Maggie MacKeever (25 page)

Julie rubbed her cheek against his hand. “You meant me to have pleasure, didn’t you? Earlier tonight?”

“I mean to give you a great deal of pleasure, but this is neither the time or place. Here, let me wash that muck from your hair.”

She bent her head. Ned lathered soap through her matted curls, rinsed, repeated the process. Mick and Pego should be shot for hurting her. Dismembered. Eviscerated. Their heads stuck
on pikes adorning London Bridge. Ned had been sorely tempted, but brutes like those merely did what they were told. He had let them go as warning that Julie no longer lacked protection.  “You mentioned Mother Yarwood. Who is she?”

Mother Yarwood, explained Julie — as Ned lifted her and toweled her dry, rubbed her arm with liniment and helped her don the stable boy’s clothing, a temptation-laden task: she had decided it was all right for him to see her naked though she didn’t know how she should act, and her self-consciousness proved more erotic than the posturings of the most skilled courtesan — was a woman of considerable enterprise, one of her undertakings being to snatch children off the street and train them up in crime. Julie supposed she
should be grateful to have been given a place of sorts, but if Mother Yarwood hadn’t taken her, some other would. Like everybody else in the Holy Land, Mother Yarwood answered to Cap’n Jack.

By the time Julie had finished talking, Ned had her set before him on a stool in front of the hearth, a hairbrush in his hand. The stable boy’s shoes having proven too big, her feet were bare.

She shifted around to face him. “About the other— You think I’m too young.”

“You
are
too young. But I don’t think of you that way.” Ned crooked a finger under her chin and tipped up her face. “Those eyes of yours have seen enough for someone twice your age. While I am twice your age, or almost.”

“I don’t think of you that way. It’s because of how you act.” Her smile faded. “Your friend, Lord Saxe. He knows who I am.”

“Buttercup,” said Ned, with feeling, “
I
don’t know who you are.”

This declaration, for some odd reason that only another female might have understood, had Julie scrambling into Ned’s lap. “How much
does
the baron know?”

Since she was in his lap, he might as well enjoy it. Careful not to disturb her damaged arm, Ned cradled her against his chest. “I’ve no idea, and it doesn’t matter. If you’re a trap, as Kane suspects, I am firmly caught. Now that you have me, what do you mean to do with me, sweetheart?”

Her breath, as she laughed, was warm against his neck. “If you were a fish, I would toss you back.”

“No you wouldn’t.” He smoothed his hand over her hair.

“No I wouldn’t. But I should.” And then, gruffly, she allowed as she wouldn’t mind it if he trifled with her more. “Yes, I know I’m damaged, and you think you shouldn’t, but hear me out. I’d made up my mind before, but now I’m doubly sure. If you was to tumble me, I wouldn’t be worth so much to a buttock broker then.”

Never had he had a more blunt, or appalling invitation. “This is not a good idea,” said Ned, in defiance of those portions of his person that thought it an excellent notion indeed. “You’ve been set upon, and threatened, and aren’t thinking straight.”

Julie plucked at a loose thread on her trousers. “You don’t want me any more. Is it because of what happened tonight?”

Ned was used to females. One way and another, he’d dealt well with females all his life. Why, with this particular female, was he forever setting his foot wrong?

Julie didn’t understand that everyone she’d known had used her for one purpose or another. Nor would Ned wish her to realize. But he couldn’t also use her and then set her aside.

He didn’t think he could set her aside at all, as witnessed by her comfortable perch on his lap.

Ned brushed damp curls back off her forehead, tipped up her face so he could look into her eyes. “What happened tonight only makes me want you more.” She looked skeptical. “Truly. On my honor as a gentleman.”

“I’d rather have the word of a gamester.” Julie caught his hand and placed it against her breast. “A gamester plays out the cards he’s dealt.”

Lord, but Ned was tempted. Before he could give in to his baser nature, his sister emerged from the dressing room, a bundle tucked under one arm, and Cerberus beneath the other. The dog snarled. Ned snatched back his hand.

“‘
Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo’.
St. Augustine,” said Clea. “Make me chaste and pure but not yet. The two of you are setting me a dreadful example. What is a buttock broker, pray?”

