Somerville Farce (2 page)

There were others, of course, as no
respectable peer of the realm possessing a modicum of sense travels
without numerous understaff, but as they were of little import to
the duke’s party other than to be noticed only by their absence
when the fires were left unlit or the veal arrived cold at table,
they will not be mentioned here.

More to the point was the reason Glynde had
chosen to travel to Mayfair in the dead of a particularly cold and
messy winter, inexplicably dragging with him his nauseatingly
cheerful brother, his brother’s pranking bosom beau, his
dishearteningly obtuse but lovable aunt, and creaky old Pinch.
Angelo’s company, on the other hand, was at least self-explanatory,
as even a duke had to eat.

Simply, and not to put too fine a point on
the thing, Harry had come to Mayfair to confront one slippery,
difficult-to-locate Myles Somerville. Somerville—a perfect rotter
of a man who three years previously, through his short-lived but
profound influence over Harry’s dear, daft, departed father while
Harry was off somewhere fighting with Wellington—had nearly
bankrupted the Townsend family.

Harry’s chagrin upon discovering that his
quarry—whom he had meant with all seriousness to call out for this
great crime—had just days earlier escaped London for the safer
shores of Ireland, thus effectively spiking the duke’s guns, or
dueling pistols, was not lost upon his brother or his brother’s
friend.

Rather than stand by while Harry fumed, and
rather than have to return to Glyndevaron to endure the remainder
of a boring winter watching Harry sulk, Willie and Andy put their
lamentably shortsighted heads together and devised a plan sure to
make Good Old Harry the happiest man in the kingdom.

If one could not revenge oneself on the head
of the household, the schemers reasoned—if, indeed, any conclusion
brought forth from these two minds could be thought to have
anything remotely to do with Dame Reason—why not do what was done
in the “olden days,” and gain that revenge through the offspring
Somerville had left behind?

Yes, indeed, it seemed a kidnapping was in
order! And if that offspring was female rather than male, well,
wasn’t that always the way of it? Harry
et al
. would hie
back to Glyndevaron, the schemers would present him with their
fait accompli
, Harry would efficiently deflower the
Somerville chit, and then he would send her back to her reprobate
father, head bowed and spirit broken, a mere shell of her former
gloriously beautiful, chaste self.

Or, even better, Harry would fall in love
with the chit, who most probably was totally unlike her father, but
rather a diamond of the first water who had the heart of an angel.
Harry would then exchange his wearying passion for revenge for an
equally consuming passion for the daughter of his old enemy—leaving
Willie and Andy a lot more freedom to do as they pleased—and
everyone would be the happier for it.

Truly, it was a most beautiful revenge, a
wondrously brilliant, flawless plan that benefited everyone
concerned; something straight out of all those glorious stories of
knights of old.

However, if the Somerville offspring turned
out to be plural rather than singular, and if that offspring came
most inconveniently equipped with both maid and governess—who would
put up an awful racket at being left behind, queering the whole
idea at the outset—that just might present a wee problem.

But these were minor considerations,
piddling details barely worth fretting about. Most important was
the revenge—and the dash and thrill of the thing. Willie and Andy
had their job to do, and they would do it; a brilliant job of work
for which any brother so depressed by his inability to arrange his
own revenge would be endlessly grateful.

After all, Good Old Harry was the smart one.
He wouldn’t have any trouble figuring out what to do with the
excess hostages—would he?

“L
ord love a duck,
Willie, d’ya have to make all that racket? What is that, anyway?
You sound like you dragged half a blacksmith’s shop along with
us.”

Lord William uncurled himself from the
crouch he had taken up behind his friend and opened his cloak, the
light from a nearby streetlamp—one of the few lining the street and
a more inconveniently located structure no one could
imagine—shining on a collection of knives, mallets, and a
particularly sinister-looking metal bar, the whole of it tied
around his neck by way of lengths of rope. “D’ya like ’em, Andy?
The bar is to force open the lady’s window, the ropes are to tie
her up with, and the knives are for fighting our way out with her
if she screams.”

“And what’s the mallet for?” Andy inquired,
much impressed with his friend’s foresight as well as his
bloodthirsty inclinations. “You aren’t going to tap her over the
head, are you? It doesn’t seem sporting. I mean, we are two against
one, and the one’s female into the bargain.”

Hunkering down again, the two of them having
taken up places behind a large rain barrel located on the side of
the Somervilles’ small rented house in Half Moon Street, Willie
explained that the mallet was for hitting anyone he didn’t think
deserved skewering. “Anyone like Pinch, for instance,” he whispered
as one of the Watch was passing by the end of the alley. “I don’t
think I’d have the heart for sticking a Pinch, do you?”

Andy reached back to ruffle Willie’s gold
curls as his friend made a pained face at the thought of harming
the Glynde family butler. “I don’t think you have the stomach for
it either,” he said, grinning, his smile splitting his long, thin
face and lending a slight sparkle to his dark, hedgehog eyes. “Now,
pay attention. That’s twice the Charlie has gone past. If my
calculations are correct, he won’t be back this way for at least an
hour. That should give us plenty of time to do what we have to
do.”

“It bloody well better, Andy,” Willie
warned, rising to jump up on top of the barrel. “It’ll be dawn in
another three hours and Harry said we’re leaving for Glyndevaron at
first light. Any later than that and he’ll be sure to notice that
we’ve added to the parade of coaches hired for the trip out of
London.” Holding on to a convenient ledge, he hoisted himself up
onto the closest balcony and held out an arm to his friend.
“Here—up you go, Andy.”

Andy, whose spirit might be in the right
place, but whose stomach and heart were decidedly opposed to
heights, hesitated a moment before allowing Willie to pull him up
alongside him onto the balcony, a rickety wrought-iron appendage to
the building that seemed to remain in place more by luck than
engineering.

