The Last Hellion (Scoundrels 4)

“Let it be a lesson to her, eh?” Tolliver said, chuckling. “What lesson was that, I wonder? How to deliver a jawbreaker?”

“Jawbreaker?” Carruthers echoed indignantly. “And how could he be talking if it was? I vow, you must be half blind. It wasn’t the uppercut that dropped him. It was that curious acrobatic trick of hers.”

“I’ve heard of such things,” said Crenshaw. “Something to do with balance, I collect. All the rage in China or Arabia or some such—and about what you’d expect from those heathen inscrutables.”

“About what you’d expect from Lady Grendel, then,” said Carruthers. “I heard she was born in a Borneo swamp and reared by crocodiles.”

“More like Seven Dials,” Tolliver said. “You heard this lot, cheering her on. They know her. She’s one of their own, spawned in the back-slums of the Holy Land, I don’t doubt.”

“Where’d she learn heathenish fighting tricks, then?” Crenshaw demanded. “And how is it no one ever heard of her before a few months ago? Where’s she been keeping all this time that no one remarked a Long Meg like her? It isn’t as though she’s hard to see, is it?”

He turned back to Vere, who was swatting mud from his trousers. “You’d a close enough look and listen, Ainswood. Any hint of the Holy Land in her speech? London bred, would you say, or not?”

Seven Dials was the black heart of one of London’s seamiest neighborhoods, St. Giles’s parish, which was also known ironically as the Holy Land.

Vere doubted that the Grenville gorgon would have needed to travel beyond its boundaries to learn the kinds of dirty fighting tricks she employed. That he’d discerned no Cockney accent meant nothing. Jaynes had grown up in the back-slums, yet he’d lost all traces of the accent.

Perhaps she had sounded more like a lady than Jaynes did a gentleman. What did it signify? Plenty of lowborn wenches tried to ape their betters. And if Vere could not at the moment recall a single one who’d made it seem so natural, he could not, either, discern a single reason to stand here blithering about it. Covered with mud outwardly and simmering inwardly, he was in no mood to encourage this lot of morons to exercise their limited intellects upon this or any other point.

Leaving them, he made for Brydges Street in a storm of outrage, the likes of which he hadn’t experienced in years.

He had hurried to the curst female’s rescue and found her all but begging for a riot. His timely intervention had beyond question spared her a knife in the back. In reward, he’d received an earful of brimstone and taunting defiance.

Miss Insolence had actually threatened to black both his eyes. She’d threatened him—Vere Aylwin Mallory—whom even that great big-beaked brute Lord Beelzebub couldn’t pound into submission.

Was it any wonder that a man so goaded should adopt the tried and true method of silencing a scold?

And if she didn’t like it, why didn’t she slap his face, as a normal woman would? Did she think he’d hit her—any woman—back? Did she think he meant to ravish her in Vinegar Yard before a mob of drunks, pimps, and whores?

As if he’d ever stoop so low, he fumed. As if he needed to take a woman by force. As if he didn’t have to fight off their advances with cudgels, practically.

He was halfway to Brydges Street when a loud voice penetrated his indignation.

“I say—Ainswood, ain’t it?”

Vere paused and turned. The man calling to him was the one he’d pulled out of the cabriolet’s rampaging way.

“Couldn’t place the name at first,” the fellow said as he reached him. “But then they said something ’bout Dain and m’curst sister and then I recalled who you was. Which I should’ve done in the first place, him mentioning you more than once, but I’ll tell you the truth: I been hurried and harried from pillar to post till I feel like what’s-his-name the Greek fellow with them plaguey Fury things after him, and it’s a wonder my brainworks ain’t closed up shop permanent. So it’s like as not if the tall gal did run me down I wouldn’t know the difference, except maybe it’d be the first rest I had in weeks. All the same, I’m much obliged, since I’m sure it’s a deuced awkward way to go, havin’ your bones crushed under a wheel, and I’d be honored if you’d share a bottle with me.”

