Читать книгу Regency Collection 2013 Part 1 - Хелен Диксон, Louise Allen, Хелен Диксон - Страница 42

Jack shook off the worst of the water and accepted a piece of towelling from the bemused groom to rub himself dry with. What the man thought of a gentleman suddenly appearing in the middle of the afternoon and sticking his head under the pump he was too well trained to betray. Jack made a business of rubbing his hair to kill time, then went back up the stairs to the door into the studio. All was quiet inside. Had Lily gone?

Best to give her time and not to risk a meeting. It was hard to accept he would never see her again. He sat down on the top step, leaned his back against the scratched panels and stared down into the dusty congestion of the coach shed. What had happened to them that things had come to this?

He shook his head. He knew what was wrong with him—love, a guilty conscience, wounded pride, worry and the sick after-effects of losing his temper, which was normally on a very tight rein indeed. Oh, yes, and probably the most painful case of desire he could ever remember.

But Lily—what had led her to make that astounding offer? Marriage! It was as perverse an idea as he could imagine. Had she had him investigated and now knew more about him than he had told her? No, surely not, she would hardly have had time for one thing, and for another, he did not think that Lily France was the woman to hold back if she discovered she had been deceived.

The room behind him was still silent. Jack got to his feet and opened the door on to emptiness. There was the scent of rosewater in the air, a crumpled handkerchief on the floor, two long red hairs on his pillow. The sheets were tangled, the blankets were on the floor. He added the hairs to the one already in his pocketbook and folded the handkerchief in with his own, pulled on a clean shirt, straightened the bed and rang for Percy. Then he sat down at the table and began to write.

St Martin-le-Grand was almost solid with traffic as the hackney carriage dropped Jack off outside the Bull and Mouth. A great wagon, its hoops bare, and looking more like the ribcage of a huge dead beast than anything else, blocked the centre of the road, while all around smaller vehicles jostled for position. The noise was immense, bludgeoning his brain, which already seemed bruised with thinking.

Jack wondered how any of the stages ever got out of the Bull and Mouth, let alone the mails from the General Post Office, just along the street. He paid the driver his shilling and a tip, glancing up as he did so at the vast dome of St Paul’s, dominating the skyline at the end of the street as though a gargantuan hot air balloon was rising into the air.

A pot boy came to take his bags, and, with a last glance at the looming cathedral, Jack followed him into the yard of the inn. When he had arrived in London it had been late evening and he had been too tired to stand and gaze at the famous yard, the three tiers of galleries rising up, with all manner of folk hanging over the rails to watch the scene in the yard below. As good as a play any day of the week, he had heard said about the yard of the Bull and Mouth.

‘You wanting a ticket for the stage, guv’nor?’ The pot boy was standing impatiently, loaded with bags.

‘No, I have a ticket for tomorrow evening. I need a room for tonight.’

‘Right you are, guv’nor, follow me.’ The lad led the way in through a door marked Coffee Room, threading through the noisy mass of people drinking, demanding coffee, snatching a bite of pie or pasty, talking at the top of their voices and creating chaos with their bags and umbrellas. Jack almost tripped over a parrot cage, was sworn at by its occupant and glared at by the elderly lady it belonged to. He spared a fleeting sympathetic thought for the occupants of the coach on which they were travelling and caught up with the pot boy.

‘Here you are, guv’nor.’ The lad dumped Jack’s bags unceremoniously at a hatch in the wall, took the proffered coin with a grin of thanks and wriggled back into the crowd.

As he had not booked, Jack had expected to find himself in a garret, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that, although he was up on the third floor, the room was clean and comfortable enough and the noise less than he had feared. He would have settled for the garret to get away from Chandler Street, and the constant comings and goings in the yard below were at least a colourful distraction. He leaned his elbows on the rail outside his room and watched, unwilling to go back into relative silence where he would have no escape from his thoughts.

What would Mrs Herrick make of his carefully penned apology for leaving without thanking her in person? And what would Lily make of his even more carefully composed note to her? He had taken pains to ensure that it was so innocuous that she could screw it up and throw it into the waste-paper basket.

Dear Miss France, please accept my thanks for the hospitality you have shown me and the care of your staff. Circumstances compel my return home as a matter of urgency and prevent my taking my personal leave of you and expressing my feelings as I would wish. I remain, your humble servant etc. etc.

