by Shana Galen
There was a pause. “Yes.”
She turned the first lock, then paused. “Have you come for the dinner tray?”
“That’s right.”
She turned the second lock. She should open the third, but her fingers hesitated. She’d never met Mr. O’Dwyer. She assumed there was a Mr. O’Dwyer. How could she be certain this was he?
Of course, Finnegan and the other wouldn’t have allowed him to come up if they didn’t know him.
She undid the last lock and opened the door slightly. A man stood without, his face in shadow. “You are Mr. O’Dwyer?”
“That’s right. Mrs. O’Dwyer sent me for the tray.”
He didn’t move forward, into the light spilling from the doorway so she could see him. That wasn’t all that bothered her. There was something…
“You don’t have an accent.”
“What’s that?”
Mrs. O’Dwyer still had the thick accent of her homeland. This man sounded like he’d been born in London. “You’re not Irish.”
Panic seizing her heart, she slammed the door and fought to secure the locks. She wasn’t fast enough. The latch lifted, and though she pushed against the door to keep it closed, the man on the other side was too strong.
He rammed against the door, and it flew open, causing her to stumble back. She managed to keep on her feet and fled for the bedroom. She slammed the door and secured the lock just as the intruder banged against it.
“Go away!” She peered around the room frantically. The lock was flimsy and wouldn’t hold against the man’s hammering.
“Open the door. No ’arm will come to ye.”
“Liar,” she muttered. Why had she sent that wardrobe to storage? She could have used it at that moment. Instead, she grabbed the edge of the dressing table and dragged it in front of the door. One of her fingernails broke at the quick, and she gasped with pain, but she yanked the furnishing until it rattled with every bang of the door.
Only then did she back up and suck the throbbing finger. The dressing table was too small and dainty. It wouldn’t hold. She needed a weapon. A brush? The bottle of cologne? Oh, but if that exploded all over the room, the scent would make it practically uninhabitable.
Where were Finnegan and the other—why couldn’t she ever remember his name?—when she needed them!
The door shook, and the wood around the lock splintered. Lila squeaked with fear. This was it. Now she would die. The door gave way, and the man pushed his face into the slivered opening. His cheeks were red from the effort, and he grunted to move the dressing table out of the way.
She recognized him. It was the same man who’d taken her that night. The same one who’d killed the gentleman, the MP.
She backed away and around the side of the bed, hoping to put some distance between herself, the door, and certain death. At that moment, she spotted the book, snatched it up, and threw it at the door.
She’d played catch with her brother a thousand times as a child, and all that practice finally paid off. The book cuffed the man on the chin, and he stumbled back and out of the door’s slim opening. Lila ran back and tried to shove the door closed again. If she could find a way to wedge the dressing table in front of it—
But the door wouldn’t close. The blasted book had landed in the opening. She bent to free it, and a hand caught hers.
Lila screamed. It was the sort of scream she knew would make her throat raw later, but she didn’t care. She didn’t think there would be a later.
The dressing table still blocked the door, and the man couldn’t pull her through the opening without first moving the dressing table. She was wedged between the table and the door. She fought to free her hand, but his punishing grip on her fingers didn’t slacken. They were deadlocked in a tug-of-war until the door shuddered from a punishing blow. Someone else—there were two of them!—had kicked the door. Lila screamed again and yanked her hand, only to have it pulled back.
The door crashed inward, and the dressing table toppled over, the contents shattering with an angry crash.
* * *
Brook heard the scream and began to run. He’d almost reached the building and was grateful for the rain because if the sky had been clear, St. James would have been crowded, and his progress would have been slowed. Now, with Hunt keeping stride, they burst into the building. The scene that greeted them was chaos.
The landlady was yelling. Her husband knelt beside one of the dead guards. And Lila—it had to be Lila—screamed just as what sounded like an entire china cabinet crashed to the ground.
