The Bridegroom (5 page)

Her chin slipped up a notch. “Simon and Harry need my attentions far more than you ever could, my lord,” she said. “Turn right at the corner, please.”

Clay concentrated on keeping the ribbons loose, though his hands had tightened into fists.

“Furthermore, I am convinced there is no way you could match what they give me in return for my affection. Stop here.” She was stumbling onto the uneven cobblestones before he had brought the high-wheeled curricle to a complete stop.

“Wait!” he exclaimed. “You will hurt yourself—”

She had already disappeared into a dark, narrow alley between two houses. “What the devil are you—?”

Damn the chit! He tied up the ribbons and leapt to the ground in one graceful move. His hand clamped onto the filthy shirt of the first street urchin he saw. “Watch my cattle. There will be something for you, if they are safe when I return.”

“Aye, milord,” the boy said, his chest puffing out in importance as he looked around to see who might have noticed his improved station in life.

Clay eyed the boy askance, not at all sure his favorite bays would be there when he returned, but leaving them was a necessary risk. An infamous procurer kept a houseful of
filles de joie
not a block away. If Lady Regina was not careful, she might very well find herself forced into a life even he could not condone.

He glimpsed the hem of her skirt disappearing beyond a pair of iron gates, which clanged shut behind her. Had she gone inside willingly? Or had she been taken prisoner?

Clay hurried forward, only to find the gates had been locked behind her. “Open the gates!” he ordered the woman who was rapidly retreating along with Lady Regina.

The middle-aged woman dressed severely in black bombazine turned, her face filled with surprise and concern, increasing Clay’s fear that Lady Regina had fallen into the worst sort of company. Some of the most notorious Covent Garden abbesses looked like simple governesses.

“Let me in,” Clay said. “I have business with the lady.”

“Ye’ll have to take yer turn, sir,” the woman said with a chortle. “The lady is much in demand.”

Clay ground his teeth with impatience as she unlocked the gate with a skeleton key attached to a chain at her waist. Then he shoved his way inside, grabbed the woman by her shoulders, and demanded, “Where is she?”

“Why, inside with the youngest of the gents. Where else would she be?”

Clay let the woman go so abruptly she nearly fell and hurried toward the double doors that led into a kind of hell he was afraid to imagine. He could hear shrieking even through the heavy wooden doors beyond the inner courtyard. He reached for the latch, half expecting the door to be locked, but it opened with a screech of
unoiled hinges. As he stepped into the gloom, his jaw dropped.

Lady Regina stood haloed in a shaft of light, holding a gurgling baby in her arms. A “younger gent”—a mere three years, at a guess—held tightly to her skirt with one hand, while the thumb of the other was stuck firmly in his mouth.

Clay crossed to her without speaking and stood staring at her in fascination.

“This is Simon,” she said, brushing at the blond curls on the baby’s head. She looked fondly at the child at her knee and added, “This young man is Harry.” She turned to glance at the myriad other children crying and shrieking as they played around her. “It will take me a while to introduce the rest. I believe there were forty-eight at last count.”

“This is an orphanage,” Clay said, a relieved bubble of laughter building in his chest.

She shot him a mischievous grin. “Yes, my lord, it is. What else could possibly lure me into such a disagreeable neighborhood?”

Reggie knew it had been outrageous of her to confound the earl, once she realized he had so totally misunderstood the situation, but she had been unable to resist teasing him. It was not at all ladylike behavior, but no one could ever accuse her of acting as she ought. It was a flaw in herself she could not seem to mend.

“You had me in a fine coil, Lady Regina,” the earl said.

“You deserved every moment of discomfort I could give you for thinking so badly of me,” she said, returning his chagrined smile with a look that begged forgiveness.

“I suppose I deserved to be roasted,” he admitted with a laugh. “I could think of no other explanation for why you would come here.”

“Do you always think the worst of people?” she asked.

His features abruptly sobered. “I try to see people as they are, not as I would like them to be.”

“What is it you believe I am?”

