A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (24 page)

“Bloody gentry,” the stockman growled as Velocity pranced into the tight space in front of the cattle. “Don’t care who they run over.”

Before she had time to wonder if the stockman referred to her, or to the rashly driven vehicle, a familiar voice sounded in her ear.

“Well, Miss Antigone Preston. Can you not make that bloody big nag of yours behave better than that?”

Chapter Fourteen

Will Jellicoe sat looking for all the world like a dashing Corinthian, his boots propped casually against the muddied dashboard of an elegant racing curricle pulled by a pair of lathered and splattered bays, and driven by an excited, pink-cheeked Thomas. Clearly, they had come at quite a clip.

“Devil take me,” Jellicoe drawled as if he hadn’t just come flying down upon her in the middle of a muddy, crowded street. “Miss Preston, if you haven’t the most remarkable affinity for trouble.”

“Me?” she shot back. “I’m not the one driving like a mad Corinthian. What do you think you’re about?”

He tipped his hat cordially. “I’ve come to save you.”

“From what?”

“From my imagination.” He looked bemused, his brow furrowing even as his lopsided, self-deprecating smile galloped about his mouth, as if he had only just that moment realized what he was about.

“Are you mad?” Antigone sputtered over the beginnings of her own smile.

“Oh, clearly.” His tone was as dry and amusing as the day was wet. “I imagined you quite vividly in any number of dire situations amidst all these desperate ruffians.” He looked askance at the busy commercial order of the street. “I’m keeping a firm eye on that yoke of oxen in particular—they look entirely suspect. I must admit I was hoping to find you had succumbed to a faint, so I might make myself useful by carrying you off heroically.”

“Carrying me?” Antigone wondered if one could catch whimsy like the ague. It was the only explanation for the sudden ridiculous buoyancy of her mood.

“Obviously, I forgot that you never faint.”

“No,” she agreed with a laugh. “I carry sticks”—she reminded him of her gun—“and lethal hunting whips.”

“You are a marvel of capability.”

“Jellicoe, you flatter me. I commend you on your thoughtfulness if not your vivid imagination. I am almost sorry to be so capable that I’ve ruined your plan of heroics.”

“I’m not sorry. I am relieved.” He blew out a deep, gusty breath. “I was giving Thomas particular hell all the way from Downpark for not looking after you properly.”

“Jellicoe,” she chided again. “It is not Thomas’s fault his horse threw a shoe.” She leaned forward to see around Jellicoe. “How is your hunter faring, Master Thomas?”

“Tolerably, Miss Antigone. He is being seen to at Downpark. I walked him the whole way home.”

“I am sorry for your day to end like that—”

“You are not to give him any sympathy,” Jellicoe instructed with mock severity. “It’s only what he deserved for abandoning you, and leaving you in distress.”

“But I’m not in distress.” Quite the opposite, now that her friends were with her.

“He couldn’t know that.” Jellicoe refused to be moved from his unforgiving stance.

“Yes I could.” Thomas was not going to suffer his brother’s wit without defending himself. “I’m a better judge of character, and horsemanship, than you obviously think. I knew she would be fine. You’re the one who—”

“Yes. Thank you, Thomas.” Jellicoe said firmly. “Miss Antigone is nothing if not supremely confident and capable. But what have we here?” Jellicoe was looking up the road. “Hard men, with hard heads, and even harder fists? Preston, you do have the most extraordinary talent for attracting trouble.”

Antigone followed the direction of his gaze to see that her two sailor friends had hopped off their dray, and seemed to be intent on making their way toward her. “I do not. And they are not trouble. They are my friends.”

And as if to prove such an outrageous statement, the two in question came trotting back along the slick road to her. “You all right, then, missus?” the large, blue-coated man asked, and tipped his chin toward the curricle. “You’re not having any trouble here?”

She favored Jellicoe with a pert eyebrow and an I-told-you-so purse of her lips before she answered. “No, I thank you. I am quite well.” What stalwart fellows they were. “In fact, this is my naval friend I was telling you about. Commander Jellicoe, may I—” Antigone turned to indicate Jellicoe, who looked at her, and then back at the men as if she were the mad one now.

Because there was no need for an introduction. He knew them.

