A Gentleman By Any Other Name. Kasey Michaels
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War Office.
He was the man he had made. A gentleman, in name if not by birth.
He rarely thought of the young Chance anymore, the ragged, barefoot boy who had angled for pennies on the wharf and slept wherever he could. He’d been known only as “Angelo’s brat,” until Ainsley.
He’d moved so far beyond that life, both in the islands and here in England.
But every turn of the coach wheels took him closer to Becket Hall, and the memories refused to go back where they belonged, into the far recesses of his brain. He blamed Julia Carruthers for that, although he knew such reasoning to be ridiculous.
Ainsley would like Julia Carruthers, damn him.
Yes, he publicly referred to Ainsley as his father and the others as his brothers and sisters, but in his mind all he saw was the end, that last day, that last memory. He would never forgive Ainsley that last memory.
Build a life, watch that life be destroyed. Love and refuse to love again. Protect yourself, adhere to the rules, refuse to be vulnerable or dependent again. Never, never trust.
Those were the lessons of that last memory. All of that. And Isabella’s smile…
Julia cried out when Billy sawed on the reins. The horses all but plunged to a stop and she was tossed into Chance’s arms from the other side of the coach.
“What on earth…?”
“Cow-handed fool!” Chance tried to disengage himself, but he had reflexively thrown out one arm to keep a sleeping Alice from tumbling to the floor of the coach, so that he could barely steady Julia with the other as she scrambled to right herself.
Julia had been dozing and was really only half-awake now as she pushed against him with her hands to right herself.
“Ooof! Miss Carruthers, please, for the love of all that’s holy—”
“I’m sorry, sir. So sorry,” she said, feeling her cheeks growing hot and blessing the darkness that hid that fact. “What happened? Why have we stopped?”
“Two very good questions, both of which Billy may be able to answer if my hands are not wrapped too tightly around his scrawny neck,” Chance said, opening the door and jumping down onto the uneven ground. “You stay in the coach with—oh, never mind,” he finished as Julia jumped down to stand beside him. “Billy? Billy!”
“Here, sir!”
“He’s there,” Julia said, pointing past the horses. “There, in the road. He’s bending over something.”
“Making it easier for me to boot him in the hindquarters. Is it too much for me to ask you to stay here while I investigate further, Miss Carruthers?”
“Probably,” she said, knowing she should be agreeing with him, climbing back into the coach. “But Alice didn’t waken and there’s nothing out here anywhere save the road, the marsh and us. No trees, barely anything that could even be called a hill. What could be in the road? A sheep?”
“I suppose we could stand here and debate the matter, but I suggest I—we—do the obvious and go look,” Chance said. He offered Julia his arm because otherwise she might trip over something in the darkness, and the woman was enough of a problem to him now without adding a sprained ankle to her list of detractions. “Oh, wait a moment more. Stand here while I get a pistol from the coach.”
“You think the sheep is armed?” Julia ignored both the offer and the order as she lifted her skirts and made her way past the horses to where Billy was standing very still in the roadway.
“Billy?” she asked, then realized that the coachman was staring quite intently, not down at the roadway but over to one side, where the marsh grasses grew waist-high.
“I’m that sorry, miss. I didn’t used to be such a looby,” Billy said, then slowly raised his hands up over his head. “He said not to do this until you came looking, miss.”
Julia’s eyes had become more accustomed to the darkness, and now the moonlight helped illuminate the scene in front of her.
She could see that Billy had shot his hands into the air because a young man kneeling in the marsh grass was holding a large, ugly pistol directed at the coachman’s chest.
The dark object in the road was really two dark objects, both of them human forms, neither of them moving. Julia went to her knees in front of the closest figure, who seemed little more than a boy.
“Lower your weapon, boy,” Chance said from somewhere behind her. “Yes, I can see you, and by the way that pistol’s shaking in your hand, I believe I’m the better shot. Billy, stop acting the looby. Lower your arms and relieve the halfling of his pistol before he hurts himself.”
“Me, sir? Begging your pardon, sir, but a pistol is a pistol, even in the hands of a boy. And this one’s cocked.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Julia said, looking first to Billy, then to the young man, who shook as he held the pistol, and lastly to Chance, who looked quite dangerous. And not at all afraid. She wished she could say the same, but she was actually terrified…which had the happy result of making her very, very angry. “We’ve got two boys bleeding to death in the road and no time to worry about who is the better shot, for clearly the best shots have already been taken. Billy, never mind the pistol. Fetch a lantern from the coach.”
“Hoppin’ right to it, miss!” Billy said, then turned and ran back toward the coach, directly disobeying Chance’s order.
Chance continued to hold out his cocked pistol, even though he knew he was too far away to do more than aim, pray and shoot, probably hitting the infuriating Miss Carruthers, who had gotten to her feet in order to walk around one body to the other. “Miss Carruthers, if you would do me the courtesy of standing still—”
But she was down on her knees again, a hint of moonlight illuminating her blond hair but not her features that remained a shadowy profile as she looked up at the third man. Boy. Very nearly boys, all three of them, not men. And one of them would never grow to manhood. “I’m so sorry. I can’t help this one, but I may be able to help the other, if you’ll let me.”
“Georgie? Georgie’s dead?” the boy said, then called out, “Georgie! Georgie, you’re not dead!”
Chance took the opportunity to advance toward the group and remove the aged pistol from the terrified boy’s hand. “Did you shoot him?”
The boy dropped the pistol and turned wild eyes on Chance, speaking between sobs. “No, sir! They shot him. Two of ’em. They shot our George and our Richard. They shot at us when we wouldn’t give ’em the tubs and Georgie told ’em to bugger off. We dropped the tubs and ran. We ran forever till we lost ’em. Then Georgie fell, right here. And Dickie, too. We never should have done it. We should have waited—what am I goin’ to tell our mam?”
Julia listened to the boy even as she pushed aside the dark blue smock on the wounded Dickie to see the even darker ugly hole in his shoulder. “Help me turn him, Mr. Becket, please,” she said, as the boy was unconscious, his breathing shallow.
“What?” Chance had lowered his pistol as he listened to the third youth’s sorry tale, not paying much attention to Miss Carruthers except to note that she certainly did seem to enjoy the role of heroine. “What the devil are you doing?”
“Trying to save this boy’s life, obviously. He’s been running and all the while bleeding like a stuck pig,” Julia said as Billy stood above her holding one of the large lanterns he’d taken down from the side of the coach. “I think the ball went straight through, but I want to be sure. Billy—hold the lantern closer while Mr. Becket and I turn Dickie and have a look. Mr. Becket? Your assistance, please?”
Was there any choice? Besides, the third youth was sitting on his haunches now, sobbing; he’d be no further trouble. Chance put down the pistol and dropped to his knees, carefully lifting the unconscious boy enough to roll