A Baron for Becky (3 page)

He was near
Niddberrow? The last Aldridge remembered, he had been just outside
of Bath, half a day’s ride away. “If you’re off to search the
countryside, perhaps one of you would take a message to my cousin
in Longford, the Earl of Chirbury at Longford Court.”

“No time,” Tiny
told him.

Aldridge
sighed. “So much for Smite’s promises,” he said. “Ah well. I
daresay I can walk to Longford, though it might alarm the local
populace. When I get to London, though, I’ll be having a little
talk with our mutual friend. ‘Anything you need, any time,’ he
said.” Aldridge made shooing motions with his hands. “Go on, then.
Go, if you’re going. I might as well get some more sleep.”

Tiny looked a
little hunted. He’d witnessed Smite’s first meeting with Aldridge.
Clearly, Tiny knew no better than Aldridge what the crime lord
would expect of him now.

Aldridge let
him stew for a minute, then offered him a way out. “I suppose
whoever rides over to Longford could just give my note to a
villager. That would do.”

Tiny agreed,
and found a scrap of paper in one pocket and a pencil in the other.
Pity. Aldridge had hoped to move the entire meeting up to the
house, so Rose and Sarah could release themselves from their
prison.

He wrote
quickly and handed the message to Tiny, who read it before giving
it to the searcher heading for Longford. Would Rede recognise his
writing? He had no idea if his cousin had even seen a letter from
him. Well, if no carriage came, Aldridge would have to think of
something else.

Chapter Two

Trapped in the seat,
with Sarah’s light weight heavier by the minute, the woman known as
the Rose of Frampton listened with growing appreciation as her
rescuer played Smite’s men like an orchestra. She’d heard of the
Merry Marquis—who hadn’t? The Marquis of Aldridge: one of the
richest men in England, and one of the randiest, too, by all
accounts.

Among
mistresses and courtesans, his generosity with women of their kind
was legendary—and of far more interest to Rose than his rumoured
prowess in the act by which she made her living.

Aldridge talked
circles around his audience: cajoling, commanding, teasing,
amusing, coaxing; by turns haughty, friendly, and bored. Rose
understood very little of the London argot, but the tension eased
from the air, the men’s voices changed as they relaxed their
battle-ready awareness and fell under Aldridge’s spell.

By the time he
sent them off on their wild goose chase around the countryside,
Sarah had fallen asleep. Rose hoped they would all leave, but the
leader said he would wait here for his followers’ reports. Rose
felt the bench seat shift slightly as someone sat on it, and she
heard Aldridge’s voice directly above her, addressing the leader of
the heavies.

“You do not
have to keep me company, Tiny. I’m happy to go back to sleep until
Rede’s carriage arrives.”

Tiny muttered
something, and Aldridge answered as if he could not care a bean.
“Search the garden? Why not. Help yourself, old chap.” His weight
shifted above her, and suddenly his voice was only inches above her
head. “I’ll just check out the back of my eyelids.”

Long moments
passed before Tiny grunted, and his boots sounded on their way to
the door and down the steps.

Aldridge spoke,
his voice a whisper. “Best stay there, ladies. I hope you are not
too uncomfortable.”

She whispered
back. “Sarah is asleep. We can stay as long as we must. Thank
you.”

“No talking,”
he warned. She was tempted to tell him he had started it, but she
stayed silent.

Sarah slept on
as the minutes slowly passed. Rose ignored her increasing
discomfort, straining her ears to hear Tiny as he searched the
garden, grumbling loudly to himself. He must have a couple of men
still here, since she heard him talking to one down by the back
gate, and another up near the house. Thank all the powers of Heaven
he didn’t think to poke in the low shrubbery around the
summerhouse, where Aldridge had stowed their bundles.

Several times,
he came into the summerhouse to talk. Aldridge asked after the
woman they were hunting.

“She, I must
suppose,” he said, “is this Rose that Perry spoke of so highly. I
must say, if she is as good in bed as she is to look at, she’s
worth every penny Perry wanted for her. If your men find her, I
would like to make an offer.”

Tiny made an
answer, in which ‘The Rose of Frampton’ was the only familiar
phrase, and that only because Rose was accustomed to the label
she’d been given, ten years ago, by the abbess who had taken her
when her father cast her out.

After the
brothel, she had moved from protector to protector. Perry, may he
roast in Hell forever, was to have been her last. He’d promised her
the cottage, showered her with jewellery, even let her keep Sarah
with her. But when he tied her up, he’d told her the cottage was
never hers, that the deeds he’d given her were fake. And he’d
sorted through her jewels while she sat cuffed to the bed cursing
him, leaving the ones he said were paste, and taking the few good
pieces.

When she had
stashed some clothes and jewellery in the bench seat in case she
needed to run, she had laughed at her own fears. Why would she wish
to escape from her own house? From her last protector, who was a
gambler and a drunkard, but not a violent man? But her escape
baskets were a habit established for years, and into the seat they
went.

Now her only
question was how much of the hidden jewellery was paste? How many
of her previous protectors had played her for a fool? Perry, the
belly-crawling sack of slime, had given her one piece of good
advice: “You should have hired a solicitor, Rose,” he told her.
“All the smart beauties do. Too late now, though. No lawyers in
Smite’s world.”

If she had to
find herself another protector, she’d insist on a written contract,
and hire someone to check that he not only seemed wealthy, but
actually was. She sighed, taking care to stay silent. She had hoped
to leave this life behind her, to give Sarah a fresh start, away
from this business. Her hopes were dust now. Even if the rest of
her jewellery were real, it wouldn’t raise enough for them to
survive.

And what were
her other choices—assuming she and Sarah got out of this alive?
With her past, no one would give her a respectable job, and what
marketable skills did she have? It would be the workhouse, where
they would separate her from Sarah, or another protector.

