Bound in Moonlight (12 page)

The prince's embarkation upon the royal barge was marked by volleys of artillery so concussive that Caroline, standing all too close to the twenty howitzers, had to cover her ears. Still, the detonations made her heart kick, her teeth clatter.Worse, they reminded her of Aubrey, smashed to bits by an iron ball two years ago that day.

Huddled amid roaring strangers with her eyes squeezed shut and her hands clamped over her ears, thinking about her beloved Aubrey and her wretched existence since she'd lost him, Caroline had an epiphany. She realized, with sudden, ringing clarity, why she'd been drawn to this bridge on this day, and what she was meant to do. A strange warmth and
serenity enveloped her, as if Aubrey himself were wrapping her in a blanket and whispering in her ear, “Tonight. Do it tonight, my love, and then you will be with me always.”Never had she felt so calmly resolute.

She felt that resolve still as she made her way along the footbridge, one hand skimming the stone balustrade to help guide her in the dark, the other clutching her wind-battered bonnet. About halfway down the bridge, she stopped and gripped the balustrade with both hands, grateful that they hadn't gotten the lamps working yet, lest she be seen by the toll-men at either end. So impenetrable was the gloom that the only buildings she could make out were the majestic Somerset House near the bridge's north end, from whence she'd come, and beyond it, the dome of St. Paul's. Her gaze on that most venerable and resplendent of God's houses, she whispered, “Forgive me.”

Caroline climbed with some difficulty atop the balustrade and stood there, her skirts snapping and billowing. She breathed in the river's familiar murky smell, heard it slap-slap-slapping against the granite piers—but all she could see of it was a fathomless black abyss.

Untying her bonnet, she let the wind wrest it from her hands. It soared into the night, ribbons flapping.

A gust of wind buffeted her, almost lifting her off her feet. She waved her arms frantically to regain her footing, heart seizing in her chest.

Poised in a wavering half-crouch with both arms extended for balance, lungs heaving, Caroline stared down into the inky oblivion of the Thames. Gone was her placid resolve, replaced by roiling terror. Would she be filled with such dread if she were truly meant to do this? Perhaps—

Another gust toppled her forward, the timeworn soles of her slippers sliding and skittering on the railing.
God, no—

She grabbed wildly at nothing as the world careened. A wall of water, cold and hard, bashed the breath out of her.

She thrashed as she sank, legs pumping against her waterlogged skirts, lungs swelling.
Oh, Jesus, I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

She flailed her arms, straining upward, clutching at the blackness above.
Please, please.

Her lungs burned as she fought the urge to inhale. She clawed and kicked and prayed, and then something nudged her, something hard. It prodded her, poked her in the chest, the stomach.

A gruff male voice, muffled by the water overhead, hollered, “Take it! Grab hold!”

Caroline gripped it with both hands, finding it flat, with smooth, tapered edges—an oar. She felt along the blade until it narrowed into the throat, and this she closed both fists around.

“Hold on,” the voice called.

Caroline felt herself being pulled upward along with the oar. As her head breached the water, she dragged in a spasmodic breath through the hair plastered over her face, and then another, and another, coughing and sputtering. Hands tugged at her, seizing her under the arms to haul her up over the side of a small rowboat. “Easy, Jack,” a voice grunted as the boat rocked and pitched. “We flip this thing,we'll all end up in the drink.”

They managed to drag her aboard without tipping over. She collapsed, drenched and shaking and no doubt well-bruised from her rescue, but infinitely grateful for it.

“Thank you,” she rasped. “Oh,my God. Thank you.”

There were two men in the boat, both bearish and humbly dressed. One set about rowing them to the north bank, while the other, the one called Jack, sat Caroline up and raked the hair off her face. “Threw yourself off our fancy new bridge, did you?”

Caroline dropped her head in her hands and nodded.

“Now, why would a pretty little wench like you want to be doing a thing like that?”

She shook her head wearily.

“Self-murder ain't the answer to a life of sin,” he said.

She looked up.

“You ain't the first sporting girl that's ever flung herself into the Thames when she couldn't take the life no more.” Before she could correct his assumption, he said, “You know we're going to have to take you in, don't you?”

