A Midsummer Night's Sin (12 page)

“And thank you,” he said, sitting down beside her and lifting her hand to his mouth, depositing a kiss in her palm. “You were very brave.”

“I don’t believe I had a choice,” she pointed out, and he smiled at her as if she’d just said something wonderful. “Now tell me more about your brother. Jack. I already know about another brother. Beau, I think? He ran off with Lady Chelsea Mills-Beckman last Season.”

“Really? To hear Beau tell it, it was she who was in charge of that particular expedition. I was an innocent party to most of it, dragged into the adventure with great reluctance, of course, and if asked, I’d have to say you might wish to put more credence in the latter conclusion.”

“She kidnapped him? Is that what you’re saying? I don’t believe you.”

“No, I don’t, either. I believe the word I’d use is
coerced.
Yes, that’s better. And, just for the record, if you were to
coerce
me into some mischief, I believe I could be persuaded to comply. In fact, I think that’s already happened.”

“You think you’re diverting me, but you’re not. Tell me about your other brother. Jack.”

“Black Jack,” he corrected and then took a sip of wine before setting the glass on the low table in front
of them. “I suppose I should tell you the full story, as long as we’re waiting for the servants to introduce Davy Tripp to his other new friends, soap and water.”

“You’ve ordered him a
bath?
”

“As we may have need to keep him near us for a time, I’ve ordered him fumigated. Now. If you’ve heard about my brother and the great scandal he and Chelsea made last Season, then you know that he and Jack and I are the sons of the Marquess of Blackthorn but, alas, not also the sons of his late wife, the Marchioness, correct?”

“That was very delicate,” she told him, watching his face for any trace of anger or embarrassment. She found neither.

“Thank you, I’ve had considerable practice.” He picked up his glass and took another small sip and then waited as Wadsworth entered the drawing room bearing a tray holding the requested refreshments. “Ah, my favorites,” he said, reaching for one of the cookies. “Thank you, Wadsworth. How goes the fumigating?”

“He only got away from Anders twice, sir, and he’s now in the tub. Cook was not best pleased, however, when the idiot boy went running mother-naked through her kitchen. Your pardon, miss.”

Regina quickly bent her head and concentrated on choosing just the perfect cookie, although they all looked exactly the same.

“Mother-naked? Ha! There is nothing so bad that enjoyment can’t be found in it somewhere. Do you love
life, Regina?” Puck asked her once Wadsworth had bowed and taken his leave. “I do. I love life.”

Once again, Regina felt something inside her melting. Simply melting. “I’m liking it more and more, yes. You were telling me about your family?”

“Yes, I was. You know about Beau. He and Chelsea now live at Blackthorn with our father when they’re not traveling here and there and back again, riding herd on Papa’s many estates. He would have made a stellar marquess. Beau is the oldest of us and likes to be useful. For all the scandal of his elopement, he’s really not at all the adventurous sort. Which leads me to Black Jack.”

“Who is adventurous?” Regina offered, wondering how Puck would describe himself, if she asked.

“We think so, yes. Mostly, he’s an odd duck. Holds grudges, I think.” Puck took another sip of wine, betraying, at least to Regina’s mind, that he wasn’t so comfortable talking about his family as he would like her to believe. “You see, our father never married our mother, but he did marry our mother’s sister.”

Regina blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

Puck drained his wineglass and stood up, walking around the table to begin pacing in the center of the large room. “As we grew up with all of it, the whole thing seems logical enough to us until one of us has to explain the thing. My mother and father met and fell in love, but my mother longed to be an actress. She
is
an actress, in point of fact, with my father financing her troupe of traveling players lo these many years. She longs for the theaters of London, but the closest she’s
gotten in more than three decades is a small theater in Bath and then only for a fortnight a dozen years ago. But she perseveres. There are times I think her best performances are
off
the stage, but then I remember that Jack is cynical and that I don’t find that trait particularly becoming.”

“So they didn’t marry because she became an actress? I suppose I can understand your father’s hesitation.”

Puck laughed. “Hardly that. She refused him. But in the end, they made a bargain. She would always love him, and he would always love her, they would always be true to each other—so sentimental—but he would marry her sister instead. Abigail was beautiful, but a child in every way. Their father wanted her put somewhere and would have, Mama told us, without her there to protect her. She couldn’t leave, couldn’t fulfill her dreams, unless she knew Abigail was protected.”

“And your father agreed? Well, obviously he did, for he married her. And Abigail didn’t object to her sister becoming her husband’s mistress?”

