How To School Your Scoundrel (6 page)

“And what has we here, ye fine cove? A gold watch!”

“It’s not . . .”

But he was already pulling at the chain. Luisa’s head swam. The man’s face blurred above her, pinched and hungry, a ghastly yellow gray in the feeble, faraway gaslight. She tried to haul herself upward, but the man’s hands pushed her back. He was fumbling roughly in her waistcoat pockets now. Oh, God! He was going to find . . .

“Blimey!” he breathed.

“Give that back!”

“You wee little liar. Going to keep this hidden away from old Ned, was ye?”

Luisa gathered her breath. “Help! Somebody help! Thie . . .”

“Quiet!”

“Thief!”

The knife pushed at her throat again. She flailed for his arm, and watched in horror as his other arm lifted, the hand drawn into a large, meaty fist, elbow poised near his ear.

She threw her body against the prison of his weight. “No!”

The fist descended.

She shut her eyes and turned her head, and for a brief flash her father’s face appeared in her head, looking at her with sad and disappointed eyes, his salty beard clipped into a sharp point at the end, as it had been when she was little.

An instant later—it seemed like a minute, the whole world seemed to have slipped into a sluggish old gear—the weight lifted away from her hips like a sack of grain.

A dog howled, a piercing and miserable howl cut short by a series of deep thuds.

Luisa opened her eyes and struggled upward.

No. Not a dog. A man, the thief, who dangled from one of the Earl of Somerton’s large hands while the other fist beat a tattoo into his jaw and ribs.

“Good God,” she whispered. Her collar was wet against the night air. She looked down and saw a neat red half circle staining the linen.

The thudding stopped. Somerton let the man drop to the pavement, as he might rid himself of a sack of ash, should an earl ever have had cause to do so himself.

A faint groan issued from the broken bundle of humanity at his feet.

Somerton straightened his cuffs. “Be grateful you’re still alive.”

“Good God,” Luisa said again. She braced herself on a fence post and hauled her aching body upward.

Somerton turned to her. “What an unfortunate misadventure. Are you still whole?”

His voice was calm, almost icy. She couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see his expression. Couldn’t tell if he were sympathetic or angry, or some mysterious emotion private to himself. His large black outline blocked out what little light shed upon the street: a shadow upon shadows. At his feet, the thief now seemed pitifully small.

“Still whole,” she said. She put a hand to the back of her head, which was throbbing but dry of blood. A small mercy.

Somerton’s face tilted downward. “Spoils of war,” he said, and in a quick motion of his long arm, he scooped up the watch and the ring that the thief had plucked from her pockets. “By God, it looks as if you’re not his first victim tonight. A damned fine ring. The watch is inferior, however. Is it yours?”

“Yes.” She held out her hand.

“There you are. My hackney is around the corner. We shall be home in half an hour. The housekeeper will see to your injury; I daresay a mere bandage will do. It’s stopped bleeding, at any rate.” He unfastened the first two buttons of his overcoat and slipped the ring into some hidden pocket next to his body.

In the presence of his matter-of-fact words, Luisa’s heart began to slow. She placed the watch and the broken chain into her waistcoat pocket and picked up her overcoat from the damp pavement. She willed her hands to stop shaking.

Somerton waited, without moving, as she buttoned her coat and settled her round bowler hat, now somewhat battered, back on her head. As if she’d simply stumbled and fallen while walking, instead of having nearly been murdered by a London street thief. As if this were all very ordinary.

For Somerton, it probably was.

“Can you walk?” he asked at last, when she was ready. He didn’t spare so much as a glance for the thief, who still lay on the pavement, issuing groans from time to time. He didn’t even wait for her reply; as soon as the question left his lips, he turned on his heel and began walking down the street, booted heels cracking smartly against the pavement, greatcoat swirling about his legs.

Luisa’s cheeks flushed hot against the cold air. She forced her bruised limbs into a run to catch up. “If I
can
walk, it’s no thanks to you!”

“I beg your pardon. I believe I just saved your life, young man.”

“The least you could do, after you arranged this entire absurd drama tonight.”