“Take me in?”

“Me and Hugh are river watchmen. We seen a straw bonnet come flying off the bridge, so we headed that way and heard you scream when you jumped. There's laws against killing yourself, you know. You get caught trying to do it, you got to be dealt with.”

“I . . . I didn't really mean to.” Caroline didn't remember screaming, but her throat felt as if it had been scoured raw. “That is, I meant to, but I changed my mind.”

“Folks generally do, once they hit the water,” Jack said. “Where do you live?”

“Nowhere anymore. I have no home. I have nothing.”

“Right, then. We're going to take you to the Newcastle Street watch house, then you'll go before the magistrate in the morning.”

Docking the boat along the embankment northeast of the bridge, the watchmen guided Caroline, wet and shivering, up a narrow flight of steps to Wellington Street. With Jack gripping one of her arms and Hugh the other, as if they thought she had enough energy left to make a break for it, they walked her along the Strand past the Somerset House, turning left on Newcastle. Her hair was a matted tangle; her sodden skirts, stretched out from the water, dragged heavily along the ground.

Leaning against a building up ahead was the tall figure of a man tilting a flask to his mouth, a cocked hat tucked under his arm. From somewhere came a woman's breathless laughter.

“You there!” called Jack. “You know you can't be drinking out on the street like that, I don't care what time of night it is.”

With unhurried nonchalance, the man pushed off the wall and strolled under a streetlamp. He was perhaps thirty, with slightly mussed dark hair, well dressed but for his untied cravat and open collar.

“Lord Rexton. Beg your pardon, your lordship,” Jack said with a little duck of his head as they approached. “Didn't realize it was you.”

“Just waiting on my friend,” Rexton said in a deep voice woolly with drink.

The unseen woman laughed again, saying, “Lookit that fine upstanding prick. Fill my naggie. Fill it deep.”

“Lift your arse, Molly,” came a male voice. “Good girl,” he said with a grunt of effort. “Ah, yes.”

Caroline and the two watchmen looked into an adjacent alleyway, quite long and narrow, which connected Newcastle to the next street over. Toward the middle, barely visible in the dim passage, could be seen a man and a woman. The frowzy redhead stood bent over with legs widespread, one hand braced on the brick wall while the other held the skirts of her bright green frock bunched at her waist. Her bodice was unfastened at the top, allowing her enormous breasts to hang free. The man, hatless but as finely attired as Rexton, stood behind her gripping her meaty rear end as his hips churned, her breasts swaying with every thrust.

Caroline averted her gaze from the sight, only to find Lord Rexton giving her a lingering appraisal from head to toe, taking in her snarled hair and shabby, sodden frock with a vaguely amused expression. “Dredged up a little river rat, did you, boys?”He took a long swallow from his silver flask.“What did she do? Get soused and fall off a pier?”

“Tried to drown herself,” Jack said.

His lordship's gaze met Caroline's; the smirk faded.

“Harder,” demanded Molly. “Fuck me deep. Squeeze my tits.”

“She's the sixty-fourth chit to jump off a bridge this year,” Jack said, “but first one to get fished out alive.”

“What are your plans for her?” his lordship asked the watchmen.

“She'll spend the night in the cage,” Jack replied,“then we'll bring her before the magistrate in the morning. Seeing as she tried to do away with herself, he'll have her confined to a madhouse.”

“What?”
Caroline's trembling, which had begun to ease, renewed itself. She'd assumed that her foolhardy act would earn her a brief sentence in the house of correction—an unpleasant prospect, to be sure, but one she could have endured. Madhouses were a different matter entirely. The man in the alley started groaning in time with his quickening thrusts.

“Aye, sir, that's the way,” praised the whore. “Deep and fast. Let's feel you spurt. Come on. Come on.”

“Most of the lunatic paupers,” Jack continued, “he sends 'em to Bethnal Green Asylum, else White's if there ain't no room at Bethnal.”

“No,” said Caroline, who'd heard stories about both asylums that had sickened and horrified her. “No, please. Let me go,” she pleaded, trying to wrestle out of their grip. “I . . . I'm sorry I jumped from that bridge. I won't do it again, I swear.”