“Abigail wouldn’t have understood the word.” Puck’s eyes went rather soft and faraway. “She was an angel, Regina. Sweet and silly and so innocent. But she was never very well. I can remember holding her hand and how cool it always was to the touch, the tips of her fingers always slightly blue. Mama said it was her heart, that it wasn’t strong. One morning last year, she simply didn’t wake up.”

Regina longed to go to him, but for all that they’d
shared in this same room only hours earlier, this time she held back, sensing that Puck wasn’t telling her about Abigail because he wanted sympathy but only to explain something about his brothers, and perhaps even about himself.

“That’s all very sad but still difficult to believe. If your parents simply had married, then your mother’s sister could have come to live with them, been safe with them. Surely being a wife to the man she loved was more important than being an actress.”

“You say that because you’ve never met Adelaide,” Puck told her, a slight, one-sided smile not quite softening his words. “I think she’s only half-alive when she’s with us, even as she’s pretending to be— Hell, sometimes I don’t think even she knows who she’s pretending to be. At any rate, she sticks to her word. She always comes back each time she goes away, but she always leaves again. She’s rarely at Blackthorn anymore. She’d stay for months sometimes, when we were all still young. I know I was born on the estate. But then she’d feel the itch and be gone again. We—none of us, not lover nor sons—were enough to make her happy. We tried. We all tried, sometimes desperately. But she’d always leave. We were never enough to hold her. Not then and not now. Sometimes I wonder…”

“What do you wonder about?” Regina asked him as he didn’t say more but just stared into the middle distance.

He shook his head. “It’s that cynical thing again. I wonder if she loves anyone, if she ever loved anyone.
I wonder if she just needed financing for her troupe. I wonder if…if she hoodwinked my besotted father into marrying Abigail because then he couldn’t marry anyone else and Adelaide wouldn’t lose her generous protector. And I wonder if we, my brothers and I, weren’t simply mistakes.”

Now Regina did go to him, and put her hands on his. She knew why she had been born; her father had always been very clear about that. She knew that her mother loved her but was ashamed of the blood that flowed in her own daughter’s veins. And she knew how that hurt. “Oh, Puck. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

He lifted both her hands to his mouth, kissing her knuckles. “Don’t be. I have a father, I have a mother, I had Abigail and my brothers. I’ve been educated, recently given an unentailed estate I’ll be happy to call my home and the run of Blackthorn and this not unimpressive mansion here in town. I’ve lived in Paris, I’ve traveled the world, I have never lacked for funds. Whether or not I’m happy is not the world’s decision, Society’s decision. It’s mine.”

Regina leaned close and pressed a brief, soft kiss to his mouth. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

“I should hope not,” he said, clearly trying to lighten the conversation. “One Puck is more than enough on any stage. Now, back to the mysterious Black Jack. I told you that Beau and I are either resigned to or uncaring of the events of so many years ago, the decisions that made us who we are.” He lowered his voice.
“That would be bastards,” he said confidingly, as if she needed to be reminded.

She smiled in spite of herself.

“Good, you’re smiling. We’ve gotten rather smoothly over the roughest ground. All that remains is where we began. With Jack. I wish I could tell you what maggots he carries in his brain, but I can’t. I only know he hasn’t spoken to either of our parents in years. He refuses any allowance from our father and yet seems more than comfortably deep in the pockets. He lives nowhere that we know of, does nothing that we know about and has this uncanny and often annoying way of knowing everything about us while we, not to repeat myself, know nothing of him.”

“Except that he’s here, in London,” Regina said, for she had not forgotten that. “You thought he might have been the man who had come to speak with Davy Tripp.”

“Yes, I left that part out, didn’t I? While our mother has put forth the notion that her middle son might have taken up the role of a highwayman and our father believes he supports himself gaming for high stakes, Beau and I discovered quite by chance last year that Jack is actually in the employ of the Crown in some clandestine way. Not that Jack admits to it, you understand, but we happened to trip over him while he was going about his business. God only knows what he’s done for king and country. I only know that if he were to be sent looking for me as part of his orders, I would be upstairs right now, cravenly cowering under my bed.”

“But he’s not looking for you. Is he looking for Miranda?”

“No. He’s looking for the men who are snatching up pretty young Englishwomen and selling them on the open market, like so much livestock. Your cousin is just one of nearly two dozen blonde, fair females to have gone missing from London the last two months. She’s simply the one you and I care about.”

“That many?” Regina could barely take that in. “But why isn’t all of London up in arms? Where is the hue and cry? Where is the outrage? Why has there been nothing written in the newspapers about this horrible crime?”

