Stronger Than Magic, page 13
“It’s true, my lord,” Tidswell corroborated, joining Alys in glaring at the sweep. “The man is a savage beast who was abusing this poor child in a most unspeakable manner.”
“’Tweren’t abusin’ I were doin’, but discipline,” the man protested. “Look what ’e did ta yer fine rug.” He indicated the soot-smeared rug, as if its sorry state could escape even the most casual notice. “Ye don’t want me to let the little bugger get away with doin’ that, now do ye?”
All four pairs of eyes were fastened on Lucian’s face now, clearly expecting a response.
Lucian groaned inaudibly. The last thing he wanted was to get involved in this disagreeable business, and he would be involved if he stated an opinion. And as he knew from experience, involvement led to consequences, consequences that in this instance promised to be very unpleasant indeed, no matter whose view he took.
If he sided with the sweep, agreeing that the boy deserved punishment for soiling the rug, then he’d undoubtedly be forced to bear the brunt of the forementioned pair’s displeasure for God knows how long. If he were to take their part against the sweep, then he might be forced to see to the urchin’s welfare, a thought that he found singularly intolerable. He detested children and had thus far scrupulously avoided taking any under his roof.
Desiring to keep his house free of children without taking the sweep’s part, he decided to do what he’d have done had he been facing the predicament alone: he’d simply ignore the boy’s plight and order the filthy duo from his house. He was about to do just that when his gaze fell on Alys’s face.
He’d intended to stare in her eyes as he gave the order, to warn her with his glare that he’d not brook such bothersome interruptions in the future. Instead the words died in his throat. No one had ever looked at him like she was doing now.
Her expression was not one of petulant demand as he’d expected, nor was she giving him one of those annoying dewy-eyed looks of pathetic appeal like most females were wont to do. No, she was gazing at him with an expression of absolute faith; faith that he’d do the right and compassionate thing; faith that he had it in his heart to be merciful.
As he stared at her too taken aback to speak, a very small, very sweet smile of encouragement sketched across her lips. That anyone who knew him would credit him with having a single humanitarian bone in his body was almost too astounding to be believed. That he found that fact suddenly disturbing was more astonishing yet.
He gave his head a small shake. This whole situation was too ridiculous to countenance. Why did she expect him to act in a charitable manner? And why, in God’s name, should he extend such benevolence to the boy? He was nothing but a member of the lower class, one of the thousands of unwashed minions who had always been beneath his notice. So why should he be expected to notice now? Despite what Alys seemed to believe, he was in no way responsible for the boy.
Yet … yet, for some reason, one completely at odds with his dispassionate nature, her confidence in the generosity of his spirit made him desire to be the noble knight she credited him with being. In truth, he was actually tempted to champion the climber …
Which meant that in all probability he’d end up stuck with the boy. Bloody hell! Certain that one glance at the creature’s dirt-smudged face would instantly dispel him of his gallant notions and bring him back to his senses, he shifted his gaze downward.
The expression on the boy’s face merely deepened his altruistic urge. His was a look of misery-laced resignation, one that, unlike Alys’s, clearly said that he held out no hope of being rescued from his wretchedness, especially by a member of the nobility. To Lucian that look was like a reprimand of how often he’d ignored the plight of London’s ill-used street children, too selfish to acknowledge their grievous condition, too unfeeling to care.
Remembering all the times he’d had his footman push starving young beggars away from his coach, or how he’d averted his gaze from the sight of a freezing child huddled in a doorway for warmth, stirred up a singularly unpleasant emotion. To say that he felt ashamed would have been too mild a description for the cringing pain he felt inside. For unlike simple shame, this feeling triggered an almost uncontrollable impulse to make amends for all the times he should have cared and hadn’t.
But you can’t save all of London, he reminded himself, the disdainful aristocrat in him rebelling against the notion that he, the rich and powerful Marquess of Thistlewood, was in any way obliged to notice, much less acknowledge and help, anyone below his station.
