“I, uh, didn’t expect, uh …” Parren seemed utterly discomposed as he stared at Alec.
“Are you trying to say that you didn’t expect to see me this far from London on such a fine night? Why, Parren, how shortsighted of you!” Alec’s voice was pure silk, so polished that if she had not heard him earlier, she might have mistaken him for a gentleman after all. But something sinister buried just below the surface made even Isabella shiver. The lantern Parren was holding quivered again.
“We … we never meant to do you out of your cut, Tiger. I … I swear it. We would ’ave give it to you, just as soon as we got back to Lunnon. But the gent whut wanted the job done was in a powerful ’urry, and …” Parren’s voice trailed off as Alec—Tiger?—shook his head almost regretfully.
“But you know how much I like to be informed of these things in advance. I’m afraid that you’ve made a slight error in judgement, Parren. And it’s going to cost you. Dearly.”
“ ’Ow much? ’Ell, Tiger, you can ’ave ’alf our take.…”
“I want it all.”
“All?” It was an outraged croak.
“And the lady, too. Alive.”
“But—but we already made a deal with ’er da, and got our cash. ’Ard bloody work it was, too. Believe me, Tiger, there’ll be no more paid for that one.”
“There is no deal made out of London unless it’s approved by me. You know that.”
Parren was silent.
“You shouldn’t have tried to cheat me, Parren. I don’t like that. Ask anyone. Ask Harry Givens.”
“But ’e’s crabbed.”
“He is dead, isn’t he? And that’s what you’re going to be if I ever set eyes on you again. I’m very much afraid that from now on you’ll have to carry out your dirty little jobs in another town, Parren. London’s just been closed to you.”
“You can’t do that! ’Ell, even you don’t own the whole bloody town!”
“Don’t I?” The voice was almost a purr. Alec lifted his pistol almost idly, and the men behind him immediately did the same. The tension in the air was palpable. In the sudden silence Isabella thought she heard a metallic click.…
“Watch it!”
All of a sudden Parren dropped his lantern. Isabella was following its downward trajectory with her eyes when there was another hoarse shout and the staccato bark of a pistol.
Paddy cursed, and thrust her toward the woods. “Run, wench!” he growled at her. Yanking a pair of pistols from his waistband, he sprinted for the field. There were more shouts, more pistol shots. As Paddy emerged from the woods, pistols blasting, Isabella realized that Alec lay on his belly on the frost-bitten ground. The other men had either taken cover in the woods or were, like Alec, lying sprawled in the open.
Run, Paddy had said. Isabella needed no second urging. She lifted her skirt clear of her legs and fled as exploding pistols and men’s screams rent the night.
She was just leaping over a rotten log fallen across her path when something struck her with the force of a mule kick square between the shoulder blades.
Isabella cried out, was spun around by the force of the blow. Instinctively her hand twisted, clawing up her back for the site of the spreading, burning pain. She could not reach it, but there was a wetness soaking the back of her gown. Her fingers touched something warm, something wet and sticky. She withdrew them to look down with shock at the thick, dark liquid that stained them.
“Why, I’ve been shot,” she thought, horrified, just before she crumpled senseless to the ground.
VII
Alec Tyron got to his feet, dusted off his breeches, and stood looking down at the body of Cook Parren with cold disinterest. The fool should never have tried to play him false. Others had attempted it before, and most had paid with their lives, as had Parren.
Alec had not risen to be the overlord of London’s seamy underworld on the strength of his jolly good humor or remarkable looks. It took a strong man, a ruthless and clever one, to claw his way up to the position of ruler of the Spitalfields-Whitechapel-Kensington district. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he thought that over. Royalty, that’s what he was. At least, of the slum rat variety. King of Whitechapel. Maybe he should get himself a crown.
