And he harbored no illusions: tonight the trio’s mission was to kill him.
Unfortunately for them, Neil was not yet ready to die.
At the same moment that Clapham aimed his pistol and Parks and Richards, pistols at the ready, converged on him, Neil threw himself at Clapham’s knees in a low, fast dive.
“Blimey!” Clapham bellowed, trying without success to leap clear and shoot at the same time. The bullet passed close enough to Neil’s right ear so that he felt the wind of its passing, smacking into the cobblestones, then ricocheting with a whine. Neil made contact before Clapham could snap off another shot, the full force of his flying body slamming into Clapham’s legs, causing his gun to catapult out of his grip. Clapham went sailing over Neil’s back, tumbling forward, providing for the next crucial seconds just enough cover to protect him from Parks’s and Richards’s guns, which spat fire into the darkness. Screams echoed off the walls around them. The few remaining onlookers scattered.
“Don’t shoot!” Clapham yelled, covering his head as he hit the cobblestones.
“Get ’im!”
“Over there!”
A large body—Richards—tackled Neil as he scrambled to his feet, almost bringing him down again. Chaos reigned as Clapham’s henchmen temporarily abandoned the idea of shooting him in favor of hand-to-hand combat. In the foggy darkness it was impossible to be certain of exactly what was happening, or who was who. Amidst the thuds and grunts of bodies hitting the cobblestones and blows being landed, shapeless figures of bystanders flitted through the fog like wraiths to watch from a safe distance while the three principals in the attack fell on Neil in a blur of lightning-fast movement. Neil blinked in pain as a fist landed a glancing blow that ripped the corner of his mouth. The silver gleam of a knife plunging at him through the darkness gave him just enough warning to dodge it. A man—Parks?—screamed in pain, Clapham cursed, and the sound of an upstairs window being thrown open was followed by a woman shrieking, “Timmy, go fetch the watch!”
The foul stench of the sewage-filled gutter almost under his feet filled Neil’s nostrils as he sucked in air, courtesy of a fist the size of an anvil slamming into his midsection. Wheezing, he returned the favor with a punch that sent that particular assailant flying.
As soon as he realized that he was grappling only with Clapham now, another pistol spat, the bullet glancing off the wall nearest Neil’s head.
“Bloody fool, don’t be shootin’ toward me!” Clapham yelled, his meaty arms trying to latch onto Neil even as Neil managed to tear himself free. Clapham was quick despite his bulk, and snagged a fist in Neil’s coat as he turned to run, jerking him to a halt. Neil whirled, slammed his fist into the man’s thick belly, and yanked his coat free. Then he bolted into the darkness, darting toward the mouth of another of the small alleys that honeycombed the area.
“’E’s gettin’ away!”
Snapping off a quick shot behind him as he ran down the first of the rabbit warren of streets he knew like the back of his hand and that he hoped would be his salvation now, Neil tried to come up with a plan. Run was the best he could do for the moment, he decided as his immediate vicinity was peppered by answering gunfire and he ducked down another alley.
So that’s what he did, with his would-be assassins in determined pursuit.
Despite his years of loyal service to Crown and country, those who decided such things were determined to see him dead.
Chapter Four
BETH FOUND THAT she was shivering a little as she stole up the back stairs and flitted as silently as possible along the long corridor that led to her bedchamber. The shivering, she thought, was not due to cold, but rather to the shock of William’s attack, and had set in only now that she deemed herself really, truly safe. Even after she had dealt with William, the thought of exposure had terrified her. Had it not been for the fortuitous presence of that impossibly handsome housebreaker . . .
Her lips burned as she thought of him. He had, of course, been frightening at first, but at the moment when he’d appeared she’d had far too much disaster on her plate already to worry about any danger she might have been in from him, and in the end he had proved to be a God-send. Without his help, she would never have been able to get herself and William out of the library with no one the wiser. She’d even begun to trust him a little—until he’d proven himself to be as untrustworthy as most men with his unwanted kiss. Still, she hoped, no, prayed, he had kept to his part of the bargain. Her knowledge of him was of the slightest, but still he had struck her as a man who kept his word, so she rather thought he would. If asked, she meant to say only that she had given William his congé and then he had left the premises (which had the virtue of being absolutely true). If an accident had befallen him after that—say, he’d fallen and hit his head—well, she was very sorry for it, of course, but it had nothing to do with her.