“I told you, Regina. A few shop girls go missing, a maid walks out on her afternoon off and never comes back. There are perhaps a dozen fewer prostitutes plying the streets around Covent Garden. A minor actress disappears, or perhaps just joined a traveling troupe and didn’t bother to tell anyone she was leaving. To hear Jack tell it, by the time anyone noticed and began making inquires, the number had risen to that two dozen. There could be a dozen more no one will ever know about.”

“But now they’ve taken the granddaughter of an earl. How did your brother know that?”

“He didn’t until I told him. The first young lady anyone really knew about was a Miss Edna Featherstone, daughter of one of the premiere vintners here in London. He took his sad tale straight to one of his best customers, who also happens to be Jack’s con
tact with the government. And no, before you ask, Jack didn’t share the man’s name with me nor the government office involved, and I consider myself much too fond of my intact nose to ask. It was only while investigating Miss Featherstone’s disappearance that, one thing leading to another, those doing the investigating fell onto the trail of disappearance after disappearance.”

“And Miss Featherstone is petite and fair and has blond hair?”

“She does. Or did. She hasn’t been found. But Jack wasn’t summoned to London until a few days before I met you, when the Duke of Norfolk’s goddaughter, the only child of one of his royal highness’s bosom chums, disappeared. And that, Miss Hackett, is a bit of knowledge you and I will take with us to the grave, graves we don’t wish to see for many a long year, correct?”

Regina nodded, finding it impossible to talk.

“Like your cousin, she is in the country, suffering some minor ailment and will be returning to London once she is recovered. God help her. God help all of them.”

P
UCK SAT IN THE
study and frowned over the list he’d written while waiting for Davy Tripp to be brought to him.

Regina had gone upstairs to check on her mother and to take a bath, telling him that she could still smell the warehouse on her clothing. Puck thought the same thing about himself, but as one bath probably would not do to erase the stink of friend Davy, he’d postpone his until after their interview.

“But that isn’t the only thing that
stinks
in all of this,” he muttered to the empty room, still eyeing the list.

He’d told Jack about Miranda, that she’d been abducted. But he hadn’t told him
where
the abduction had taken place, planning to share information with his brother as he shared information with him. He’d remembered that even as he’d bounded off down the length of the warehouse like some rabbit being chased by a dozen hounds. Not that Jack wouldn’t have put somebody to following his brother—but that meant following, not arriving ahead of him.

In addition—that was number
three
on his list—Jack didn’t know about Davy Tripp, the servant Puck had
first spoken to Friday evening, so if he’d set someone to following him, the someone wouldn’t have known to ask for the boy. “And again, he wouldn’t have arrived at our destination before Regina and me. That’s two reasons to cross Jack of my list.”

Which he did after dipping his pen in the inkwell once more. He also crossed off the unnamed Mentmore coachman and the word
footmen.
He crossed off the name Doris Ann.

So who else knew where the abduction had taken place?

Again, he looked at the list.

Regina. She was there.

Lady Claire. Regina told her.

The Viscount Ranscome. Lady Claire undoubtedly told him.

Reginald Hackett. He was there.

Then he looked at the list again and crossed off the first three names. All three had one thing in common: none had known about Davy Tripp. He hadn’t told Regina about the boy until they’d arrived at his place of work. Miranda’s parents could not have known.

He underlined the last name. Three times. And dipped his pen once more, for a new list.

He was there.

He could have observed me talking to Davy Tripp when I returned to the masquerade after seeing Regina safely home.

He sent the Runners north.

Behind that last line, Puck wrote one more word:
Why?

He underlined that four times.

“Sir?” Wadsworth stepped into the room. “He’s as decent as we could make him, sir.” Then the sergeant-major-turned-butler reached a hand behind him and pulled Davy Tripp into the room.

The boy didn’t look much better than he had before his bath and change of clothes, but at least his entrance wasn’t preceded by the smell of him. He had a gaunt, hungry look about him, probably because he was hungry. He was short, perhaps older than his frame would suggest. In fact, he needed a shave.

“Coo…” he said as he looked about the room. “Ain’t this plum fine.”

“Yes, I’m sure that was what the ladies of the house had been striving for over the years with their decorating efforts—to look plum fine. Thank you, Wadsworth. You may go.”

“Are you quite sure, sir? He’s the sort would pick up bits ’n’ pieces when no one’s watching. I’ve seen his like. Only thing he didn’t try to pocket since he got here was the soap. Steered a wide berth around that, he did.”

Puck smiled at the exasperated expression on the butler’s face. “We could always tie him to the chair? Hold a pistol aimed at his head? Are there any thumbscrews about anywhere, Wadsworth?”

The butler’s cheeks flushed cherry-red. “You’re saying you can handle him, aren’t you, sir?”

