The Last Hellion (Scoundrels 4)

“I know all about his manly pride.” Lydia left her chair and paced to the fireplace and back. “He saw his chance to get even with me tonight for what happened in Vinegar Yard. By now he’s probably guzzled a dozen bottles of champagne celebrating his great victory over Lady Grendel. All he cared about was showing his friends I wasn’t too big for him to handle—lifting me straight up off the pavement and carrying me halfway to the next street as though I weighed nothing. I struggled with him all the way to the hackney and the man wasn’t even winded, curse him.”

And her stupid heart had melted, and her brain with it, because he was so big and strong. Gad, it was enough to make one retch. She couldn’t believe the rubbishy notions she’d got into her head.

“Then, after he’s emptied Crockford’s wine cellars and dropped several thousand pounds at the gaming tables,” she fumed, “he’ll stagger out of the club and into a high priced brothel in the neighborhood.”

And he would take a harlot into his powerful arms, and nuzzle her neck and—

I don’t care, Lydia told herself.

“He’ll forget I exist, big and obnoxious as I am,” she stormed, pacing on. “And so he’s bound to forget all about a scrap of a note from a girl he probably believes asked for ruination. As though the child had any idea men could be so treacherous.”

“Indeed, it’s most unfair that the woman is punished and the man is admired for his virility,” Tamsin said. “But we shan’t let her be punished. I know you must attend an inquest tomorrow, but I can go to Bridewell—”

Lydia stopped short. “You most certainly cannot.”

“I’ll take Susan. All you need do is tell me how to get Mary and her baby out. If there’s a fine to pay, you must take it out of my wages.”

Tamsin advanced, took the bemused Lydia’s arm, and led her back to the dressing table. “They can share my room until we contrive suitable arrangements for them. But the first priority is to get them out. Her week is up on Thursday, isn’t it? And tomorrow is Wednesday.” She tugged Lydia down onto the chair. “Write down what I must do, and I’ll set out tomorrow morning. Where is your notebook?”

“By gad, what a managing creature you are turning out to be,” said Lydia. But she reached into her pocket obediently—and somewhat amused at her docile obedience to a girl half her size and nearly ten years younger.

Lydia found the notebook in her pocket but not the pencil. She must have dropped it in the hackney. “There’s a pencil in the drawer of the nightstand,” she told Tamsin.

The girl quickly retrieved the pencil.

Lydia took it, then looked up to meet her companion’s steady gaze. “Are you sure, my dear?”

“I managed to get from the other end of England to London on my own,” Tamsin said. “And I only got into a scrape here because I couldn’t see. This time, I promise not to remove my spectacles for anything. And I’ll have Susan as a bodyguard. And I shall be so happy,” she added earnestly, “to do something useful.”

In six days it had become clear that Tamsin liked to be useful. The time had also proved her to be no fool.

A pity, Lydia thought as she began to write, the same couldn’t be said for herself.

Early Wednesday morning, a hackney bearing Adolphus Crenshaw, Mary Bartles, and the infant Jemmy drove away from Bridewell prison.

Bertie Trent should have departed at the same time, but he had fallen into a state of abstraction, which at the moment caused him to mutter, “Not Charles Two but somethin’ to do with him. Only, What? is the question.”

A short, feminine shriek broke into his cogitations, and he looked up to see an enormous black mastiff bearing down upon him, with a smallish, bespectacled female in tow.

The female was trying to slow the dog down. She might as well try slowing down a stampeding elephant, Bertie thought. Since she was having a hard time staying on her feet, he advanced to assist. He caught the dog by the collar, and she promptly turned on him, growling and baring her teeth.

Bertie gazed at her reproachfully. “Now, what did I do that you want to tear my head off? Ain’t you had your breakfast yet?”

“Grrrrrrrrr,” said the dog, backing toward the girl.

Bertie cautiously released the collar. “Oh, that’s it, is it? Well, I ain’t going to hurt her. It’s only that you was pulling too hard on account of not knowing your own strength, my gal.”

The mastiff paused in her growling to eye him warily.

Eyeing her in the same way, Bertie presented his gloved hand. The dog sniffed it, grumbled something to herself, and sat down.

Above the canine’s huge head, Bertie met the girl’s startled gaze. Behind the very little pair of spectacles perched on her tiny nose was a pair of very big brown eyes.