“We ain't fixing to give you the chance,” Jack said. “Come on, Hugh. Let's get this one in the cage before she starts biting and clawing. I've still got the scars from that whore we pinched last week.”

“I didn't mean to do it,” she said desperately as they dragged her down the street, she struggling violently against their ever tightening grip.“I can't be condemned to an asylum. It's not right, not without giving me a chance to prove my sanity. There must be some legal recourse available to people in this situation. Won't you please just—”

“Wait,” ordered Lord Rexton as he strode toward them, stowing his flask in his coat and replacing his hat on his head. Coming to stand before Caroline, he tilted up her chin and pushed her hair out of her eyes. Sounding a bit more sober than he had a moment ago, he said, “It is a rare river rat who speaks the King's English.
What is your name?”

In a feeble voice, she said, “Caroline Keating,my lord.”

“Are you any relation to Reginald Keating, Baron of Welbury?”

“He is my uncle,my father's brother.”

“And your father is . . . ?”

“Obediah Keating, Rector of Welbury Parish. But . . .”

“Yes?”

“I am disowned.”

“Have you a husband?”

“No, my lord.”

He studied her face for a long moment, then released her chin and said,“Under current British law,Miss Keating, anyone who attempts suicide is automatically deemed non compos mentis—insane. You can, indeed, be confined in a madhouse for having jumped off that bridge, and the magistrate can send you there without any further legal proceedings.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Believe it or not, I am a barrister—by training, if not by inclination.”Withdrawing a kid purse from inside his coat, he said to the watchmen, “Gentlemen, I suspect Miss Keating has learned her lesson well enough to avoid any midnight dips in the future.”

“We can't just let her walk away,” Jack said.

“Fortunately for you, I am willing to take her off your hands.” He plucked two gleaming half sovereigns from the purse and handed them to the gaping watchmen. “For your troubles.”

They looked at each other a moment, and then, having come to a silent consensus, they stuffed the coins in their pockets and released Caroline's arms.

“Miss Keating,” said Rexton, “if you will come with me, I
believe there is a coach stand on the Strand in front of the Somerset House.”

“My lord,” Caroline said, “I . . . I can't go with you. I don't even know you.”

“David Childe, Viscount Rexton, at your service.”He lifted his hat and executed a bow that had a slightly mocking edge to it.

“Where do you mean to take me?” she asked. For all she knew, he might intend to sell her to an Ottoman sheik, having first assured himself that she had no family, at least none that would miss her.

“We are going to my home,” he said.

“Your
home
? I . . . I can't . . .”

“It is that or the madhouse, Miss Keating. The choice is entirely yours.”

Three

G
ROSVENOR SQUARE,” REXTON told the coachman as he handed Caroline into the hackney they'd found waiting in front of the Somerset House.“You're shaking like a rabbit,Miss Keating.”

“I'm cold,” she said as she sat on the front-facing seat, wrapping her arms around herself. “My clothes are soaked through.”

“It has naught to do with me, then?”He settled in opposite her, setting his hat on the seat next to him as the shabby old carriage rattled away from the curb.

“You seem disappointed,my lord.”

“Just skeptical,” he said, looking both surprised and amused at the cheekiness of her response. He shucked off his coat, beneath which he wore an ivory waistcoat over a shirt with billowing sleeves. “Lean forward.”

When she hesitated, he pulled her toward him and draped the coat over her shoulders. It felt huge and heavy and smelled of clean, damp wool and tobacco. Thunder grumbled in the distance.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Merely trying to prevent you catching a chill, Miss Keating. Wouldn't want you falling ill before we've gotten the chance to know each other.” He propped one long leg on the seat next to her, assessing her with insolent directness.

Lightning fluttered across his face, casting his eyes into deep shadow.

Pulling the coat around her, Caroline turned to look out the window, spattered with the first few droplets of what promised to be a violent summer storm.

“Tonight only,” she said without looking at him. “You've saved me from Bethnal Green, and I've nowhere else to go, but I am no whore, desperate though I may be. One night, no more.”

