The Last Hellion (Scoundrels 4)

The girl raised her eyebrows at Lydia’s trousers. Then her keen gaze went to the tangle on the desk. “Good grief, what is it?” She leaned over, pushed her spectacles up her nose, and peered closely at it. “Pirate’s treasure? What an odd—Oh, my!” She blinked up at Lydia. Her face worked. “Oh, d-dear.” She swallowed and bit her lip, but a sob broke from her, then another. She flung herself at Lydia and hugged her fiercely.

Lydia returned the hug, her throat tight. “Please don’t make a fuss,” she said as the girl began to weep. “I’ve always wanted to be a jewel thief. This was the only way to do it more or less legally.” She patted Tamsin’s back. “It’s no crime to recover stolen goods.”

Tamsin drew back and stared, her tear-filled eyes as big as an owl’s. “You wanted to be a jewel thief?”

“I thought it would be exciting. And it was. Come along and I’ll tell you all about it.” She beckoned the bewildered girl. “You’ll want tea—and I’m starving. These knock-down, drag-out rows with thickheaded noblemen do stir up the appetite.”

Tamsin listened to the tale in a daze. She nodded and shook her head and smiled in the right places, but Lydia was sure her companion wasn’t entirely present in spirit. “I hope I haven’t shocked you witless,” she said uneasily, as they ascended the stairs from the kitchen.

“No. It’s Sir Bertram, who’s talked me witless,” Tamsin said. “He has muddled my brain with Charles II. The king kept wandering into the conversation on the way to the theater, during the intervals, and all the way home. I’m sure I’ve mentioned all the significant events of His Majesty’s reign, but nothing helps. We cannot discover the connection, and now I cannot make my mind work on anything else. Please forgive me, Lydia.”

They had reached the ground-floor hallway.

She thanked Lydia again for recovering the keepsakes, and hugged her again and kissed her good night and went up to her room, murmuring to herself.

Coralie Brees was not happy when Josiah and Bill carried a battered Francis Beaumont—whom they’d found slumped against the privy—into the house shortly before daybreak.

Once upon a time she had worked for Beaumont in Paris, ruling over the brothel that formed a part of his elaborate pleasure palace, Vingt-Huit. They’d had to make a speedy exodus from Paris in the spring, and the move to England had been a downward one for her. Beaumont had been the brain behind Vingt-Huit’s operations. That brain, however, was at present rotting from large quantities of opium and drink—and likely pox as well.

Why it was rotting did not interest Coralie. She counted only results, and the result for her was no grand pleasure palace in London, but a more laborious and much poorer-paying job peddling young flesh upon the streets.

Coralie wasn’t clever enough to build grand enterprises on her own. Her mind was small and simple. Uncorrupted by schooling, unbroadened by experience, incapable of learning by example, it was also too barren to support alien life-forms such as conscience or compassion.

She would have cheerfully killed Francis Beaumont, who was nothing but a nuisance these days, if she’d believed she could get away with it. She had more than once cheerfully garroted recalcitrant employees—but these were mere whores, whom nobody missed or mourned. To the authorities, they were anonymous corpses pulled from the Thames, causing a lot of paperwork and the bother of pauper burial, using up time and labor without recompense to the laborers.

Beaumont, on the other hand, had a famous artist wife who traveled in aristocratic circles. If he were found dead, an investigation would be ordered and rewards offered for information.

Coralie didn’t trust any of those who worked for her to resist the temptation of a reward.

This was why she didn’t step behind Beaumont while he sat slumped in a chair, and wrap her special cord ’round his neck.

Deciding against killing him was a mistake. Unfortunately, it was a mistake other people had made, and this time, as on previous occasions, the error had grave consequences.

By the time Beaumont had, with the aid of the gin bottle, recovered his zest for villainy, Coralie was in a screaming fit. She’d found the house servant, Mick, insensible on the kitchen floor, her bedroom ransacked, and Annette as well as money box and jewelry gone.

She sent Josiah and Bill to hunt the girl down—and bring her back alive, so that Coralie could have the pleasure of killing her very slowly.

Only after the boys had gone did Beaumont remark that it was a waste of time, since Annette had fled hours before—with a bully of her own who would easily make mincemeat of Josiah and Bill.

“And you only thought of it now they’re gone?” Coralie shrieked. “You couldn’t open your mouth before, while they was here? But no, you had the bottle in it, didn’t you?”

