Had We Never Loved Read online

  “Indeed she has not,” said Glendenning. “The shoe’s on the other foot in point of fact. I—”

  “I don’t know nothing ’bout your shoes, sir,” said the constable resonantly. “But there’s been charges brought ’gainst this young woman.” He added, over his shoulder, “Is this her, mate?”

  A burly, red-faced young man, with a too-tight coat and a wig that made his lordship shrink, loomed up behind the minion of the law, and nodded. “That’s ’er,” he confirmed. “Stole me watch, she done!”

  “Ooh! I never!” declared Amy, outraged. “Didn’t yer ma never teach ye not to tell fibs, young man?”

  “I, for one, am not in the least surprised,” proclaimed the grey lady.

  The large gentleman who had scolded Glendenning for not being careful now roared that it was only to be expected. “She’s a gypsy, after all,” he pointed out.

  “I see you hanging on to this here gent,” said the constable, tightening his grip on Amy’s wrist. “You best check your pockets, sir. You’ll be lucky if you still got your purse!”

  “Ooh! What a wicked mind you got,” said Amy, bursting into tears. “I never did nothing! You can search me from head to toe, you can, and you won’t find that skinflint’s cheap watch, nor the gent’s purse, neither.”

  “Here! I ain’t a skinflint,” protested the red-faced young man.

  “Yes, ye is,” said Amy, scattering tears. “You promised me yer watch if I’d give you a kiss, and then you never give it me.”

  Ignoring the grey lady’s shriek, and the outburst of laughter, the young man’s face became redder than ever as he said indignantly that he couldn’t give away what had already been stole. “Besides,” he appended, “you never did give me the kiss!”

  Glendenning, who had encountered a few gypsies during his eventful life, had been groping about in the deep pockets of his riding coat, just in case. He had not lost his purse, although it was now in the wrong pocket. He had, however, gained something. Keeping his features commendably bland, he informed the gathering with perfect honesty that nothing of his had been stolen.

  “Ar, well it wasn’t for want of trying, I’ll wager,” snorted the constable, and gave Amy’s arm a tug. “You come along o’ me, young woman, and—”

  “No!” she wailed, casting an imploring glance at his lordship. “Oh, sir! Don’t let him take me off and ruinate me. I ain’t done nothing!”

  “’Pon my soul!” gasped the large gentleman. “He’s not going to ruinate—I mean, he’s an officer of the law, girl! Where ever did you come by such notions?”

  “With a face like hers, you should know where she come by ’em,” said the grey lady, all righteous accusation. “Men, is where! Men!” She waved her parasol about for emphasis as she expounded, and several of the onlookers were obliged to duck. “A pretty face, and they forget every moral value their poor mothers ever tried to inculcate into their lascivious minds! Men! Animals, more like. The lot of ’em!”

  There was a brief awed silence, nobody venturing to contradict so fierce a crusader until someone braver than the rest (and well hidden) uttered a loud “Hee-haw!”

  The large gentleman gave a shout of laughter. The grey lady turned on him in a passion. The crowd entered into the spirit of the argument, and his lordship, who rarely puffed off his consequence, drew the constable aside.

  With cool authority, he said, “I am Lord Glendenning, officer. And I think you must know that you cannot arrest this lady without proof of an offense.”

  “Lady!” snorted the red-faced young man. “She ain’t no more a lady than—”

  His lordship snapped, “Careful, fellow. You speak slander!”

  The alleged victim blinked at him. “What’s that mean?”

  “It means as she’s gotta be searched,” said the constable, adding a respectful, “ain’t that it, your lordship?”

  “Not by you, you dirty old—” began Amy.

  Glendenning intervened hurriedly, “We shall find a respectable lady, Miss, er…?”

  “Lewis,” lied Amy, smiling at him. “Alice Lewis, yer worship.”

  A timid little woman who had been selling nosegays was pressed into service. She took “Miss Alice Lewis” into a nearby tent and emerged some moments later to impart shyly that the young lady was “innocent as the day she was born.”

  The constable grumbled himself away.

  The red-faced young man said sullenly that his lordship probably had his reasons for taking up for the thieving gypsy.

