A Midsummer Night's Sin (14 page)

Regina’s eyes grew as round as saucers.

“Friday evening? The same night Miranda was taken? But that’s marvelous—I mean, I’m certain Mr. La Reina didn’t think so, but it might be extraordinarily lucky for us. You’re hoping he can tell us more about Miranda’s kidnappers, aren’t you?”

“That is the object of our small excursion, yes,” Puck said, delighted that Regina had understood their mission so quickly, ecstatic that she had put both her hands on his forearm in her excitement and was looking at him as if he’d just hung out the moon for her. “You may kiss me now,” he said, perhaps tumbling into the land of the romantically giddy.

“My, and aren’t you full of yourself this evening. I should think I’d want to reserve any reward until we locate Mr. La Reina,” she told him, her tone light and teasing. “But if you were to insist…”

He cupped her cheek in his hand. “Ah, and I do.”

She was smiling as he touched his mouth to hers, and he quickly took advantage, pulling her fully into his arms as he deepened the kiss.

She wasn’t shy, and she was clearly a very apt student. This kiss was a far cry from their first, yet even
more exciting because he knew not only the body now but something of the woman, as well. She was so much more than merely a comely physical vessel, an attractive outlet for his carnal desires. She was mind and heart and humor and so much more.

Her father’s ambitions be damned. Society be damned. The whole hypocritical world be damned. She was his. He didn’t know how he would achieve the impossible, but he would find a way. They were meant to be, fate had stepped in and chosen for them.

He broke the kiss at last, pulling her even closer so that he could whisper into her ear. “I’m mad for you, you know. Quite possibly insane.”

“I know,” she whispered, rubbing her cheek against his.

Puck very nearly laughed out loud. He put his hands on her shoulders and lightly pushed her away from him. “I beg your pardon? You
know?
Well, aren’t you the cheeky thing.”

Her light laugh set his heart soaring. “Puck, you’ve just been kissing me. Rather heatedly, I think. You’ve taken…certain liberties and have allowed me no end of liberties you should have denied me, and that could very well lead you into troubles no man would take on lightly. My father is a formidable man. He would have your liver on a spit if he was to know the half of what you and I have been doing since we first met, including the fact that you had the audacity to have all but kidnapped his wife, for pity’s sake. That all said, I would much prefer that you are mad for me, rather than simply
mad. Oh, and if I’m wrong, please don’t tell me, as I seem to be quite alone with you inside this coach.”

He looked at her for a long moment, his lips firmly pressed together, before his shoulders began to shake and he at last gave way to hilarity. To give her credit, Regina allowed him his amusement for a full minute before she told him to stop.

“I apologize,” he said, then chuckled one last time. “Really. I’m being serious now.”

“No, you’re not,” she shot right back at him. “You’re never serious, even when you are. You see not only the humor but also the hope in everything. It’s one of your most endearing qualities. I’d be terrified, otherwise, so thank you. Now, is that Davy shouting something from the top of the coach?”

Puck immediately leaned across the coach and opened the small door used to converse with the coachman. “Mr. Tripp! Do you see our man?”

“Aye, guv, I sees ’im. Lookin’ mighty fine all trucked out in pink this evenin’ he is, guv.”

“Stop the coach and hop down.”

“Will do, guv,” Davy said and then raised his voice. “You there! I sees you, Mr. Queen! I gots a fine gentry mort ’ere wants ter talk with yer.
Hey, stop!
”

Puck retrieved his sword cane from the floor and turned to Regina. “Stay right here. I mean it. I’ll bring La Reina to you.”

She nodded, biting down on her bottom lip.

He took her face between his hands and planted a quick, firm kiss on her forehead, then was out of the
coach and running after Davy Tripp’s departing back, a vision in pink loping along ahead of them, skirts raised to reveal hairy legs and bony knees.

Mr. Queen unexpectedly ducked into an alleyway, and Davy skidded by the opening on the wet cobblestones as he belatedly tried to change direction, landing on his backside in a puddle, putting himself out of the running.

