Viscount Vagabond (Regency Noblemen 1)

“To—to bed?” she echoed faintly.

“Y-yes,” he mimicked. “More comfortable, you know.”

She looked about her again. As far as she could ascertain, his shabby lodgings comprised two rooms. There was no bed in this one. Her face grew warm. “Well, then, good night,” she said politely.

Mr. Demowery considered this briefly. “I’m foxed, darlin’, so maybe I’m not hearing straight—but that sounded om’nously like a dismissal.”

“You expressed intentions of retiring.”

“And you ain’t ‘retiring’ with me?”

“Good heavens, I should hope not. I should not be in your lodgings in the first place. It’s most improper.”

“Sweetheart, I can’t decide,” he began slowly, after he’d mulled over these remarks as well, “whether you’re insane or if you’re horribly ungrateful. Didn’t I just pay fifty quid for you?”

Her face flushed, this time with indignation. “You have preserved me from a fate reputed to be worse than death. I asked you to do so. It’s completely illogical that I should express gratitude by doing exactly what I wished to avoid in the first place.”

As he stood gazing at her, his puzzled expression gave way to a rueful smile. “Very complicated reasoning, mlove. Too complicated for me.” He lifted her out of the chair, and, oblivious to her startled protests or the two small fists pounding on his chest, carried her to the bedroom and dropped her onto the bed.

“I will not cooperate,” she gasped.

“No, of course you won’t. It’s just my luck, ain’t it, this night of all the rest?” He turned and left the room.

Catherine lay upon the mattress, frozen with apprehension. Less than an hour before, her main concern had been escaping a place that could have been one of Dante’s Circles of Hell. Now, evidently, she’d leapt out of the pan into the flames. She’d left home for excellent reasons with a logical plan. Now she could not believe she’d been so naive, so horribly misguided. She had fled what promised to be a life of wretchedness and rushed headlong into what had speedily become the most horrid two—or three or four, she hardly knew—days of her existence.

Despite his drunkenness and apparent penchant for squalor she had believed that her benefactor was not entirely sunk to the depths of depravity. Yet, instead of taking her directly to the authorities, he’d carried her over his shoulder like a sack of corn to his lodgings and clearly expressed intentions of bedding her.

Perhaps he too meant to drug her. Mayhap even now he was preparing some foul concoction and would come back to force it down her throat. Catherine scrambled out of the bed and ran to open the window. It was stuck shut. Furthermore, there were three floors between herself and the ground and no visible means of descent.

Her panicked gaze darted about the room. She dashed to grab the basin from the washstand. Let him try, she told herself. Just let him try.

And if she did somehow miraculously succeed in overpowering a man nearly twice her size, what then? Where would she go, alone, in the middle of the night in this alien, hostile city? One crisis at a time, she counselled herself, as she crept to the door. She tried to close it quietly, but it would not shut altogether. Frustrated, she looked for a position from which she might take her attacker unawares.

At that moment she heard from the room beyond the terrifying noises by means of which primitive man once warned away the creatures skulking near his cave at night. She crept closer to the door and listened. It was true. Mr. Demowery was snoring.

For all that the sound might have in bygone days frightened away wild beasts, Miss Pelliston found it reassuring. She would wait another quarter hour to be absolutely certain he was asleep for the night. Papa was known to lose consciousness over his dinner—apparently dead to the world—then suddenly start up again minutes later, quarrelling with her as if he’d been awake the whole time.

Catherine was very weary, and the steady rhythm of that snoring made her drowsy. She looked longingly at the bed. She would lie down just for a few minutes and think what to do next. The few minutes stretched into half an hour, at the end of which Miss Pelliston too was fast asleep.

Chapter Two

The sun, which had risen many hours earlier, strove in vain to penetrate the grimy window as Clarence Arthur Maximilian Demowery awoke. He was not at all surprised at the great whacking and thundering inside his head, since he had awakened in this state nearly every day of the past six months. He was very much surprised, however, to find himself sprawled face down on a tattered piece of carpet in front of the sooty fireplace. Gingerly, he turned over on his side. A pair of shabby bandboxes blocked his view.

“Now where in blazes did you come from?” he asked. Though he spoke aloud, he was startled to hear a faint moan in reply. Had he moaned? From what seemed a great distance he heard a cough. Then he remembered.

He’d gone to Granny Grendle’s to enjoy one last night of nonrespectablility. There he’d found a curiosity and had brought it—or her, rather—back with him. Though he was not at the moment certain why he’d done so, he was hardly surprised. As a child he’d regularly carried home curiosities of various sorts: insects, reptiles, and rodents, primarily. He wondered how his father would respond to this particular trophy. At eight and twenty, Max was too old and much too large to be spanked. Anyhow, there was no reason to enlighten his father regarding this or any other of the past six months’ adventures.

A second faint moan from the bedroom dragged Mr. Demowery to his feet. Not only his head but his muscles ached, jogging his memory regarding several other details.

He’d gotten into a brawl in a low brothel, after which he’d also parted with fifty pounds for the privilege of hearing a bit of muslin show her gratitude by politely denying him the favours he’d so extravagantly paid for.

He hauled his weary body to the partially open bedroom door and glared at the frail form entangled in the bedclothes. A cloud of light brown hair billowed over the pillow, veiling what seemed to be a very small face, out of which poked a straight, narrow little nose. Gad, he thought in sudden self-disgust—she’s only a child.

At that moment the object of his scrutiny opened her eyes, and his heart sank. They were wide, innocent hazel eyes whose expression changed from child-like wonder to fear in the instant it took her to recall where she was.

“How old are you?” he asked abruptly, feeling unaccountably frightened himself and therefore more annoyed.

“One and twenty,” she gasped.

“Hah!” He marched away from the door and threw himself into a chair.

Steadfastly he ignored the sounds that issued from the bedroom—the rustle of bedclothes, the splash of water, more rustling, and some thumps. He pretended not to see her creep out to grab her bandboxes and scurry back to the room again, pushing the stubborn door half-closed behind her.

When she finally emerged, he thrust past her into the bedroom and took an abnormally long time about his own washing up. Was that what he’d brought home? Dressed in a sober grey frock, with all that glorious hair yanked back into a vicious little knot, she seemed neither the curious baggage he’d taken her for last night nor the child he’d believed was swaddled in his bedclothes.

Yet the frock and bun matched what he recalled of her conversation. She had sounded like a schoolmistress last night, and that in combination with the personal charms he’d briefly glimpsed had appealed to his sense of humour— or maybe his sense of the absurd was more like it. Such a creature was not at all what one expected to find in an establishment such as Granny Grendle’s.

Max Demowery was no wet-behind-the-ears schoolboy. He’d had considerable experience with the frail sorority in England and abroad, in the course of which he’d heard any number of pathetic tales. He’d not actually believed her story, but had taken her away because she amused him. Purchasing her from the old bawd had seemed a fitting conclusion to his six month orgy of dissipation.

Not until the young woman had declined to reward him as he?

??d expected had he, drunk as he was, begun to wonder whether her tale was true. Besides, he’d never yet forced himself upon a woman.

That was as far as he’d been able to reason at the time. Today, in the clear, too-bright light of early afternoon, he found a deal more to puzzle and distress him. A common strumpet he could put back upon the streets without a second thought, assuming confidently that she must be able to survive there or she would never have reached the advanced age of one and twenty. Suppose, however, she wasn’t street goods?

Suppose nothing, he told himself as he savagely scoured his face with the towel. If he had a sense of impending doom, that was because he was hungry and out of sorts. He’d give her some money and send her on her way.