He turned the corner of Ponsonby Place onto Causton Street. Ahead, a hackney sat patiently by the curb. “I apologize for the austerity of the conveyance. A crested carriage is something of an inconvenience on such errands.”

“Errands? This was an errand to you?”

“Tut-tut. All’s well that ends well.” He reached the hackney and rapped upon the side. The driver started, nearly losing his hat, and sprang open the doors. “After you,” said Somerton, with an absence of flourish.

For an instant, Luisa considered delivering a parting shot and stalking off down the street.

“For God’s sake, Markham. Don’t be such a woman.” Somerton pulled his gloves from the pocket of his overcoat—he had evidently removed them in the struggle—and tugged each one over his hands.

Luisa cast him her haughtiest glance and climbed into the hackney.

He swung in behind her at once, making the vehicle stagger under his weight. The doors clanged shut, the whip twitched briskly, the driver spoke. With a weary sigh, the horse leaned forward in his harness and started off from the curb.

“I see you’re not going to apologize,” said Luisa, after a moment’s damp silence.

“Apologize?” The earl’s voice was genuinely incredulous. “For what?”

“For nearly having me killed!”

“You were never in any danger.”

“And yet there is a great deal of blood on my collar, my head hurts like the devil, and I daresay I shall carry a multitude of bruises well into next week.”

“Trifles.” He folded his arms against his massive chest.

“I suppose they’re trifles to you. I suppose you do this sort of thing on a nightly basis, God knows why, but I refuse to submit to such barbarous treatment again.”

A pause settled into the rhythmic motion of the hackney, the close intimacy of their two bodies held together beneath the iron doors. Luisa thought of her ring, tucked inside Somerton’s waistcoat, and flexed her fingers.

How the devil was she going to get it back?

“In that case, I assure you, you will come to no further harm in my employ,” Somerton said quietly.

“How on earth can you promise that?”

“I promise it.”

She couldn’t think of a reply to that solemn low voice, that intensity of conviction. His sleeve was next to hers; his enormous leg lay against her own, like the trunk of a hundred-year oak next to a seedling. He radiated heat, almost smothered her with his energy.

Her father’s ring. The ring of state, the ring held by the Prince of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, as a symbol of his marriage to his subjects. She’d kept it close to her body, as a talisman to keep her safe. What a fool she’d been. A sheltered little fool of a princess, who never thought to consider the common dangers of a London street at night.

Luisa turned her head to watch the sooty buildings slide by, darkest Pimlico giving way to Belgravia. In another few minutes, they would be back at the Earl of Somerton’s town house, encased in safety and luxury. Another peculiarity of London, that wealth and squalor lay together as bedfellows. You were never far from one or the other.

She had to get the ring back, before Somerton examined it more carefully. Saw the Holstein crest engraved on the band, the unique arrangement of diamond, sapphire, and ruby.

She drew in a deep breath. Stay calm. Wait for opportunity. Emotion achieves nothing.

Victoria Station passed quietly by. The traffic was growing, hackneys and carriages, a single late omnibus, nearly empty. The driver turned a corner, and suddenly all was stately and grand, lit by energetic gas lamps. The world she knew, through different eyes, in a different time.

“I suppose this means you intend to keep me on?” she said.

Somerton roused himself. “Keep you on? Yes, of course.”

“But I didn’t pass your test.”

“I beg your pardon. I don’t quite understand you.”

“Your test. Your test of my abilities. The Baltic shipping list, which, as you see, I have failed to deliver.”

Somerton rapped against the roof. The trapdoor slid open. “Pull over. We’ll walk from here.”

“Very good, sir.”

The hackney swerved to the curb and came to a stop. Perhaps she could fall against him when she climbed out, and pluck the ring from his pocket in the resulting confusion.

But his overcoat remained buttoned, and the jacket beneath that. Besides, she was no trained pickpocket.

Somerton reached inside his coat for the fare. In a moment, they would be back on the pavement, back in the house. She might not see him again until the morning.

The cabbie took the fare. The doors fell open.

Luisa braced her hand on the side of the hackney. “Well, your lordship? Don’t say you’re willing to overlook my failure.”

