The Wild Baron (Baron 1)

“Why won’t you tell me the truth?” she was saying. Obviously this wasn’t the first time she’d asked him.

“Go take yourself off,” the man said shortly and spit, missing Susannah’s skirts by only an inch. It was a nasty habit.

“You and George were friends, weren’t you? I remember that you were one of the men I met that day in the inn dining room. Your name is Lambert, isn’t it?”

“You were George’s little lightskirt. Aye, I knew it was you. Here you thought you was his wife. How we all laughed about that. And it only cost him ten pounds a quarter. Cheapest mistress a man could ever have.” The man laughed, a rough, leering laugh, but still Susannah stood her ground.

“I don’t believe you. You’re lying about a man who’s dead and can’t defend himself. Please, tell me the truth about George. I need to know about him. Are you Lambert or are you Theodore Micah?”

He turned his face to the wall.

“You’re Lambert, aren’t you?”

This time the man flinched. Slowly he turned back to face her. “You give me that wretched map and I’ll tell you all about George.”

“There is no map. If there is, I don’t know where it is. I told you that. It’s the truth.”

“Then that means George did something else with it. I wonder.”

“Keep wondering, Lambert,” Rohan said, approaching from the corner. “Now that we know who you are, we will soon discover what this is all about.”

“Mangy bastard. George said you’d have a bone to pick with this if you ever found out about it. He told us he was real careful around you. He said you acted all indolent and good-natured, but there were depths in you he didn’t want to plumb. Looks like George wasn’t careful enough, was he? You just go looking, you’ll not find out a damned thing. Without the map, you don’t have a bloody clue.”

He turned his face once more to the wall.

Rohan said slowly, “I think it’s time you went to gaol, Mr. Lambert.” But there was a problem. The man knew about George’s sham marriage. What if he announced it to the world? It was an appropriate time, Rohan thought, to become ruthless.

Lambert didn’t go to gaol. Instead, that afternoon, after Dr. Foxdale had pronounced him fit enough, two footmen escorted him to Eastbourne, where he was turned over to Captain Muldoon, along with a long letter from Lord Mountvale. He would be in His Majesty’s Navy for six years or until he died, whichever came first.

There was nothing more that Rohan could think of doing. He found Susannah this time with Ozzy Harker, in deep discussion. “ . . . Aye, yer ladyship, there be many methods we see at the cat racing course. There’s old Mr. Bittle wot stands over ’is poor gray tabby and claps ’is mitts together real loud, right in the kitter’s ears. Scares the poor kitter out o’ ’er wits. She do run, fur all stiff, tail blossomed out, but most the time, she runs unner the skirts o’ the nearest lady.”

She smiled, for it was amusing, but she was thinking: I have to stop this. Everyone is calling me my lady. It is a horrible mistake. I must leave.

“Thank you, Ozzy. I have something important I must see to now.”

She walked away from him, her head down, and Rohan knew exactly what she was thinking. He followed her to, of all places, his estate room. He blinked when he saw her very quietly, very slowly, open his desk drawers, one after the other. He watched her pull out his strongbox. Unfortunately for her, it was locked.

“Don’t you think it would be easier to marry me than be hauled in front of the magistrate? Stealing money is frowned upon, you know.”

Susannah sighed deeply. She rattled the strongbox once again, then put it back in the bottom drawer of the desk. “I would have paid you back,” she said, her voice as dull as the consommé she made for her father whenever his innards rebelled against too much whiskey.

“How?”

That hit its mark. She stood straight and tall, like a veritable Diana. All she needed was a bow and arrows. Her chin went up. “Why, I think I just might go to Oxford and find myself a protector who will pay me more than ten pounds a quarter.”

“You know, Susannah, George’s problem was that he didn’t know how to prevent you conceiving a child. And it never even occurred to you. If Marianne had never been born, then he could have continued enjoying you without worrying about offspring. You told me he didn’t come around much the past two years. That was because he was terrified of getting you pregnant again.”

She hadn’t thought of that; she had only felt the pain of rejection. “A man of your reputation—why, how could you possibly know what George thought or planned? Maybe it wasn’t at all like that horrible man Lambert said. Maybe he was just talking to me like that because he wanted to hurt me. I did escape him and you did shoot him.”

“That’s possible, but not at all to the point. Why don’t we just put an end to all this? Marry me, Susannah. I will fetch us a special license on the morrow. The local vicar, Mr. Byam, is a lifelong friend of the Carrington family. He would never betray us. He can marry us the next day. Then you won’t have to worry about stealing money from me.”

“No, that’s true. I would just have to worry about which one of your women you were with when you weren’t with me.”

“I know. That’s an insurmountable problem, isn’t it? A man of my reputation has much to live up to, doesn’t he? Perhaps we could just forget about all my women.” He waved his hands in front of him like a magician, and snapped his fingers. “There! The problem’s gone. What do you say?”

“George betrayed me. I couldn’t bear to marry another man who wouldn’t even pretend he wasn’t betraying me.”

“Perhaps,” he said very slowly, very carefully, “perhaps you and I could consider never betraying each other. There would be just the two of us. We would provide all of the entertainment for each other. I believe I could make that vow. Could you?”