“Damn my eyes. Moffat. I should have seen it was you. If you aren’t still an anvil of a man. How are you, man?” Jellicoe was climbing down from the curricle, and reaching out to clasp the hand of the blue-coated seaman. “I’m glad as the devil to see you. This must be your brother.”

Of course he would know them. Of course. All the world was a friend to Will Jellicoe.

“You know this bloody man, Jack?” the other sailor demanded of Moffat.

Well, perhaps not
all
the world.

“Aye, knowed him since before Trafalgar. Just a boy he were then, but staunch and true.” The man Moffat turned and gave the other sailor a firm nod of his head. “It’s Commander Jellicoe, now. I won’t hear anyone say otherwise.”

“Easy there, Jack,” the sailor returned. “Your word’s good enough with me.”

Yes, all the world after all. Because in his easy way, Jellicoe took no offense, taking it all in his stride.

“Good of you to say so, Moffat.” Will Jellicoe offered the other man his hand as well. “How have you been keeping?”

“Well enough, sir,” Moffat replied. “Well enough on close rations. And you, sir?”

“I confess I’ve been luckier than most on half-pay have been,” Jellicoe answered. “What are you doing in this part of the world?”

“Goin’ up to London, to try to find work. We’ll look on the docks if we can’t find a ship there.”

“I’ve had much the same idea in mind of London. But I tell you what.” Jellicoe glanced around at their position in the roadway. “We’ve shoaled ourselves in the middle of the roadstead, lads. Thomas,” he directed his brother, “pull over there out of the way for a moment.”

Antigone turned Velocity aside to let Thomas direct his horses, and followed in his wake.

“How far do you plan to go tonight?” Jellicoe was asking the men. “Petersfield? Speak my name to the landlord of the Lion, and they’ll see you’re made comfortable.”

Moffat’s surprise at this unlooked-for generosity was unfeigned. “That’s very good of you, sir.”

“Think no more of it.” Jellicoe was all firm decision. “I only wish we could adjourn to a safer berth, where I might stand you to a decent drink out of the weather, but I needs must see the lady home. You’ve a long walk to London, for I’ve no way to convey you there at present, but I have the name of a man, an East India merchant who is looking to fit out a new ship at the East India docks on the Blackwell Reach side of the Isle of Dogs.”

“I know the place, sir,” said Moffat, nodding.

“Good, though I might suggest you try applying to him first at Leadenhall Street before you head for the docks. George Allen is his name, and you may tell him Commander Jellicoe sent you to him, and will vouch for you. I’m not due to meet with him myself for another week’s time, but I’ll send off a letter of introduction tomorrow, and with any luck, it will reach him before you do. I’ve no doubt he can make good use of you fitting out the ship before I get to her. And I’ll rest easier knowing good men are seeing to her armament.”

“Thank you, sir. That’s right handsome of you.”

“Not at all. Mr. Allen and I would be lucky to have you. And it’s promised to be better pay than the navy on an Indiaman as well.”

“Yes, sir,” Moffat replied enthusiastically.

Jellicoe reached out his hand in farewell. “Then I hope to see you in London in a week’s time. Godspeed to you and your brother, Moffat.”

“An’ you, sir. God keep you, and your lady, Mrs. Jellicoe, sir.” Moffat tugged his hat and the two fellows shambled off to see if they could catch their dray.

Antigone turned quickly back to hide, busying herself with the horse—securing her stirrup, checking the girth, and arranging the fall of the reins just so. Anything so she would not have to look at Jellicoe. Anything so he would not see the flushed heat creeping up her neck in a guilty mixture of pleasure and embarrassment. Would he think that
she
had been the one to suggest such a thing—that she was his wife—to them?

But he would not let her hide. “Preston?”

“That was very good of you to speak to those men so,” she said brightly, and was pleased to see her diversion take effect.

“Yes. It was uncommonly good to see Moffat. Damn me, but I worry about men like him. Nothing but twenty years in the king’s service to show for his life, and no useful skills to speak of now that he’s turned ashore. Lamentable problem. He was a damned good gunner. ‘An anvil of a man,’ a shipmate of mine once called him. I’m happy to help him find a ship. Not many like him will be as fortunate. That’s why places like that field, and that meeting back there, are so full. Lamentable problem.”

