Amanda Scott (14 page)

Edging around those now gathered around boy and dog—albeit at a discreet distance—Pinkie would have gone straight up to the pair had not a stout woman grabbed her by an arm and stopped her in her tracks.

“Art daft, girl? That beast will tear ye limb from limb an ye go near it!”

“Nay, then,” Roddy said cheerfully. “He’ll no harm her. He’s friendly, I tell you. He only wanted to keep yon villain from abducting me.”

Several voices in the crowd spoke at once. “Abduct you? Was that man not your father, then? Who was he? Who are you, boy?”

Hearing the latter query, Roddy straightened, saying, “I am Master of—”

“He is Master Campbell,” Pinkie interjected quickly in a tone loud enough to drown out the boy’s more specific reply. Quickly, she freed herself from the woman’s grasp and moved to stand beside him, adding, “You must come along home now at once, Roddy, and let your new friend return to his master.”

A wiry man dressed somewhat better than most of the crowd said sternly, “Ye be too young to be his mother, mistress. Be ye his nurse or his governess?”

“Neither, sir,” Pinkie said. “I am his sister, though, and I will see him safely home again.”

“It is his father who should see to him,” the man said, drawing a rueful grimace from Roddy.

“I expect his father will agree with you, sir,” Pinkie said. “Come along, laddie.” She held out a hand, and with a sigh, he took it. When they turned to walk toward Faircourt House, Doreen followed, but the dog fell into step beside them.

“Oh, dear,” Pinkie said, observing this. “Whatever shall we do with him?”

Roddy chuckled. “I dinna think that will be our decision to make. Do you think you can force this braw laddie to do anything he doesna choose to do?”

With another look at the huge dog, Pinkie said, “No one could.”

“That’s true,” said Roddy. “He’s a grand lad, he is.”

Watching Roddy’s rescuer trot along beside them, Pinkie agreed. The dog bore itself with distinctly regal elegance.

“I think he’s a deerhound,” she said, suppressing a tingling sensation as she added, “I…I have seen one or two before. Did you see where he came from?”

“Nay, then, how could I? I was gey busy just then, if you will recall.”

“So you were,” she agreed. “What were you doing in Shepherd’s Market?”

“Looking for Mrs. Salmon’s Waxworks,” the boy said. “Terence said one can see a replication of Charles the First being executed there, and also a lady lying on a bed of state with her three hundred and sixty-five children, all born at one birth. I think that last bit was just more of his blathering, though, and what’s more, a man I asked said the waxworks are ever so far from here—in Fleet Street, he said.”

“You should not call him Terence,” Pinkie said. “He is Mr. Coombs.”

“He’s no but a fool bletherskate,” Roddy said scornfully. “He didna even come the day. I think he and Chuff went over Westminster way to watch the cockfights there. I asked them to take me, but they said I was too young.”

“Bless me, don’t speak of such a thing to anyone else,” Pinkie exclaimed. “Neither of them would do that, and certainly not when Mr. Coombs is supposed to be tending to your lessons. Something must have occurred to detain him, that’s all, and in any event, you had no business to leave the house.”

“Well, dinna scold me for it,” Roddy said sourly. “I expect I’ll hear enow without your tuppence added.”

His expectation proved accurate, for when they entered the front hall of Faircourt House ahead of their two companions, Duncan was waiting for them in the doorway of his bookroom.

“Where the devil have you been?” he demanded, halting them on the threshold before they were properly inside.

Eyeing him with less confidence than usual, Roddy said, “Shepherd’s Market, Papa. I was looking for—”

“What were you thinking, lass,” Duncan snapped, taking a step toward them, “to walk in such a place as that without your chairmen or Dugald to protect you?”

Caught off guard at finding his anger directed at her, Pinkie swallowed hard, realizing he would not accept what Roddy had done as justification for her actions if he thought she had behaved improperly, or had put herself or the boy in danger.

She was still trying to think how best to answer when the boy said, “She was looking for me, Papa—she and Doreen both.”

Duncan looked beyond them then to where Doreen still stood outside on the step. “Ah, I see,” he said, but nothing in his tone gave his listeners reason to think the information had soothed his temper so much as a jot. “You go and wait for me in the bookroom, Roderick. Don’t say another word,” he added when Roddy drew an audible breath. “This time I will do the talking—all of it—although after I’ve said all I mean to say, your voice will doubtless be heard throughout the house.”

