A Perfect Gentleman (28 page)

“Why? Because they came to London to find work, and there was none for them. Or their families tossed them out to make room for the younger children. Or their parents died of drink and disease. Who knows how they all landed in the streets.”

“I meant, why did you take them in?” She waved her gloved hand at the building, the girls, her out-of-place escort. “Why here?”

“Oh, I won the house in a card game,” he said, as if such magnanimity were an everyday thing. “No one would buy it in the condition it was in then, to my regret. So I decided to put it to good use, rather than let the rats and dry rot take it.”

Ellianne was still shaking her head, her mind spinning with the knowledge that Wellstone, who had so little he had to betray his class by going to work, gave so much. Her own charitable contributions seemed less generous in comparison. Stony was going on, telling her how the girls were taught to read and write so they could find honest work, part of their earnings coming back to the home for the next crop of girls. They had nothing so ambitious as her training schools, he confessed, but perhaps she could offer some suggestions. Or financial assistance, he added with a smile, tossing the leather pouch containing their last night's winnings to a smiling black-clad matron who met them at the door.

After a tour, and after hearing from the girls that their Stony had hung the very moon, Ellianne promised to return with a banknote and a list of ideas to make the home more self-supporting.

“Why girls?” Ellianne asked when they were on their way home. “Why not orphaned infants, or boys, or a hospital for wounded veterans?”

The need was endless, he explained, and his resources laughingly limited. His heart went out to the girls, though, because they seemed the most vulnerable. Without the Wellstone Home, they had nowhere to go and nothing left to sell but their bodies. “No one should be forced to that. No one.”

Ellianne could not tell if he was speaking of his own experiences or not. She only knew that she could not go home now, not until Stony's girls had fresh pinafores and more instructors and new mattresses. She'd go make a chart of what needed doing.

*

As long as she was in Town, she might as well continue with her plan to be seen. A ball at Rockford House should have every member of the quality in attendance. If no one recognized her as Isabelle's relative there, she would have to conclude that her sister had made friends outside polite circles.

Stony was prepared this time. He found a sturdy cane, not any elegant walking stick, but a thick, polished tree limb. Then he found a small pebble to put in his shoe. Then he found a limp.

Finding a cause for his affliction was more difficult. He was too young for the gout, too old to be climbing trees. Claiming he'd fallen off his horse would have branded him an oaf; a carriage wheel running over his toes would have made him a fool. He decided that his horse had stepped on his foot. No, a runaway horse that he was trying to stop before it injured someone. That sounded wondrously heroic, but too much of a lie. In the end he decided to smile when someone asked and say it was a minor injury, a nasty sprain. Ellianne's aunt did not put much stock in his story. Neither did the too-predictable parrot: “Limp leg. Limp brain. Limp lord. Limp rod.” They hurried from the house as fast as the pebble permitted.

At the ball, he could walk but not dance. He could sit by Miss Kane but not promenade with the hostess's niece. He could go in to supper but not to fetch punch for every thirsty miss who batted her eyelashes at him. In other words, he was a limpet. Stuck to Miss Kane like a scrap on one of her charts, he was. He was not budging, and she was not leaving his side. No disappearing to the ladies' withdrawing room, he warned. He needed her protection from the solicitous mamas and their so-available daughters. There was to be no going off with strangers, no finding a quiet room where some prowling tomcat could pounce on her. He was taking his escort duties far more seriously this time.

Ellianne was almost giggling like one of the little moppets at his charity home by the time he finished his lecture. She stopped smiling when Lord Strickland approached them, looking for Gwen, who was dancing with the comte.

“Gads, she didn't kick you too?” the baron asked, too loudly.

Stony accidentally dropped his heavy cane. His would not be the only sore toes by the morning. Then he kept the area near them clear by twirling the gnarled wood, as if it were a wizard's wand. It worked, or his rudeness did.

“No, Durstan, the lady does not dance tonight. Can you not see she is wearing black gloves?”

Then: “No, Sir Poindexter, that seat is taken.

“No, the lady is not thirsty, Lord Hathaway, but perhaps your wife is.

“No, Miss Kane is not playing cards this evening, Major, but she will be pleased to accept donations for her favorite charities.”

Ellianne was relieved that she did not have to face all these men on her own, that Stony's solid presence kept them at a distance. She did feel, though, that she could have spoken for herself, that she was no shrinking violet. She did not want him to think of her as another of his little girls, to be protected from the world. Besides, what if one of the men had news of her sister?

“Trust me,” Stony told her, “your aunt would not have let one of these fortune-hunting rakes within a mile of Miss Isabelle.”

Word must have gone out that Wellstone was declaring Miss Kane off-limits, for few others approached the gilt chairs where she and Stony sat with Gwen and whichever of her cisisbeos was around at the time. Ellianne was starting to recover from the viscount's high-handedness. He was only trying to protect her, she told herself.

A bit later, one of the handsomest men she had seen—not as good-looking as Lord Wellstone, of course—stopped in front of their seats. He was as tall as the viscount but thinner, not as broad-shouldered. He was dark-haired instead of fair, with the brooding look of a fallen angel. He might have been Stony's age, but his eyes seemed older, duller, harder.

He bowed and said, “I say, Lady Wellstone, I have been pining away, waiting for someone to introduce me to this goddess in our midst so I might worship at her feet. Will you perform the honors?”

Stony answered instead of Gwen: “No, Blanchard, she will not. The lady is not a goddess, her feet do not require adoration, and she is not going out on the balcony with you, so go find another pretty pigeon to pluck.”

Ellianne felt a blush starting at those same feet. Gwen gasped and batted at Stony's sleeve with her closed fan, but Strickland laughed and said, “He's got you dead to rights. Takes a rake to know one, eh, Blanchard?”

