Chapter One
The Wretched Hat and the Wretched Man

August 1812
Escaping London
Nash roused from his latest bout of self-pity long enough to crack his eyes open and watch the newest passengers climb aboard the already cramped, soggy stagecoach. The pair settled directly across from the corner he’d occupied for the past several hours.
He shifted and pressed his foot solidly against the floor of the coach.
Demmed inconvenient it was, having to share the dank spot he’d staked out as his own with the outwardly perfect couple. He kept his head lowered in the guise of dozing and refused to admit, even to himself, that he’d cared enough to peek.
People. Who needed ’em?
Certainly not Nash Hammond.
The stagecoach? Now that he needed, though if the blasted sky would just cooperate, not for much longer. He had enough money to buy his own horse—a splendidious one if he wanted. Hell, an entire stable full if he so desired—and actually had a stable. But then he’d have to care for it. Them. No demmed matter!
It was easier to put up with public transport.
Gave him something to think about other than his own contemptible problems.
“Pardon me, sir, but your foot snagged on my dress.” The cultured voice cascaded over him like a heaven-sent waterfall, at odds with the jarring way its owner tried to wrench her long, surprisingly dry skirts from beneath his boot.
He refused to budge, kept his boot clamped down and continued to feign sleep as he’d been doing ever since the horses had splashed to a stop, the stagecoach rolling to a sodden halt behind them when the driver paused for a fresh team and additional passengers.
Folks left a slumbering man alone—Nash knew by now, reckoning he was drunk most likely—and refrained from asking him to scoot over. That was the pertinent motivation; if he was going to be trapped inside, then he’d make blame certain he had every bit of space he could muster. He always claimed an extra thumb’s width between his body and the side of the coach, celebrating whenever he managed to secure more than the typical sixteen inches allotted to paying chaps like himself.
He’d begun his flight out of London as an outside passenger on the Royal Mail Coach—because it moved faster than lightning—but the incessant rains drove him inside and onto a public conveyance. Never could abide being exposed to the elements when it was pouring.
“Mister! My dress,” the female hissed, trying in vain to arrange herself across from him. “It’s caught under your boot!”
She pulled harder and he glanced at her through slitted lids, but the frothy contraption perched precariously atop her head hid her face.
Did she know that he’d stepped on her trailing hem on purpose?
Could she tell he was fighting back a gloat at her pathetic efforts to free her skirts? Did she have any idea of his pathetic existence?
Just as he tensed the muscles in his thigh to lift his foot, a ripping sound exploded from the floor and she plopped backward on the opposite bench, her skirts flying up to expose surprisingly inviting petticoats.
“Wretched man!” she muttered under her breath.
Acting no better than an unlicked cub, he was, amusing himself at her expense. He should apologize.
But he didn’t move.
Or say a word.
He was too busy rumbling a fake snore and inspecting the luscious treat whose lacy hem remnants lay trapped beneath his sole and the fop who’d just climbed in after her, lurching more than a bit. The fop who she appeared to be wedded to, if the dandy’s sour look toward Nash was anything to go by.
Figured.
Refined thing like that. Her in her fancy hat and white traveling dress—white! As if she shouldn’t be covered from head to toe with a thick layer of mud and grime. How she managed to look so perfect and proper on a day like today, with her apricot-colored kid slippers, closed ruffle-edge parasol that matched her dress and immaculately gloved fingers was beyond him.
Her generous bosom looked anything but refined though, ready to spill from the not-quite-decent neckline with just the slightest encouragement.
Nash strangled on the sudden growl of desire that threatened to erupt, turning it instead into a garbled snore.
Criminal, the way his cock behaved. Rearing up as if it needed a warm quiver, as though he hadn’t attacked his brother’s woman just hours before. Blast him! His primed penis deserved to be ground beneath her heel.
“All set, m’dear?” the red-haired dandy asked on a hiccup, squishing close to the woman and plunking his arm across her shoulders in a proprietary move while he cast Nash a glower as if the man could read minds.
Nash’s first-rate wattles caught the slight hitch in her breathing, his conk the hint of sour fear. “Indeed, Mr. Tate.” She squirmed within her companion’s restrictive embrace. “Thank you for asking.”
