The Last Hellion (Scoundrels 4)

She planted the cigar between her teeth again, doffed an imaginary hat, and made him an exaggerated bow.

For an instant he forgot where he was, as his mind darted from the present and caught on a memory. Something so familiar, but from long ago. He’d seen this before. Or experienced it.

But the feeling vanished as swiftly as it had come.

“Well done, m’dear,” he said coolly. “Vastly amusing.”

“Not half so amusing as the original,” she answered, boldly eying him up and down.

Ignoring the heat her brazen survey generated, he laughed and, amid scattered applause, strode toward her. As he made his way through the crowd, he saw her beautiful countenance settle into a harder expression, while her evil mouth curled into the smallest fraction of a smile.

He’d seen that coolly mocking look before, but this time he didn’t quite believe it. Perhaps it was the smoke and the sickly light, but he thought what flickered in her eyes was uncertainty.

And there again he discerned the girl within the beautiful monstrosity. And he wanted to pick her up and carry her away from this infernal place, away from these drunken swine with their roving eyes and lecherous thoughts. If she must mock and ridicule him, he thought, let her do it for him only.

…you didn’t want me to hit anyone else but you.

He shook off the memory of her infuriating words along with the absurd sense of foreboding they stirred, as they’d done last night.

“I’ve only one small criticism,” he said, pausing a pace away from her.

She lifted an eyebrow.

About them he heard the low murmur of voices. A cough here. A belch there. Yet he’d no doubt their onlookers listened avidly. They were newsmen, after all.

“The cigar,” he said. He frowned down at the one resting between her long, slightly ink-stained fingers. “The cigar is all wrong.”

“You don’t say!” She frowned down at it as well, mimicking his expression. “But this is a Trichinopoli cheroot.”

From an inner pocket of his coat, he withdrew a slim silver cigar case. He opened it and held it out to her. “As you can see, these are longer and thinner. The tobacco’s color indicates a higher quality. Do take one.”

She shot him a quick glance, then shrugged, tossed her cheroot into the fire, and took one of his. She rolled it between her graceful fingers. She sniffed it.

It was a cool enough performance, but Vere was near enough to see what others couldn’t: the barely discernible pink tinting the curve of her cheekbones, the quickened rise and fall of her bosom.

No, she was not so fully in command of herself as she made others believe. She was not so case-hardened and cynical and impudently self-assured as she seemed.

He was strongly tempted to lean in closer and discover whether the hint of a blush would deepen. The trouble was, he’d already caught her scent, and that, he’d discovered last night, was a mantrap.

He turned away from her and toward the audience, some of whom had found their tongues, which they employed in obligatory ribald witticsms about the cigar.

“I beg your pardon for the interruption, gentlemen,” Vere said. “Do carry on. The drinks are on me.”

Without a backward glance—as though he’d forgotten her already—he sauntered out the way he’d come.

He’d come this way, into this hellhole of a tavern in Fleet Street, intending to erase any wrong impressions she might be entertaining about his appearance at Bridewell this morning.

He’d planned to make a great production of returning her pencil—before an audience of nosy scribblers—while indicating with suitable innuendoes that the writing instrument wasn’t all she’d lost in the hackney last night.

By the time he was done, she’d be convinced beyond any doubt that he was the obnoxious, conceited, conscienceless debauchee everyone—and rightly—believed he was. A few more hints would suffice to convince her that he’d only recently emerged from a bawdy house in the neighborhood when he’d come upon Trent and Miss Price, by which time His Grace had altogether forgotten Mary Bartles existed.

Consequently, it was logically impossible he’d come to obtain her release and send her to his man of business to make whatever arrangements were necessary to get her the hell out of London and settled comfortably so he wouldn’t have to hear about her ever again or think about her and her bedamned sick baby.

If any good deeds had been done, Vere would have made clear, Bertie Trent alone was responsible.

As plans went, it had been a good one, especially considering he’d devised it while in the throes of a near-death experience, thanks to the swill Crockford passed off as champagne and a grand total of about twenty-two minutes’ sleep.

But Vere had forgotten this very good plan the instant he’d paused in the doorway and discerned the girl under the touseled mop of golden hair.

Now, recalling the faint blush and the quickened breathing, he abandoned the plan altogether.

He’d mistaken her. She was not, quite, what she made the world believe she was. She was not, quite, immune to him. The fortress was not impregnable. He’d perceived a chink. And being what he was—obnoxious, conceited, conscienceless, et cetera, et cetera—he was duty bound to get inside, if he had to dismantle her defenses brick by brick.

Or rather, he amended while his mouth curled into a dangerous smile, button by button.

Blakesleigh, Bedfordshire

On the Monday following Lord Ainswood’s encounter with Miss Grenville at the Blue Owl, the Ladies Elizabeth and Emily Mallory, ages seventeen and fifteen respectively, were reading all about it in the pages of the Whisperer.

They were not supposed to be reading the scandal sheet. They were not allowed to peruse even the respectable newspapers that arrived daily at Blakesleigh. Their uncle, Lord Mars, allotted time every day during which he read aloud those portions he deemed fit for innocent ears. His ears, and his eyes as well, were not so innocent, for he’d been a politician all of his adult life. Privately, he read everything, including the scandal sheets.

The paper the young ladies were studying late this night, by the light of the fire in their bedroom, had been liberated from a large stack of periodicals belowstairs, awaiting the rag and bottle collector.

Like others liberated before, this one would be consigned to the flames as soon as they had gleaned as much as they could about their guardian’s doings.

Their guardian was the seventh Duke of Ainswood. They were Charlie’s daughters, Robin’s sisters.

The firelight at present made fiery threads in the pair of auburn heads bent over the paper. When they finished reading the accounts of their guardian’s encounter with Miss Grenville at Crockford’s and the Blue Owl, matching pairs of sea-green eyes met, and both youthful countenances wore the same expression of mingled perplexity and amusement.

“Obviously something interesting happened in the hackney when he ‘escorted’ her from Crockford’s,” said Emily. “I told you Vinegar Yard wasn’t the end of it. She knocked him on his arse. That had to get his attention.”

Elizabeth nodded. “And obviously, she’s pretty. I’m sure he wouldn’t have tried to kiss her if she wasn’t.”

“Clever, too. I wish I had seen how she did that trick. I understand the pretending-to-faint part, and I can picture the uppercut, but I still can’t picture how she dropped him.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Elizabeth said confidently. “We simply have to keep trying.”

“I’m not going to try smoking cigars,” Emily said, making a face. “Not with Uncle John’s cheroots, at any rate. I did it once and thought I should never eat again. I cannot think how she did it without puking all over Cousin Vere.”

“She’s a journalist. Only think of the filthy places she must enter to get her stories. She can smoke cigars because she has a strong stomach. If you had one, you wouldn’t get sick.”

“Will she write about him, do you think?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “We’ll have

to wait and find out. The next Argus comes out the day after tomorrow.”

It wouldn’t arrive at Blakesleigh, however, until Thursday at the earliest. Then it would pass through several hands, including the butler’s, before it joined the stack of discards.

They both knew they must wait at least a week after its arrival. Their Uncle John never read aloud from the Argus, not even the fictional Rose of Thebes. Its hoydenish—and that was putting it mildly—heroine might have an unfortunate effect upon the suggestible minds of young ladies.