The Last Hellion (20 page)

"Good grief, Ainswood," she exclaimed softly. "What's happened to you?" Her astonished gaze moved up to his head. "Your hair is combed." Her attention drifted downward. "You haven't slept in your clothes."

His powerful shoulders lifted in a shrug. "I thought we were discussing Miss Price and Trent, not what I wear to bed."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

Lydia would not be diverted from her subject. "I collect you took my suggestion and hanged your valet, and found a responsible replacement."

"I did not hang him." He leaned in closer, and Lydia caught a tantalizing whiff of soap and cologne. "I told him—"

"That's a most agreeable scent," she said, tilting her head back. "What is it?"

"I told him," Ainswood went on tautly, "that you did not approve of my manner of dressing." His big hands settled upon the desk on either side of her. "I told him my life was henceforth rendered weary, stale, and profitless."

She closed her eyes and sniffed. "Like a pine forest… far away… the faintest trace carried on the wind."

She opened her eyes. His mouth was but an inch from hers.

He drew back, retreated out of reach, and brushed something from his cuff. "I'll tell him you were transported and burst into poetical raptures. I'll tell him you were rendered utterly useless for intelligent discussion. Still, you haven't argued about my arrangements for Trent and your companion—which ought to be marked down as a miracle of some kind. Until tonight, then."

He turned away and started toward the door.

"That's all?" she asked. "That's all you came for—to tell me about your plans for Trent?"

"Yes." He didn't look back, didn't pause, but strode through the door and slammed it behind him.

Grenville had very sensibly stuffed her thick golden hair under a battered cap.

The trousers were supposed to be sensible, too. As she'd told Vere, she was stripped for action—in a dark-colored masculine shirt tucked into the waistband Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

of the trousers and a spencer over that—with no skirts or loose garment ends to catch or tangle in anything.

And so, because the spencer reached only as low as her waist, and because the secondhand trousers were worn tissue-thin in the rump and the fit there was a tormenting fraction too tight, Vere's own nether regions were stirring for action.

The wrong kind.

Keep your mind on the job
, he commanded himself as her foot left his laced fingers and she swung up onto the privy.

They were in the backyard of Coralie's house.

Vere adjusted the dark kerchief—slit, like hers, for seeing and breathing—that hid his face, and climbed after her. From the roof of the outdoor necessary, it was an easy reach to the ledge outside Coralie's back window. The window was closed only, not bolted, so Vere had no trouble prying it open with his pocketknife.

Coralie had long since left, and moments earlier, Vere had checked on the remaining occupants. A pair of servants were belowstairs having a row, by the sounds of it. Nonetheless, he checked again for signs of first-floor occupancy before climbing in. Grenville followed close behind him, swinging her long legs over the sill.

"Light closet," she murmured, the words barely audible. "Unused, evidently."

That was unsurprising. Coralie had moved to Francis Street very recently.

Grenville's study was a converted light closet, he recalled. The cramped space at the back of the house had one small window to let in daylight, and a doll-size fireplace. With the desk and chair and wall-to-wall books, it was an open invitation to conflagration.

That wasn't the fire he'd been worried about at the time. It was the way she'd Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

looked at him. The blinking astonishment—as though his combed hair and clean, unrumpled clothes constituted one of the world's wonders—should have been comical, but he'd been too irritated to laugh. He'd felt hot and uncomfortable, like a schoolboy in his Sunday best, trying to impress the object of his calflove.

That wasn't the worst of it, though. He'd discovered moments later that a pair of ice-blue eyes could transmit heat and drive a man's temperature up to the danger point. He'd had to hurry out then, before he lost control.

In his haste, he'd failed to inform her of other changes in plans. Doubtless she would play him one of her rotten tricks, to pay him back for sneaking in her servants' entrance at half past eight and bullying her into the carriage he'd hired.

She'd wanted to take a hackney. It was more anonymous, she said. She apparently believed him stupid enough to arrive in one of his own vehicles—

complete with ducal crest screaming his identity from the door.

