The Last Hellion (Scoundrels 4)

When Trent came back, he gave Vere a searching look. “Why don’t we go somewheres and find you some hair of the dog that bit you?” he said. “You ain’t lookin’ exactly flourishin’ this mornin’, Ainswood, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so.”

“I already had Jaynes telling me how I look, thank you.” Vere started down the street. “If I hadn’t stayed in Crockford’s forever waiting for you last night, I shouldn’t have been obliged to swill a vat of bad champagne and listen to a lot of morons calling me Beowulf.”

The truth was, Vere had been awaiting Crenshaw there in order to complete the job the Amazon had started.

Thou shalt support thy bastards was the commandment the Mallorys substituted for the ones about not coveting others’ wives and not committing adultery. Even Dain—who wasn’t a Mallory, had no conscience to speak of, and lived entirely by his own rules—supported his illegitimate offspring.

Confronted by Mary’s note, Crenshaw should have puffed out his chest and said, “By gad, I seem to be a father again. Much obliged for the information, Miss Grenville. I’ll toddle down to Bridewell and collect them first thing tomorrow.”

Then Miss Attila the Hun Grenville would have gone away, swaying her arrogant rump, and Vere wouldn’t have seen her, let alone tangled with her and had to listen to her sarcasm and keep his hands to himself the whole aggravating way to the dragon’s lair.

But Crenshaw hadn’t done what he should, and hadn’t turned up at Crockford’s to get pummeled properly, and all those bottles of champagne hadn’t been enough to flood away the aggravation.

Now, just in case Vere hadn’t been plagued and goaded enough last night or didn’t have cannon blasts going off in his head at present on account of getting up at an ungodly hour, Miss Guiding Light of Civilization would learn he’d come to Bridewell and would have no trouble figuring out why. And she’d think she’d won. Again.

“I should’ve asked one of the fellows to tell you not to wait for me,” Trent said apologetically. “But I didn’t figure you was comin’ back, bein’ more agreeably engaged for the night.”

Vere stopped short and stared at him. “Agreeably engaged? With Lady Grendel? Have you lost your mind?”

Trent shrugged. “I thought she were deuced handsome.”

Vere recommenced walking. Only Bertie Trent, he told himself, would imagine the Duke of Ainswood had made off with the blue-eyed dragoness for purposes of dalliance. The thought had never crossed the minds of the men with whom Vere had spent the evening. They thought—and rightly—that it would make as much sense to bed a crocodile.

It was merely one of the perverse jokes of the malign powers ruling his life that she should possess a long, lusciously feminine body instead of the humpbacked, shriveled, and scaly one that would have complemented her personality.

That’s what he’d told himself through bottle after bottle last night, and what he’d told himself when he came home and couldn’t sleep.

That’s what he’d told himself this morning when he spotted the dog and his heart began to pound, even while he prepared to turn away to avoid meeting its owner.

And that was what he’d told himself moments ago, when he’d discovered the dragoness wasn’t nearby and something mortifyingly like disappointment had entered his heart.

He told himself so again, for the troublesome feelings lingered there yet…under the breast pocket of his waistcoat…where he kept the stump of a pencil she’d left behind last night.

Chapter 4

Entering the Blue Owl on this chill, damp night was like descending into the infernal regions.

Vere was used to inns and taverns filled with raucous, drunken men. Those, however, were normal human beings.

The Blue Owl was filled with writers, and the din of their voices was beyond anything he’d ever encountered in his life.

So was the smoke, roiling through the rooms like the heavy fog outside rolling in from the Thames. Every single customer in the place had a pipe or cigar in his mouth.

As Vere turned into the hall leading from the bar parlor, he half expected to see leaping flames, and the Old Harry poised on cloven hoofs in their midst.

But the forms Vere saw were unquestionably mortal. Under a lamp whose light the enveloping smoke had turned a sickly greyish yellow, a pair of young, reed-thin men shouted in each other’s ears.

Beyond them a door stood open, from which clouds of smoke occasionally billowed forth, along with thunderous roars of laughter.

As Vere neared, the roar was subsiding to semideafening merriment, and above that noise he heard someone bellow, “Another! Do another!” Others took up the cry.

When he came to the threshold, Vere saw gathered about a few tables a crowd of some thirty men, most sprawled upon chairs and benches, a few slumped against walls. Though the smoke was thickest here, he saw her clearly enough. She stood before the great hearth, and the firelight behind sharply outlined her stern black attire.

The drama of her costume had not struck him before. It did so forcibly now. Perhaps it was the smoke and hellish noise. Perhaps it was her hair. She’d left off her bonnet, and without it she seemed troublingly unprotected, too exposed. Her thick hair, a soft pale gold, was coming loose from the untidy knot at the nape of her white neck. The tumbled coiffure softened her starkly beautiful features, made her look so young, so very young. A girl.

Above the neck.

Below was the dramatic contrast of her black armor, with the line of buttons sternly marching from waist to chin, ready to defeat and destroy all invaders.

He’d undone those buttons, again and again, night after night, in his dreams.

He wondered how many men here imagined undoing them.

All, naturally, since they were men.

She was the only woman, and there she was, parading herself in front of this mob of low-minded scribblers, every last one of whom was picturing her naked, in every lewd position known to the human species.

He watched her move forward to lean over one of the drunkards and talk to him while he gaped at her bodice.

Vere’s hands fisted at his sides.

Then she moved away, and he saw she had a wine bottle in one hand and a cigar in the other. She’d taken only a few steps when he realized she was foxed. She swaggered unsteadily toward a group of men to her left, then paused, swaying, to direct a drunken leer at one of them.

“Big, yes, but not up to my weight,” she said, her voice carrying easily over the

hubbub. “I make her at five and three-quarter feet. And ten stone, stripped. Which I should pay fifty guineas to see, by the way.”

It took Vere a moment to place the words, then another to place the voice, which wasn’t hers. And because the audience exploded into laughter, it took him another moment to believe his ears.

Those were his words. In Vinegar Yard.

But that could not be…his voice?

“As much as fifty?” someone called out. “I didn’t know you could count so high, Your Grace.”

She stuck the cigar in the corner of her mouth and cupped her hand to her ear. “Was that a mouse squeaking I heard? Or was it—By gad, it is. It’s little Joey Purvis. And here I thought you were still in the asylum.”

It was something eerily like Vere’s voice, deep and slurred with drink, coming out of her ripe mouth. And those were his gestures. It was as though his soul had entered this woman’s body.

He stood frozen, riveted upon her, while the audience’s laughter faded to the edges of his consciousness.

She withdrew the cigar from her mouth and beckoned to the heckler with it. “Want to know if I can count, do you? Well, come along, lad, and I’ll teach you how I count teeth—while you pick yours up from the floor. Or would you rather a chancery suit on the nob? You know what that is, don’t you, my little innocent? It’s when I hold your head in place under one arm while I punch it in with the other.”

There was little laughter this time.

Vere dragged his gaze from her to the audience.

Every head had turned toward the doorway where he stood.

When he looked back again, his impersonator’s blue glance flicked over him. Evincing not the smallest quiver of discomfiture, she raised the bottle to her lips and drank. Then she set the bottle down. After wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she acknowledged him with a slight dip of her head. “Your Grace.”

He made himself grin. Then he lifted his hands and clapped. The room grew quieter still, until the only sound was the steady slap of his palms.