Julie tried to scoot off Ned’s lap. He held her fast. “Speaking of dreadful examples. Have we not had numerous conversations about eavesdropping?”

“There is a passage in my dressing room. It leads out into the garden through the old Tudor drains.” Clea settled in one of the upholstered chairs, Cerberus and her bundle both clutched on her lap. “I suspected some mischief was afoot the instant Bates started hovering in the hall. Now tell me everything.”

Muttered Ned, with feeling, “Heaven forbid.” Julie said, “A buttock-broker is a bawd. A dimber cove is a pretty fellow—”

“—Like Ned,” offered Clea.

“—and a bumfiddle is a backside. A purveyor of pronouns is a schoolmaster, a tickle-text is a parson, and to dance is to shake a toe.” Julie glanced up at Ned. “I must return to Ashcroft House, and have lost my knife.”

“Ned will loan you one of his,” said Clea. “An excellent knife, souvenir of the Peninsular Campaign. Why
must you return to Ashcroft House? You could stay here with us. Oh, I see. We must act as if nothing unusual has happened. So as not to sound the alarm.”

Ned wished he might keep Julie. He wanted her, fairly desperately; even more, he wanted her kept safe. “You won’t be climbing for some time, sunshine. Will you be able to get back into the house?”

“I came out through a side door and left it unlocked.”

Cerberus grew bored with his ill-temper and curled up for a nap. Clea patted the dog. “I would like to climb a drainpipe. Will you show me how?”

“She will not,” said Ned. “Unless it’s your intention to send me into a brain fever thinking about what drainpipes you might wish to climb.” To Julie, he added, “You’ll go nowhere without an escort.”

“After tonight, I wouldn’t mind if an entire regiment tramped around in my wake.” Julie bent to pick up the stable boy’s too-large boots.

Clea held out her bundle. “Good stout walking shoes from the Peninsula. See how helpful I can be?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Don’t wish ill for your enemy, plan it.
— Pubilius Syrus

An accident at Astley’s? Lady Georgiana had never heard of such a thing. Not surprising that the performers might occasionally be battered and bruised; it was hardly natural to ride a horse whilst standing on one’s head; but for a member of the audience to be similarly afflicted was the outside of enough.

“I should have never given my permission. I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said aloud. In point of fact, Georgiana knew exactly what had been going through her mind; to wit, that Lord Dorset was the perfect person to distract Julie from her son. The earl could have distracted even Georgiana, had he cared to, which naturally he did not because she was too old, a circumstance that put her further out of charity with everyone in her vicinity.

“Let us lay our cards on the table! While this horrid business cannot be what I like, I may at least make sure it doesn’t become known all around the town. I will insure that you have a generous amount of pin money, Miss Wynne, in return for which you will insure that Tony does not
. . .
” Georgiana fumbled for her vinaigrette. “That Tony does not! And so
you
do not, he will stick close to you as a court plaster from now on.” She sailed ahead of them through the shop door, a vision of exacerbated elegance in jaconet muslin with a deep flounce and ruff and a lilac cloth pelisse, a bonnet of yellow twilled sarcenet tied with a long bow of lilac ribbon and adorned with a bunch of violets in front.

Before Tony could shepherd her into the shop, Julie caught his arm. “So I do not
what
?” she said.

“Deuced if I know.” Bad enough, thought Tony, that his mama regarded him as if he were a caperwit. Now Julie was frowning at him in the same way.

He supposed it was his duty to clarify matters. “I have been avoiding you.”

“So I noticed. Why?”

“Maman took the notion I’d been compromised.” Julie looked blank. “By you,” Tony added, in case he hadn’t made that clear.

Now Julie looked astonished. “I compromised you?”

“Of course you didn’t compromise me! I’d have known it if you did, wouldn’t I?”

Julie wasted a brief moment considering the numerous things Tony didn’t know. “Lady Georgiana thinks
I compromised you?”

“
Thought
you’d compromised me, and was blackmailing me as a consequence, and that’s why I brought you into the house.” Tony was glum. “She knows better now.”