Glumly, Roddy turned away, but a diversion occurred before he had taken a step. Hidden from Duncan until then by Pinkie’s wide skirt and the open door, the huge dog stepped forward, inserting itself between its young charge and the man who had dared to threaten him.

“What the devil is that?” Duncan exclaimed, adding in a roar, “Dugald, Peasley, bring some men out here, and get rid of this beast! You there, Doreen, get inside and shut that damned door.”

“Wait, sir, he’s harmless,” Pinkie said hastily as her maid slipped into the hall beside her and closed the door. “At least…” She hesitated. Then, gathering her courage in the face of the darkening frown on Duncan’s face, she said to Roddy, “I do think we must tell him everything that happened.”

Duncan’s eyebrows shot upward. “Everything, eh? Very well, you tell me, Pinkie. You, sir, can go into the bookroom as I commanded you to do. Neither that monster nor anything you might say to me will save your skin today.”

“Yes, sir,” Roddy said with a sigh of resignation. However, when he tried to step forward, the dog moved, too, preventing him from going toward Duncan.

“Bless my soul,” exclaimed Mr. Peasley, entering by way of the green baize door at the back of the hall. “Whoever brought that beast in here?”

“He brought himself,” Duncan said grimly. “You’ll need some stout lads, Peasley, to put him out again.”

“No, Papa, you must not put him out. He will do as I bid him, I think.”

“Will he, indeed?”

“Aye, he will,” Roddy said. Gently laying one hand on the dog’s great head, he said confidently, “Lie down, sir.”

To everyone’s astonishment but the boy’s, the dog obeyed.

“The devil,” Duncan muttered.

“Bless my soul,” exclaimed Mr. Peasley. “But what shall we do with him now, my lord?”

“Please, sir,” Pinkie said to Duncan, “I believe he saved Roddy’s life.”

“What?”

“Aye, Papa,” Roddy said. “When I was in the Shepherd’s Market—”

“I’ll hear it from Pinkie,” Duncan said sternly. “If you can control that beast so easily, take him out to the mews and command him to take his orders from whichever of the stable lads will agree to look after him. Then bring yourself back to my bookroom without him. Our business together remains to be seen to.”

“Yes, sir,” Roddy said with another sigh. Touching the dog’s head again, he said, “To heel, me laddie. We’ll find you some dinner.”

When they had gone, Duncan looked expectantly at Pinkie, and she explained what had happened.

“Where the devil was young Coombs whilst all this was taking place?”

“I do not know, sir,” she said. “He did not come to the house today.”

“I’ll deal with him shortly, too. Did you recognize the horseman, lass?”

“No, sir. He was no one I had seen before. I do not believe he can have been following Roddy, so perhaps he merely saw a chance to snatch up a well-dressed child and make off with him.”

“You may be right. In any event, I suppose I must be grateful to that monster. Perhaps I should even offer him a home out of gratitude, but how anyone can afford to feed him, I do not know.”

Interpreting the comment as a mild jest, Pinkie smiled, but Duncan was not through with her.

“The moment you knew he was missing, you should have told me,” he said evenly. “You had no business running off on your own to find him, lass. This is not home, where it is safe enough now for you to wander at will. This is London, and you might as easily have been a target for that villain as the lad was. Do not put yourself in such danger again, or you, too, will know my wrath.”

“I won’t, sir,” Pinkie said meekly.

He nodded dismissal and returned to his bookroom. Not wanting to be anywhere nearby when Roddy joined him there, Pinkie gestured to Doreen and hurried upstairs to prepare for Lady Sefton’s rout ball.

How word of the strange rescue swept so quickly through the beau monde, Pinkie would never know, but she and the others from Faircourt House had been at the rout ball no more than twenty minutes before people began to speak of it to her. Since she had said not a word about it to anyone at home except Duncan, among the first to demand explanations had been the countess and dowager.

When Pinkie had explained, Mary said in distress, “It is my fault. I have been so busy with mantua makers and milliners during the day and parties at night that I’ve scarcely had time for the poor laddie, and Duncan is too busy with his tobacco lords and such like things to pay heed to him as he does at home.”

Duncan, rejoining them in time to overhear her, said, “Don’t blame yourself or me for the lad’s mischief, love. He is old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, and to obey orders when he receives them.”

