“Good luck with that,” he muttered, casting a dispassionate look at the floral confection resting on his thigh then at his sister’s pretty, indignant face. “Papa thought it looked mighty becoming, and that’s saying something. You do realise the girl who made it is lucky to earn enough to put one square meal on the table from her labours?”
Lucy sighed, taking the bonnet back and thoughtfully fingering one of the silk blooms, before thrusting it back at him with the exhortation that he must see the stitching that was come undone, adding, “Papa only praised me in the hope of bending my will so I’ll yield and return home to live with him; which you know I will never do! And you always get so fired up about the poor and unfortunate, yet you never publish a word about injustice in your magazines. Anyone would think you were just like Papa.” She said this almost sorrowfully, and Hamish had to temper the hot retort that sprung to his lips. Little could get him riled up, but a barb like that, especially coming from his sister, needed to be treated with kid gloves. Though perhaps not quite as expensive as the ones his sister adored.
“Which you know I am not,” he managed calmly, wrapping the reins about his wrist to prevent him flicking them in agitation when the horses were still at a standstill. Hamish was considering whether to enlarge upon his offence at being compared with his father when the incompetence of the carriage driver in front decided him that his assistance might expedite matters and get the traffic moving once more.
Jumping down from the seat, one long ribbon of his sister’s bonnet became caught in his cufflink, and he stopped to extricate it in order to return the piece of millinery to his sister.
What happened next caught him totally off-guard; for one moment, he was aware of a flurry of grey, and when he turned, Lucy was screaming, pointing at a figure that was now running across the road, the trailing pink ribbons suggesting that his sister’s unsatisfactory bonnet had just found a new home.
“Catch her! Don’t worry about me!” Lucy exhorted him, still pointing at the figure of the beggar woman who’d just evaded death from beneath the wheel of a cooper’s wagon coming from the opposite direction.
The dirty bundle of rags was in the process of picking herself up from the cobblestones before making a run for a group gathered beneath a shop awning, where she no doubt hoped to evade notice.
Ducking and weaving between the carriages, Hamish tore off in pursuit. For all Lucy’s complaints, the bonnet had cost a pretty penny, but above all, he considered society was in a parlous state if law-abiding people waiting in carriages were not safe from such assaults on their liberty to go about their business.
He stopped to let a dray go by, still keeping in sight the woman whom he saw ducking and weaving amongst the throng of shoppers. He might have lost her had a stretch of empty road not cleared up, and he was able to dart down a side street where he saw her in the distance.
Lucy would either wait or make her own way home, for she’d made clear her priorities: the return of her bonnet. And although he’d decry he was as unlike his harsh and puritanical father as it was possible to be, Hamish was nevertheless concerned about upholding law and order. It would set a poor precedent if he couldn’t arrest a brazen thief in the middle of the day; and a delinquent young woman, at that.
Yet, the brazen thief appeared to have outwitted him. Frustrated, he stood on the corner and shaded his eyes, scanning the cobbled street until, in the distance, he saw that the person had obviously been crouching in the shadows, pressed against a wall, before, perhaps perceiving it was safe, darting back into view, pausing, then dashing up a short flight of stairs and into a four-square dwelling, whose door had just opened. A couple of ladies were now stepping out onto the pavement.
He would have been surprised at their lack of concern at being passed by a clearly desperate creature had he not drawn close enough to recognise the establishment as Madame Chambon’s notorious House of Assignation. Stories of desperation—and vice and villainy—were common enough here, he supposed, and although this was the last place Hamish would willingly step into, the street was now empty, and he had an excuse that was valid enough reason to satisfy his curiosity, though he told himself that mere curiosity had nothing to do with entering.
If the thief was one of Madame Chambon’s girls, then she should be brought to justice.
But as he stopped in the vestibule, breathing rather fast as he gazed about the sumptuous surroundings—which he put down to exertion only—he recollected that Madame Chambon’s
girls were renowned for being as refined and well-dressed as any duchess. Their beauty, poise, and wit made them highly sought after by the discerning male establishment looking for diversions their wives could not provide.
No, this creature was an urchin. She most definitely was not one of Madame’s girls.
“Sir, how can we help you?”
The purr belonged to a young woman of considerable beauty and in accents that would have done any duchess, or person with pretensions to gentility, proud. For a moment, he could only stare. The light from the high window highlighted the sheen on her glossy dark ringlets, which were arranged in the elaborate curls and twists so fashionable at the time. Her gown would have had Lucy in raptures, except that the low cut of the bodice so early in the afternoon was just one indication of the woman’s calling.
She really was a beauty, was his first thought.
Then, what brought these creatures so low? he wondered as he realised, with embarrassment, that he’d obviously been mistaken for one of the clientele.
“My sister’s bonnet was stolen just now, and the woman who snatched it ran into this establishment.”
The young woman raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes as if the news was distressing to her personally. Then she smiled and put her hand on his arm. “A brazen crime like that can’t go unpunished. Can I offer you something while I despatch someone to search the premises?” She pressed a little closer, and he was assailed by the scent of violets. When he looked into her eyes, he saw that her own eyes were the colour of violets, also. She was, he thought, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
He glanced away, ashamed of the wave of raw desire that washed over him, reminding him that he really was so much more than the hot-blooded, tempestuous youth who’d left England in disgust at serving his father’s empire six years before, than the cold and reserved adult he must, these days, pretend to be for the world.
He fought the impulse to humour the young woman with at least a smile, instead saying stiffly, “That would be appreciated.” And then, because he had to make it clear, in case she was under any misapprehension, adding, “I am here only to secure the return of my sister’s bonnet.”
“I imagine a disgruntled sister would be highly vexatious to one’s afternoon plans, sir. Let me show you into the sitting room where you can wait while I make enquiries.” The young woman took his arm and led him through an entranceway hung with heavy red velvet curtains, into a room which, thankfully, was empty. Pausing on the threshold, she sent him an appraising smile, then added, “Perhaps another time.”
“I doubt it, madam; no offence intended,” he murmured as he lowered himself onto a plush gold-tasselled settee and stared about him. The room was tastefully decorated, a portrait of the queen above the mantelpiece, several Turners—prints, of course—on the walls. It could have been the room of repose of any respectable person of his acquaintance.
The house was surprisingly quiet. No other customers were about, thank goodness. He hadn’t thought of that. A chronic embarrassment it would have been—to both parties—had there been. Not that he expected he would have been recognised. He did not frequent houses of ill repute, and he supposed he was not likely to associate with those who did; though he’d discovered that even people one thought one knew well could surprise one.
He frowned at an elegant porcelain vase on the sideboard filled with hothouse blooms of the variety his Aunt Madeleine favoured, his cheeks suddenly flaming up at the thought of conjuring up his redoubtable, fearsome aunt in a place like this.
A few minutes later, he glanced up to see the beautiful young woman who’d admitted him standing in the doorway.
“Madame Chambon has sent someone in search of the thief who will be found,” she assured him. She moved languidly towards a bellpull. “Would you like some tea while you wait?”