Viscount Vagabond (Regency Noblemen 1)

On the way to the dressmaker’s, Blackwood had tactfully reminded his impetuous employer of the need for discretion if the young lady was found. After all, hadn’t Lord Andover refused to call in Bow Street, fearing that a scandal would result? It was the valet who’d suggested the tale of amnesia.

Now there seemed to be prospects of precisely the to-do Lord Rand had promised to avoid. The boy’s shrieking was loud enough to raise the Watch, if not the dead, and Miss Pelliston had got that mutinous expression on her thin face. Even the seamstress was beginning to look doubtful.

The valet, who’d been waiting in the showroom, now appeared. “There seems to be a difficulty, My Lord,” he said in as low a voice as possible, given the noise the child was making.

“The brat’s taking fits, and so she won’t come,” was the frustrated response.

“Indeed. If you’ll permit me, My Lord?”

Lord Rand shrugged. Blackwood moved past him to approach Jemmy.

“Here, now, my lad. What’s all this fuss?”

Forgetting all Miz Kaffys lessons in grammar and elocution, Jemmy burst out with a stream of loud outrage and complaint in cant so thick that none of his listeners could comprehend a word he said. None, that is, but Blackwood.

“And is that what makes a great strong boy like yourself cry like a baby?”

“I ain’t no baby,” was the angry retort.

“In that case, perhaps you would express your objections calmly to his lordship—man to man, so to speak.”

Jemmy considered this while Catherine wiped his nose with her handkerchief.

“N’ I will too,” he said, looking round at the company. He marched up to Lord Rand, gave him a fierce glare, and spoke.

“Miz Kaffy is learnin’ me to write all ‘em hundred letters and now you come to take her away and we just got to ‘J’ and there’s a pile more arter. N’ who sez anyhow ‘afs all wot you say?” the boy demanded. “How does we know you don’t mean bad for her? She ain’t one of ‘em wicked ones, you know. Miz Kaffy’s a lady and knows all ‘em letters and eats wif her fork and all. N’ she tole you to go away besides,” the child summed up with his most unanswerable argument.

Lord Rand, as has been noted, was not a stupid man. He had been a bold, angry little boy himself once. He’d had precious scraps of treasure torn from him and burnt as trash, had been ordered to do and whipped for not doing a great many things without being given any comprehensible reason. Even as an adult, he’d had someone he cared for driven away from him. He knelt to look the urchin in the eye.

“Of course your friend is a lady,” he answered. “That is why I’ve come to fetch her. You know, don’t you, that ladies don’t work for a living?”

Jemmy nodded grudgingly.

“I realise you’ll miss her,” his lordship went on, “but her relatives have been missing her several days now, and they’ve been very worried about her. They’ll be most grateful to learn what good care you and Madame Germaine have taken of her in the meantime.”

The boy’s face grew very still, except for the tears that welled up in his eyes. “But ‘ey—they’ll—have her back and I won’t see her no more... and we only got to ‘J.’” His voice quavered.

“Yes, that is a problem.” Lord Rand stood up, darting a glance at Miss Pelliston, whose own eyes were filling. Gad, but her eyes were extraordinary—a great, unfathomable world seemed to exist there.

Lord Rand made a hasty decision, precisely as he was accustomed to do. “Suppose then, Jemmy, you come back with us to see where Miss Pelliston’s relations live, so you can be sure everything’s right and respectable. You can ride with the coachman,” he offered.

“The boy’s eyes lit up. “Ken I?”

“Yes—if you assure Miss Pelliston that you won’t raise any more fuss and will be as brave as you can. Maybe then she’ll come by to visit you from time to time.”

“You knew I had no choice but to come,” Catherine accused as the carriage rattled down the street. “Nonetheless, I cannot condone your methods, My Lord. You bribed that poor child with the promise of a ride on a fancy coach.”

“Miss Pelliston, you are the most contrary woman I’ve ever met. Did you honestly intend to work as a seamstress the rest of your days?”

“Yes. I was content—and it was honest work.”

Max studied her narrow face. Was it his imagination or was her color better? Somehow she didn’t seem as tired and drawn as before, yet she must have been working ten, eleven, twelve hours a day. What a mystifying creature she was.

Aloud he said, “I’ll be sure to mention that to Louisa. Perhaps she’ll set you to embroidering her gowns—or making your own. I suppose that would spare all those tiresome visits to dressmakers. She can boast that you’re the only debutante in London who’s made very stitch of her Season’s wardrobe.”

Miss Pelliston, who’d been staring dismally at her hands, looked up. “I am not, as you well know, My Lord, a debutante. I am engaged to be married—or I was. Perhaps he won’t want me now,” she added with a faint, rueful smile. “Then at least something good will have come of all this.”

“Sorry to upset your happy fantasies, ma’am, but I don’t think your fiance has anything to say in the matter. Louisa’s determined to bring you out, and once Louisa’s determined on something there’s nothing and no one can stand in her way. Certainly not irate papas or broken-hearted bridegrooms.’’

“Bring me out? Where? Why? What on earth are you talking about?” She leaned forward eagerly in her seat only to find Lord Rand’s blue-eyed gaze rather too close for rational thought. Abruptly she sat back, her heart thumping wildly.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re talking nonsense. I didn’t think you were inebriated, but one can never be certain. I suppose you have a very hard head.” She winced as soon as she’d finished speaking, realising that, as usual, she’d been quite tactless.

Lord Rand smiled. “Bless me if you don’t have the oddest way of flattering a man. I can hardly wait to see the other fellows’ reactions when you treat them to some of your compliments.”

To his satisfaction, her face turned pink.

“Yes, I do have a hard head, Miss Pelliston, but the fact is I’m sober as a judge at the moment. Dash it, didn’t the Andover name ring any bells with you? Probably not. Country’s crawling with relations—who’s going to keep track of a lot of third and fourth cousins?”

“Oh, dear,” she said softly as she took his meaning. “They are relations. I was afraid of that.”

“You weren’t afraid of slaving your life away for a miserable handful of shillings a week. What’s so terrifying about Andover?”

“I know it will sound cowardly to you,” Catherine began reluctantly, “but I didn’t want anyone to know who I was. People treat one so differently... I mean, they would have felt obliged to go out of their way on my account and I’d be obliged to accept, even though it would make matters worse.”

“With your family, you mean? But how? They don’t come any more respectable than Andover. Even the Old Man— my father, that is—can’t find fault with the fellow, though he’s tried hard enough for ten years.”

“I mean,” Miss Pelliston said so softly that Lord Rand had to bend closer to hear her, “I had rather face Papa alone— not before strangers.”

Lord Rand began to think he understood. She must have expected a perfectly horrendous homecoming if she’d elected to work for the miserable wages of a seamstress instead. The rage and frustration that had been building in him for days abruptly dissipated. She was gallant in her way, wasn’t she? He remembered the girl clutching a coverlet about her as she sought help from a wild, drunken vagabond. Brave then too.

“Miss Pelliston, I assure you I’m not the least foxed,” he said more kindly. “Edgar and Louisa intended to tell you the very next morning, after you’d had time to recover from your—experiences. No,” he added hastily in response to her horrified look. “They know nothing of Granny Grendle or how

you spent that night and they’ll never know of it, I promise you.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.