Authors: Elizabeth Essex
“They come for you. Word is you done something awful bad.”
“Hurt a man, perhaps?”
“Worser. They was saying murder, sir. They’re talking the noose.”
Fuck all. So he had killed Rosing after all.
Tanner was surprised to find himself feeling something that had to be remorse—his chest felt tight and achy. But it was remorse for the fact that he now seemed to have involved Claire in not one, but two, murders.
But he wasn’t hanged yet, and wouldn’t be if he kept his wits about him.
He would need a diversion. “Right then. Best ask Moore to put the tall bays to the town carriage,” he instructed Pip, “and await His Grace the duke at”—Tanner consulted the map in his brain—“at St. Giles Churchyard this half hour.”
St. Giles Churchyard was located a convenient distance away in the middle of a godawful slum. But Tanner had no doubt that Moore could handle both himself and the high-spirited bay team, and that the jaunt there might pull the constables and Runners crawling about the place in the opposite direction from where he himself intended to go.
And it was always lovely fun to mislay the law.
“Yes, Your Gr—” The lad stymied himself, and tugged the brim of his cap. “Done.”
“Now get along, and speak to Moore all on the quiet, mind you. And then send Beamish to me.”
Tanner kept on with the filly, taking up a curry brush and rag to stroke her down, until Beamish found him.
Beamish was a mostly reformed, one-handed former thief who acted as majordomo and all-around fixer at Fenmore House, and who didn’t so much as bat an eye at the sight of his master the duke dressed as a groomsman. He’d seen stranger, and he knew well enough how to run a rig. “Jesus God. There y’are.”
“What’s the lie, Beamish?”
“Ah, Tanner, Yer Grace. Fook me, but I’m glad to see you, lad. There’s a raft of beak coves idling about the ken. Looking fer you and a mort.”
“She’s safe. Safe as houses. It’s all my eye and Betty Martin.”
“Dunno.” Beamish winched up one side of his face with doubt. “They’re talking the drop, they are. Mean to see you in Newgate, if they dare. They’re after saying you’ve kidnapped two ladies, and all but kilt a man. There’s talk of murder.”
“Is he dead?”
“Which fooking one?” What Beamish lacked in deference for the dignity of the dukedom he more than made up for in loyalty.
“The one they say I nearly ‘kilt.’”
“Bashed up awful bad, they say, but not so nears death as he couldn’t screech like a ha’penny whore and name you to the beak at Bow Street.”
There it was then. Tanner could feel the anger growing in him like a weed—anger at himself for not anticipating such an accusation. He had been so blinded by his own plan to steal Lady Claire Jellicoe that he didn’t see anyone else’s plan coming. “Well, damn me. So.”
“So?” Beamish gaped at his understatement.
“So Lord Peter Rosing has laid evidence—if he was capable, which I doubt—so perhaps his father, the bloody Marquess of Hadleigh, laid evidence in his son’s name for a charge that I tried to rape a lady, and that Rosing tried to stop me? And that failing to rape her, I kidnapped the lady against her will?”
“You’ve the gist of it. Complete shite. Anyone knows you knows that.”
“I imagine there’s a magistrate or two in the drawing room who say otherwise.”
“The Beak of Bow Street himself. They’ve a warrant, they say. Writs and the like. A lot of fooking palaver, if you ask me.”
Tanner had to smile at Beamish’s colorful language. With such a majordomo, life at Fenmore House had never been boring. But Tanner couldn’t laugh at the charges, spurious though they were.
The Beak of Bow Street would be Sir Nathaniel Conant, a well-respected man, with a reputation for fairness but also mildness of person. Just the sort of man whom someone with a reputation for authoritative behavior—like the Earl Sanderson—might be able to take advantage of.
“This is indeed a right tight jam.”
“Bloody well right it is.”
“And there’ll be a load of work and mischief unraveling it all.” Work that was already under way. Across the yard the bay pair was being put to the traces of the small town carriage. And both of the Runners were on their feet, watching avidly.
“Put out word on ’Change and with Elias Solomon that I’m after some profiteers—profiteers in gold specie in particular. A club, or a syndicate of gentlemen, hedging their bets against the recoinage.”
