One Night with a Rake (Regency Rakes) (23 page)

“My lord,” the shopkeeper said with a deferential curtsy.

She was a fine-boned, swan-necked woman, and ordinarily he’d be very much interested in her. However, just now he had another woman in his sights. He could always return to this shop on a later date to further his acquaintance with the milliner.

“How may I assist you this day?” she said.

“I require a bonnet,” he said, looking at those he thought might fit in the hatbox he’d seen Georgette’s abigail carrying. “A special one. One very like the bonnet you just sold. Do you by chance make duplicates of your designs?”

“Oh, no, milord,” the shopkeeper said, her wing-shaped brows arched in scandalized surprise. “All my creations are originals. Think how horrified a lady would be to discover another woman had the same bonnet as she.”

Not to mention that the lady would never buy so much as a fichu from that particular milliner’s shop again.

He picked up a simple bonnet. “Yes, quite. But I have in mind a harmless little joke between friends. What if I offered you a ridiculous sum?” He named a price that was easily five times the going rate for ladies’ headgear. “Could you fashion an exact duplicate of the one you just sold? And it must be exactly the same, mind.”

The milliner nibbled her bottom lip, clearly tempted.

“I promise that your customer will never know you did it,” Roger said, holding a handful of coins before him in an open palm.

“How can you promise that, milord?”

“Because by the time Lady Georgette sees the bonnet, it will be flat as a flitter. This is part of a jest, you see,” he said. “A harmless prank. But the bonnets must start out identical or the joke will fall”—he gave her his most winning smile and a self-deprecating shrug—“flat. Come. Take my blunt.”

Her eyes flared with longing as she gazed at the handful of gleaming coins. Most shops traded on credit. They were constantly cash-strapped, even if they served the most exclusive clientele, because they had to wait for their wellborn customers to deign to pay their bills.

The milliner snatched the money from him. “Return in three hours,” she said as she escorted him to the door and flipped over the sign, indicating that her shop was closed. “I’ll have it ready by then.”

By eight o’clock that evening, Georgette was fretting like a colt on a lunge line. She fidgeted in the upstairs parlor while the guests were being announced one by one in the ballroom below. Her mother had decided it would create a grander moment if Georgette descended the curving staircase and processed into the ballroom accompanied by a fanfare of strings and brass. She was even supposed to make her entrance after the Duke of Cambridge arrived.

“That will probably upset all sorts of precedence,” Georgette had argued. What she really wanted to do was find a quiet alcove in the ballroom and hide till the whole thing was over. The way her mother was arranging matters, every eye would be upon them when she and the royal duke met for the first time.

“That’s as may be, dearest, and I’ll admit it’s a calculated risk, but we want the duke to see you at your regal best,” her mother had insisted. “What’s more imperious than being the last to arrive?”

Since Lady Yorkingham had given in on the matter of the red gown and reluctantly admitted the shimmering pale pink was the better choice, Georgette decided to allow her mother this small victory. Besides, the fact that she was about to upstage the duke might just irk him enough that he’d cast his royal eyes elsewhere.

She wished for that with all her heart.

As much as she wanted to please her parents, she was beginning to realize she could never accept the royal duke’s suit. Court life would suffocate her. She wasn’t cut out to be a princess, but she’d be powdered and pressed and squeezed into the mold of one.

If she said “yes” to His Royal Highness, she’d be forever saying “no” to her real self.

Her parents would be devastated, but however much she loved them, she couldn’t live for them. The ton would consider her addlepated. She didn’t care. Even if she lived out her years as an eccentric spinster, at least she’d still be Georgette.

She might not have Nathaniel, but she’d still be herself.

Georgette parted the curtain and gazed down on the street where carriages lined up past the corner. The queue of equipages curved around the bend in the street beyond. Bejeweled women swathed in fur-trimmed capes and men with starched neckcloths and silver-headed walking sticks disembarked and made their stately way into burgeoning Yorkingham House.

If she were ever going to make a break for it, now was the time. But where would she go?

One needed a prospective bridegroom in order to steal away to Scotland. Where did a lady go when she wanted to steal herself?

Maybe
Paris…

Her imagination whirred like a windmill in a gale.

She’d go to Paris. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it was a start.

To travel in safety, Georgette would need some portable wealth. She was wearing a strand of pearls with a ruby clasp. The locked jewelry chest in her chamber held a diamond brooch and a pair of emerald earbobs that were so heavy it hurt to wear them for an entire evening. The matching choker was fashioned of goodly sized gems. All told, the contents of her jewel box were enough to keep her comfortably for years.