Her cultured tones had turned puny. From vibrant waterfall to watered-down dribble.
Nash hunched lower, slightly lifting his lids to gaze at her from beneath the overlong fall of hair that blocked half his face. Some sort of netting hung from the brim of the ungodly confection perched atop her head, hiding her features. The curve of her cheek was visible—barely—but naught else.
Probably had the face of a sow, a pointy-nose, bulgy-eyed mama pig. God surely had to give such a one a curse to balance the bounty of figure He’d blessed her with.
The dandy patted his pocket and pulled out a snuffbox. He made a great show placing a pinch just inside his lower lip, which he ruined with another hiccup, then did everything in reverse, returning the snuff to his pocket. His actions were ludicrous, done with one hand as the other was still firmly ensconced atop the sow’s shoulder.
Nash hadn’t seen more flounces even at court. How the dandy’s chin moved as his pursed lips blathered at her with so much starched linen and lace at his throat was beyond him. The clunch likely spent more time at Weston’s than he did his own dinner table.
And shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy! his conscience taunted, compliments of Mister William Shakespeare.
Jealous? Jealous of the overdressed man and his feminine fortune? Never. Never! As if hearing the mental shouts, the man echoed…
“Never fear, m’dear,” Dandy drawled, “only two days confined in this infernal conveyance—three at the most if this Scotch mist keeps up—and we shall arrive at our destination.”
She left off gazing at the torn hem fraying in her fingers and glanced through that irritating netting at Dandy. “Will you please bring yourself to tell me where we are going?” she inquired so softly anyone without Nash’s exceptional hearing would have missed it.
He wished he’d missed it, for the dulcet sounds of her airy syllables would never let him think of her as a sow again. Pig-faced or not, she had the voice of a princess. “I am quite sure it will not ruin your surprise if you—”
“Nay! And leave off asking!” The dandy swatted her shoulder. “You will enjoy it,” he added cajolingly. “I assure you.”
At the threatening undercurrent in the man’s voice, Nash lifted his head and uncrossed his arms. He remained slouched, giving the appearance of only casual interest. “You would not be taking the lady somewhere she prefers not to go, now, would you?”
The woman flinched. The sour scent of her fear now blasting off her in waves.
“Of course he isn’t!” She trilled a practiced laugh. “Mr. Tate is forever treating me to new experiences and surprises.”
“Mind your own bloody business!” the dandy bit out.
“Hear! Hear!” an older man in the opposite corner grumped. “Females present and all that. Mind your mouth!”
“Forgive me,” the redhead reprobate said even as his knuckles whitened on her shoulder. To the others, he was all polish and shine. Slime.
Nash wanted to lose his breakfast on the man’s gleaming Hessians. Instead, he tried to see past the netting, clueless where his sudden bout of chivalry had sprung from. “Ma’am? Are you well?”
He sensed her nervous smile, practically tasted the salty thickness of her looming tears. “I am wonderful. My life is…wonderful.”
“See?” Dandy boasted, as if there had never been any doubt.
She was lying.
Nash cursed himself for caring. For even asking.
He didn’t want the responsibility of sheltering a blame horse. What made him think he was up for the challenge of saving a bountiful-breasted, soft-voiced princess?
Sow, he told himself. A veiled sow. Oink.
Oink, oink! so cries a pig prepared to the spit. He intentionally butchered Shakespeare’s original line, but couldn’t stop from wondering…
Did lions eat pigs?
***
Three days, maybe two, if the stinking rain didn’t sink this coach as it had the first one they’d climbed into.
Reginald curved his arm more securely around Eleanor’s shoulder. He couldn’t stay mad at her for more than a minute.
Damn but he was parched.
Thoughts of her always made his throat go dry. So why can she not make your twanger go stiff?
Ever since the Unfortunate Incident when his brother George John arrived unexpectedly at Reginald’s townhouse and caught him with Neils, life hadn’t been the same.
From the time they were in the nursery, Reginald knew he was different, knew with an inborn certainty that he should keep his sexual desires to himself. But even his sense of self-preservation couldn’t stop him from finally expressing his inner yearning once he and Neils met. Lovers. They’d become lovers and Reginald had never been so happy.