“Gentlemen,” Beamish scoffed. “Them that can breaks the law by bending it to their will.”
“The very same, Beamish. Just that type.” Another thought struck hard between Tanner’s eyes. “And have Levy follow the money from young Paul Walker’s yard at number eighty-nine St. Catherine’s Dock. See if he can find who holds the lease. Or who paid for a load of Mendip ore.”
“Right ho. I’m right on to it.”
“Take your time. I’m off to Richmond, but I’d rather know I’ve a cushion of time before they think to look for me there. Send me off to the market sharp-like for the Runners to hear, to get a bushel of eels. And then keep the Beak busy. Assure him I’m expected back anytime.”
“Ah, yer a right lovely bastard to think of that, so.”
Tanner retrieved his coat. “And I’ll wager His Worship the Beak is bound to be needing a drop or two of sherry after waiting all that time.”
“Aye, he might do. They do say hanging is thirsty work.”
Chapter Seventeen
After such an extraordinary speech, and after such extraordinary kisses, Claire felt depleted—so physically and emotionally wrung out that she was brittle with exhaustion. She felt numb with weariness, but when she looked at her hands they were shaking from fatigue.
At least that was what she told herself. That it was the effect of being up all night and all day that made her legs weak, and her breath ratchet unevenly in her chest. It had nothing to do with the ring that she gripped so tightly it began to dig into her palm.
She opened her hand to stare at the ring again. To marvel at its delicate loveliness and its old-fashioned charm—a poesy ring inscribed
No other but you.
It was the most beautiful, most heartwarming ring she had ever seen, and she wanted nothing more than to put in on.
But only if he did not come out, he had said. Only for her protection. He had said nothing of his own feelings—only that he wanted to protect her.
Granted, he was probably the only man in England who was strong enough to marry her and protect her from the inevitable scandal—the scandal that was clearly playing out across the market at Fenmore House. Even she knew that the shifty-eyed fellows in the scarlet waistcoats watching the duke’s carriage made ready were Bow Street Runners, and that their presence could bode no good.
Claire returned the ring to the pouch, took out the few pence needed for a meat pie, and made her stiff legs carry her to find a pie seller’s stall, and then sat herself down to wait.
Be ready,
he had said.
Ready for anything.
Anything turned out to be nothing much at all. The lovely town carriage rolled out of the mews but did not come for her where she sat like the veriest urchin on a stack of discarded crates, as she had somehow imagined and hoped it might. Instead, the coach took a sharp right and exited the market via Sun Court with the scarlet Runners red faced in pursuit.
And then her Tanner simply walked out the gate of the stable yard, and made his slow, meandering way toward her across the market square.
“I bought you a meat pie.”
His smile was full of slow delight. “You remembered.”
“Hmm. I’m clever that way.” She handed it to him as he hitched his hip onto the edge of the crate, right next to her. “And I’m clever enough to see that something was going on over there. What’s all the trouble?”
He took his time answering around bites of pie. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
There was not another duke in the world who would eat a pie from a stall while sitting on a crate in the street with so much gusto. It was entirely boyish and inordinately charming. So charming it nearly put her off her point.
“Which means you’re not going to tell me. Which is annoying.” She looked back the way the coach had gone. “Nearly as annoying as not getting a ride. I will admit to being done for. If I sit too much longer out here in the sun, I’m going melt into a puddle of Claire.”
“Then we won’t sit here any longer.” He brushed his hands together to rid them of crumbs, and then offered to pull her to her feet. “And anyway, it’s coming on to rain.”
“How can you say that?” She laughed. “There are only a few clouds.”
“Because we live in England. Come on. Let us away to the river.”
She let him haul her to her feet, and took the opportunity to keep possession of his hand as they started down one of the many small side streets that branched off the market.
“Tired?” he asked, and then answered his own question. “Of course you are. I am. We’ve been on our feet for nearly twenty-four hours. Come.”
As soon as they came out onto Piccadilly, Tanner put his hands to his lips and let out a piercing whistle, which immediately summoned a hackney carriage.
An antiquated carriage with two indifferent horses pulled up to the pavement, but she supposed it was the best they could hope for, dressed as they were.