“An enigma,” he murmured.

Reggie felt her blood begin to thrum at the earl’s steady regard and realized her ready wit had deserted her. Fortunately, her uncle Marcus, once a major in the Prince of Wales’s own Tenth Royal Hussars, had taught her that retreat was occasionally the better part of valor.

“I thank you for your escort, my lord,” she said to the earl. “Now that I am safely arrived, please feel free to go about your business.”

She shifted the baby so he lay over her shoulder, then took the toddler by the hand and headed for one of the two long trestle tables set for luncheon. The tables were situated near an immense brick fireplace where a coal fire burned, taking the chill from the room, but leaving everything in a layer of soot. To her dismay, the earl followed right behind her.

“I had reserved the afternoon to spend with you,” he said, stopping beside her at the table closest to the fire.

“Oh. I am—”

She was distracted by three-year-old Harry’s grunts as the child tried to hitch himself up onto the wooden bench at the table. She waited to see whether Lord Carlisle would offer to help. When he did not, she thrust the baby into his arms in order to help Harry herself. “Will you please hold Simon for me?”

“See here, my lady,” the earl protested. “You cannot be shoving babies at a fellow—”

Simon, looking not at all happy about the switch, began to howl.

Before Reggie could reach Harry, he fell, scraping his elbow on the rough stone floor, and began shrieking like a banshee.

“Try feeding Simon some bread from the table, soaked in milk,” Reggie instructed the earl over the two wailing children, “while I tend to Harry’s hurt.”

“Don’t leave me—”

Reggie had already forgotten the earl, so absorbed was she in soothing Harry and finding a clean cloth and water in the kitchen to wash the dirt from his wound. It was Harry’s, “I’m starvin’, Reggie,” that reminded her she had left the earl at the luncheon table with a howling baby. Except, she realized suddenly, it was now deathly quiet.

Reggie hurried back to the dining room where, to her amazement, she saw forty-seven children seated at the two tables, all quiet as mice. The reason for their silence was plainly the predatory creature sitting in their midst.

Her attention was drawn to the grimy hand of a small girl, up on her knees beside the earl, tugging on his no-longer-immaculate white linen neck cloth.

“What is it, Charity?” the earl asked.

“May we eat now?”

“When Lady Regina returns.”

“She says to call her Reggie,” a gap-toothed girl across the table said.

“ ’Cause she’s our friend,” the towheaded boy beside her added.

“And friends can call each other by their given
names,” the girl in tight brown braids sitting beside him chimed in.

“I see,” the earl said. “And what is your name?”

“Melinda, sir. Melinda Smythe.”

“It’s Smythe ’cause she ain’t got no name of her own,” a boy at the foot of the table said. “Seein’ as how her mum’s a—”

“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Melinda,” the earl said, adroitly cutting off the boy’s explanation.

The girl was old enough, Reggie saw, to blush at the earl’s formal greeting.

“What shall we call you?” the gap-toothed girl asked the earl.

Reggie was very much a part of the expectant hush, waiting to hear how Lord Carlisle would reply.

“You may call me—”

The baby in his lap let out an impatient shriek and reached with both hands toward the table.

“Your manners are execrable, young man,” the earl said, restraining the child. Nevertheless, as Reggie watched, Carlisle picked up a loaf of bread from the center of the table, broke off a piece, and dipped it into a cup of milk in front of him. He handed the portion to the baby in his arms, who leaned back against him and sucked noisily on the offering.

“What’s yer name?” an impatient child at the other table demanded.

“My name is Clay,” the earl said.

“Pleased to make yer acquaintance, Clay,” the towheaded boy said with a grin.

“Likewise, I’m sure,” the earl replied with a smile. “And who are you?”

“I’m Freddy Jenkins,” the towheaded boy replied.

The room erupted with names being offered to the earl, until someone spied Reggie at the door.

“It’s Reggie! Hurry up, Reggie, and sit down,” Freddy urged.

“Clay says we have to wait for you,” Charity piped up.

