Lady in Green (13 page)

One of the riders darted out of the crowd. “I’ll uncover the masterpiece,” he bragged, reaching for her veil.

Annalise backed Seraphina again and raised her whip.

“Watch out, Hastings, she already caught Jelcoe with the whip.” There was coarse laughter from the group nearby.

The man called Hastings answered, “That’s all right. I like a woman with spirit. I don’t mind using a whip myself on an unruly filly.”

More crude comments and advice were sent to Hastings and Repton, most of which Annalise did not understand, blessedly. She had heard more than enough, however. Anger overcame her fright. “Animals!” she screamed. “You are all worse than beasts! Have you no respect, no honor? Not all women are for sale, you dastards!”

*

Lord Gardiner had managed to push his way forward through the
ranks
of horsemen. “Bloody hell,” he swore when he saw one of the lady’s bodyguards on the ground, wrestling with four times his number. The other was still on his horse, but with a pistol held to his head.

Some of the other men were turning back, shamefaced and muttering. Like Cholly, they’d come only to see the latest comet in London’s sky. No one wanted to have it out with Repton, though. He was hot at hand when it came to issuing challenges, and he was a crack shot with a pistol. In addition, he held a lot of the younger men’s vouchers. They started drifting away.

Gard, however, was determined to go to the lady’s rescue. If this wasn’t a damsel in distress, he’d never played at St. George. Besides, he owed her for the boost to his morale. Then, too, he’d do his damnedest to get any female, even his housekeeper Annie Lee, out of the clutches of this pack of dirty dishes. Peep-o’day boys and ivory tuners, they were all loose screws. Repton was the worst.

The
earl’s plan
was
simple: beat the hell
out of Repton and move the curricle from the lady’s path. Before he got near enough, she let loose a stream of invectives that stopped
him
in his tracks. Then, while he and the others were still absorbing her magnificent fury and vitriolic message, the woman pulled back on her reins, causing the mare to rear. The chestnut backed up,
still
on her hind legs only, until her tail was almost touching the phaeton behind. With the lightest of touches the lady brought the mare down to all fours and then, with a leap and a bound and burst of speed forward, the two sailed right over Repton’s curricle and away. If the old roué hadn’t ducked, they’d have taken his head with them. As it was, his hat went flying.

Lord Gardiner leaned down from his stallion and retrieved the hat while most of the other spectators were still staring at the cloud of dust kicked up by the lady’s departure. One or two started clapping. Ross turned back to them and sneered. “Would you have clapped so hard if she’d broken her neck trying that amazing jump? What if she’d lamed the animal, trying to get away from you?” Eyes shifted to study the ground. “And you call yourselves gentlemen. I am ashamed to be one of your number.”

“Come now, Gardiner, just a bit of fun. No harm done.” Repton was sitting up again, getting his color back. He held his hand out for his hat. “Since when has Earl en Garde developed such nice scruples when it comes to women anyway?”

Someone, Hastings, he thought, snickered. Lord Gardiner studied the hat in his hands. “Scruples?” he drawled. “Do you know, in all my years I never had to terrorize a single defenseless female into agreeing to warm my bed. I wouldn’t quite call that scruples. Not even common decency. I don’t suppose you’d recognize either, Repton. By the way, I don’t like your hat. It’s filthy and smells rank.” And he threw the offending article as far as he could, into the Serpentine. “If you have any complaints, I’ll be happy to oblige.”

Repton was not about to challenge the earl, not with Gardiner’s prowess with a sword. Cloth-headed gapeseeds who didn’t know an épée from an epergne, those he would challenge. They had to choose pistols. Of course, if Lord Gardiner challenged him… “Want her yourself, do you?” he taunted.

The earl did not take offense. “I might not be the beast the lady called you, Repton, but I am still a man.”

“Are you? I heard rumors…
”

Gard clenched his fists. The muscles in his jaw worked so hard, they twitched. He’d kill the bastard. Then he’d strangle Moira Campbell. He started to dismount. “I won’t call you out, you muckworm. The field of honor is reserved for gentlemen. You’d make a mockery of it. I’m just going to beat you to a pulp.”