“What’re you grinning at?” Paddy came up beside him, frowning. Paddy was a chapel-going sort, not at all suited for the life of riding herd over the pickpockets, murderers, brigands and bawds among whom he found himself. He had a conscience, and a most inconvenient set of morals which Alec, with his quicker brain, had found himself talking around most of his life. Paddy and he had been together since the time when both had been grimy urchins barely breeched, roaming the streets of London doing whatever they must for crusts of bread to keep body and soul in one piece. They’d complemented each other, Paddy with his enormous size and huge muscles, and Alec, for all that he was some few years the younger, with his agile brain. It was that combination of brain and muscle which had got them to where they were. And it was that combination of brain and muscle that would keep them there. Paddy was the only human being in the world besides himself that Alec completely trusted.
“Where’s the gentry-mort—the lady?” Alec had worked hard and long to rid himself of the cant speech of the streets, but sometimes he slipped. It usually occurred in times of stress, and he was always severely disappointed in himself when it happened. Speech habits marked a man, labeled him as clearly as slovenliness or a cringing mien. To rise above the lowest of the low, the class to which he’d been born, it had been necessary to change the way he spoke as well as nearly everything else about himself. He’d done it, by dint of much effort. But still, when he least expected it, hints of his origins would emerge, to his secret shame.
“The little wench? When the shooting started, I told her to run. I saw you go down, and I thought Parren might have done for you at last.”
“Not bloody likely. And the little wench is no wench, at least not by birth. It’s become clear to me that she is the very lady we came seeking.”
“What?” Paddy was skeptical.
“Parren and his men lost her, and we found her. Just how many females do you think go running about these woods at night, anyway?”
“She didn’t look like no lady I’ve ever seen. Not—not fancy enough.” Paddy frowned doubtfully at Alec.
Alec shook his head, pocketed his pistol and knelt by Parren’s sprawled body. “You great looby, it’s the bawds that wear the fancy dresses and perfume. Ladies—real ladies, born-to-it ladies—don’t dress like that. They dress real plain.”
“She was dressed plain, all right.” Paddy began to grin. “You put your hand on her—”
“Aye, well, I thought she was a doxy.” The memory of how that small breast with its taut, eager nipple had felt against his palm made him uncomfortable suddenly. He looked away from Paddy, down at the body whose pockets he was systematically turning out. “She was near naked. Threw me off, or I’d have tumbled to who she was sooner.”
“You going to apologize?” Paddy’s smile was wide as he thrust his own pistols into the waistband of his breeches. Alec had never apologized to anyone for anything in his life, and Paddy knew it. Alec flicked him a dampening look.
“Saving her from Parren is apology enough. He meant to kill her.”
“Aye.” Paddy sobered momentarily. “I don’t hold with killing females, Alec.”
“I know.”
For all his size, Paddy was a peaceable man. He didn’t find it easy to be rough with men, much less women, as Alec well knew. Alec straightened away from his cursory search of Parren’s body, and gave Paddy a clip on the shoulder.
“We saved her life, if it makes you feel any better. Now all we—you—have to do is find her.”
“What do you mean, I have to find her?” Paddy looked aggrieved.
Alec shrugged, and started walking toward the house. “You let her go, you find her. Or not, as you please. ’Tis not exactly sporting to save her from Parren and then lea
ve her to freeze, to my way of thinking. But ’tis up to you.”
“She could be anywhere in those woods!”
“I doubt it. Besides, ’tis not a very big woods. Take some of the men with you, and I don’t doubt you’ll have her back in a trice.”
“We’ve already frightened her half to death. She’ll go to ground like a fox, does she know we’re after her.”
“So tell her you mean to restore her to the bosom of her family.”
Paddy snorted. “ ’Tis likely she’ll let me get close enough for conversation, isn’t it? Besides, we don’t know who her family is. Or even her name. All we know is that Parren was hired to kidnap a high-born lady and kill her. Hell, if he’d gone through the proper channels, we wouldn’t even have cared.”
“ ’Tis the way things work.”
“Pray tell me just what you mean to do while I’m freezing my backside off searching for the lady.”