“I think so, yes. But please feel free to stand just on
the other side of the door should I suddenly begin hysterically screaming for help. Thank you.”

“Yes, sir,” Wadsworth said, lowering his head as he turned away and then swiftly giving Davy Tripp a cuff on the ear. “Just so you remember me,” he said and then closed the door behind him.

The boy rubbed at his head and glared at Puck. “Why does everyone keep on hittin’ me, guv’nor? I ain’t done nuthin’.”

“I apologize for accidentally introducing my boot to your cheek, Mr. Tripp.”

“No, guv’nor, not yer. Yer a right’un, saved me and all.
Him
wot jist left. An’ the three coves what tried ter drown me.”

Puck coughed into his fist. “It’s called a bath, Davy.”

“Call it wot yer want, guv’nor. I ain’t never doin’ it agin.” He walked over to one of the tables and picked up a figurine of Aphrodite, ran a still dirty fingernail over the bared marble bosom, grinned and then hastily put it back down. “Why’d that bloke try ter stick me? I didn’t do nuthin’.”

Puck waved the boy…lad…youth to a chair on the other side of the desk. “How old are you, Davy?”

“Me?” He frowned as if considering a complicated problem. “I dunno. M’maw first put me out ter chimneysweep when I was five or six. Ain’t seen her since. She’d know. Then I got too big fer that and got turned off inta the streets. Been a couple of years here, a coupla years there. Been workin’ where yer found me a coupla more. Cain’t go back there now, can I? Back
ter the streets fer me, I guess. An’ Tiny took wot coins yer gave me the other night, so it’s hard times fer me, that’s wot it is. Nope, cain’t rightly say I wants ter say much o’anythin’, guv’nor. If I gets it wrong, yer goin’ ter have them drown me agin?”

“Not at the moment, no, but if you’re to remain in my employ, I’m afraid I will have to insist that you maintain at least a nodding acquaintance with the tub. You see, Mr. Tripp, I need your help. Are you willing to help me?”

“T’ain’t no mister. Jist Davy. Only gots called Tripp causin’ I used ter fall down a lot. Mostly when somebody pushed me.” Davy scratched his head, lending credence to the notion that certain sorts of vermin can hold their breath for quite a long time underwater. “An’ I’m guessin’ that depends, guvnor. Wot’s a noddin’ quain-tance?”

“T
HANK YOU
, H
ANKS
.”

The maid had unearthed yet another handkerchief from somewhere and handed it to Leticia Hackett.

“Yes…thank you, Hanks,” Lady Leticia said, delicately patting at her damp eyes and lustily blowing her nose. “I cannot believe you agreed to this tawdry intrigue, Claire,” she then said to her sister-in-law, not for the first or even the twenty-third time. But this time quickly proved to be the worst. “You are only a haberdasher’s granddaughter, so perhaps you can be excused somewhat, I suppose, and you do care for your daugh
ter. But how dare you expose
my
child to this sort of scandal?”

“Mama, please,” Regina said, also not for the first time. “I told you, I am as guilty as Miranda in what happened. I could have said no. I
should
have ordered the coach turned back. But I didn’t. It all sounded rather exciting. Wearing masks, dancing with all the gentlemen there and with nobody knowing who we were. Did you never go to a masked ball when you were youn—during your Season in London?”

Lady Leticia drew herself up very straight on her chair. “I most certainly did
not.
I heard about them from my mama, but she told me quite plainly that they’d fallen out of favor thanks to the naughty goings-on that seemed to mark such affairs much more frequently. I have heard a few stories, and none of them are fit for your ears, young lady. My daughter, at a
masquerade.
You could have been taken. You’re much prettier than Miranda. How could they have chosen her over you? Oh! What am I saying!” She took refuge in her handkerchief once more.

Regina looked to her aunt and sighed. They’d been at it for more than an hour now, ever since Lady Leticia had awakened from her wine-induced slumber. Going back and forth, back and forth. First the masquerade, and then exclaiming over the fact that she was being held captive in the home of a horrible, baseborn scoundrel who had absconded with them in the way of some desperate highwayman. A prisoner! And in the very heart of Mayfair! It was not to be borne!

“Perhaps a glass of wine…” Lady Claire suggested softly after taking Regina aside while Hanks hovered over Lady Leticia, patting her back and offering yet another handkerchief.

“No!” Regina winced at her own vehemence. “That is to say, I don’t think we should encourage that sort of refuge. Should we?”

“She’s yet to mention your father,” Lady Claire pointed out. “When she considers how Reginald would react if he were to learn what we’ve done, there may not be enough wine in the entirety of London to calm her.”