  “And that will be enough from you,” said the viscount. “I wouldn’t doubt but that your watch is still lying where you dropped it when you were trying to take advantage of this lady. But if you can’t find it,” he clapped the victim on the shoulder, “buy yourself another. Go along now, and search for it, there’s a good fellow.”

  The young man brightened when a gold sovereign was pressed into his palm, and with a leering grin departed.

  Amy gave the viscount a limpid look, and edged closer.

  Lord Horatio smiled into her dusky eyes, then exchanged a shilling for a nosegay, and offered it to her.

  “You paid six times too much,” she advised, smelling the violets.

  “Yes, but the lady did us a favour.” He slipped another shilling onto the little flower seller’s tray and, brushing aside her transports of delight, led Amy from the continuing dispute between the grey lady and the large gentleman.

  “You’re very easy with yer better-or-worse, milor’,” said Amy.

  Her nose was still buried in the violets, and over the flowers her great eyes twinkled roguishly at him. She should, he thought, be taken at once to that fellow who had married Margaret Burr. What was his name? Oh yes, Gainsborough. He was quite clever with paints. Probably be very glad of a model like this enchantingly lovely gypsy lass. Something poked at his ribs, and Flame snorted uneasily. Looking up, Lord Horatio’s dreaming gaze encountered a furled but aggressive parasol, and he retreated before two hard grey eyes under an austere grey bonnet.

  “Shameful!” snorted the grey lady as she marched past. And drifting behind her came the all-embracing denunciation “Men!”

  Recalled to a sense of his obligations, Glendenning coughed and said, “Never mind about how easy I am with my purse, Miss Lewis. You did steal that poor fellow’s watch, because it’s in my pocket!”

  She smiled at the violets. “Is it, sir? And where did a great nobleman like yerself learn that better-or-worse means purse?”

  He thought of Enoch Tummet, and grinned. “I’ve come up against rhyming cant before. Matter of fact, the valet of a friend of mine—” He paused.

  “Why d’ye frown, yer highness? Ain’t he a friend? Or ain’t the valet a valet?” Amy gave a ripple of laughter. “Straight, I never heard of no-one so grand as a valet what knew rhyming cant. That’s what simple folk talk. Like me.”

  The viscount guided her to one side, avoiding a brawny labourer with a scythe slung over one shoulder. “The valet is a valet, I promise you,” he explained. “And he is a simple—Er, I mean, he hasn’t been a valet for long.”

  “What was he before, then?” Amy looked longingly at a stand where rows of toffee apples shone stickily in the sunlight. “A bishop, p’raps?”

  Glendenning chuckled. “He was a guard. A—a sort of bailiff, actually.”

  “You mean what does executions in houses when folks can’t pay what they owes and isn’t allowed to move nothing out ’til it’s all sold for debt? Cor! How’d the likes of him get to be a valet? That’s proper grand, that is.” Her eyes had wandered back to the apples again. “Why don’t ye like him?”

  His lordship edged through the crowd that surrounded the stand and bought two toffee apples, one of which he gave to Amy. She accepted it with pleasure, and he watched as her pink tongue was promptly applied to the toffee.

  “I do like him,” he said, answering her question and regarding his apple dubiously. “It’s just that he don’t work for my friend now, but for—er,
another gentleman. None of which has anything to do with—”

  “Oh,” she interrupted, licking busily. “Then it’s this here other gent what you don’t like. Ain’t you going to eat yer apple?”

  It had been many years since Lord Horatio had attacked a toffee apple, and he approached it gingerly, but found it delicious. After a minute, he looked up to find Amy laughing at him.

  “Don’t be so ladylike, mate,” she advised. “Forget as you’re a squire, for once, and give it a good lick. Like this…”

  ‘Ladylike!’ he thought. But following instructions, gave it “a good lick.”

  “That’s right,” said Amy, encouragingly. “Have at it, yer highness. I knew as ye could do it.”

  It dawned on his lordship that the note to her voice, the gleam in her eyes, held a trace of mockery. He said, “And you properly turned me from the subject, didn’t you? But now I want to know how it is that your kissing friend’s watch found its way into my pocket.”

  Amy’s lashes swept like two dainty fans onto her cheeks, and she said meekly, “I ain’t a bad girl, yer worship. But sometimes, when I’m very hungry, the Devil he whispers in me earhole.”