Fists pounded on the table. Shouts erupted. A fight broke out.

“Silence!” the earl roared.

The mice froze in place.

“You’re frightening them, my lord,” Reggie said in a soft voice. “Is such a fierce look really necessary?”

The earl’s features eased as he said, “I always look like this when I’m famished. Dig in, mates.”

Every eye shifted to Reggie, who nodded.

A clatter of plates and a clash of silverware followed, as the children grabbed for bread and hunks of cheese.

“I can take Simon now,” Reggie said as she settled Harry in an empty space and then took the last bit of bench left—beside the earl—for herself.

Reggie eyed the bread crumbs soaked in milk that Simon had deposited on Clay’s black breeches. “He is not the neatest of children.”

“I have a passing acquaintance with dirt, my lady. And the damage is already done. Simon will be fine here,” he said, brushing a hand gently across the child’s blond curls.

Her jaw was still hanging in amazement when he said,
“I would love to know what brought you here in the first place, Lady Regina.”

“Won’t you please call me Reggie?” she said. “At least while we are here.”

He shot her a grin that took years from his face. “Only if you agree to call me Clay.”

“But— Oh, very well.”

“Very well, Clay,” he intoned.

“Very well, Clay.”

“Will you answer my question?” he asked.

“I have forgotten it,” she said with a laugh.

“What are you doing here, Reggie? It is not often one finds a lady, indeed, a duke’s daughter, playing nursemaid to a bunch of orphans.”

“It is quite simple, really,” Reggie replied. “When I was ten, my father brought home a thirteen-year-old orphan named Michael O’Malley to live with us at Blackthorne Abbey, my father’s estate in Kent. Mick became a beloved brother. He works for my father now managing his estate in Scotland, Blackthorne Hall, but he will be coming to London within the month to bring news of whether I have a new brother or sister. I am sure you will find him as fine a man as I do.”

“This O’Malley is the source of your interest in orphans?”

Reggie nodded. “It took some time, but my sister and I finally pried the truth from Mick about how awful life was for him and his two younger brothers and two younger sisters in a Dublin orphanage. After a beating one day, he finally ran away, but not before promising to return for Corey and Egan and Glenna and Blinne when
he had made his fortune. Unfortunately, his sister Blinne was sold away before Mick could get back to them.”

When she finished, Reggie’s throat was tight with emotion. Mick was still searching for his lost sister.

Reggie met the earl’s gaze and said, “When I heard Mick’s story, I vowed that someday, when I was old enough, I would do what I could to help such unfortunate souls.”

“You really think coming here makes a difference?” the earl asked.

“Yes, I do. My pin money contributes enough to provide milk and cheese to go with the bread which was all the children had before I began coming here two years ago.”

“How did you find this place? It is nowhere near any of the parks where I would expect a young lady to spend her time walking. In fact, the neighborhood—”

“Is not a very nice place,” she finished for him. “If you must know, Freddy slipped out and made his way to St. James’s Park, where I was walking with my sister, snatched my reticule, and ran. I doubt he expected me to run after him, but I did—and caught him! Once I found out he was only hungry, I offered to help and …” She shrugged. “Here I am.”

“What about the dangers of frequenting such a neighborhood?” Carlisle asked.

“Oh, ’tis perfectly safe,” Reggie said. “A hackney is usually waiting for me at the corner, and I always leave before dark. Something must have delayed Bascombe today.”

The earl shook his head. “You are naive to think no
harm could befall you in such a place. A young woman alone—”

“You will not sway me from my purpose. Besides, you need not fear for me, my lord, I—”

“Clay.”

Reggie had encouraged the familiarity, so she could hardly object to it now. “Clay,” she said, feeling her stomach turn over as his hand covered hers. She eased her hand free and set it in her lap. “I am careful to bring nothing of value with me when I come, and I dress as meanly as the least servant, so that no one will suspect my true station in life. Indeed, when Bascombe did not arrive with the carriage today, I considered returning to the house. I would have done so, if it were not for Freddy’s birthday.”