Chapter 3
Chapter Three
O h, why did it have to be him ?
For over a year—when she’d been bent over some embroidery, or playing the piano for her employer, or walking to the village to do errands, or pouring tea—her body had been in one place and her mind had been somewhere else.
Somewhere with Mr. Keynsham.
She wasn’t stupid. She’d known almost from the night that she’d met him that there couldn’t be anything between them. But somehow, that hadn’t stopped her from dreaming. He had become her ideal of the perfect gentleman.
And of course, she’d never see him again. So what could be the harm in thinking about him? Maybe someday, he’d fade from her thoughts. But in the meantime, no one would ever know.
His wit, his manners, the way that he’d protected her… the way that he’d looked at her… She’d spent hours obsessing over their one extraordinary night together, and many more hours—dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands!—having imaginary conversations with him.
She remembered every detail of their one kiss: the way the morning stubble around his mouth had prickled her lips, how much warmer his body was than hers, the strength of his arms when he’d drawn her closer, and the scent of Castile soap on his skin.
And… well, she’d imagined what it would be like to kiss him again. It was mortifying to remember these fantasies while sitting in the same room as him—so mortifying that she’d scarcely known what to say to him.
“Miss Ryder, you are quite clearly in some sort of trouble.” His voice was exactly as she’d remembered it, only better: low and with a certain rumble to it, despite his cultured accent. It was a voice that belonged to a rich man who indulged in bare-knuckle boxing. It was a voice that—even amidst her terror—seemed to warm her whole body.
But he was a viscount now. And what was she? An out-of-work lady’s companion. And as if that weren’t bad enough, now she’d dragged Wilkes and his gang out of whatever dark hole they inhabited and straight into Keynsham’s life.
She hugged her elbows and stood before the little fire, wishing that it could melt the chill and fear from her muscles. She couldn’t seem to stop the deep shivers that wracked her body. They were from more than the damp chill of the evening. They were from her nerves. Her mind kept replaying the terrifying, disorienting flight through the wet shrubbery, the realization that she was trapped in the square…
And then there was her terror at seeing Wilkes again—the way that he’d appeared out of the night, his greatcoat flapping like the wings of a bat… and the sickening crack of his fists hitting Keynsham.
And the instant that she’d seen the pistol in his hand.
She found herself squeezing her eyes closed, trying to shut out the sheer horror of the moment when she’d believed that Wilkes would murder Keynsham.
And yet, it made no sense. Why was Wilkes still pursuing her? It certainly wasn’t because he was in love with her. He’d never loved her. When she’d run away she’d assumed that if she disappeared, he’d quickly forget about her.
Well, it appeared that she’d badly misread the situation.
Her mind wouldn’t stop whirling through the list of bewildering questions: How could Wilkes have known that she was in London almost the instant that she’d arrived? And why would he bother to send his men after her? Any business that he’d had with her father was long since ended. After all, he’d been dead for over a year—as Wilkes well knew. He was the one who’d told her of his death.
She caught sight of her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror over the mantel. She looked dreadful, with pale cheeks, a reddened nose, and anxious eyes. She certainly wasn’t such a prize that a man would lose his head and scour London for her. Yet for some reason, Wilkes had.
She’d arrived that morning by stagecoach. Though she was hungry and tired, she’d gone directly to the first of the employment agencies on the list that she’d made. She couldn’t afford to be out of work for more than a few days.
But the proprietress hadn’t even looked at her character reference. Instead, she’d stared down her nose at her costume and said that she must dress more smartly if she hoped to make a respectable figure in some London lady’s sitting room.
Mustering all her dignity, she thanked the woman and left, trying to persuade herself not to mind. She might not possess any fashionable gowns now, but she was patient and thoughtful. She read aloud, played piano, answered and filed correspondence, and never complained about being sent on tiresome errands. Those were the qualities upon which she ought to be judged—not her wardrobe!
She raised her chin, squared her shoulders, and walked on toward the next agency on her list. She was too agitated to notice, at first, that a man who’d been loitering across the street looked familiar. It took her a few minutes to realize that he bore a strong resemblance to a certain petty criminal from the Hampshire town in which she’d grown up.
That was odd. Then again, there were more than a million people in the capital city—and she’d never actually seen the man—Dick Fenton—up close, much less spoken to him. Perhaps her mind was playing tricks on her. She hurried onward. And when she checked the street again after leaving the next office, she saw no one at all.
Fine. She had more pressing matters to think about.
But a few streets later, she realized her mistake. She was being followed—and not just by the first man, but by another man, too, one she’d never seen before.
Wilkes. The thought flew into her mind from seemingly nowhere, but she knew instantly that she was right.
Her heart pounding, she hurried up one street and down another. The faster she went, the faster they chased her. Fear made her feel sick and weak. A sudden fog was rising, and she had no idea which direction she was facing.