Brook took the steps two at a time, ignoring the burning in his legs. He burst into his flat to find Racer pushing his way into the bedroom, and Beezle crouched on the floor, his hand locked around Lila’s wrist. A large piece of furniture had overturned, blocking the doorway and preventing Lila from backing away from Beezle.
Racer turned and saw Brook, but Brook couldn’t tear his gaze from Beezle’s hand on Lila’s wrist.
He would have seen Beezle locked away for a thousand crimes, but the crime of touching Lila—his wife—meant death. Racer charged him, and Brook knocked him aside like one might an annoying insect. Beezle saw him coming, hesitated a moment too long in releasing Lila, and Brook had his hands on Beezle’s shoulders.
He yanked the arch rogue to his feet, slammed his fist into him, and followed him as he careened across the room. Blood from Beezle’s broken nose splashed the walls and Lila’s new rug. There would be more blood yet. He reached for Beezle again when Lila shouted.
The warning was enough for him to duck, and, with a sharp sting, Racer’s blow grazed his side. Beezle was on his feet now, and Brook had no more ducked to avoid his fist than Racer caught him.
With a bloody sneer, Beezle slammed his fist into Brook’s breadbasket, making him double over, gasping. Hunt thundered into the room, met Brook’s gaze, and Brook looked to Lila, who had managed to rise from the floor. She stood with her hands pressed against her pale cheeks, her face caught in an expression of horror.
Hunt had made a career of obeying orders, and he went for Lila, ushering her back into the bedroom, where she might be safe.
With a curse, Beezle lifted a knee, connected with Brook’s chin, then ordered Racer to release him.
“We’re not through yet, Derring!” he yelled as he ran for the door.
Not even close to through, Brook thought. Still unable to speak, he jabbed at the door when Hunt raced from the bedroom. “After him,” he wheezed. The room spun, and he pressed a hand to his burning flank.
But he knew it was too late.
Beezle was free, and he’d be back.
Eight
Lila hated the silence even more than she hated the sounds of the fight. What did the silence mean? Had Brook lost? Had he won? Her back pressed against the bedroom wall, she squeezed her eyes shut. The door was broken, but Hunt had shoved it against the jambs to give her a measure of protection. It also prevented her from seeing out.
Finally, she heard footsteps and the low sound of a man’s voice. Brook or Hunt? Or the other? No, he wouldn’t have spoken quietly.
Unless he didn’t want her to know he was coming for her.
The stench of the spilled perfume made her head spin, and a piece of broken mirror jabbed at her foot through her delicate slipper. Still, she didn’t move.
“My lady?”
She thought it was Hunt. She knew Brook’s voice by now, and this one was too refined to be one of the thugs.
“Yes?” she managed, her voice shaky.
“Sir Brook and I are coming in. Beezle is gone.”
She felt her shoulders slump, and she would have crumpled to the floor had it not been covered with perfume and broken glass. The door slammed back against the wall, still blocking the doorway but leaving a wide enough gap for Hunt and Brook to enter.
Brook’s jaw looked red and he stood hunched, hand pressed to his side, but otherwise he appeared unharmed.
“Are you hurt?” he
asked, his voice low and quiet.
She thought about her broken nail and the glass digging into her foot. “No. But you are.”
“Nothing serious. We have to go. Now. Tonight.”
She looked from Hunt to Brook. Hunt’s forehead was creased and his brow furrowed with worry. Brook’s expression might have been carved from stone.
“Where?” she asked. “To Derring House?”
“No. Somewhere else. Away from London.”
She didn’t want to argue. Now that the threat was over, she wanted to cry. Over the years, she had become an expert at not crying. I will not cry had become a mantra. Not crying came easily, but she couldn’t stop her body from shaking.
“Hunt, the blanket.” Brook gestured toward the brown velvet coverlet, and Hunt pulled it off the bed, unseating several pillows, and handed it to Brook. One-handed, he wrapped it around her shoulders then pulled her away from the broken dressing table so she might sit on the floor.
“I’ll look in on the O’Dwyers,” Hunt said, darting into the common room and leaving them alone.
