Vanity (53 page)

She grabbed a stone and began to hammer on the locked gate and was immediately joined by a group of men with crow bars and sledge hammers, following her lead with no clear purpose except that locked gates must be destroyed.

The wood splintered. Octavia tore at it with her bare hands, but one of the men shouldered her aside.

“’Old ’ard, missie.” He raised his crow bar and brought it down with a massive swing, rending the door from top to bottom.

“My thanks,” Octavia gasped, leaping through the gap. “Please help me with the door to the prison room upstairs. It’s bound to be locked.”

With great good humor they followed her up the stairs, and Rupert stood listening as his door shook beneath repeated blows. Then the lock shivered, cracked, and the door flew open.

“Oh, thank God. Rupert … Rupert … Rupert!” Half-crying, half-laughing, Octavia exploded into the room, leaping into his arms. The men at the door stared for a minute, then one of them guffawed and clapped his hands, and the others joined in with a ringing burst of laughter and applause.

Rupert glanced over Octavia’s head at his saviors. “My thanks,” he said.

“Eh, y’are good an’ welcome, mate,” the leader said, winking. “Wouldn’t do to keep a man from ’is lass.” Then they turned and clattered down the stairs, pausing at each landing to attack locked doors with their crow bars.

“Come quickly.” Octavia pulled Rupert to the door. “I’m so afraid this will turn into a dream and I’ll wake up in bed and everything will still be horrible.”

“Eh, Nick. Nick … come quick, now.” Bessie appeared panting in the doorway. “Miss got to ye first, I see. But there’s no time to waste.”

“Aye, now they’ll bring out the troops in no time,”
Ben said, crowding with the others into the doorway behind Bessie.

“Let’s get out of here.” Rupert caught Octavia’s hand and strode to the door. “I’ll express my thanks, good friends, at a more suitable moment.”

They thrust him out ahead of them, desperately pushing him down the stairs as if at any moment die tide would turn and they’d all be swept back again.

But Newgate jail was open that night to all who chose to come and go. The Keeper’s house was burning merrily, its occupants long since fled across the rooftops. The wards and cells of the prison stood open; prisoners, many wearing the shackles of the convicted, were being dragged by their uproarious saviors from their cells, even up from the subterranean darkness of the condemned cells. Their rescuers muffled their irons in handkerchiefs as they hustled them out into freedom, and Rupert was fleetingly grateful that his own flight was not similarly hindered.

In the street they stopped. Octavia gripped Rupert’s hand and smiled up at him, her face smudged with soot, her cheeks flushed with the heat of the flames. “We did it.”

“Aye, that we did,” Ben said behind her. “But the best place for Lord Nick right now is in Lord Warwick’s ’ouse, seems to me.”

“Aye, my thinking too, Ben.” Rupert held out his hand. “When things have settled down, I’ll come to the Oak.”

He shook hands with them all, smiling into their weary yet exuberant faces. “I owe you more than I can ever repay.”

“No one wants repayment, Nick,” Bessie said gruffly. “We’re all in debt to you one way and t’other. Be off and be safe now.”

They went off toward the Embankment, and Rupert and Octavia turned their steps along Holborn toward the Strand.

Octavia tucked her hand firmly into Rupert’s. “You’d best look as if you’re with me if we meet any rioters,” she
said gravely. “You look too much the gentleman to please them.”

“You certainly look like the jail bait,” he returned with a grin, pulling her into a side street. “It’s quicker this way.”

The sounds of the riot pursued them all the way to Dover Street. They met stray groups of ruffians, who responded to Octavia’s cheery ribaldry with bawdy, drunken comments and hearty laughter and paid no particular attention to the tall, well-dressed figure beside her.

“I left the side door unlocked,” Octavia said as they reached their house. “I hope we don’t bump into Griffin. He’s never seen me dressed like this.”

“I doubt he’d recover from the shock,” Rupert observed solemnly.

