The Last Hellion (Scoundrels 4)

That prospect was nearly as painful as the gallows.

But painful or not, Francis Beaumont must bear it.

He had enough money to hire a post chaise, and if he started immediately, he’d reach the coast long before anyone was aware he’d fled.

He was making his way through the crowd, careful not to appear in the least hurried, when the constables approached, bearing Coralie on a makeshift litter.

“I hope the bitch is dead!” a whore near him cried out.

“She ain’t,” someone else yelled. “More’s the pity. The duchess only broke her jaw.”

This news, confirmed by a constable, brought nearly universal disappointment.

It dawned on Beaumont then that Grenville of the Argus had more friends than enemies in this quarter. Two prostitutes, half dead as they were, had tried to help her rescue Ainswood’s wards. He looked about him, saw hardened whores sobbing, cursing Coralie Brees.

Even the street arabs were blubbering.

It took him but a moment to discern this, and but another to make use of it. He knew how to exploit grief, how to poison minds, how to stir simpler hearts to bitterness and rage. And so he let a few careless remarks drop as he made his way through the crowd.

In a matter of minutes, the crowd of sailors, whores, pimps, beggar boys, and other riverside scum turned into a murderous mob.

Its roar drowned out the rattles, warnings, and threats to read the Riot Act.

In minutes, the mob had overturned the cart that was to bear Coralie Brees to the Shadwell magistrate, knocked the constables out of the way, and attacked the prisoners.

Moments later, Coralie Brees, battered beyond recognition, lay dead upon the cobblestones. Mick finished bleeding to death not long thereafter.

By then the mob had melted away…and Francis Beaumont was already on his way home.

Some hours later, Vere sat as he’d done so many times before—for Uncle, for Charlie, for Robin—holding a too-cold hand.

His wife’s.

“I’ll never forgive you, Grenville,” he said, his voice choked. “You were supposed to stay home and be the general. You were not supposed to go charging out on your own. I can’t trust you out of my sight for a minute. I vow, I must have died months ago and gone direct to hell—which is why I haven’t hanged myself, because it would be redundant.”

“Lud, what a fuss you make.” Grenville treated him to one of her mocking half-smiles. “It’s the merest nick she gave me.”

It had not been the “merest nick.” If not for layers of underwear, a sturdy corset, and Great Uncle Ste’s pocket watch, the Duchess of Ainswood would not be alive. The watch had deflected the blade, which had cut clumsily rather than fatally.

The doctor, having treated the wound and bandaged up Her Grace, had left the room a moment ago with Lord Dain.

“As soon as you get well,” Vere said, “I’m going to give you a good beating.”

“You don’t hit women.”

“I’ll make an exception in your case.” He glowered at the hand he held. “Your hand’s as cold as ice.”

“That’s because you’re stopping the circulation.”

He eased his death grip.

“That’s better,” she murmured.

“Sorry.” He started to let go.

“No, don’t,” she said. “Your hand is so big and warm. I love your wicked hands, Ainswood.”

“We’ll see how much you like them when I turn you over my knee and give you the spanking you deserve.”

She smiled. “I was never so glad of anything as I was of your arrival tonight. Coralie fights as dirty as I do. And it was hard to concentrate, because I was worried about the girls. I wasn’t at all sure I’d be in any condition to help them once I was done with her. The rage. The madness. When they’re truly worked up, such people have superhuman strength. I knew it. I didn’t want to tangle with her. I knew what I’d be up against. But I had no choice. I couldn’t let her get away.”

“I know.”

“I did send a boy from the Bell and Bottle for help,” she went on. “But I couldn’t risk waiting for help to come. As it was—”

“Lizzie and Em would have been dead if you’d waited,” he cut in. “She went in to kill them.” He told Lydia about the rat they’d caught and thrown at Coralie.

“Still, their ploy only gained them a few minutes,” he went on. “Luckily for them you arrived during those minutes. You saved their lives, Grenville. You and your rag-tag army.” He bent and kissed her hand.

“Don’t be absurd,” she said. “We should never have succeeded without reinforcements. Even if I’d managed to subdue Coralie—and I’ll tell you straight, it was no easy battle—I still would have had Mick to contend with. By the time I got to him, he might have done your wards considerable damage.”

“I know. Tom hit him in the head with a rock. The brute didn’t even feel it. He presented no problem for Susan, though.” He frowned. “Gad, I didn’t do a damned thing. Let the dog take care of Mick. Looked on while you battled the bawd, as though it were a prize fight.”

