The Last Hellion (Scoundrels 4)

“That’s not the point,” he said. “The point is, she’s doing it on purpose to vex me. You’d think she’d run all the way from St. James’s Square, instead of covering the distance sound asleep, on my feet, in a hackney.”

The youngest of the clerks stepped out from behind the counter. “That is Her Grace’s mastiff, isn’t it?” he said. “I’ve seen her before. I think she’s guarding the door, that’s all, sir. Protecting you.”

Vere looked at the dog, then at the clerk.

The man bowed. “And if you will pardon the liberty, Your Grace, may I offer my heartiest felicitations upon your recent nuptials.”

A murmuring chorus seconded this speech.

Vere’s neckcloth felt much too tight, and the shop seemed much too warm. He mumbled a response—he wasn’t sure what. Then, fixing his eye upon the one who knew all about the dog, Vere said, “I want to buy a gewgaw. For my lady.”

If the term “gewgaw” was not as precise as could be wished, the clerk showed no signs of discontent.

“Certainly, Your Grace. If you would be so good as to come this way.”

He ushered Vere into a private room.

Ten minutes later, Susan ambled in and collapsed on Vere’s feet.

Two hours later, his toes numb, Vere exited the shop, a small parcel tucked into his waistcoat pocket.

He didn’t see the female scurry away from the shop window and dart into an alley. He didn’t know who Susan was growling at, or whether she was simply growling at everyone because she was cross again, at having to move after she’d finally got comfy.

He was unaware of Coralie Brees peering from the corner of the alley and staring, long after she could actually see him, and so he could have no inkling of the murderous fury churning in her breast while she imagined the sparkling baubles he’d bought, and what she’d do to the one he’d bought them for.

It was early evening when Lydia found the box.

By this time she was aware that Ainswood had gone out and taken the dog with him. Millie, who’d gone to the garden to try to coax Susan to eat—she was sulking again—had seen Ainswood come in the garden gate, pick up the leash, and depart with the mastiff.

It was Bess who brought up the dinner Lydia had elected to eat in the master bedchamber, since that was the only part of the house not under attack or still thick with grime. And it was Bess who passed on the information that His Grace had exited via his bedroom window.

“And Mr. Jaynes is ever so vexed, miss—mean to say, Your Grace—on account of it was a new coat, just come from the tailor’s.” Catching Lydia’s frown, the girl added hurriedly, “Only he said it to me private-like, not in front of anybody, and said I might mention it to you, but nobody else, as it wasn’t proper for him to tattle on the master, but you ought to know, in case His Grace comes back the same way and gives you a fright in the middle of the night.”

After Bess left, Lydia went to the window. It was no easy climb, and she wondered where he’d found a foot-hold in the well-pointed brick. If it had been raining when he left, he could have easily slipped and broken his neck.

That was when the box caught her attention, shiny lacquered black against the yellow paint of the windowsill.

She remembered the fuss Ainswood had made last night about his pocket contents.

She was a journalist, and prying into others’ affairs was her stock-in-trade. She was also a woman.

She opened the box.

In it lay a stump of a pencil, a black button, a hairpin, and a splinter of ebony.

She snapped it shut, started to put it back where she’d found it, then took it up again and pressed it to her heart. “Oh, Ainswood,” she cried softly. “You wicked, wicked man. Keepsakes.”

“You’re the most aggravating female who ever lived. There’s no pleasing you.” Vere crouched beside the dog. “It’s raining, Susan. What the devil do you want to lie in the rain for, when you can lumber about a great, warm, dry house and trip the footmen and throw all the maids into fits of terror? Mama’s in there, you know. Don’t you want to see your mama?”

A deeply despondent doggy sigh was her answer.

Vere collected the various parcels he’d thrown down when Susan threw herself down, then stood up and marched into the house.

Once inside he bellowed for Jaynes.

“The damn dog won’t come in,” he said, when the valet finally skulked into the hall.

Leaving Jaynes to deal with Susan, Vere hurried upstairs and into his bedchamber.

He threw the parcels on the bed. He pulled off his wet coat. Turning to toss it toward a chair, he saw his wife, sitting on the rug before the fireplace, her knees drawn up, her arms wrapped about them.

His heartbeat quickened to triple time.

