Free Thea's Marquis by Carola Dunn

saying, “Eat,” and sank his teeth into another as Thea disappeared into the shop.
    Nothing was left but two cores by the time she came out with a large loaf, three meat pasties, and a small tin can with a cover and a wire handle. “Milk,” she explained. “I had to buy the can, too, but I thought you would not mind.”
    “I’ll carry it, miss,” Peter volunteered.
    She passed it to him, along with one of the pasties, and gave another to Rod. “Would it be very unladylike in me to eat in the street?” she asked uncertainly.
    Rod suppressed a sudden, unaccountable urge to hug her. “I would not encourage you to walk down Bond Street nibbling on a hot meat pie. Here, I simply advise you to take off your gloves first.”
    Laughing, she complied.
    As they swallowed the last bites of piecrust, Peter led them off the Strand into a warren of tenements separated by tiny, dingy courts. He turned into a crooked alley so narrow they had to walk in single file.
    On either side blank brick walls rose to a few small windows on the first-floor level. Overhanging eaves high above admitted a mere streak of grey daylight to the airless, dankly cold ravine. Following Thea, Rod cursed himself for letting her come. It was the perfect place for a trap, with no room for him to use his advantages of strength and reach. At least he ought to have had the sense to wear old clothes, as she had, so as not to attract greedy eyes.
    He was about to call a halt to the enterprise when they turned a corner and came to the blind, rubbish-filled end of the alley.
    “Rosie?”
    Half hidden by a broken crate, a bundle of rags stirred. Thea darted forward and took the filthy, shivering child in her arms. Too late to warn of the danger of typhus fever, Rod could only think how wrong he had been to compare her to his mother.
     

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    “So Peter will be Hazlewood’s new tiger, and Rosie is to live with a family at his country seat in Buckinghamshire. He spends at least half the year there, so they will see each other often. I told him he must not separate them more than he can help.” Reaching the end of her story, Thea realized that her mother was more worried than approving. Her excitement ebbed and she sank wearily onto one of the new Chippendale chairs.
    “Oh dear, it was scarcely proper in you to instruct the marquis, my love.”
    “He did not take it amiss, Mama. We are friends.”
    “Friendship seldom leads to warmer feelings,” Meg informed her knowledgeably. “To make him fall in love, you must dress in your best and flirt with him, not wear your old cloak and rush around rescuing ragamuffins.”
    “I have not the knack of flirting, and even if I had, Lord Hazlewood is not in the least likely to fall in love with me.”
    “No, I suppose not. Jason says he is very rich and grand—the crème de la crème —and much sought after, but he has never paid his addresses even to the most beautiful and eligible young ladies. Not that he is either a rake or a recluse. He goes to all the best balls and parties, and Almack’s, and is generally regarded as a paragon of propriety.”
    “Then I cannot think what he was about, Thea,” the dowager fretted, “to involve you in such an unpleasant business. Does he suppose you so lost to all sense of decorum that anything is acceptable? I fear you started on the wrong foot with him, at that inn, and then to go out this morning without your maid!”
    “I’m sorry, Mama,” Thea murmured impenitently. She would not have missed this morning for the world, and Farden’s daunting presence would have spoiled it.
    “I ought not to have allowed you to go to Covent Garden at all. You must behave with particular care in future and hope that time will erase the unfortunate impression.”
    “Yes, Mama.” In theory she agreed. She suspected, though, that if she showed herself to be a conventional, demure young lady, she would forfeit the warm regard he had expressed after their adventure.