“Up you get, Mr. Tripp—no time for lollygagging!” Puck shouted as he, not making Davy’s mistake, took the corner more carefully and then put his entire mind to running as fast as he’d ever run, at least since that night in Toulouse, when he’d nearly run afoul of a determined gendarme as he’d climbed down the drainpipe from the mayor’s daughter’s boudoir.

Thanking his usual good luck for the full moon, he avoided heaps of fetid garbage, a pair of feral cats that were busily mating in the middle of the alley as well as two supposed humans doing the same thing up against a rough, wooden wall, and was able to catch hold of La Reina’s skirts just as he was in the act of vaulting over a ramshackle fence.

“Hold there! It’s only talk that I want from you, and I’ll pay for that pleasure. Handsomely. Or not, if you try kicking me in the head again, young lady.”

“I ain’t nobody’s— Leave off me!”

Puck grabbed at one flailing ankle and, with his fist twisted in the material of the gown, gave a mighty yank. Down came La Reina. Unfortunately, the ram
shackle fence immediately became a casualty, thanks to the man’s tight grip on it.

Puck lost his footing but not his grip, and was suddenly on his back, covered by both La Reina’s flailing body and several ancient, heavy, rain-soaked boards of the fence.

He wrapped one strong leg around both of the small man’s and his forearm around the fellow’s scrawny neck, effectively cutting off his air while daring splinters and much more as he then rolled the fellow onto his stomach, his arms trapped beneath him.

“Try for your knife,” Puck warned him tersely, still recovering his breath, “and you and I will become even more intimate, much to the displeasure of both of us. I am not by nature a violent man, you understand, but you’ve done my rigout what I’m sure is a mortal injury, and I am not best pleased with you at the moment. Try me again and I may cease being so pleasant.”

“I…I can’t breathe!”

“Really?” Puck allowed shock to color his voice and loosened his hold fractionally to give the man air. “And must you? I mean, if you were to answer my questions, you would need breath to speak, I suppose. But if you were to continue to refuse, I wonder that you’ll need breath.” He leaned close to the man’s ear, locking his forearm tightly across his windpipe once more.
“Ever again.”

La Reina or Mr. Queen or whoever he was immediately began bucking, trying to get Puck off him, an
exercise, the man soon realized, almost laughable in its futility.

“Wot…wot you wants ter know?”

Puck immediately relaxed his grip and leaped lightly to his feet, locating his swordstick on the cobblestones and unsheathing it before La Reina could disengage his snagged skirts from the destroyed fence. When he at last had managed to—dear God!—adjust his bodice to a more discreet position and straightened, it was to find the tip of that same swordstick an inch away from his nose.

“Your sticker, my sweet, soiled dove,” Puck crooned as Davy Tripp stepped forward from the shadows. “You will kindly remove it from your person and drop it over there—” he indicated the side of the alley with an inclination of his head “—where my associate here—yes, indeed, that would be you, Mr. Tripp—will then retrieve it.”

An efficient-looking knife went skittering into the base of the brick wall.

“Wot did yer go runnin’ fer, Mr. Queen? I told yer. The gentry mort only wants ter talk.”

“A small lesson, Mr. Tripp. When you wish to speak with someone who might not wish to be spoken with, you do not call to him from a distance. You walk up to him and tap him most congenially on the shoulder and then clamp your hand firmly on said shoulder. Do you think you can remember that?”

Davy nodded furiously. “So’s that he don’t lope off.”

“Ah, teachable. Wonderful. Shall we find our way back to the coach now? You first, madam.”

“I ain’t no madam, neither,” La Reina grumbled. “I’ll fix you, Davy Tripp, next time I sees yer. Jist yer wait.”

Davy, apparently feeling drunk with power, seeing as how Puck still had the swordstick point at La Reina’s spine, responded by dancing in front of the man and making loud, smacking kissing noises.

“I see an extended stay in the country in your future, Mr. Tripp, if not a permanent remove,” Puck said, once more enjoying himself, or at least as much as was possible when his entire back was soaked through to the skin with none-too-clean rainwater and other liquids he wouldn’t care to identify. “And now, if you’ll kindly retrieve my hat, I will make it a gift to you. I rather think I shan’t be wearing it again.”

