Somerville Farce (3 page)

Another man, seeing the seriousness of the
situation, and weighing the chances that the Somerville chit would
hear the commotion and summon aid—which was sure to bode ill for
the two housebreakers—would have immediately set to with a will,
assisting his friend by employing the piece of rope lying at his
feet, using it to at least tie the woman’s fat, flailing ankles
together.

But then, another man hadn’t just been all
but frightened into disgracing himself by a person who, by the by,
was supposed to be his most particular
bon ami
, who had
jumped up and down on a rickety balcony—in unholy glee, it must be
added—when that second person had known that the first person might
just end by tossing up his supper.

“I wouldn’t dream of interfering, my good
friend,” he pronounced evenly as Willie once more pleaded with him
for assistance. “You seem to be doing splendidly on your own. There
are only two of you rolling around down there, aren’t there?
Strange, but you appear to be a crowd.”

Leaning against the table he had so lately
made acquaintance with in a much ruder manner as he landed on it
nose-first upon entering the room, Andy crossed one ankle over the
other, produced a wide, closed-mouth grin, and watched his friend
in action. “Will you use the knife or the mallet, dear boy?” he
asked conversationally a few moments later as he saw Willie
struggling to reach his store of weapons. “She’s more a Pound than
a Pinch, you know.”

Willie’s next exchange with his friend was
not only unquotable but unprintable as well, although it did elicit
a sharp bark of laughter from Andy, who had at last decided that
his revenge was complete and slowly bent to retrieve the second
length of rope before, with the two of them working together, they
at last succeeded in tying up the woman.

A few perspiration-producing moments later,
Andy’s handkerchief stuck in her mouth, the woman—whose hopes,
fears, inclination, or assessment of her charms was much greater
than that of the two boys—was left trussed up nearly head to foot
to lie in the middle of the floor, her wide blue eyes staring up at
what, to her, must have looked to be the soon-to-be possessors of
her “vir-ture.”

“There,” Andy said, straightening his
disheveled clothing after tying the last knot, “that has her all
right and tight. I told you it would be easy. Shall we now proceed
to Miss Somerville’s bedchamber?”

Andy’s statement seemed to breathe new life
into the trussed-up woman, who had been lying quite still—whether
stoically awaiting or eagerly anticipating her fate, only she
knew—and she began to throw her body from side to side as
unintelligible sounds emanated from her handkerchief-muzzled
mouth.

Willie looked down at the woman, his young
heart stung by her distress, and he hastened to explain. “You would
be Miss Somerville’s maid, I suppose. No, please don’t try to
answer. I’m convinced you must be. Well, madam, there is no need to
fret. We’re just here to abduct your charge and take her to
m’brother—so he can ravish her, you understand. But he’s a duke, so
maybe he’ll fall in love with her and we’ll all have a happy
ending—even though it doesn’t look too good right now, does
it?”

“Well, that certainly served to ease her
mind,” Andy remarked sarcastically, watching as the rotund maid’s
blue eyes all but popped from her fat, pudding cheeks and her
struggles to free herself increased tenfold. “You told her about
the duke, you know. Why don’t you gift her with his name as well?
That way the constable won’t have to bother hying back and forth up
and down the countryside looking for us among all the dukes.”

Willie looked positively stricken. He
slapped one palm against his forehead, cursing himself for his big
mouth, before inspiration struck him with even more force. “That’s
no problem, Andy. We’ll simply take the maid along with us. That
way there’ll be no one left here to give the alarm.”

Andy looked assessingly at the maid’s
still-squirming bulk and then at his long, stringy arms. “Who
carries her to the coach?” he asked, considering the plan.

“We both carry her,” Willie declared
emphatically, settling the matter. “There are two flights of stairs
to consider, you know, and I still harbor some faint hopes of one
day siring children. Now, come on. Let’s find the girl and get out
of here. The coach will be outside soon.”

Over the maid’s fervent but muffled
protests, the pair went on the hunt for the staircase and ascended
to the next floor of the tall, narrow house. With Andy shushing
Willie, whose remaining store of tools was clanking together
beneath his cloak, they crept stealthily down the hall, to stop
outside the door Andy had selected as being the one of the three on
the floor that seemed to him most likely to contain Miss
Somerville.

Seeing no light peeping out from beneath the
door—and, truly, why should there be, as it was past four in the
morning and no respectable young miss would have a reason to burn
her candle past two, even in the midst of the Season—Willie grasped
the bent metal handle and pushed down.

There came a quiet “click,” followed by a
slight squeak as the door swung open into the darkened chamber.
Stuck so close together as to appear joined at the hip, the two
plotters tiptoed into the room, their backs bent nearly in half,
their eyes darting back and forth as they searched through the
gloom for the bed.

And, lo and behold, there it was, nearly
straight in front of them, a large bed piled high with comforters
and pillows, lying among which lay, not one, but two young
ladies.

Andy looked at Willie. Willie looked back at
Andy. Their brows rose, to hang suspended high above their wide,
perplexed eyes. Their lips formed the word “Two?” Their heads
turned once more toward the bed, then swiveled back to each other.
“Two?”

Andy, decidedly the more adventuresome of
their
particular “two”—as long as both feet were planted
firmly on the ground—ventured around one side of the bed and looked
down on the two sleeping faces. Wordlessly he pointed to two heads
crowned by glorious guinea-gold hair, then two identically shaped
faces—or profiles, as those were all that were visible.

He tiptoed back to the bottom of the bed.
“It’s like looking into a mirror,” he said, awed.

Willie rolled his eyes. “Don’t be stupid,
Andy. It’s nothing like looking in a mirror. If you looked in a
mirror, you’d see yourself. But I know what you mean. I can see two
girls—very lovely girls, too. Twins, I’m sure. Which one do we
take, do you think?”

