Nicola and the Viscount (18 page)

Unless…unless Harold could somehow find a way to be a man. It was, she knew, a very slim chance. Still, it was a chance.

And in any case, Nicola herself was as prepared as she could ever be, she supposed, for battle.

“‘Charge, Chester, charge,'” she whispered fiercely to the closed door. “‘On, Stanley, on! Were the last words of Marmion.'”

“Ah,” said Lord Sebastian, after he'd flung open the door to Nicola's prison and found her seated meekly upon her cot. Leaning in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest, he regarded her with no small amount of interest. “The blushing bride.”

“It's bad luck,” Nicola informed him, “for the groom to see the bride before the ceremony.”

“Bad luck.” Lord Sebastian chuckled, then sauntered casually into the room, having to duck a bit, because he was so tall, in order to avoid the beams overhead. “It would seem so. For the both of us. It isn't exactly my dream, you know, to marry a girl who claims to despise the very ground on which I walk.”

“Well, it isn't exactly my dream,” Nicola pointed out, “to marry a man who seems to think everyone should worship the ground on which he walks.”

“Touché,” the viscount said with a wry smile. He really was, Nicola couldn't help reflecting, very handsome.

Too bad he was so well aware of the fact.

“What do you want, my lord?” Nicola inquired from the bed. “Has your father returned with the minister?”

“Not yet,” Lord Sebastian said amiably enough as he bent to break a piece of bread off the loaf on the table. “I just thought I'd come up here and get a few things straight before, you know, the nuptials actually take place.”

“Really,” Nicola said without enthusiasm. “How thoughtful of you.”

“You probably won't think so”—Lord Sebastian popped the piece of bread into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, and then commenced to licking his fingers—“when you hear what I've come to say. But here goes, anyway. Number one. I am no more excited about this than you, Miss Sparks, so you can set aside any fears that you might have that I have any intention of the two of us ever living as man and wife.”

“Oh?” Nicola said politely.

“Right. I intend to keep rooms at my club. You can reside with Mama and Honoria. I'm certain they will enjoy your company a good deal more than I ever could. All that incessant chatter about poetry!” He rolled his expressive blue eyes. “I swear, there were times I thought I might go mad if I had to listen to it any more.”

“How illuminating,” Nicola said. “Pray go on.”

“Number two,” the viscount continued, “you will afford me the respect and courtesy that a wife should. As your husband, I shall expect my word to be law. You will behave as I instruct you, or you will find yourself locked right back in this room quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.”

“I see,” Nicola said.

“Number three,” Lord Sebastian said, ticking off each point on his fingers. “You will, at all times, maintain a neat and appealing appearance. None of this trying to put me off by failing to clean your teeth or wash your hair. You will remember that you are a viscountess, and conduct yourself accordingly.”

“Indeed,” Nicola said.

“Four, you will not squander my money on gewgaws. You will, of course, be afforded an allowance, but you will be expected to keep your spending within a certain budget. Are you getting all this?”

Nicola nodded reverently. “Yes, my lord.”

Pleased at the apparent change in her attitude, he went on. “Number five. As far as providing me with an heir you will, of course, produce a son within the year.”

“Won't that be difficult,” Nicola asked sweetly, “if we are maintaining separate residences?”

Lord Sebastian frowned. He had evidently not thought of this.

“We will have to have intimate contact with one another occasionally,” he admitted. “Perhaps I will stay at home from my club on Saturday and Sunday evenings.”

“That sounds a very sensible plan,” Nicola said.

Lord Sebastian smiled at finding her so complacent, and reached for a piece of cheese.

“I can foresee,” he said, chewing, “that so long as you can remember the items I just described, and keep the chatter to a minimum, you and I shall get on capitally, Miss Sparks. For you are, for all your faults of character, quite fetching to look at. Really, I never considered being married to you at all a burden. I rather looked forward to it, in fact. A man likes to have some stability in his life, you see, and having a pretty wife to come home to at the end of a long day at the races or the card table must always be considered a boon. If you can just keep that tongue of yours in check, Nicola, I would say that we have a very good chance at finding marital bliss. Don't you think?”