Tanner must have seen her looking askance at the carriage, because he laughed as he handed her in. “I assure you it’s a fine example of the species. One of the finest.”
It was still stale and musty and not at all like the private carriages in which she had always ridden. “Do you take hackney carriages often enough to know? But you’re a duke. You have a stable full of every sort of carriage known to mankind, and horseflesh fine enough to make half of Newmarket weep with envy.”
He tipped his head sideways in a little tic of acknowledgment. “It’s as I told you—I’m not always a duke. Even now.”
“But you are. Even now. Even as we drive by your house—your house.” She pointed out the open window at the gated facade of Fenmore House as the carriage took them up Piccadilly. “Even now, dressed in cast-offs from your own servants, you
are
the duke.” It was inescapable—a simple, inescapable fact of his life.
He said nothing to that particular piece of insight. He watched the house roll by before he looked away, out the opposite window. “I know.”
The realization hit her—much more softly than a shovel to the back of the head, thank goodness, but forceful nonetheless for all its quiet truth.
He wanted escape.
As he would say, Ah.
But as she had no further insight into how she might fit into his particular version of escape, she had nothing, not even small talk, to add. As she had already noted, “It’s quite a day for firsts.”
He gaze flicked back to her. “Your first hackney carriage?”
“Indeed.” She decided to be charming. He liked it when she was charming. “I am totting up quite a list today—skiff, wherry, goldsmith’s, lead yard, stolen vessel, rag trader’s, Tattersall’s Repository, and now a hackney. But I shall not account the day a triumph until I have learned how to whistle.”
He rose to her bait faultlessly. “I could teach you if you like.”
She rewarded him with a genuine smile. “Yes, please.”
“Easiest thing in the world,” he said. And with all his usual focused intensity, he began to do just that.
“You put your tongue out like this”—here he demonstrated the proper sticking out of the tongue—“and curl the end of it up with your fingers. And your fingers have to be just so.” Again he demonstrated the proper position. “And the force and flow of the air through the vortex created by your fingers and across the surface of your lips should sound like—” He let out a little toot.
Claire copied all his movements and positions, and attempted to follow his directions on airflow, but by the time they reached the Haymarket she had produced only a slight wheezy sound, and had gotten herself out of breath and rather dizzy.
And Tanner was staring at her, with his mouth ever so slightly open, as if she baffled him.
“Am I doing it wrong?”
“No.” His brows arced with denial over his blank surprise. “You’ve very clever—you’re doing it right.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
He did not say, “Like what?” He did not pretend to misunderstand. He said, “Because now I want to teach you to do other things with your clever mouth.”
In that moment, Claire began to have an inkling as to what it was to feel powerful. But she was equal to his honesty. “Things like kissing?”
This time he did not immediately take her bait. And he was not entirely honest. “Perhaps.” He turned again to check out the open window as the hackney moved onto Cockspur Street.
Claire felt her smile spread across her face. She would have to try harder. “Perhaps, I want to learn more about kissing.”
This time, it was his smile that stretched full across his face. “Somehow, I knew I could count on you.”
And then he was kissing her, and nothing else mattered.
Nothing but warmth, and texture and scent. The warmth of his body, as he pulled her closer to him. The texture of his smooth lips, and rasp of his cheek against her. The male scent of his body, of cedar spice and horse and saddle soap.
She leaned in to him, and he pulled her flush against the long strength of his body. His hand spanned the small of her back, fitting her to him until there was no breath of space between them. Nothing but pleasure and comfort and glorious need.
His hand rose to her nape, cradling her skull, angling her head to his liking, bringing them close and closer still. She had thought she was melting in the sun, but it was nothing to what she was feeling now—pressing heat and pulsating need turned her liquid and pliant, flowing into him with every kiss, every breath, every touch.
“Claire.” His voice sounded foggy, as if it came from far away, and he had to clear his throat to speak again. “Claire, the carriage has stopped. We’re at the Whitehall Stairs.”
“Whitehall?” Parliament, where her father spent so much of his time, was in Whitehall. Though she and her mother had been set to head to Downpark directly from Riverchon, her papa was bound to stay in London until Parliament adjourned in August, another few weeks away. All of which meant that her father might very well be about. “What if my father is here?”