A Midsummer Night's Sin

The next thing she knew, Puck had pulled her against his chest, his arms around her as he rested his chin on her hair, rocking her slightly as if she were a child he was attempting to comfort. She wrapped one arm about his waist, holding on, hoping for strength.

And felt something else stirring inside her, something she shouldn’t have felt. Not now, with her cousin in such dire straits. Not ever.

Regina had never had anyone to cling to like this. Certainly not her mother, whom she loved dearly but who was as useless as a parent as ears would be on a turnip. Certainly not her father, who had made it clear he saw her as a commodity to be, as he’d baldly told her, “bought low and sold high.” Why, she’d never even had a pet that she was sure would have loved her unconditionally.

At last, as his coach slowed, she pushed herself away from him. “I have to stop this. I’m feeling sorry for myself, and that’s ridiculous because it is Miranda who’s in danger. Oh, and you’re horrid, Mr. Blackthorn, because you were about to take advantage of my overset state, weren’t you?”

“The thought had danced fleetingly across my mind, yes. Are you certain you’re totally against it?”

Regina glared at him, but then her bottom lip began to tremble, and she laughed. “You’re incorrigible. A true Puck.”

He put his bent index finger beneath her chin to hold it steady and then leaned in and placed a short, chaste kiss on her mouth. “For courage,” he said when he withdrew just far enough to look into her eyes.

Regina realized that the coach had come to a halt. She was home.

“I think I probably need it. Will you come inside?”

He shook his head. “I believe it would wiser if my name were kept out of any explanations you will offer your parents. I’m convinced the viscount won’t be mentioning it, at any rate. But don’t worry. Your father will be much too overjoyed to know that his daughter is safe and will not be asking for too many details. As for your mother …?”

Regina winced. “She won’t be a problem.”

“I’m sorry,” Puck said, stroking her cheek.

“Why? You aren’t the cause of any of this.”

“No. I’m sorry we have to say good-night. By tomorrow, you will have remembered just how unsuitable I am.”

She lowered her head. He was right. He was nothing she could think about the way she was thinking about him now. Her father wouldn’t allow his commodity to be thrown away on a bastard son, no matter that his sire was the Marquess of Blackthorn.

“We … we are only caught up in the moment,” she told him, still not raising her chin. “I have suffered a considerable—several considerable shocks this evening. And you …”

“I am a very bad man,” he finished for her.

“Sir,” a footman said, having opened the door and put down the steps. “We have arrived.”

Puck grinned, looking young and silly, so much so that it startled her. He had so many different sides to him, and she knew she was compelled to learn about all of them. “Some people find it necessary to state the obvious, don’t they? My footman will escort you to your door and make certain it opens to you.”

Regina nodded and then made a decision. She raised her hand to his cheek, lifted her head and kissed him, squarely on the mouth, and then withdrew before he could react.

“Tomorrow at eleven. In the park,” she said, quickly gathering up her reticule and all but stumbling out of the coach, his laughter following her.

She hiked up her skirts rather inelegantly, belatedly remembering that her shawl was still inside her uncle’s coach, but hopeful none of the sleepy Hackett footmen or the butler would notice.

And she probably would have made it to her bedchamber, where she longed to be alone and think back over every moment of the evening, save for the fact that she heard her father’s voice calling to her from the drawing room. The last thing she’d expected, considering what he had been about the last time she saw him, was for him to have returned home so early.

Her shoulders sagged; truly, her entire body sagged, suddenly exhausted. But she dutifully turned and headed toward the sound of his voice.

“Good evening, Papa,” she said, dropping into a small curtsy, because that always seemed to please him for some unknown reason. Besides, it was either that or kiss him on the cheek. After where he’d been tonight and what he had been doing, she would rather kiss the fireplace grate.

“Where’s your mother? No, never mind that nonsense. We’ve more important things to discuss.”

Reginald Hackett was still a relatively young man, and tall, towering over most other men (although not quite so tall as Puck, she realized with a ridiculous spurt of pride). He was thick in his body, most especially in his chest and shoulders, for he had spent many years laboring alongside his crews, climbing rigging, loading cargo. Regina knew this because her father had told her the stories, taken her to the docks, showed her what he had achieved and recounted again and again how hard he’d worked for his success, how grateful she should be for the fine clothes on her back, the food on her plate, the roof over her head.