Eyeing him with displeasure, Mary said, “What did you do to him, sir?”

He drew her away to speak privately to her, whereupon Lady Agnes said tardy, “I daresay he thrashed the poor lad. He’s a stern man, is Duncan, like his father before him, but Roddy should never have gone into the streets alone. How that tutor of his allowed it, I do not know, nor do I know why your brother does not keep a closer eye on Roddy. How Chuff manages to occupy his time to such an extent that we rarely lay eyes on him from dawn to dusk, I do not know.”

Pinkie did not know either, and she had begun to worry. Not until half an hour later, when she saw him pass through the reception line and enter the ballroom while she was dancing a reel, did she relax. He was with Terence Coombs, however; so, much as she would have liked to scold him, she could not do so. In any case, she was too astonished by his appearance to think about anything else.

At Faircourt House, Mr. Coombs always appeared tidily dressed, without any display of fashionable quirks beyond wearing a powdered periwig. She had noticed that he dressed more fashionably, even foppishly, for evening functions, but Chuff had scorned to follow his example. Both Duncan and Chuff had flatly refused to shave their heads to accommodate fashionable wigs. They simply powdered their hair when necessary, to appear in company, and both had expressed relief upon learning that many younger men had begun defying the stricter dictates of masculine fashion. Many no longer wore wigs at all, except on the most formal occasions.

The moment Pinkie clapped eyes on her brother that night, however, she realized that his opinion of wigs must have altered considerably, for both he and Coombs sported impressive examples of the
perruquier’s
art. Curled and powdered, the elaborate creations made them both look ludicrously top-heavy.

Her partner, a splendidly garbed gentleman whose name she could not recall, murmured, “Who is that pretty beau with Terry Coombs, I wonder?”

The thought of Chuff, who was nearly as tall as Duncan, as a pretty beau made her giggle, but the description struck her as apt, and she could not help staring. When the music stopped and Chuff and Coombs approached, she abandoned her partner, then found herself at a loss for words.

Preening like any fop, Chuff twirled the quizzing glass attached by a long black velvet ribbon to a button on his waistcoat and said impishly, “Well, lass?”

“Lud, sir,” she said, fluttering her fan and simpering in exactly the way she had seen many London beauties flutter and simper, “’tis such a prodigious age since last I saw you that I had begun to think you must have died.”

“Well, I haven’t,” he said bluntly. “Coombs and I enjoyed a splendid day together, however.”

“Rigging yourself out, in fact,” she said, nodding. “But I protest, sir, your dress is finer than my own, and it must be quite stiff with all that silver and gold embroidery. Your scent is prettier than mine, too,” she added, sniffing delicately.

“It is what the king himself wears,” Mr. Coombs informed her with a confiding air and a graceful gesture of the amber cane he carried. A decorated enamel snuffbox and a lacy white handkerchief graced his other hand.

She nearly told them both what she thought of Mr. Coombs for having deserted his charge in favor of a day with Chuff, but she decided to hold her tongue. It would serve the tutor right to face Duncan without warning, and it would not hurt Chuff to learn that his splendid day had resulted in a painful interlude for Roddy. Thus, she said no more than, “Good evening, Mr. Coombs.”

Before he could reply, a disturbingly familiar voice said from behind her, “This is my dance, I believe, Miss MacCrichton.”

Turning to face Kintyre with the firm intention of informing him that it was no such thing, she found herself raising her fan instead and flirting with him over it as she said, “Is it, indeed, my lord?” It was as if someone else had suddenly jumped into her shoes.

He frowned, reminding her uncomfortably of Duncan at his most censorious and in his worst temper, as he said, “Would you deny me, lass?”

“Pay her nonsense no heed, sir,” Chuff said with a chuckle. “She is merely practicing the airs and graces she sees other London lasses affecting.”

With a squeak of outrage that he would dare accuse her of something she thought more nearly akin to what he was doing, Pinkie turned to give her brother a much-deserved piece of her mind.

“Not now, lassie,” Kintyre said, firmly taking her hand and placing it on his forearm. “The music has begun. If we are to find our place, we must go now.”

Pressing her lips together, more to keep Chuff from hearing her snap at Kintyre than for any other reason, she allowed him to draw her away from the two younger men before she said, “You take too many liberties, sir. Not only did I not promise this dance to you, but you must know that we have never yet even been properly introduced to each other.”