Don't Tempt Me (Fallen Women 2)

The leaders had broken loose, but some men farther along the street caught them. The wheelers, meanwhile, were wild, one bleeding and clearly maddened by pain and fear, the other in a panic.

Marchmont shouted orders. A boy ran up and nearly had his head kicked off, but he caught hold of the injured animal. The duke caught the other one and was calming the frantic beast when he heard a familiar voice cry, “Someone fetch a doctor!”

He looked back and saw Zoe, half under the coach and pulling at the door of the insecurely balanced vehicle.

“Get away from there!” he shouted. “It’s going to collapse!”

She ignored him and tugged at someone inside. The trunk bulged and the coach sagged downward.

“Zoe, damn you, get away from there!”

To his horror, she crawled under the coach.

“Someone hold this curst animal!” he shouted.

All that held up the old coach was the trunk. One wrong move and it would fall…and crush her.

Someone came and took over the animal. At the same instant, before he could get the wretched girl away from the coach, she gave another pull.

The trunk gave way.

The coach seemed to fall so slowly, while he was still lunging for her, before it landed with a great crash and a choking cloud of dust.

“Zoe!” he roared, and plunged into the wreckage.

She’d seen the boy hanging out of the door. Zoe feared he was badly injured, but she hadn’t time to check. She pulled him out and dragged him out of the way. An instant later, the coach hit the ground and flew apart.

“You idiot.” Marchmont’s voice easily penetrated the clamor about her.

He took the boy from her and carried him into the nearest shop. He demanded a doctor, and one soon arrived. Then he went out and supervised those tending to the horses and damaged coach.

When a constable arrived, Marchmont ordered the coachman taken into custody and charged with drunkenness, disturbing the King’s peace, and endangering public safety. The coachman was taken away.

All this happened in a remarkably short time. Zoe watched the street’s concluding events through the shop window while behind her the physician attended to the boy.

Marchmont, she saw, could be remarkably efficient when he chose—or when he had to be. Or perhaps he was not so much efficient as impatient and intimidating.

He came back inside the shop at last. He didn’t look at her but folded his arms and leaned against the door, stone-faced, until the boy came to his senses and proved able to remember his name, the date, and the present sovereign. Zoe caught only the last part of this, because the boy said it loudly: “King George the Third. Everybody knows that.”

He had a lump forming on the back of his head and a number of bruises and scrapes, but the doctor pronounced him fit to return home.

“My groom will take him home in my carriage,” Marchmont said. These were the first words he’d uttered since reentering the shop.

He watched them drive away until they were out of sight. Then he turned his attention to Zoe, who’d followed him out of the shop. He eyed her up and down.

She was dirty and bedraggled, she knew, but she didn’t care. She was still exhilarated, because she’d saved the boy from serious injury, perhaps death. The big, cumbersome coach could have crushed him when it fell. He could have been impaled on a jagged piece of wood or metal.

She’d saved him. She’d been free to act, free to help, and she’d done something worthwhile.

Marchmont did not look either exhilarated or bedraggled. He still had his hat on. His neckcloth seemed crisply in order. The coat that so closely followed the contours of his big shoulders and upper body showed spots of dirt here and there but no tears. The green waistcoat hugging his lean torso hadn’t ripped anywhere or lost buttons. The pantaloons clinging to his long, muscular legs were very dirty, though. Her gaze trailed slowly down, to his boots. They were scuffed and coated with dust.

She became aware of a soft, slapping sound. He had taken off his gloves. He slapped them against his left hand.

Slowly she brought her gaze up.

His face was as hard as the marble in his house’s entrance hall. His eyes were angry green slits.

“That way,” he said, jerking his head toward a shop.

She looked in the direction he indicated. The shop bore a black sign with the word VÉRELET in gold letters. That was all. On either side of the door, bay windows held a splendid array of colorful fabrics and delicious bonnets.

“Clothes?” she said. “Now?”

“My curricle is on its way to Portland Place with that wretched boy. What do you suggest instead? Perhaps a leap off Westminster Bridge?”

She had trained herself ages ago to keep her temper in check, because survival in the harem often depended upon keeping a cool head. She told herself she could do it at present.

