“Wherein the trouble begins ...”

 

Aubrey awoke with an alarming sense of disquiet, and then the events of the previous day fell upon his shoulders with the weight and speed of an avalanche.

The realisation that all his efforts to cudgel his brain into supplying some sort of solution as to what to do with the vision occupying his rooms had come to naught was not a happy one. It was little helped by the rather vindictive hangover that made the daylight too bright and the idea of leaving his bed at such an ungodly hour quite repulsive. However, Violette needed him, and so with a charitable air of self-sacrifice, he forced himself into motion and was up and at the breakfast table when Lord Lancaster sauntered in.

“Ben,” Aubrey said, nodding at the fellow who flopped down in the chair opposite. Ben yawned and helped himself to coffee. “You coming or going?” Aubrey asked, thinking it unlikely the fellow had just got up.

“Just off to bed. Thought you might want this,” he added, throwing a roll of notes at Aubrey.

Aubrey fumbled the catch, not being quite awake yet, and just grasped hold of the roll before it plummeted into his coffee. “It won!” he remarked, quite astonished.

“Well, you needn’t sound so dashed surprised,” Ben replied, sounding somewhat affronted. “Told you that horse was a sure thing.”

Aubrey bit back the remark that he’d heard that too many times before and kissed the roll of notes with deep relief. Providence had, for once, smiled upon him and it would be churlish to sound ungrateful for it.

“Couldn’t have come at a better time. Thank you,” he said with obvious gratitude. Stuffing the notes away, he went to pick up his coffee when a nagging question occurred to him. “How d’you know I was here?” he asked, with a sense of deep foreboding.

Ben shrugged and reached over to pluck a bread roll from a basketful on the table.

“Knocked at yours, no answer. Where else would you be? Figured you were too bosky to stagger home.”

As home was all of forty feet from where he was sitting, Aubrey ignored the slight and concentrated on a far more pressing concern. “No answer?” he demanded. “Wasn’t Mrs Meekham there?”

Ben regarded him with horror and deep suspicion. “Why in God’s name would that old harridan be in your rooms at this hour of the morning?”

Not bothering to answer, Aubrey got to his feet so suddenly he overturned the chair as he ran out the room. He heard Ben’s shout of astonishment, but could hear nothing further over the pounding in his ears. Reaching his own door, he hammered on it to give fair warning, and then barged in to find the place as empty as he might have expected before the vision had crashed into his life.

“She’s gone!” he exclaimed, a strange feeling of terror and loss curling around his heart. Before he had time to examine it or to answer any of the questions that Ben (and Owen and Tommy, who’d been woken by the brouhaha) were demanding in his ear, he had run down the stairs to find the housekeeper.

“Where is she?” he demanded of a rather defiant looking Mrs Meekham.

“Gone,” she said with a sniff of disdain. “And good riddance, I’d say. A lucky escape you’ve had, in my opinion.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion, blast you!” Aubrey exploded with fury, making the woman stare at him in shock, a hand covering her heart. “What did you do to make her leave?”

“I--I,” she stammered, staring at Aubrey as though he’d sprouted a second head - as well she might; Aubrey was ever the most even tempered of men, and the rage overpowering his emotions astonished even himself, but it could not be denied.

“I didn’t do anything, Mr Russell, I swear it,” she said, and from the terrified look in her eyes he was inclined to believe her. “She said she’d caused you enough trouble and didn’t want to bring you more, and off she went, must be an hour or more ago. And no, I don’t know where,” she added, with a touch of defiance. “She left this for you,” she added, handing Aubrey a sealed note.

Breaking the seal with fingers that trembled, Aubrey read the lines with his heart in his throat.

Dear Mr Russell,

Thank you so much for your kindness towards me last night. I hope one day that I may repay you. For now, however, I really must continue my search and I have no wish to cause you any further inconvenience. Please do not trouble yourself, I’m sure I will manage perfectly well.

 

Miss Mystique.

 

P.S. Of all the ridiculous names to think of, that has to be the most appalling, but I forgive you.

 

Aubrey swore so violently that Mrs Meekham gasped and showed every sign of descending into strong hysterics, so he made a hasty escape.

Climbing the steps back upstairs to find his friends, clearly drawn by Ben’s shouts earlier, demanding what the devil was going on. Aubrey however could think of nothing but Violette, all alone in the most appalling slum in London.

