The Last Hellion (3 page)

Only she and Angus were aware that its author's name, Mr. S. E. St. Bellair, was also a piece of fiction.

Even Joe Purvis didn't know that Lydia wrote the chapters he illustrated. Like everyone else, he believed the author was a reclusive bachelor. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined that Miss Grenville, the
Argus's
most cynically hardheaded reporter, had created a single word of the wildly fanciful and convoluted tale.

Lydia herself did not like being reminded. She paused and turned back toward Angus. "Romantic claptrap," she said.

"So it may be, but your fascinating claptrap is what hooked the readers—

especially the ladies—in the first place, and it's what brings them back begging for more. Damnation, you've even got me wriggling on your hook." He rose and rounded the desk. "That clever girl, your Miranda—Mrs. Macgowan and I were talking about it, and my wife thinks the wicked, dashing fellow ought to come to Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

his senses and—"

"Angus, I proposed writing that idiotish story on two conditions," Lydia said in a low, hard voice. "No med-dling from you or anyone else was one condition. The other was absolute anonymity." She bent a glacial blue stare upon him. "If the faintest hint gets about that I am the author of that sentimental swill, I shall hold you personally responsible. In which case, all contracts between us shall be null and void." Her blue glare bore an alarming resemblance to one employed by certain members of the nobility, under which generations of their inferiors had quailed.

Lionhearted Scotsman though he was, Macgowan cowered under the frigid look as any other inferior would, his countenance reddening. "Quite right, Grenville,"

he said meekly. "Most indiscreet of me to speak of it here. The door is thick, but best to take no chances. You know I'm fully aware of my obligations to you and

—"

"Oh, for God's sake, don't toady," she snapped. "You pay me well enough." She marched to the door. "Come, Susan." The mastiff rose. Lydia took up the leash and opened the door. "Good day, Macgowan," she said, then strode out the door without waiting for an answer.

"Good day," he said to her back and, "Your Majesty," he added under his breath.

"Bloody damned queen, she thinks she is—but the bitch can write, confound her."

There were a great many people in England at this moment who would agree that Miss Grenville could write. Many of them, however, would have maintained that Mr. S. E. St. Bellair could write even better.

This was what Mr. Archibald Jaynes, valet to the Duke of Ainswood, was Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

attempting to explain to his master.

Jaynes didn't look like a valet. Narrowly built and wiry, with beady black eyes sitting very close to his long, crooked—on account of being broken several times

—nose, he looked more like the weasely sort of ruffian frequently encountered at horse races or boxing matches, taking bets.

Jaynes himself would have hesitated to use the term "gentleman's gentleman" on his own account. While, despite his unprepossessing features, he was exceedingly neat and elegant, his tall, handsome master was not what Jaynes would call a gentleman.

The two men sat in the best—which was not saying much, in Mr. Jaynes's opinion—dining room of the Ala-mode Beef House in Clare Court. The street, a narrow way off infamous Drury Lane, was hardly the most elegant in London, and the Alamode's culinary productions were scarcely calculated to appeal to discriminating palates. All of which suited the duke admirably, for he was no more elegant or discriminating than the average savage, and probably less so, from what Jaynes had read of the aboriginal races.

Having made short work of a tall heap of beef, His Grace had settled—or sprawled, was more like it—back in his chair and was watching a waiter replenish his tankard of ale.

The duke's chestnut hair, with which Jaynes had taken such pains only a short time earlier, had got raked into a tumbled disorder that declared it had never met comb or brush in its life. The neckcloth, once crisply starched and painstakingly knotted, with each crease formed at proper intervals and angles, had subsided into limp and rumpled disarray. As to the rest of His Grace's garments: In a nutshell, they looked as though he'd slept in them, which was how they usually looked, no matter what one did, and,
Really, I wonder why I bother
, Jaynes was thinking.

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What he was saying was, "The 'Rose of Thebes' is the name given to a great ruby, which the heroine found some chapters ago when she was trapped in the pharaoh's tomb with the snakes. It is an adventure story, you see, and all the rage since summer."

