Victoria and the Rogue (20 page)
impossible, a thorough reprobate. It was ridiculous that his kisses should make her head spin the way
they did, ridiculous they should make her so weak at the knees. He was a rogue of the first order, and
the last man on earth Victoria would ever consider marrying.
But Victoria would have liked him to have asked her— nicely—just the same.
Sitting on the bed, staring blindly out the window, Victoria wondered what Jacob Carstairs was going to
think when he found out about her having spent the night in the earl’s rooms. Surely he, of all people,
would know that Victoria had been tricked into it. Worse than tricked. Held against her will. Surely
Jacob, knowing Victoria as he did, would guess that she would sooner have died than disgrace
herself—and her family—in such a way. Surely Jacob…
Jacob Carstairs, Victoria realized with growing horror, wouldn’t think any such things. He would think
she was just a silly girl who’d gotten herself into a silly situation from which she ought to have been able
to extricate herself. She was Miss Bee, after all. Miss Bees did not—simply did not—get kidnapped by
earls and held against their will.
Instead, they escaped.
Slowly Victoria’s gaze focused on the window she’d been peering blindly out of for so many minutes.
A window. There was a window in her room.
Getting up from the bed, Victoria crossed to the window and laid her fingers over the casement latch. It
lifted easily. A second later the window was swinging outward…
…and the cool night air hit her face, smelling sweetly fresh after the rainstorm. Leaning forward, Victoria
looked out. The bedroom in which she was imprisoned was on the far side of the house. Below her lay a
garden, dripping and dark. Beyond the garden wall was the street, empty this time of night, and still
shining wetly in the moonlight. If she could climb down into that garden, it would be very easy to scale
that wall and follow that quiet, narrow street to freedom.
Except…
Except that she was in her undergarments. Her under-garments and a blanket. And she was barefoot.
Even if she were to find a Bow Street Runner—and Victoria hadn’t the slightest idea how one was
supposed to go about summoning one—what would they think of her, a blowsy-looking girl with
uncurled—uncombed!—hair, wearing nothing but pantaloons, a camisole, and a blanket?
Victoria felt she hadn’t any choice but to risk it. Which, she asked herself, was worse: being found
wandering the streets in one’s underthings, or being found in the rooms of a man in the early hours of the
morning? If her reputation was going to be ruined anyway—and Victoria was by now convinced it was
going to be, marriage to the earl or no marriage to the earl—why not have it ruined on her own terms?
She would, she knew, forever after be known as the debutante who paraded around Mayfair in her
undergarments.
But Charles Abbott, she felt rather strongly, would sooner marry the cousin of that girl than the cousin of
a girl who spent the night with a man to whom she was not yet wed….
Her course of action decided, Victoria wrapped the blanket, which had come loose during her tangle
with Lord Malfrey, more tightly around her body. Then she climbed carefully onto the windowsill and
swung her bare feet into the still, damp air…
…reminding her of another time she’d been forced to make a less than dignified climb down from a
dizzying height.
Don’t look down, Jacob Carstairs had advised her then, when she’d hesitated atop the rope ladder from
his ship, and you’ll be all right.
Keeping her eyes averted from the ground so far below her, Victoria clung to the sill and lowered her
bare foot, feeling for a toehold in the bricks.
And she began to descend.
It was not as steep a climb as the one she’d made down the side of the Harmony, but it took
considerably longer, seeing as how Victoria had to feel for each foothold, and sometimes couldn’t seem
to find any. Fortunately the building was old and not in the best of repair, or she might have found herself
stuck clinging to the side of the building, unable to descend any farther.
But she managed to find a few places where brick and mortar had chipped away, and that, coupled with
the occasional ornamental lintel, got her most of the way down. She jumped the rest of the way when she
got to a first floor window and worried someone might glance through it and see her, then raise the alarm.