“What the devil else were you to do?” she demanded, edging up on the pillows. “No one with a grain of sense would interfere in such a situation. You did exactly as you ought. You can have no idea how much the sound of your voice cheered and encouraged me. I was growing very tired and discouraged—and a little anxious, I will admit. But your telling me to stop playing and finish her off was like a bracing gulp of strong liquor. At any rate, I couldn’t bear to lose while you watched. Too humiliating for words.” She coiled her fingers with his. “You cannot do everything, you know. Sometimes you must be content with giving moral support. I don’t need to be coddled and sheltered. I don’t need all my battles fought for me. I do need to be believed in.”

“Believed in,” he repeated, shaking his head. “That’s all you need, is it?”

“It’s a great deal to me,” she said. “Your believing in me, that is. Considering how you hold my sex in contempt, I must regard your respect for my intelligence and abilities as the most precious of commodities.”

“The most precious?” He disentangled his hand, then stood and walked to the windows. He stared into the garden. Then he came back to the bed. He stood at the foot, his hand wrapped round the bedpost. “What about love, Grenville? Do you think, in time, you might be so graciously condescending as to endure my love? Or is love only for mere mortals? Perhaps the godlike Ballisters have no more need for it than the Olympian deities need a curricle to take them down to Delphi, or a vessel to take them to Troy.”

She gazed at him for a long moment and sighed. “Ainswood, let me explain something to you,” she said. “If you wish to make a declaration of love to your wife, the accepted form is to say, simply, ‘I love you.’ The accepted form is not to dare and daunt and go about it in your usual belligerent way. This is supposed to be a tender moment, and you are spoiling it by making me want to throw a coal bucket at you.”

He narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. “I love you,” he said grimly.

She pressed her hand to her breast and closed her eyes. “I am overcome with—with something. I do believe I shall swoon.”

He returned to the side of the bed, grabbed her hands, and trapped them firmly in his. “I love you, Grenville,” he said, more gently. “I started falling in love with you when you knocked me on my arse in Vinegar Yard. But I didn’t know, or want to know, until our wedding night. And then I couldn’t bear to tell you, because you weren’t in love with me. That was stupid. You might have been killed tonight, and I wouldn’t have had even the one small comfort: that I’d told you how dear you are to me.”

“You’ve told me,” she said, “in hundreds of ways. I didn’t need the three magic words, though I’m glad to hear them.”

“Glad,” he repeated. “Well, that’s better, I suppose. You’re glad to own my heart.” He released her hands. “Perhaps, when you’re feeling stronger, you might muster up more enthusiasm.

In any case, as soon as you’re quite well again, I’ll start working on capturing yours. Perhaps, in a decade or two, you might be sufficiently softened to return my feelings.”

“I most certainly will not,” she said as he stepped back and started to undress.

He paused, staring at her.

“Why in blazes should I return them?” she said. “I mean to keep them. In my heart.” She pointed there. “Where I keep my own. Where it says, ‘I love you,’ comma, then all your names and titles.”

He felt the smile tugging at his mouth, and the odd stab, at the heart she’d stolen from him.

“You must be blind,” she went on, “not to have seen it written there long since.”

The smile stretched into a roguish grin.

“Well, let me get undressed, my dear,” he said. “Then I’ll come into bed and take a closer look.”

Normally, a riot in London provoked an outpouring of indignation and the sort of panic expected upon receipt of news of a foreign invasion.

The riot in Ratcliffe, which made all the morning papers, was scarcely noticed. This was because a more catastrophic event had occurred.

Miranda, the heroine of The Rose of Thebes, had, as Bertie Trent predicted, sharpened a spoon on the stones of the dungeon. However, as Bertie was exceedingly shocked to discover on Thursday morning, when he finally got to reading yesterday’s Argus, Miranda had not dug a tunnel with it. Instead, she had plunged her makeshift weapon into Diablo and fled.

In the closing paragraph of the chapter, the dashing villain of the story “gazed at the portal through which the girl had vanished until Death’s shadow darkened his vision. Yet even then, his eyes continued fixed upon the door, while he heard the precious fluid drip from his massive form onto the cold stones. In that sound, he heard his life seeping slowly away…lost, futile, wasted.”

London was devastated.

The fictional event made the front pages of several morning papers. Only the most sedate, like the Times, chose to disregard it, merely mentioning, in an obscure corner of the paper, “a disturbance outside the offices of the Argus,” late on Wednesday afternoon.

The disturbance was caused by a large gathering of outraged readers. Some threatened to burn down the building. Others offered to tear the editor to pieces.