“Maybe I can start a ‘House of Sirens’ type rehabilitation school for the demimonde of France,” she whispered to herself. Then because she couldn’t bear to give up completely on the dream of personal happiness, she added, “And maybe Nathaniel will come find me there.”

She dropped the curtain and turned away from the window, only to almost run headlong into Roger Fishwick.

“My lord, what are you doing here?” Georgette stumbled back a pace in surprise. She hadn’t heard his footfalls behind her and she was sure she’d not seen his name on the guest list.

“My apologies.” He executed a perfectly correct bow, but the bead of perspiration trickling from his temple marred the image of gentility he was trying to project. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy, and truth to tell, I had the devil’s own time getting past your staff, but I had no choice. I had to see you.”

A pompous blast of Purcell wafted up to the second-story parlor. The duke must have arrived. At any moment, the Handel tune that was her cue to appear would sound with a squeal of trumpets and full-throated strings.

“Now is not the most opportune—” she began.

“Oh, I know,” Roger interrupted and started pacing, wringing his hands as he went. “Do you think I don’t? This evening is supposed to be your great triumph, and believe me, the last thing I want to do is interfere.”

Then why was he, devil take the man? Roger had no way to know he was interfering with her determined flight away from her supposed “great triumph,” but he was still keeping her from her hastily assembled plans.

“I suppose they figured since you and I were childhood friends, I was the natural choice,” he mumbled.

The
natural
choice
for
what?
The Purcell ended with a flourish and the silence from below was pregnant with anticipation. Once the Handel began, if Georgette didn’t appear, her mother would send a legion of servants to collect her. If she was going to make good her escape, she still needed to steal up to her chamber for the rest of her jewelry.

“They who?” she asked with undisguised impatience. “What are you talking about?”

“This.” He pulled out a bedraggled object that was tucked inside his waistcoat. The confection of lace was misshapen, as if it had been smashed by a carriage wheel, but Georgette recognized the cheerful scarlet tulle and tiny chain of embroidered daisies on the netting.

It was Mercy’s new bonnet.

She took it from his hands. “Where did you get this?”

“The hat was delivered to my house this evening along with a note.” He fished in his pockets, his expression more panicked each time he turned out one and it came up empty. “Don’t tell me I’ve lost it. Oh, no.”

He put both hands to his temples, clearly distressed. “I was certain I had it when I left the house, honestly. Oh, milady, please forgive me.”

“What did the note say?” Georgette demanded. A hollow sickness spread through her belly. Something horrible had happened to Mercy. She wouldn’t have parted with her beloved bonnet otherwise. “Has there been an accident?”

“An accident? No.” Roger rubbed his forehead as if he’d massage the information from his brain. “More like an abduction. The note said something on the order of how if you want your maid back, you must deliver a certain sum to a certain place by the stroke of midnight or…I’m sorry, milady. I can’t remember more.”

Georgette wanted to shake Roger Fishwick till his teeth rattled, but she forced herself to an outward show of calm. “What about Mr. Darling? The footman she was with is quite a formidable fellow.”

“They didn’t mention a footman.”

Some evil must have befallen Reuben Darling too. He’d never have let anything happen to Mercy otherwise. “Do you think you might have left the note at your home?”

His expression brightened at that, his pale eyes going round. “You know, I may have. I was in that much of a hurry to reach you with this news.”

A trio of brass trumpeted in the parlor below. Georgette bid her scheme of running away to France adieu and screwed up her courage to do what was necessary for Mercy.

“Will you take me to your town house so we can look for the note?” Georgette asked.

“Oh, most assuredly,” Roger said.

“Now,” she said when he stood there stupidly. Georgette strode to the door and checked the hallway for servants. The Handel fanfare was still parading along at a sprightly pace.

“Yes, yes, of course.” He hurried to her side. “But oughtn’t we tell the marquis where you’ve gone?”

“If we only have until midnight, there’s no time to dawdle,” Georgette said. Besides, if she didn’t quit Yorkingham House in the next few minutes, there’d be no way to leave later. After they located the missing note, she’d have Roger drive her to Nathaniel’s town house in Cheapside. He’d know what to do. “Have you an equipage?”

“My gig is in the alley.”

“Good.” Georgette stole down the hallway in the opposite direction of the grand staircase with Roger at her heels. Once she reached the end of the corridor, she led him down the servants’ narrow stairs. It opened finally into the kitchen. She stopped in the shadows, wondering how to proceed.

