The Taming of the Rake (18 page)

“Me?” The baron looked so guilty the hangman would have had no second thoughts about dropping the noose over his neck…even though Chelsea had no
idea what the fellow could be guilty of. She had decided that all men have something for which they should feel guilty, and she relaxed when the baron proved her right.

“You owe those two desperately unhappy children an apology, both of you. That they would dare such a disastrous marriage only proves how miserable you have managed to make them both. And yet, although blameless, there they are upstairs, cowering in fear, terrified of what you will do to them. They aren’t marrying for love. No, no—they are marrying to escape untenable situations. And whose fault is that? I think we know the answer. The two of you storming in here like wild beasts? And so I say again, shame on you! Unfeeling monsters, the pair of you.”

The squire broke first. “What? My little Emmy—afraid of me? Never say something so cruel, madam! I have been both mother and father to that girl from the day she was born.”

The baron, not to be judged the inferior parent, pounded his fist against his chest. “That’s my boy upstairs, my heir. I would cut out my own eyes before I’d harm a hair on his head, God’s truth, madam!”

“I doubt you’d have to go that far,” Beau said, stepping in front of Chelsea. “I think we’re satisfied now. Although an apology to Mrs. Claridge here might be in order, if there is still any question that your children have been safe as houses with us. My wife, as you see, is a formidable woman, and of the highest character. She is very much set against elopements. Tawdry things, she calls them. Don’t you, dearest?”

She was very good. She didn’t laugh. Or surreptitiously kick him.

She was, however, forced to bite the insides of her cheeks as she extended her hand, allowing both men the honor of bending over it in turn. Then she held her breath until Beau directed them to the two upstairs chambers where their children waited for them, fearing the worst, before she sat herself down all at once and laughed until tears came to her eyes.

Beau leaned himself against the tabletop, chuckling softly. “And that,
my good woman,
was as good as a play. ‘I’ve heard all about you, sir.’ What the devil did that mean?”

She took the handkerchief he’d offered and dabbed at her moist eyes. “I haven’t the faintest notion. But you will admit it worked.”

He laughed again. “I’ll have to remember that, and never apologize until you tell me what I’m apologizing for. I might even be innocent.”

“Were you ever innocent, Oliver?” she asked him as he held out his hand and helped her to her feet.

“I seriously doubt it, no.” He lifted her hand and turned it, kissing her palm. “You were brilliant. They came in here angry and demanding and left thoroughly chastened, their tails between their legs, and off on their way to apologize to their errant children. A lesser man might think you a witch.”

“Oh? And you are not a lesser man? What kind of man are you, then?”

“Any sort of man you want to term me, as long as the
twit departs and you are my bed partner for this night and every night until we reach Gretna Green,” he told her, causing a blush to steal into her cheeks. The man would appear to be insatiable.

Wasn’t that nice.

Chelsea put her hand to her mouth and feigned a yawn. “But it is nearly ten, Oliver. I believe I may be sleepy.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” he said, reaching for her, his grin adorably wicked.

They were interrupted by the sound of many feet trampling down the stairs outside the taproom. Beau took her hand and led her to the doorway, to watch as first the baron and his moaning, worse-for-drink, green-complexioned son departed the inn with alacrity, followed hard by a finally dry-eyed Emily and her red-faced papa…with a half-dozen brown-and-white, tongue-lolling hounds tumbling down the stairs behind them.

Beau slipped his arm around her waist. “I shall treasure that sight until my dying day,” he said fervently.

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Perhaps we can have it preserved in oils and hung above the mantel.
The Elopement, Undone, With Hounds.
”

“And Puck missed it. He’ll be crushed when I tell him. He’d suggested we just leave the two of them on the side of the road—heartless, my brother is, it would appear. But I’m certain the things I brought back with me are in our rooms by now, along with the tubs I ordered for both of us. And did I tell you that Puck made a
flying visit to Bond Street before heading north, and selected a few pieces for you? He assures me he is extraordinarily adept at choosing feminine garments, having kept sufficient mistresses in Paris this past year to have become expert.”

Chelsea instantly straightened, giving a small cry of genuine delight. “Puck is in Gateshead? And you waited until now to tell me?”