‘Etcetera,’ he murmured to himself.

‘I beg your pardon, sir—did you address me?’ The young woman who had paused beside him, one lace-mittened hand resting daintily on the rail, opened blue eyes wide and smiled. Jack straightened and removed his hat. Inside, something very basic responded to the invitation in that mock-innocent gaze and to the complete contrast with the last young woman he had been this close to. There was no need to wonder just what this female’s occupation was, and little doubt that she was most accomplished at it.

Behind her the door to his room stood ajar. She moved her head coquettishly, the blonde curls peeping from under her bonnet flirting with the movement. What she offered was a straightforward monetary transaction, and suddenly that seemed a refreshingly straightforward answer to a gnawing need both to slake the ache that still possessed him and to banish the vision of a pair of wide green eyes, dark with hurt.

‘A dreadful crush, is it not? Might I offer you some refreshment?’ He gestured towards the door.

‘Oh, I am sure you can, sir.’ She just touched the tip of her tongue to her lower lip as she spoke and turned towards his chamber with a practised, inviting, swing of her hips.

Lily sat at her dressing table, the contents of her jewellery case spread out before her, her aching eyes dazzled with the reflection in the glass. Diamonds dripped from her ears and caressed her neck in a waterfall of light. She lifted her hands to her lips and rings flashed fire and bracelets seemed to pulse with flame in time with her heartbeat. In her hair diamond clips and pins trembled and sparkled like candles on a river at night.

‘Miss Lily?’ Janet sounded almost scared, as she had ever since Lily had swept in, thrown an old black cloak on the floor and demanded that it, and the gown she was wearing, should be burned. ‘Are you all right, Miss Lily? Have you a fever? Should I call Mrs Herrick?’

‘No. Be quiet, please, Janet, you are making my head ache. I am trying to decide what to wear to the Duchess of Oldbury’s ball in two days’ time.’

‘With the new ballgown, Miss Lily?’ The maid’s voice was eager; of all the gowns Lily had ever bought, this one was the most wonderful in her eyes. ‘Shall I bring it out?’

‘Yes, do that.’ Lily swivelled on her stool to watch as Janet opened a press and reverently lifted out a mass of fabric swathed in white linen sheets. Inside the linen was silver paper, then tissue, and under it all the gown. The sheath of white satin was overlaid with gauze, heavy with silver beads and silver embroidery, floss edged the hem like a cloud of swansdown and the bodice was low-cut to the point of daring and heavy with crystals.

‘I will try it on.’ Lily stood patiently, welcoming the pounding headache that filled her skull to the point of preventing thought. The correct undergarments were found, the stockings and the slippers, and finally the weight of the gown slid over her head.

‘Oh, Miss Lily!’ Janet stood back and looked at the column of sparkling white and silver that was her mistress. ‘You look like something out of a fairy tale, a diamond princess.’

‘Yes,’ Lily agreed, lifting her hands to her aching head. ‘All I need now is my prince.’ And she turned her back on the maid before she could see the tears running down her face like moving diamonds. ‘Send for Madame Hortense, there are changes I wish to have made.’

Four hours after he had arrived at the Bull and Mouth, Jack poured another bumper of rum into his glass, sat back against the settle and contemplated getting very drunk indeed. The drinking house—one could hardly call it an inn, that had too respectable a sound—was hot, almost bursting at the seams, and full of the most extraordinary mixture of people.

Draymen rubbed shoulders with flash coves, bruisers with top-of-the-trees sportsmen. There were more than a few black faces, seemingly representing a range of occupations from respectable tradesmen to down-at-heel servants, and someone was trying to set up a cock fight in the corner, with a number of top-lofty Corinthians already laying bets.

Only the women seemed to be of one uniform class. Jack smiled grimly and took a swig of his rum. Three hours ago he had paid off the little ladybird who had propositioned him at the inn—and he was as damnably unsatisfied now as he had been when he had met her.

Lily had as good as emasculated him, there was no other word for it. Not physically, oh, no. His body had been more than willing, damn it, and yet, his mind would not let him do it. To take another woman like that would have been to betray Lily.

He could not have done it to save his life and, as a result, he was out of pocket by several guineas he could ill afford, his amour propre was at rock bottom and his body was furiously at odds with his brain. There seemed to be only one answer: to get blind drunk and to hell with all women.