“Oh, I say, that were you, weren’t it, in Vinegar Yard the other day!” Bertie exclaimed. “Only you wasn’t wearin’ gogglers then. I hope the tall gal didn’t get in an accident afterwards and knock somethin’ loose in your eyeballs.”

The girl stared at him for a moment. “I’m shortsighted,” she said. “I wasn’t wearing them the—er—last time because they’d been broken. Miss Grenville was so kind as to have them repaired.” She paused. “You were there when she rescued me, it seems. I thought you looked familiar, but I couldn’t be sure. Without my spectacles, the world is rather a blur.”

“She kept you, then.” Bertie nodded approvingly. “Well, speak of the devil. I were thinkin’ about her this minute. I seen her last night and she put me in mind of somebody, only I can’t think who it is. Charles Two keeps comin’ into my brain box, though it beats me why.”

“Charles Two?” The girl stared very hard at him.

“Not the one they took the head off of, but the next one, when the fire was.”

She stared some more. Then she said, “Ah, King Charles II. Perhaps it’s because Miss Grenville is so majestic.”

“Woof,” said the dog.

Absently Bertie petted her.

“The dog’s name is Susan,” the girl said.

Bertie remembered his manners then and introduced himself. He learned the girl was Miss Thomasina Price, and she’d become Miss Grenville’s hired companion.

After the introductions, she turned her keen gaze upon the building behind him. Her brow creased. “It isn’t very welcoming, is it?” she said.

“Not the jolliest place I ever been in,” said Bertie.

But it had to be less jolly for the girl Crenshaw had made the baby with—which was how Bertie had put the matter to the man last night.

After Ainswood had gone off to wrestle with Miss Grenville, Bertie had taken Crenshaw to a public house for a drink—“bein’ ambushed by females bein’ hard on the nerves,” as Bertie had told him.

Finding a sympathetic ear, Crenshaw had poured out his troubles. At the end, though, Bertie pointed out that facts were facts, however disagreeable, and the fact was, the man was accused of fathering a bastard, and they had to look into it, didn’t they?

And so Bertie had come with him to Bridewell this morning, where it became clear that Crenshaw was guilty as charged. Then there was a good deal of blubbering and the upshot was, Crenshaw said he’d take care of Mary and Jemmy. And that was that.

Though many wouldn’t think so, Bertie could put two and two together. Here was Miss Price, companion of Miss Grenville, who had ambushed Crenshaw on Mary Bartles’s account last night. There was Bridewell behind him, where Mary had been confined.

“You wouldn’t be here to spring a gal and a baby from the Pass-Room, by any chance?” he asked. “Because if it’s the ones Miss Grenville was in such a lather about last night, you can tell her Crenshaw came and got ’em. I were with him, and they went off not a quarter hour ago, the three of ’em, and—By Jupiter, what’s he doing up at this hour?”

The girl turned in the direction Bertie was looking. The Duke of Ainswood was indeed up and about, though he hadn’t come in, Jaynes had said, until daybreak—and drunk as a wheelbarrow.

/> Which would explain, Bertie thought, why His Grace was looking like six thunderclouds at once.

Though it took Vere a moment to place the girl, he recognized the black mastiff immediately. He would have turned and gone in the opposite direction then, because if the dog was here, the gorgon must be. However, the animal was staring fixedly at Vere, her teeth bared, and she was emitting a low, steady snarl. If Vere made an exit now, it would look as though she’d scared him off.

So he advanced and coolly gazed at the growling canine. She was splendidly muscled under the glossy black coat, and unusually large for a female. “I see she wasn’t the runt of the litter,” he said. “And such a charming personality she has.”

The mastiff strained at the leash. Trent grabbed her collar.

“Grrrrrrrr,” said the dog. “Grrrrrrrrrr.”

“As amiable as her mistress,” Vere went on above the hostile commentary. “Who has no business, by the way, leaving her puppy in the keeping of a slip of a girl who obviously can’t control her. But that’s typical of Miss Grenville’s irresponsible—”

“Miss Price, this here’s Ainswood,” Bertie broke in. “Ainswood, Miss Price. And this one who’s tryin’ to tear my arm out of the socket is Susan. Beautiful mornin’, ain’t it? Miss Price, why don’t I hail a hackney for you, and you can go back and tell Miss Grenville the good news.”

Trent dragged the snarling mastiff away. Miss Price bobbed a hasty curtsy and followed. A short while later, girl and dog were safely tucked into a hackney.