Page 6 of To Tame the Wild Rake
“I assume this is about school?” Charlotte prompted.
Tony twisted to face her. In his unease, he forgot to speak the form of English he’d picked up from her and the other teachers, absorbing both accent and vocabulary like a sponge. Charlotte had less ease with his dialect than he with hers, but managed to pick up a scornful negative, followed by an explanation she could make neither head nor tail of.
He must have seen her bewilderment, for he took a deep breath and began again. “It’s the Beast, me—my lady. He sent his men for me, but one of his pets used to be a mate of mine, back before the Beast collared him, and he…” He stopped mid-sentence and turned on Yahzak.
“Here, you can’t say nothin’. If’n he tumbles… If the Beast finds out how I knew to run, my mate’s neck won’t be worth a farthing. Powerful nasty when he’s crossed, is the Beast. He’s, like, the duke of the tenements.”
“I promise my silence, çaga, on all matters that do not touch on the safety of my kagan and his family.” The boy’s face said the words did not satisfy, and Yahzak added to them. “My lady’s uncle, who is a real duke.”
“The Beast is real enough to us as live in the tenements,” Tony argued, which was true enough. The villain who ruled the particular noxious slum Tony called home had crossed paths with the Winshires before, if the intelligence recently brought to Charlotte’s uncle was true.
He had once been known as the Duke of Devil’s Kitchen, and had, in that persona, twice chosen the wrong side to back, first providing assassins for hire to Charlotte’s uncle’s enemies, and then involving himself in a plot against her cousin Ruth and Ruth’s now husband, the Earl of Ashbury.
The Winshires had crushed his organisation after the second incident, but the villain himself had escaped custody with some of his accomplices. Winshire had recently learned that, instead of fleeing to the West Indies, as they had believed, he had hidden somewhere and was now taking a large chunk of the slums back under his control.
Opinion was divided on whether to go in after him. “We know his weaknesses,” Charlotte’s cousin Sutton had argued. “Destroy him altogether and another will rise that we have to learn all over again.”
One of those weaknesses was pretty children. He kept several with him at all times, dressed in silk and treated like household pets, right down to the gold and silver collars they wore around their necks. No wonder Tony had run.
“You can stay here tonight and tomorrow,” Charlotte decided. “I’m travelling into the country to a house party the day after that. You can come with me. As a groom, perhaps? The Beast won’t be able to reach you there.”
Aldridge could not sense the presence of Lady Charlotte behind him. The idea was ridiculous. And he could not possibly smell the delicate mix of herbs and flowers that drove him wild every time he was in Lady Charlotte's vicinity.
For a start, she would rather die than enter the chambers of any man, let alone the notorious Marquis of Aldridge.
For another, he was not in a position to sense anything outside of the strong musky perfume of the two naked women on the bed before him. They must have drenched themselves with it before casting themselves onto the sheets. Certainly, they could not have crept past his footmen to intrude on his peace while stinking like a bordello. Lady Thirby had gone too far, this time. And she’d brought her friend.
He’d been having a bath in his dressing room when he was called to deal with the intruders. He found the pair of them already naked in the big bed in the chamber he had long since abandoned to the ghosts of pastbacchanales. Apparently, they expected adanse de trois—rumour had it that neither went anywhere without the other, but he had not thought the comment quite so literal.
They were doomed to be disappointed. Beyond a mild stirring of his least respectable body parts, he was not particularly tempted by the two ladies, which was depressing in its own way. Using them to submerge his discontent in physical pleasure would show no respect to them or to himself. Now he had to get rid of them.
Perhaps he should claim a head cold or an emergency on one of the estates. The one in the far north of Scotland might be sufficiently distant.
Suddenly, Lady Thirby stiffened, abandoning her odalisque pose to point at something behind her. "What is she doing here?"
Standing in his doorway, her lips pressed into a tight line and her face white except for two spots of high colour on her cheekbones, was the woman of his fondest dreams. And she didn't look happy to be there.
A cold breeze down below warned him that his hastily-donned banyan had caught on the bed as he turned. He hurriedly wrapped it back around him, veiling that part of him that the lady could not have expected to see.
Behind him, Mrs Meecham whined, "She's never here for a romp, Margaret. She's one of the Winderfield twins."
Aldridge sighed. He could not imagine what sort of a crisis had brought Saint Charlotte here, but clearly, he was going to have to deal with it. "My lady," he said, "if you would be kind enough to wait in the next room, I'll join you in a moment."
She pulled her fascinated gaze from his lower torso, and glared at him. "You’ll need clothing. You have to come with me and we have no time to waste."
"He can't go out," Mrs Meecham objected. "Aldridge," (when Lady Charlotte said nothing but just retreated into the next room), "you can't go. We came to play."
Lady Charlotte said nothing; just retreated into the next room. Aldridge sighed. "Ladies, I have already explained that I am not available for such games. Not this evening. Not at all. And now, I must leave you. The messenger—who, by the way, neither of you saw,"—he gave them the ducal look learned from his father and honed over years of acting in his father’s place—"brings me word of an appointment I cannot miss. My heartiest regrets.”
He raised his voice. “Richards!” The butler must have been hovering at the door, for he was bowing to Aldridge before his name was out of Aldridge’s mouth. “Escort these two ladies to a room where they can dress, and arrange for a carriage to take them home. Oh, and Richards? Find out how they got in.”
He bowed to the two ladies, dashed back to his dressing room to grab the clothing already laid out for him, pulled on his pantaloons and shirt, and grabbed the rest. He could shrug into his waistcoat and coat and tug on his boots while she told him what the problem was. It was a little late to worry about appearing in front of her improperly dressed.
In his sitting room, Lady Charlotte was striding to and fro, turning at each end of her path in a swirl of skirts. Her brows were drawn together and she was biting her upper lip. She became aware of his entry and stopped to face him. “You said I was to ask you if I needed something.” The edge to her challenging tone hinted that she expected him to reject her.Never.
“I told you I was at your command,” he reminded her. “That hasn’t changed. Will you permit me to sit, my lady, to put my boots on?”
She gave a huff of displeasure. “We don’t have time for drawing room manners.”
