The Wicked Marquess (15 page)

The footpad licked dry lips. The theft of property worth more than one shilling was punishable by death, and if he hadn’t stolen as much as a shilling, he had certainly tried. They should improve themselves, Freddy had insisted, when the opportunity presented itself. Under influence of a potent beverage known as a dog’s nose, Jem had agreed. Now the consequences he had failed to consider loomed over him like the shadow of Newgate. All too vividly, he could see himself hanged for his attempted crimes, his body dancing herky-jerky for a full quarter hour before all life had left it, his corpse given over to the resurrection-coves for sale to some quacksalver who would cut him open to see what had made him tick. If only he had listened to his ma when she told him Freddy was a beetle brain.

Benedict hauled his prisoner up and off his feet, and gave him a good shake. “Your name,” he repeated.

“Jem!” the captive gulped.

Benedict held in his grasp no hardened criminal, but a lad so terrified that his teeth were chattering in his head. He wondered what the boy did when he wasn’t attempting to waylay flats. He might have been some shopkeeper’s apprentice. Or a fugitive from the workhouse.

If the scamp had run away from a workhouse, Benedict could not fault him for it. Workhouse children slept crammed with six or eight other unfortunates into a single bunk, were wakened at dawn and given a miserable breakfast and set to toil until dusk, after which they were sent back to bed so that the whole miserable routine might start over again. Even so, it was a better life than in the manufacturing districts, or the coal pits where children were put to work at seven years old, for as long as thirty-six hours on end. If fortunate, this ragamuffin still lived with his relatives, in some vermin-infested slum.

Benedict set Jem on his feet but retained a firm grip on his filthy collar. “Do you have a family?”

“It’s just me, guv. All alone in the world.” Save for a  mother and seven siblings, but Jem refrained from mentioning them.

“How old are you?”

Fear of having his neck cricked gave way to a new horror. Jem had heard of gentry coves who fancied young men like himself. “Er!” he said.

Benedict interpreted this utterance to mean that Jem had not yet reached his majority. Nor was he likely to, if he continued on his present road. “You’ll come along with me until I decide what’s best done with you.”

“Hoi!” Jem struggled to free himself.  “I ain’t — You can’t— I mean, thank you kindly, guv’nor, but I ain’t wishful of putting on a petticoat!”

A petticoat? Good God. Benedict seemed unable to stroll the streets of London without encountering innocents determined to consider him the instrument of their downfall. “I meant that there may be a place for you in my stables, providing you can find your way around a horse. Providing you forgo trying to rob wayfarers like myself. You must also forgo your friend Freddy, and others of his ilk.”

 “You mean me to be a stable boy, guv?” Jem repeated warily. He had never shared close quarters with a horse.

Benedict released him. “Alternately, you may return to your friends, and I’ll see you dangling on the gallows soon enough. Which is it to be?”

Jem was uncertain just what it was that a stable boy did. On the other hand, he didn’t care to come any closer to the gallows than he already had. On the third hand, his ma had several hungry mouths to feed. And on the fourth, golden opportunities didn’t often fall from trees. “At your service, guv’nor!” he said, and executed an awkward little bow.

Perhaps it was Benedict who was pitch-kettled: he had just taken a footpad into his hire. “It’s not ‘guv’nor’ but ‘my lord.’ Come along, then.”

A lordship, was it? Although far from convinced of the lordship’s purity of purpose, Jem trailed close at his heels.

They traveled only a short distance, though it might as well have been forever, to a part of town Jem had never seen before. He gaped at a tall brick mansion with balustraded roof, forecourt and prominent portico and broad front steps. “Criminey!” he breathed.

Benedict also surveyed his home, his attention caught not by its grandeur but by the figure huddled on the broad front steps. Were the trials of this day never to end? “What are
you
doing here?” he snapped.

Was his dream of a better future to be so quickly shattered? “You asked me!” Jem protested, stung. “You said I was to have a place. And I ain’t chirping merry anymore, so you can’t say I imagined it, guv.”

“Not you!” retorted Benedict. “Her.”

Jem glimpsed a huddled figure in scruffy breeches and jacket and a battered cap in little better condition than his own. What sort of female went about dressed like a boy?