It was no joke, jumping from such a height without shoes to protect her bare feet from the sting of the
ground below. But fortunately the rain had softened the earth, and Victoria, instead of breaking both her
legs, sank ankle-deep into the thick black mud of someone’s rose garden.
Disgusted—particularly since she lost her blanket in the process and had to pick it carefully from the
clinging thorns of a nearby rosebush—Victoria pulled her feet from the oozing mud and made her way
through the dark garden to the wall that separated it from the neighbors’. There was, she saw to her
relief, a door in the center of the wall, and when she turned the wrought-iron latch, she found that it
turned easily… though not exactly soundlessly. Glancing back over her bare shoulder, Victoria saw that it
was unlikely the shriek from the rusty hinges would be overheard. Everyone in Lord Malfrey’s rooms
appeared to be asleep—at least, very little light showed through the curtains of his sitting room and
bedrooms. She might actually be able to make her escape as easily as that. Except for a few scrapes
from thorns, and a set of mud-encased feet, she was unhurt.
How angry Lord Malfrey would be in the morning when he unlocked the door to the spare room and
found her gone! La, how Victoria wished she could be there to see his face! It would, she was certain,
be a picture.
Then Victoria saw something that quite took her breath away: a head, thrust through the window she’d
left open! Lord Malfrey’s head, she saw at once. Why, he must have come back to the room to check
on her! She hadn’t a moment to spare. She needed to fly at once, or be caught.
Slipping through the garden door—wincing as its hinges squeaked, for she was certain Lord Malfrey
would look that way and spy her—she found herself not, as she’d expected, in the neighbors’ backyard,
but in a dark and narrow alleyway between the two garden walls. It occurred to her fleetingly that it was
just the sort of place rats liked to hang about.
But she thrust this uncourageous thought from her head—she didn’t have time to worry about rats. Earls
were her immediate problem. Victoria lifted the hem of her blanket and began to run as quickly as she
dared in her bare feet—conscious that there might be broken glass— down the length of the alleyway.
She ran in the opposite direction that Lord Malfrey had been looking, which was toward the street, since
she feared the alley would spill her out onto it before his very eyes.
It was no fun at all, Victoria soon found, running down a dark alley with no shoes, wearing nothing but
your underthings and a blanket, in the dead of night after a rainstorm. All manner of things squished
hideously beneath her feet. Indeed, she would not let herself even imagine what those things might be.
And there were dogs behind the high garden walls on either side of her, dogs that sensed her running by
and set up a terrific racket, barking territorially. Lord Malfrey, Victoria was certain, would find her in an
instant, based solely on the alarm being raised by the dogs of the neighborhood.
And though the moon shone brightly, this was not necessarily advantageous, since it only made Victoria
more conspicuous to anyone who might happen to be looking for her. Worse, it cast large parts of the
alleyway in deep shadow… shadows from which Victoria could not help imagining all manner of
unsavory individuals leaping out and attacking her. Never mind rats or vicious dogs. What about
footpads? Or worse, pirates?
Her heart in her throat, Victoria stumbled as quickly as she could down the alleyway. She was
approaching, she could see, a street—a blessed street! A street down which hacks rumbled—she saw
one go by! Oh, if only she could flag down a hack and take it to her aunt and uncle’s house, and to
safety. She hadn’t any money with her, of course, but she was certain she could convince the driver that
he would be handsomely rewarded by her uncle once he delivered her….
Only when Victoria, with a final burst of desperate speed, certain that at any moment the earl was going
to spring out from behind her and stop her, finally made it to the street and leaped in front of the first
carriage she saw in an attempt to stop it, the driver cursed at her very rudely! Cursed at her, and said it
would be a cold day in hell when he’d let one of her kind into his nice clean hack!
Victoria, enraged, stared after the hack as it clattered away. One of her kind? What ever could the
driver have meant? Did he mean the daughter of a duke? But everyone liked dukes’ daughters.
