The Marquess (31 page)

“I damn well will not go about in society if
you’re not there,” he growled. “And I’ll not skulk
about the back alleys of London getting to you.” He turned his glare on
Marian as if her pregnancy at this time was done just to annoy him. “Since
you can’t go with me, you must find some other means of introducing Miss
Reynolds to society.”

Laughing eyes darted from Gavin to Dillian and back again. “Of
course, dear cousin, anything to appease the angry beast. I really wish
Reginald were here. He would love to see this. The hermit of Effingham forced
from his lair by a woman. Is Lady Blanche quite as beautiful as they say?”

“More so, Lady Marian,” Dillian answered. “She
is as beautiful on the inside as the outside. I will do anything for her.”

The laughter left their hostess’s eyes as she regarded
Dillian more carefully. “Just Marian. I do not use my honorary title.
Lady Blanche must be a saint indeed if you wish to sacrifice yourself for her.
Personally, I think sacrifice highly overrated, but I understand the concept.
Since we have agreed it is best that we give the appearance of never having
met, I cannot offer any of my family or Reginald’s as your introduction.
Perhaps we can ask my half sister’s husband if he knows of someone. That
would be sufficiently distant, wouldn’t it?”

“I hate to impose...” At the militant gleam in
Marian’s eyes, Dillian accepted her proposal. “I think that would
work. He wouldn’t be a complete stranger to Lord Effingham, in that case,
so it would make sense if such a person introduced us in public. We can take it
from there.”

Gavin interrupted. “A caretaker and his wife
isn’t sufficient protection. I want a burly footman at every door, around
the clock. And you will need a maid to go about with you. You’re not to
leave here until they’re hired.”

“That is the most ridiculous—”

“You’ll do it, or I’ll move in with you,”
Gavin threatened. “No more burning houses or kidnappers. You obtain the
papers. I’ll make the proper connections. We transfer the papers to the
connections. Then we’ll get the hell out of here. That’s it.”

Both women stared at him, but he remained adamant. Dillian suffered
an odd fluttering in her midsection as she translated the look Effingham
fastened on her. She’d become his property, and he protected what was his.
She hadn’t bargained for this. She didn’t know if she liked it. She
just knew she’d run up against an elemental force that she couldn’t
control any more than she could control the wind or fog.

* * * *

“I’ve brought you the lady’s maid you
requested, miss.”

Dillian looked up with irritation at the hunchbacked footman
Gavin had evidently hired off the street. Unkempt black hair hid his face, and
his clothes hung like sacks from his arms and legs. She didn’t intend to
stay long enough to buy livery for his hirelings, but she wished she had some
excuse for clothing this beggar.

She wished she had some excuse for throwing him out.
Something in his manner was not only too familiar, but too insolent for a
servant. Still, if Gavin thought him competent, she couldn’t quarrel.
Only one other footman had applied for the position. That scarcely made for
adequate protection in a house this large.

She’d thought the service would send over several
maids for an interview. Evidently a temporary position attracted few applicants.
Dillian would have preferred waiting until the modiste had finished pinning the
gown she wore, but the faster this charade was ended, the better she would
feel.

“Show her in, Grimley.” Dillian gestured to a
place among the bolts of cloth and scattered accoutrements, where the maid
might stand without scattering the modiste’s haphazard arrangement.

Dillian thought her eyes might fall out when the apparition
appeared in the doorway. Even the modiste stopped to stare at the newcomer. Her
assistant gasped, then giggled. The apparition merely stood where placed.
Grimley lingered in the doorway, rubbing his hands with satisfaction.

“Indira Muhammed, miss,” he announced proudly,
as if he’d sought her out himself.

The figure cloaked in white robes and veil didn’t move
or say a word. Suddenly, the very bizarreness of the situation struck Dillian.

The modiste kneeled at her feet, staring, her mouth full of
pins. The assistant buried her giggles in a bolt of spectacular peacock blue
cloth. The unsightly footman in beggar’s clothes and hunched back preened
like the most supercilious butler she’d ever encountered.

And the lady’s maid—the lady’s maid who
was to rig her out in the height of fashion, dress her hair, guide her in the
rigors of society—that lady’s maid, stood before her in white
sheets and covered head to toe in veils. Unless the whole world had gone mad,
something was seriously amiss.