Davy ran off down the alley once more, appearing again with the wet, dirty, faintly dented, curly-brimmed beaver on his head, held up from covering his face by means of his marvelously protuberant ears.

The copulating couple had gone, although the feral cats were still seemingly enjoying each other’s close company as Puck and his small entourage made their way back to the coach. As he got closer, he could see Regina’s face peeking out from behind the concealing leather shade, and waved to her.

The coach door was immediately opened, and the steps kicked down. It would seem she was happy for his return. How nice. However, once she smelled him, she might change her mind.

Still, it had been a productive night’s work. And it was far from over.

R
EGINA RAISED HER
bent legs up onto the seat of the comfortable leather chair and arranged her dressing gown so that it covered her ankles. She was entirely modest, thanks to the cut of the dressing gown rather than her own inclinations, the white dimity buttoning nearly to her chin, the lace-edged sleeves covering half her hands.

Her hair was hanging freely down her back, its waves unleashed to tumble where they might, a casual comfort she hadn’t appreciated when she’d been younger and longing to be allowed to finally declare herself grown by putting up her hair.

It was strange, the things one thought one could not live without, and once you held them in your hand, the longing seemed silly when compared to the mundane reality.

In any event, Mr. Queen or La Reina or whatever the odd little man’s name was shouldn’t be too shocked by her appearance if he were to return with Puck. On the other hand, she doubted her dressing gown would do much to encourage Puck. That was unfortunate but also for the best, especially if he learned anything important in his nocturnal travels.

The mantel clock struck the hour of midnight, and Regina wondered yet again what was happening.

They had returned to Grosvenor Square a rather strange group, with herself riding alone inside the coach and Puck and the others up on top. She would appreciate the arrangement, he’d told her rather gleefully, and even from the distance he kept between himself and the coach when he’d first approached, she had readily agreed with him.

He had lost his grosgrain ribbon, so that his streaked golden hair had fallen forward, making him look young and jaunty and meltingly handsome. His hat had been on Davy Tripp’s head—making that poor soul simply look silly—and there was a tear in the knee of Puck’s trousers. If he had looked any happier, he would have been giggling like a child. Except, of course, for the swordstick he had pointed at the back of the bedraggled La Reina; that had looked considerably less than silly.

Honestly, be they boys or grown men, there seemed nothing so certain to bring a smile to their faces than having had the opportunity to roll about in the muck. Rather like pigs with clothes, she supposed, although the piggery at Hackett House in Hampshire smelled sweet by comparison.

Bored with the pose she had struck on the chair, especially with no audience to see her, Regina wandered over to the bookshelves to peruse the titles, which clearly were well-read. One book in particular caught her attention, as the spine seemed broken. Either well-read or poorly constructed—or abused by a reader more
intent on the words than the appearance of the thing. She had to handle it carefully as she slipped it from its resting place, carried it over to the chair and the lit candles.

The Aeneid.
Ah, Virgil’s epic poem that told of the supposed Trojan Wars. She knew it well. She’d read Homer’s
Iliad,
of course, but that epic poem had covered only three days of the ten-year war that was at times variously aided and abetted by the Greek gods of Olympus.

It was
The Aeneid
that had included the fascinating story of the Trojan Horse. Why anyone would accept a
gift
from a departing, defeated army had made no sense to her then and still did not. But, again, men had made the decision, probably drunk with their victory. Any woman would look at such a gift and wonder
why
it had been given, and then have someone quickly dispose of it.

Regina carried the volume back to the shelf and replaced it, smiling as she heard a sound near the doorway. “At least it is not your
perfume
that first announces you this time,” she said as she turned with a welcoming smile that quickly dropped away from her face. “Who are you?”

The man did not move from where he stood, almost as if that courtesy was supposed to comfort her in some way. He bowed rather elegantly for a housebreaker, she supposed, and was dressed nothing like one, unless housebreakers were espousing exquisitely tailored evening wear this Season.

He was dark of hair, his skin tanned as if he spent much of his time outdoors, and he was probably the most frighteningly handsome man she’d ever encountered. Very much the man but with a nearly unreal beauty to him, marred only by the intense expression in his disturbingly compelling eyes. He also seemed to know his way about the room, as after his bow, he headed straight to the drinks table without looking in that direction and poured himself a glass of wine from the decanter.