“My dear fellow. The Baltic shipping list is neither here nor there.” He sprang to the pavement and turned to face her.

She rose to her feet and stumbled deliberately out of the cab, sticking one hand toward the parting of his coat as if to brace herself, but Somerton’s long arms snatched and steadied her before her feet touched the ground. She looked up at his face, inches away. The lurid glare of the cab’s single lamp made him look like an apparition.

“You have gained my trust, Mr. Markham,” he said in a low voice, almost a snarl. “See that you don’t squander it.”

I
nside the Earl of Somerton’s town house, the lights had all been turned down, though it was only half past nine o’clock. A blank-faced footman answered the door, dressed in an elegant gray livery; the butler appeared an instant later.

“Is her ladyship at home?” asked Somerton, perfectly neutral.

“She is upstairs in the nursery at present, sir. May I take your coat and hat?”

“No. Order the carriage at once. I am going out.” Somerton made a gesture in Luisa’s direction. “Have Mrs. Plum see to that scratch on Mr. Markham’s neck directly.”

The butler’s gaze turned to Luisa for the first time and flicked downward to her collar. His eyes made the faintest movement, as if to widen. “Of course, sir.”

Luisa squared her jaw. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Johnson. I am quite capable of attending myself. Has the garden door been bolted yet?”

“No, Mr. Markham.”

“I shall need to see to Quincy’s convenience at once. Please ensure that nobody bolts the door until we return.”

Somerton turned to her. “Quincy? Who the devil is Quincy?”

“My dog, sir.”

“Your
what?
”

“My dog. A corgi, well trained. We are inseparable.” She looked back at him with her haughtiest gaze.

He looked as if a hurricane might break out at any instant around his head, from the sheer force of atmospheric energy being generated within. “I do not recall giving permission for a dog to be installed in this house, Mr. Markham.”

“I find, your lordship, one achieves more by asking for forgiveness, rather than permission.”

The butler made a faint choking sound. The rest of the house remained as silent as a tomb. Not even the clock perched atop the hallway fireplace dared to tick.

Bit by bit, the earl’s narrowed black eyes returned to their usual state. His shoulders relaxed a telling quarter inch. “I see, Mr. Markham, you’re going to cause me a great deal of trouble in the course of your employ. Let us both hope you prove yourself worth the disruption.”

“Of that, I have no doubt, sir.” She bowed her head.

Somerton adjusted his gloves. The dimness of the hallway gave his cheekbones additional heft, made his keen eyes especially black. “I don’t want to see this dog of yours, Mr. Markham. I don’t want to smell him. I most particularly don’t want to hear him. Is that understood?”

“Quite, sir.”

“That will be all, Markham.”

The dismissal in his voice was irrevocable. Luisa turned and marched to the soaring marble stairs without another word. Behind her, the door crashed shut, and Somerton disappeared back into the night.

With the state ring of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof still tucked securely in his waistcoat pocket.

•   •   •

A
dark-haired woman stood on the landing when Luisa reached the top of the stairs. One hand gripped the railing, and the other was hidden in the folds of her dressing gown.

Luisa stopped and bowed. “Lady Somerton, I presume.”

The woman stepped into the light from the single sconce burning in the hallway. Luisa had to bite back a gasp; her beauty was so striking, so immaculate, she seemed to belong to another world. The air around her smelled of roses. “Good evening. You are his lordship’s new secretary, I believe?”

“I am. My name is Lewis Markham.”

The countess’s gaze fell to his collar. “You’re hurt!”

“A trifle.” Luisa shrugged. The simple action made her abused head ring and her shoulders creak.

Lady Somerton sighed. “You’re no better than my five-year-old son. Come along. It must be seen to at once.” She turned and began to ascend the stairs to the upper floors.

“But I can’t . . .”

“It’s not a request, Mr. Markham.”

Something about her air of quiet authority reminded Luisa of Miss Dingleby. She watched the young countess climb upward—float, really, as if she had wings rather than feet—without so much as glancing behind her. The delicate nape of her neck caught the glow from the sconce on the landing.

She shrugged again, a terrible mistake, and raised her foot to the steps.