The waiter having departed, the duke turned his bored green gaze upon the copy of the
Argus
. It lay as yet un-opened—and it was only through a phenomenal exercise of willpower that Jaynes had resisted opening it—upon the table.

"That would explain why you hauled me from the house at dawn's crack," said His Grace. "And dragged me from one book shop to the next looking for it—and all of them thick with females. Mainly of the wrong sort," he added, grimacing.

"I've never seen so many dowds in so many jabbering clumps as I have this morning."

"It's half past two," Jaynes said. "You never saw the morning. As to the dawn, it was cracking when you finally staggered home. Moreover, I discerned several attractive young ladies among the crowds of what you so callously dismiss as

'dowds.' But then, if their faces aren't thick with paint and their bosoms aren't bursting from then-bodices, they are invisible to you."

"Pity they aren't inaudible as well," his employer muttered. "Twittering and simpering lot of nitwits. And meanwhile ready to claw one another's eyes out for

—What is the curst thing?" He took up the magazine, glanced at the cover, and dropped it. "The
Argus
, indeed. 'The Watchdog of London,' it purports to be—as though the world is famished for more pontificating from Fleet Street."

"The
Argus's
offices are in the Strand, not Fleet Street," said Jaynes. "And it is refreshingly free of pontificating. Ever since Miss Grenville joined the staff, the publication has become more like what its subtitle claims. The Argus of mythology, you may recollect—"

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

"I'd rather not recall my days in the schoolroom." Ainswood reached for his tankard. "When it wasn't Latin, it was Greek. When it wasn't Greek, it was Latin.

And when it wasn't either, it was flogging."

"When it wasn't drinking, gaming, and whoring," Jaynes said under his breath.

He ought to know, having entered Vere Mallory's service when the latter was sixteen, and the dukedom apparently safe, with several Mallory males standing between him and the title. But they were gone now. With the death of the last, a boy of nine, nearly a year and a half ago, Jaynes's employer had become the seventh Duke of Ainswood.

Inheriting the title had not mended his character a whit. On the contrary, he had gone from bad to worse, thence to unspeakable.

More audibly Jaynes said, "The Argus was reputed to possess a hundred eyes, you will recall. Its namesake's aim is to contribute to a well-informed populace by observing unflinchingly and reporting upon the metropolis as though it had a hundred eyes. For instance, Miss Grenville's article concerning the unfortunate young women—"

"I thought there was only one," said his master. "The addlepated chit who got herself trapped in the tomb with the snakes. Typical," he sneered. "And some poor sod must gallop to milady's rescue. Only to die of snakebite for his pains. If he's lucky."

Thickhead
, Jaynes thought. "I was not referring to Mr. St. Bellair's story," he said. "Whose heroine, for your information, escaped the tomb with no outside assistance. However, I was speaking of—"

. "Don't tell me—she talked the snakes to death." Ainswood hoisted the ale tankard to his lips and emptied it.

"I was speaking of Miss Grenville's work," Jaynes said. "Her articles and essays Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

are exceedingly popular with the ladies."

"God save us from bluestockings. You know what their trouble is, don't you, Jaynes? Due to not getting pumped regular, females take the oddest fancies, such as imagining they can
think
." The duke wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

He was a barbarian, that's what he was, Jaynes thought. His Grace belonged among the Vandal hordes that had once sacked Rome. As to his views of women, those had rapidly regressed to antediluvian since his elevation to the title.

"Not all women are witless," the valet persisted. "If you would take the trouble to become acquainted with women of your own class, rather than illiterate whores—"

"The whores give me the only thing I want from a female, and don't expect anything from me but the fee. I can't think of one good reason to bother with the other kind."

"One good reason is, you'll never get yourself a proper duchess if you refuse to come within a mile of a respectable female."

The duke set down his mug. "Devil take you, are you going to start that again?"

"You'll be four and thirty in four months," said Jaynes. "At the rate you've been going lately, your chances of seeing that birthday are approximately nil. There is the title to consider, and its responsibilities, the foremost of which is to get an heir."