She hadn’t seen Wilkes in over a year! She had nothing that he could want! This wasn’t fair! Her brain chanted these futile thoughts in time with her hurrying footsteps. But the men kept following, and the thickening mist and her unfamiliarity with London made it impossible to know where she was. And then, dimly ahead, she saw trees and palings. She thought that she must have reached a park—and decided that she could hide in it.
It didn’t take long before she realized that she’d made yet another mistake. The “park” was only a square—large and densely planted but bounded on all four sides by streets. She’d thought that she could outsmart the men. Instead she’d outsmarted herself. She was trapped.
And if Keynsham hadn’t come…
But he had. She only wished that she could be happy about that.
She dropped her eyes. The mantel of this overdecorated bedroom was lined with a collection of enameled silver snuff boxes whose painted lids depicted eighteenth century beauties in the style of Fragonard. Scarcely thinking what she was doing, she picked one up.
The hinged lid swung open, revealing a different picture on its underside: The same smiling lady, but now with her skirts hiked above her waist and a kneeling gentleman… She gasped and dropped it back on the mantel as though it had burned her hands. What on earth…? Did people really…?
Curiosity got the better of her. She picked up the next box. On the outside, a coy beauty held a rose that matched her pink lips and lace-trimmed gown. Inside, however, she was bent forward over a bed, naked, while the frock-coated gentleman who stood behind her, his breeches pulled down, was…
“Your bath, miss.”
She jumped away from the mantel. The housemaids entered with huge pitchers of steaming water and filled the tub. When they were gone, she took off her damp and dirty gown and sank into the hot water, closing her eyes against the images of the silly erotic pictures that she’d just seen.
In what world were people rich enough to buy such costly, vulgar little trinkets?
Well, Keynsham’s world. Which wasn’t her world—and never would be. And she would do well to get that through her head for once and for all.
And the Keynsham—or rather, Lord Alford —who’d rescued her tonight had changed subtly over the past year. He seemed weary, cynical, older—maybe even bitter. His clothes, his carriage—not to mention the way that he’d been so matter of fact about this luxurious house and his father’s mistress… all of it only served to emphasize the gulf between them. He was a man of the world. And that world was a different world than hers.
She tried to concentrate on scrubbing the grime of travel from her pores. She must stop thinking about him… and the way that the slight rumble in his voice seemed to tickle her spine… and focus her mind on her next steps. It was plain that there were many things that she didn’t know. The only thing that she did know was that coming to London had been a mistake.
She’d known that Wilkes had been expanding his business into London. She’d heard it from their housekeeper, Mrs. Ryder. But almost everyone in the town had known, because Wilkes was—or had been, anyway—a braggart.
No doubt he was doing well for himself here. Indeed, judging by the look of his clothes, he was wealthy. But until today, she hadn’t given him or his criminal career much thought in over a year. So why was he still so interested in her?
She didn’t want to stay to find out. She must find a new position in some country town or isolated house and leave as soon as she could—tomorrow, if possible. The one comfort was that unless Wilkes had a gang the size of an army, he couldn’t search every corner of the kingdom. And as it happened, it was easy for a lady’s companion—expected to be a gentlewoman, but to efface herself like a servant—to disappear into the woodwork.
And, of course, she must never see Keynsham again. To be near him was to put him in danger. And until she could master her emotions, to be near him was to put her heart in danger too.
She sat before the fire, drying her hair. Keynsham had told her to stay in the house tomorrow until he could come. What he didn’t understand was that it would be far better—for both of them—if she did not.
She blew out the candles and slipped between the heavy, luxurious sheets. If there were one piece of comfort to which she could cling, it was that Wilkes couldn’t possibly know who Keynsham was.
And she would make certain to disappear again before he could find out.
Wilkes melted back into the shadows as a lone carriage rolled past. Fog filled the street. The lit windows in the house opposite were squares of light in the gloom.
Ordinarily, a job like watching a house was one that he sent his men to do. But this was Celia. Celia was not an ordinary job. Besides, his men had already let him down several times today. They were far too stupid to be reliable—as recent events had shown. The day had been nothing but a series of their cockups.
He had informants at all the principal coaching inns. After all, it was often necessary to ensure that a debtor didn’t make a run for the Continent. So, when a boy had arrived with the message that a young lady traveling alone and matching Celia’s description had arrived on a public stage from Lincoln, he’d dispatched Fenton and Gooley to bring her in.
How difficult could it possibly be for two grown men to snatch one young woman off the streets of London? And yet, they hadn’t managed to follow her for even a few minutes before she spotted them! One of the street urchins he paid to spy on his men and carry messages had come pelting to his office with the news that Celia was on the run.
Wilkes was downstairs and in his carriage almost before the boy had finished speaking. He ought to have handled this himself from the beginning. Well, soon it wouldn’t matter. Soon, Celia would understand that running from him was futile.