“Oh no. Are the O’Dwyers hurt?” she asked. Selfish of her not to have asked before. “I thought he”—she nodded toward the common room—“was Mr. O’Dwyer. That’s why I opened the door. But then he didn’t sound Irish, and I tried to close it again.”
Brook closed his large, warm hand around hers. She had the impulse to rub her cheek on it. She must have been more shaken than she realized.
“It’s not your fault. Beezle’s crony followed Hunt here. Then he went to fetch Beezle, who came for you.”
“But the guards—?”
“Dead.”
The shock of the word pulled her breath from her lungs. Finnegan, dead? Big, gruff Finnegan who hadn’t complained once when she asked him to position the new furniture not once but half a dozen times? Dead, because of her.
“How?” she whispered.
“Slit their throats. He would have done the same to you. He will do the same to you if I don’t take you away from here.”
“But I thought—”
“I failed you,” he interrupted, seeming to read her thoughts.
She’d thought she’d be safe here. She’d thought this would all be over in a matter of days. She hadn’t truly been concerned. After all, she was the daughter of the powerful Duke of Lennox. No one could hurt her.
She’d been wrong.
“I won’t take more chances. My family owns land, and there’s a small gamekeeper’s house—a cottage really—about a half day outside of London. It’s in disrepair, but it’s livable. The main advantage is that it’s relatively secluded. We have a few tenants farming the land there, but there’s not much of a village or anything else nearby.”
In other words, no chance of refurbishment. She looked at her beautiful bedroom. She’d have to leave it all behind. They would go to this cottage, and they would be safe from Beezle.
“For how long?” she asked. “How long do we have to stay there? How can you arrest this Beezle if you’re in the country with me?” She twisted her hand to catch his wrist and hold it. “Do not say you’ll leave me there alone.”
“No. At the moment, I’m a liability. I led Beezle to you, so I go too. I have men who will track Beezle for me, men who know the rookeries as well as he. They’ll find him and send word when he’s been taken. We’ll be at the cottage a few days. A week at most.”
A week with Brook in the middle of the countryside. Just the two of them. Alone…no. She would not think about that. And she wouldn’t think about what Brook meant when he said the house was in “disrepair.”
She would think about a week. Seven short days. It would pass quickly and easily.
Only a week. What could go wrong?
* * *
“This is not a cottage,” she said when she looked out of the carriage window at the structure before them. They’d traveled all night and most of the morning in a nondescript coach that desperately needed new springs. She had jounced so much, her head rattled.
Even Brook looked pale and wan, and the journey had obviously upset his stomach because he had his arm wrapped about it the entire journey. Hunt had driven them. He would be the only one who knew where they were and knew how to reach them. Lila would not be permitted to write to her friends—what few there were—or her family.
She would not attend her cousin Rose’s wedding. No hardship in that. She’d never enjoyed weddings, as they took place much too early and were solemn, tiresome affairs—her own included. She did enjoy the wedding breakfast—again, not her own, but those of others—and she thought of all the wonderful delicacies she would have to forgo in this dilapidated, old building that had probably never even heard of a chocolate tart.
She glanced at Brook. “You said it was a cottage.”
“I said it was in disrepair.”
She’d thought that meant weeds had grown up in the garden and the ivy on the brick walls needed to be trimmed back. She’d imagined a stone structure with large, rectangular windows, flowers boxes bursting with color, and a pretty vista curving behind it where she could take long walks when the urge struck her.
Of course, the flower boxes had been a bit of fancy, considering this was the middle of winter. She hadn’t been wrong about the stone. The house was constructed of stone, and that was the only reason it still stood. No ivy grew on the dirty exterior and the windows had been covered with wood that looked to be rotting away. She was not in the habit of examining a structure’s roof, but she cautiously studied the one on this building, hoping against hope it did not leak.
The structure was tiny and only a single story. If it boasted two bedrooms, she would be surprised, and the kitchen was almost certainly in a separate structure in the back.