Perhaps she
should try her luck in London, where rich men were more plentiful,
or so she had heard. Perhaps Aldridge would help her.
Perhaps...

Her heart, her
breathing; everything stopped for a moment while she considered the
thought that crept up on her. Perhaps Aldridge meant it when he
claimed to be attracted to her, perhaps even when he said he wished
to make an offer. Was he in the market for a mistress? And could a
provincial whore hope to win his interest?

She was so busy
remembering everything she had heard about the Merry Marquis that
she almost missed the crunch of footsteps outside.

“Are you
‘Tiny’?” Another upper-class voice, consonants so crisp they could
cut.

“Rede?”
Aldridge said, the boards creaking as he shifted his weight. “Rede,
you came yourself?”

The cousin
replied, “With a message like that? ‘Stuck at Perringworth’s
cottage just outside Niddberrow. No clothes, no horse, no money.
Send closed carriage to the summerhouse, urgently. Your loving
cousin, Aldridge.’ Fetching kilt, cousin. Pink roses on a green
field. Setting a new fashion?”

Aldridge
laughed. “I’ll bet you a gold guinea, at least a dozen people would
imitate me, were I to walk through Hyde Park dressed like this. I
did think it rather better than the alternative, especially if I
had to walk all the way to the Court.”

“I have not
been introduced to your friend,” the cousin said.

“Ah. A friend
of a friend, shall we say. Tiny,
aide-de-camp
to Smite, of
Seven Dials in London. He’s here on a debt-collecting mission. Our
Mr. Perringworth has been a naughty, naughty boy.”

“Run orf, ’e
as,” Tiny said. “An’ the skirt too. Smite, ’e’s not gonna be ’appy.
’Ad a buyer for the little ’un, ’e did.”

“We are
talking, I take it, of The Rose of Frampton and her child?” the
cousin asked.

“Perringworth
left them as payment for his debt, but they seem to have
disappeared. I don’t suppose I could borrow your jacket,
cousin?”

“We can do
better, I think.” Something was placed on the bench with a
thump.

“You’ve brought
clothes? Ah, good chap. I say, Tiny, if you could just wait outside
while I change?”

The bully’s
steps retreated down the stairs, and then up the path towards the
house. Suddenly, the seat lid was opened. Rose was dazzled for a
moment by the sudden light.

When her eyes
cleared, two men were leaning over her. The sun had risen while she
was hiding, and was shining directly into the summerhouse, giving
both fair heads a halo of gold.

Aldridge was
everything she’d heard. If Sarah hadn’t been asleep on top of her,
she wasn’t sure she could have resisted poking his bare chest to
see if his muscles were as hard as they looked. Or perhaps just
shaping them with her hands... What on earth did Aldridge do for
exercise?

She met his
amused brown eyes, and he winked as if he knew exactly what she was
thinking. She turned her head and met vivid blue, instead. If
Aldridge were handsome, then his cousin was beautiful—classic high
cheekbones, a firm mouth currently in a stern line, but with a
lower lip that suggested a passionate temperament, and golden hair
tousled from being trapped under his hat. He could have sat as a
model for the archangel Michael. She wouldn’t be at all surprised
if he slew dragons in his spare time.

“The Rose of
Frampton, I presume,” he said. The voice was bland, non-committal,
not a hint of judgement. Still, she blushed.

“We have no
time for introductions,” Aldridge said. “My dear, is there another
way out of the garden? Tiny has men on the front gate and the
back.”

“We can get
through the hedge,” said Sarah with a yawn, as she responded to
Rose’s hand gently shaking her shoulder.

“Where will
that take you?” As he spoke, Aldridge was dressing: stepping into a
pair of pantaloons and pulling them up before he unwound the shawl,
turning his back to don and tuck in a shirt. “We’ll bring the
carriage as close as we can to pick you up.”

“The lane. It
takes a turn past the house and runs beside the hedge for a short
way,” Rose said. The angel man had helped Sarah from the cavity,
and was now holding out a hand for her. Unaccountably shy, Rose
held her dress at the knee as she climbed out.

Aldridge was
sitting on the floor, pulling on boots. “Over the side with you,
and hide. We’ll draw Tiny off. Don’t run for the hedge until we
clear the corner of the house.”

“Aldridge,”
said the angel man, “what am I assisting with here?”

“A rescue, dear
cousin. You heard what they said about the child.”

The angel man
smiled at Sarah with a sweetness Rose did not expect from such a
stern man. “A rescue we can manage. Come. Let me lift you over the
wall.” Sarah went willingly to his arms, and he swung her between
the trellises into the garden beyond. Aldridge lifted Rose and did
the same, the strength in his arms fulfilling the promise of the
muscles now hidden beneath a gentleman’s waistcoat and jacket.

“Tiny!”
Aldridge’s voice moved away from her as he spoke. “Tiny, the Earl
of Chirbury and I would like you to take a message for us to
Smite.”

Aldridge
continued talking, and the steps of all three men retreated up the
path. Rose waited impatiently until they sounded distant before
daring to peek over the bush that was her hiding place. As soon as
they disappeared around the corner of the house, she stood
cautiously, checking all around her.

No one was in
sight.

“Sarah, run for
the hedge and hide under it until the carriage comes,” she said,
before scurrying along the edge of the summerhouse, picking up the
bundle, box, and basket.

She checked
both ways again before running to join her daughter. Just in time.
Tiny rounded the house and started down the path, calling for the
man at the back gate.

Moments later,
the carriage came slowly up the lane. Aldridge opened the door and
leapt down to toss first Sarah, then Rose, then all of their
baggage, up into the carriage. He swung in behind them, swiftly
shutting the door.

“Stay down,”
his cousin said to Rose, who was trying to pull herself up from the
floor. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”