And then he’d tell her how she would repay him. “Nothing less than an earl, girl, you hear me? Then squirt out a brace of sons for him, make me grandda to the heir, and nobody’ll dare remember Hacketts were ever in trade. Two generations from the docks, girl, that’s all it takes. And you name the first whelp Reginald somewhere in his string of names. I’ll go the blunt for that, as well. I promised m’mother as much, and that’s how it’s going to be, understand?”

His mother. Grandmother Hackett. To her father, everything that was right and good about the world. To her mother, who had been forced to have the coarse, domineering Alice Hackett live in her house until the woman died, the bad angel who sat on Regina’s shoulder. Her mother loved her daughter, but Leticia could never quite hide the fear that Regina had the makings of a lowborn peasant deep inside her, just waiting for some inopportune moment to pop out and sully her and her family escutcheon.

“Papa, I have terrible news,” Regina said as her father had recourse to the gin decanter, the only thing that bonded him to her Uncle Seth. She had hoped to be able to put off the telling until the morning, but that was impossible now. “Our coach took a wrong turn tonight and brigands attacked us. I’m fine,” she added quickly, as her father had whirled about to look at her, his face a thundercloud. “But Miranda was …”

“Well? Spit it out, girl. The idiot girl was what? Beaten? Shot? Raped?”

Regina sought out a chair and sat down. “No,” she said. “Taken. Miranda was taken.”

He raised one inquisitive eyebrow at her. No sign of caring, of compassion. Simply inquisitive. “Is that so? Taken where?”

“She was abducted by the brigands.” Regina hated that her voice was shaking, hated that she was afraid of her father. But she was. He was so large, so physically imposing. She reassured herself that anyone with half a brain in his head would be afraid of her father. “Uncle Seth has already begun making inquiries,” she lied quickly. “There is a great fear that Miranda has been kidnapped in order to be sold somewhere. I was left alone because I’m not what they wanted. It’s just as you told Mama and me. Terrible men, buying and selling people as if they were bolts of cloth.”

“I see,” Reginald Hackett said slowly. “And you’re not lying to me? She hasn’t talked you into going along with some farradiddle about slavers to cover that she’s run off with some idiot young pup who thinks he loves that penniless twit?”

“No! Papa, this is real.”

“And you didn’t help her make up the story, thanks to me telling you about such things? Come on, come on—the truth!”

Regina shot to her feet. “I am many things, Papa, but I am not a liar.”

His enraged shout shook the chandelier above her head. “Damned if you aren’t!”

She sat down once more, hoping to hide her sudden urge to flee the room. She hadn’t realized he knew her that well. “Papa, please …”

“You’re mine, aren’t you? You couldn’t help but lie whenever it suited you. Only good thing about you, other than your worth in the marketplace.”

Regina felt a spurt of resentment. “I also have tolerably good teeth,” she said quietly. But he’d heard her.

He downed the remainder of his gin and deposited the empty glass on a nearby table before spreading his arms wide as if in apology, one he certainly didn’t mean. “You need a thicker skin, that’s what you need, girl. I’m only stating facts. All right, all right, never mind. We’ll put your sad tale of brigands to bed, shall we? You were up to mischief tonight, the pair of you, but you escaped by the skin of those tolerably good teeth while your cousin didn’t. Next time, you might not be so lucky. But there’s not going to be a next time, is there?”

Her shoulders visibly slumped. He knew. How did he know? “No, sir.”

“So your cousin did not involve you in some elopement? She truly was taken. Seth knows?”

Regina nodded. “He’s going to hire some Bow Street Runners in the morning.”

“Another dip in my purse,” Reginald grumbled. “She hardly seems worth it, except to accompany you in the evenings.”

Regina grabbed on to that most important fact. “I can’t depend on Mama to accompany me all the places you wish me to go, no. And if Miranda isn’t recovered, Aunt Claire will be too devastated to chaperone me. No one is to know she’s gone, and once she’s safely recovered, it will be as if nothing has happened.”