Never mind. That particular driver clearly had some sort of problem. Here came another carriage, sadly
not a hack, but a very respectable-looking chaise-and-four. Victoria raised her arms and cried to the
driver, “Oh, sir, if you please, I’m in terrible trouble. Could you kindly take me to—”
But the driver made a very rude noise and raised his whip at her! Raised his whip and cried, “Out of my
way, lassie! I’ll have none of your tricks tonight!”
None of her tricks? Victoria, who’d leaped from the path of the carriage—indeed, she’d have been
trampled if she had not—blinked after it, stunned to the core. Tricks? What was wrong with everyone?
Couldn’t they see that she was a desperate kidnapping victim and needed immediate rescue? Good
Lord, if this kept up Victoria would be out here all night. And surely then Lord Malfrey would find her….
And then from around the corner came a sight so welcome to Victoria’s sore eyes, she very nearly
giggled for joy. For it was a Runner, a Bow Street Runner, swinging his stick and whistling a happy tune.
Victoria, delirious with joy, ran toward him.
“Oh, sir, sir,” she cried when she reached his side. “I am so happy to see you! You must help me, sir.
My name is Lady Victoria Arbuthnot, and there’s been a terrible—”
“Get on with you, miss,” the Runner said affably enough, giving her a gentle push away from him. “This is
a nice neighborhood. Get on back to Seven Dials, where you belong.”
Victoria, stunned, echoed in a wounded voice, “Seven Dials? I don’t know what you mean. Didn’t you
hear what I said? I’m Lady Victoria Arbuthnot, and I’ve been—”
“And I’m Bonnie Prince Charlie,” the Runner said kindly. “Go on home with you, girl. And for heaven’s
sake, put some clothes on. You’ll shame your poor mother, dashing about in next to nothing like that.
Not to mention catch your death.”
“But—”
The Runner paid no heed. He gave Victoria another push, this one not as gentle, then turned and started
back down the street, whistling his happy tune. Victoria stared after him with a look of utter despair.
It was only when a couple happened by on the other side of the street—a well-dressed man and
woman—that Victoria realized how she must look to people. The woman, catching a glimpse of her,
said, “Tsk-tsk!” in a loud voice, and the man put his arm protectively around her, as if he feared Victoria
might fly at them with a pick-ax.
Victoria was shocked. Surely no one could possibly think she’d chosen to dress this way. But
apparently these hardened Londoners thought exactly that. Why, they must have thought her a
madwoman, or—and here Victoria had to swallow hard—something even worse.
Her cheeks scarlet, Victoria darted back into an alleyway, this one some streets over from the one that
had led from the back of Lord Malfrey’s house. Good Lord, what was she going to do? She had no idea
where she was, and not the slightest idea of how to get home. She was cold and wet and her feet were
beginning to hurt, and everyone in London seemed to think she was a madwoman. What in heaven’s
name was she to do? She might, she could not help thinking, have leaped straight from the frying pan and
into the fire. For while the idea of having to marry Lord Malfrey was repugnant, to say the least, being
mistaken for a madwoman in the streets of London seemed infinitely worse!
And just when Victoria had begun to believe she had sunk to an all-time low, she heard a sound that
caused her blood to curdle. And that was a man’s voice, just behind her, that said, “Well, well, what
have we here?”
Thinking it was Lord Malfrey, and that she was well and caught, Victoria closed her eyes and uttered a
quick and silent prayer for strength. If she screamed, she wondered, would the Runner come sprinting
back and save her? She doubted it. She had no choice. She was going to have to face the fact that she
couldn’t run anymore, and that there was no help to be had in the city of London for a woman wearing
only her underthings and a blanket… even if that woman happened to be a duke’s daughter.
Swallowing hard, Victoria turned to face her tormentor…
…and found herself staring not at Lord Malfrey, but at several children who appeared to be as dirty and
raggedly dressed as she was.
“See here,” demanded the eldest of the children, the one whose voice she’d mistaken for Lord
Malfrey’s. And indeed, it did belong to a man, but one who was only teetering on the brink of adulthood.