Repton did not need another invitation. He cracked his whip over his cattle and was gone before the earl’s foot touched the ground.

Gard turned to the other men. “Anybody else have any question about my manhood?”

No one answered. Ross Montclaire had challenged Oxford’s champion boxer while at school, and won. He still sparred with Gentleman Jackson himself. No one forgot that.

“Then let go of the lady’s escort before I forget that I am a
gentle
man.”

The man who was covering Clarence put his pistol away and stood back, but not far enough or quickly enough that Clarence’s heavy boot, didn’t catch him in the jaw, knocking him flat on the ground. The rowdies who had tackled Clarence’s partner hurried into the woods, some with spilled claret, some with daylights already darkening.

A spotty-faced sprig in yellow pantaloons brought the fellow’s horse. He coughed and stammered an apology.

Lord Gardiner nodded. “We all, and everyone who considers himself a gentleman, owe you an apology. And the lady, of course.” He directed his words to the two grooms, but spoke so all of the remaining members of Repton’s plot could hear. “Please convey our humblest regrets for this deplorable event. And please tell your mistress that she will be perfectly secure in the park from now on. ’Twould be a shame if such a spectacular horsewoman were denied her ride. Inform the lady that I, the Earl of Gardiner, guarantee her safety.” He looked around, frowning awfully, making sure the makebaits all understood that he would exact dire retribution on anyone who caused her more distress. The cowed expressions he read satisfied Gard. “The Lady in Green can ride as unmolested as my own mother. If she is still fearful, tell her that I stand ready to escort her, with no expectations or demands or disrespect. On my word of honor.”

Chapter Fourteen

Annalise was shaken. She didn’t know how she got home, by which route she made her way back to the livery stable, or what she told the men when they asked for Clarence and Mick. There were more insults along the way, she recalled, for a solitary woman with no escort who was galloping madly down the street as if all the hounds of hell were at her heels. They were, as far as she was concerned. Lord, was there no safe place for a woman in this whole city? If two reformed hedgebirds were not enough to protect her in the public park, she could never ride again. Now, when her looks were finally coming back so that she didn’t frighten herself in the mirror, she could never come out of her crone’s guise. It wasn’t that she was vain about her looks; she never considered herself a beauty or anything, though Barny had been wont to call her pretty. She simply hated being the antidote Annie Lee, from whose appearance grown men turned and little children hid behind their mothers’ skirts. Annalise hated being ugly. She hated being afraid. She mostly hated the feeling that she was a fox forced to go to ground, with the hunters waiting at every burrows’ end, day after day.

Rob had taken Henny on errands, luckily for him, for Miss Avery was damning every male alive. She wouldn’t even share her uneaten, crumpled roll with Clyde the dog.

*

The day got worse. As Annalise sat with trembling hands around a cup of steaming tea, looking fully as ugly as her mood, Lorna reported a man at the door.

“He’s nobbut a cheeky footman, I’d guess, passing hisself off as some nob’s secretary or something, all so’s he doesn’t have to use the back door. He’s asking for the mistress, and I ’spose that’s you, ma’am. I tried to send the fellow away, seeing as how you’re looking blue-deviled, but the coxcomb says he won’t leave a message or anything, and he’ll come back another time. Thinks a lot of hisself, this Stavely.”

Stavely was a moderately good-looking knave with slicked-back hair and padded shoulders. He was also the man who had called her name in the park yesterday—was it just yesterday? He was Sir Vernon’s man.

If she gave him short shrift, Annalise considered as she watched him preen in the hall mirror before he was aware of her presence, he’d be suspicious, wondering why his questions were going unanswered. A pretty fellow like this would be used to getting his own way among the serving girls. Also, even if housekeepers like Annie Lee were often autocratic, deeming theirs among the highest rungs on the servants’ ladder, it would never do for Annalise to come over as haughty or arrogant. She didn’t want this popinjay going back to her stepfather saying he was shown the door by a housekeeper who was putting on the airs of a lady. Sir Vernon was too clever. So Miss Avery gathered her shaken poise and gushed like a moonstruck tweeny as if her life depended on it. It most likely did.