“Get out that bar,” Andy whispered hastily,
clinging to the rough, crumbly brick with all his strength,
refusing to look down. “See if you can use it to pry open the
window. Hurry, Willie, I don’t like the feel of this balcony. It
seems to be moving under my feet.”

Convinced that the balcony was sturdy, aware
of his friend’s dislike for heights, and not averse to having a
little fun with the fellow, Willie shook his head, stating firmly
that he was sure the Somerville girl’s bedroom could not be located
on this floor.

“And don’t be so missish, Andy,” he
admonished. “The balcony’s fine. Look—I’ll prove it.” So saying, he
jumped up and down three times, his small arsenal of weapons
jingling with his every movement—while the balcony continued to
sway and creak for a full three seconds after he had stopped his
assault on it. “There. Are you happy now? Lord knows I am,” he
said, turning his head to hide his grin.

Andy, his abused fingertips all but
burrowing into the crumbling brick, glared at his friend through
the darkness. “You did that on purpose, Willie,” he declared
feelingly.

“Well, of course I did. You knew that. And
to think that you’re the one who told me a gentleman never points
out the obvious. For shame, Andy. I say, Andy, you’re looking pale
in the moonlight. Do you feel all right? I tell you, it’s hard to
believe this was all your idea. But to return to what I said before
about the location of Miss Somerville’s bedchamber: I think we
should climb that drain over there—it leads up to the next
balcony.”

Not caring that they might be found out,
hauled off to the guardhouse, and then rescued from jail only to be
read a blistering scold by the duke, Andy gritted loudly: “Willie,
open that damned window! Now!”

“Why don’t you shout a little louder, Andy,
and the whole place might come tumbling down—like that Joshua
fellow, you know?” Willie suggested, unearthing the bar and setting
to with a will, working to pry open the window. Fun was fun, but it
was time they were moving on.

“Well, isn’t that depressing?” he remarked a
moment later in disgust as the window slid up silently. “The fool
thing wasn’t even locked. You have to wonder, Andy, what this world
is coming to when people don’t even bother to lock their own
windows. It’s inviting trouble, that’s what it is. Just think about
it a minute, Andy. Anybody at all could have come here tonight and
robbed them blind—or worse. Anybody at all!”

“Oh, shut up, Willie,” Andy ordered, rudely
shoving his friend to one side before—with a remarkable lack of
grace—he launched himself headlong into the Somerville town house.
Graceless maneuvers tending to result in equally graceless
landings, there came almost immediately the loud crash of breaking
glass, followed by an equally loud masculine curse and a single
piercing female scream, then the sickening thud of Andy’s body
making rude contact with the wooden floor, and, lastly, the
anguished voice of a woman—obviously Irish—calling upon the dearest
Virgin Mary and all the saints to protect her poor babies from
being murdered in their beds.

Now, Willie might have agreed with Andy that
Adventure, if not his middle name, was at least on speaking terms
with him, but the chaos taking place in the dark on the other side
of the half-open window did not immediately seem to him to fit his
description of Adventure. Other, less pleasing words came more
readily to mind; words like Disaster, or Mayhem, or Incarceration,
or—worst of all—Harry.

He had a choice to make, and he had to make
it quickly. He could either dive into the town house to rescue his
friend, who—by the sounds he heard filtering out to him—was at that
moment being struck heavily about the head and shoulders with some
article of furniture, or he could scamper back down the way he had
come, join a cavalry regiment under an assumed name, and hope for a
quick, relatively painless death at the hands of any leftover enemy
of England he could find to do the deed.

The fact that it was nearing the end of the
quarter and he had barely enough allowance left to him to buy a
meat pie on the corner, let alone a commission; the knowledge that
he was just now entering the prime of his life and to date had not
even so much as talked to an opera dancer, so that he had no real
desire to die for his country—or anyone else, for that matter; and
the niggling suspicion that Andy would at some later date discover
him wherever he might hide and strip off all his skin inch by inch,
toughened Willie’s resolve, so that, after taking a deep, steadying
breath, he ducked his head and stepped through the window.

The scene that met his eyes, regrettably
only partially lit by the small brace of candles sitting to one
side of the room, was not without humor. Andy, never stout, was
still on the floor on his back, reminding Willie of an overturned
sea turtle he had once seen on the beach at Brighton, his hands and
feet all raised to protect himself. Hovering over Andy, armed only
with an evil-looking embroidery tambour frame, which she was
wielding with a vengeance, stood a very small, yet truly enormous
woman of indeterminate years, her heavy white cotton ruffled
nightgown billowing about her like a man-o’-war in full sail.

Reaching under his cloak, Willie pulled out
a length of rope, took another measuring look at the woman’s girth,
and extracted a second length.

“Ye filthy, nasty divil, ye,” the woman, who
was so intent on her victim that she had not noticed Willie’s
presence, was saying in a low growling brogue, every other word
punctuated by a swing of the tambour frame, “Oi’ll not be
surrenderin’ me vir-ture ta the loiks o’ ye!”

“Vir
tue
, ma’am,” Willie corrected,
coming up behind her to tap lightly on her shoulder. “The word is
‘virtue.’ Now, leave off, do, before you hurt the poor fellow.”

The woman swung about, nearly clipping
Willie on the ear with the frame before he could throw one rope
over her back and, together, they fell to the floor—landing atop
the already beleaguered Andy, who was still trying to catch his
breath.

A moment later, his hands full wrestling
with the woman as the two of them rolled over and over across the
floor, knocking down small tables and scattering knickknacks
pell-mell all over the place, Willie called out frantically for
Andy to lend him a hand—preferably both hands—before the woman’s
bulk crushed the life out of him.