The Seven Dials, he thought with a numb kind of horror. It was the sick kind of feeling that assailed you when you saw some fool cram his horse at a fence. You knew damn well the fellow was going to take a tumble, perhaps even break his stupid neck, but there was damn-all you could do about it. But this wasn’t some fool neck or nothing taking his own risks. This was a beautiful, little innocent with no more welcome to be found in the Seven Dials than a lamb would encounter in a lion’s den.

Ignoring Tommy, Ben, and Owen’s insistent demands for an explanation, he grabbed his coat and hat and ran to hail a hackney.

Bearing in mind the amount of time he knew his friends usually required to make themselves presentable before leaving the house, he admitted himself surprised, and a little touched, that as he clambered into a hackney they’d caught up with him.

Crammed too tight into the poky carriage, he found himself quite unable to answer Ben’s demands as to what the hell was going on, and left it to Owen to relay the salient facts.

His eyes scanned the streets but the Dials was not much more than a ten-minute walk at best, and she’d been gone an hour or more. His guts twisted with anxiety at the thought of all the horrors that could befall a girl who looked like that in such a hellhole.

Bare minutes had passed by the time the carriage rocked to a halt, but Aubrey felt he’d aged a lifetime. The men agreed they’d best split up, with Owen and Tommy going in one direction, and Ben at Aubrey’s heels. Even though they’d never before seen her, Violette would stand out in the Dials like a swan in a midden.

The next hours were among the worst of Aubrey’s life. Once, his dear friend Celeste had run away, and he’d been bereft and terrified. But she, at least, had been street wise, raised in desperate circumstances despite her blue blood after the terrible events in France, and she’d had money. He knew that Violette was alone and friendless, without a farthing to her name, and had no more notion of life in a city than a day-old kitten.

They had walked the length and breadth of Monmouth Street, and it was way past midday when Aubrey let out a strangled cry of relief.

There, not more than the width of the street from him, was Violette. She was deep in conversation with a young woman who looked exactly like the kind of person Aubrey would like to shield her from. To his horror the brassy and buxom creature was clutching a baby, and he watched as Violette took the squalling babe into her arms with a smile and tried to sooth it.

“Violette!” he exclaimed, rushing up to her, and not entirely sure at this point whether he wanted to shake her or fall at her feet in relief.

“Mr Russell!” she exclaimed, her eyes wide with surprise. “Whatever are you doing here?”

For just a moment, shaking her was paramount in his desires, but chivalry was too deeply ingrained into his being, and reasserted itself to deny the impulse. 

“Looking for you,” he said, with a remarkably calm tone of voice, in light of the stresses of the morning.

“Oh,” she replied, as though she couldn’t think why he ought to have done so. “How kind of you, but look, I have found Jenny. She knows Eddie,” she said, with a beaming smile. “I told you he’d been seen here.”

“Really?” Aubrey replied with misgiving, eyeing with a sinking feeling the scrawny baby that Violette was rocking.

“So, you know this ... err, gentleman?” Aubrey asked the woman, treading carefully.

“I knows of ‘im,” she said with a strong cockney accent, weighing Aubrey up with equal suspicion. “You a friend of ‘is, then?”

Aubrey cleared his throat, shaking his head. “No, but I am a friend of the young lady’s,” he said. “And she is very worried about him.”

“Aye,” said the girl, narrowing her eyes at him. “‘E talks posh like you an’ all.”

“Do you know where he is?” Aubrey asked, wincing as the baby began to wail, a high-pitched noise that seemed to cut through his tender brain with the subtlety of a hammer.

“Nah, he scarpered ... cleared out,” she added for Violette’s benefit, as she was looking perplexed. “‘Bout three weeks ago, I guess. Dunno where to.”

Aubrey reached into his pocket and retrieved his card. “If you see him again, would you be so good as to give him this and tell him that Vi ... that a friend would be very glad to see him, if he would like to call upon me.”

He had a sudden and disquieting feeling that the man may have made himself scarce for good reason. Perhaps he didn’t wish for Violette to find him, though judging at the look in Ben’s eyes when he looked upon Violette, - something akin to a hungry dog with a bone - the man would need a damned good reason.

But Violette was too concerned with the wailing baby to pay Ben the slightest bit of notice. “Oh, the poor thing, he’s hungry,” she said, staring at the brassy woman in dismay. To Aubrey’s acute discomfort, the woman’s eyes began to fill, and she snatched the child back to her. “Well, I ain’t got nuthin’ to give the poor bleeder,” she said, her voice constricted with sorrow.