“Where are we going?” she asked civilly, when the next landing passed by without a pause.

“To the nursery,” said Lady Somerton. “I keep salves and plasters there. My son, I’m afraid, stands in constant need of patching up.”

“Haven’t you a nurse for such things?”

“Some do.” Lady Somerton turned at the half landing and glanced at Luisa. “Are you quite all right? You seem rather stiff.”

“Quite all right.”

She resumed her upward march. “I suppose he’s had you out on one of his little expeditions. Were you obliged to kill anyone?”

“I . . . no.” Luisa paused. “Though it all might have gone vastly better if I had.”

“There’s the spirit. I’m sure you’ll prove a tremendous success. You might even last until Candlemas, if you’re especially fortunate. Here we are.” The countess slipped a set of keys from her pocket and opened the door. She turned to Luisa and held her finger to her lips. “I’ve just got him to sleep,” she whispered. “Don’t spoil it.”

Luisa tiptoed through the darkened room behind the graceful swaying shadow of the Countess of Somerton. To her left stood a cluster of furniture: table, chairs, desk. Evidently this was the day nursery; a door stood ajar on the opposite wall, fully black within, where young Lord Kildrake no doubt lay sleeping.

Lady Somerton led her in the opposite direction, to the nursery bathroom. She closed the door and switched on the light. Luisa blinked furiously at the sudden brightness of the gaslight in the white-tiled room.

“Good gracious. What a dreadful amount of blood.” Lady Somerton clucked her tongue and opened a white-painted cabinet. “You’ll want to soak that in cold water immediately.”

Luisa watched her ladyship in astonishment as she burrowed matter-of-factly about the jars and tubes. Not even the harsh glare of the bathroom light could erase her beauty; her creamy skin remained smooth and flawless, a little pink perhaps in the apples of her cheeks, and her eyelashes swooped to sinful lengths beyond her brow. The delicate symmetry of her profile was almost mesmerizing.

Lord Somerton’s wife. Who was she? What was she like? Did she love him?

Did he love her?

Well, obviously they didn’t love each other. Luisa’s own bedroom was proof of that. But how could even a beast like Somerton fail to adore such a lovely rose-scented creature, with her perfect profile and her extravagant eyelashes? One who shunned the endless social amusement of London to tuck her son in bed, instead of ordering a nurse to do it? One who drew a lowly clerk upstairs to tend his wound herself, instead of ordering a maid to do it?

For an instant, Luisa imagined that saturnine face lowering to press a kiss on Lady Somerton’s rosy lips. His body pressed against Lady Somerton’s porcelain skin. Kissing her. Touching her.

The image stung with unexpected sharpness. She pushed it away. Revulsion, no doubt. Somerton was an unpleasant beast, the sort of man she had always taken care to avoid.

She glanced again at the countess, who was now biting the corner of her lower lip as she hunted among her shelves. Probably she wasn’t sophisticated enough for Somerton’s taste. Perhaps she was simply a pretty face, with nothing inside to interest him.

Not that Luisa gave the slightest damn about the state of the Somertons’ marriage.

“Here we are,” her ladyship said, in that melodious voice of hers. “If you’ll be so kind as to unfasten your collar, Mr. Markham. I shall dampen this washcloth with a bit of soap and hot water.”

“I am perfectly capable . . .”

“A young man of your age knows nothing about how easily even the most superficial of wounds can become infected with germs, Mr. Markham.” Lady Somerton returned, brandishing the white washcloth like a weapon of war. “I daresay you would go to bed without even washing.”

“That’s not true,” Luisa said indignantly, and then “Owww!” as the countess dabbed at her neck.

“Be still. I haven’t even touched it yet. My goodness, your skin is sensitive. I . . .”

Luisa pushed her hand away. “That’s enough.”

“But I haven’t . . .”

Luisa snatched the washcloth and turned to the mirror. “I’ll wash, if you please.” Her heart beat hard against her chest. What had she been thinking, to let the countess examine her tender feminine skin? It had felt so natural, the way she and Emilie would braid each other’s hair at night, trading secrets.

But Lady Somerton was not her sister.