“Ha! Believe that, girl, and you’ll believe anything.” He walked over to the chair she sat in and stood directly in front of her. Hovered over her menacingly. “She’s probably on her back in some low tavern even now, being held down, her legs spread wide for her while every last man Jack in the place takes his turn every which way. They’re having her in ways even the devil himself never thought of, and the more she screams, the more they’ll like it. Don’t you go clapping your hands over your ears, girl! You listen to me! I know. Better off dead by morning, that’s how I see the thing, and even your idiot uncle Seth will know it, too, see if he doesn’t. He won’t be looking for her all that long. Dead or a twopenny whore, that’s all your fine cousin has left to her. And you’ll consider twice now before you even think to take another step off the path I’ve put you on, stupid girl, won’t you? Won’t you!”

The image that had formed in Regina’s mind at her father’s crude description tore painfully at her heart, even as she unconsciously squeezed her thighs together. If she hadn’t been lucky enough to have met Puck at the masquerade when she was feeling so adventuresome, rather than someone like her father, where would she be now?

Her father was right. She was stupid. Stupid, and foolhardy and very, very lucky.

“Yes, Papa,” she said quietly.

“Good. Now give me his name.”

She looked up at him in surprise that swiftly turned to horror.

“And don’t lie to me again. Brigands,” he spat. “In Mayfair? I wondered what you’d come up with, and it’s pitiful. Only a brains-to-let looby like my brother-in-law would swallow such a clunker. Then again, he didn’t see you tonight, did he?”

Regina thought she might faint. This was worse than anything she could have imagined. “You knew? You let me go on and on—and you knew?”

“Got yourself a grand eyeful, didn’t you? Yes, I saw you. You and that man you were with, but you were already climbing into his coach and driving off by the time I could locate you again. Followed the pair of you all the way to Cavendish Square, though, figuring the least Seth could do was to see you home safely from there. Now, who is he?”

She ignored his questions because she had questions of her own. “You knew Miranda had gone missing at the ball?”

“You left without her, remember? You two weren’t at a tea party, girl. Things happen. And her disappearance could have been of her own planning. But to answer your question, no, I didn’t know for certain. Not until I returned to the ball and asked a few questions. Now you answer mine. Give me his name. He saw you safe to your uncle. I want to thank him.”

“No,” Regina said, knowing she was visibly trembling now and deathly afraid. Her father had never hit her, never laid a hand on her. He’d always found other ways to control her.

“I’ll have your mother put away. For her own good.”

And that was one of them. But just this one time she’d say to him what she’d always wanted to say, but had never dared. “You won’t do that. It’s bad enough you want to foist the tradesman’s daughter on the ton, Papa. It’s quite another to sell the daughter of a Bedlamite to a title.”

She flinched as he raised his hand, but then he stopped and smiled, which was worse. “Very well, we’ll not bother about the Good Samaritan. Go to bed.”

“Yes, Papa. I’m sorry, Papa.” Regina scrambled to her feet and fled the room, knowing he hadn’t meant what he’d said. Puck had been masked, and apparently no one had recognized him. Still, she couldn’t see him again, for his own safety.

Except that she’d have to see him again, to warn him. Otherwise, she felt certain he was foolhardy enough to come knocking on her door. Or worse.

CHAPTER FOUR

“M’SIEUR PUCK. IF you were to do me the kindness to lift your chin so that I might button your collar,” the valet, Gaston, crooned in that way he had about him, a politeness of expression far from the rough gutter French he’d spoken when Puck first found him, rescuing the slim, slight fellow from a gang of rough men who had been demonstrating their displeasure with what they believed to be his perversion of nature.

Puck liked his servants loyal, and in saving Gaston, he had found a treasure beyond price. He also held an affection for other misfits in this world. With Gaston, he could say what he liked, show what he felt, without fear of being misunderstood, without worrying about possible betrayal.

“She’s magnificent, Gaston. You’ve never seen eyes like that. A mouth so impossible to resist. And spirit! And intelligence!”

