Viscount Vagabond (Regency Noblemen 1)

Subterfuge was alien to Miss Pelliston’s character. She was, as she had admitted, an inept liar. The fibs she’d told Miss Collingwood had cost Catherine agonies of guilt. Besides, she could conceive of no more unworthy return for his unexpected kindness than to lie to him.

She told him the truth, though she eliminated the more sensational elements in order to present the matter with dry objectivity. She did not enlighten him regarding her true identity, either, and named no other names. Though that was not precisely objective, she had rather keep her disgrace as private as possible.

“So you ran away because you couldn’t stomach marrying the old fellow your father chose for you?”

“I never stopped to consider what I could endure, Mr. Demowery. I’m afraid I did not weigh the matter as carefully as I ought,” she said, gazing earnestly into his handsome face. “I just took offence—”

“And took off.” He smiled—not the crooked, drunken grin of last night but a friendly, open smile. “Yes, I see now what a passion-driven creature you are. Oh, don’t go all red on me again. The colour’s too bright and you must think of my poor head. I ain’t fully recovered, you know.”

She drew herself up. “Actually, I am seldom ruled by emotion. This is the first time I can remember ever behaving so—so unsensibly.”

“Sounds sensible enough to me. As you said before, people shouldn’t be forced to marry. M’ sister felt the same. Bolted, when m’ father tried to shackle her to some rich old prig. They tried to get me to fetch her back, but I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t either, if you knew Cousin Agatha. That’s who Louisa went to. That’s what you need, Miss Pettigrew—a Cousin Agatha to terrify your papa into submission.”

“Well, all I had was Miss Fletcher and she doesn’t terrify anyone, and now she’s gone,” Catherine answered ruefully.

“What, no old dragon ladies in the family to scorch your papa’s whiskers for him?”

Catherine shook her head.

“Then I think,” said Mr. Demowery, turning his blue gaze to the greasy window, “you had better meet Louisa.”

***

“Bolted?” Lord Browdie exclaimed. “Well, if that don’t beat all.”

He ran his thick fingers over the rough, reddish stubble on his chin. Probably should have shaved, he thought, though that seemed a deal of trouble to go to merely on Catherine’s account.

Miss Deborah Pelliston left off snuffling into her black-bordered handkerchief long enough to offer a weak protest. “Oh, don’t say it,” she moaned. “I cannot believe Catherine would do such a thing. Surely there is a misunderstanding. She may have met with an accident or, heaven help us, foul play.”

“And left a note? That don’t make sense.”

The glass of Madeira at his elbow did, however, make sense to his lordship. Therefore, he turned his attention to that while nodding absently at his hostess’s stream of incoherent complaint.

Should have married the little shrew right off, he thought sourly. She’d be broken to harness now. Instead there was going to be a deal of bother and no one but himself to deal with it.

The whole business ought to have been simple enough. James Pelliston had decided to marry a handsome widow from Bath. The widow didn’t think a house required two mistresses and had dropped a hint to her future husband. Pelliston, as usual, had confided the problem to his crony: what was to be done with Catherine?

The crony had considered the matter over a bottle of brandy. He considered the property Catherine’s great aunt had left her and found that agreeable. He considered Catherine’s appearance and decided he’d seen worse, especially now she was out of that hideous mourning. He considered that he himself had long been in need of an heir and therefore a wife, which in any other case would require a lot of tedious courtship. Catherine’s like or dislike of himself he considered not a jot.

“I’ll take her off your hands,” he’d charitably offered.

By the time the gentlemen emptied another bottle, the dowry had been settled and an agreement reached whereby the two households would take Aunt Deborah by turns, until such time as neither could put up any longer with her whimpering and she might be packed off to quarters in nearby Bath.

The two men had toasted each other into a state of cheerful oblivion after settling matters to their satisfaction. Since that time, over two months ago, Lord Browdie had spoken to Catherine once, at her father’s wedding. Their conversation had consisted of Lord Browdie’s jovially informing his betrothed that she was too pale and skinny and should eat more. Like the other wedding guests, Lord Browdie then proceeded to drink himself into a stupor. He never noticed his fiancee’s disappearance. He had enough trouble remembering she existed at all.