The thing that he hadn’t counted on was that someone would come to her rescue. And not just any someone—but a gentleman who had training in fighting.
Wilkes had always prided himself on being a quick study when it came to the ways of the gentry, but until he’d moved to London, he hadn’t realized how popular boxing was with a certain set of young aristocrats. It would have made him laugh, if he’d been the sort of man who laughed.
Which he wasn’t.
Didn’t these overbred fools understand that being rich meant not having to do your own fighting?
And what had the young lord been doing in Grosvenor Square on a damp, foggy March evening, anyway? What impulse could have led him to help Celia? It was impossible that there could have been any previous connection between them. She knew no one in London. Was he merely a drunken young aristocrat out looking for a brawl?
That would have been the most likely explanation… but for one thing: the gentle way that he’d lifted Celia into his carriage when she’d fainted. There had been something so unmistakably tender—almost possessive —in his manner that Wilkes’s blood had boiled as he stood in the shadows of the square’s garden, watching.
Because Celia was his. And he would teach the overbred fool that lesson the hard way. He was looking forward to it, in fact.
He folded his arms and studied the house. It was a huge, creamy stone affair with a porticoed front and a stone wall that separated the semi-circular drive from the street. As his father would have said, it wasn’t the sort of crib that would be easy to toss.
Of course, Wilkes had moved on from housebreaking… mostly. There were far easier ways to get what he wanted. Still, if there was one thing that his father had taught him, it was that every house had its weakness. Sometimes that weakness was a broken window latch, and sometimes it was a bribable servant. You never knew until you looked.
It hadn’t been at all difficult to find the place. After all, London’s wealthy could never resist a chance to announce who they were. The family coat of arms—surmounted by a gold viscount’s coronet, of course—was right there for all to see, painted on the door of Lord Alford’s very new, very expensive carriage.
The instant that Wilkes had his name, it had been an easy enough matter to learn the location of his house. And if there’d been any remaining doubt, the very same coat of arms appeared upon the glossy painted iron gates.
Ah. There was movement in the house. Someone—a servant, probably—was shutting the curtains in the windows on the first floor. He wondered who else lived here besides the viscount. A wife? Children? He’d find out. He knew people who knew things. And many of them owed him money.
This miserable fog sent its cold tentacles everywhere—down his collar, up his already-aching ribs. The young lord was a bruising fighter. Fortunately, there was a remedy for that. It was called a pistol.
He shifted his weight and drew his greatcoat closer about himself. It had, of course, been made by Weston. His hat was from Lock & Co. and his boots had been made by Hoby. The fact that he looked like a gentleman made his clients trust him to behave like one—a trust that, to a man, they came to regret.
Moving his operations to London had been a good decision. Not only were there richer clients to fleece, but in the teeming capital city—where everything was available for a price—a man could reinvent himself. People in the city had much shorter memories than they did in a country town, and money took on a self-cleaning property: When you had enough of it, people were eager to overlook how you’d got it.
Which was just as well, because he’d done any number of things that wouldn’t bear scrutiny. For that matter, he was still doing them.
And that, of course, was why he couldn’t allow Celia to slip through his hands again. As long as she was wandering about loose, there was a chance that she might discover the truth. It was only a small chance—she was only a woman, after all—but it was a chance nonetheless. And he never left anything to chance.
What he still couldn’t understand was how she’d managed to run away in the first place. She was a sheltered girl who’d never been farther from her home than Chichester! She hadn’t the slightest idea how to survive on her own. So how had she managed to defy him, slip out of his grasp, and disappear for an entire year?
Had the viscount helped her then? Was she his mistress?
No. It wasn’t possible. Besides, it was plain enough from her shabby clothes that wherever she’d been, she hadn’t been living well.
That would change when he married her. He liked to see a well-turned-out lady. She’d never want for new gowns—although, unfortunately, he’d have to keep her quite isolated. After all, he couldn’t risk her chattering to other ladies. That would lead to gossip… which would lead to questions… which would lead to suspicions.
Which was why Lord Alford’s chivalrous impulses—assuming that that was all that they were—were so dangerous. Celia didn’t need anyone putting ideas into her head and making her believe that she could escape the destiny that had awaited her since she was thirteen. Whether she liked it or not, she was just as much Wilkes’s as his ruby cufflinks were.
A carriage rolled slowly past, the driver keeping the horses to a walk in the dense mist. It was a cursed cold evening for March. If it hadn’t been for this uncanny fog, even Fenton and Gooley wouldn’t have lost Celia.
Well, now that she was in London, he’d have her back soon enough. He’d struck a bargain with her father, after all. And he wasn’t in the business of forgiving debts. He was in the business of collecting on them… as young Lord Alford was about to discover.