Nicola, from her pallet, said meekly, “If you say so, my lord.”

“Well.” Lord Sebastian regarded her with some surprise. “I do say so. I declare, Nicola, but you're being awfully obliging. I'd have had Father lock you up long ago if I'd known it was going to have this kind of effect on you. I must say, I really think we have a shot at a decent marriage, don't you?”

Nicola smiled at him. “As good a shot as anyone, I'm sure, my lord.”

Looking immensely satisfied, Lord Sebastian said, “Well, I'm excessively glad we had this little chat.” Then, with a glance at the table, he said, “I thought I saw them bring up a pitcher of ale. What happened to it?”

Nicola, from the bed, asked, “Oh, would you like a little ale, my lord?”

“Indeed,” Lord Sebastian said. “That cheese has made me parched.”

“Well, then,” Nicola said, climbing to her feet. “By all means, my lord, let me serve you, as a good wife should.”

And with that, Nicola swung back her arm, and, with all the force she could muster, brought the pitcher she'd been holding down upon Lord Sebastian's golden head.

The clay vessel exploded, sending pottery shards and ale flying everywhere. Nicola didn't care. She hardly noticed, in fact. She had eyes only for Lord Sebastian who, not seeming to know what had hit him, stood for a moment looking dazed, ale dripping down from his blond curls and onto the fine stitching of his silver waistcoat.

“Hark,” Nicola said. “Do you hear wedding bells, my lord?”

Lord Sebastian nodded dumbly. Then his eyes rolled slowly back into his head, and he slumped heavily to the floor. Nicola stepped neatly out of the way, lest she inadvertently offer up a cushion for his fall, something she in no way wished to do.

Once Lord Sebastian was stretched, unconscious, upon the floor, Nicola returned to what she'd been doing before he had so rudely interrupted her.

And that was kicking out the wooden planks that someone had fastened across the tiny window at the far end of her cell.

She heard, from downstairs, the Grouser call, “Lord Sebastian? Lord Sebastian, is everything all right up there?” He had undoubtedly heard the thump that had been the viscount's head hitting the floor. “Lord Sebastian, your father's here with the parson. Would you be so kind as to bring the girl down, so that we might begin the ceremony?”

Nicola, with renewed fervor, thrust her foot through the last of the boards barring her path to freedom. Being very old and weather-beaten, they crumbled obligingly.

“Just a moment,” she called, to forestall anyone coming up to look for her. “I just want to…to comb my hair!”

And then, as the cool sea air hit her face, Nicola thrust her head and shoulders through the window…

…and found herself looking out of a dormer on a rooftop a good twenty feet in the air. All around her lay shingles and smokestacks reaching up toward the starry night sky. Below her, she could see the street, narrow and all but empty this time of the evening. Not one street away lay the docks, great sailing ships standing tall and proud in their slips, their masts rising high above the rooftops like poplars in the twilit sky.

For the first time all day, Nicola began to see a glimmer of hope for her future.

“See here!” Nicola heard the Grouser shout from behind her.
Too
close behind her. He was in her cell! “Where do you think you're going? And what—My God! What have you done to the viscount?”

There was no more time to sit and admire the view. Nicola had to move, and move fast. It was a tight squeeze when it came to her hips, but she finally managed to wriggle almost all the way through the window.

Almost all the way because, even as her knees were scraping against the rough wooden shingles, one of her ankles was seized from behind, and held in a grip of iron. For such a spindly thing, Lord Renshaw was surprisingly strong.

“Come back here!”The Grouser called, tugging for all he was worth on her foot. “Come back!”

But Nicola had already had too strong a taste of freedom to allow it to slip away from her now. Twisting like a cat, she managed, with a few well-placed kicks, to pry her foot at last from her guardian's hands…although she came away minus one of her shoes.

“You!” The Grouser called, waving the slipper at her through the window as she limped away across the shingles—no easy feat, since many of them were rotten, and had a tendency to slide out from beneath her, skid down the sloping roof, and then fall with a clatter to the street below. “Come back here, you ungrateful chit!”