“Yes, I see,” she said, because a response of some kind seemed to be called for. But she realized that she did mean it, she did begin to see. By hearing it through his words and seeing it through his eyes, she did begin to understand. She had told him she wasn’t naïve, but she was dreadfully lacking in real experience of the wider world. “Did you really come to save me?”

He took off his hat and swiped back his hair, leaving it looking disreputable and rakish. And utterly disarming. “It seems quite ridiculous now.”

He really was the most wonderful man. “Quite. You know I can take care of myself.”

“So I see. But what are you doing shambling up the dirty London Road when you ought to be streaking up empty lanes on your way home?”

“She’s called ‘Velocity,’ not ‘Longevity.’ She needs to recover after such a long, hard run hunting early in the day.”

“You must be tired, as well, and I’m keeping you standing in the middle of a public street. Come.” He beckoned to the curricle. “Let me see you home, posthaste.”

“Jellicoe, that is very good of you, but there is not room in that delicate contraption to admit another. And I have my mare, as well.”

“Thomas will play tiger, sitting in the back, and lead her.”

Thomas immediately objected. “I can’t. Who will drive?”

Jellicoe turned his laughing blue eyes to hers. “Miss Antigone? Would you like to drive? I am assuming, of course, that driving is included in your range of astonishing talents, and that you have driven before? Because Broad Ham will string me up by the—Well, he will be mightily displeased with me, and mightn’t ever let Thomas drive again, and that would simply crush the lad, and send him into a mortal decline, if I allowed you to overturn us into a ditch.”

He knew exactly how to appeal to her, with his heady combination of self-deprecating charm and compliment. “Yes, I am experienced at driving. I will be as careful with your bays as I would be with Velocity.”

“Excellent. Thomas will play tiger out in the rain as his punishment for losing you, however inadvertently. I will put the hood up, as the rain looks to be coming on in earnest in place of this incessant drizzle. And you will conduct us to Redhill.”

Jellicoe assisted her down from her mare, but did not linger over the task in such a public place. The rest, the handing over of reins and shifting of positions were swiftly undertaken. And then the curricle was dipping from Jellicoe’s weight as he settled in next to her. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

“It’s lay on—” She stopped herself with a glance at his laughing eyes. “You knew that. You were only teasing me for some strange reason of your own.”

“Shakespeare, the calculus, probability, novels, maps, and Whig newspapers.” He ticked her reading materials off on his fingers. “Really, I cannot go another minute without the direction of this bookseller.”

“We don’t have a bookseller. It was Papa who bought our books. He collected them, mostly in Cambridge, when he went there in the course of his studies. But he always brought home a book or two, or five. His study was always littered with them. It still is.”

She hadn’t wanted to move them, his books, or close the pages. His copy of Lacroix was still open on the desk, just where he had left it. As if he could come back at any minute and pick up where he had left off. As if his warm laughter would come bounding out of his study to fill the house with its reassuring sound. As if it would all be right again.

But it wouldn’t be. And she was going to make it worse by overturning them into a muddy ditch, if she were not careful.

Antigone sat up straighter and applied her attention severely to the driving. The bays worked well together, moving smoothly despite the slick going. “They are a beautiful pair,” she commented, focusing her attention on the horses.

“Ah, the way to the lady’s heart is through the horses.”

Oh, certainly horses were an easily marked lane on the serpentine path to her heart. But Jellicoe’s offhand jest was an unwelcome reminder that Lord Aldridge had said much the same thing. Lord Aldridge, to whom she was still currently obligated, through no fault or agreement of her own. Lord Aldridge, whose unwanted presence in her life had sent her sneaking out into the mist early that morning.

And here she was, with another perfect scenario for ridding herself of Lord Aldridge’s regard. They were well beyond the purview of the nosy magistrates, but any number of other people might see her out, ostensibly alone with a man in a carriage.

But as handily as it would destroy her reputation and serve to remove her from Lord Aldridge’s favor, it would also involve Jellicoe unfairly. He had come to help her, not be wrangled into her sordid little charade.

Antigone took the next turning off the London Road and down a less-used byway. “Had we not better bring Thomas under the awning? I fear that he will grow cold and wet.” And his presence would protect Jellicoe.

“If he does, it is no more than he deserves.”