With any luck, that story might just see her through.
As luck—bad luck—would have it, Twindle was in Beth’s bedchamber as Beth slipped inside the door and quietly closed it behind her. The light from the fire in the hearth and the flickering candles in the sconces on the wall revealed her clearly just as soon as Beth turned around. Tall and spare, clad in austere black bombazine, with a narrow, deeply lined face and silver hair brushed up into a severe bun, Twindle had been first nursemaid, then governess, and finally, as they grew up, companion to her and Claire, and the elderly woman was fiercely devoted to the pair of them, and their eldest sister, Gabby, too. But she was also straitlaced and rather lacking in humor, and completely rigid in her notions of what was and was not proper behavior for an unmarried young lady. Beth was quite certain that if the complete tale of her evening’s misadventures should ever come to Twindle’s ears, Twindle’s scandalized lecturing would continue nonstop until the day one of them died.
“Miss Beth! Miss Claire sent me up to—” Twindle’s voice broke off and she frowned as she took in her erstwhile charge’s dishabille. “Child! Have you had some kind of accident?”
“’Twas a—most unfortunate thing,” Beth began, groping desperately for a version of events that would not completely horrify Twindle. Since the room was only dimly lit and her arms were once again folded over her chest, hiding the worst of the damage to her gown, she was pretty sure that Twindle was reacting to her tumbledown hair and general air of disorder only. If Twindle had seen her torn gown, her old nursemaid would have dissolved into a paroxysm of questions and exclamations on the spot.
“What was?” Twindle’s frown deepened.
Before Beth could decide on how much she could safely say, the door opened behind her, nearly hitting her in the backside. Beth shot an alarmed look over her shoulder even as she had to scoot forward to get out of the way. Of course, she thought wryly, just when she truly needed a few moments of privacy to recover her composure and change her clothes, her room would suddenly become a magnet for the household.
“There you are,” Claire said in relieved accents as she entered and closed the door behind her. Her sapphire blue ball gown rustled as she moved. The sapphire and diamond necklace and earbobs with which she was bedecked glittered in the candlelight. Raven-haired, slender to the point of fragility, and still impossibly beautiful at the ripe age of nearly twenty-five, Claire was the sister she had squabbled with, loved as an equal, and done her best to look out for for as long as she could remember, while Gabby, ten years Beth’s elder, had mothered them both. Aside from Gabby’s health, which was never robust, Beth rarely worried about her: Gabby had enough quiet fortitude to look out for herself, and was happily married and the mother of a brood of three hopeful children besides. Although Claire was now Duchess of Richmond, rich and respected and married to a man who adored her and whom she truly loved, she still brought forth her protective instincts. Beth had always, always known that she, although not her sister’s equal in beauty or, regrettably, sweetness of disposition, was a far tougher character than Claire would ever be.
“Sho
uldn’t you be down in the ballroom?” Beth asked her sister with some exasperation, knowing that the gig was up even as Claire’s eyes fixed on her and began to widen. There now would be no explaining this away without revealing some version of the truth. Claire’s eyes were too sharp—and so was her knowledge of her sister.
“What in the world happened to you?” As Claire looked Beth over, her lips parted in horror. Behind her, Beth could sense Twindle looking her up and down, too. Beth grimaced and gave it up: dissembling in front of these two who knew her so well just wasn’t going to be possible.
She would, at least, honor her bargain to the dishonorable housebreaker and keep his presence secret. The rest, she knew, was going to be dragged out of her one way or another, so she might as well get it over with.
“Oh, all right. If you must have it, I gave William his congé.” Her voice was flat. As she spoke, she turned and headed across the large bedchamber with its soft green walls, cream-flocked curtains and bedclothes, and elegant mahogany furniture toward her much smaller dressing room. The first order of business was to get out of her ruined gown before anyone else came bursting in. “He didn’t take it well.”