Regina felt tears stinging at the back of her eyes. “I’m not sorry we did it,” she said. “We had no other real choice, not if we’re going to be able to help Miranda and be here to comfort her when we find her. And we will find her, Aunt, I promise you that. Puck—that is to say, Mr. Blackthorn—feels we are already making huge strides toward locating her and bringing her home safely.”

Lady Claire drew in her breath and nodded, clearly holding on to her composure with all of her motherly might. “No matter
how
we find her. She is my daughter, my darling. With God as my judge, the world will never know anything differently than that. Your uncle…” She pressed her fist to her mouth. “Your uncle is already quietly arranging for Miranda to be wed to the squire’s son, back at Mentmore. The boy is
simple,
for the love of Heaven, but Seth says that’s all for the better, as he won’t know he’s been handed damaged…damaged
goods. I think…I think Seth would rather she were dead. But she can’t be dead. She simply cannot!”

Regina held out her arms and her aunt walked into her embrace, putting her head on her niece’s shoulder as she gave way to her grief. She guided the near-to-swooning woman to a chair, and then sat beside her and held her hands as she cried.

Clearly, neither woman was in any shape to go down stairs when the dinner gong was rung. Indeed, Regina didn’t know how she could leave them here alone, as they were both so fragile, each for their own reasons.

But she had to see Puck, had to speak with him. While she’d been in her bath, she’d thought over all that had happened so far in this quite eventful day. She’d thought about how delighted she’d been to see him up on the box, wearing the Mentmore livery. She thought about how he must have looked whilst brandishing his swordstick, saving Davy Tripp from an assassin’s knife.

She thought about how he had kissed her, touched her…and how she’d responded. Even as she’d dragged the soapy sea sponge over her skin, her body had begun to turn liquid, remembering.

They were going to find Miranda. She had put it in front of herself to find her cousin, and she would find her. Rescue her. With Puck’s help, as he seemed likewise determined.

They would remain here, hidden in this lovely Grosvenor Square mansion, not a mile from where her father
resided in the belief that his wife and daughter were even now halfway to Mentmore.

She would be well chaperoned by her aunt and her mother.

It was all rather bizarre, but it was all still rational, in most ways.

At the end of a week, or sooner if Miranda were located, her mother, her aunt and herself would climb back into the Mentmore coach and return to their London residences.

And that would be that. An adventure, a rescue, a good deed done, a mistake corrected.

She would never be allowed to see Puck again. Talk with him again. Watch his slow smile widen, reach all the way up to his mischievous eyes. She’d never feel his touch again. His kiss.

One week. Seven days or even less to learn what it was like for a woman to be made love to by a man such as Robin Goodfellow Blackthorn. For certainly no man her father chose for her would hold a candle to the glories Puck had hinted at that night in the gardens outside that terrible warehouse.

She hadn’t noticed the smell of fish because he had been there. She hadn’t seen the squalor behind the palm trees and draperies because he had looked into her eyes, blinding her to everything else. She hadn’t shied at the tawdriness of it all because she hadn’t felt tawdry or loose or lacking in morals when he’d kissed her, touched her, whispered thrilling, wickedly naughty things against her ear.

She’d felt alive.
Alive.
As she had earlier, in the drawing room. Not wicked, not naughty, not even simply curious.
Alive.

“Or,” she whispered under her breath as Lady Claire returned to sit beside her sister-in-law, “as my idiot cousin said and I now believe I understand…
ready.
”

She squirmed slightly on her chair as that hitherto uninteresting part of her that lay between her thighs began to feel warm, tingly. She squeezed her thighs together tightly and concentrated on the feeling when she squirmed again, rubbing the tops of her thighs together. She could almost feel Puck’s fingers there, stroking her, causing all sort of strange, wonderful sensations to take hold of her, course through her veins with every heartbeat, making her want to open even more for him, so that he could touch her any way he liked, do whatever it was he wanted to do and never, never ever stop.

Just as he’d said to her in the gardens, the words made even more dangerously provocative in French.

Come away with me now, sweet tease, and we will pleasure each other all the night long. We will strip off these masks and with them rid ourselves of all inhibition. You do not yet know me, but I will soon know your every delectable inch, taste your nectar, explore your most intimate, womanly secrets. I will take you where you have never been, touch you in ways you have never been touched. Until you weep with the joy of it.

She could marry the man of her father’s choosing, live until she was a very old woman and never hear
such words. But she had heard them, and she couldn’t get them out of her head.

Didn’t want them out of her head.

Regina got to her feet, ordered her breathing to return to its normal rhythm. She walked over to the tall cabinet and poured herself a tumbler of water to wet her suddenly dry mouth.