Eleanor made the perfect foil—she attended all appropriate venues for a mistress and played her part well, keeping George John pacified and mollified.
Eh, eh. Reginald chuckled at his private jest.
Ironically, when it came to his older brother, no matter how much he positively loathed the man, Reginald secretly aspired to emulate him in every manner. George John was a true out-and-outer—the man boxed with Gentleman Jackson, rode with the prince, and was a top-notch gambler and womanizer to boot. With his wife tucked away in the country raising their three brats, two mistresses ensconced in London and reputations at more than one high-class brothel, George John was all the crack. And he had mistaken illusions that his younger brother was made of the same stamp.
When in fact, the only thing Reginald ever dreamed of cracking…was Neils.
Eleanor winced and he consciously relaxed his fingers, patting her shoulder. Leaning forward, he slid his tongue inside his bottom lip and gathered up the spit-soaked snuff. Hated the stuff. Only did it to look manly and because Eleanor had started clearing her throat and coughing every time he lit a cheroot these days—not that he blamed her on that score.
The fancy snuff tin had been the most recent gift from Neils and that alone made it worth using, though the constant reminder brought a pang each time Reginald pulled it out.
Determined to put his past love affair and liaison behind him, Reginald spat the wad of tobacco on the lurching stagecoach floor. The brown blob slid toward the impertinent rogue in the corner.
Reginald straightened and smiled. He’d just shown the other man who was in charge. Easily discounting the way the stranger’s eyes narrowed, he leaned into Eleanor, knowing he couldn’t make his claim any clearer.
He really didn’t need to. He owned her. Body and soul.
Owned her. The knowledge didn’t bring the comfort it usually did. Because from the moment George John discovered Reginald in his own home, in his own bedchamber no less, and in an extreme state of dishabille with another man—and Eleanor nowhere in sight to mask his true actions—George John had made it his mission in life to “make Reginald into a real man” and “purge his soul of those detestable, perverted leanings”.
Father would be appalled, Reginald had heard countless times. Usually followed by A sodomite! In my god-damned family? or A Miss Molly—in the Tate family tree? Take care, Reg, the authorities don’t get wind of this or you’ll soon find yourself swinging from a branch.
Yammering on and on, over and over, as if Reginald were to blame. If anyone was to blame, ’twas Eleanor.
At the thought, Reginald ground his teeth. If she’d been at home as she should have been, instead of flitting off to the sweet shop with her little teacher friend, then she would have been there to salvage his reputation.
But oh no. She’d been gone, George John had found Neils in bed next to him and Reginald hadn’t had a moment of solitude since.
“If that juicy flap under your roof cannot harden your cock, I will break it off myself,” George John had threatened. “You take that bitch, prove to yourself—and to me—that you are capable of siring a babe. Damn you, Reg! You know how I have begun negotiations with Lord Volmering about his youngest chit. I expect you to do your duty and get her with child within a year of the nuptials.”
Reginald had protested. But as always, it hadn’t made a lick of difference. George John had his mind set on a connection with Lord Volmering—more decisively, a connection with Volmering’s youngest’s excessively large dowry entering into the Tate family coffers. Seatmates in the House of Lords ever since George John had unexpectedly inherited his title, they’d struck up a friendship three years and two babes late for George John himself to make the connection a reality.
So it was left to Reginald.
Left to Reginald to find a way to bed Eleanor and prove to both himself and his brother that he could.
Stupid everlasting stipulation in the marriage contract, if you asked him, requiring him to father a child before the dowry changed hands.
Nagging pressure made his loins twitch. The gin he’d downed earlier had gone right through him. He needed to piss.
Knowing they wouldn’t stop for hours only made his bladder burgeon. Too bad his newest beaver couldn’t double as a chamber pot. Deuced hot in here with all these muggy bodies clumped together like barnacles on a barge. Maybe he’d just sweat it out. But if that was going to be the case…
He removed his fine beaver and set it in his lap, not wanting to soil the hat band with perspiration.
He squeezed Eleanor’s shoulder, thinking of how his brother promised—had damned well guaranteed—this trip would purge the “suck-pricking” urges—George John’s term—right from Reginald’s soul. Would cure him so that his cock would stiffen and spew each time he so much as looked at a woman.