  “Ear,” he corrected. But looking at all the demure witchery of her, the very thought of her going hungry appalled him, and he had to struggle to add with severity, “And stealing people’s watches is not the way to appease your appetite, Miss Lewis. You could have been transported had we not managed to bring you off. You would do better to obtain a position in—in a shop, perhaps.”

  She sighed and the dark silk of her hair swung as she shook her head. “I ain’t got the proper gab fer it, milor’. And that young man with the red face, he was a rough bully. The kind a girl’s got to look out fer. Deserved a lesson, he did, so I give him one.”

  “I see. And since I find that my purse has been moved, I presume you judged that I also deserved a lesson.”

  She darted a glance at him from the corner of her eyes. “Still got it, ain’tcha? You been kind to me, yer honour. I don’t forget folks what’s kind to me. Someday, I’ll pay ye back…” A far-away look came into her eyes. She said in a softer voice. “One o’ these fine days…”

  Curious, Glendenning asked, “What is it? Of what are you thinking?”

  “That we’ll meet again, milor’. Soon, I think … At the dark o’ the moon, maybe.”

  He fought to repress a grin, but the side of his mouth twitched.

  Amy saw, and bristled. “Think it’s funny, does ye? A poor common gypsy girl don’t go to balls and routs and the high and mighty opry, where she might meet someone so top lofty as yer lor’ship, eh? And anyway, I ain’t good enough for ye to ever want to meet again, is that what you be sticking yer nose in the air at?”

  A tall farm worker carrying a long-tined pitchfork, paused and looked with suspicion from the elegant young man to the gypsy girl.

  Glendenning lengthened his stride, and said tersely, “Of course not. And I’m not sticking my nose in the air.”

  “Yus you is, and you got a long nose if ye want to know it. I wonder some blackbird don’t fly down and sit on it!”

  Glendenning, whose nose was described by kindly friends as showing strength of character, grinned. “Wouldn’t you be surprised if one did.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” she said crossly, and with a glance at his eyebrows, which were distinctly auburn, she added, “’Sides, it looks to me like you got a red poll under that there wig. Red hair means bad temper. Always. So ye needn’t think I’m making up to you or nothing.”

  “No indeed. Though I would be very flattered if you were. And ’tis kind in you to want to repay me for what little assistance I may have rendered. Especially since my hair is indeed red.”

  He had spoken with saintly meekness, and his green eyes were properly solemn. Very nice eyes, she thought. And he was truly a fine-looking man. But that telltale quirk hovered beside the humorous mouth again, wherefore, “You needn’t try to turn me up sweet, Hoity-Toityness,” she said, scowling.

  “It isn’t hoity-toity to know that stealing is wicked, Alice, and—”

  “Me name’s not Alice.”

  “Oh. But you said—”

  “Never mind.” A twinkle dispelled her wrath. She said mischievously, “And if you think stealing’s wicked, then ye’d best shoot that pretty gry o’yourn, ’cause she’s eating yer apple all up!”

  Lord Horatio jerked his head around in time to see the apple disappearing between Flame’s jaws.

  Laughs went up as he shook his fist at the unrepentant mare, and told her she was a scamp. And clearer, sweeter, purer than all the rest was a silvery trill of mirth as Amy clung to his arm and pleaded that he not beat his gry.

  “Well, I should,” he argued indignantly. “Bless it, one might think—”

  “Tio! Hello! Tio!”

  Recognizing the musical voice, he turned, his eyes brightening. “Katrina!”

  Miss Katrina Falcon’s maternal grandmama, exquisitely beautiful, had been the product of a union between a Chinese mandarin and a Russian princess. Miss Falcon’s ancestry was revealed only in her eyes which, although large and of a rich midnight blue, had a slight Oriental slant. If anything, this feature added mystique to a lady of rare loveliness, for Katrina was blessed with a clear if slightly olive complexion, her features were dainty, her rather tall figure slender and graceful. Now three and twenty, she had a gentle and affectionate disposition, and would have long since made a brilliant match save for two obstacles. One was her mixed blood, which was viewed with horror by much of the haut ton. The other was her brother, a deadly duellist who despised London’s Society and declared contemptuously that he had yet to meet the man worthy of his lovely sister. Katrina was a considerable heiress and, despite her unfortunate birth, was much courted both by fortune hunters and by the many gentlemen who genuinely admired her. Mr. August Falcon dismissed them all. Often with a lack of tact that had led to several duels.