He gave her an indolent smile. “If it is ravishment you expect, Miss Keating, I'm afraid I shall have to disappoint you. Given how much brandy I've swilled tonight, I fear such an attempt would prove rather uninspired. Instead I shall hand you over to my housekeeper, Mrs. Allwright, who will provide you with a warm bath, dry clothes, and a bedchamber that locks from within. In the morning, you will be free, should you choose it, to go on your way and never lay eyes on me again.”

“Should I choose it? Why would I not?”

She recoiled with a gasp as Rexton leaned over to slide a hand beneath the coat wrapped around her. He withdrew his silver flask from a pocket in the garment's satin lining and uncapped it. Sitting back, he tilted it to his mouth and took a long swallow.

He said, “Are you with child, Miss Keating? Is that why you attempted suicide?”

“No, my lord.”

“Why did you, then?”

“I don't really see that it is any of your—”

“Since I'm not making you fuck me, Miss Keating, I should think the least you could do is to humor me with a bit of conversation.”

Caroline was astounded. Although she'd grown used to coarse language from living in St. Giles, she'd never thought to hear it from the mouth of an aristocrat. Too late, she realized how gratifying her expression of shock must be to Lord Rexton, who had undoubtedly used that word in the hope of eliciting such a reaction.

“Was it because you'd been disowned?” he asked.

She looked away, gritting her teeth. “No.”

“Then it doubtless has to do with the transgression that prompted your reverend father to repudiate you. You've been ruined, I take it.”

“Yes.”

“Seduced and abandoned?”

“No, it wasn't . . . We were in love. We were betrothed, but secretly.”

“Your father didn't approve?”

“Aubrey was Catholic.”

“Was?”

“He was a captain in the Royal Horse Guards. They were sent to Waterloo, and he died there.”

Some of Rexton's cockiness seemed to dissipate. He looked away and took another swig of brandy. “Two years ago today. I must say, you chose to mark the anniversary in rather lurid fashion.”

She ignored that.

“Papa wouldn't accept you back into the bosom of the family?” he asked.

“He'd made it quite clear when Aubrey took me to London that I was dead to him. He poisoned my uncle and aunt against me as well.”

“Your mother went along with this?”

“She died of childbed fever after I was born.”

“You've no other family?”

“I have two older brothers, but they both joined the East India Company as soon as they came of age. They're halfway around the world. I haven't seen them in years, and I doubt they'll ever come back to England. Not to live. It would mean dealing with my father.”

“So you've been living on your own in London since then? How have you supported yourself?”

“I get a little piecework now and again—embroidery and the like. But it's not steady. I've never been gifted at needlework, so I'm only called upon as a last resort, and it pays pittance even when I do get it. I've always been interested in educating young girls, so in the beginning I tried to obtain work as a governess or tutoress, but no one would have me. People actually slammed doors in my face. It was mortifying—and utterly confounding. I found out later that my father had told everyone he knew in London that I'd turned to a life of sin. Those people told other people. They probably thought I'd been. . . selling my favors.”

“You never considered it?”

“Is that supposed to be a jest, Lord Rexton?”

“Not walking the streets, I mean, but getting a place in one of the better houses? Or perhaps securing yourself a gentleman friend?”

“Never. I'd rather die.”

“Yes, well, it would appear that you've already explored that option, with limited success,” Rexton drawled.

“It was the last option at my disposal,” she said. “It would have solved all of my problems for good, but I failed even at that. Which leaves me at something of a loss, as I've exhausted every means to repair the fix I'm in.”

“Well.” The viscount smiled slowly. “Not quite.”

The next morning, Caroline stood outside Mrs. Milledge's lodging house in the teeming squalor of the St. Giles Rookery, trying to work up the stomach to walk in and ask for her old bed back. Getting inside the ramshackle building would involve stepping over or hauling aside Reenie Fowls, who lay in a tattered heap on the front stoop with an empty gin bottle next to her. Her skirt, painted with mud from last night's rainstorm, was shoved up around her thighs, and her legs were spread wide. Caroline wondered how many men had eased their lust in her during the night without her knowing it.

“A sex slave?” Caroline had exclaimed in response to Lord Rexton's appalling proposal. “Are you mad? Do you think
I'm
mad?”

