Free The Last Hellion by Loretta Chase Page B

and be treated like filth. She isn't like the others—"
    "I know, you told me," Tamsin said.
    "She isn't used to hard treatment," Lydia went on angrily, despite the soothing strokes of the brush. "Men are so despicable. He will get away without doing a dratted thing for the poor girl."
    "Perhaps the duke will speak to him," Tamsin said.

    Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion
    Lydia jerked away from the brush. "What the devil does he care?" she cried. "I told you what he said after reading Mary's note. He went straight back to provoking me."
    "Perhaps his pride would not allow—"
    "I know all about his manly pride." Lydia left her chair and paced to the fireplace and back. "He saw his chance to get even with me tonight for what happened in Vinegar Yard. By now he's probably guzzled a dozen bottles of champagne celebrating his great victory over Lady Grendel. All he cared about was showing his friends I wasn't too big for him to handle—lifting me straight up off the pavement and carrying me halfway to the next street as though I weighed nothing. I struggled with him all the way to the hackney and the man wasn't even winded , curse him."
    And her stupid heart had melted, and her brain with it, because he was so big and strong. Gad, it was enough to make one retch. She couldn't believe the rubbishy notions she'd got into her head.
    "Then, after he's emptied Crockford's wine cellars and dropped several thousand pounds at the gaming tables," she fumed, "he'll stagger out of the club and into a high priced brothel in the neighborhood."
    And he would take a harlot into his powerful arms, and nuzzle her neck and—
    I don't care , Lydia told herself.
    "He'll forget I exist, big and obnoxious as I am," she stormed, pacing on. "And so he's bound to forget all about a scrap of a note from a girl he probably believes asked for ruination. As though the child had any idea men could be so treacherous."
    "Indeed, it's most unfair that the woman is punished and the man is admired for his virility," Tamsin said. "But we shan't let her be punished. I know you must Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion
    attend an inquest tomorrow, but I can go to Bridewell—"
    Lydia stopped short. "You most certainly cannot."
    "I'll take Susan. All you need do is tell me how to get Mary and her baby out. If there's a fine to pay, you must take it out of my wages."
    Tamsin advanced, took the bemused Lydia's arm, and led her back to the dressing table. "They can share my room until we contrive suitable arrangements for them. But the first priority is to get them out. Her week is up on Thursday, isn't it? And tomorrow is Wednesday." She tugged Lydia down onto the chair.
    "Write down what I must do, and I'll set out tomorrow morning. Where is your notebook?"
    "By gad, what a managing creature you are turning out to be," said Lydia. But she reached into her pocket obediently—and somewhat amused at her docile obedience to a girl half her size and nearly ten years younger.
    Lydia found the notebook in her pocket but not the pencil. She must have dropped it in the hackney. "There's a pencil in the drawer of the nightstand," she told Tamsin.
    The girl quickly retrieved the pencil.
    Lydia took it, then looked up to meet her companion's steady gaze. "Are you sure, my dear?"
    "I managed to get from the other end of England to London on my own," Tamsin said. "And I only got into a scrape here because I couldn't see. This time, I promise not to remove my spectacles for anything. And I'll have Susan as a bodyguard. And I shall be so happy," she added earnestly, "to do something useful."
    In six days it had become clear that Tamsin liked to be useful. The time had also proved her to be no fool.

    Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion
    A pity, Lydia thought as she began to write, the same couldn't be said for herself.

    Early Wednesday morning, a hackney bearing Adolphus Crenshaw, Mary Bartles, and the infant Jemmy drove away from Bridewell prison.
    Bertie Trent should have departed at