Avoiding her gaze and trying to steady his breathing, he knelt down beside her. Looking for words, and looking anywhere but at her face, he saw the box her ink-stained fingers encircled.

He stared at it, frowning, for a long moment. Then he remembered. Jaynes. The lacquered box.

“What have you got there, Grenville?” he said lightly. “Poison for exasperating husbands?”

“Keepsakes,” she said.

“They’re not keepsakes,” he said stoutly, while well aware the lie was written plain on his face in vivid scarlet. “I like to keep a lot of rubbish in my pockets because it makes Jaynes wild. You make it easy because you’re forever leaving debris in your wake.”

She smiled. “You’re adorable when you’re embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed. A man who’s spent half the day conversing with a dog is past embarrassment.” He put out his hand. “Give it back, Grenville. You’re not supposed to go poking about in a fellow’s personal belongings. You should be ashamed of yourself. You don’t see me sneaking behind your back for a look at the next chapter of The Rose of Thebes, do you?”

He felt rather than saw the box drop into his hand, for his gaze had shifted to her face. He caught the startled look in the instant before she blinked it away.

“I’m not blind,” he said. “I saw Lady Dain’s ring—the great ruby, amazingly like your description of the Rose of Thebes. I’d had my suspicions before of who St. Bellair really was—interesting, isn’t it, how the letters can be rearranged to spell ‘Ballister’?—but the ring clinched it. Today, I found out—in the same way you did, I reckon—where Lady Dain’s ruby had come from. Whether originally looted from a pharaoh’s tomb, no one could say. But the jeweler’s agent did buy it in Egypt.”

To her credit, Grenville didn’t try to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. “You suspected before?” Her blue gaze was soft with wonder. “How did you suspect? No one suspects. Even Miss Price, who is almost painfully perceptive, gaped at me for a full minute when I told her.”

“You gave yourself away in the last two installments, when Diablo started sounding like me.”

She swung up onto her feet in a rustle of bombazine. She began to pace, as she had done last night.

He sank down onto the carpet and lay on his back, his hands clasped behind his head, which was turned to the side, so he could watch her. He loved to watch her walk, long confident strides that would have seemed mannish if it weren’t for the arrogant sway of her magnificent rump. That was all woman.

This was but a temporary respite, he knew, and not much of one at that. While he lay apparently at his ease, images advanced and receded in his mind, like shipwreck victims upon the waves.

He’d taken Susan to Southwark, to the Marshalsea. He’d seen children, some hurrying out—on errands for parents who could not leave the prison—and some returning, more listlessly, their steps dragging as they neared the gates.

/> His wife had been one of those children, and he knew what the Marshalsea had stolen from her.

…take me to meet my new family.

He knew what she wanted in Bedfordshire.

“Oh, it’s impossible!” She flung herself into a chair. “I shall never manage you.” She set her elbow on the chair arm and her chin on her knuckles and eyed him reproachfully. “You undermine and overthrow me at every turn. Every time I want you to do something you find disagreeable—which is practically everything—you find a way to turn my heart to mush. What have you done, read every word I’ve ever written, and analyzed and anatomized it?”

“Yes.” He turned his gaze to the ceiling. “And if I’d known that was all it took to turn your heart to mush, I could have saved myself a good deal of money today—not to mention sparing myself Susan’s aggravating company.”

There was a silence, during which, he assumed, the parcels on the bed finally attracted her attention.

“You wicked man.” Her voice was low and not quite steady. “Have you been buying me gifts?”

“Bribes,” he said, sneaking a glance at her. She had left the chair to go to the bed, and stood looking at the packages. “So I wouldn’t be obliged to sleep in the stables.”

After Rundell and Bridge, after the Marshalsea, he’d taken Susan from shop to shop, with one break for sustenance in a private dining parlor of a coaching inn.

“Perhaps you’re not so good at reading my mind as I believed,” she said. “That thought never crossed it.”

He got up and went to her. “Open them,” he said.

There were notebooks, their rich vellum pages bound in leather as soft as butter. There was a cylindrical pen case of delicately worked silver, with an inkwell that screwed to the bottom of the tube. There was a small traveling writing box, decorated with scenes from mythology, whose compartments contained pens, inkwells, and pounce box, and whose small drawers held wafers, notepaper, and a silver penknife. There was a silver inkstand, as well as a papier-mâché pencil box, filled with pencils.