Elizabeth Beacon - A Regency Rebel's Seduction - A Most Unladylike Adventure / The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle

‘I wish you good day and expect you to be gone by the time I get home, madam,’ he informed her stiffly and turned to pick up his coat from the chair he’d flung it on to earlier, shrugging into it as he cravenly bolted for the front door and freedom from wanting what he couldn’t have.

At least it should have been freedom, except he had to halt stock-still on Kit’s doorstep to breathe deeply and steadily as he thought hard about desolate arctic waters and relentless storms at sea. At last he was respectable enough to proceed through this confoundedly civilised neighbourhood without his very obvious need for Miss Eloise La Rochelle and her magnificent body instantly causing a scandal.

Not just her body either, he couldn’t help but recall as he marched rather blindly along the wide streets to his destination. She had that acute, questing mind and an unexpected sense of humour to render her almost irresistible as well. He let himself consider the unique charms of such a contrary, intriguing woman for a moment and would have been horrified to know an unguarded smile quirked his mouth as he did so. Most of the time she was as knowing as any street urchin, full of self-reliance and used to hardship almost from birth, then she’d astonish him with an eager enthusiasm for life and suddenly seem as coltish as any ingénue . No, he assured himself, he was long past being a fit companion for any sort of innocent, even if it was Eloise the buccaneer. Once again, he fought his over-active imagination as he pictured her in that black shirt aiming a pirate ship at his sturdy merchantman, and discovered how much he’d relish capturing and taming such an unlikely opponent when she failed to overrun him.

‘Idiot,’ he chided himself as he nearly walked into a lamppost. A little restored to his usual stern self, he strolled towards Stone & Shaw’s offices in the City, but was still too preoccupied with his eventful evening, sore head and unwanted visitor to sense that he was being followed.

Louisa paused when he did and wondered why she’d impulsively stuffed her cap on her head and shrugged into Coste’s overlarge jacket, then ventured out in broad daylight to see where rude and disobliging Captain Darke was bound. She watched her own reflection in a shuttered window and tucked a giveaway strand of hair under the hatband of the silly hat she’d stolen last night. At least Charlton could live without his very odd suit of clothes, but she promised herself she’d replace Coste’s jacket if she damaged it, then all her senses suddenly sharpened as she considered a wiry young tough who seemed as intent on staying on Captain Darke’s tail as she was herself.

He was good, she grudgingly admitted that much to herself as she lurked in a doorway and eyed the innocuous-looking youth pretending to watch a street vendor chase off a starving little would-be pickpocket. Luckily she’d trained herself to be even better once upon a time and felt her old skills return as she fell into step behind both the Captain and his follower and neither of them even had a suspicion she was there. Spying a fancy footman, she was grateful Kit didn’t insist on Coste going about in some fanciful livery, though, for she’d certainly attract attention if she’d been forced to steal a chapeau-bras and gold-laced blue jacket. She slouched towards the unfortunate dressed so ostentatiously and he gave her a pained snarl and shuffled his feet self-consciously, obviously believing her another annoying idler, silently jeering his ridiculous uniform.

Grinning at this confirmation that she looked nothing like fashionable Miss Alstone, or even Miss Eloise La Rochelle, Louisa swaggered a little in her disreputable breeches and worn and ill-fitting coat and pretended to be absorbed in the noise and bustle of Cheap-side as follower and followed moved onwards. Hands in her pockets, she sauntered along at a distance from Captain Darke and his shadow, keeping enough space between herself and them to look as if she was aimlessly passing the time until more promising mischief offered.

She mused on the quality of the Captain’s enemies and decided the boy was very good, and at the next crossroads she cast a disguised gaze about her to see if she was being followed in her turn. All was clear and as innocent as London streets ever were, so Hugh Darke’s foes weren’t that canny. Suddenly she wished more fervently than usual that her big brother would come home. Kit would soon find out who was so interested in his infamous captain and she suddenly felt inadequate for this suddenly very serious task, as well as uncertain why it seemed so vitally important that Hugh Darke should not be hurt by his enemies.

She’d followed him on impulse, unable to think of another way to fill in her time until Kit came back without sitting tamely in his kitchen, waiting for Charlton or her uncle to come and march her up the aisle. Now her impulse had changed from a way of idling away the day into a quest to protect the ungallant Captain’s back. She wove a cautious track over to the other side of the street and blessed Hugh Darke for being tall enough to stand a little above the crowd and show her the way, even if he was several inches shy of her brother’s lofty height and Ben Shaw must tower over him like a giant, as he did over everyone else she had ever come across outside a fairground sideshow.

Now Hugh Darke was entering the quieter street where her brother and Ben had their offices and she had to walk past it and head down an ally to avoid being too noticeable to him or his pursuer. Anxious all of a sudden that the young tough would use the sparseness of the area to attack Hugh, she sped to the end of her alley and out into the opposite end of the street, only to skid to a halt and have to duck into a handy doorway to avoid the nondescript lad coming the other way, obviously off to report to someone that the target was safe in his office now and beyond following. Wondering even more at such an odd sequence of events, she leaned back against the heavily made door at her back and decided she must follow the young thug, rather than do as instinct demanded and stay to make sure Hugh Darke was safe if he ventured abroad again. Doubtless someone else would keep watch over Kit’s offices for the next few hours, but for now she might get a clue about who was behind all this if she could track the young bully to his lair or his current employer.

At the end of the chase she was very glad Kit and Ben weren’t in London after all, for they would surely have had fits if they knew where she’d been today. First of all to the cheapest of pie shops the City rejoiced in, where she managed to loiter and look hungry as well as penniless until chased off by the infuriated owner with a fearsome ladle. Then the boy sauntered through the noisome rookery she knew from her youth was the haunt of thieves and pimps of the worst sort; even high on the rooftops as she’d had to go to follow him there, she had to tread as if on pins to avoid discovery.

The houses might be rotten as a blown pear, but they were full of people forced into degradation and misery and every room and attic seemed to heave with human souls even at this time of day. That was what she’d conveniently forgotten from her childhood spent with one foot in the underworld and the other in an almost respectable street on the edge of Mayfair: the stench and misery and hopelessness of poverty. It seemed criminal to her that anyone should be expected to actually live in such cramped, dank and stinking conditions, so close to one of the richest capital cities the world had ever seen. She ghosted across closely packed rooftops, jumped at leaning chimneys and soot-grimed walkways even the inhabitants appeared to have forgotten about and wondered at herself for ever being discontent with the well-fed and secure-seeming life she’d lived since she left all this behind.