Andy frowned, considering the question. “The
elder? But how would we know? The prettier? They’re as alike as
peas in a pod. Perhaps we should toss a coin and have done with it.
Dash me, I hadn’t counted on two of them.”

Willie, who had already come to a
decision—enjoying this temporary position of power over his
nonplussed compatriot—shook his head decisively. “Toss a coin? We
take them both, you nodcock. Think about it. We’re already lugging
the maid along to keep her silent. We can’t leave one of ’em behind
to do what we won’t let the maid do. Besides, look at them, Andy.
They look so helpless. What would one do without the other? No,” he
said, reaching into the voluminous pockets of his cloak for the
sack he had brought to stuff the Somerville chit in, “we take them
both. You take the one on the right, and I’ll take the other.
Quickly, now.”

Left without a sack, and with Willie already
on the move, Andy swallowed hard and approached the head of the
bed, his hands held in front of him, not knowing precisely where to
place them. In the end, he decided on the young girl’s shoulders,
which were barely visible above the coverlet.

It proved to be an unfortunate choice. While
Willie’s twin struggled, her screams muffled beneath the heavy
cloth of the sack, Andy’s twin was left with her mouth free. Her
eyes opened wide in shock, she employed her voice to good effect,
screaming so loudly into Andy’s nearby ear that he suffered a
momentary qualm that he might have been rendered deaf as a
lamppost.

“For the love of heaven, Andy, shut her up!”
Willie commanded, tying a length of rope around the edges of the
sack that reached to the young girl’s knees before hefting her,
kicking wildly, onto his shoulder. “Yours is screaming fair to
raise the dead.”

“Hardly, sirrah,” came a tightly controlled
female voice from the doorway. “But Eugenie’s cry for help has
fortunately succeeded in summoning me.”

The boys whirled about in surprise, Willie’s
burden all but slipping over his shoulder onto the floor before he
regained his senses enough to grab onto a pair of bare, shapely
ankles. “Who... who are you?”

Eugenie, the screamer, had been immediately
released by the audibly abused Andy, who had passed the point of
caring much one way or the other how the night ended, just as long
as it did.

“Trixy!” Eugenie shrieked, causing Andy once
more to grab at his ear, “we’re being abducted. It’s just like that
book Helena and I read last week, the one from the lending library.
I’m quite assured we’re being abducted.”

“And I’m equally assured that you are not
being abducted,” the woman she had addressed as Trixy answered
calmly, the reason for this assurance gleaming dully in the faint
light coming in from the streetlamp located outside the window.
Motioning with the barrel of the evil-looking pistol, she commanded
softly, “If you gentlemen would kindly step against the wall—after
you have redeposited Miss Helena Somerville on the bed and untied
her—perhaps we can discuss what is to be done now.”

Lord William stubbornly remained stock-still
as Miss Helena Somerville’s wiggling bare toes tickled at his
nose.

“Willie, for God’s sake, put her down,” Andy
pleaded, his hands raised high above his head. A pistol was to be
respected, Andy knew, but that same pistol in the hands of a woman
was to be feared. “It’s over. We’ve botched it.”

T
he Duke of Glynde
was pleased to be home, even if his trip to London had proved
frustratingly unprofitable. Myles Somerville still lived, a thought
that galled the duke’s eye-for-eye sense of right and wrong even as
the realization that he himself, not having become a killer on the
field of honor, would be allowed to continue living unfettered on
his beloved Glyndevaron estate, rather than being forced to flee to
the Continent in order to escape the long arm of the king’s
justice.

Glynde was not by nature a violent man, and
although he had more than once distinguished himself by his bravery
in battle on the Peninsula, he much preferred to be remembered as a
commander who had cared first and foremost for the safety and
well-being of the men in his command.

It was only since the death of his father
that Harry had realized that it was one thing to care for the
soldiers dependent upon him in wartime, and quite another to be
responsible for his brother, William, a young man whose reckless
joie de vivre
was enough to turn the head of the bravest of
men white overnight.

The thought of what havoc William, left on
his own, would cause to the family name if the duke ended by
spilling his claret on the dueling ground, had kept Harry from
racing off all alone to the city in pursuit of Myles Somerville the
moment he had learned the man had taken up residence in London in
preparation for the Season.

In the end, he had taken William with
him—William and his reprobate friend, Andrew—if only to have the
boy close at hand in case the unthinkable should happen. That way,
Harry had reasoned, the family solicitors should not have to first
bail William out of some country jail before informing him that he
had become the twelfth duke.

He had not, he realized now, considered the
possibility that William, engulfed in the throes of grief, might
immediately challenge Somerville to yet another duel, in order to
avenge both his father and his brother. Harry thought of it now,
trying in vain to picture a stony-eyed William staring down the
barrel of a pistol at his opponent.

The mental image dissolved nearly as quickly
as it formed. No, William would never do such a thing. The boy
would seek revenge, Harry was convinced of that—for William did
love him—but it wouldn’t be a conventional revenge. William had
made it a point never, ever, to submit to the conventional if a
more dashing, inventive plan would serve as well.

Yet, Harry reasoned, pacing the length of
his study, William had behaved most properly for the week they had
remained in London and, surprisingly, had seemed all but overjoyed
to be returning to Glyndevaron without partaking in any of the
varied and ribald activities the metropolis had to offer.

Harry frowned, his steps leading him to a
window, where he stood looking out on the west lawn. Why did
William’s good behavior gnaw on the edges of his brain? The
explanation came quickly: it bothered Harry because it wasn’t
normal. It wasn’t natural for William to be good, it wasn’t
expected.