Evidently, in addition to the mistresses and madams he consorted with in town, his brother had quite the collection of acquaintances with rather varied sexual tastes. At the thought of everything George John had hinted awaited him at the end of this journey, Reginald shuddered.
He just needed another drink. He’d get there. His blade would get there—be able to pierce the prize next to him and make his brother proud.
He had Eleanor. And his brother’s friends to help him.
***
Merciful heavens.
The look on the stranger’s face made all sorts of twittery discombobulations churn Laney’s guts. Just like being with Reginald did, only in a not-quite-horrible way. Almost a good way, for even though her stomach had nigh lodged in her throat and her skin hummed at the fiery glint in his eyes, she couldn’t look away.
Mayhap ’twas simply riding backward? Squished between the side of the carriage and the man who owned her—body, not soul—until her indenture expired. If she didn’t expire first, that recent—dire—vision overriding her every waking thought and action the last few days. Until this gruff stranger demanded her attention and refused to let go.
Her stomach pitched again. Knowing the four horses and driver were just a meager distance away, barreling forward at a breakneck pace, didn’t help. They travelled far too fast for the inclement weather. But then, Reginald had insisted they both change clothes after the morning’s coaching debacle and he’d just tipped their new driver substantially to “Push on, man. Horses are strong, make ’em earn their hay.”
Thanks to Reginald and his ill-timed impatience, she was now stuck enduring not only the stranger’s avid inspection, but the coach jiggling her body so ferociously it was stewing up the Banbury cake she’d eaten to break her fast. Ugh. She knew better than to indulge in her love of sweet breads, especially when such an arduous, unknown journey awaited her.
And now she paid for such ill-thought-out—
Nay, it wasn’t the public coach ride responsible for the locusts plaguing her belly. It was him. The surly stranger whose knees crowded her own, the heat from his expression warming her straight down to her previously wet toes.
The scowl on his face should damage his countenance, but on the contrary, his churlish expression combined with the daring lack of care he showed in his dress only piqued her interest. His jacket wasn’t properly buttoned and his neckcloth was tied so haphazardly the hollow beneath his throat where his collarbones didn’t quite touch was visible. Absolutely scandalous!
Now if he owned her instead…
Laney groaned at her fanciful imaginings. Only one person owned her at the moment—for the next ten months, twenty-two days and some-odd hours—and that was Reginald Tate, the handsome…bastard next to her.
To distract herself, both from Reginald’s smothering arm across her shoulders and the stranger’s piercing gaze, Laney chanced a look at Reginald, confirming his attention was elsewhere, and left off tearing the torn hem to shreds to bring her reticule to her lap and a comforting rustle to her ears. Mary Delilah’s letter. She’d read it again this evening, after they stopped for the night, see whether she could make heads or tails of her friend’s uncharacteristic wild rambling.
Reginald patted her shoulder and then removed his arm. Finally. Calling him Reginald in her mind was just one of a handful of defiant measures she’d undertaken lately to assert her independence, whether he knew it or not.
She took a shaky breath, but still smothered by his presence, it wasn’t nearly deep enough. Why couldn’t the knave have remained outside and ridden on top of the coach? The loud blast of thunder overhead mocked the question.
“I’ll just enjoy another little nip, m’dear. I daresay it’ll help the time pass.” He scooted closer, branding her entire side, then pulled his ever-present flask from inside his coat pocket and tipped it back, pouring the contents down his gullet as if it were a race he had to win. At this rate, he’d be out before the next stop.
Would the stranger disembark there or remain on the coach? If that was his destination, would Reginald notice if she disembarked with him—and never got back on?
Oh, the fanciful ideas running through her mind. The tingly quivers running through her abdomen…
She found herself unraveling her torn hem again and trying not to acknowledge the increased flutters in her stomach at the thought of putting herself under the stranger’s power. She should know better. She’d already put herself willingly under one man’s control and that certainly hadn’t improved her lot in life, now, had it?
Reginald Tate…
The man she once thought the answer to her prayers. The man she now concentrated heaven-bound prayers on nightly, requesting Divine escape.