She reminded herself of her conversation with Jarvis. Zoe needed this man’s help in order to live the life she’d risked everything for. She needed his help to banish the shame she’d brought on her family. She needed this help if she wanted a chance to find a good husband. Once she was wed and settled, her father could stop worrying about her.

She told herself all this, several times. Then she lifted her chin and entered the shop.

Marchmont’s heart still pounded.

It was as though his brain had overturned, like the coach, and boxes had fallen out and broken, spilling their contents.

He heard himself shout, “No! Don’t!” and heard Gerard laugh in the instant before he went over the fence. Again and again the scene played in his mind: Gerard, galloping ahead of the rest of the boys, heedless as always.

Marchmont would never know why he’d shouted the warning, whether he’d seen or sensed something amiss with the fence ahead or the ground or his brother’s horse. He’d never know what it was that had made him slow his own mount and cry, “Look out!”

But Gerard wouldn’t listen. He never did.

“No! Don’t!”

Gerard only laughed, and on he galloped, toward the fence, and over it.

And then he was dead. Like that. In the blink of an eye.

Again and again the scene played in Marchmont’s mind.

He followed Zoe into the shop, staring hard at her back, at the stains and dirt and ripped ruffles of the carriage dress. He concentrated on these and thrust the unwanted images back into the dark place they’d escaped from.

Madame Vérelet’s was a large shop. As he finally took note of his surroundings, he felt as though he’d entered an enormous birdcage. What seemed like hundreds of females fluttered about the place, bobbing and clucking, picking up buttons and ribbons, pretending to be busy sewing or putting trimmings into drawers and taking them out again. They opened books and flipped through pages, then shut them. They bent their heads together and whispered. They darted furtive looks from him to Zoe and back again, again and again.

Madame Vérelet bustled out from a back room quite as though she’d been deeply engaged in important business there for this last hour. A man less cynical than Marchmont might be taken in. Another man might believe that Madame was too elegant and dignified to take any notice of public disturbances on her doorstep. Madame, after all, was a great artist, not one of the rabble who gathered at accident scenes.

Marchmont, though, hadn’t any doubt that she’d been gawking out of the shop window along with all her employees, and had hurried into the back room only when she saw him coming.

She made him an elegant curtsey. “Your Grace,” she said.

He gave the little wave of his hand. “Everyone out.”

“Out?” said Zoe.

“Everyone but you,” he said. The women darted for the door leading into the back of the shop, where the workrooms were. They all tried to squeeze through at the same time, with a good deal of pushing and elbow thrusts. Madame did not fly, but she did not linger, either. She shoved aside one girl who didn’t get out of her w

ay quickly enough.

“Miss?” said Jarvis.

“You, too,” said Marchmont.

“She is required to stay with me,” said Zoe.

“Out,” he told Jarvis. She hurried after the seamstresses and shopgirls.

Zoe folded her arms. Her face took on a mulish expression.

He knew this expression. He’d seen it scores of times. She’d worn it a moment before she’d picked up the cricket bat. He was aware of this, in the churning stew that was his mind; but since it was a stew, he wasn’t capable of calm and logical thinking. The pose and the expression only made him angrier.

He didn’t wait to hear what she’d say.

“Are you utterly mad?” he said, his voice low and taut. “Are you deaf? Are you completely without brains? Did I not tell you to get away from that coach?”

“You had the horses to deal with,” she said with a calm he found maddening. “I could not leave the boy there. He was hanging out of the door. I knew he was hurt. He might have been bleeding. What if he bled to death while you dealt with the horses? What if the coach fell on him?”

What if it fell on you?

“He wasn’t bleeding,” he said.

“You didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t need to know!” he snapped. “It was a thoroughly decrepit coach and four, and if it had fallen on you, it would have smashed you to pieces! And that’s if you were lucky. If you’d got a piece of it stuck in your gut, you’d die by inches.” Such accidents happened all too frequently, the victims lingering in agony for days, sometimes weeks.

“The same could have happened to him,” she said. “What would you have me do?” Her voice rose. “Nothing?”

“Yes!”