Cook was still in high feather. Flour whitening her arms to the elbows, she shrieked orders left and right. Even the indomitable Mr. Humphrey gave her a wide berth and quit the kitchen as quickly as he could, making his getaway through the servants’ parlor and up another set of stairs that led to the public areas of the house. The stairs Georgette and Roger had just come down serviced the rooms used primarily by the family.

Mr. Rigsby and his footmen hopped to, fetching and carrying as each new dish was pronounced fit to serve. Some carted their trays only as far as the dumbwaiter that would hoist the food to the butler’s pantry, while others followed Mr. Humphrey’s example and scurried away to other levels of the house.

Only the bootblack boy seemed unconcerned, yawning hugely through the uproar as he hunkered by the big fireplace, turning a rack of chickens on the spit.

“It’s cold out, milady,” Roger whispered in her ear. “If I may?” He removed his garrick and draped it over her shoulders.

Georgette was surprised by his thoughtfulness and knew she’d appreciate the warmth if they managed to make it past the gauntlet of servants. But the garment smelled of Roger Fishwick, a heavy-handed lavender scent spiced with the tang of male sweat.

“I suggest we duck through the scullery,” Roger said. The doorway to the small cell that held a soapstone sink was directly next to the back stairway door. “That’s how I managed to get in before.”

“There’s a girl in there washing up, I’ll be bound,” Georgette whispered back. “Cook has surely dirtied every pot and pan in the place.”

Roger shook his head. “There was a scullery maid in there, but she was dozing in the corner when I came through. With a little luck, perhaps she still is.”

Georgette took a deep breath and waited for another outburst from Cook that would draw every eye away from her hiding place. She didn’t have long to wait.

“Bertha, you imbecile!” Cook screeched. “The petit fours should be dusted with powdered sugar, not cinnamon!”

“Go.” Roger gave Georgette a small push on the shoulder and she slipped around the corner into the dim scullery. The sink was piled high with a leaning tower of pots and pans and crockery. But the maid Roger had mentioned was still slumped in the corner on her high stool, her head lolling forward, her shoulder propped against the wall. How on earth she could sleep while pandemonium erupted in the kitchen next door, Georgette had no clue.

She
must
be
simply
exhausted
, Georgette reasoned and resolved to look into the hours and duties assigned to the poor girl.

“Hurry,” Roger hissed as he ushered her out so quickly the tail of the garrick she had draped about her caught in the door. Georgette gave it a yank and rushed to the waiting gig. Roger steadied her with a hand to her elbow because light snow had begun to fall, making the going slick underfoot.

Neither of them noticed when Roger’s black-and-white-checked deerstalker fell out of the garrick’s shallow pocket.

Nathaniel trudged up the snow-rimed steps to the red silk-draped doors of Yorkingham House. He’d thought he could stay away from this cursed ball, thought seeing Georgette acclaimed as the royal duke’s future consort would be too painful to bear.

Staying away proved to be worse.

One way or another, he had to make sure she was happy and settled.

He rapped the knocker, but Humphrey didn’t come immediately to open the door. The blasts of a Handel fanfare pierced the crisp, cold air, then stopped abruptly mid-phrase. Frantic shouts punctuated the music’s end.

Nate didn’t wait any longer. He tried to turn the knob and when it wouldn’t give, he rammed his shoulder into the door and forced it open.

He strode into the marble foyer, but was promptly ignored by Lady Yorkingham and the gaggle of frantic servants at her heels.

“Fan out,” her ladyship ordered. “She must be here someplace. Oh, where on earth can that girl have gotten off to?”

She could only be talking about Georgette. Nathaniel’s lips twitched in a smile. He might have told Lady Yorkingham there was a certain curtained alcove in the library of which Georgette was particularly fond, but if she was exerting a little independence over the matter of wedding the duke, far be it from him to interfere. He allowed himself the tiniest scrap of hope that she’d changed her mind and would choose him instead.

“And for heaven’s sake, Humphrey, tell the musicians to play something.” She took a step, then jerked to a stop to add, “Anything but Handel.”

Lady Yorkingham plowed toward the adjoining parlor, heels clacking, hands gesticulating in the air. The rest of the servants scattered like beetles before a lit candle. They were clearly desperate to find Lady Georgette before His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge realized the lady whom he’d condescended to court in a public fashion couldn’t be bothered to make an appearance at her own ball.

But Mr. Humphrey didn’t make for the musicians as his mistress had ordered. Instead he crossed the marble foyer to Nathaniel. He didn’t offer to take his hat and coat.

“Lord Nathaniel, I’m most relieved to see you,” Humphrey began. “If you’d be so good as to come with me, there’s a matter of some urgency with which I feel certain you can lend assistance.”

May
as
well
help
Georgie
with
a
little
misdirection.