“Puck will arrive here with the coach tomorrow morning, but we’ll be gone by then, as I think we need to stay with our original plan and go all the way to Scotland on horseback. The last thing we want is to run into your siblings this close to our goal. Puck will pick up anything we can’t bundle and carry with us, so choose what you like best, and leave the rest. And yes, I probably should have told you straightaway. However, in my defense, as you’re still glaring at me, I’d just spent the better part of an hour attempting to keep those two great oafs from killing each other. One for the marriage, the other against. But you knew that, as well, didn’t you?”

“I thought it a reasonable assumption, yes. Even in our marriage, one could say that one of us gains more by the union than the other.”

His eyes clouded for a second. “Me. All the benefits come to me.”

She looked at him, her smile starting small but then growing, even as her heart swelled inside her. “Why, Oliver, thank you. That wasn’t going to be my answer at all.”

And then, while she was watching his jaw drop, she
turned, picked up her hated red skirts and raced upstairs to her chamber, her bath, her soap and her lovely new clothes. With everything else that was going on, she believed herself terribly shallow, to be so nearly overjoyed with the prospect of new clothing. But she wasn’t ashamed at all. She only hoped nothing she found was red.

I
T WAS A SHAMEFUL
thing, but she nearly fell asleep in the tub. She hadn’t realized how long the day had been, and how much drama and emotion had been laced through it, from the early-morning departure from the inn, to the discovery of Jonathan and Emily along the road, to the heart-shakingly intense interlude with Beau in the woods, to the confrontation with the squire and the baron.

She’d lived more today, she believed, than in any ten years she would experience in her lifetime.

Inspecting the contents of the small portmanteau served to revive her quite a bit, and she sighed regretfully as she replaced the lovely silk shift and dressing gown, blushing only a little at the thought Puck had chosen it for her, and instead dressed in her new midnight-blue riding habit for the walk down the hallway to Beau’s chamber.

Emily had made a mess of the bed in this chamber, variously napping on or crying in it all the day long, so it seemed more than reasonable that Chelsea go to Beau, rather than the other way round. Tomorrow evening she would wear the dressing gown for him because
that, she’d promised herself, would fit in her small traveling bag if she had to shove it in with her foot!

She tied back her still damp hair with a black riband, stepped into the hallway, locked the door and pocketed the key before turning down the twisting corridor in the direction of Beau’s chamber.

And then she stepped quickly into a dark corner as she heard voices and approaching footsteps.

“Who do we ask for at The Crown?”

“The Spaniard. You remember me telling you his name. Don Pedro Messina. He speaks for the French.”

“To speak is one thing. To do is another. You said he swore he’d have the money tonight? And why so damned late?”

“Because you didn’t arrive until this afternoon, remember? I didn’t know when you’d get here, so I said tonight. Did you find it yet? Damned thing to leave behind. Go back and check in the room.”

Chelsea recognized the first man’s voice; he was the same man she’d encountered earlier in this very hallway. It would seem they had some late-night business to attend to. The man whose voice she recognized did not seem overjoyed at the prospect.

She peeked out of her hiding spot to see that the men had stopped in the hallway, the man she recognized patting at his pockets, as if trying to ascertain whether or not he had something he needed.

He did. He pulled out the narrow object. Chelsea heard the click of some sort of button, and a sharp blade appeared in the man’s hands.

She quickly shrank back into the shadows.

“Nasty thing, that sticker. And I told you, the Spaniard swore he had the money, as long as he got to meet you,” the second man said. “But who knows? Haven’t you learned yet about these damned Frogs? They do as they do.”

“If they want our help, they’d damned well better do as they do
toot-sweet.
”

“Our help? Christ on a crutch, man, it’s not like we’re going to
help
them.”

“They don’t know that. What do we care about what they want? We meet with him in his room at The Crown like we said, we take the money, thank him kindly and then we slit his throat and walk out of the place innocent as you please, just like we did with the others. I just want it done. What’s that? Did you hear something? Over there—have a look.”

Chelsea knew she had two options open to her, neither of them appealing. She could stay where she was and surely be discovered, or she could step out of the shadows and face them head-on.

She chose the latter.

“Mon Dieu!”
she exclaimed, clapping her hands to her chest as she feigned surprise, and then immediately let loose with a torrent of French, telling them she was very afraid, telling them she feared her maid had disappeared, just when she needed help with her buttons, and had either of these fine gentlemen seen her?

“It’s only some dumb female. I thought the whores had all gone. What’s she gibbering about?”

