and wailing, is there? All that does is make everyone around you irritable.’
Was that what had happened to her? When first her mother and then her father had died, and one grandfather had refused to accept responsibility for her and the other had palmed her off on a cold, resentful aunt? He wouldn’t have blamed her for weeping in such circumstances. And he could easily see that bony woman becoming irritated.
He wished there had been someone there for her in those days. He wished there was something he could do for her now. Although it struck him now that she’d come to stand by his side, as though she was trying to help him.
To be honest, and much to his surprise, she had succeeded. He did feel better. Less insulted by the landlord’s mistrustfulness, at any rate.
‘We do look rather like a pair of desperate criminals,’ he admitted, leaning down so he could murmur into her ear. ‘In fact it is a wonder the landlord permitted us to enter his establishment at all.’
Just then a tow-headed individual poked his head through the open window.
‘What’s up, Sarge?’
‘This ’ere gent,’ said the landlord ironically, ‘claims he has a horse and gig in your stable. Know anything about it?’
As the stable lad squinted at him Gregory’s heart sped up. Incredible to feel nervous. Yet the prospect that Jem might fail to recognise him was very real. He’d only caught a glimpse of him as he’d handed over the reins, after all.
Prudence patted his hand, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking. Confirming his suspicions that she was trying to reassure him all would be well.
‘Bad-tempered nag,’ Jem pronounced after a second or two, much to Gregory’s relief. ‘And a Yarmouth coach.’
Yes, that was a close enough description of the rig he’d been driving.
‘Right,’ said the landlord decisively. ‘Back to work, then.’
Jem withdrew his head and the landlord slammed the window shut behind him.
Gregory resisted the peculiar fleeting urge to take hold of Prudence’s hand. Focussed on the landlord.
‘So, we have a deal?’ he said firmly.
‘I suppose,’ said the landlord grudgingly. ‘Except now I’m going to have your animal eating its head off at my expense for the Lord knows how long.’
‘Fair point. How about this? If I’m not back within the space of one week from today, with what we owe for the meal we’ve eaten, plus the cost of stabling the horse, you can sell the beast and the...er...Yarmouth coach.’
‘One week from today?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘I s’pose that’d do. But only if you put something in writing first.’
‘Naturally. Bring me pen and paper and you may have my vowels.’
The landlord screwed up his face and shook his head, indicating his reluctance to let them out of his sight even for the length of time it would take to fetch writing implements. Instead, he rummaged in his apron pocket and produced what looked like a bill and a stub of pencil, then slapped both on the table.
As Gregory bent to write the necessary phrases on the back of the bill he heard the sound of a coaching horn. Closely followed by the noise of wheels rattling into the yard. Then two surprisingly smart waiters strode into the coffee room, bearing trays of cups and tankards.
The landlord swept Gregory’s note and the pencil back into his pocket without even glancing at them, his mind clearly on the next influx of customers.
‘Get out,’ he said brusquely. ‘Before I change my mind and send for the constable anyway.’
Gregory didn’t need telling twice. He snatched up the valise with the incriminating stays with one hand, and grabbed Prudence’s arm with the other. Then he dragged her from the room against the tide of people surging in, all demanding coffee or ale.
‘Come on,’ he growled at her. ‘Stop dragging your heels. We need to get out of here before that fat fool changes his mind.’
‘But...’ she panted. ‘How on earth are we going to get wherever it is you planned to take me without your gig?’
‘Never mind that now. The first thing to do is find a pawn shop.’
‘It will be in a back street somewhere,’ she said. ‘So that people can hope nobody will see them going in.’
‘It isn’t a very big town,’ he said, on a last flickering ray of hope. ‘There might not even be one.’
‘If there wasn’t the landlord would have said so,’ she pointed out with annoyingly faultless logic.
Condemning him to the humiliating prospect of sneaking into some back street pawn shop. After all the times he’d lectured Hugo about the evils of dealing with pawnbrokers and moneylenders.
‘And I don’t see why you have to walk so fast,’ she complained. ‘Not when we have a whole week to raise the money.’
‘We?’ He couldn’t believe she could speak of his possessions as though they were her own. As though she had some rights as to how he should dispose of them. ‘I am the one who is going to have to pawn my watch.’
‘I’m sorry. I can see how reluctant you are to part with it. But you know I don’t have anything of value.’
‘Not any more,’ he fumed. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘What do you mean, thanks to me?’
‘I mean that you had my purse. Which contained easily enough money to last until the end of the week. I can’t believe how careless you are.’
‘Careless? What do you mean? Are you implying it’s my fault you lost your purse?’
‘Well, you were wearing my jacket when those oafs jostled it out of the pocket.’
‘What oafs?’ She frowned. ‘Oh. You mean when we came in here?’
He could see her mind going over the scene, just as his own had done the moment he’d realised the purse wasn’t where he’d put it.
‘So,’ she added slowly. ‘You think that is when the purse went missing, do you?’
‘When else could it have gone?’
‘How about when you fell out of the gig?’
‘You mean when you pushed me out of the gig?’
They were no longer walking along the street but standing toe to toe, glaring at each other. Though what right she had to be angry, he couldn’t imagine. He was the one who was having to abandon every principle he held dear. She was the one whose fault it was.
Yet she was breathing heavy, indignant breaths. Which made her gown strain over her bosom.
Her unfettered bosom.
Since her stays were in his hand. At least they were in his valise, which was in his hand.
‘Right,’ she said, and drew herself up to her full height and lifted her chin.
He probably ought to warn her to pull his jacket closed. She could have no idea how touchable and tempting she looked right now.
Tempting? No. She wasn’t tempting. She was not.
No more than she’d been when she’d moaned in ecstasy at the flavour of his steak and onions. There was still something the matter with his brain—that was what it was. Some lingering after-effect from the drug. It explained why he’d spilled out almost the entire story of his adventure at Wragley’s. And why he kept on being afflicted by these inconvenient, inappropriate surges of lust.
Though part of it was down to her. The way she looked all wild and wanton in the grip of anger, so much more alive and vital than any other woman he’d ever known. The way she openly stood up to him in a way nobody had ever dared before.
Though he’d even found her appealing when she’d looked drugged and dazed and helpless. Helpless, she aroused his protective instincts. Angry she just aroused...more basic instincts.
‘Right,’ she said again. And with a toss of her head turned round and strode away from him.
‘Where do you think you are going?’ The insufferable wench was obliging him to follow her if he didn’t wish to lose sight of her.
‘I’m going,’ she tossed over her shoulder, ‘to sort out the mess you have plunged us into.’
‘Mess I have plunged us into? You were the one who got robbed—’
‘You were the one who left the purse in my pocket, though, once it became an outside pocket after you removed your coat.’
‘I—’ Dammit, she was correct. Again. He should have kept hold of the purse himself.
‘In my defence,’ he pointed out resentfully, ‘I had just suffered a stunning blow to the head.’
‘Trust you to bring that up,’ she said, rounding on him. And then, taking him completely by surprise, she reached up and snatched off his hat.
‘You don’t mind me borrowing this, do you?’
‘For what, pray?’
‘To collect the money.’
‘Collect the...what?’
She didn’t seriously mean to go begging through the streets, did she? That would be worse by far than anything that had happened to him yet.