LITMIR.BIZ

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rile, you and Jack both. Takes the joy right out of a fellow. I was listening from the terrace, you know, and heard most of what she said. You’ve really been quietly ruining the earl? I’d say that was brilliant, except that Lady Chelsea found you out, so you couldn’t be overly credited for subtlety. Comparing you to Machiavelli? Hardly. And now your pigeons seem to have come home to roost.”

      “We can’t know that. Not unless the damned woman left her brother a note before she ran off. Because she did run off, Puck, that much is obvious. It’s what women do. Without a thought to anyone else perhaps not agreeing to become an actor in their small melodrama.”

      “Yes, you’re right,” Puck agreed as he followed Beau down the hall to a small room he used as his private study. “She would have been better off applying to Mama. She dearly adores a melodrama. But when I left her to come to town, she was about to begin a tour of the Lake District with her troupe. I hadn’t the heart to tell her she’s getting a little long in the tooth to play Juliet, but as long as Papa finances the troupe, she has her pick of roles and no one gainsays her. Are you listening to me? What are you doing messing around in that cabinet?”

      Beau turned back to his brother, the wooden case that held a pair of dueling pistols in his hands. He then opened a long wooden box kept on a sideboard and pulled out both the sword and belt he’d taken to war with him and a short, lethal-looking knife kept safe inside its sheath. “See that these are taken downstairs, if you please. I probably won’t need the sword, but I know I’ll want the knife.”

      Puck frowned as the weapons were thrust at him. “Really? Would you be wanting me to hunt up a piece of field artillery as well while I’m at it? You really think the brother will come here, don’t you?”

      “I was unprepared once, Puck. That won’t happen again. Now, take yourself off and do what you said you were going to do—get yourself prepared to return to Paris. This may all come to nothing, but the girl knows things she shouldn’t have guessed, and I’m going to believe her until she says something that changes my mind. Damn, what a morning—if I’d known this last night I wouldn’t have crawled so far into the bottle with you.”

      “Yes, of course, blame me. It was a terrible thing, how I held your nose pinched shut and poured three bottles of wine down your gullet as we celebrated your birthday.”

      “In case you’re about to add that the woman downstairs is some sort of birthday present from the gods, let me warn you—don’t.” Beau left his brother where he stood and headed downstairs to where Lady Chelsea was now pacing the Aubusson carpet, slapping her gloves against her palm.

      She was, upon reflection—something, according to her, he didn’t have time for—a startlingly beautiful woman. He remembered that, as a child, she’d shown a promise of beauty, but that he’d believed she’d never hold a candle to her sister. Time had proved him wrong.

      He’d seen Madelyn a time or two on his visits to London since his return from the war, driving in the park in an open carriage. The years had not been kind to her. She’d developed lines around her mouth, which seemed pinched now rather than pouting, and the nearly white-blond hair aged her rather than flattered her. She looked like what she was—a haughty, clearly unhappy woman.

      He’d learned she had taken lovers over the years, sometimes without employing enough discretion, and her reputation, as well as her standing in Society, had suffered. For that, she blamed her brother, and the two of them had not spoken since their father’s death. She also probably blamed Beau, as well, for her fall began only after what he thought of now as The Incident.

      But Beau had taken little satisfaction from any of Madelyn’s problems. To him, justice had been served up very neatly to Lady Madelyn for what she had done.

      It was Thomas Mills-Beckman who had yet to feel justice come down on his neck. Hence the cat, toying with the mouse’s purse strings.

      And now, pacing his drawing room, full of cryptic statements and offers to help him administer that justice, was this intriguing and maddening young woman, fallen into his hands either like a ripe plum or as the agent of disaster, clearly wanting to get some of her own back on her brother and eager to use Beau to help her.

      “My brother tells me you assured him that we are embroiled in something very serious. Life or death, I believe he said—or perhaps that was you saying it? I’ll admit I’ve begun to lose track.”

      She stopped pacing and looked at him, her blond head tipped to one side as she ran her clear blue-gray gaze up and down his body as if he were a horse she was considering purchasing. “You look somewhat better. Are you sober now?”

      “I believe I’m heading in that general direction, yes. At least enough so that I want to make it clear to you yet again—I do not know this Reverend Flotley. I did not arrange to have him introduced to your brother, so if the rest doesn’t bother you—the smell of spoiled grapes notwithstanding—perhaps you wish to rethink whatever it is you believe you can do for me and go away. Quickly.”

      “I can’t. I think we both know it’s already too late for that,” she said and then sighed. “We really don’t have time for this, but I have truly burned my bridges just by coming here so openly, and yours, as well, which I’m sure I don’t have to point out to you. I’m sorry for that, at least a little bit, but I had no other choice open to me. I left my brother a note explaining every—”

      Beau slammed his fist into his palm. “I knew it! Why do women always feel they have to explain themselves?”

      She straightened her slim shoulders. “I was not explaining myself, you daft man. I couldn’t allow my maid to take the brunt of Thomas’s anger, not when she helped me tie up some of my belongings and met me at the corner so that I could strap them onto my saddle without anyone being the wiser that I was leaving.”

      “Oh, yes, of course. I can see the wisdom of that. He won’t turn her out without a reference now, not when you’d clearly cowed her into doing what you’d asked.”

      “Oh,” Chelsea said quietly. “I hadn’t thought of that. But I didn’t tell him where I was heading. I’m not stupid.”

      “Wonderful. The girl assures me she’s not stupid. Tell me, Mistress Genius, did you happen to confide your destination to your maid? Because, were I said maid, staring the loss of my position in the teeth, I do believe I’d try to save myself by being of assistance to my employer.”

      Chelsea glared at him. “I could truly begin to dislike you.”

      “I’ll take that as a yes,” Beau said, looking longingly at the wine decanter. “How long before he misses you and comes racing hotfoot over here, brandishing a pistol and demanding I present myself?”

      Chelsea glanced assessingly at the mantel clock. “We should probably be going.”

      “Yes. Going. And where would it be that we should probably be going to, madam? Oh, and one more small thing. Why? Why me? Why am I going to be helped by you, and how am I going to assist you? My mind is still a little fuzzy on those two points.”

      She looked toward the clock once more. “We don’t have time for this now.”

      Beau crossed his arms over his chest, prepared to stand his ground for the next fortnight. That she should wish to flee her brother’s household was commendable. That she should involve him in her escape? Not quite as laudatory. “Make time.”

      “Only if you come with me now,” she told him, heading for the foyer and then unerringly turning toward the rear of the house. “Your brother has ordered your horse saddled, and both mounts await us in the stables. If we keep away from the main thoroughfares, I’m sure we can be clear of London before Thomas can pick up our scent and kill you.”

      “Oh, this gets better and better,” Beau said as Puck, never to be left out of anything even remotely exciting, joined them as they passed through the green baize door that led to the servant area of the mansion. “One minute I’m fairly happily contemplating my life through the bottom of a bottle in celebration

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