Devilish Lord, Mysterious Miss

Because if that woman was Cora, then what the hell had been going on for the last seven years? He certainly had not imagined the extraordinary success her shade had brought him at the tables.

Unless…he sat forwards, clutching the steak to his eye as Ephraims gathered his bloodied shirt up from the floor. Supposing winning on those horses had just been a fluke. One of those lucky streaks that happen to gamblers from time to time. He had been barely twenty years old, half out of his mind with grief, spurned by his family and friends at a time when he needed them most. Had he just clung to the idea there was still one person who would not turn her back on him?

And his subsequent successes—could they have more to do with the fact that he never played but when he was stone-cold sober? And that he knew when to stop?

He shot to his feet, flinging the steak on to the dish on the table, dismissing it and Ephraims with a peremptory wave of his hand.

‘Don’t be angry with me, Cora,’ he pleaded, terrified lest she be offended by this lack of faith in her. ‘I still believe in you. I do!’

He refused to believe that red-headed woman could possibly be Cora! Why, she’d had no idea who he was or what he was talking about. He paced across the room, running his fingers through his hair. Cora would never have forgotten him! They had been everything to each other! Besides, the woman he had mistaken for Cora had looked completely at home amongst the denizens of that gin shop. Whereas Cora had been shy. And opposed to strong drink. It was unthinkable that she could have changed so much!

And Cora had no reason to flee to London. Not one that made any sense.

He paced the room for several minutes, torturing himself with an imaginary lover, with whom she had eloped. Of an illicit pregnancy, which she dared not confess to her brother.

He went cold inside. Robbie’s temper was formidable. She might have been afraid of what Robbie might do. But surely, he groaned, she could have confided in him?

He went to the washstand, where he bowed over the basin, and dashed a jug of cold water over his head. And was flooded with relief at the recollection that there had been no mention of a child of any sort in Grit’s report.

Of course not.

Cora had not taken a lover. Or been pregnant. She had loved him!

The woman was not Cora, that was all there was to it!

But what if she was? a persistent little voice nagged at him.

‘Dammit all to hell!’he growled, reaching for a towel and burying his face in it. If the woman he had seen in the gin shop was Cora, then she owed him an explanation for the suffering he had endured on her account! And if not…he tossed the soiled towel to the floor.

Well, he was not going to break faith with Cora. He might have kissed the woman, but that was only because he had been so sure, in that instant…

He was just going to have to establish, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was not Cora, that was all.

And the quickest way to do that, he suspected, would be to walk back into that gin shop, and start to make enquiries amongst the people she associated with.

But not straight away.

He deliberately waited the few days it took him to regain his sense of equilibrium before returning to the gin shop where he had caught her carousing with…no, not scum. The men she had been with were at least honest and hard working. He paused on the threshold of the Flash of Lightning, scanning the room until he spied the men she had been with the night he had seen her, held her, kissed her…

Muttering a curse, he stalked across the room to the very same table where he had committed that act of gross folly. And stood there, calmly letting the conversation dry up as the men, one by one, became aware of his presence.

The one who had been sitting next to Cora, the one who had been so eager to rush to her defence, rose slowly to his feet.

‘Thought we’d seen you off for good on Friday,’ he growled. ‘You got no right coming back here.’

The other men around the table growled their agreement.

Rather than argue that he had a perfect right to enter any drinking den in London, or anywhere else he chose, Lord Matthison kept his expression neutral as he replied, ‘I have returned to compensate the landlord for any breakages that occurred. And to offer my apologies for poaching on your territory,’ he addressed Cora’s defender directly. ‘She bears such a remarkable resemblance to my late fiancée, that for a moment or two…’ He tailed off, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. ‘I hope you will believe me when I tell you I intended no insult to your…wife.’

He had no idea what connection the red-head had to these men. But he had seen them all leap to her defence from what they interpreted as his assault, as if she was one of their own. If he wanted to find out more about her, this was the place to start.

‘Mary’s not my wife!’ Fred protested, turning red as a couple of the other men at the table sniggered. ‘But nor could I just sit there and let someone grab her like that. No, not if he was a royal Duke I couldn’t!’

‘Scurvy thing to do,’ said another of the group. ‘Taking advantage of a simpleton in that way.’

‘It was as well it was Fred as saw you trying to steal a kiss,’ said another, ‘after what Molly threatened not five minutes before you walked in.’ There was a moment’s thoughtful silence, then the entire group burst out laughing.

‘She’d have torn you limb from limb!’ declared the one who had been cuddling Cora’s female companion, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. ‘You couldn’t have employed that right hook against her!’

Taking advantage of the relaxation in the atmosphere, Lord Matthison took a place at the table, and clicked his fingers for service. After he had ordered a round of drinks, Fred clapped him on the shoulder, admitting,

‘If it hadn’t been you, it’d uv bin someone else. There’s nearly always a fight in here of a Friday night.’

‘Usually a woman what starts it, too, one way or another,’ bitterly asserted a man on the other side of the table whose fists, Lord Matthison recalled ruefully, had made such an indelible impression on his ribs.

When he told him as much, the man’s scowl turned to a grin of pride. ‘For a gent, you pack quite a punch yourself. Spar with Gentleman Jackson, I suppose?’

He allowed the conversation to dwell for some time on the merits of the science that could be learned at such establishments, compared to the tricks learned in less salubrious surroundings.

There was a slight lull when the serving girl brought their tray of drinks, and once they had all toasted his punishing right, he turned to the topic he had really come in to investigate.

‘What did you mean when you referred to…Mary,’ he forced himself to call her, though he was by no means certain it was her real name, ‘as a simpleton?’

They had spoken of her that way several times, and attributed their defence of her largely to that cause.

‘Just that,’replied the one who had reminded him his name was Joe. His jaw, Lord Matthison noted with grim pride, was still rather swollen. ‘She ain’t all there. My Molly looks out for her at work, but…’ He raised his tankard, and took a long pull.

‘And she don’t like men,’ pointed out Fred, sympathetically. ‘No disrespect to you, sir, but she’s jumpier than an unbroke filly round men she don’t know well. Couldn’t let you go a scaring of a poor maid like that.’

‘Molly reckons,’ said Joe, setting down his tankard and aligning the handle with great precision, ‘she’s been took advantage of, before she come to London.’ There was a murmur of assent from the other men. ‘Not that she’s ever spoke of it. Says she don’t remember much of anything before she fetched up in town. Molly said she was a lot worse back then even than she is now. Headaches, and sort of fits, and that.’

Lord Matthison went cold. The girl had no memory of the time before she came to London? Six years ago? Could that account for the blank look in her eyes?