“As you’ve said, m’sieur. Repeatedly. I am so happy for you I am beyond words. The chin if you please, m’sieur.”

“I should walk away,” Puck said, at last doing as his valet asked. “That would be the decent thing to do. There’s no reason I can’t conduct my search for her cousin without ever seeing Regina again. None. In fact, it would be pure selfishness for me to involve her at all. I’ll tell her that.”

“When you meet her in the park, having taken such an unconscionable time dressing for this meeting,” Gaston said without expression—which was as good as tapping his employer over the head with a strong mallet.

Puck waved Gaston away and took a step toward the mirror to inspect the man’s handiwork. As usual, the valet’s effort was perfection itself. “Sending a note around to her residence could be risky for her. Anything put to paper can be risky.”

“And I am risky, as well, m’sieur? You could send me in your place, to repeat your words of farewell to her, without need for a note. I can remain committed to my purpose when exposed to magnificent female eyes and mouths.”

Puck eyed Gaston as he was reflected in the mirror. “You make a valid point. I believe I shall ignore it.”

At last Gaston allowed himself a small smile. “I have never before seen you like this, m’sieur. The beautiful women, yes, you like them all, romance them all. And then like a bee always in search of nectar, you fly on to the next flower, and the next. How is this one so different?”

Puck snatched up his gloves and softly slapped them against his valet’s shoulder. “That, Gaston, is what I wonder myself. And what I do believe I have no choice but to find out. Beginning this morning, in the park. Feel free to pray for me. I very well may be human after all.”

His own words still ringing in his ears, Puck then took himself off for the stroll to the park. He headed for the entrance closest to Berkeley Square, careful to arrive well in advance of the appointed time, to look over the lay of the land, as it were. Not that he was overly concerned that Regina had told her father about the scheduled meeting, but one could never be too careful, and Puck wasn’t fond of surprises, unless they were of his own making.

He saw the man immediately. Dressed well enough but appearing to be somewhat uncomfortable in his clothes, his eyes shifting left and right, as if looking for something he did not know but hoped to recognize when he saw it. With every second visual sweep of the area, his gaze would hold for some moments on the female form clad in a light green walking gown and pelisse, a red-haired maid standing just behind her.

So much for the notion of a leisurely stroll with Miss Regina Hackett, who had also seen fit to arrive early. Puck deftly turned and left the park, heading via a slightly roundabout way in the direction of Berkeley Square.

London churches had just completed their noon hour competition of bells when his most recent peek out from his hiding place alerted Puck to the fact that Regina was returning to her residence, her swift steps firm on the flagway, a reflection of her anger and forcing her maid to nearly skip to keep up with her longer strides.

Oh, there was going to be the devil to pay if he didn’t get his apology in quickly!

She and her maid were the only ones taking advantage of the fine, sunny day, save a few nurses and their charges and a spattering of old women out seeking fresh air for their health. The rest of the inhabitants of this exalted area of London were just now waking up to their hot chocolate and newspapers.

“Psst!” Oh, for the love of Heaven, she hadn’t heard him. “Psssst!”

Regina’s steps faltered slightly, and she turned her head toward the narrow alleyway where Puck was standing. But when he commanded her to pretend there was something in her shoe and to tell her maid to bend down and help her remove it, Regina reacted with the sort of alacrity a drill sergeant would admire in his recruits.

“Where were you? I waited for nearly an hour,” she told him quietly as she braced one hand against a nearby railing and stuck her right foot out to the maid, who quickly fell into enacting her role. Clearly, Regina had shared what the trip to the park was about this morning and had enlisted her aid.

“Someone was watching. You weren’t alone. Your father suspects something?”

She bent her head, as if talking to the maid. “My father knows everything. He saw me at the ball.”

“And now you’ve grown a tail.”

She very nearly turned her head to look at him. “I’ve what?”

Puck smiled at her horror. “And it will wag after you everywhere you go. He’s behind you somewhere now—no, don’t turn around. He’ll be much happier and become more lax in his surveillance the longer you pretend to not notice him.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. “But what shall we do? He can’t see you with me. I didn’t tell my father your name when he asked.”