Only one sort of female would perch on a gent’s front steps. Curious about this prime article of virtue who looked little older than himself, Jem would have liked to ask her name. He had no chance to do so. The guv’nor grasped her by her collar and hauled her up the steps.

The front door was opened by a sleepy footman. Martin, too, might have said ‘Criminey’, were he not so well trained. Squirming in Lord Baird’s grasp was the same young woman he had brought home once before – had she no proper clothes? Following them was a filthy street urchin. He grinned, displaying a gap between his front teeth.

Benedict snapped his fingers under the footman’s fascinated nose. “Martin, this is Jem. Take him to the kitchen. Feed him and then see that he has a bath.” He bustled his unwelcome guest across the marble chessboard floor toward the stairs.

Chapter Nineteen

The study door slammed shut behind them. Lord Baird deposited Miss Russell, none too gently, on a footstool in front of the fireplace. “You’re angry,” she said.

‘Angry’ was much too mild a word. “I asked why you have come here,” Benedict repeated.

If there was anyone in the world who
wasn’t
angry with her, Miranda didn’t know who it was. “I wished to speak with you, my lord.”

“Ah! And because you wish to speak with me, I must oblige. You are the most shockingly spoiled little baggage that it has ever been my misfortune to encounter. I should take you over my knee.”

Benedict broke off. Were he to take Miranda over his knee, it was unlikely he would manage to merely paddle her backside. She looked damp and cold and miserable, as well she deserved to, after depositing herself on his doorstep in the damnable fog.

Miranda eyed him warily. “I’d begun to think you weren’t ever coming home.”

He shouldn’t have come home. He should have stayed at White’s. Or gone to Lady Cecilia, whom he was avoiding, because he was a coward, and she would have heard by now of his adventure at the British Museum.

Not all the details of his adventure, however. Benedict rang the bell. The haste with which Martin responded to this summons suggested he might have been lurking in the hall. The footman’s countenance remained impressively impassive as his master ordered a dry blanket fetched.

The door closed behind him. Benedict turned back to Miranda, let his gaze travel insolently over her grubby shirt, the filthy grey furze breeches that did nothing to disguise curves of hip, buttocks, and thigh. “Why are you dressed like that?”

Miranda thrust out her chin. “I could hardly climb down the tree in my skirts. Kenrick locked me in my room. If you are going to scold me like everybody else has done, you might as well save your breath. I am going to live like a tiger instead of like a sheep.”

Tiger? Sheep? Benedict let this obscure reference pass. “Why is everybody scolding you?” Before Miranda could answer, a tap sounded at the door.

Jem popped his head into the room. “Here’s your blanket, guv!” He craned his neck to try and steal another glimpse of the guv’nor’s ladybird.

Benedict took the blanket from him, and firmly closed the door. Miranda echoed, “‘Guv’?”

“Don’t try and change the subject,” Benedict growled.

Miranda wrapped the blanket round her shoulders and moved closer to the fire. “I was rude to Lord Wexton. Yes, and so would you have been if you were me, and you should be glad that you are not. ‘Miss Russell, you cannot think this and that; Miss Russell, it would be most improper—’ And on and on and on. Lord Wexton is very conscious of the instability of the female condition. He believes I am allowed entirely too much freedom. Moreover, he is certain it is
not
a good thing for a young woman to be highly admired.”

“You do not care for Wexton,” Benedict observed.

Miranda pulled the blanket more tightly around her. “I don’t know how anyone could care for Wexton, though my uncle likes him well enough that he intends me as his bride. I am allowed no choice in the matter, which is why I have come to you. If I am disgraced, the earl will never marry me.”

At the rate Miranda was proceeding she would be irrevocably disgraced, Benedict reflected, and with little effort on his part. Proper young women did not visit gentlemen’s residences, especially Sinbad’s residence, and especially not in the middle of the might.

“You said you would ravish me,” she reminded him. “Under the circumstances I hoped we might hasten matters a bit.”

Benedict hoped to hasten Miranda’s departure from his house. But he could hardly send her unaccompanied out into the night. The child was still shivering. He picked up the decanter from his desk.

Miranda watched the marquess pour amber liquid into a glass. Nonie had warned her about rakehells. Being closeted with one was inviting a fate worse than death.

