Anne Barbour Read online

  Devon had taken Zoe up in his curricle. Mina didn’t know what to think. Rather, she thought so many conflicting things that her head was in a whirl. Devon was doing as she had asked him; he was engaging Zoe. However, she had also asked him not to engage Zoe, and so he wasn’t obliging her in the least.

  Perhaps he meant to please Mina by occupying Zoe’s attention. Perhaps he meant to drive her to distraction, in which case he was succeeding well. And perhaps he wasn’t thinking of Mina at all.

  Why should he be thinking of Mina, when he was with Zoe? Mina reminded herself he was also with Nell. She found some slight comfort in thinking of Devon at the mercy of Zoe and Nell.

  He would charm his guests, of course. Devon Kincaid could charm the birds down from their boughs.

  He could have, had he wished, charmed Mina out of her stays.

  He might, that very moment, be charming Zoe out of hers.

  Not in an open carriage. Not with Nell present to protest, and Nell would protest if Devon devoted so much effort to anyone else.

  Mina couldn’t imagine much effort would be required.

  It would not have been, in her case.

  Yet Devon had not expended even that little bit of effort, and Mina sat here brooding, and there was scant consolation in the knowledge she had brought this misery down on herself.

  The door abruptly opened. Startled, Grace dug her claws into Mina’s thigh. Romeo uttered a high pitched sneezing sound and scrambled to his feet.

  George Eames strode into the room. His coat was creased and his hair rumpled, as if he’d grasped great handfuls of it and tugged.

  Mina’s heart sank. The arrival of one’s solicitor in such a sorry state could not herald good news. “Mr. Eames! What has happened to you?” Romeo ambled forward, intrigued by the scent of the newcomer’s pomade.

  George sidestepped the goat and, without waiting for an invitation, dropped into a chair. “I was in the park with Lady Anne, engaged in a serious conversation, when your cousin walked up to us bold as brass. You realize, I hope, that she has maggots in her brain. She said I should make Lady Anne jealous. Jealous! Of her?”

  Was this jealousy Mina felt, regarding Zoe and Dev? She hoped she was above such petty stuff, and feared she was not. “Surely it cannot be so bad.”

  “Can it not? That pestilential pig-widgeon insinuated that Nell is my child.”

  “Surely Lady Anne does not believe—”

  “Who knows what Lady Anne believes?” George lowered his head into his hands, thereby thwarting Romeo, who was poised to nibble on his hair. “She is too well-mannered to speak her mind. One thing is certain: my hopes are all dashed.”

  There was a lot of that going around. Mina stroked Grace’s soft fur. “What did she say? Lady Anne, I mean, not Zoe.”

  George replied, with loathing, “When next I see your brass-faced bacon-witted cousin, I shall have several words to say to her! Lady Anne was shocked, but only said that she must think. And what she must think is that I am a pretty scoundrel. A complete knave.”

  Lady Anne sounded like a paragon, and also deadly dull. Mina did not air this opinion, but asserted vaguely that things would eventually come right. She didn’t believe her own words for a moment, not as regarded Mr. Eames, and not as regarded herself.

  Loversalls, alas, had a long acquaintance with matters not ending well. Romola leapt off the battlements; Odo drank a fatal dose of poison; Casimir visited the menagerie in the Tower and got eaten by a bear.

  On the other hand, Great-Great-Great-Great Uncle John fell into a fit of choking after eating fruit in the middle of a play at the Theater Royal, and was saved by a prostitute known as Orange Moll, who stuck her finger down his throat.

  Ironic, that Mina should realize how much she wanted Devon only after she handed him to Zoe.

  She glanced at the window and let out a little shriek, waking Grace, who hissed. Romeo looked up, the remnants of one of the green linen draperies dangling from his mouth.

  Mina rang for a servant. Figg and a second footman wrestled the goat from the room. Grace yawned, rearranged Mina’s skirts to her satisfaction, and resumed her nap.

  George, during this distraction, regained control of his emotions. He had no faith that everything would turn out right — as a solicitor, George was all-too-well acquainted with instances when everything did not — but realized belatedly that Mrs. Moxley wasn’t in fine fettle. He suspected she had been wrestling with troubles of her own.