Battling hysterical laughter Dillian focused her sharp gaze
on the obnoxious footman pinning him in place as she spoke to the modiste. “Madame,
if you and your assistant will leave me now, I would talk to the maid alone.
You should find tea in the sitting room.”

The footman’s eyes widened, and he began to back out
beneath Dillian’s scrutiny.

“Grimley, keep your posterior where it is. Don’t
move a muscle.”

As the modiste and her assistant departed, chattering
laughingly, Dillian turned her gaze to the passive white-garbed maid, but her
words were for the footman. “Grimley, shut that door—now.”

As soon as the door shut, Dillian stepped down from the
chair, dragging her half-pinned hem through the debris of fabrics and lace. “Blanche,
so help me, if that is you, I’ll scalp you alive. And if that wretched
excuse for a footman is O’Toole, I’ll go after him with a
butcher’s knife, I swear I will.”

The laughter from behind the veil was very distinctly
Blanche’s.

“See, I told you, Michael. Dillian has eyes like a
hawk. It would never work.” The figure in white threw back the veil,
revealing the fading burns of Blanche’s fair cheeks and eyes undisguised
by bandages or scarf. She blinked rapidly in the daylight, then adjusted the
veil to shield her eyes again.

The hunchbacked footman collapsed cross-legged amid the
billows of petticoats and netting scattered across the settee. Shoulders straightened,
he lost the hump and a few dozen years. Dancing eyes regarded the disarray and
the two women in its midst. “But wasn’t it worth the try? The
expression on her face was worth its weight in gold. I’ll treasure it
always.”

Dillian grabbed a pair of sewing shears and came at him with
points upended. “I’ll murder you, O’Toole. I’ll cut
your throat and slice you into little bits and mail what’s left back to
your brother.”

His eyes went wide at this mention of Gavin. “Damn
you, Whitnell, where’d you hear that piece of nonsense? I have no
brother.”

She grinned malevolently. “Oh, no? Want to keep it
quiet a little longer? Or shall I broadcast it to the streets? Gavin
won’t mind.”

“That’s not funny. I didn’t figure you for
a spiteful witch.” Michael turned to Blanche, who listened with amazement
and curiosity. “I’ll leave you in her hands. I’ll be about.
If you need me, just call loud enough. Someone will hear and get word to me.”

He stood to go, but Dillian planted herself in front of the
door. “If that means you’ll have the household permeated with your
spies, forget it, O’Toole. Or shall I call you Lawrence? It makes no
difference to me, but Blanche deserves better. How dare you endanger her by
bringing her here?”

O’Toole halted and regarded her warily. “Is that
what this is about? Blanche? Did you seriously think I would do anything to
endanger her?”

Lilting laughter drifted from the other side of the room,
where Blanche wrestled with the ungainly veil, trying to remove it from her
hair. “I wrapped myself in sheets and went down and told the Arinmede
cooks I needed to visit the nearest coaching inn. They went into hysterics, but
the one called Matilda patted my hand and said she’d see I reached town.
I almost escaped without Michael knowing.”

“Matilda’s practically blind. Half the time, I
think she believes Gavin is the late marquess. She probably thought Lady
Blanche the marchioness dressed for a ball.” Michael relaxed his
shoulders and eyed the shears in Dillian’s hand with interest. “Could
you really use that thing like a sword?”

“I’d rather have a sword,” she replied
grumpily, throwing the shears on a heap of material and retreating to the
settee. “I’d rather you dressed me in gentlemen’s clothes,
gave me a sword and pistol, and let me go after Neville. This is ridiculous.”
She glared at Blanche. “What the devil did you think you could do here
dressed like that?”

Blanche shrugged. “When Mac came racing up telling
Michael you’d almost been kidnapped, I figured I had to do something. I
couldn’t think of a better way of disguising myself.”

“Your eyes? Don’t they hurt? It’s bright
in here.”

Dillian noted Michael already moved toward the draperies,
pulling them closed even as they spoke. The veil had served two purposes then:
disguise and bandage.

