Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,33

begun to wash up about her, like the detritus that washed up on the riverside.

Cassandra thrust her way through the crowd and hurried round the back into the stall. As deGriffith’s Gorgon hove into view, the masculine flotsam and jetsam oozed back into the throng.

“Where is Aunt Elizabeth?” she said.

“She left suddenly—to be sick, I believe,” Hyacinth said.

Pushing her sister behind her, Cassandra moved to the front, to stand guard over her wares, a moment before the duke’s leisurely circuit brought him and his minions there.

He smiled at her, all blue-eyed benevolence. “Miss Pomfret.”

She put on her best dealing-politely-with-fools smile. “Duke.”

“Look what I’ve brought you,” he said. “A distressed foreigner of your very own. Will you allow me to present Master Jonsatovickya.”

She opened her eyes wide, fluttered her eyelashes, and said, “Just for me? How sweet. You shouldn’t have.” She dropped the smile and narrowed her eyes. “Truly, you shouldn’t.”

He beamed, and it was like Apollo shedding golden light upon little, mortal her. For a moment, she teetered, mentally off balance.

Ye gods. He ought to be locked in a deep, dark dungeon.

He truly was dangerous, a soul-shatteringly beautiful monster.

Fortunately, she was a monster herself.

She leant over the counter.

The boy grinned up at her.

He had not bathed in a very long time, if ever, and another woman might have fainted dead away from the fragrance alone. But Cassandra had grown up with seven brothers, their boy cousins, and their friends. She had spent time in low places. Her stomach was strong.

“If Master Jones or whatever his real name is puts his hands on my goods,” she said, “he’ll lose his fingers.”

The so-called distressed foreigner put his hands behind his back.

He seemed familiar, but it was hard to be sure. His overlarge, stained yellow jockey cap shadowed a face wearing ancient layers of dirt. The upper orders found street children hard to tell apart, a fact the children were happy to take advantage of.

“Don’t I know you?” she said.

The boy shook his head.

She scrutinized his features. Under the grime appeared to be a not-unhandsome child, one she’d seen before. “It is Jones, isn’t it? Or Jonesy, as your young confederates call you.”

She lifted her gaze to meet Ashmont’s dazzling sapphire one. It made her a little dizzy, but she didn’t blink.

Not blinking or backing down was something a girl in a large family of boys learnt early on. It was her brother Julius who’d first called her Medusa.

“Such elegant company you keep,” she said.

Jonesy looked up at Ashmont accusingly. “You didn’t say it were her.”

What came out of the child’s mouth didn’t resemble these words. But she’d learnt Cockney, among other things, from Keeffe.

“Well, he wouldn’t say, would he?” Cassandra said. “How much is the duke paying you to do this?”

She was aware of people drawing closer to the stall, in spite of the boy’s stench. Out of the corner of her eye she saw handkerchiefs go up to cover noses and mouths.

The ragamuffin’s dirty face instantly formed an expression of pure innocence. He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, appearing to think very hard, then, “I fink he give us a glistener,” he said.

“A sovereign?” she said. “I think not. Two bob at most.”

“A half crown.”

Two and a half shillings was untold riches for a street urchin. It would be untold riches for any number of working people. But where Ashmont was concerned, this at least fell within the realms of possibility. Whatever else one might accuse him of—and the list stretched to infinity—he was no pinchpenny.

“I’ll give you a crown,” she said, “if you’ll go straight to the nearest baths and get washed.”

The boy grinned. He shoved under one arm the goods he’d collected and held out his filthy hand. She reached into the side slit of her dress, where the pocket hung, and drew out a small purse. She counted out five shillings and dropped them into his grimy little paw.

The boy closed his fingers tightly over the money. Then, still clutching the ladies’ handiwork, he turned and ran out of the Hanover Square Rooms.

It was so far from what Ashmont expected to happen and it happened so quickly that he could only watch, in a sort of wonder, while his prank fell to pieces. Mouth hanging open, mind wiped blank, he stood blinking at Jonesy’s rapidly retreating back.

Nobody tried to stop him. No surprise there. Nobody wanted to touch him.

Then he was gone, and Ashmont was left standing there, looking like—like—the goat. An ass. A great, slow-witted