“Oh, Jenny,” Violette replied, her own face filled with equal dismay.

“Here,” Aubrey said, forcing a sovereign into the woman’s hand. “Go and get yourselves something to eat.”

“Oh,” Jenny said, looking at him with astonishment and a rather different expression from the one she’d worn moments earlier. “Well, ain’t you just the nicest fellow.”

“Yes,” Violette agreed, staring up at him with such approval that he felt his cheeks heat. “He is nice, isn’t he?”

***

Once they had met back up with Owen and Tommy, Aubrey was pressed to make introductions, which was still a little awkward. It was also dashed irritating when every one of his friends was staring at his earthbound goddess with unabashed admiration. It gave Aubrey the childish desire to stamp his foot and say that he’d seen her first.

He contented himself with a furious glare that needed little interpretation. They decided they couldn’t return to Bedford Square without incurring the Meekham’s wrath, and in the end, they retired to Gunter’s for tea and cakes to mull over what would happened next.

Aubrey allowed Violette a little time to eat something and drink her tea. Instinctively, he sensed that her triumph over finding Jenny had been short-lived. Eddie, whoever the devil he may be, had certainly been there, but he wasn’t there now. Unless she had any other tricks up her sleeve (a thought that made him quake a little), she was going to have to confide in him.

“Well, then, Violette,” he said, once she had refused a third refill of her teacup. “If we are going to help you to locate your Eddie, you will have to trust us, you know.”

Violette looked up and cast Ben a doubtful look, and Aubrey thought perhaps she had a little more sense than he’d credited her with.

“You can trust me,” he said, with a little more force, to which she returned a tremulous smile.

“I know,” she replied, her voice as soft as her eyes, and her words uncurling that strange proprietary sensation in his chest again. Damn, but she was lovely. “Well,” she said, licking her lips and casting her eyes down at the table. “Well, as it happens there is someone else I need to go and see, and with the utmost urgency.”

“Yes,” Aubrey pressed, watching her turn her china teacup round and round on the table. Whether she really trusted him or not, she was as nervous as a cat on thin ice about revealing who it was. He had the most disquieting sensation that she was going to shock him to his bones. Again.

“Well, I was going to go and visit her next, you see, but if you would be so good as to escort me ...” She gave a little cough and then blushed. “I ... I would like to go and see Mrs Dashton.”

“Mrs Dashton?” Aubrey repeated, wondering why the name was so familiar. The penny dropped at about the same moment Ben figured it out.

“Not Dolly Dashton?” Ben said in astonishment, as Owen and Tommy both hissed at him to keep his voice down.

To Aubrey’s chagrin, Violette just put her chin up, in what he suspected was a familiar gesture to those that knew her. “Yes,” she said, her voice firm. “And why not?”

“Good God,” Aubrey said, his voice faint. He took a deep breath and turned in his chair a little, leaning towards Violette and keeping his voice low. “Mrs Dashton is ... err ... Well she’s not exactly the kind of woman that respectable females go to visit.”

Violette gave a rather unladylike snort of amusement. “Well I know that,” she said, rolling her eyes at him.

Aubrey turned back to his friends to gauge their reactions and see if it was just himself that was scandalised. By the way all three of them were clearly agog at this revelation, he felt rather justified. Wondering how on earth a girl of Violette’s stamp could know anything about the notorious high-flier known as The Dasher, he repulsed a tremor of doubt that made him wonder if he had misjudged her.

“How do you know of Mrs Dashton?” he asked, treading with care. “Have you ever met her?”

He saw Tommy’s eyes widen at him and felt rather relieved that he wasn’t the only one who felt that this was unlikely.

Violette stared at him and then burst out laughing, a wonderful warm sound that made her eyes glitter with mirth and Aubrey wish that he could make her look so carefree all the time.

“Well, of course not!” she said, shaking her head so that her blonde curls danced in an enchanting fashion. “I believe she is what’s known as a Cyprian?” she added, wrinkling her brow a little over the unfamiliar word. “And I’ve never met one of those before.”

Aubrey gaped at her, astonished that she even knew the word. “Good heavens, I should rather think not!” he exclaimed. He wondered with a strange prickling feeling if she even knew what the word meant.

As if he’d spoken aloud, she answered him.