No, but you can save this boy, an unfamiliar part of him countered.
Before Lucian knew quite what was happening, he was saying, “I do not believe in beating children, no matter what their crime. And I shall not tolerate you doing so beneath my roof.” Encouraged by Alys’s radiant smile, he added, “Now Mr. …?” He glanced at Tidswell to provide the man’s name.
The butler was looking at him with approval, a sentiment he’d never thought to see on the man’s dour face. “Moles, my lord,” he supplied, the corners of his mouth curving up.
Lucian nodded, illogically pleased by the servant’s favorable regard. “Mr. Moles, I shall give you exactly one minute to leave this house, then I shall summon my footmen to throw you out.”
“Suits me fine. I’ll jist take me apprentice and be orf me way. Plenty of other people with dirty chimneys who ain’t so particular about hows they get cleaned.” With that, he grabbed the boy and roughly jerked him away from Alys.
“No!” she cried, catching on to the boy’s arm again. This time the child’s thin hand wrapped around her wrist to aid her in her efforts to stay him. Turning her imploring gaze to Lucian, she beseeched, “Please, my lord. Don’t let the monster take the boy. He’ll beat him, maybe even kill him!”
“’E’s me apprentice all proper and legal,” Moles snarled. “You take ’im away, and I’ll see ye before the magistrate ta answer for it. Ye may be a bleedin’ lord, but ye ain’t above the law.”
“Then by all means take me to court. The boy shall remain here,” Lucian mandated, barely able to believe his ears as he listened to his own words. Had he really said that? Keep the filthy urchin? Whatever had possessed him?
One look at Alys’s face, so tender and filled with gentle pride for him, and he knew the answer to the question. He’d done it for her. Done it because, by simply believing in him, she had brought out a benevolence in him he’d never suspected he possessed.
“Pardon me if I don’t jump to do yer biddin’ like old spindle breeches there.” Moles jerked his head at Tidswell. “Bart, ’ere, is the best climbin’ boy I’ve got, and yer damned cracked in yer high and mighty head if ye think I’ll leave ’im because ye says so.”
“Then you should have considered his value and treated him accordingly,” Lucian informed him icily. Nodding to the butler, he said, “Please bid the footmen to show Mr. Moles out, Tidswell.”
Tidswell actually grinned. “My pleasure, my lord.”
“Yes. Go summon the bleedin’ footmen,” Moles mimicked, tearing the boy’s arm from Alys’s clasp and dragging him toward the door. “We’ll be long gone to whar you’ll niwer find us by the time they get here.”
Lucian stepped back to block the doorway. “You’re not going anywhere with that child.”
Clamping the struggling boy’s neck in a stranglehold to subdue him, the sweep hauled him to where Lucian stood firmly rooted to the threshold. “Oh? And who’s gonna stop me?” he snarled, his gin-fouled breath striking Lucian in the face as he spoke.
Lucian looked him straight in his bloodshot eyes. “Me.”
“Ye and what bloody army?” he challenged, the menace in his voice unmistakable.
“Me and”—he smashed his fist into the man’s smirking face—“this.”
The sweep howled his pain and outrage, his grip on the boy’s neck slackening in his surprise. Adding insult to injury the climber kicked his master in the knee, then ducked out of his hold and scampered to Alys, who shoved him protectively behind her. Cursing in a manner that Lucian found offensive, even after years in the cavalry, the man lunged at him.
Lucian countercharged, violently knocking the sweep backward. The veteran of untold street fights, the man grabbed him around his waist, dragging him to the floor with him. The second their bodies hit the carpet, the sweep rolled on top of him, viciously elbowing him in the belly in the process.
Lucian grunted as nauseating pain exploded up through his torso. Too stunned to strike back, he lay there simple warding off the punishing blows raining down on his face and upper body. Through the din of the man’s curses and Tidswell’s shouts for the footmen, he heard Alys shrieking. Then he saw a small form fly onto the sweep’s back, where it clung like a monkey to a banana tree.