“Come along, dearie. We can talk about your errand over a nice cup of tea. Or else maybe you’d fancy some of the stable man’s ale. I was just saying to myself, Mrs. Lee—I’m a widow, don’t you know—wouldn’t it be cheery to have some company on a chill morning like this? Handsome company, too.”

The footman gulped. His Adam’s apple bobbed above his necktie. There was a nice reward if he found any information for his employer, but no tip was worth cozying up to an old hunchback hag like this. “No, ma’am, thanks for the offer, but I can’t stay. On important business, don’t you know. I’m after news of a young miss what might of come your way.”

The witch cackled. “We get a lot of young misses hereabouts. A different one every day, or night. The master’s a regular billy goat, he is. Of course, he’s not to home right now, so don’t feel obliged to stand out in the hall.” She made to take his tricorne with her emaciated fingers. He snatched it out of her reach. “What did you say your name was, ducks?”

“Ah, Stavely, just Stavely. Thing is, I’ve got a lot of places on my list to ask.”

“Oh, yes, your missing gel,” the housekeeper said with disappointment in her voice.

“I only wish,” he replied, equally as disappointed. “The wench is way above my touch. She’s a lady, a real lady.”

Annie
sniffed. “No real lady would be caught dead here. There’s some as calls themselves ladies, but I ask you, would a fine, well-bred female come to bachelor quarters like this?”

“No, but this one’s a relation of some kind to Lady Rosalind Avery. She’s got nothing to do with the buck you’ve got sporting here now.”

“Ah, now, that’s a different kettle of fish. I’m right sorry I can’t help a likely looking lad such as yourself, Stavely, but I wasn’t in charge here until Lady Rosalind left. I had no call to pay attention to the comings and goings of the company.”

“And no young ladies have come looking for Lady Rosalind since she left?”

“Nary a female comes looking for anyone but Lord Gardiner. But I’ll keep a lookout for you, Stavely my boy. How old is this lady and how’d she come to be lost?”

“She’s twenty-one, used to be a real Diamond, they tell me, but maybe fallen off her looks. And she left her stepfather’s household ’cause she’s all about in the head.”

Mrs. Lee clutched her flat chest. “Lawks a-mercy, should I call the Watch, then, if I see her?”

“No!” George Stavely exclaimed. “That is, no, ma’am. She ain’t considered dangerous. The family wants her back, is all.”

“Seems to me they’re well rid of her if her attics are to let. What do they want her back for?”

“Sir Vernon says he wants to take care of her.” He put his finger alongside his nose and grinned. “Word below stairs is that she’s an heiress. Sir Vernon locks her away—for her own safety, don’t you know—and there’s no pesky husband to claim her dowry.”

“Ah, that’s a man after my own heart!”

“Here’s his card, if you hear anything. There’s a nice bit of silver in it for you if you find the chit.”

“Hmm, might be I’d claim my reward in other ways, eh, bucko?”

George left in a hurry.

* * *

Annalise didn’t bother with tea this time. She went straight for the Madeira. Near spasms, she decided she must have become another person with this disguise. In less than twenty-four hours she’d stopped a seduction, been the intended victim of a seduction, and simulated the seduction of a slimy footman. In her whole twenty-one years she’d never even contemplated such a thing. She hardly recognized herself at all! Four more years of such deception and she’d be depraved indeed.

Her friends told her she did well. Henny clucked her tongue and busied herself at the stove, but Rob thought she had a great future in the criminal world.

“Never seen a sweet young gal turn to cheatin’, lyin’, cussin’, and committin’ mayhem with such a flair. We sure could of used you in the old days. And just think, you get tired of hidin’ out here in Bloomsbury, you can make a career on the stage.”

“Don’t tease, Rob,” she said tearfully. “I know I’ve made a rare mull of things.”

Rob lit his pipe, since Henny refused to let him chew his tobacco in the kitchen. He could chew it, that is, but he’d have to swallow the stuff. She wouldn’t tolerate spitting in this fancy house. When he got the pipe going to his satisfaction, after much puffing and poking, he winked at Annalise. “Things is workin’ out for the best. They allus do.”