Chapter Eighteen
That night, Mel could not resist prodding at Allan’s casual remark about courting her. When they had slipped under the bedclothes and he reached for her, she said, “Thank you for supporting my right to be there this evening.”
“Of course. You have the same right as my brothers’ wives. More, because you are responsible for us fighting back.”
The same right as the wives? What did he mean by that? She needed to be more direct. “You said you were courting me?”
“Of course, I am,” said Allan. “If you have not noticed, I need to try harder,” and he took her mouth with his own, stopping further discussion.
Surely, he did not intend marriage! Mel had far too much sense than to hope for any such thing.
*
The following day was the second of the new year, and they had few plans—an outing in the afternoon, and dinner with all the brothers and their wives.
Tonight’s chief topic would be thinking of a diversion or two to make certain that Teign and most of his bullies were not at home when Allan led the selected peers to make an assault on the cellars.
The dukes from last night were choosing the credible witnesses, who had to be young and fit enough to climb steep stairs and walk some distance along the maze of tunnels and corridors beneath the mansion.
And the Kempburys had taken responsibility for providing the professional fighters to protect those witnesses. In two days’ time, both sides of the plan—diversion and assault team—needed to be ready.
Mel and Allan had breakfasted and were relaxing in the morning room when the butler came to tell them they had visitors. Mel braced herself for another encounter with Teign. It wasn’t him, though it was his doing.
The butler returned with Harmony, Harriet, Benjie, Phineas, and Lydia. Also, the two leaders of their protection teams, who left it to Phineas to make their apologies.
“Our house was set on fire,” Phineas explained. “Then, when we tried to escape the flames, we were attacked. They tried to carry off the two girls. Moriarty’s men saved us and brought us here. They said if we were here, it would be easy to defend us. Do you think Lady Baldwin will mind?”
Clara declared she was delighted to have them, “Though horrified at the need, of course. And the men from Moriarty Protection saved the day again. We must be very grateful to them. Children, let us go and inspect the nursery. Mrs. White, Mr. Eastwood, I shall have bedrooms made up for you.”
The children were soon settled at a table in the schoolroom, carrying on with their lessons as if nothing had happened. Indeed, the adults were more shaken than the children.
The bodyguards had managed to capture two of the assailants while driving off the others.
One of the bodyguards had delivered the men to Mrs. Moriarty, their boss, while the others escorted their charges to Clara’s house.
Perhaps this would be their due cause—a provable offense for which they could have the marquess detained.
However, when Mrs. Moriarty reported a couple of hours after Harmony and the others arrived, the news was disappointing.
Neither assailant knew anything about who had employed their gang.
“I have a few leads to follow up, to find the person who took instructions for the job, and therefore what he knows about the man who paid him. We shall keep at it,” she said.
Meanwhile, she agreed that the newcomers should stay in the household.
“I shall leave all three teams in place. Teign will go after Lord Kemble first and foremost, as the leader of the brothers, and then his daughter, as a lever to move Kemble. It is convenient to have these two together, now we know the marquess has found where Miss Lydia was hiding.”
After she left, Mel and Allan spent some time with the children, and then prepared to go out in public again, to keep Society talking.
The rain continued, so the brothers and their ladies met at the London Museum, and chatted as they strolled around, looking at the exhibits. “When this is over,” Allan said to Mel, “we must come back with the children.”
Quite apart from the attack on Harmony’s home, two of the other coaches had been ambushed last night on their way home from the Dellboroughs. The assailants were driven off. Nothing else of significance had happened, at least to their knowledge.
They all went back to Clara’s for a planning session and then dinner. That, at least, was the theory, but Harriet and Lydia each had their sole remaining parent close at hand for a change, and were waiting to pounce as Mel and Allan followed Baldwin and Clara in the door.
As the other six couples followed, Harriet drew back, suddenly shy, but Lydia had no such reservations. “Papa and Mrs. Blackmore, we need to show you the art we have been doing this afternoon. Also, Mrs. Blackmore, please will you tell us a story before bed? Your stories are so good.”
“Are uncles permitted to come to see the art?” Baldwin asked, and Clara added, “And aunts?”
In fact, everyone wanted to come, and so the sixteen of them crowded into the school room. With the three children, plus Phineas and Harmony, there was not much space to move around, but the two girls were delighted to show their paintings.