“If you want my opinion, I suggest you check the garret. It would be an unlikely place for Lady Georgette to hide, and that makes it all the more likely she’d hide there,” he said as he followed Humphrey down the servants’ staircase to the below-stairs portion of the great house.

“No, milord. It’s not about that,” Humphrey said. “I’m sure Lady Georgette will be found when she wishes to be. When she was a child, it wasn’t unheard of for her to hide for hours if there was a lesson she wished to avoid—oh! Not that she wishes to avoid His Highness, I’m sure.”

“I’m not,” Nathaniel muttered, then he raised his voice. “What is it that requires my assistance?”

“On this night of all nights, I didn’t wish to trouble the quality folk with—oh, I beg your pardon, milord, I didn’t mean to imply—”

“No offence taken, Humphrey,” Nathaniel said. Even servants recognized that his title was a mere courtesy. “So tell me. What will trouble the ‘quality folk’?”

“This.” Mr. Humphrey led him through the kitchen where Cook was screaming herself hoarse giving orders to the underlings who couldn’t move fast enough to suit her. From there, Nate was ushered into the cold larder off the kitchen. The stone-walled room was crammed with shelves that held wheels of cheese, burlap sacks of potatoes, and baskets of winter apples. A brace of pheasants hung in the corner.

A dead girl was stretched out on the rough plank table that ran down the center of the space.

“Who is it?” Nathaniel asked.

“Dora Underhill, the scullery maid. The bootblack boy found her.”

“Where?”

“In the scullery, still propped up on her stool. We laid her out here till we could discover what should be done. Oh, and I’d appreciate your discretion, milord,” Humphrey said. “If Cook learns there’s a dead body in her larder, well, in the state she’s in already, I fear for anyone within arms’ reach if she has a cleaver in her hands.”

Nate walked around the body, looking for the cause of death. There didn’t seem to be any obvious wound.

“She wasn’t ill?”

“No.”

A pinprick of dread stabbed between his shoulder blades as he undid the button at her collar and peeled back the fabric. A red weal circled the girl’s slender throat.

“When was she discovered?” he asked.

“Only a few minutes ago.”

The prickle of dread spread to Nathaniel’s spine. He fervently hoped someone would bolt down the servants’ stairs to announce that Georgette had been found and was now being presented to His Royal Highness. Even that was preferable to the awful alternative beginning to form in his mind.

“Did you find the body before or after Lady Georgette went missing?”

“After.”

“Show me where Dora was found.”

Humphrey led him to the nearby scullery and tried to direct his attention to the high stool in the corner, but Nate seized upon the fact that the scullery had a door that led directly out to the alley.

“The killer likely came in this way,” Nathaniel said.

Humphrey breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, good. Then you don’t think this horrible thing was done by someone in Yorkingham’s employ.”

“No.” With all the uproar in the kitchen, it would be a simple matter for someone to slip into the scullery, dispatch the maid, and then when there was another outburst from Cook, make their way up the back staircase.

Nate stepped through the door to the alley. Two sets of footprints, one heavy and masculine, the other slim and shallow, dimpled the snow leading away from the door. Wheel tracks from a light gig pulled by a single horse marked the snow, running down the alley and out into the street.

“Oh, God.” His gaze fell on a black-and-white-checked deerstalker that was partially covered by the falling snow. Lord Fishwick. Nathaniel’s gut had led him to suspect the man. Now the evidence confirmed it.

Fishwick had killed Dora Underhill and somehow spirited Georgette out of Yorkingham House without attracting anyone’s notice. Fury and fear battled in Nate’s chest.

“Lady Georgette is not hiding in the house someplace,” he said woodenly. “She’s been abducted. Notify Lord Yorkingham and send for the magistrate immediately. Order as many Bow Street runners as you can find to converge on the town house of Lord Roger Fishwick.”

Nate struck off toward the small stable behind Yorkingham House.

“Where are you going, milord?”

To
the
only
other
place
that
I
know
of
where
Fishwick
might
take
her,
he thought furiously but only said, “I’m going to steal the marquis’s horse.”

***

“Why are we going this way?” Georgette said when Roger turned the gig in the opposite direction from the more fashionable neighborhoods. “I thought your town house was in Mayfair.”

“It is.” He chirruped to the roan gelding and it broke into a mile-eating trot. “Like many gentlemen, I keep a
pied-de-terre
elsewhere in London as well.”

“And that’s where you think you left the note about Mercy?”

He nodded and urged the roan into more speed. Since there was little traffic, the gig rattled over the cobbled streets at a bone-jarring pace.