Ainswood pushed away from the table and rose. "Why the devil should I consider the title? It never considered me." He snatched up his hat and gloves. "It should have stayed where it was and let me alone, but no, it wouldn't, would it?

It had to keep creeping on toward me, one confounded funeral after another.

Well, I say let it go on creeping after they plant me with the others. Then it can Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

hang itself on some other poor sod's neck, like the bleeding damned albatross it is."

He stalked out.

Some moments later, Vere had reached the end of Catherine Street and started west, intending to quiet his inner turmoil by the river, with the aid of a few more tankards of ale at the Fox Under the Hill.

As he turned into the Strand, he saw a cabriolet burst through the crush of vehicles at Exeter 'Change. The carriage narrowly missed spitting a pie seller on its shaft, veered perilously toward an oncoming cart, corrected in the nick of time, then swung aside sharply—straight toward a gentleman stepping off the curb to cross the street.

Without pausing to think, Vere hurtled forward, grabbed the fellow, and dragged him back to the footway—an instant before the carriage rocketed into Catherine Street.

As it thundered past, he caught a glimpse of the driver: a black-garbed female, with a black mastiff for a passenger, an obviously panicked horse under the ribbons—and no tiger on the platform behind to help her.

He set the fellow aside and hurried after the vehicle.

Lydia swore when she saw her prey dart into Russell Court. The cramped passageway was too narrow for the cabriolet, and if she made the long circuit round Drary Lane Theater, she was sure to lose them. She drew the carriage to a halt and leapt from it, Susan close behind. A ragged boy hurried forward.

"Mind the mare, Tom, and there's two bob for you," Lydia told the street urchin.

Then, picking up her skirts, she ran into Russell Court.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

"You there!" she called. "Release that child!"

Susan gave a low "Woof!" that echoed through the narrow passage.

Madam Brees—for it was she Lydia called to—threw one quick glance over her shoulder, then darted left into a still narrower alley, towing the girl with her.

Lydia did not know who the girl was—a country servant by the looks of it, likely one of the countless runaways who made their way to London every day, only to fall promptly into the clutches of the bawds and pimps who loitered at every coaching inn from Piccadilly to Ratcliffe.

Lydia had spotted the pair in the Strand, the girl gawking at the sights like the average bumpkin while Coralie—garbed like a respectable matron, with an expensive bonnet perched upon her shoe-blacking-dyed curls—drew her relentlessly toward ruin: Drury Lane and its legion of vice pits, beyond doubt.

If they made it into whatever brothel Madam was aiming for, Lydia would not be allowed in, and the girl would never get out.

But as she turned into the alley, she saw the child dragging her heels and trying to shake off Coralie's grasp.

"That's it, my girl!" Lydia cried. "Get away from her!"

She was aware of masculine shouts behind her, but Susan's thunderous bark drowned out the words.

The girl was struggling in earnest now, but the stubborn bawd held tight, dragging her into Vinegar Yard. As Coralie raised a hand to strike the child, Lydia hurtled at them and backhanded the trull away.

Coralie staggered back against a dirty wall. "Murderous bitch! You leave us alone!" She flung herself forward again.

She wasn't quick enough to get to the girl, whom Lydia swiftly pushed out of the Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

way. "Susan, guard," she told the mastiff. Susan moved close to the girl's drab brown skirts and let out a low warning growl. The fiend hesitated, her face twisted with rage.

"I recommend you crawl back into whatever hole you crawled out from," Lydia said. "Attempt to lay hands on this child again, and I'll have you taken up on charges of abduction and attempted assault."

"Charges?" the woman echoed. "You'll peach on me, will you? And what do you want with her, I wonder, you great Jack whore?"

Lydia looked at the girl, whose wide-eyed gaze shot from Lydia back to the trull, then back again. Obviously she didn't know which of them to trust.

"B-Bow Street," the child choked out. "I was attacked and r-robbed and she was taking me to—to—"

"Ruination," Lydia said.

A tall ruffian dashed into Vinegar Yard at that moment, with another fellow at his heels. Several other males were also emerging from divers taverns and alleys.