Alec ostentatiously fastened his frock coat, shivering, to tease Paddy about the cold. “I’ll be searching for something else, of course. Something that interests me infinitely more than a skinny little female.”
“The ransom.” Sometimes Paddy was surprisingly perceptive, given his usual obtuseness. But then, he knew Alec very well.
“Aye,” Alec said with a quick grin.
“And of a surety we’ll be keeping the ransom for ourselves?” There was more than a hint of sarcasm beneath the question.
“What would you have me do with it? Parren, who I suppose would technically be considered its rightful owner, is dead. The lady’s family will be getting her back unharmed, which is more than they would have without our intervention. ’Tis money well earned, in my opinion.”
“You’re a sad case, Alec,” Paddy said, shaking his head.
“Aye, I know it, and the knowledge sends me weeping to bed every night. Go on, go find the lady. I’ll see to the cleaning up here. Can’t leave bodies lying about, you know. ’Tis not hygienic.”
They were nearing the house. Even as he said the last few words, Alec felt a sudden tingle crawl up his spine. Usually that tingle meant danger. It was another gift that had helped him survive to climb as high as he had. He continued to walk, but with his eyes and ears on the alert for anything out of the ordinary. Looking around, carefully casual, he saw from the fallen bodies lying about the field that all but one of the men who had been in on this attempt at subverting his authority were down. Only a heavyset woman and a single man remained on their feet, and they were being herded toward the house by his men. All his enemies were accounted for. Why, then, could he not shake the sense of danger?
“You and your big words,” Paddy complained, shaking his head in equal parts admiration and annoyance. Intent on pinpointing the source of the eerie feeling that refused to leave him, Alec barely heard him. “Half the time a body don’t know what you’re nattering on about.”
When Alec responded with no more than a grunt, Paddy surrendered to the inevitable and took himself off, calling to Deems and Ogilvy to follow him. The rest of the men stayed behind, to dispose of the dead and ransack the house for the ransom and any other items of interest or value under Alec’s direction.
Rat-face Hardy, a runt of a man whose name described him perfectly, came up to Alec for orders about what to do with the bodies. Alec spent a few moments considering the available alternatives. Perhaps they should be transported back to London, and left to rot on the streets as a grim warning to those who would emulate Parren’s fool-hardiness? But no, that would cause Bow Street to go into a flap, which might be a nuisance in some of his operations. Besides, transporting corpses was sure to rub Paddy’s scruples the wrong way, and would be an awkward task at best. Still bothered by that niggling tingle, Alec chose the easiest solution, directing that a shallow grave be dug in the woods and the corpses buried together therein. No stink would be raised about the disappearance of such vermin, but they would be missed, and the talk on the streets would be enough to serve his purpose of deterrence.
Problem solved, he was just walking up the steps when at last the reason for the tingle became clear. Behind him came a stealthy movement, and the click of metal on metal. He would recognize the sound of a pistol being cocked in his dreams.…
Alec whirled, grabbing for his own pistol.
The movement was too late. Even as his hand closed over the polished wood muzzle, Rat-face Hardy fired.
The ball hit Alec like a fist in the chest, first cold and then burning hot as it churned deep within his flesh. Alec staggered backward to be brought up short against the doorjamb, his pistol still in his hand. Even as Hardy dropped the first smoking pistol and lifted a second for another go at him, all hell erupted around them. Men loyal to the Tiger shouted, running toward the scene, drawing their own pistols as they tried to figure out who was doing what to whom. Alec heard his name, shouted in Paddy’s voice. Hardy was apparently unnerved by the commotion. Forgetting to fire a second time, he looked about him, turned to run.…
Alec lifted his own pistol, pulled the trigger. The ball hit the little bastard right between the shoulder blades, exploding the back of his coat as it tore a great bloody hole through his flesh. Alec smiled as Hardy staggered and fell. It wasn’t the first time he’d ever shot a man in the back, but it was the first time it had ever felt so good.