He stuck out his hand. “Mean to say, it’s Bertie Trent—me, that is—and pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Lydia shoved the Duke of Ainswood to the darkest corner of her mind and focused on the girl. This was not the first damsel in distress she’d rescued. She usually took them to one of London’s more trustworthy charitable organizations.

Early in the summer, though, Lydia had rescued a pair of seventeen-year-olds, Bess and Millie, who had run away from harsh employers. She’d hired them as maids of all work—or slaveys, as such servants were often called—because her intuition told her they’d suit her. Experience had proven her intuition correct. The same forceful inner voice told her this waif would also do better with her.

By the time Lydia had squeezed her and Susan into the cabriolet, she was certain the girl was not of the laboring classes. Though she spoke with a slight Cornish accent, it was an educated one, and practically the first words that came out of her mouth were, “I can’t believe it’s you, Miss Grenville of the Argus.” Maidservants and simple country girls were unlikely to be familiar with the Argus.

The girl’s name—definitely Cornish—was Tamsin Prideaux, and she was nineteen years old. Lydia had guessed fifteen at first, but on closer inspection the maturity was more evident.

Tamsin was a smallish girl, that was all, except for her eyes, which were enormous and velvet brown. They were also extremely shortsighted, it turned out. Apart from what she wore, her spectacles were the only belongings she had left. They were sadly mangled, with one lens cracked.

She had taken them off shortly after alighting from the coach, Miss Prideaux explained, in order to clean them, because by then they were thickly coated with road dust. There had been a great crush at the coaching inn, and someone had pushed her. The next she knew, someone tore her reticule and carpetbag from her hands so violently that she unbalanced and fell. When she got up from the ground, her box was gone, too. At this point, the bawd had come, feigning sympathy and offering to take her to the Bow Street magistrate’s office to report the crime.

It was an old trick, but even hardened Londoners were assaulted and robbed daily, Lydia assured her.

“You mustn’t blame yourself,” she told the girl as they reached the house. “It could happen to anyone.”

“Except you,” Miss Prideaux said. “You’re up to every rig.”

“Don’t be silly,” Lydia said briskly while hustling her indoors. “I’ve made my share of mistakes.”

She noticed that Susan showed no signs of jealousy, which looked promising. She had also resisted the temptation to play with the new human toy. This was considerate of the mastiff, since the girl had been terrified out of her wits already, and—misinterpreting affectionate canine overtures—might start screaming, which would upset Susan very much. Nonetheless, as they entered the hall, Lydia took precautions.

“This is a friend,” she told the dog while lightly patting Tamsin’s shoulder. “Be gentle, Susan. Do you hear? Gentle.”

Susan licked the girl’s hand, very delicately.

Gingerly, Tamsin petted her.

“Susan is highly intelligent,” Lydia explained, “but you must communicate with her in simple terms.”

“They used mastiffs to hunt wild boar in olden times, didn’t they?” the girl asked. “Does she bite?”

“Devour is more like it,” Lydia said. “Still, you’ve nothing to fear from her. If she grows too playful, tell her firmly, ‘Gentle,’—unless you’d rather be knocked down and drowned in doggy drool.”

Tamsin chuckled softly, which was an encouraging sign. Bess appeared then, and in a little while the guest was borne off for tea, a hot bath, and a nap.

After a quick washing up, Lydia adjourned to her study. Only there, w

ith the door closed, did she let her mask of unshakable confidence slip.

Though she’d seen a great deal of the world—more of it than the majority of London’s most polished sophisticates, male and female—she was not altogether as worldly as the world believed.

No man had ever kissed Lydia Grenville before.

Even Great-Uncle Ste, kindly if misguided, had never done more than pat her on the head—or, when she started sprouting into a giantess, upon the hand.

What the Duke of Ainswood had done was very far from avuncular. And Lydia found she was very far from immune.

She sank into the chair at the desk and pressed her bowed head against the heels of her hands and waited for the hot inner tumult to subside and her neatly ordered, well-controlled world to settle back into place.