“I don’t know,” the man Chelsea had encountered earlier said, looking at her intently, the knife no longer in sight. “Do you speak English?” he asked her slowly, as if that might help her to understand.

Chelsea very nearly shook her head before she realized what that motion would betray. Instead, she repeated what she had just said, this time employing a few more
Mon Dieus
and a fervent
par tous les saints
even as she tossed in some dramatic hand gestures to hammer home her point. And then she fell back on the most powerful weapon in any woman’s arsenal: she began to cry.

“Crazy female,” the other man said in disgust, giving his companion’s arm a quick, nudging punch. “Come on, Jonas.”

“I don’t know,” the man called Jonas said slowly, still looking at Chelsea as if trying to decide if she was genuine. “She could have understood us. Maybe we should take her along. Pretty piece, at least. Looks cleaner than the others.”

What! Didn’t the man have
business
to do, murdering to do? Men were so obtuse. She could scream, she supposed, but that would bring Beau on the run, probably unarmed, which she knew these two men were not. She had to handle this on her own. How did a woman get rid of a man?

That’s simple enough. Beg him to stay,
a voice in Chelsea’s head explained with amazing clarity.

She grabbed Jonas’s arm, looked up at him implor
ingly and repeated her lie for the third time, tugging at him as if she desperately required his help.

“Can’t stand that yammering. Bugger off, bitch,” Jonas said, shaking her free, the movement of his arm sending her crashing against the wall, knocking all the air from her lungs. “God, I hate the French. Running around England just like they won the war. I’d slit this one’s throat for free, just to shut her up. Let’s go have that drink you promised me and be on our way.”

Chelsea remained where she was, needing the wall for support as she willed her knees not to crumple beneath her, and struggled to regain her breath. And then she took off running around the turn in the hallway, heading for Beau’s chamber.

She banged on the door with some force and then immediately depressed the latch, hoping he hadn’t locked it. He hadn’t.

“Get up!” she demanded, seeing him lying fully dressed on the bed, his long legs crossed, looking entirely at his ease. “Someone is going to be murdered.”

The dratted man didn’t react. “Yes, I can see that. My brother, most likely. Much as you look charming, my dear, I don’t believe I’m comfortable with Puck’s assessing eye. That riding habit fits you entirely too well.”

She proudly looked down at herself for a moment, only a moment, and silently agreed that the outfit flattered her; even the length of the hem was right. But then she recovered. “Not now, Oliver,” she said with some heat. “I just overheard two men in the hallway,
and they’re planning to kill someone tonight. In Gateshead, I think.”

“Is that so? I shouldn’t worry about it.” Beau levered himself up and off the mattress. “It has been my experience that people do that all the time. Especially when they have access to a taproom. Plan to kill, talk about killing. They rarely do it.”

“Don’t you dismiss me, Oliver Le Beau Blackthorn! I am not in the habit of overreacting. I heard them, and they mean it. They’re going to rob him and then slit his throat. I even saw the bloody knife.”

“You saw the bloody what?”

“Well, all right, it wasn’t bloody when I saw it, but it will be. I only said that for emphasis. And something else, Oliver. Did you know that those women who were here today are whores?”

He suddenly looked a little sheepish. “I knew it might be a possibility.”

“Honestly, I must live with shutters over my eyes. Not that any of that signifies anything. We should be able to find the man and warn him if we leave now, and I can tell you everything on the way to Gateshead.” She jammed her fists onto her hips, truly out of patience with him. “Unless you’d rather continue to just stand there like some hair-for-wit village idiot and gawk at me.”

“Just when I was lying here, waxing nearly poetic about the way we two seem to rub along so well together. I was deciding it was your appreciation of my better qualities that I admired most.” He took her arm
and steered her to the window seat, and then sat down beside her. “The village idiot awaits, madam. Speak.”

She had a momentary urge to wring his neck, but suppressed it. “You need to hear more, don’t you? In fairness, I suppose I would, as well.”

He listened with half an ear at first, she could sense it, too busy playing with the fingers of her right hand to be truly paying attention. Allow a man to bed you, it would seem, and their minds become somehow fixated, unwilling or unable to concentrate on anything else. But then he seemed to become more alert.

“Say that again.”

“What? The Crown? You visited all of the hotels and inns, you told me so. Is there a Crown?”