“I can see,” Blanche replied defensively. “It
stings a little, but I’ll live with it. I can’t go around in
scarves for the rest of my life.”

“You could go around blind the rest of your life,”
Michael said harshly. “If you must do this your way, you have to keep the
veil on. I told you that.”

Blanche stuck her tongue out at him, then draped her head in
one of the pieces of shimmery see-through material. Dillian wasn’t
certain she could believe her eyes. Blanche never did anything so improper.
Blanche had no idea what kind of ideas that gesture might give a man.

She turned and caught enough of Michael’s expression
to know the notion hadn’t escaped him. She’d seen that hungry gaze
on Gavin’s face often enough.

This couldn’t be happening. At least, Blanche
didn’t seem aware of her footman’s feelings. Or did she? Of course,
if O’Toole was really a Lawrence, he wasn’t precisely a
footman—although being the bastard brother of a bankrupt marquess
didn’t raise his desirability any great extent.

She couldn’t think of the consequences of the
impossible while faced with the very real danger presented by Blanche’s
appearance. Dillian idly poked at the pins sticking her. “If I’m
the target of this murderer, we’re endangering Blanche by keeping her
anywhere near me. And if she’s the target, it won’t do at all
having her where everyone knows her.”

“No one notices ladies maids,” Blanche
protested. “I’m perfectly safe here. And you’re much better
off with me instead of some incompetent servant the kidnappers might bribe.”

The idea of using Blanche as her maid horrified Dillian. Her
opinion apparently carried to her face, because Michael intervened before she
could offer her objections.

“If the villains have figured out you were traveling
with Gavin, then Arinmede is a prime target. Blanche couldn’t stay there.
It will be much easier protecting the two of you together.”

Dillian frowned, distracted by this new topic. “I
don’t understand how anyone could know I was with him. It doesn’t
make good sense. I think they just wanted a woman, and I happened to be there.”

“You went past a tollbooth, didn’t you?”

Dillian shrugged. “I believe so. Mac handled the
transaction. Lord Effingham and I were inside.”

“Did you keep your voices down? Could anyone have
overheard you?”

She tried to think back. “I don’t know. We were
fighting at the time. I don’t think we spoke much. What difference would
it make? A toll collector isn’t likely to know me.”

“But if he had a soldier demanding the names of every
occupant of any carriage that passed, he might pay closer attention than you
expect. If you didn’t deliberately keep quiet, or if Mac didn’t
keep his gob shut, he’d know a lady traveled in the carriage. The
carriage has the Effingham crest. Everyone knows the marquess keeps no company.
A lady traveling with him would raise suspicion.”

“A soldier could have just demanded that I get out and
introduce myself. He wouldn’t have to send highwaymen to drag me out,
screaming, in the middle of the night.”

Even Blanche’s eyes widened before Michael said out
loud the thought that followed.

“If the soldiers take orders from Neville, and
he’s the villain, they wouldn’t want a kidnapping traced back to
him, would they? They’d hire someone else to look into the matter.”

Soaking his abused muscles in the Earl of Mellon’s
luxurious bathtub, Gavin let his thoughts drift over ideas he would never have
considered just a few weeks ago. Women did that to men, scrambled their minds
until they could no longer think straight.

Just a few weeks ago he’d had only one goal: scrape,
squeeze, and dig enough money out of the estate to buy the lands surrounding
Arinmede so he and Michael would never starve again. So far, he hadn’t
found the owner of those lands, so he’d invested in lucrative funds until
he did.

The manor itself was a worthless ruin. Any money spent there
would be a foolish waste of his few precious resources. The antiques and
paintings and other valuables that his predecessor had left to rot had provided
an unexpected gold mine, thanks to Marian’s husband, Reginald Montague.
Reginald could turn a crumbling volume of poetry into filthy lucre.

But now Gavin sat here contemplating aching muscles and old
age. He had barely turned one more year than thirty, but he felt the stiffness
of old injuries, knew he lacked the agility that had saved his life more than
once. He’d let Dillian’s screams distract him from trussing the
first villain, and his fury at her near abduction had made him careless with
the second. He’d only had his wits and strength to keep him alive all
these years, and both seemed on the wane. He’d been humbled before, but
not like this.