“Never say you’ve jilted another one?” Twindle, sounding aghast, fell into step behind her. “For heaven’s sake, Miss Beth, you must—”
“Lord Rosen did this?” Claire broke in. Her voice pitched high with surprise and shock, as she, too, joined the procession. Although skeptical of Beth’s intention to actually wed the man, she had not been displeased with Beth’s acceptance of William, feeling that he offered her headstrong little sister a reliable ballast on which to build her life.
Clearly, Beth thought, Claire was no judge of character. But then, neither had she been.
They had reached the dressing room now; Twindle was only a few steps behind her, while Claire, whom she could see perfectly well through the tall pier glass at the far end of the room, stood just inside the doorway.
Stopping in front of the mirror, Beth met Claire’s eyes through the glass. With her back to the room, her hair spilling over her shoulders and her arms folded over her chest, most of the damage to her gown was yet concealed from them. But with both of them watching her like pigeons after crumbs, there would be no hiding the extent of the disaster.
Beth sighed.
“Yes, William did indeed. Could one of you unfasten my gown, please? I don’t want to ring for Patterson.”
Patterson was her maid and loyal, but Beth wasn’t ready to trust her with this. Servants’ gossip was notorious for reaching the ears of the ton. And if she was to come out of this with her reputation, such as it remained to her, intact, no word of what had happened in the library must get out.
“You look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backward.” Indignation colored Claire’s voice as she met Beth’s gaze through the glass. “I heard that you and Lord Rosen repaired to the library, alone. Then . . . ”
Both Claire and Twindle had stepped forward to unfasten her gown, but it was Claire who reached her first, and she was actually touching the tiny hooks and eyes at the back of Beth’s gown as her voice trailed off. Through the mirror, Beth watched her sister’s eyes widen again as she realized the state the garment was in.
“Your gown is ripped. Ruined, in fact.” Claire’s fingers ran disbelievingly over the frayed edges of the delicate material, and she took in the destruction visible at the back of the gown by sight and touch before meeting Beth’s eyes through the mirror again. “Did Rosen attack you?”
Horror was writ large in Claire’s face and voice, and Beth was reminded of the nightmare of a previous marriage Claire had endured before wedding Hugh. Her sister had gone paper white, with a strained look around her eyes and mouth that made Beth’s stomach tighten. Claire had never fully shared the details of her years-long ordeal, but knowing her sister as she did, Beth felt certain that violence had played a large part in it.
“William didn’t actually harm me,” she hastened to say. “At least, he didn’t—oh, in the end, all it really amounts to is a torn dress. Could you undo the waist, please? I can slip right out of the rest.”
There was no point in trying to conceal the ruination of her bodice any longer; Claire was clearly beginning to realize the extent of the damage for herself, and Twindle, bug-eyed, was crowding in right behind her. Giving it up, Beth unlocked her arms from across her chest and pulled her tangle of hair to the front so that the few fastenings on her gown that were still intact were more readily accessible.
“Dear Lord,” Claire breathed, her gaze sliding over the tatters of Beth’s gown through the mirror. “The scum.”
“Sit down, Miss Claire.” Twindle took charge, pushing the small slipper chair beside the mirror toward Claire as every last bit of color leached from Claire’s face. “And you, Miss Beth, hold still.” Nudging Claire aside, Twindle started undoing the hooks at the back of Beth’s gown herself while Claire obediently sat, her face now white as chalk. That Twindle was almost as horrified as Claire was evident from what she didn’t say: in anything less than the direst of straits, Twindle inevitably scolded until the victim was tempted to clap her hands over her ears and repent in sheer self-defense.
But Twindle went to work on the fastenings without another word.
“Tell me the whole,” Claire ordered from her perch on the chair. A glance in the mirror told Beth that her sister’s eyes burned, and her expression was grim. Another glance showed that Twindle’s mouth was a thin, straight line.
Beth sighed. For these two, under the circumstances, nothing would serve but the truth. Or, at least, most of the truth.