“Knows better?” Julie gave him a shake. “You didn’t tell her—”

“Hsst! I meant Maman took another notion. Because of your corset. I was looking at it when she came into the bedroom.”

“You
went through my things?”

Tony had the grace to blush. “It isn’t like I wished to! I was told to find a statue. Sounds like a deuced ugly thing.”

“Ahem!” Lady Georgiana loomed in the shop’s doorway. “I do not believe Julie would care to have her fitting in the street.”

Julie didn’t give a fig about her fitting. She was mulling over Tony’s admission that he had been told to search her room.

The girl had questions, Tony decided. Stood to reason that she would. She’d want those questions answered. Avoiding her had been the right thing. It occurred to Tony that he had tried to avoid Pritchett, and look how
that
had turned out.

Down on his luck as Tony had been lately, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see the Runner pop up again at any moment. A swift glance around the dressmaker’s shop revealed no bespectacled little man with thinning hair. Tony was perfectly at ease in these surroundings, though he suspected Julie was not, a circumstance that might have exercised his imagination had he given it more than a moment’s consideration. He had dressed in accordance with his dejected spirits — jacket of Devonshire brown with extremely large buttons of his own design, waistcoat of parma violet, cravat tied in the Mail Coach because it required very little starch, appropriate because if Tony had any starch in his
backbone he wouldn’t be in this fix — but the shopkeeper’s wares soon distracted him sufficiently that he was able to engage in a
discussion of the relative merits of alliballi and pullcat, chine silk and shagreen; put forth his opinion of the colors Morone and Aurora, Cossack green and Russian flame. His spirits revived further when his mama withdrew with
Julie into one of the smaller fitting rooms.

Julie was as uncomfortable as Tony had suspected. For one thing, her long-sleeved chintz dress and chip straw hat had been provided not by a fashionable modiste but a used clothing store in Monmouth Street, Seven Dials; and if Julie had once believed they
belonged to a nobleman’s disgraced daughter, she knew better now. For another, trying on clothes was made awkward by her damaged arm. She stood silently on the stool while a seamstress twitched and adjusted and stuck pins in the fabric draped around her, all under Lady Georgiana’s watchful eye.

The new dresses were breathtakingly pretty. Under other circumstances Julie might have enjoyed herself very well. Instead, she puzzled
over Lady Georgiana’s statements. As best she could make out, Tony was to dog her heels while she was to prevent him from doing some unknown thing.

Ned’s knife was strapped to her thigh beneath her petticoats. If the seamstress was aware of its existence, she gave no sign. The poor woman was being driven distracted by Lady Georgiana, who had decided that where she once wanted Julie’s bosom placed on display, now she wanted her neckline drawn up to her throat.

She was also having second thoughts about bright colors. Julie envisioned her pretty dresses being snatched away. “I like them as they are,” she interjected. “If you do not, I’ll pay for them myself, out of the pin money you promised to provide.” Georgiana’s jaws snapped shut. She looked as if she had bit into a sour plum.

The fittings went smoothly after that, Georgiana’s complaints being confined to a tight-lipped minimum. Julie was buttoned back into her plain chintz dress and the gowns promised for delivery within the next few days. She returned with Lady Georgiana to the shop’s main room, where Tony had been amusing himself, first with fashion dolls and patterns, then with the various trimmings
stored in the drawers behind the counter, lace and braid and ribbons, buttons and beads. The viscount couldn’t sit long in one place, and had a passion for pretty things.

His mama glowered at him. Tony set aside the fan he’d been inspecting, which featured a bucolic rural scene painted on the silk. Lady Georgiana was in her own turn distracted by the arrival of an acquaintance and the intelligence that the ladies of Britain, headed by the Duchess of York, were getting up a subscription to erect a monument to Lord Wellington, now Marquis of Douro and Duke of Wellington, who was due to soon arrive in London and make his first appearance in the House of Lords, which would be the signal for another round of celebrations to begin. The monument was to be formed of cannon taken by him in numerous engagements, and would occupy a prominent site in Hyde Park. Opinion at present inclined toward a group of classical steeds, but a certain contingent favored a colossal bronze nude. Upon learning Lady Dorset was among those who championed the horses, Lady Georgiana cast her vote for the nude.