She’d been barely sixteen when the dashing Reginald Tate had begun frequenting Mrs. Michaels Millinery and Fine Accoutrements where Laney had been indentured shortly after she turned thirteen. After three solid years making hats and waiting on “ladies” who looked down their fashionably pale noses more often than not—and pricking her fingers with milliners needles, hat pins and bracing wire just as regularly—the flattering attention the handsome Mr. Tate showered on Laney practically made her swoon. His visits certainly brightened dreary days and long afternoons.
Two scant months after they met, he’d offered to buy her papers from Mrs. Michaels. Laney assumed he wanted her for his “Lady of the Night” and other than being woefully uneducated in the art of nighttime activities, she was otherwise agreeable. Since losing her grandmama and mother within a few months of each other and being passed from one relative to another until winding up on the doorstep of an aunt who was already burdened with her own gaggle of children and didn’t want another, indenturing Laney at the first opportunity, she was nothing if not practical.
The allure of being pampered like a “lady”—even one bought and paid for—far surpassed the daily drudgery as the life of an unappreciated servant. At the time, her indenture to Mrs. Michaels was for another four years, which to the young Laney was a veritable lifetime. The position offered by Reginald seemed a godsend.
Instead, the rotten Mr. Tate had only wanted her to pretend to be his amour while he’d dallied in ways she’d often heard called sinful and sordid. She could hardly think of it without blushing, even now, half a year after Reginald had parted ways with his male paramour and renounced his despicable, detestable acts—Reginald’s words, parroting his brother, she suspected—only to turn his immoral attention to her. Immoral because he didn’t want her, but he kept trying to take her anyway.
His efforts and her fear only mounting until he’d brought her to this—stuffed like kippers on a plate among the other passengers. What if she’d declined Reginald’s offer and remained with Mrs. Michaels? Would she have, perhaps, crossed paths with the gentleman sitting across from her?
And should he even be termed “gentleman”?
Most assuredly not. Not with the way he went without a hat when everyone knew the importance of fine head wear. “Choose your hat first,” Mrs. Michaels had always told her customers, “and the rest of your ensemble will then magically follow.”
And not with the way he brazenly persisted in staring at her so intently, his eyes glowing like orange embers. Why, her face felt naked, as if her veil hardly protected her at all.
“Stop staring.” The words escaped before she could grab them back.
Reginald had gone slack. He leaned heavily against her, indicating his slumber, and Laney supposed she’d unknowingly relaxed her guard as well. Relaxed too much, given her awareness of the man across from her and her hastily spoken command.
Judging by the increased heat in his gaze, he hadn’t stopped contemplating her either.
Did no one else notice his unusual eyes? The way they fairly shimmered with heat?
“Remove your hat.”
The lace slipped from her fingers. “I beg your pardon?”
He leaned forward and caught the scrap before it drifted to the ground. Their knees collided. “Take off your hat. You appear to be the best view around, and I want to see the rest of it.”
“Shhh!” she sputtered, never more grateful for the shielding netting than she was at this very moment. She tried to angle her legs from his, but between Reginald’s sleeping body wedged along her side and the stranger’s knees pressed intimately against hers, she couldn’t move. “Please. You mustn’t say such things.”
He gave Reginald’s sleeping form a disdainful glance and leaned even closer. “Why do you fear him?”
How did he know? “What?”
“You heard me.” He made a show of returning the torn hem to her gloved hands, giving hers a gentle squeeze before releasing them. The unexpected gesture soared clear to her toes, which remained locked between his heavily booted feet.
“I asked why you fear him.” His rumbling voice had gone all low and gruff.
“I’m quite sure you must be mistaken,” Laney whispered, glancing at the other passengers, who all appeared intent upon passing the uncomfortable time as privately as possible, gazing out the windows or snoozing.
How was it no one took notice of anyone else? Least of all the intimate encounter between her and the stranger? Or how Reginald’s head lolled about his neck with every jostling revolution of the coach’s wheels? Laney couldn’t miss how Reginald’s jaw hung unhinged, his sour breath gusting over her shoulder. She had the sudden urge to upend the contents of his flask inside his mouth. Maybe he’d drown.
“You do not deny it.” The firm statement, voiced with perfect elocution, drew her attention back to the ill-dressed man before her. The most unrigged gentleman to cross her path.
