Regency Rogues and Rakes: Silk is for Seduction / Scandal Wears Satin / Vixen in Velvet / Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed / A Rake's Midnight Kiss / What a Duke Dares. Loretta Chase
drowned, dry him off and see that he’s fed.”
A short time later, she was shaking off the wet from her carriage dress, and Longmore was treating the landlord with the same imperious impatience he’d shown Dowdy and her accomplice: “Yes, two rooms. My aunt requires her own. And you’d better send a maid to her.”
“Your aunt?” Sophy said after the landlord had hurried away to see about rooms.
Amusement lit Longmore’s dark eyes and a tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I always travel with my aunt, don’t you know? Such a dutiful nephew. Luckily, I’ve scads of them.”
That was all it took: one rakish glint in his dark eyes and a ghost of a smile. Her heart gave a skip and pumped heat upward and outward and especially downward. She had to fight with herself not to rush to the nearest window and pull it open, storm or no storm. She needed a sharp dose of cold water.
She told herself to settle down. He’d used that look on hundreds of women, probably, with the same effect. And she was a Noirot. She was the one who was supposed to slay men with a glance.
In any event, she supposed she ought to be glad he owned at least a modicum of discretion.
As fille de joie euphemisms went, “aunt” was probably more useful than “wife.” Half the world would probably recognize him, and that half would know he wasn’t wed or likely to be anytime soon, if ever.
He took out his pocket watch. “This is ridiculous. We haven’t covered eight miles and it’s nearly half past ten o’clock.”
“She wouldn’t travel in this weather, surely?” Sophy said in a low voice, though they were alone in the small office. “If she did visit the park, wouldn’t she stop at an inn nearby when it grew dark?”
“I hope so,” he said. “But who knows what’s in her mind?”
“She has Davis,” Sophy said. “She wouldn’t let her mistress endanger herself.”
“Clara can be obstinate,” he said. “My hope is the horse. Wherever she tries to go, she’ll have the devil of a time changing horses. The cabriolet only wants one, but it needs a powerful one. Inns reserve those for the mail and stage coaches. She’ll probably find it easier to keep the one she set out with. Which means she’ll need to stop at intervals—and stay for a good while—to give the creature food and drink and rest.”
Sophy knew little about the care of horses. She and her sisters had had enough to do in learning not only their trade but a lady of leisure’s accomplishments as well. This was no small feat for girls who had precious little leisure. But it was unthinkable merely to learn a trade. While the DeLuceys and Noirots might all be greater or lesser rogues and criminals, they never forgot they were blue bloods. Too, they knew that refined accents and manners vastly improved the odds of luring unsuspecting ladies and gentlemen into their nets.
Learning dressmaking and learning to be a lady—not to mention acquiring other less virtuous Noirot and DeLucey skills—left no time for the finer points of horsemanship. Sophy could distinguish general types of vehicle, and she could appreciate a handsome horse, but for the rest she had to trust Longmore’s judgment.
“I think I’ll send Fenwick to insinuate himself among the stablemen,” he said with a glance at the door through which their host had departed. “They’ll have noticed the cabriolet if it passed, or they’ll have heard about it from post boys. We’ll get more detailed gossip from them than from any tollgate keepers.”
The innkeeper reappeared then, a plump maidservant following. While she led Sophy up to her room, Longmore stayed behind, talking to the landlord.
Meanwhile, less than ten miles away, in Esher’s Bear Inn, Lady Clara sat by the fire, studying her copy of Paterson’s Roads.
“Portsmouth,” she told Davis. “We’re already on the road, and it’s only a day’s journey.” She calculated. “Not sixty miles.”
“It’s not twenty miles back to London, my lady,” Davis said.
“I’m not going back,” Clara said. “I won’t go back to him.”
“My lady, this isn’t wise.”
“I’m not wise!” Clara jumped up from her chair, the guidebook clattering to the floor. “I declined a duke because he didn’t love me enough. Poor Clevedon! He at least liked me.”
“My lady, everybody who knows you loves you.”
“Not Adderley,” Clara said bitterly. “How could I be so blind? But I was. I believed all those romantic words he’d taken out of books.”
“Some gentlemen can’t express themselves,” Davis said.
“I’d almost got myself to believe that,” Clara said. “But that wasn’t the point, was it? That wasn’t the real problem. How humiliating that I needed Lady Bartham to point out the simple fact: If he’d truly loved and respected me, he would never have done what he did.”
Her ladyship hadn’t said it quite so baldly as that. But Lady Bartham never insulted or hurt anybody plainly and honestly. She’d slither about the subject like a snake, and every so often, when you weren’t expecting it, she’d dart at you, tiny fangs sinking in, so tiny you barely felt them … until a moment later, when the poison seeped in.
There was a moment’s silence, then, “Portsmouth is a naval town, my lady. Very rough. Sailors and brothels and—”
“It’s near,” Clara said. “It’s a port. I can get on a ship and sail far away. It can’t be so very dangerous. People go there to tour and sightsee. I’m ruined. Why shouldn’t I see the world? I haven’t even seen England! Where do I ever go? To our place in Lancashire and back to London and back to Lancashire. Since Grandmamma Warford died, I don’t go anywhere. She used to take me away, and we had such fun.” She swallowed. She still missed her grandmother. No one could take her place. Clara had never felt more in need of her counsel than now.
“She used to drive her own carriage, you know,” she went on, though Davis knew perfectly well. But Clara needed to talk, and her maid wouldn’t shriek at her, as Mama did. “She was an excellent whip. We’d drive out to Richmond Park and visit her friends there.” They would go out to Richmond Park and Hampton Court for a day’s outing.
Clara had driven to the park today, hoping somehow her grandmother’s spirit would find her, and tell her what to do. She’d left the park no wiser, and gone on to Hampton Court. None of Grandmamma’s wisdom came to her there, either, and even a living person, Grandmamma’s great friend, Lady Durwich, had no advice but for her to turn back and stop being such a ninny.
Clara wasn’t sure where she was going. To Portsmouth, to start with. After that … somewhere, anywhere. But not back to London. Not back to him.
Sophy’s room was small but clean, and the maidservant was as eager to please as Sophy expected her to be. People of every social degree judged by externals. While an upper-class accent and fine clothes were sure to win attentive service, generous tips and bribes could raise the quality of service to unadulterated obsequiousness.
Not only was Sophy expensively dressed but she had ready money. Marcelline had made Leonie provide funds for tips and bribes, and Sophy wasn’t stingy with her coin. She wanted supper and a fire and a bath and she was happy to pay for them.
She got all three quickly, without fuss, despite the hour and the sudden influx of storm refugees.
As it turned out, she was in too much turmoil, about Lady Clara and about the shop, to do more than pick at supper. Since she was, at the best of times, a light sleeper, she knew she was in no state to attempt sleeping until after she’d had a bath. That would quiet her. Certainly she’d feel better once she washed the ghastly egg mixture out of her hair. She’d brought her favorite soap, scented with lavender and rosemary.
Though the inn servants had brought a very small