“After I told William that I feared we would not suit, he said that I would marry him, whether I wished to or not. He ripped my dress, then threw me down and tried to ravish me, on the theory that if he ruined me I would have no choice but to become his wife.”
“The bastard,” Claire breathed. Beth’s eyes widened at that. Over the course of a lifetime spent together, she could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had heard Claire swear.
Twindle snorted derisively. “Clearly he doesn’t know you, Miss Beth. The devil himself couldn’t make you do what you don’t wish to do, and never could.”
“He should be beaten,” Claire said. “Or brought up before a magistrate. Or at the very least be banned from decent society. When I tell Hugh . . . ”
“No, you mustn’t.” Beth rounded urgently on her sister just as Twindle finished unhooking the last of the hooks and eyes that had, until then, held the ruins of her gown together. The gown sagged forward and she shrugged it down toward her feet with an accustomed wriggle. “Don’t you see, you mustn’t tell Hugh. You mustn’t tell anyone. Either of you.”
“He attacked you.” Claire spoke through clenched teeth. “He cannot be allowed to just—”
“If word of this gets out I’ll be ruined,” Beth said. “You know as well as I do that my credit isn’t good enough to survive the kind of scandal this will bring down upon us.”
“We can’t just let him get away with—”
“He won’t be getting away with it.” Beth interrupted Claire fiercely even as she stepped out of the puddle of gold silk that was the ruined dress and kicked it aside. “He will have lost. I won’t marry him, and I won’t be ruined, either. We must just pretend that I simply gave him his congé and he accepted it like the gentleman he decidedly isn’t.”
Their eyes met. A new emotion—fear?—darkened Claire’s.
“He did not . . . ?” Claire trailed off delicately, but her eyes held Beth’s and her meaning was impossible to mistake: had the attack succeeded to the point where she had been sexually violated? Beth shook her head even as Twindle finished untying the tapes of her petticoat and looked up to catch the answer.
“I told you, the only thing he truly harmed was my gown.” As the petticoat dropped around her ankles, Beth stepped out of that garment, too. “Though not for want of effort, mind.”
&nbs
p; “Thank goodness,” Claire said.
“Hold still, Miss Beth.” Twindle was now working on the strings of Beth’s stays. Under her breath Twindle added starkly, “Boiling in oil is too good.”
That clearly was meant to apply to William.
“So how did you get away?” Claire asked.
“I hit him over the head with a poker.” There was a wealth of satisfaction in Beth’s voice. The stays dropped away, and she stripped off the shredded chemise with a feeling of relief. The ruined clothes were far too vivid a reminder of how terrifyingly close she had come to a hideous fate.
“Here, Miss Beth.” Twindle handed Beth her pale blue wrapper, and she shrugged into it.
“You hit him . . . ” Claire’s voice seemed to fail. Tying the wrapper’s belt around her waist, Beth turned to face her sister. Claire’s eyes were dark and she was white as hair powder. Then her expression brightened, and a smile curved her mouth as color flooded back into her cheeks. “Good for you, Bethie. I hope you hit him hard.”
Beth grinned. “I did.”
“Never say you killed the man, Miss Beth?” It was clear from Twindle’s reproving tone that she considered it a real possibility, and was concerned more about the breach of ladylike behavior aspect of it than the prospect of William’s death.
“No.” Beth shook her head. “I only hit him hard enough to knock him unconscious. I thought at first I might have killed him, but, as it turned out, I didn’t.”
There was the faintest note of regret to that.
“What a shame.” Claire echoed her sentiments exactly. Then her brow knit with concern. “So am I to understand that Lord Rosen is still lying unconscious in my house somewhere?”
Here was the tricky part.
“Not at all.” Although her response was airy in tone, Beth’s mind was racing. Lying was not something she did well, and lying to Claire, who knew her so well, was especially difficult even at the best of times, which this was not. Despite the brave front she was putting on, she was still a little shivery, still a little shaky, still not quite herself in the aftermath of all that had happened. The solution, then, was not to lie. Well, at least, not exactly. “He left. By now, I would imagine, he is back at home bemoaning his cracked head.”
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