When she was about to scream in either fear or frustration, he turned to her, saluted her with his glass and then downed the wine in two large gulps before finally answering her question.

“A question I could turn back on you, Miss Hackett, were I not already apprised of your presence in what is, or so I’m told, partially
my
residence. I take it my reprobate brother is currently occupied elsewhere. Making a muddle of things, no doubt. Or should I say, making
more
of a muddle of things? He’s already in it past his knees, having deposited you and your relatives here. Kidnappers hang, I believe.”

Regina longed to take umbrage at the man’s description of Puck but held her tongue. Brothers probably always thought their siblings never grow up. “We have not been kidnapped, Mr. Blackthorn. We are guests. You are Don John Blackthorn, aren’t you?
Black Jack?
And, if I must say so, rather painfully obvious in the way you are attempting to live up to your name.”

His smile transformed his face from cruel beauty
to something much more appealing. “On the contrary, Miss Hackett, I aim only to live
down
to it. Perhaps I find this all rather amusing because it isn’t the first time one of my brothers has hidden a woman here at the mansion. Perhaps that’s where Puck got the idea. At any rate, please, be seated, and I apologize for my rude behavior. I will, however, ask again—is my brother about?”

Regina retook her seat and once more pulled her legs up onto the cushion, busying herself arranging her skirts over her slippers in order to give herself time to formulate an answer. “He may have gone out,” she said at last. “Shall I tell him you’ve called and wish to see him?”

“Thank you for that polite invitation to vacate the premises. But, no, I believe I’ll wait.” He sat himself down in the facing chair, gracefully crossing one long leg over the other. “We will wait together.”

“Very well, Mr. Blackthorn,” Regina said, wishing she had done what was proper, or as proper as the admittedly peculiar circumstances could make it, and excused herself from the room. “But please do not relax in the erroneous conclusion that we shall now chat about innocuous things, as I have no time for such pleasantries. Have you made any progress in your investigation of the disappearances? Are you here to declare success or in the hope that Puck has seen some success to your failure?”

“You’ve quite the way with an insult, Miss Hackett. My congratulations. But to answer your question,
I might be further along with my investigation if mine own brother trusted me enough to share information with me. Just small, piddling details, really. Such as the location of the masquerade ball from whence your cousin was taken against her will. As I said, piddling.”

“He didn’t tell you that?” Regina pretended surprise. “Doesn’t he trust you?”

“Oh, I’m certain he does. As much as I trust him.” Jack’s emerald-green eyes narrowed slightly beneath low, winglike brows. “I have wasted one of my best men all of last night and today, following after my dear Robin Goodfellow, making sure he doesn’t tumble into some desperate situation, only to learn that he has now seemed to have taken up chasing hapless females down alleyways. Needless to say, my curiosity was piqued. Would you know anything about that, Miss Hackett?”

The corners of Regina’s lips twitched in humor, but she managed to restrain her smile. “The only thing that I would know about that, Mr. Blackthorn, is that one of your best men obviously needs to consider spectacles.”

“Ah, and now you’ve caught me out. Allow me to amend that.
One
of my men, not necessarily one of my best. The fact that Puck waved to the fellow from the top of the coach as it drove off earlier this evening—and that my man was so silly as to reveal that to me—is the reason I’m here.”

“Puck saw your man? And
waved
to him?”

“Blew him a kiss, actually. My brother has a strong leaning toward the dramatic gesture, I’m afraid.”

“And you, of course, would recognize that. Why,
nearly as much so, I suppose, as if you were looking into a mirror,” Regina said slyly.

Jack’s smile was beginning to unnerve Regina somewhat, as it was very like Puck’s, and she did not want to feel kindly toward this strange man.

“Shall we cry friends, Regina? Puck might be more forthcoming if he sees that we two are rubbing along well together, and that can only be of benefit to your cousin. We are soon to be running out of time. Two more young women were taken since I last spoke to my brother. Someone, I believe, is gearing up for an ocean voyage and is busily and none too selectively rushing to gather the remainder of his cargo, as if on some sort of deadline. We lose to that deadline, and your cousin is gone forever out of reach.”

