Don't Tempt Me (Fallen Women 2)

“We can’t, miss. Lady Lexham said His Grace would call for you and you might go out with him.”

“He hasn’t called,” said Zoe. “He hasn’t been here since Thursday, and then he spoke only to my mother.” She’d been with her sisters, learning the correct way to serve tea.

“You can’t go out alone, miss,” Jarvis said.

“I’m not going alone. You’re coming with me.”

“You’d do much better to wait for His Grace,” Jarvis said. “If he’s with you, no one will dare to stare or behave disrespectfully toward you, her ladyship said. She said if anyone else was to go about with you, they would have to call out the guards again and read the Riot Act and if you was killed by the mob, even by accident because of too much enthusiasm, what would she and his lordship do? she said.”

“The mob is gone,” Zoe said. “Even the newspaper men have left the square. Last night the Princess Elizabeth married the Prince of Hesse-Homburg at the Queen’s House. She is the news. I am not the news.”

“But, miss, her ladyship said—”

“If we travel in a hackney, no one will know it’s me,” Zoe said. “No one in my family travels in a hired vehicle.”

“That’s true, miss, which is why I never fetched one before. And if anyone ever did want one, it’s rightfully a task for one of the under footmen or—”

“There is a stand, I believe, not very far away,” said the implacable Zoe.

“Yes, miss, on Bond Street, but—”

“Then go to Bond Street.”

It was the voice of command. Jarvis went.

A short time later

The maid had been obliged to run up and down Bond Street, waving her umbrella, to procure the hackney, with dubious results. Judging by the creakiness, crumbling interior, and smell, the carriage had probably done service in the time of the first King George, if not the eighth Henry. Still, it moved, which was all Zoe required.

Once they were safely enclosed in the ancient coach, embarked on their journey, Jarvis showed a more adventurous spirit and began naming the sights along the way.

They traveled along Bond Street to Piccadilly, with the maid pointing out dressmakers’ shops and furriers, goldsmiths and jewelers, bookshops and print sellers, and houses of the great. They made their way through Haymarket and continued southeastward to the Strand, then headed westward again by another route that took them to Covent Garden.

Zoe gazed out of the coach window, entranced. For a time, the sights of London took her mind off the capricious Marchmont, but only for a time. She did not see how she was to become fashionable with only her sisters to guide her. He seemed not to take this matter seriously. He did not care, certainly, that she’d been cooped inside Lexham House forever.

Perhaps he’d forgotten?

It would be easy for a man to forget about a woman when she wasn’t right in front of him. Life offered men a great many more distractions than it did women. Then, too, men were so easily distracted.

“Where to next, miss?” said Jarvis. “Would you like to see the Tower? Or would you like to go back?”

“I’m not ready to go back,” said Zoe.

“Whitehall, then?”

After a moment’s thought, Zoe said, “I want to see White’s Club.” She knew Marchmont spent a large portion of his day there, not thinking about her or the tortures she’d be undergoing at her sisters’ hands.

The driver, amply paid to indulge the lady’s whim to wander through London, took them back to the West End. They passed Charing Cross and the King’s Mews and the Opera House. At another street, the maid pointed out Marchmont House, nearby in St. James’s Square. They did not enter the square, though, but continued along Pall Mall to St. James’s Street.

All the coaches, carts, riders, and pedestrians in London seemed to have crammed themselves into it this day. As they neared the top of the hill, the hackney slowed to a crawl. At White’s, close to the corner of Piccadilly, it came to a dead stop. This gave Zoe ample time to study the building. It was handsome but did not look very exciting. What on earth did he find there to amuse him, day after day? Or was it merely a comfortable place in which to get drunk with other idle men?

“There’s the bow window,” said Jarvis. “The gentlemen gather there and watch the passersby. But only certain gentlemen are allowed.”

Several were gathered in the window at present. Zoe couldn’t make out their faces, though, through the dirty glass of the hackney’s window.

“Curse it,” she said. “I can’t see a thing.” She wrestled the window open and leant out for a clearer view. At the same moment, one very fair head turned to look out of White’s bow window, straight at her.

She regarded the gentleman for a moment, then sat back. “Close the window,” she told Jarvis.

The traffic gave way and the hackney lurched forward.

Meanwhile in White’s

The Duke of Marchmont was half-listening to his friends’ unstimulating conversation and gazing out of the bow window in hopes of a diversion when an ancient hackney paused in the street outside and its window went down and a young woman’s face appeared.

He blinked.

The face disappeared, the window went up, a space opened in the crush on St. James’s Street, and the hackney pushed into it.

He stared for a moment at the place where the vehicle had been and told himself he’d imagined the whole thing. Lexham would never allow a daughter of his to drive about London in a hired vehicle, especially a broken-down one like that.

“That was a deuced pretty girl,” said Adderwood.

“Which girl?” said Worcester.

“Hanging out of the window of the hackney. The oldest one in London, I vow. The vehicle, I mean. Not the girl.”

“Didn’t see her,” said Worcester.

“Pity,” said Adderwood. “She was a peach. Put me in mind of somebody but I can’t think who it is. Did you see her, Marchmont?”

“Yes,” His Grace said tightly. “That reminds me. I have an appointment.”

While his friends began betting about how old the oldest hackney was, he made his exit.

He did not hurry out of the room. He told himself that Zoe Octavia was her father’s responsibility. If she was wandering about London in a ramshackle hackney—and thus couldn’t possibly have a family member with her, because they’d all rather set themselves on fire than be seen in a hired vehicle—this was not Marchmont’s problem but Lexham’s.

The duke told himself that if Lexham chose to let her loose, to get into who knew what kind of trouble, this was Lexham’s decision, though one would think the man would know better.

On the other hand, this was Zoe Octavia, who had a pernicious habi

t of running away….

His Grace took care not to run out of the club and race to the hackney stand in St. James’s Street.

He walked at his usual unhurried pace. He selected the least disgusting vehicle he could find. He described the one he’d seen.

The driver knew it. It was famous, apparently, for it was, as Adderwood had asserted, the oldest London hackney in operation.

“I shall pay you fifty pounds to find it,” said His Grace.

“I’ll wager anything he didn’t see me,” Zoe muttered. “That would be like him, not to notice. I should have given him more time. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he was too drunk to focus clearly.”

“Miss?” said Jarvis.

“Never mind.”

She should have waited longer before moving away from the window, Zoe chided herself. She’d watched ladies of the harem do it countless times when they traveled outside the house. If they saw a handsome stranger, they’d let their veils fall “accidentally.” Then they took their time about covering their faces again. Even at home they found ways to show themselves to attractive men passing in the street below. They’d peep through curtains or window shutters and be slow to close them or to move away from the window.

She might not have been slow enough.

Marchmont might have been looking at another vehicle or a rider or a pedestrian. She’d shown herself for only a moment. Even if he’d spotted her, he might not have recognized her. He might be in a haze. He had been in a haze when he agreed to introduce her to his world. Perhaps he had only a vague recollection of what she looked like.

She should have allowed for the haze and his not being overly intelligent.

Ah, well, too late to mend it. Either he’d recollected her existence or he hadn’t.

A short while later, as the hackney was proceeding westward along Piccadilly, she became aware of shouts nearby.

She looked out of the window. She saw only passing vehicles, horses, people, and, farther to the left, a stretch of hilly meadow dotted with a few clumps of trees.