She truly did believe his mind was stunted, Vere brooded as he felt his way through the tiny back room.

As though her brain were infallible.

It hadn't dawned on her that Coralie's house was but a few streets from Soho Square, which made it logical for Vere, who was coming from farther away, to collect his partner-in-crime en route, instead of her going out of her way and having to backtrack.

Not that mere would have been any point in telling her. He was sure she hadn't attended to more than a word in twenty of what he'd said to her in the study.

She'd been too busy staring at him, watching every move he made, as though she had him under a microscope.

In his misspent life, he'd undressed any number of women with his eyes. If they'd returned the favor, he hadn't paid much attention. Today he'd been Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

pulsingly conscious of the blue gaze that seemed to penetrate layers of immaculately tailored clothes as though they'd been transparent.

Naturally, his rod had started swelling for sport, and then she'd got that dazed, dreamy look and started talking poetry, and… well, then, as you'd expect, his brain had closed up shop and left the thinking to his breeding organ.

It was a miracle he hadn't thrown her down on the desk and relieved her of her maidenhead then and there, he reflected irritably as his fingers settled upon the door handle. Again he listened. No signs of life. Cautiously, he cracked the door open.

One small lamp feebly lit the room, casting uncertain shadows. "Bedroom," he said in an undertone.

"You take the left side, I'll take the right," she whispered.

He slipped into the room and moved noiselessly to the opposite door. She trailed close on his heels. Starting from the door, they began to search their assigned territories for jewelry.

The room was a mess: gowns, underthings, footwear strewn everywhere.

In his mind's eye, Vere saw a similar scene, but in his own bedroom, and in his fancy it was dragon's wear scattered about: a wanton trail of discarded black garments ending in a tangled heap of chemise, corset, and stockings, beside the bed. Upon the bed lay a luscious expanse of woman, smoky hot, and…

"Good God."

Vere's glance shot toward his companion. For one mortifying moment, he feared he'd said what he was so lewdly thinking. But no. Her masked countenance was not turned toward him. She was on her knees, staring into an open hatbox.

He dropped the petticoat he'd just fished out from under a footstool, crossed the room, and knelt beside her.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

In the flickering lamplight, bracelets, earrings, rings, necklaces, seals, chains, and brooches winked up at him from the box. The hopeless tangle looked like a magpie's nest, with pieces knotted and woven with one another. That, however, was not what had elicited Grenville's breathless exclamation.

She took up an object from the top of the glittering heap. It was a silver stickpin.

The head was artfully carved to depict two body parts conjoined in a manner expressly prohibited by both church and state.

He snatched it from her. "Never mind puzzling over that," he whispered. "Are Miss Price's things in there?"

"Yes—along with, apparently, every piece of jewelry in the Western Hemisphere. Separating them will be like untying the Gordian knot. She's hooked rings through chains and necklaces and—oh, everything is either attached to or tangled with everything else."

She crawled away, searched through a heap of clothing, and drew out a chemise.

She came back, laid it on the floor, and dumped the hatbox's contents onto it.

Then she gathered up the edges of the garment and fashioned a bundle.

"Find me a garter," she said.

"Are you mad? We can't take everything. You said—"

"We have no choice. We can't stay here all night trying to work loose the pieces we want. Find me a—Never mind. There's one."

She snatched up a stray garter and tied the bundle with it.

Vere relieved his feelings by jamming the obscene stickpin into a nearby bonnet.

She started to rise, then froze.

Vere heard it, too, in the same instant: footsteps and voices approaching…

rapidly.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

He lunged at her, pushed her down, and shoved her under the bed. He flung a heap of gowns and petticoats onto the hatbox and pushed it into a corner, then dove under the bed, in the same moment the door opened.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

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It seemed to go on for hours: the mattress jerking violently above, the French girl alternately crying out in pain and begging for more while her partner alternately laughed and threatened in a vaguely familiar voice that seemed to slither over Lydia's skin and into her belly, leaving her chilled and faintly nauseated.