Benjie, not to be left out, introduced everybody to his pet mice. “I had to bring them with me, Auntie Mel. I couldn’t leave them in the burning house, and if I let them out, they might have been eaten by a cat.”
Mel was impressed with how calmly Clara accepted this unusual addition to the household. “We have a cat in this house, Benjie,” Clara said. “Make certain they stay shut in their cage at all times, for cats are very fast, and they do not understand the difference between tame mice and wild.”
One could only hope that the boy obeyed, and that there was no carnage in the schoolroom.
“Can we come and watch the dancing later?” Lydia begged.
“We are not planning to dance later,” Allan told her. “Are we, Clara?”
“Not tonight,” Clara said, “but we have nine couples here. Why not go out into the long gallery now and dance?”
And so, they did, with the ladies and some of the gentlemen taking turns on the piano in the long hall that did sterling service as a place for children to play and adults to walk when the weather was inclement, as a picture gallery, and—as now—as a dance space.
It was ten couples, in fact, for the three children joined in, though the impromptu entertainment ended with the nine ladies—the seven wives plus Mel and Harmony—dancing a circle dance.
After that, the children returned to the nursery, and the adults to the drawing room.
The discussion on the rescue mission to the cellars was enlivened by the teasing and camaraderie of the brothers.
As Mel had observed over the days since she first met them, they were fast friends.
Being men, they often expressed their affection for one another in insults, mocking comments, and even outbreaks of shoving and fisticuffs.
On the whole, Allan was immune from physical attacks, though he came in for his share of pointed comments.
Baldwin, in particular, had a habit of producing embarrassing memories at apt moments.
One example was a comment about not letting Allan take charge of any keys, which led to chortles and a story about their early days in the tower, after they had first discovered the hidden doors to the stairs and had begun the adaptations, such as the trapdoor, that hid their secrets still further.
Apparently, it was they who had installed the lock on the door to the lower tower, and hidden it behind a brick.
Allan had promptly lost the ring with two keys given to him by the locksmith.
It had been discovered a week later, when they were on the point of blindfolding the locksmith and bringing him in to open his own lock.
“It was on the floor of the necessary,” Hudson reported, with glee. “Kicked under the basket of rags. One can only guess how it got there.”
By contrast, the ladies showed their growing friendships by sharing interests and life stories, supporting one another with encouraging remarks.
Even those who had not previously known one another well were merging into a sisterhood through their loyalty to their husbands, and they willingly opened their community to Mel and even to Harmony, whose only connection to them was through Mel.
The ladies insisted on being part of the planning process, but said little until Mel declared that she would be part of the assault team.
“No,” Allan said. “A fight is no place for a lady.” Most of his brothers murmured their agreement.
“Allan, one or more ladies must be there. You will be dealing with an unknown number of women who have been repeatedly brutalized. If you want them to co-operate with their own rescue, you will need us.”
“She is right, Allan,” said Thomasina, and the ladies all nodded.
“I am willing to come,” said Clara. “I can help if any of them need immediate medical care before being moved.”
“I do not like it,” Allan complained.
“I don’t, either,” said Baldwin. “But Melody is right. And the points she makes are ones none of the rest of us would have considered without her.”
The clock was standing at thirty minutes past the hour of six when Clara called a halt so that people could change for dinner, which would be at half past seven. Mel went up to the nursery with Harmony and Allan and gave the children their promised story, then changed into a dinner gown.
One of the benefits of dressing as a man had been fewer changes, but she did enjoy seeing Allan’s eyes drop to her chest when she returned downstairs.
Her dress was one of several Harmony had made for her, and the bodice was lower than the gowns she usually wore, and another gown that she generally wore with a fichu.
Harmony had assured her that many ladies of high estate wore their gowns even lower, and the last week of socializing had confirmed the claim. Even so, Mel had avoided the gown until tonight, when the close familial environment gave her the confidence to give it an outing.
Appearing in public naked from just an inch above her nipples made her self-conscious, so Allan’s burning look was a confidence booster.
Even so, she was careful all evening not to lean forward.
At least until she and Allan were alone.
Perhaps she might leave the gown on and lean forward when he arrived to join her.
It would be interesting to discover just what that look promised.