Thinking of the kitchen made her stomach growl. She had not eaten the dinner Mrs. O’Dwyer had brought the night before—for which she blamed Brook—and now she wondered where the servants would bed.
A sense of dread covered her like a wet cloak. “Are the servants expecting us?”
Brook gifted her with a look that could only be described as disgust, which was all she needed to know.
No servants. No flower boxes. No charming cottage.
The conveyance rocked as Hunt jumped down from the box and came to open the door for them. She waited for Brook to alight first, but he waved her ahead. Slumped in the seat as he was, he did not look well at all.
Taking Hunt’s hand, she stepped down, her slipper immediately sinking into mud. She was too slow to save her skirts, and the hem was also dipped in mud and grime. With some effort, she extricated her foot and navigated the field of sinkholes until she reached the door of the building. A light drizzle fell, and the gray clouds matched the gray of the stones before her. She waited for Hunt to open the door for her, but when he did not, she turned and noted he stood at the carriage, speaking to Brook, who remained inside.
Well, if they wished to remain outside in the cold and wet to hold their tête-à-tête, that was all well and good, but she was ready for a warm fire and a bed. Please God, let there be both inside.
She tried the door, found it locked, but when she pushed on it, it creaked open. Obviously the Derring family had not been concerned about intruders if the house was this poorly secured. She pushed the door open, pausing as the stale smell of an old fire and the musty scent of a place long since forgotten wafted over her. She’d smelled it before in rooms closed up for a season or so and once when she toured an ancient castle.
Lila stepped inside and had to force herself to continue. Without any light from the windows, the interior was dark, but not so dark that she could not see the bare wooden floors. Indeed, there was a great deal of floor to see, considering the only piece of furniture in the place was a scarred table with a broken chair at the head. The chair lolled drunkenly to one side as she stepped over the threshold and stifled the rising panic. She saw no bed or bedroom. The back door most likely opened to the path leading to the kitchen, s
eparate to protect the main structure from fire.
Lila doubted the path would be covered, which meant every time either she or Brook made the journey to the kitchen, they would be subject to the elements. And it would be the two of them going to and fro since the place was not large enough for one person and certainly could not accommodate a staff. Was she expected to prepare her own meals? She’d never done anything more in the kitchen than make a request of the cook. She did not even know how to prepare tea.
Not that there would be any tea in the kitchen. How would they eat? She glanced at the cold, dark hearth. How would they keep warm? A fat drop of water plopped on the floor in front of her, joining its brothers in the puddle at her feet.
Lila whined softly and pressed the heels of her hands to her burning eyes. She would not cry. One week. Seven days. Could she live seven days without food or heat?
She turned at a shuffling sound in time to see Hunt ushering Brook inside. It took a moment for her to understand what she saw, but Hunt supported Brook, whose face was a mask of pain.
Lila quite forgot about the fire and the tea and rushed to Brook’s other side. “What is wrong?”
His coat was not buttoned, and it gaped, giving her a view of the red stain on his light-colored waistcoat. She inhaled sharply.
“You’re injured.”
“Nothing serious.” He’d said that before, but clearly it was quite serious if Hunt had to drag him inside.
“I saw blood.”
“Dried now. It stopped bleeding a few hours ago,” Hunt informed her.
She stared at him. Had he known all along his master was injured? Why had no one told her?
“But when did this happen? How?”
“Racer had a dagger. He meant to plunge it in me, but he only gave me a scratch.”
“You’re lucky, sir.”
“Story of my life.”
Hunt dragged Brook toward the back of the cottage. Lila hadn’t paid much attention to it, but now she saw a moldy blanket hung, cordoning off a small area. Hunt pushed it aside, revealing a sizable bed nestled in a nook. He shoved Brook against the wall for support, then disappeared back out the door. A moment later, he returned with two thin mattresses and clean linens. He unrolled the mattresses and took down the moldy blanket. Brook didn’t wait for assistance. He lurched like a drunkard to the bed and lay down.