Gentleman? Gads! She had to stop thinking of him as such. No matter that his speech was as fine as she strived to make her own, he was nothing more than a shabbaroon. But one who so boldly demanded, “Remove your hat. I will not ask again and I want to see your face.”
His tone made her think he’d be uncouth enough to rip it from her head if she refused. “You cannot! I cannot. Oh, do please sit back.”
She couldn’t think with his knees touching hers, with his finger idly nudging her leg. Was this desire, then? This awful achy, nervous, splendiferous feeling? The need to brush his hair back, to really see him? The need to be his?
For the thousandth time, Laney bemoaned her misspent youth and cursed her impatience. She hated Reginald and Mrs. Michaels all over again.
“How long have you been wed?”
His words startled. “Wed? I assure you we most certainly are not!”
“Related?”
“Heavens no.”
And just like that, he was gone. No more teasing fingers. No more obscene nuzzling of her kneecaps. No more glowing eyes.
“Ah,” he murmured once he’d straightened and returned fully to his own seat. His expression once again inscrutable, the playful, albeit intent, interest he’d shown seconds before wiped free.
“And what, pray tell, does that mean? Ah? You utter that as if you pass judgment upon me. Are not negative judgments reserved for those of clerical persuasions?”
He fairly growled from his shadowy corner. If anything, he looked darker, more brooding. “You claim not to be bound to him, yet you choose to remain,” he stated, disdain dripping from his scowling lips. “Keep the blasted hat on, then. I no longer care what you look like.”
Unaccountably, she cared that he no longer cared. Stupid, stupid. She should be jumping from the stagecoach and running as far away from Reginald as she could instead of bantering with a moody stranger.
“You don’t understand,” Laney hissed, incensed with herself. Why in the world should it matter whether he understood or not?
Nash turned away from the shrouded feminine mystery, dismissing her and pulling the thin volume of Shakespeare from his pocket. One could only feign sleep for so long. “I no longer have the inclination to understand. Keep your protestations and your fear to yourself, madam. What you choose to do with your life is of no interest to me.”
It was a blatant lie, but if he said it enough, mayhap it would become truth.
He had no business caring for anything, much less anybody, at the moment.
Blast her and her infernal voice for tempting him to think otherwise.
For unlike his older brother who preferred hardened women—at least until Lady Francine came along—Nash himself had always lusted after innocence and purity. Virgins. From the moment he became cursed and realized his body was no longer his own, he day dreamed about once-upon-a-times and happy-forever-afters, envying ordinary men with ordinary wives living ordinary lives.
He dreamed of one day having a pure wife. An innocent. As long as she composed herself as he imagined a lady would—caring for her family (which, to his way of thinking, meant her man—him) and caring for her home (the one he’d never had, not since his mother abandoned them shortly after his father did the same)—she didn’t have to be a lady in truth or even very beautiful. A simple refined peasant or even a clean servant—he wasn’t overly particular—would suit him fine. A woman who had saved herself just for him. That was what he truly desired.
But those were imaginings—the scant moments of fantasy he allowed himself in the lull before full wakefulness intruded and reality crashed down. He couldn’t take a virgin. He couldn’t have a wife.
Or children, or a family of his own. He wouldn’t have peace.
Not as long as he was a monster.
Who’d practically raped his brother’s woman.
Like a hive of angry bees the irate attention the veiled, behatted female still directed at him, buzzed and needled, made a mockery of his feigned disinterest. Dodging the annoying pests—both her and his reactions, he moved the curtain that was drawn against the rain.
Making a great show of gauging the location of the sun—asinine, as it was blocked by storm clouds—he peered out the coach. “By my reckoning,” he said to himself but intending that she should hear, “and barring a broken wheel or axle, or washed-out roadway, we should arrive at our overnight stop in six and a half hours.” He sighed and sank back into his corner, letting the curtain drop. “Plenty of time to find myself a pretty wench for the evening, one who avoids wearing ugly hats. Or anything at all…”
“Wretched, wretched man!”
Good. He’d gotten to her. So why did he feel lower than the bottom of muddy pigs’ feet? And why couldn’t he rid himself of the unwanted concern mired in his chest?