A Midsummer Night's Sin

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!”