But Nicola, having made her way across the treacherous territory, nearly losing her balance several times thanks to loose shingles, finally made it to a brick chimney some yards away. She flung both arms around it, then turned, panting, to regard Lord Renshaw in the purple gloaming.

“I won't come back,” she informed him breathlessly. “And you can't make me.”

“Oh, can't I?” Lord Renshaw shook his head. “You can't stay out there forever, you know, Nicola. Eventually it will start to rain…or you'll slip. You'll fall to your death, you stupid girl.”

“I don't care,” Nicola retorted. “So long as I don't have to marry the viscount.”

“Marry him!” The Grouser cried. “Why, you'll be lucky if you haven't killed him. Murder's a hanging offense, you know!”

Nicola reflected that, were she to hang for the viscount's murder, Lord Renshaw would get Beckwell Abbey after all, in the end. But she knew Lord Sebastian wasn't dead. He'd been breathing quite evenly when last she'd looked. Besides, it had only been a clay pitcher. He'd wake with a headache, surely, but no shards in his skull. She doubted she'd even managed to scar his beautiful, manly head.

“You come back here right now, Nicola Sparks,” the Grouser cried, having to break off every few words in order to cough into his handkerchief, as there was apparently a good deal his tender throat found objectionable in the evening air. “You come back here this minute, before you slip and crack your head open.”

“No,” Nicola said, and she sat down upon the slippery shingles—made all the more hazardous by her having on only a single shoe—and, trying not to notice how thoroughly she was shaking—though not because it was cold, as the temperature was quite mild—refused to budge. Indeed, she was not certain she could have moved if she'd wanted to. It was terrifying to be that high in the air, without even remotely firm footing. She was much better off, she decided, where she was.

Lord Renshaw's voice was soon joined by another. Lord Farelly had come upstairs, and now peered out at her angrily.

“I'll have you clapped in irons for this,” he shouted, being entirely too stout to follow her out the window, though, judging from the red rage in his face, he wanted to, very badly. “If you've killed my boy, you harpy—”

“He isn't dead,” Nicola said disgustedly.

“I shall send Grant out after you,” the earl bellowed. “See if I won't.”

But the driver, Nicola knew, could no sooner fit through the window than Lord Farelly. The only one who might have been able to squeeze through the narrow opening was the Grouser. She could hear the men arguing inside her little attic room, as the earl tried to convince her guardian to risk it.

“I will not!” she heard the Grouser cry. “Why, you saw what she did to your son! Do you think she'd hesitate to push me off that roof the first chance she got?”

And then, along the narrow, cobblestoned streets below, Nicola heard the clatter of horses' hooves. Someone, she realized, was coming.

And not just one person, either, but quite a few of them.

Craning her neck, Nicola tried to peer around the chimney against which she leaned. It was dark in the street—the sun had set behind the houses on the western side of it—but Nicola guessed there were at least a half dozen men approaching. They might, of course, be men with business down at the docks. Or they might be reinforcements fetched by the Milksop….

But no, what were the chances of that? The Milksop surely hadn't made it to Mayfair. If he'd managed to escape at all—and Nicola could only suppose he had, as she had not heard his voice joining in the cacophony inside her attic cell—he had surely run off to the ship that was to take him to America. Why should he trouble himself about a girl who'd refused, so rudely, to marry him?

And then the horsemen on the street below thundered into view. Nicola had been right—there
were
six of them—and four of them wore coats of the Bow Street Runners!

“Help!” Nicola shrieked, as, clinging to the chimney beside her, she scrambled to her feet on the treacherously sloping roof. “Up here!”

She saw the riders—she could not make out their faces—pull their mounts to a halt. But at the same time, she also heard a noise from behind her. Spinning around, she was horrified to see the hansom cab driver—Grant—clambering his way over the peak in the roof. He had apparently found some other, much larger dormer window on the opposite side of the house through which to climb.

And now he was lumbering at her with an expression of determination on his face, apparently not aware that, below, the cavalry had arrived.

“Don't worry, milord,” Grant called to Lord Farelly. “I got her. I'll have 'er down in a wink.” Then, to Nicola he said, his arms spread wide to catch her if she chose to flee, “Come 'ere, missy. I won't hurt you now.”