A Lover's Kiss. Margaret Moore
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week. He would be at the weekly open house held by the president of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.
“Go to 32 Soho Square, to the home of Sir Joseph Banks, and ask for Lord Bromwell. Tell him I need his help.”
The young woman crossed her slender arms. “Oh, I am to go to a house in Soho Square and ask for a lord, and if he comes to the door and listens to me, he will do as I say?”
“He will if you tell him Sir Douglas Drury has sent you. Or would you rather I stay here until I’ve recovered?”
She ruminated a moment. “Am I to walk?”
That was a problem easily remedied. “If you take a hackney, Lord Bromwell will pay the driver.”
“You seem very free with your friend’s money,” she noted with a raised and skeptical brow.
“He will pay,” Drury reiterated, his head beginning to throb and his patience to wear out. “You have my word.”
She let her breath out slowly. “Very well, I will go.”
She went to a small chest, threw open the lid and bent down to take out a straw Coburg bonnet tastefully decorated with cheap ribbon and false flowers, the effect charming in spite of the inexpensive materials.
As she tied the ribbon beneath her chin with deft, swift fingers, a concerned expression came to her face now prettily framed. “I am to leave you here alone?”
Drury’s crooked fingers gripped the edge of the bed as he regarded her with what his friend the Honorable Brixton Smythe-Medway called his “death stare.” “I assure you, Miss Bergerine, that even if I were a thief, there is not a single thing here I would care to steal.”
She met his cold glare with one of her own. “That is not what troubled me, Sir Douglas Drury. I do not like leaving an injured man all alone, even if he is an ungrateful, arrogant pig. But never mind. I will do as you ask.”
Drury felt a moment’s shame. But only for a moment, because even if she had helped him, she was still French and he had his ruined fingers to remind him of what the French could do.
Juliette marched up to the first hackney coach she saw, opened the door and climbed inside. “Take me to number 32 Soho Square.”
The driver leaned over to peer in the window. “Eh?”
Her arms crossed, she repeated the address.
Beneath the brim of his cap, the man’s already squinty eyes narrowed even more. “What you goin’ there for?”
“I do not think it is any of your business.”
The man smirked. “Bold hussy, ain’t ya? Show me the brass first.”
“You will be paid when I arrive, not before. That is the usual way, is it not?”
Even if she’d never yet ridden in a hackney, Juliette was sure about that. She thought the driver might still refuse, until his fat lips curved up beneath his bulbous nose. “If you don’t have the money, there’s another way you can pay me, little Froggy.”
She put her hand on the latch. “I would rather walk,” she declared, which was quite true.
He sniffed. “I’ll drive ya—but I’d better get paid when I get there, or I’ll have you before a magistrate,” he muttered before he disappeared.
With the crack of a whip, the hackney lurched into motion. As it rumbled along the cobblestone streets, the enormity of what she was doing began to dawn on Juliette. She was going to a town house in Soho in a coach she couldn’t pay for, to ask a British nobleman to come to her lodgings, to help a man she didn’t know, who had been attacked and robbed by four ruffians in an alley.
What if Lord Bromwell didn’t believe her? What if he wouldn’t even come to the door? What if the driver didn’t get his money? He could have her arrested, and she could guess how that would go. It wasn’t easy being French in Wellington’s London even when she kept to herself and quietly went about her business.
Biting her lip with dismay, she looked out the window at the people they passed, instinctively seeking Georges’s familiar face. She had been looking for him for months, to no avail, yet she would not give up hope.
The buildings began to change, becoming newer and finer, although even she knew Soho wasn’t as fashionable as it had been once. Now the haute ton lived in Mayfair.
The haughty, arrogant haute ton, full of men like Sir Douglas Drury, who had seemed so vulnerable and innocent when he was asleep and who had kissed with such tenderness, only to turn into a cold, haughty ogre when he was awake.
He must not remember that kiss. Or perhaps he did, and was ashamed of himself—as he should be, if he’d been trying to take advantage of her after she had helped him.
As for speaking French, most of the English gentry knew French, although he spoke it better than most. Indeed, he had sounded as if he’d lived his whole life in France.
The hackney rolled to a stop outside a town house across from a square with a statue in it. Though narrow, the front was imposing, with a fanlight over the door and a very ornate window above.
Taking a deep breath and summoning her courage, she got out of the coach.
“Mind, I want my money,” the driver loudly declared as she walked up to the door.
Juliette ignored him and knocked. The door was immediately opened by a middle-aged footman in green, red and gold livery, with a powdered wig on his head.
He ran a puzzled and censorious gaze over her. “If you’re seeking employment, you should know better than to come to the front door.”
“I am not seeking employment. Is this the home of Sir Joseph Banks?”
“It is,” the footman suspiciously replied. “What do you want?”
“Is Lord Bromwell here?”
The man’s brows rose, suggesting that he was, and that the footman was surprised she knew it.
“I have been sent by Sir Douglas Drury,” she explained. “He requires Lord Bromwell’s assistance immediately.”
“And somebody’s gotta pay me!” the driver called out.
Juliette flushed, but met the footman’s querying gaze undaunted. “Please, I must speak with Lord Bromwell. It is urgent.”
The footman ran his gaze over her. “You’re French.”
She felt the blush she couldn’t prevent. She was not ashamed to be French; nevertheless, in London, it made things…difficult. “Yes, I am.”
Instead of animosity, however, she got the other reaction her nationality tended to invoke. He gave her a smile that wasn’t quite a leer, but made her uncomfortable nonetheless. “All right. Step inside, miss.”
“I ain’t leavin’ till I been paid!” the driver shouted.
The footman ran a scornful gaze over the beefy fellow, then closed the door behind her. Juliette prepared to fend off an unwelcome pinch or caress, or to silence him with a sharp retort. Fortunately, perhaps because of the person she had come to summon, the footman made no rude remark and didn’t try to touch her.
“If you’ll wait in the porter’s room, miss,” he said, showing her into a narrow room that was not very bright, even though the sun was shining, “I’ll take your message to his lordship.”
“Thank you.”
He gave her a bold wink and said, “If only I was rich, what I wouldn’t do with you.”
At least he hadn’t touched or insulted her, she thought as he pulled the door shut. Nor did she have long to wait in the cramped room that seemed full of furniture, although there was only two chairs, a table and a large lamp. Almost at once the door flew