  Aware of this, and aware also that the lady’s deadly brother stood nearby, Lord Horatio was undaunted as he kissed Miss Falcon’s outstretched hand. He acknowledged her beauty, he admired her amiable nature, but she did not touch his heart. He was fond of her, however, and was perfectly sincere when he exclaimed, “What luck that I should find you here! I’d fancied you to have gone down to Sussex after the Rossiter wedding.”

  “So we did,” she answered merrily. “But I knew the Mop Fair would be held today, and—”

  “And she could not resist it.” August Falcon sauntered to join them. Her senior by six years, he was as handsome as his sister was beautiful, and so like her that there could be no doubt of their relationship. His eyes were not as large as hers, but of the same blue that was so dark as to seem almost black. In expression, however, they were very different; August’s eyes were hard, and cold, and reflected a deep cynicism that was echoed in the uncompromising line of the thin lips. He offered a languid hand to Glendenning, and murmured, “A Mop Fair, God bless us! That I should have allowed myself to be bullied into mingling with such a sorry collection of yokels!”

  “I did not bully,” objected Katrina laughingly.

  Glendenning asked, “What the deuce is a Mop Fair?”

  “It is a day in which those seeking employment bring some tool of their trade and walk about hoping a prospective master will hire them,” explained Katrina. “But if you did not know, then why are you here, Tio? I’d thought you were remaining in Town.”

  They moved out of the crowd and into the cool shade cast by a tent, and Glendenning answered, “I was, but—well it seemed rather dull after our little tussle with the League of Jewelled Men. So I decided to pop up and see how Mama goes on.”

  “Do pray alleviate our intolerable suspense,” drawled Falcon. “How does dear Lady Bowers-Malden go on?”

  Glendenning grinned. “Not a bit of use your trying to be obnoxious, Falcon. I know dashed well you like my mother. And I don’t know how she goes on, because I haven’t got there
yet, as you see.”

  “I see,” said Falcon, looking bored, “that your lordship is taking an extraordinarily circuitous route. Eton failed you, dear boy. Upon departing the Metropolis it is not necessary to ride through Basingstoke so as to reach Windsor. Not,” he added dulcetly, “that it is any of my bread and butter.”

  One should know better, thought Glendenning, than to try and flim flam August Falcon. “Well, it ain’t,” he said without rancour. “But, if you must know, I thought I’d drop in on the Cranfords first.”

  “Whereby one assumes your mission to Glendenning Abbey is not an urgent one.”

  Lord Horatio tensed, his green eyes darting to Falcon’s bland expression. “Why should it be?”

  “Exactly so,” replied Falcon obscurely. “To resume this enchanting tale, you detoured again to come to a fair you’d not known was in progress, eh?”

  Katrina scolded, “Now August, you must not be such a tease. He likely decided to take luncheon here, is that not the case, Tio?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.” Glendenning smiled at her gratefully. “Although had I known ’twas like Bedlam, I’d not have come near the dratted place, I promise you.”

  “You surprise me,” said Falcon. “I’d have guessed you’d—ah, hired that pretty piece you were flirting with just now.”

  “Jupiter!” Glendenning jerked around guiltily. “I quite forgot—” He broke off. Miss Alice Lewis was nowhere in sight. Her purple kerchief should be easy to find, but although he scanned the jostling crowd narrowly, there was no sign of her. He thought, ‘Damnation!’

  Watching him, Falcon chuckled. “Properly bewitched you and then tipped you the double, did she? You’d best look to your purse, my poor dupe.”

  “Nothing of the kind,” said his lordship. “But I wish you might have met her, Katrina. She was the most enchanting little—” His earnest words ceased. He’d slipped one hand into his pocket, just to make sure. His purse and the red-faced man’s watch were gone.

  Falcon uttered one of his rare laughs. “An enchanting little female prig, eh? You may count yourself blessed that she didn’t make off with your horse as I am very sure she longed to do.” He patted Flame’s glowing shoulder. “A damned fine animal you’ve got here. Did you find her at Tattersall’s?”