The Defiant Lady Pencavel Read Online Free Page B

true?”
    “You’re assuming much...and yes. But what you have may hold no interest for me at all as I am a cultured and discerning man.” Griffin didn’t trust this scavenger, but he’d dealt with many the low character before. He’d have to give their “mutual friend” a good dressing down if this was a mistake. “I insist you provide me with more details.”
    “These items...they be like the guineas an’ shillings we has here, but from backalong times in Italy.” Clem snickered and beamed as if he’d offered the crown jewels.
    “Very well, it might be worth a look. But I warn you, no tomfoolery. I am not a man to cross. Or run afoul of, or broadside, and so on.” Griffin nodded and rose slowly to his feet. He felt the cool brass handle of the pistol in his coat pocket, leery of footpads, swindlers and cut-purses.
    ****
     
    The billowing smoke of London almost choked her, and Melwyn closed the coach window in irritation. “I haven’t visited here in a couple of years, and had forgotten what a beastly stink this city is. The kennels are teaming with offal.”
    The coach rumbled over the raised pedestrian walkways, past brick, and wattle and daub buildings that leaned like drunks over a table—the few such structures left after the Great Fire of 1666. The numerous shop signs, which no longer dangled over people’s heads as a few had fallen and killed the passersby, fascinated Melwyn, and softened her pique at having to flee Cornwall.
    “How did ‘ee snatch the coach and horses, again, without your father’s knowin’?” Clowenna pressed a handkerchief to her nose.
    “I have my wiles. Anything to slip away from that vile Lord Lambrick.” She shivered in revulsion, yet his mesmerizing eyes haunted her dreams. “He’ll never have me to wed and bed. Whatever that might mean, since I’m a virgin and wouldn’t know.”
    “But why London, m’lady? After five days o’ travel at indifferent inns?” Clowenna brushed soot from the shoulders of her spencer jacket, then rubbed her tailbone. “Me bum is numb.”
    “To hide with my windowed aunt, of course. Doesn’t everyone have a widowed aunt tucked away in London for convenience?” Melwyn tugged her pelisse close. “For people of my class, it is de rigueur .”
    At Grosvenor Square, in the exclusive Mayfair district, the two women alighted. The pale-stoned townhomes with Corinthian columns and several stories lorded over the park before them. Elegant carriages clattered over the cobblestones.
    “Your father will know where we is.” Clowenna stepped around steaming horse dung.  “Your aunt bein’ his sister.”
    “I’ll be of age in six months, and then he can’t force me to do anything.” Melwyn regretted she sounded like a child with that statement as she smoothed her wrinkled skirt.
    “Six months be a long time, m’lady. What choices does ‘ee have, if not to marry?”
    “I’ll marry a footman, if needs must, then run off before the fateful bedding, disguise myself as a man and join the navy and travel to the ruins in Italy and Greece.” Melwyn shoved aside her ire that her maid was correct in her assumption about choices, and approached the intricately carved door.
    “Will be flogged in the navy, given your temper,” Clowenna said thoughtfully.
    Melwyn laughed, for the first time in a week. She stared again at the door. She hadn’t seen her aunt for two years, and hoped she’d be welcomed. Hesitating, she turned to her abigail. “I still wonder how that brigand Lambrick knew about Mama.”
    “We should o’ stayed in Cornwall an’ asked him.” Clowenna flicked a smut from her eyelashes. “An’ I doubt someone with your pride would marry a footman.”
    “What do you mean, my pride? If I had any pride, I’d sit home and knit, smile blandly at all men, and sink into despair.” Melwyn jerked the bell pull. “Really, Clowenna, you have the bellicose manner of a virago. I don’t know why I keep you with me.”
    “Because