She could not stop herself from edging nearer to Ainswood. She would have burrowed under his big body if she could, but the tight vertical fit prevented her from carrying out that inexplicable act of cowardice. Even flat on her stomach, she occasionally felt the mattress sag onto her head. She prayed it wouldn't collapse. She prayed that neither of the acrobatic lovebirds would tumble off and happen to look under the bed.

It wasn't the easiest corner to fight one's way out of, and she would not be able to fight very effectively while keeping a firm grip on the precious bundle.

Devil take them, would they never stop?

Finally, after about two more minutes that felt like two decades, the tumult subsided.

Leave
, Lydia silently commanded.
You've had your fun. Now go away
.

But no, now they had to exchange pillow talk.

"Lovely performance, Annette," said the man. "But you may tell your mistress that one accommodating slut is not enough to appease me."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

The mattress shifted and a pair of stockinged masculine feet descended to the floor, inches from Lydia's head. She felt Ainswood's hand slide over her back and press her down firmly.

She comprehended his silent message: Keep still.

She remained still, although it seemed that every muscle in her body was twitching. From her vantage point, it was evident that the fellow was conducting a search similar to theirs. She stifled a gasp when he unearthed the hatbox she'd emptied.

But he flung it aside and snatched up a bonnet. "Here's my silver stickpin," he said. "Now, do you know what this looks like? It looks like adding insult to injury. After keeping what she knew was mine, and lying when I asked her whether I'd left it here, she has the effrontery to flaunt the thing in public—

adorning her garish bonnet, no less."

"I did not know," came the girl's uneasy voice. "I never saw it before, I promise you, monsieur."

The stockinged feet advanced to the bed, then disappeared as he climbed onto it, the mattress sinking under his weight. The girl let out a shriek.

"Do you like that, Annette?" the man asked, his voice tinged with amusement.

"Would you like to be my pincushion for an hour or so? I can think of many interesting places to—"

"Please, monsieur. It was not me. I did not take it. Why do you punish me?"

"Because I am very cross, Annette. Your mistress stole my wicked little stickpin

—one of a kind, and it cost me plenty. And she's stolen—or driven off—the little flower girl I'd set my heart on. A pretty little cripple, all alone in the world. She wasn't in her usual place in Covent Garden last night, but Corrie was there, all smiles. The girl wasn't there tonight, either." The mattress moved violently and Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

the girl cried out.

Lydia felt Ainswood's body tense beside her. She, too, was tensing, eager to spring out and beat senseless the foul thing above them. But the girl began to giggle, and Lydia reminded herself what sort of girl Annette was: second only to Madam Brees in ruthlessness and brutality, Annette was the one who usually helped Josiah and Bill break in new girls.

Lydia found Ainswood's hand and pressed hers upon it, willing him to remain where he was.

"No, this isn't the way to punish her, is it?" the man was saying. "What does she care what I do to you?"

Once more his feet descended to the floor. This time, he collected the garments he'd discarded so hastily.

"Get dressed," he said. "Or stay undressed, whatever you prefer. But you're going on a treasure hunt, Annette, and I hope for your sake it's successful."

"But I do not know what has become of the jewelry."

Lydia's heart tried to crawl into her throat.

The girl knew the jewelry was missing. Evidently her client had either returned or arrived unexpectedly, and interrupted her ransacking of Coralie's bedroom. It must have been Annette and this vile man they had heard arguing downstairs.

The man laughed. "What good is that rat's nest to me? It would take weeks to untangle it, and for what? A very few items of any value, mixed with a prodigious lot of worthless gewgaws. Corrie has no taste, no discernment, only greed. No, my little pincushion. I want the silver, gold, and banknotes. The box.

I know what it looks like, but I'm not in a humor to hunt for it."

"Monsieur, I beg you. I am the only one she tells where it is. If it is gone, she will blame me, and she—"