  “I apologize for my outburst. Your cousin’s hen-witted conduct is not what brought me here. I recently discovered that Abercorn the younger’s maternal grandmother resides in Bath. The old lady and Abercorn Senior have never rubbed along well together, but she dotes on the son. Senior will think Junior has gone to ask her to haul his coals out of the fire.”

  Mina said, “I wonder if she knows about Nell.”

  “If not, I daresay she will before this business is done. Frankly, I could care less.” So savage was George’s tone that Grace stirred, departed Mina’s lap, and curled up in his instead.

  George eyed the cat. He was unfamiliar with the philosophy that held most troubles could be eased by the presence of a purring feline.

  “I am so sorry,” sighed Mina. “About everything. You will be wishing us to Hades, and regretting you ever became involved in our affairs.”

  As to that, George couldn’t argue. But his companion didn’t deserve his censure, so far as he knew, and therefore he merely said, “Oh, well.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The supper box was softly illuminated by variegated lamps. On the rear wall, painted milkmaids wearing flat hats and gowns with ruffled cuffs danced to the music of a wooden-legged fiddler. Outside, in the Grove, an orchestra softly played.

  It was wonderfully romantic. Rather, it might have been romantic, were Zoe there with someone else. Mr. Kincaid had consumed a remarkable amount of wine — the wines provided at the Garden were of the best vintage, even when served in a kettle and ‘burnt’ — while ignoring the rest of his supper (chicken and assorted biscuits, cheese cakes and wafer-thin slices of ham), along with herself.

  He scowled at her. “You still haven’t told me the purpose of this expedition. And spare me further drama about how dull your life has been.”

  Zoe widened her eyes at him. “But my life has been dull. Or it was dull until my wretched husband wagered me at play. Have you forgot? First I had to escape, and now that I have escaped, everyone is trying to keep me well wrapped in lamb’s wool! Even you are suspicious of me. It is most unfair.”

  Devon hadn’t drunk so much that he trusted his companion. “That horse is troubled with corns, my girl.”

  She fluttered her lashes. “Am I?”

  “Are you what?”

  “Your girl. I surmised I must be when—”

  “Aargh.”

  “Are you unwell?”

  Devon reached for the wine bottle, found it empty; looked for a waiter, found none. By these circumstances, his mood was not improved. “Allow me to refresh your memory. I escorted you here tonight in an attempt to spare Mina additional distress.”

  Zoe tilted her head so she might regard him all the better. “Mina is the object of your affections! She will be very jealous when I tell her you brought me to Vauxhall. Where are you going?” she added, as he pushed back his chair.

  “In search of the waiter,” Devon retorted. “To get through this evening, I will need much more to drink.”

  Finally! She had feared he would never leave. Zoe sat quietly until Mr. Kincaid exited the box, then pulled the hood of her domino over her bright curls. Beneath the domino she wore a simple muslin gown, one that would come off easily, due to the stitches she had loosened, if someone attempted to disrobe her, which she was determined someone would.

  And now it was time for her rendezvous with a rakehell.

  She slipped out of the box into the Grove, a square enclosed by Vauxhall’s principal walks, or colonnades, and the garden’
s western wall. Each colonnade was lined with supper boxes, and lighted by festoons of shimmering lamps hung among the boughs, twinkling suns and stars and constellations in shades of gold and green, red and blue. In the center stood a temple, where the orchestra was housed.

  The musicians struck up another selection. Zoe hurried from the Grove into a colonnade, mingling easily among the many people promenading there.

  Vauxhall was crowded on this as every summer evening. Revelers strolled in all directions along the tree-lined gravel thoroughfares: the Grand Walk, a stately avenue of elms nine hundred feet long and thirty feet wide; the South Walk, spanned by three triumphal arches which were a part of a realistic painting of the Ruins of Palmyra; the Grand Cross Walk, which ran through the garden at right angles to these. Even the lesser pathways boasted exotic faux minarets and splashing waterfalls; pavilions, lodges, groves, grottoes, lawns and shadowy columned ways. If a person didn’t know what she was about, she could become quite lost.

  Zoe knew precisely what she was about. She had discovered at an early age that servants could almost always be bribed.