It was the boy. With language every bit as foul as his master’s, he began boxing at the man’s ears, screaming his rage. It only took Lucian a moment of listening to his words to realize that the boy’s fury stemmed not from his own abuse, but from that being heaped on his new benefactor. That the child, as fragile and malnourished as he was, would unselfishly risk serious bodily harm to come to his aid filled him with irrational warmth. It also made him cease worrying about protecting his face in favor of overpowering the sweep before he could retaliate against the boy.
Thus resolved, he violently arched his body, intent on bucking the sweep off him as if he were an unbroken stallion and the man an inexperienced rider. It didn’t work. Though he and the sweep were evenly matched in height, the other man outweighed him by at least two stones. Pile on the additional weight of the climber, as slight as it was, and his torso and lower body might as well have been shackled to the floor.
Without a conscious change of tactics, Lucian reflexively slugged the sweep in his midsection. No sooner had his fist made contact than he heard a loud crash followed by a downpour of bits and slivers of something hard and white. The sweep grunted once, then slumped forward, burying him beneath his flabby form.
Laboring to catch his breath, Lucian shifted his head slightly to the right to peek over the unconscious man’s shoulder. Hovering above them holding what was left of his ancient Grecian urn vase—the rare one dating from 600 B.C.—was Alys. Next to her, clapping his hands and jumping up and down, was the climbing boy. For some strange reason, he felt like applauding as well, though he knew he should be furious at Alys for using the most valuable piece of art in the room to fell the chimney sweep.
“My lord! Are you quite all right?” Tidswell exclaimed, leaning into his line of vision. Though his craggy old features were tainted with concern, there was something suspiciously like a smile tugging at his lips.
“I’m fine,” Lucian grunted, nudging at the sweep’s inert form. Without the weight and worry of the climbing boy, he easily shoved the man off him.
As he rolled over onto his belly to push himself up on his knees, he found himself nose to toe with a particularly fine pair of boots. He groaned aloud as he looked up into their owner’s horror-struck face.
Bloody hell! He’d completely forgotten Lord Atwood. At a loss as to what to say, he ran his hand through his mussed hair and said what one normally said to afternoon guests, “You shall stay for tea, shan’t you, Atwood?”
Chapter 8
“Ouch! Jesus,” Lucian muttered, wincing as Charlotte dabbed at the bloody cut above his eye.
“Pshaw! It’s nothing but a scratch. Hardly worth all this fuss and bother,” she chided, smiling in a way that completely belied the sternness of her tone. She was so proud of her brother that she’d have hugged him if she thought he’d allow it.
When she’d arrived at the house twenty minutes earlier, the first sight to greet her eyes had been a very flustered Lord Atwood. His homely face flushed a blotchy red, he’d stuttered something that sounded oddly like “row,” then had dashed down the front steps as if the hounds of hell were loose and he were their midnight prey. As if that weren’t irregular enough, her knock was answered not by Tidswell, but by a contingent of grinning footmen bearing a groggily cursing ruffian, who they cheerfully tossed into the street.
Though these untoward incidents had alerted her that something was amiss within the walls of her brother’s house, they hadn’t prepared her for the shocking sight that had met her eyes when she’d entered the library.
Lucian, with his hair standing up on end and his perpetually immaculate clothing rumpled beyond redemption, was on his knees with a ragamuffin of a boy clinging to his neck. More remarkable yet, he was smiling. That her brother would smile at a child, not to mention allow one to touch him, made her wonder if she
was having one of those dreams where one thought they were awake, but were in reality still asleep.
She wondered all the more seriously if that was the case when an equally disheveled Alys explained in a breathless jumble how her child-loathing brother had rescued the boy from an abusive chimney sweep. It was Lucian’s grumbling after Alys and the ragamuffin had been led away that had convinced her that this was no dream.
And he was still at it. “I’m going to be stuck with her for certain after this,” he groaned, pushing her hands away from his face to rise. As he was wont to do these days, he began to pace.