They were both behaving as if they inhabited a dream, making conversation that had nothing to do with the tumultuous emotions of the last week—let alone the events of the evening. Much still lay between them, but he felt as if he were stepping onto new-sown ground, where the fragile shoots were peeping above the earth, still in danger of an early frost or a heavy foot or a hungry squirrel. There must be no more mistakes … no more trampling on the delicate growth of love.

Octavia’s hand trembled slightly as she turned the handle on the door. Behind that door lay safety. No one would seek for Lord Nick the highwayman in the house of Lord Rupert Warwick, frequenter of the court of St. James’s, habitué of the most exclusive establishments in the land.

“I told Miss Tavi ye’d be safe, if’n ye put the sign on yer door, guv,” a little voice whispered from the shadows.

“Frank?” Octavia whirled around.

The child crept out of the darkness and surveyed them warily, clearly ready to run at the slightest hint of danger. “Ye goin’ to ’and me over to the beak?”

“No, I’ve already said not,” Octavia reassured briskly. “Are you going to come inside?”

“Is that Mr. Griffin goin’ to beat me?”

“No,” Rupert said. “No one is. But if you don’t come inside now, then we’ll leave you outside, because we’ve had
enough of the streets for one night and are going in right now.”

There was something about the impatience in his voice that seemed to reassure Frank much more than cajoling would have done.

“Awright.” He dived for the door as Octavia opened it and ducked sideways into the passage leading to the kitchen.

Octavia shot the bolts across the door. “He’s probably off to raid the pantry.”

“I don’t think this is a good place for him,” Rupert said. “Once the city’s quiet again, we’ll take him to the Royal Oak. Bessie will know what to do with him.”

“Poor Frank,” Octavia said with a weary grin. “Does he really deserve such a fate?” Then she leaned back against the door, her legs suddenly weak.

“Come,” Rupert said softly. “You’re exhausted, sweeting.”

“No, jubilant,” she corrected, but she offered no resistance when he swung her into his arms and carried her up the stairs through the quiet house to her own apartments.

There he set her down.

They stood looking at each other in silence for long moments, as if they would drink in this miraculous reality; as if they would absorb and finally come to accept that the nightmare was over.

Hesitantly, Octavia took his hands, her own cold fingers closing over his warm ones. She lifted his right hand, where the Wyndham ring glinted in the candlelight.

“You have it,” she said softly.

“Yes, I have it.” He took his hands from hers and ran them up her bare arms.

“How could you have done what you did with Philip, Octavia? After everything that had gone before? You knew how I felt about it.”

“It seemed the right thing to do,” she said simply. “It gave me a purpose, otherwise I would have given up. I’m sorry if it upset you, but I had to do it for myself. Not you, if that makes you feel any better.”

The truculence in her voice was feigned, and the fire in her eyes had no relationship with anger.

“I’d still like to wring your grubby little neck,” Rupert said, cupping the back of the slender column in his palm.

“Could it wait?” She arched her neck into his hand.

He nodded judiciously. “For an hour or so.”

They stood poised in the charged silence, then with a low, “God in heaven!” he hooked her closer, tipped up her chin with his free hand, and brought his mouth down on hers.

Her hands scrabbled with his belt as he released her chin and fumbled with the lacing of her bodice, freeing her breasts. His fingers teased her nipples as she pushed his britches and drawers off his hips. They stopped at his boots and tangled around his ankles, but he ignored it, pulling her dress from her body, pushing her shift up to her waist, his fingers stroking over her belly before delving into the heated furrow between her thighs. He gripped the soft mound of her sex with one hand, while his other fastened on her bottom, pulling her body into his as if he would dissolve all physical boundaries between them.

Octavia moaned and bit his lip, her legs twining around his as she pressed her belly against his, rubbed her loins against his aroused flesh. She went down to the floor as he fell to his knees, pulling her with him. As she fell onto her back, he rose above her, his hands gripping her wrists, drawing them high over her head.

“Will you wed the Earl of Wyndham, madam?”