The pot boy at the Bull and Mouth had sent him here, with a knowing grin. ‘Want a bit of the low life, guv’nor? I can tell you just the place. All the toffs go there when they want to slum it, you’ll enjoy it, see if you don’t.’

Jack snapped his fingers at the serving girl and watched sardonically as she winked back at him, adjusting her already perilously low bodice even lower before she brought him a fresh bottle. He would forswear all women, become a monk …

‘Damme, but she’s a tasty little bit, never mind her parentage.’ The drawling voice from the settle, set back to back with his own, jarred on Jack’s nerves. Some bloody aristocrat, out slumming. He smiled at himself for his own hypocritical thoughts, and let his head fall back against the greasy wood. ‘And those pert little titties, and those big green eyes, all topped off with a fortune that would make a man drool, that’s what I call temptation.’

‘I heard Randall’s had her already. He’ll be at the Oldbury ball, night after next, what’s the betting he’ll take her back?’ Another voice, lascivious.

‘Not he. And so what if he has had her? So what? For the money she has, I’d take Lily France if she’d been tupped by the whole of the Peerage and the House of Commons after them. And she’s got spirit too, I’ve got the bruised balls to show for it. But she won’t be so fast with her knee next time, little—’

‘Lord Dovercourt, I presume?’ The rum seemed to have drained out of Jack’s bloodstream as rapidly as it had entered it. He felt stone-cold sober and angry enough to kill. The young man sprawled at the table goggled up at him as though he had appeared through a trap door in the floor, like the Devil in a melodrama.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘My name is Lovell and I take exception to you bandying a lady’s name around in those terms. If you give me your word you will not repeat it again, I may—No, what the hell, I am going to beat the living daylights out of you anyway.’ Jack reached out, took Dovercourt by the neckcloth and hauled him to his feet. ‘I cannot begin to tell you how much pleasure this is going to give me,’ he remarked conversationally, making a fist with his right and fetching his protesting victim a square punch to the jaw.

It lifted Dovercourt off his feet and sent him sliding across the table, taking with him his companions’ tankards and the dish of oysters the landlord had only just placed on the table. Jack found himself confronted by two new opponents, both with porter and oyster juice on their flash suits, both pot valiant with drink and indignation. ‘Come on, then.’ He raised both fists, suddenly happier than he had been since he got to London. ‘Which of you wants to be first?’

The fight was spectacular, bloody, and rapidly spread to encompass virtually every male occupant of the Cat and Bottle, two pairs of fighting cocks, a brace of pit bull terriers, the landlady with a stout staff and three of the serving girls who had a private score to settle.

Twenty glorious minutes later Jack found himself out on the street, his arm around the shoulder of the man with the pit bull terriers and his shirt covered in blood. ‘You hurt, my boy?’ the dog owner demanded. ‘By old Harry, we raised a fair breeze in there. Look at the state of you now. Do you need a doctor?’

Jack looked down. ‘No, not much of that’s mine, I thank you.’ Several victims of the brawl staggered out, assisted by the landlady’s stout arm and a mouthful of eye-wateringly bad language. One of the black tradesmen grinned at Jack.

‘You can fight, guv’nor. Thought of taking it up professional-like?’

‘No.’ Jack shook his head. ‘No, that was personal.’

‘Well, come on then, lad, let’s be finding another touting ken.’ The dog owner whistled up his animals and slapped Jack on the back. ‘What do you say? Shall we make a batch of it? Night’s not old yet.’

‘Not for me.’ Jack shook his head and wondered if all his teeth were still with him. ‘If you can give me a steer back to the Bull and Mouth, I’d take it kindly.’

He strolled back in the direction the man indicated, taking his bearings from the looming mass of St Paul’s in the distance and whistling softly between bruised lips as he went.

Well, that was Dovercourt dealt with. It had been fretting at the back of his mind that he was walking away from those two. But what to do about Randall? It was too much to hope that he would find him slumming in some backstreet boozing ken, and, now he knew for certain that Randall was slandering Lily’s good name, something had to be done about it.

Jack found he was twisting the worn gold signet ring on his left hand. Anything that had been engraved on it was long gone, so it was safe to wear. He glanced down at it. Why not? You are leaving town after all. But not yet, not for another two nights. Coach tickets can be changed.