He nodded, getting to his feet and crossing the room to pick up his jacket. Something had changed, the very air in the room had become charged. He suddenly seemed bigger, more muscled. Almost dangerous. “The Crown and Feathers, and The Crown and Harp. Two of them. Tell me the name again. I want to believe I misheard you.”

Chelsea stood up. Something was wrong, something more than some sudden resolve to put a spoke in the wheels of the two prospective murderers. “Jonas? No, wait, you mean the other one, don’t you? The Spaniard. Don Pedro Messina.” She frowned. “You know, Oliver, there’s something vaguely familiar about that name.”

He was bustling about the chamber, not aimlessly, but with grim purpose, pulling his brace of pistols out of his saddlebag, checking them and then quickly replacing
them, hefting the bag up and over his shoulder. The knife and its sheath, lying on the bureau, were just as quickly secreted inside his right boot top.

“Shakespeare’s
As You Like It,
” Beau told her shortly. “Don Pedro, the legitimate heir, as opposed to Don John, the bastard son and villain of the piece. The setting Spain, Messina to be precise about the thing. It’s too close to be anyone else. Damn him, it’s exactly the sort of dramatic nonsense he’d find amusing. All of England to choose from, and he shows up here.”

“Oliver, I’m certain you know just what you’re talking about, and to whom you are referring—but I don’t.”

He stabbed his fingers through his hair. “No, of course you don’t.” He picked up his hat, his riding gloves. “Our mother named us all after characters in Shakespeare’s plays. Oliver Le Beau, Robin Goodfellow. Don John, the bastard brother of Don Pedro in
Much Ado About Nothing,
even though we call him Jack.”

“But if it’s as you said, Don John is the villain. Why would your mother name your brother for a villain?”

“You’d have to ask her. Some would say she’d had a premonition. Christ, Chelsea, he’s working for the French?” He slammed the hat down on his head and approached her, taking hold of her upper arms. “With any luck, one drink downstairs will turn to two or three, to build courage. That should give me time to round up Puck and find Jack. I think this will make the first
time in five years that all three of us have been in the same place at the same time. You’d think we’d planned a damned party. Stay here, lock the door behind me.”

She put her hands on his, holding him where he was. “Oliver,” she said carefully, as if speaking to a faintly dim child. “Take a moment to think. I know the names of the two possible inns. I have a horse and money of my own in my reticule. I can ask the direction to Gateshead or even hire someone to guide me. Plus, I have been here all day, and this inn is not so lovely as you might think. I do believe I’d have to follow you.”

“And I can pull the sash off that curtain over there and tie you to the bedpost,” he pointed out and then sighed. “All right. As far as Puck’s room at the White Swan, but no farther. I’ve had misgivings about this inn from the start. Too many people in it sleep all day and rise only at night, but there seemed to be no budging that silly girl once she’d locked herself in the room. We’re probably surrounded by itinerant highwaymen and thieves, not that I was going to point that out to you. Or the whores. So you come along, but you do as I say. Agreed?”

She pulled the key to her own room from her pocket. “Agreed. Let me fetch my new hat and gloves, and I will meet you in the stable yard. There’s a full moon, and you know I can ride well enough.” She went up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Your brother will be fine, Oliver.”

“Not when I get through with him, he won’t,” he told her and headed out of the room.

H
E’D ALREADY
traveled this roadway twice today and knew it to be in fairly good repair. With his recent familiarity, along with the full moon, he felt confident the journey would take no more than a half hour, even with Chelsea riding with him.

And if one of the supposed highwaymen from the inn accosted them, well, he already was in the mood to do violence to somebody, so that would be all right.

He’d checked the taproom before they’d departed and gotten a fairly good look at the two prospective murderers, sure of who they were thanks to the descriptions Chelsea had provided. Happily, the taproom, fairly well deserted all day, was now filled with the inn’s tenants, all of them male, all of them dressed in dark clothing, all of them wearing the alert, wary expressions of men ready to fight or flee if they so much as sniffed danger. They probably would be heading out around midnight, to wreak havoc on any coach they might encounter.

In his more reasonable moments, he knew this was a good thing, as he felt he could do without punching a prospective thief tonight; he’d save all his wrath for Jack.

Beau had planned to rouse Chelsea after they’d made love and slept a few hours, then depart this inn the same way they had done the last one; before dawn, and very quietly. He’d told himself he was being an old woman, seeing danger where there was none. He should have listened to himself better and left along with the baron and the squire, pushing on until he could find another small village and a less threatening atmosphere.