“That’s the second time in six months I was obliged to eat a large fist,” Beaumont said, wincing as he spoke. “It was the same as Dain did to me, in Paris, remember? If I didn’t know he was in Devon, I’d swear he was my accoster. Big fellow,” he explained. “More than six feet, easily.”

His bleary gaze drifted to the jade stickpin fastened to Coralie’s bodice.

Instinctively, Coralie’s hand went up to cover it.

“The French trull stole my stickpin, along with the rest of your magpie’s nest,” he lied. “I’ll take your new acquisition as restitution. It’s small enough payment, considering I nearly got killed trying to stop the bitch from robbing you. The devil only knows why I didn’t help her instead, considering the tricks you’ve played me. You stole my stickpin. You made the flower girl disappear, too. What brothel have you stowed her at? Or did the little cripple fight your bullies off with her crutch and escape their loving attentions?”

“I never went near the little crookback!” Coralie cried. “Didn’t anyone tell you what happened last night? That’s all them sluts was talkin’ about in Covent Garden—how Ainswood was throwin’ money about, and chasin’ some Jack whore gypsy—”

“Ainswood?” Beaumont said. “With a tall female?”

“That’s what I said, didn’t I? It were him give me the pin.” She stroked the new treasure. “On account she knocked me over against a pillar post.”

Beaumont’s bruised mouth twisted in an ugly smile. “There’s one tall female he’s been chasing for weeks. Ever since she knocked him over. In Vinegar Yard. Don’t you recall how she stole the little dark-haired chit from you?”

“I remember the bitch,” Coralie said. “But she was in widow weeds. The one last night was one of them filthy, thievin’ gypsies—some kin to the fat sow who pretends she can tell fortunes.”

Beaumont gazed at her, then shook his head, took up the gin bottle and applied it to his swollen lips. When he’d emptied it, he put it down. “I do believe there isn’t a stupider woman than you in all of Christendom, I truly do.”

“I’m clever enough not to get my face smashed in, though, ain’t I?”

“Not clever enough to see that it was Ainswood who helped your little French tart rob you blind last night.”

“A dook? Takin’ to forkin’? When he got more money than he knows what to do with and runs about London givin’ purses full of sovereigns away, like they could burn him if he held on to ’em too long?”

“What I like about you, Coralie, is your refreshing freedom from all processes of logic. If you tried to put two and two together, it would hurt your head excessively, wouldn’t it, my little charmer?”

Coralie had no more idea what he meant than if he’d spoken to her in Latin, Greek, or Chinese. She ignored him, went to the cupboard and took out another bottle of gin, opened it, and poured it into a grimy, smeared glass.

Watching her drink, Beaumont said, “I can’t think why I should enlighten you. Ignorance is bliss, they say.”

In fact, one would wonder why he tried to speak at all, since it hurt acutely. The trouble was, when Francis Beaumont was in pain or in trouble or experiencing anything in any way disagreeable, his favorite treatment—which was usually

mixed with opium and/or alcohol—was making someone else much more miserable than he was.

Consequently, he did enlighten Coralie.

“Let me guess,” he said. “That rat’s nest of baubles you hoard contained, along with everything else that didn’t belong to you, something belonging to the dark-haired chit Miss Lydia Grenville relieved you of.”

Coralie slumped into a chair, her eyes filling. “Yes, and very nice they was, too. Rubies and emmyfists.” A tear splashed onto the hand clutching the gin bottle. She refilled her glass. “And now all I’ve got left is the dook’s stickpin and you want it.”

“Amethysts, not emmyfists, you illiterate cow,” Beaumont said. “And they must be gemstones, not paste, else no one would trouble to get them back. Don’t you see? The tall female got Ainswood to help recover them for her precious little chick, and they enlisted Annette. She’d never have the nerve to do it on her own. She’d already dosed Mick with laudanum when I got here, and she was none too pleased to see me an hour ahead of time. I practically had to drag her upstairs by her feet. When I saw what she’d done to your room, I understood why. That’s when she panicked and ran—and chasing after her, I ran straight into Ainswood. I’ll wager anything they split the take and helped her get out of London. And he and Miss Lydia Grenville are laughing themselves sick. Well, why shouldn’t they? They’ve stolen two girls from you, all your sparkly treasures, and all your money.”