Shock sprang into the golden eyes gazing up at him. Her lips parted on a little gasp, and then he drove deep within her, and Octavia was lost to everything but the glories of this fusion. He could have told her he was the abominable snowman at that point, and she would have thought it perfectly reasonable.

Cullum Wyndham smiled down at the woman he would make his countess and laughed with pleasure as he felt her body convulse around him. Her eyes opened with the surprised wonder that always delighted him.

He watched her face, transformed and glowing with
joy as the glory tore through her, as powerful a force as the fire that had brought down Newgate jail. A force powerful enough to bring down and trample in the dust the walls of treachery and deceit; to bring down and trample in the dust the barriers of old hurts and mistrust.

And when his own joy exploded in a shower of sparks, he rolled sideways, bringing her with him, holding her tight against his body, shield and buttress against anything that might do harm to his love.

T
he terrace at Windsor Castle was thronged with courtiers. Among them strolled the royal family and their entourage, the little princesses skipping merrily in the wake of their parents under the benign eyes of their governesses and ladies.

The Prince of Wales, sweating in the afternoon heat, made no attempt to hide his disgruntlement as he stalked along, two paces behind his parents. He nodded morosely when someone he favored caught his eye but mostly kept his gaze on the ground, dabbing at his forehead with his handkerchief, now and again running a finger between his flushed neck and the now limp folds of his cravat.

His expression brightened, however, when he saw Lady Warwick on the arm of her husband. Her ladyship was attired in a caraco of pale-blue taffeta over a skirt of midnight blue. A turquoise pendant nestled in the deep cleft of her breasts, swelling enticingly above the lace-edged bodice of her caraco. Her hair, powdered and dressed high on her head, was ornamented with dark-blue velvet ribbon knots sown with pearls. She wore a small round patch on the outermost corner of her right eye that gave her smile a
mischievously sensual quality that made His Highness beam fatuously.

As the royal party approached the couple, standing by themselves a little to one side of the general throng, Lady Warwick curtsied low to the king and queen. Lord Warwick, resplendent in a suit of charcoal gray edged with silver lace, bowed.

“Ah, my lady … Warwick … good day to ye both,” the king said with his genial smile, raising Octavia from her curtsy. “Missed all the excitement, Warwick … what … what? Thank God the militia have the City under control again.”

“It is indeed a relief, sir,” Rupert agreed.

“Well, glad to see you back in circulation again, Warwick.”

“You’re too kind, sir.” Rupert smiled, and his wife once again tucked her hand in his arm. “I’m not such a coxcomb as to believe I was missed for such a short time.”

“Oh, believe it, dear fellow, believe it, what … what …” the king said, clapping him lightly on the shoulder. “Your dear lady was pining sadly. Isn’t that so, my lady?” His little eyes sparkled with good humor, and he reached for his wife’s hand.

“’Sadly’ is a vast understatement, sir,” Octavia said demurely. “When my lord is not at my side, I find myself quite distracted.”

The queen was pleased to smile at this and offered an affable comment on the beauty of the afternoon before passing on.

Letitia Wyndham, in the group of attendants upon the queen, glanced quickly, almost guiltily, at Octavia; then her eyes darted to Octavia’s husband.

He smiled at her, and there was a look in his eyes that made Letitia feel strangely comforted. Strengthened, almost. As if for some reason he was offering her reassurance. A responding smile flickered tentatively on her lips; then she hurried on.

The Prince of Wales hung back for a moment, raising
Octavia’s hands to his lips and planting a distinctly sloppy kiss on her palm.

“Ravishing, as always, my dear. Y’are a lucky dog, Warwick.”

“Don’t I know it, sir.”

The prince seemed dispose to linger, but the royal procession was moving rapidly and inexorably ahead like a ship on a full tide, so he was obliged to hurry back to his place on board.

Octavia chuckled. “There is something so delicious about the thought that this time four days ago you were a common felon, languishing in Newgate, and here you are making small talk with the king and no one could possibly guess.”