Regina’s heart skipped a beat. “How soon? What would constitute a full cargo? Do you know? No, don’t bother to answer. How could you? How could anyone? No civilized person could possibly understand anyone so vile as to sell another human being.”

“Ah, but Regina, it is only in understanding them that we can hope to capture them. We are looking for someone unscrupulous, naturally. Someone who places no value on anything or anyone, other than monetary, what that person can do for him, how he can profit from them.” Jack smiled again. “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone like that, would you? It would make our search that much more simple.”

“No,” Regina said softly, her throat suddenly gone tight. “I wouldn’t…I wouldn’t know anyone like that.”
And then she looked up at the sound of footsteps approaching the study, nearly giddy with relief to see Puck rather affectedly shooting his cuffs as he strolled into the room. What an impossible man. It was clear he already knew that his brother was present.

Still, his feigned surprise was rather convincing. It was as if the two men were playing a game; both knew the rules, and both enjoyed the moves.

“Jack, how good of you to visit, even at this unfashionably late hour,” he said and then inclined his head to Regina and winked. “And aren’t you lovely. Such charming
dishabille,
yet modest to a fault. He hasn’t scared you away? Jack, you’re losing your touch. The way I’ve heard it, women and children run from the sight of you. Strong men cavil at your penetrating stare. Etcetera.”

“Insolent puppy,” Jack said, but with good humor. But then the game-playing was over. “So, what did you learn from La Reina?”

Puck looked to Regina, one eyebrow raised in inquiry.
What did you tell him?

She shook her head. “He had you followed tonight.”

“True, and not just tonight. Dickie Carstairs has been on my heels so long I’ve given serious thought to adopting him. But he’s learned the young lady’s name? That is unexpected, since I find myself amazed that the man can find his own way home. Good on Dickie.”

Regina bent her head and bit on her knuckle. She should be embarrassed to be here, dressed as she was—modestly, if inappropriately. She shouldn’t be enjoying
this verbal fencing between brothers, one light to the other’s dark but both of them clearly devoted to each other. But her cousin was missing and in grave danger, and she doubted a full team of horses could drag her from this room. She wouldn’t be anywhere else!

“Your brother just told me that two more young women have been taken,” she said, bringing the conversation back on point, rather like a governess attempting to keep her charges’ attention on their lessons while a bluebird sang on a branch just outside the nursery window. “He also told me that you never mentioned the masquerade. Now you need to tell him, and me, what you learned from La Reina.”

Puck looked to his brother. “Two? How many is that? I mean, since you began to keep count. Lord knows there are bound to be more.”

“Definitely more than two dozen now, including your cousin, Regina. I would think that enough, if not for the fact that the majority are prostitutes, as is the case with the two most recent disappearances, and don’t bring the sort of price possible with—pardon me. I am attempting, badly, to say that were I the father of a lovely, fair-haired young debutante, I should be keeping her very close at the moment.”

“The Crown still won’t allow a warning to the populace? You’ve told them what you think, and those idiots won’t change their minds?”

“No, Puck, they won’t, for obvious reasons. Why else do you think they involved me, a person who occasionally does their dirty work for them, a person who,
for all intents and purposes, does not exist? And before you start berating me, remember that you’ve been less than helpful in my investigation. Truth to tell, this buying and selling of white women has been going on for as long as there have been unscrupulous men with money and…certain appetites. If a certain somebody’s goddaughter had not been taken, I’d still be in Scotland, cleaning up another mess.”

“And they would never have known about Miranda,” Regina said, nodding her agreement with Jack. “How many others do you suppose traveled home during their London Season to nurse a slight illness, only to have the world later learn that they’d
succumbed
to those illnesses?”

“I can think of two in the last three years, and I am hardly the one to ask as I am rarely in London,” Jack said, looking at Puck. “Now, what did you learn from your little miss?”

Puck poured a glass of wine for himself and then took up his stance in front of the mantelpiece. “La Reina, or more aptly, Mr. Queen—”

Jack held up one hand. “A moment, please. Clearly Dickie’s powers of observation can sometimes be, as you said, limited. Our lady is a man?”