Blanchard could have caused a scene. He could have demanded satisfaction for the insult, but not in Lady Rockford's ballroom. He was barely tolerated in society as it was, and could ill afford to lose his chances of finding an heiress. Not even a Cit would
let Blanchard marry his daughter if he were banished from the
ton.
He had no choice but to bow to Gwen again, nod at Strickland, say, “Your servant, Miss Kane,” even though they had not been introduced, and turn his back on Wellstone.

“That was dreadful!” Ellianne would have struck Stony with her fan, too, but too many eyes were watching them.

Stony's jaw was set. “He is not fit company for you.”

Ellianne raised her chin. “I'll thank you to let me decide for myself. I am old enough to select my own friends.”

“Friends? Do you really think that loose screw wanted to be your friend? Not even you could be so bacon-brained.”

Gwen decided she had a sudden thirst for lemonade and fled on Lord Strickland's arm. Ellianne and Stony sat in angry silence. He tapped his cane on the floor. She stared at the dancers.

Then Sir John Thomasford bowed over Ellianne's hand. “Good evening, Miss Kane. It is a pleasure to see you again, and in such fine looks.” He nodded in Stony's direction. “Wellstone.”

Sir John was not looking so fine, Stony decided. He had always seemed slimy, but now he resembled something that had been dragged out of a cave into the light.

Another naked girl had been found murdered, this one with brown eyes, thank goodness, so Ellianne had not needed to go to the morgue. She'd made sure Lattimer went, though, to see that the woman was buried properly. She also paid for one of the Bow Street artists to draw a sketch of the dead female, and offered a reward for her identification. The young woman's landlady had come forth to claim the purse. The woman was, indeed, a lady of the night, but the landlady went to sleep early. She never saw her boarders' patrons.

The newspapers got wind of the story and were starting to clamor for action, so the coroner's office and Bow Street must both be under pressure to solve the case. The bloodsucker should have stayed at the morgue, then, or gone home for a good night's rest. Instead he was asking Miss Kane if she cared to stroll around the room with him.

Damnation, Stony thought, he should have put the pebble in Ellianne's shoe.

“I wish you'd stay so I can hear any new developments in the case.” He lied. The last thing he wanted to hear was if this highflier had her throat slit, too.

“There are no new developments,” Sir John answered curtly, holding out his arm to Ellianne.

Stony got up when she did. “I think I will join you on that walk. One gets stiff sitting around. How was that for a little morgue humor, eh? Stiff?” Ellianne glared and Sir John curled his lip. Stony could not tell if that was a smile or not.

The pebble in his shoe was deuced painful. So was watching that oily maggot touch Ellianne, lean his head closer to hers, whisper sweet forensics in her ear.

“Devil take it, I think my foot must be broken, after all. Your pardon, Sir John, we'll have to go home.”

“I could see Miss Kane returned to her house,” the man offered.

And the devil would wear ice skates before Stony let that happen. “What, alone? What are you thinking, man? Miss Kane is a young lady of impeccable virtue, not one of your dead demireps. You ought to apologize for speaking of her that way. In fact, I don't think you ought to be speaking to her at all, not after you've been mucking about at the morgue. Come, Miss Kane, I need your arm to lean on.”

“How dare you?”

Chapter Twenty-One

“I have never been so embarrassed in my entire life.”

That was doing it too brown, for a woman who walked around with boiled potatoes in her pocket. At least Ellianne had waited until she and Stony were alone in the carriage. Not that they should have been alone, of course. Gwen had taken one look at the pugnacious pair and chose to have one of her gentlemen friends drive her home. She mumbled words to the effect that they were old enough, and people were already talking, and if they were going to be tossing insults at each other, then she was not going to sit in the middle.

No one sat in the middle. Ellianne sat as far from Stony as possible, in the corner of the coach, as rigid as his cane. He was congratulating himself at separating her from the fortune-hunters and the funereal knight, not that Sir John's avocation precluded his avarice. He was also glad he'd had the foresight not to sit opposite Miss Kane in the carriage.

“You thoroughly offended a friend of mine,” she was saying.

He could see by the coach lanterns that her brow was lowered and her hands were tightly clasped around her beaded reticule. Lud, if she had the pistol in that thing, loaded or not, he should have ridden up with the driver. It was too late to turn tail now, so he spoke his thoughts out loud: “If you are referring to Sir John Thomasford, the man is not your friend.”

“He has been kind to me, I will have you know.”

“Of course he has. He wants your money. Not even he could think to win you over with his good looks. Unless you are attracted to eels, of course, all slimy and slithering. The man never bothered to attend social gatherings before. I doubt if he even likes women. Live ones, anyway. The fact that you show an interest in his pet projects puts ideas in his head that never existed before.”

“Are you accusing me of flirting with Sir John? Of leading him on?”

“If the shoe fits….” Which reminded him. He removed the pebble from his evening pump.

Ellianne inhaled sharply. “That is insufferable!”

“That's what I was beginning to think. There is no permanent damage, though, I am certain.”

“So you lied and you cheated and you made people feel sorry for you, just so you could insult them?”

Stony pretended to think a minute. “I cannot recall insulting anyone who showed me the least sympathy. In fact, most of the dirty dishes I sent off were wishing me to perdition, not a quick recovery.”

“There was no reason to insult Sir John.”

There was every reason: Ellianne liked him. “He was being too familiar.”

“He kissed my hand! What about Mr. Blanchard? You would not permit that poor man to make my acquaintance.”

“You said it: He is poor, but hoping to remedy that shortcoming with a wealthy wife. There have been so many ugly rumors about him accosting heiresses that I would have suspected him of carrying off your sister, except he never left London. I checked, and at his
rooms at the Albany, too. He'd be after you like Atlas if he had her, besides, to get more of her blunt.”