Yesterday, the engagement ring he’d ordered in a fit of magnanimity had arrived. He’d come this afternoon to present it to his affianced bride. The trouble was, she’d fled three days ago during the wedding celebration, and this sniffling, whining, moaning creature sitting on the other side of the room had been too busy having migraines and palpitations to report the matter to him immediately. By now Catherine might be anywhere, her trail so cold he doubted that even his well-trained hounds could track her down.

“Wish you’d told me right off,” his lordship grumbled when there was a break in the snuffling and sobbing.

“Oh, dear, I’m sure I meant to. That is, I wasn’t sure if I ought. I never missed her that night because I’d gone to bed so early with a terrible headache. Then, when I found that dreadful note next day, I had such fearful palpitations and was so ill I couldn’t think at all, and with James away... Well, one cannot trust the servants, because they will talk and the scandal would kill me, I know it. So I kept to my room. But who could have imagined she would do such a shameful thing? Such a good, biddable girl she has always been.”

“Never thought she had the pluck,” said Lord Browdie, half to himself. “Anyhow, where’s the scandal in it?” he asked his hostess. “Ain’t no fine Society hereabouts to be shocked. Just let on she’s sick.”

“But the servants –”

“Will keep their tongues in their heads if they know what’s good for them. I’ll talk to them,” Lord Browdie assured her as he dragged his gangly body up from the chair.

“You are too kind. You make me quite ashamed that I did not confide this trouble to you immediately –”

‘Yes, yes. Just calm yourself, ma’am. Important to behave as though nothing’s happened out of the ordinary.”

“But surely James must be told—”

“No sense interrupting his bridal trip. By the time he’s back we’ll have Cathy home safe and sound, and no one the wiser.” He had no difficulty speaking with more confidence than he felt. Lord Browdie was accustomed to swagger.

Miss Deborah sighed. “It is such a relief to have a man take charge. I cannot tell you how beset I’ve been, not knowing where to turn or what to do. Why, I’m frightened half to death each time the post is delivered, not knowing what news it will bring—though she did say she would be perfectly safe. But will not her friends wonder when she d

oesn’t answer their letters?”

As far as Lord Browdie knew, Catherine hadn’t any friends. He pointed this out to his hostess.

In response, and with much fussing and flustering, the lady drew out a letter from her workbasket. “It’s from Ireland,” she explained, handing it to Lord Browdie. “I did not like to leave it lying about, because the servants—” She gasped as he tore the letter open. “Oh, my—I don’t think— it is hers, after all.”

He ignored her twittering as he scanned the fine, precise handwriting. Then he folded the letter and stuffed it into the tail pocket of his coat. “Good enough,” he said. “Won’t be no wild goose chase after all. She’s gone to London.”

“Dear heaven!” The spinster sank back in her seat, fumbling for her smelling salts.

“Now, now, don’t fuss yourself,” Lord Browdie said irritably. “There’s only the one place she can go, so there’ll be no trouble finding her. No trouble at all.”

Miss Collingwood’s Academy had been squeezed into a tidy corner of a neighbourhood best described as shabbily genteel. Miss Collingwood catered to bourgeois families that did not yet aspire to the glory of housing governesses, but did wish to improve their daughters’ chances of upward mobility by means of a not-too-taxing course of education. While the training would not make a butcher’s daughter a lady, it might subdue the more blatant signs of her origins.

The streets the hackney coach now traversed bespoke an entirely different social level. Here were trees enclosed in tidy squares upon which the sparkling windows of elegant townhouses bent their complacent gazes. These streets were wider, cleaner, and a good deal quieter, their peace broken only by the rumble of elegant carriages and the clip-clop of high-stepping thoroughbreds. A gentleman stood at one doorway drawing on his gloves as his tiger soothed the restless, high-strung horses impatiently waiting. On the sidewalk, a neatly dressed female servant hastened along, basket in hand.

Catherine surveyed the passing vista with confusion at first, then growing anxiety as her companion replied that, yes, they had long since left the City proper and were now in Mayfair. She shrank deeper into her corner of the coach and wished there had been room in her bandboxes for an enormous poke bonnet. This was precisely the sort of neighbourhood in which one could expect to meet Papa’s friends. Lord Pelliston never came to Town, but his cronies did. How would she explain her presence here if one of them recognised her?