“A determined man won’t have much problem finding his own answer. Your uncle will probably be delighted to assist him.”

“Miss?” Hanks, speaking with her position much lower to the ground than she obviously liked, sounded slightly oppressed. “My knees are aching that much.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Hanks.” Regina put her foot down and let go of the railing. “I have to go. If you’ve been waiting for me here all of this time, surely you’ve managed to think of something, some way we can meet?”

“Cheeky. That’s what it is. You’re cheeky. I never knew I admired that in a woman,” Puck said, longing to pull her into the alleyway and kiss her senseless. “Continue back to your residence and go inside. Wait ten minutes, and then come back out, turn to your right and then right again at the end of the building. I’ll meet you there.”

“But—but my tail?”

“He won’t expect you to reemerge quite so quickly, and it’s likely past his lunchtime. He’ll be nipping off to some pub to drink his the moment he feels you’re safely inside. If he hasn’t gone when you stick your pretty head outside—lovely bonnet, by the way, though I’d like to see more of your face—you’ll hear my warning whistle, and I’ll have to think of something else.”

“And what would that something else be?” Regina asked as she rifled inside her reticule as if searching for something.

First, the required action with the shoe, and now, the inspection of the reticule, both executed flawlessly and all the while carrying on a conversation with him. What a quick mind she had. She could have been born for the stage … or simply born to deceive. And to delight.

“Miss, we really must go.”

“I don’t know,” Puck said, unable to resist. “How wide are your chimneys?”

Regina lifted her chin and marched on down the flagway, clearly unimpressed by his answer, leaving him to sink farther into the shadow of the buildings and compliment himself on his good taste. He’d used the correct word to describe her to Gaston. She really was magnificent.

And then he was off, cutting through alleyways until he emerged on the flagway of Berkeley Square, nearly gaining it ahead of the man still following Regina. He watched as the man walked on and determined that the fellow was or at least had been a sailor, forever marked by his rolling gait.

Sailors most often meant knives, not pistols, and they usually kept them tucked into their waistbands. Puck stored the information in his brain and continued walking, following the tail until he’d passed the door that had so recently closed behind Regina, and then continued to keep pace with him as he exited the Square and turned to his left. Another three blocks took them both to a small, discreet basement tavern, patronized mostly by the servants from the local neighborhoods. The tail stepped inside and was greeted by several people who recognized him before the door could close once more.

Clearly, the man was a frequent visitor to the establishment. How nice. Gaston always enjoyed meeting new people. In his previous life, before his encounter with Puck, he had met many new people, most only briefly, deftly relieving them of their valuables as he’d been one of the premiere pickpockets in the city.

Puck wanted a look at the sort of sticker the man preferred, and Gaston would delight in practicing his old skills. It was always the details that lessened the odds.

Puck hastened back to Berkeley Square and the mews behind the Hackett residence, then nipped into the narrow passageway that divided it from the equally impressive mansion directly next door to it. The two residences had been built so closely together that occupants of the houses could have, if they’d so desired, simply opened their windows and indulged in quiet conversations with their neighbor. Or listened to conversations. Or gotten a peek at their neighbor in his or her underclothes or caught them out in some compromising position.

Which were several of the many reasons that these particular windows in both buildings were closed, and the drapes drawn, and both remained that way no matter what the time of day or the weather. The cobbled pathway still wasn’t the perfect meeting place, and a tradesman with a delivery to either house could still appear and discover them, but they’d be here only for a few minutes, and, as Puck reasoned the thing, if he couldn’t stare down a curious tradesman, then he didn’t deserve to live.

And then she was there, and Puck forgot about everything else as he stepped out of the shadows and took her hands in his. “You bring the sun with you,” he told her, “chasing away any shadows.”

She tugged her hands free. “We don’t have time for your nonsense,” she warned him, and then added, “but … thank you.”

“The pleasure, and the nonsense, remain mine. Tell me what happened after you left me last night,” he said, not liking that she looked faintly drawn, even for all her beauty. She could not have passed a quiet night.