Suddenly, the ache in her head and shoulders seemed to penetrate to her bones.

“At least you’re thorough,” said the voice behind her, and Luisa glanced at the corner of the mirror to see Lady Somerton’s face pointed attentively toward her.

Too attentively.

She let the washcloth drop into the basin. “There. Now the salve. Your ladyship,” she remembered to add, with a touch of humility.

“You’re a self-assured young man, I’ll give you that,” said the countess. She handed Luisa the jar.

“What’s this?”

“A concoction of honey, among other things. Marvelous for preventing putrefaction. Just a dab, Mr. Markham, and then the gauze.”

Luisa dabbed carefully at the nick on her throat. For a wound that had produced such a prolific amount of blood, it was rather disappointingly small, a triangle of no more than a centimeter’s length. A thin trickle of blood rolled downward, where the cleaning had disturbed the clot.

“Would you like me to wrap the gauze for you, Mr. Markham? A few turns about the neck should be sufficient.” A little note of amusement had crept its way into Lady Somerton’s voice.

“Thank you, no. I shall manage it.” Luisa snatched the gauze and wrapped the thin strip about her neck twice, tying it securely with the ends. She stared sternly at her reflection. No beauty, she. Her features were too strong, her nose too large, her chin too uncompromising. On the other hand, such things served a princess well, when she was going about as a young man.

She turned to face Lady Somerton, who ought to be regarding her with a mixture of disgust and annoyance. Lowly secretaries did not address countesses in such brusque and casual terms, after all. But her ladyship seemed to have taken it all in good humor. She had crossed her arms across her chest, and a little smile turned up the corners of her pretty mouth. Her eyes were large and quite blue, and something about them, some fleeting trick of expression, some trace of sadness at the corners, seemed years older than the rest of her.

“Thank you, your ladyship,” Luisa said sincerely. “Forgive my abruptness, I beg you. It has been rather a trying evening.”

Lady Somerton nodded. The hint of smile faded from her lips. “Of course it has. I quite understand, believe me.”

Luisa refastened her collar and tightened her necktie to its proper position. “I won’t trouble you any longer, then.”

“I’ll see you out.” Lady Somerton moved quickly, turning down the light before opening the door. Again they padded softly through the day nursery; again the countess opened the door and closed it again, turning the lock with the key from her pocket.

“Why do you lock him in? Aren’t you afraid of some accident?” The question slipped out before Luisa could consider the propriety of asking it.

“No. I sleep in the room adjoining, which has its own door into the nursery.” She smiled benignly and held out her hand. “Good night, Mr. Markham.”

Luisa took the hand and shook it briefly. “Good night, your ladyship.”

•   •   •

L
uisa awoke, sometime later, to the muffled crash of glass against a wall.

She startled upward against the pillows; a book fell away from her chest. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep at all. After taking Quincy for his walk, she had tried both the knob on Somerton’s bedroom door and their shared connecting door. She’d found them both securely locked, foiling her plan to hide under the earl’s bed until he came home and went to sleep . . . without, she hoped, first taking the time to examine his new ring more closely.

Next, she’d planned to wait until he returned, and then create some sort of distraction—a loud choking fit, or perhaps a small controlled explosion—that would send him crashing into her room. In the resulting confusion, she could find some excuse—a needed glass of water, a stealthy bash over the earl’s head with that sturdy-looking vase on the mantel—to slip into his room and locate her ring before morning.

Fortune favored the bold, as her father always said.

And now here she was, startling awake in the middle of the night like a schoolboy caught out in his studies, while the connecting door remained shut and the Holstein state ring remained in the possession of the Earl of Somerton.

She simply wasn’t cut out for this kind of work, was she?

Luisa stretched out her legs beneath the covers and craned her ears for further signs of Somerton’s return, but the room remained quiet after that signal crash of glass. Perhaps she’d imagined it, after all.

A floorboard creaked faintly, and then a sound that might have been a grunt.

At the bottom of the bed, Quincy lifted his ears and swiveled his head in the direction of the connecting door. “Shh,” Luisa whispered, reaching for his head. She scratched between his silky ears. “He’s not at all amused by dogs.”