She supposed his story made sense. Nate kept that little place in Cheapside when he didn’t wish to stay at his family’s home. And she’d heard married men often kept mistresses in out-of-the-way love nests around the city. She pulled Roger’s garrick tighter around her shoulders against the cold and settled back into the tufted seat.

But Roger had no family living with whom he had to share his Mayfair residence. And as a single gentleman, he’d have no need to hide a mistress.

So why did he keep another home in London?

The chimes of St. Paul sounded a quarter to midnight.

She fingered the pearls at her throat. What if the jewels she wore weren’t enough to satisfy Mercy’s captors? And given the time, she doubted they’d be able to find Nate.

She stole a glance at Roger as the gig passed through a pool of yellow light thrown by a streetlamp. The night was chilly and the wind bit her cheeks, but a sheen of sweat glistened on Roger’s brow.

He was afraid.

Definitely not the sort of fellow Georgette wanted at her back if she had to venture into a spotty neighborhood.

They drove into a part of the city where no streetlamps glowed. Ordinances provided that householders must light their doorways, but only one in three of the slatternly houses seemed to be following that edict.

“This is Whitechapel,” Georgette said when she saw a placard hanging over one of the pubs she remembered from the night she and Nathaniel ventured into the area. “Never say you keep rooms here.”

“As a matter–of-fact, I do.”

They turned down the twisty way she recognized as the one on which Sadie O’Toole had set up her new establishment. Even though it was nearly midnight, there were plenty of people milling on the street, but none of them looked the least friendly.

Roger reined the horse to a stop, tossed the reins to a waiting street urchin, and climbed down from the gig. He leered up at Georgette and she was reminded of the sort of boy he’d been.

The sort who pulled wings from flies and drowned kittens in potato sacks.

“Whitechapel has much to commend it if one is not overly fastidious,” he said, offering a hand to help her down. She made no move to take it. “The rent is low. The entertainments I enjoy are close at hand. And people hereabouts generally mind their own business and allow me to go about mine.”

Georgette swallowed hard. “You didn’t really receive a note about Mercy this evening, did you?”

A smarmy, unpleasant smile stretched his cheeks and made her long for a bath. She realized he wasn’t sweating because he was afraid. He was…excited.

She feared she might be sick.

“Clever girl. You and I are going to have a good time together. I can tell.”

She lurched forward, hoping to grasp the reins that draped over the horse’s rump, but the street urchin snatched them to one side. The gelding shied and sidestepped, but didn’t bolt as she’d hoped. Even a runaway conveyance was preferable to remaining with Lord Fishwick.

“Good lad, Billy,” Roger told the boy as he fished in his pockets and came up with tuppence for the urchin. “There’s an extra bob waiting for you if you take my equipage to the hostlers on the next street and give old Jack a good rubdown.”

“Right-o, guv. Only I carn’t do it till the lady gets down, carn I?” The urchin pronounced Georgette’s title as if it were “li-dee.”

Roger looked back up at Georgette and any hint of geniality faded. “Now you have only one choice to make, my lady. Are you going to allow me to hand you down and walk willingly with me, or are you going to make me drag you?”

He clamped a hand on her wrist and squeezed.

“Before you decide, let me assure you that no one will come to your aid should you cry out for help. It will only give the denizens of this little pisspot of a place something to laugh about.” A muscle ticked under his left eye. “And if you force me to drag you, they may be laughing at me, which will upset me something fierce. Trust me when I tell you, milady, you do not wish to upset me.”

No one ever moved to intervene when Nathaniel carried her through Covent Garden against her will. Whitechapel folk seemed even more preoccupied with their own misery than the whores on Lackaday Lane had been.

Georgette gathered her courage and slid across the seat so he could help her down. If she could keep him calm, surely there’d be another chance to win free of him.

“I knew you’d see reason,” he said, the unpleasant smile returning. Once she was down from the gig, the street boy leaped up onto the seat and brought the reins across the gelding’s back with a wicked snap. The gig lurched away.

Roger tugged Georgette close, one arm around her waist, the other hand gripping her wrist, and led her to the red door of Sadie O’Toole’s house of ill repute. As they passed under the lintel, he put his lips close to her ear.

“Don’t be thinking anyone will come to your rescue, Georgette,” he whispered. “No one saw me enter or leave Yorkingham House. No one knows where you are or whom you are with. No one of importance even knows I lease a room here. I can keep you all to myself for days. Longer if you’re my good girl.”

“I have no intention of being your good girl.”

“Oh, I do hope you’ll reconsider,” Roger told her. “Bad girls end up dead.”