What happened after that, Alec didn’t know. The world began to swim around him, go black. The pistol fell from his suddenly nerveless fingers. Clutching his chest, he felt himself losing his balance, and with his balance went his consciousness.
His last rational thought before he rolled down the steps into a void of nothingness was that it was of all things most ironic that the Tiger should be brought down at last by one of his own trusted men.
VIII
When Isabella opened her eyes again, her first thought was that she must have died and gone to heaven. Plump cherubs strumming on golden harps flitted about before her eyes, their white wings soft as clouds on a field of celestial blue. For a moment she simply stared. Then fright made her screw her eyes tightly shut. She didn’t want to be dead!
Her back throbbed like a sore tooth. That fact was borne in on her as she took a deep, shuddering breath, only to cringe from the pain. Dead people didn’t feel pain, she was almost certain. And they certainly didn’t hear thunderous snores.
The acknowledgement of that sound brought her eyes open again. Now that she was prepared for the sight of naked angels, she was able to discern after only an instant’s blinking that they were delicately painted onto blue silk bed hangings, and that she was, in fact, lying on her stomach on a sumptuous bed. Her eyes travelled around the room, still seeking the source of the snoring that had not abated. Perhaps Bernard …? But he never snored, so far as she knew. Impossible to imagine a man as fastidious as he, victim to such a lowering fault. Besides, when had he ever slept in the same room with her? The few times he had taken her to wife, it had been quickly over with and then he’d left her to sleep alone.
Besides being crude, the sound was too rawly masculine to be coming from Bernard. Wincing, Isabella lifted her head from the pillow and looked carefully around. The room was large and lavishly appointed, the walls all hung with blue silk. The furniture, including the enormous canopied four-poster in which she lay, appeared to be made of gilded wood. A white chaise covered in what looked like satin stretched before the dying fire that was the room’s single source of illumination. Isabella realized from the deep shadows that crept about the corners of the chamber that it must be night.
But there was nothing on that side of the room to account for the snores, so Isabella carefully turned her head to the right, wincing at the stiffness of her neck and back. On that side of the room stood a gilded washstand which held a dainty porcelain bowl and pitcher. Beside the wash-stand was a partially open door. It was on this door that Isabella’s eyes fastened, widening.
Just visible beyond the door was an enormous pair of men’s boots. From the angle at which
they stretched across the opening, it was obvious that they were attached to a man. An enormous man, if the size of the boots was anything to judge by.
Fascinated, Isabella stared at the boots. Wherever she was, it was no place she had ever been before. Except for her wedding night and a few isolated nights thereafter when Bernard, either too bored or too far into dun territory to abide London for a while, had visited the country and subjected her to his husbandly demands, she had never had a man in her room. Now here she was, in a strange and overly ornate bedchamber, lying in an enormous bed that seemed to be scented with lavender and was dressed with silk and lace-trimmed sheets, with a man snoring in the antechamber next door.
What on earth had happened to her? And what did she do now?
Resting her cheek back on the silk-and-lace pillow, careful to keep her eyes on the motionless boots, Isabella frowned as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. She remembered being kidnapped, remembered the horror of learning that they meant to kill her, remembered escaping, being recaptured, running and being shot. Of course, that accounted for the pain in her back.
She also remembered two men, a relatively gentle giant named Paddy and a golden-eyed, wickedly handsome villain named Alec.
The question now was, where was she? Was she in danger? And to whom did those enormous boots belong?
She was not bound in any way, Isabella discovered as she experimentally moved her feet beneath the bedclothes. Surely, if she was being held for some sinister purpose, she would be bound.
Or maybe not. Not if they thought she was unconscious and thus unable to attempt escape.
Escape. That’s what she must do. Wherever she was, it was no place she had been before and thus no place she wished to be. Safety lay in making her way back to Blakely Park, back to the faithful servants who would protect her with their lives, and sending word to her father and Bernard of all that she had endured. Despite their mutual lack of abiding affection for her, they would protect her from whatever ruffians had her in hand now.
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