“In truth,” he'd replied, “you strike me as refreshingly sane and logical—and with a degree of pluck one wouldn't normally expect from a ruined rector's daughter who's just been dredged up out of the Thames. You are, of course, far too bound by convention to greet my proposal with anything but righteous outrage, yet too savvy and spirited not to mull it over in that little corner of your mind that realizes this may very well be your last chance at a decent life.”

“Decent? I'm surprised you even know that word.”

“It would only be a week, after all—seven days that could change your life—that undoubtedly will change your life, forever.”

“It's—it's sickening,” she'd sputtered. “Utterly degrading.”

“More so than the alternative?” he'd asked.

At least that alternative—half of a flea-infested bed—was affordable now. That morning, when she'd awakened in a guest chamber of Lord Rexton's majestic Grosvenor Square town house, she'd found a periwinkle silk frock laid out for her, along with underpinnings, bonnet, gloves, shoes, and a dainty mesh reticule containing a double guinea and a calling card for Sir Charles Upcott of Burnham, Childe & Upcott, with an address on Regent Street. On the back of the card was scrawled:
See Sir Charles about the matter we discussed last night. Rexton.
Quite a presumptuous note, considering she'd rejected his proposal out of hand, and in no uncertain terms.

Caroline had asked Mrs. Allwright to return her old frock to her, only to be told that it had been burned per the instructions of Lord Rexton, who was still abed. The genial old housekeeper had likewise refused to take the money back, saying she'd have the devil to pay from her employer if she allowed Caroline to leave empty-handed.

It had been a pleasant shock to wake up in that big feather bed with lavender-scented sheets and a silken coverlet. Not for a very long time had Caroline had a bed all to herself, and never in her life had she slept in such luxurious surroundings. She had breakfasted like a queen on ham, scones, and eggs
en coquette
. It was the first time in two years she'd eaten her fill.

“Carrie? That you?”

She turned to see Bram Hugget lumbering toward her with his broom on his shoulder, his boots coated with mud and horse droppings.

“Lookit you, all flashed up like that. I hear you told Mrs. Milledge you'd not be back. Yet here you are. Did your new sweetman toss you out after just one night?”

“I don't have a sweetman. You know that.”

“Only two ways for a penniless wench like you to get fancy toggery like this,” he said, stroking a hand over the lace fichu pinned around her shoulders. “On your back or on your knees.” He grabbed her breast with a big dirt-caked hand and squeezed.

She pushed him away. “Get your filthy hands off me.”

“Too good for me now, are you?” He wrestled her onehanded against the wall of the lodging house, slammed the broom handle across her throat to hold her in place, and groped her roughly between her legs. “You wasn't too good last night,” he sneered as Caroline choked and flailed.

A pair of young ruffians sauntering down the street glanced in her direction, smirked, and continued on.

“I should of kept me ha'penny,” he said as he ground his erection against her. “I should of shoved you down on your hands and knees and fucked you like the little bitch you are.”

She struck out with her fists, battering his head, his face. Bram ignored the punches until one connected with the bridge of the nose. “Fucking little trull!” He pressed the broom hard against her throat. “Hussy. Whore. This is the way you like it, ain't it?” Gathering up her skirts, he said,“I bet you're dripping for it. Let's get a couple fingers up there and see.”

Fingers,
Caroline thought as his big crusty hand crawled up her inner thigh.
“Two fingers, one in each eye,”
Aubrey had taught her.
“As hard as you can. There's no room for delicacy if some blackguard has designs on you.”

Summoning all her strength, she raised her hand, locked two fingers, and drove them straight into Bram Hugget's eyes.

He roared and stumbled back, dropping the broom handle as he pressed his hands to his eyes. “Fuck! Shit!”

She lifted her skirts and fled north on Charing Cross Road as he bellowed and raged.

“Fucking bitch! You blinded me, you fucking strum. I'll kill you if I ever see you again!”

Then here's hoping I really
have
blinded you,
thought Caroline as she waved down a hackney coach rattling toward her. She leaned on a lamppost to catch her breath as the coachman climbed down to open the passenger door.

“Where to, miss?” he asked as he held out his hand.

“Regent Street,” she said breathlessly.