Charlotte straightened up, frowning. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Atwood,” he moaned, as if it were the most tragic word in the English language.
Her perplexity deepened. “Atwood?”
“He witnessed the entire debacle.” Lucian pivoted smoothly on his heels as he reached the Chippendale desk, retracing his steps without pausing in his explanation. “I brought him home to meet Alys. Bradwell and Stanton mentioned that his father is badgering him to marry, and I thought they would suit.”
“Alys and Atwood? Suit?” Charlotte couldn’t keep the amazement from her voice. “Whatever gave you such a bird-witted notion?”
That last question drew a dark scowl from Lucian. “Hardly bird-witted when you think about it. Atwood is young and rich. And he’ll be an earl someday. As for Alys, well”—he reversed directions again—“her Surrey property borders his.”
“And you think those reasons enough to deem them suited?”
“Many a solid marriage has been based on less.”
“And many a life has been ruined by such unions,” she countered sharply. “Really, Luc! How could you even consider Atwood as a possible husband for Alys without first seeing whether or not they liked each other?”
He shrugged. “What’s not to like? They are both young and both need to get married. I don’t doubt that they would have done well enough together.”
Charlotte sighed her exasperation and plopped down into the chair Lucian had vacated. “You really are a bird-wit. Doing well enough together is hardly what I’d call a good marriage. As for the chances of Alys fancying Atwood, well, he’s as suited to her as”—she gestured helplessly as she tried to think of a completely unseemly person to illustrate her point—“as—as Tidswell is.”
One dark eyebrow rose in sardonic amusement. “Isn’t comparing Atwood to Tidswell rather like comparing figs to turnips? At least Atwood is young and of noble birth.”
“And Tidswell can string more than three words together at a time, and his face isn’t covered with spots,” she volleyed back. Shaking her head, she asked, “Can’t you see what I’m saying?”
He stopped his pacing midstride to stare at her. “You want Alys to marry Tidswell?” His voice and expression were so bland, it was impossible to tell whether or not he was joking.
Charlotte returned his inscrutable gaze as she tried to ascertain, then gave up with a snort. Knowing her brother, he was probably serious. For all that he could speak six languages and was a genius at mathematics, he was a complete nodcock when it came to understanding matters of the heart. Despairing as much over his ignorance as his reply, she snapped, “I was simply using Tidswell as an example to show you that a few good qualities don’t necessarily make a man an appropriate suitor for Alys’s hand.” She shook her head to emphasize her point. “No. And I think that if you were to give the matter serious thought, you’d see how truly incompatible Atwood and Alys are.”
He pivoted to begin his fifth trek across the room. “What makes you so certain they would be incompatible?”
Charlotte marked his progress with irritation. She might as well be talking to the wall for all the impression her argument was making on him.
“Well?” he demanded.
She made an impatient noise. “Well, for one thing,
Alys likes intelligent conversation, something she would never get from Atwood. Another is that her favorite pastime is dancing, and as I and my poor feet can attest, he has no skill whatsoever in that direction. She’s also a skilled horsewoman, and in case you haven’t heard, Atwood has yet to traverse Rotten Row without being thrown. No.” She gave her head one adamant shake. “They would never suit. Alys should have a charming, intelligent, virile beau. One with whom she can experience marital pleasure … in and out of bed.”
Lucian’s pacing came to an abrupt stop, and for the first time in Charlotte’s recollection, he looked embarrassed. To her amusement, he actually blushed. “Bedding is hardly an appropriate topic of discussion between brother and sister,” he informed her stiffly. “Nor is it something to be considered when appraising a man’s qualifications as a prospective husband.”
She laughed. “Wherever do you get such quaint notions, Luc? Clayton’s virility had a great deal to do with me choosing him, as did his handsome face and fine figure. Women and men aren’t as different as you think in their criterion for selecting a mate. Ask Alys. I’m certain that she’ll have plenty to say about your plans for her and Atwood, and none of it favorable.”