  How annoying, that the Black Baron should turn up at Moxley’s when she wasn’t there to greet him. Zoe had accused Mina of taking advantage of the opportunity to secure his attentions for herself. Mina had in turn aired her opinion of Zoe’s recent actions regarding George Eames and Lady Anne. At the conclusion of this heated interaction, Zoe had claimed a sick headache and retired to her room and from there escaped the house.

  Astonishing, how certain people couldn’t see beyond the noses on their face.

  Like the gamesters who frequented Moxley’s, who got so caught up in gambling frenzy that they played beyond their means and could not stay the course; wound up purse-pinched, without a feather to fly with, run quite off their legs.

  Zoe was immune to gambling fever. Serving as the basis for a wager left a person with a distaste for games of chance.

  Still, the business was fascinating, as were all the ways in which desperate gamblers tried to cheat Dame Fortune. At Zoe’s request, Samson had explained up-hills, false dice which ran high, and down-hills, their opposite; the corner- and the middle-bend and how to slip the cards; showed her the trick of sauter le coupe, by which a card placed in the middle of the pack was imperceptibly transferred to the bottom or the top. She had learned to play Quinze, a game of cards in which the winner was he who counted fifteen, or nearest to that number, in all the points of his hand; as well as rouge et noir, wherein the winning total ranged between thirty and forty points; had even tried her hand at faro, and learned about coppering a debt, and the dealer had generously demonstrated how to make the cards climb like a ladder up her arm.

  Now it was Zoe’s turn to gamble. If fair play did not serve her, she would fuzz the deck.

  Paolo had wagered her virtue. It was only fitting that she should cuckold him in return.

  A gloomy avenue of trees led to the hermit’s dwelling. Zoe didn’t pause to admire the scenery, which included mountains, precipices and valleys, and a large cat with fiery eyes, all worked in canvas and pasteboard; didn’t wait for the old white-bearded man to emerge from his pasteboard ravine and ask her his few questions, after which he would retire and then return carrying the Future, carefully copied out on cream-colored paper, in his arms.

  Zoe didn’t care to discover what her future held.

  She paused to savor the scented night air. The dark leafy background, the nightingales’ sweet song, the fountain bubbling nearby, the strains of the roving wind players called harmonie—

  Masked ladies of dubious repute dawdled along these dark and lesser travelled paths. Scoundrels lurked in wait for unwary prey. Zoe glanced around to make sure she was unobserved, ducked into a thicket of trees, and stripped off a stocking. When she left the thicket, she stepped up her pace.

  The path opened onto one of the long colonnades. Zoe wove her way among the revelers who were strolling, dancing, lounging in supper boxes spaced out at intervals. She found the Black Baron in a box with a painting of The Rake’s Progress on the back wall. He sprawled in a chair, with a female on his lap.

  If that female was virtuous, Zoe would eat her domino.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lord Quinton was enjoying himself — as much as Lord Quinton ever enjoyed himself – alongside several like-minded reprobates who met regularly at Vauxhall, there to sit around drinking and trading tales of their most recent depravities, some of which were made up from whole cloth, and others of which were not.

  One had sold the use of his wife’s body to his chief creditor. Another was the subject of a recent ribald article in the Morning Post. A third was relating how he had preached naked to a crowd from an alehouse balcony in Covent Garden when a stranger entered the box and approached Quin. “I was asked to tell you, guv, that a prime bit of muslin desires a private word.” He held out a silk stocking. The ladybird was waiting in yon dark copse of trees.

  Quin hesitated. The copse lay some distance away. He would be obliged to get up and walk.

  The Black Baron was unaccustomed to putting forth so much effort. However, he was in excellent spirits due to the ingestion of a double dose of laudanum and a vast amount of Arrack punch, a potent mixture of grains of the benjamin flower mixed with rum. Too, the stocking was silk, knitted in a lacy openwork stitch, and it felt of warm, willing female. Quin hadn’t indulged in any notable depravity of his own for the past several days.

  Oh, why not? He stuck the stocking in his pocket and walked — or more correctly, staggered — along the colonnade. An astonishing number of lamps twisted and twinkled and whirled about among the trees, like a fireworks display.

