Loretta Chase - 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

“Nothing,” he said. “How long is this going to take?”

“Not long at all, your lordship,” she said. “It’s only the one dress. But since her ladyship is a new customer, they’ll want a few minutes to measure.”

She said something else, but a shout from outside yanked his attention back to the window. He saw two big men hurrying round his curricle toward the greenery. He couldn’t see Fenwick.

Longmore slammed out of the shop.

The baths of London are numerous and commodious, and are fitted up with every attention to the convenience of visiters. The usual price for a cold bath is 1s., or a warm bath, 3s. 6d.; but if the visiter subscribe for a quarter of a year or a longer time, the expense is proportionably diminished. The sea-water baths are 3s. 6d. each time, or if warm, about 7s. 6d.

—Leigh’s New Picture of London, 1834

The street, unlike the commercial thorough-fares leading here, was nearly empty. Longmore crossed quickly—in time to see the two men come out from behind the curricle, a squirming Fenwick between them. The taller fellow was nearly as tall as Longmore, but wider. The smaller one was not much smaller, but thin and wiry. Both had scarred faces. Both needed shaving. Both were expensively but flashily dressed.

Brute One, the burlier one, had caught a fistful of the back of Fenwick’s ragged coat collar.

“I warned you not to make me chase you,” Brute One said. “Now you’ve gone and made me mad. You ain’t gettin’ off this time, you dirty, thievin’ brat.”

“I ain’t dirty!” Fenwick snapped. “You take your filthy mitts off of me!” He struggled, but Brute One must have caught hold of more than the collar alone. The boy could have wriggled out of his clothes otherwise. “I got friends, I have, and they’ll make you sorry!” He looked up and spotted Longmore. “There!” he said. “There’s one of ‘em!”

“What the devil is this?” Longmore said. “The boy was minding my horses.”

“With respect, sir, you been took advantage of. This little bastard here ain’t to be trusted no farther ‘n you can throw a house.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Longmore said. “Let him go.”

“Beggin’ pardon, sir, but I better not,” said Brute One. “There’ll be the devil to pay, then, won’t there?”

“We warned him again and again he wasn’t to hang about the premises,” said Brute Two. “Missus don’t want him. Brings down the tone of the neighborhood. How many times we warned him off?”

“Well, I couldn’t go, could I?” the boy said. “His worship’d have me hanged, he would, for deserting my post. He said so, didn’t you, yer majesty?”

“You’ll be hanged anyway, one of these days,” said Brute One.

“Let him go,” Longmore said.

“With respect, sir, don’t you be feelin’ sorry for this one,” said Brute Two. “He’s overdue for a trip to the workhouse, he is, and that’s if he’s lucky, ‘cuz this here’s penitentiary material, you ask me. Loiterin’ and malingerin’ when he’s been told—”

“I told him to stay,” Longmore said. “I’m growing tired of this conversation. Let the boy go and take yourselves off.”

Brute One looked at Brute Two. They both looked down at the boy, then across the street at the shop.

“I’ll tell you what, sir,” said Brute One. “Missus don’t like bein’ contradicted.”

“Funny,” Longmore said. “Neither do I.”

“Why don’t I escort the boy out of the square, where she can’t see the little bugger,” said Brute One. “Farley here’ll look after your horses, sir. And you can go on about your business—”

“You ain’t taking me nowhere! I won’t go!” Fenwick kicked his captor.

Brute One cuffed Fenwick’s head, knocking his grimy cap off.

Longmore launched himself at the bully.

A muffled shriek came from the showroom.

Sophy, whose ears had been straining to detect signs of trouble outside, pulled on her cloak and ran out of the dressing room.

Dowdy and Ecrivier ran after her. “But your ladyship, your bodice,” Dowdy said.

Sophy ran to the window, where the seamstress stood, her hand over her mouth.

Sophy was in time to see a burly fellow take a swing at Longmore, who dodged the blow, and hit back hard enough to make the brute stagger.

“I do apologize for Farley and Payton, your ladyship,” Dowdy said. “But it’s that horrid little boy again, making trouble. I’ll send the girl out to—”

Sophy waved her away and looked about for a weapon.

Longmore’s walking stick leaned against a chair nearby. She grabbed it and ran out.

She heard Dowdy call after her.

She raced across the street.

Having knocked down the bigger one, Longmore was starting for the other one. Then Fenwick decided to help, and flung himself at the smaller one, a mad little dervish, all flailing fists and kicking feet.

Ignoring his protests, Sophy dragged the boy out of the fray.

Longmore immediately picked up the thinner fellow and threw him into the fence. He bounded back, and started for Longmore. At the same time, the bigger one pulled himself up off the ground, gave a roar, and started running at Longmore.

Sophy thrust the walking stick in the ruffian’s way. He tripped and went down hard on the pavement.

Longmore grabbed the thin one and threw him into the fence again. This time the ruffian folded into a heap at the bottom of the fence.

“Time to go,” Longmore said.

Sophy climbed into the carriage. Fenwick hesitated.

The brutes were stumbling to their feet.

“You, too, Mad Dick,” Longmore said.

The boy leapt up onto the groom’s place.

Longmore quickly settled the agitated horses, and gave them office to start.

As they drove away, Sophy called out, “Tell your mistress to cancel my order. I don’t care for the people she employs.”

Bedford Square and its adjacent byways, well away from the hubbub of the major shopping streets, were practically deserted. It took Longmore only a moment to get out of the square and into Tottenham Court Road.

The area was quiet enough for him to hear his passengers breathing hard.

Even he was more winded than he ought to be.

But then, the fight had turned out less straightforward than usual.

“Good grief,” Sophy said. “I can’t leave you two alone for a minute.”

“I was bored,” Longmore said. “Didn’t you advise me to pick a fight if I got bored? I was beginning to enjoy myself, too, when you and Mad Dick had to get into it. How the devil am I to have a proper set-to, when I’ve got to look out for a pair of interferers, and make sure I don’t trip over them—or they don’t get killed accidentally?”

That had certainly added interest and excitement to what could have been a mundane mill.

“You can’t think I’d hang about the shop when you’d given me a perfect excuse to make a hasty exit,” she said. “And then another fine excuse to cancel the order for that ugly dress. Really, it couldn’t have worked out better if I’d planned it.”

“What’re you saying, Miss?” Fenwick piped up from the back. “We went to all this bother, and I nearly got drug to the workhouse—and you didn’t even want a bleedin’ dress?”

“She’s the tricky sort,” Longmore said. “You said so yourself, as I recall.”

The street being less chaotic than those they’d traveled previously, he was able to give her more than a cursory glance. She was completely disheveled, her ugly cap hanging crookedly from one side of her head, her stringy hair falling down in back and clinging stickily to her forehead and cheeks. And her bodice was hanging loose.