“I believe that is a ... an unmarried lady, under a gentleman’s ... protection?” she replied, looking at Aubrey for the confirmation of a fact he was very unwilling to divulge to her. “Do I have that right?”

He was saved from the ordeal of stammering a reply by Ben, who was always too ready to make mischief with the opposite sex.

“Quite right, Miss Mystique,” he said, grinning with approval.

Violette blushed. “Oh. I wish you would not call me that.”

“Then you must give us your real name,” insisted Aubrey, only too relieved to get off the subject of Dasher.

Violette looked at him, her face imploring. “I cannot, Mr Russell, truly. For I can see that you are the most honourable of men and that you would be compelled to return me home, and I simply cannot before I find Eddie. I won’t,” she added, with that determined lift of her chin that was becoming ever more alarming.

Aubrey sighed and Violette’s face fell.

“I’m afraid I’ve been a sad trial to you all,” she said, giving them a look full of apology. “But if you would be so kind as to convey me to Mrs Dashton, you may leave me there, for Eddie always told me that she was a wonderful sort, and with the kindest heart. So you see, I shall be quite all right.”

“No!” said all four male voices in unison.

“Not the thing,” Tommy said, shaking his head, a quite uncharacteristically determined look on his usually vacant face. “Won’t do. No place for a lady.”

“But I must see her!” Violette exclaimed, clutching at her reticule and looking like she was deciding between stamping her foot or simply making a break for it. “She was a particular friend of Eddie’s before he went back to France. It may be that she’s heard from him.”

Aubrey stared at Violette and decided he’d like to find Eddie himself. Very much. Preferably on a quiet common at dawn.

What kind of man told the woman he was planning to ... well, he didn’t know what the devil was planning, but even if it was a slip on the shoulder rather than marriage, speaking of his friendship with Dasher to her was the outside of enough!

“I’ll go,” he heard himself say. “No question of you meeting with such a woman. I won’t allow it.”

He was quite taken aback by the look of quiet rage that flitted into those moss green eyes at his words.

“I beg your pardon, Mr Russell,” Violette said, her words rather clipped and her refined voice becoming really quite cold. “I am sensible to all the great kindnesses you have done me, and I will never be able to repay you for that, but I assure you, you cannot compel me to do as you wish. You are neither my kin nor my guardian. Besides which I’ve had quite enough of men trying to bully me into doing as they wish to allow someone new the opportunity.”

“That’s told you,” Ben muttered, his dark eyes alight with amusement.

“Quite a set down,” Owen agreed, nodding.

“It was good, wasn’t it?” Violette replied with a sniff, her mouth twitching only a little.

“Marvellous,” Tommy said, sounding rather awed and looking at her with clear admiration. “Wish I could say things like that. Never can find the words, ‘specially if I’m on my high ropes,” he added, looking rather dejected. “Still, Aubrey will come about.” He looked up at Aubrey, who was rather surprised to see Tommy’s admiration cast in his direction. “Devilish good fellow in a fix. Always knows what to do. He is right, though,” Tommy continued. Aubrey watched this exchange with interest as a confiding tone crept into the Earl’s voice. “Dasher’s palace. Not a place for you. Ruined if anyone should see you there. Aubrey can ask all the questions you want. Only need tell him. Wants to protect you. Best let him, I say. Upset him if you don’t.”

To Aubrey’s astonishment, this stilted recommendation of his character and idea seemed to have far more effect than Aubrey’s outburst and Violette’s shoulders sagged.

She pouted a little, but then took a breath and nodded.

“Very well,” she said, though she was obviously reluctant. “Though I’m sure it’s not as dangerous as you think, as I’ve never been to London and I’ve hardly ever met a soul, so who on earth would recognise me, I don’t know!” Her face softened a little, though, and she bestowed Aubrey with a smile that warmed his toes. “And I should hate to upset you after you’ve been so kind, and I do realise you are doing what you think is right.” There was another heartfelt sigh and she turned her eyes out of the window. “Only I wish sometimes that I’d been born a man. At least then I could do as I pleased without forever being told why I must not.”

“I’m always being told why I must not,” Tommy said, his expression thoughtful. “And I’m an Earl.”

Violette smothered a giggle and Aubrey gave her a rueful smile.

“Well then,” he said, relieved to have gotten that little crisis out of the way. “Tell me what you would have me say to Mrs Dashton.”