  Fireworks, or fairy lights. Quin hadn’t believed in fairies even as a child. Certainly he didn’t believe them now. Yet, in this moment, looking at the illuminations, he had no sure sense of what was and wasn’t real.

  Quin wondered much arrack punch he’d drunk. This was a rhetorical sort of musing, merely. He truly didn’t care.

  He stumbled into the copse, placed a steadying hand on the trunk of an ancient elm. Enough light shone in among the trees that he could see the slight figure that waited there.

  She threw back her hood. Red-gold curls, sapphire eyes—

  “Damnation,” muttered Quin.

  Lord Quinton, decided Zoe, had again imbibed more than was wise. He stood before her, gently weaving. His dark hair was disordered, as was his cravat, probably from having females sitting on his lap.

  He was the most wicked of all the wicked. It made a person palpitate to think of the countless lips he had kissed, the breasts he had caressed.

  Or it should have made a person palpitate. That it did not might be because the man had compared her to a carp.

  Zoe edged closer. She would experience passion — whatever he chose to call it — at the Black Baron’s expert hands.

  His eyes were half-closed. Was the wretch falling asleep? “You are burnt to the socket,” Zoe said disapprovingly. “It is no wonder, the life you lead.”

  Quin left off squinting in an attempt to bring the evil fairy into focus or, even better, make her disappear. “What if I am? Why should I explain myself to you?”

  Zoe folded her arms. “I don’t know why you should be cross. I’ve been put to a great deal of trouble on your behalf. May I remind you that you left me to pay the reckoning?”

  Ah yes, he had abandoned her at the coffeehouse. Quin realized now that he should have kept on going, until he was well away from town.

  He slipped slightly sideways, and the lights resumed their dancing. Quin braced himself more securely against the tree trunk. “You wanted the pleasure of my company. It seemed only fair that you should pay the shot.”

  “It was a shabby way to treat a woman prepared to give you her all.” Zoe shrugged out of her domino and let it fall to the ground.

  If ever a man needed his wits about him, Lord Quinton did so now. He attempted to speak clearly. “I don’t want your all. I
don’t want you at all. I wouldn’t want you if I hadn’t had a doxy for a week and you showed up naked at my door.”

  Zoe overlooked this fine example of a gentleman saying, as gentlemen so often did, something he didn’t mean. She surveyed him critically. “I have heard that excessive drink has a debilitating effect on the, um, masculine extremity.”

  Was she asking what he thought she was? “My extremity is not the least debilitated,” Quin replied.

  “I am glad to hear it.” Zoe tugged discreetly at one of her weakened seams. “You need not fear for my sensibilities. I understand how these matters are conducted — how could I not, when from my cradle Beau has conducted his right under my nose? I promise I shan’t hang on your sleeve.”

  She was hanging on his sleeve, Quin realized. He tried to shake her off.

  Zoe felt Lord Quinton tremble. Clearly he was not as immune to her charms as he would have her believe. “I shan’t allow you to behave as if there is nothing between us,” she murmured, and moved closer still.

  This damnable female must be even boskier than he was. She disregarded everything he said. Gingerly Quin grasped her shoulders, so that he might move her aside. “Even if I wished to — which I most definitely do not — I could not seduce you. I gave your cousin my word.”

  Zoe narrowed her eyes. “You are a rakehell. No one expects a rakehell to keep his word.”

  At the moment, being a rakehell seemed a great deal more trouble than it was worth. “I do,” said Quin.

  “Mina, always Mina!” snapped Zoe. “What does she have that I do not?”

  Mina had had Quin, or so she claimed. A pity he couldn’t recall the event. “She has a pleasant personality. A giving nature. No tendency toward romantical high flights. Shall I go on?”

  Zoe’s lips tightened. Her nostrils flared. Any member of her family would have recognized these ominous signs.

  Lord Quinton was not a member of her family. He was astonished when she kicked him in the shin.

  He cursed and released her. Zoe flew at him, fingers extended as if to scratch out his eyes. Quin caught her by the wrists. So potent was her fury, and so unsure his balance, that they fell together to the ground. Grunts and groans and curses — the sound of tearing fabric — they rolled one way and the other, her body atop his, and then his body atop hers, Zoe struggling for dominance, Quin struggling to keep the more vulnerable portions of his person from permanent harm.