This rakehell’s demeanor was less amorous than irritated. He handed her the glass, said “Drink,” and removed himself to the far side of his fireplace.

Miranda sipped, swallowed and coughed. The strong spirits burned her throat.

Benedict didn’t want to be near her. Miranda suspected he didn’t even want to occupy the same room. “I wish you would tell me what I have done wrong.” She shivered, despite the heat of the fire.

Where to begin? Benedict said, grimly, “Take off those wet clothes.”

“I don’t blame you for thinking poorly of me. I am everything you called me. I am spoiled and selfish. I—” Miranda fumbled at her buttons with fingers numbed by cold.

“You are the most maddening female in existence.” Benedict pushed away her hands, swiftly unbuttoned her shabby shirt. The damp fabric clung to her plump breasts and outlined nipples stiffened by cold.

He clenched his jaw. Definitely he was not cut out to be a monk. Yet if he touched Miranda, he would surely burn in hell.

Whereas if he didn’t touch her he would as surely go mad. Benedict turned away.

He couldn’t bear to look at her, Miranda thought, as she struggled out of her boots, her shirt, her sodden breeches, and flung them to the floor. “You should have said you didn’t like me!” she muttered, fighting against tears.

Benedict had stood listening to the rustle of fabric, trying not to guess what portions of Miranda’s perfect little body were being exposed to view. He longed to be in some far distant portion of the world, disguised as an Afghan dervish perhaps and traveling on pilgrimage to the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina, a journey during which unmasking would cost him his life, which seemed a small price to pay to be freed of this torment. His mental exercise was interrupted by a stifled sob. Miranda was weeping. He was a brute.

He crossed the room. “I don’t dislike you, little one. I want you like the devil, and it makes me very cross.” Miranda shrugged and sniffled. The blanket slipped off one slender shoulder. Benedict reminded himself that he must somehow contrive to return this maddening miss home with her reputation intact.

But not just yet, because her cheeks were rosy, and her lips half-parted, and her expression, as she gazed up at him, was bemused. Moreover, she was naked beneath that blanket. Benedict scooped her up in his arms. Miranda twined her arms around his neck.

He sat down in a deep leather chair, with Miranda on his lap. She wriggled around to face him. “What are you going to do now?”

Since she was going to be the death of him, Benedict might as well die a happy man. “I think that I might kiss you,” he murmured. “Would you mind that?”

Kiss her? While she wore only a blanket? Miranda didn’t mind at all. She imagined that a fate worse than death might be more easily accomplished if one’s clothing was first got out of the way.

She tugged at his cravat. Benedict caught her hand in his.

His mouth covered hers in a searing kiss that stole her breath. Sweet seductive salutes; hot hungry kisses, long and wet and deep; caresses that left her incapable of remembering her own name… When Benedict at last was done beguiling Miranda into a state of inarticulate anticipation, he slid his fingers into her hair and pulled her head back, grazed and nipped and licked his way along the angle of her jaw, her throat, the curve of her collarbone.

She had let go of the blanket. His fingers skimmed over her soft skin. She had a little mole on the curve of her left breast. There was nothing for it but that Benedict must conduct a closer examination, first with his fingertips, and then with his mouth.

His thumb teased the tip of one breast as he suckled on the other. Such intense pleasure swept over Miranda that she thought she must surely perish of it. When he raised his head, she felt bereft.

His hair had escaped its clasp to hang loose around his shoulders. Miranda wrapped her fingers in the silky strands.

Benedict raised his head from her breast. Miranda lowered her hand again to his cravat. This time he made no move to stop her. She unfastened his shirt and slipped her fingers inside to touch the firm muscles of his chest.

He groaned. Miranda drew back, startled. Benedict caught her hand and kissed her fingertips. She twisted her wrist and grasped his hand and placed it on her bare breast.

Eternal damnation, Benedict reminded himself. The fires of hell. He must, absolutely must, at this very moment, take Miranda home. Yet even as he scolded himself his hand was sliding from her breast down across her ribs, her slender waist, pausing on her rounded hip. Her skin was smooth as the finest silk. She smelled of the stables, and he didn’t care a bit.