“Jocelyn, give up the bird,” Blake repeated, his voice steady.
“No,” she declared, clinging to the cage. “I would rather you beat Harold senseless with the poker, please.”
Harold stretched her chin higher, endangering her neck, but she still would not surrender. She prayed Blake did not expect her to, that he understood this fight was about more than a bird. It was about self-respect and fighting for what was right.
“I need that bird,” Harold growled. “Release it before your little playmate tries anything stupid.”
“Let him have the cage,” Blake said calmly.
Oh, she’d let Harold have it, all right. She’d crack his skull with the cage, if she could. “Why?” she managed to mutter from her uncomfortable position, wondering if she could possibly let Harold have the cage and still rescue Percy.
“Oh, just a small matter of treason,” her husband claimed with deceptive nonchalance.
Treason? Jocelyn tried to swallow. She heard Blake approaching. She had a strong suspicion that the calmer he sounded, the more dangerous he became. If Harold was a traitor . . .
She choked on bile. Her family could ruin Blake’s good name forever. He would never take a position at Whitehall. He’d go to war and die, just as his mother feared.
She panicked, wondering if Blake was less likely to be blamed if she gave up the cage.
“A matter of survival,” Harold corrected. “Your husband is a bit too clever for his own good if he’s figured out the purpose of the birds, but he doesn’t understand necessity.” He forced her chin higher. “Play nice, and Antoinette’s brother and his cronies will be happy, and the authorities need never know. Give me the bird, Jocelyn, or I’ll blame everything on your new husband and see him hang.”
She almost handed him the cage then. But she couldn’t. She’d changed in these last months. She thought maybe Blake had given her the confidence to develop a backbone of sorts. She simply could not let the bully have his way.
“I don’t believe thieves and liars, Harold,” she declared proudly, “so nothing you can say will change my mind.” Jocelyn knew she was pushing Harold to his limits, that she should not rely on a white knight coming to her rescue.
But this time, she had someone strong on her side, someone who believed in justice and honesty. This time, she was trusting Blake not to call her a flibbertiwidget but to see that she was right and act accordingly. Even if Harold was a traitor—especially if he was a traitor—he had to be stopped.
She knew when Blake reached her side, even if she couldn’t see him from the awkward angle at which Harold held her. She could smell his shaving soap and the male scent. She had only one chance to distract Harold so Blake could reach him.
She shrieked at the top of her lungs and slammed her head backward into her brother’s chin.
34
The blackest moment of Blake’s life was hearing his brave Jocelyn scream and watching her crumple to the floor after the flash of Harold’s knife.
The bastard may as well have stabbed him in the heart. Never could he survive Jocelyn’s loss, even if she was a mule-headed nodcock for placing a bird’s life above her own. She was his nodcock and he loved her beyond reason.
For England and honor, Blake knew his duty was to leap out the window and chase the traitor as he fled into the night. Percy’s squawks made an easy trail to follow.
But he could not desert Jocelyn, as every other person in her life had done, not while the beautiful, laughing, defiant creature of moments earlier lay still in a puddle of silk upon the floor. What good were duty and honor if he lost her?
Shedding his hampering monk’s robe, leaving him in shirtsleeves and trousers, Blake dropped to his knees. Anguish washed over him as he dug in his waistcoat pocket for a clean handkerchief to stop the blood marring a loosened silver curl. The knife had slashed off the rope of diamonds, tearing the jewels from Jocelyn’s slender throat. The cut left behind didn’t look deep, but she was unconscious. Had Carrington broken her neck?
Blake’s hands shook, and inside he screamed at the injustice as he very carefully examined the wound. Jocelyn did not deserve this. Finally, he saw her chest move. She was breathing, so must he. He applied the linen to staunch the bleeding and prayed as he’d never prayed before.
At his touch, her lashes fluttered open and frosty blue eyes glared up at him. “Stop him, Blake! Don’t let the jackass escape!” she rasped.
She might as well have punched a fist to his chest and awakened his heart. Blood pumped through his veins again, air filled his lungs, and rage rushed to his head. Still, Jocelyn came first.
“He’s stealing part of a French code machine. If I catch him and he’s judged a traitor,” Blake warned, “it will mean your family will be ostracized by all society.”
“No.” She shook her head, winced, and grabbed the linen he still held to her throat. “No, England and your future are more important. We can lose the house. I can live elsewhere. But I will not let the bully win. Stop him!”
Blake hoped she would someday forgive him for once believing she lacked depth of character. He wanted to cover her in kisses for giving him the freedom to do as he must. In relief, he pressed his lips to her forehead. She would not regret her sacrifice.
He left her to struggle to her feet and vaulted out the window to the side yard.
Outside, he had to determine Carrington’s direction. Richard and half the party were running frantically about among the dark shrubbery, shouting and chasing a portly figure in a domino.
Bitty, the Pomeranian ball of fluff, had apparently escaped the kitchen. She ran yipping in happy circles around their guests, thinking this a new game designed just for her delectation.
Even as Blake watched, the domino-clad figure carrying a cage holding squawking Africa tripped over the mutt, splashed his way across the lily pond, and attempted to escape down the carriage drive. If Ogilvie wanted the duke’s bird, the idiot was in the process of birdnapping the wrong parrot.
Harold would run in the opposite direction from the crowd, toward the front. He’d been clever to set Ogilvie as a diversion, but not clever enough. Percy’s frightened cries gave him away.
Before Blake could race toward the darkened street, a pig squealed near the untrimmed yews at the front corner of the house. Harold’s familiar curses followed, and with a grin of comprehension, Blake stuck his fingers between his teeth and whistled loudly.
The pig he had been training snorted, not at the intruder, but in anticipation of food. Nothing could come between a pig and his dinner, certainly not Harold. The villain’s shouts reversed direction as he stumbled backward into the hedge, mowed down by a rampaging swine. Blake stalked toward the scoundrel. He kept a wary eye out for Harold’s knife as he attempted to distinguish the wretch’s shadow among the greenery.
A swathe of light suddenly illuminated the side yard. Blake swung around to see Jocelyn on the windowsill, holding the fireplace poker in one hand and a lantern in the other. “Do you have pistols? Shall I find them?” she called.
Blake’s sense of the ridiculous suddenly struck him, and he would have laughed at his once-docile wife’s bloodthirsty suggestion, except he was still too enraged. Even his relief at knowing she was well wasn’t sufficient to subdue his murderous urge to carve Harold into pig slop.
The lantern lit the shadowy shrubbery, where a fat figure slashed at a pair of irate hens while clinging to a birdcage. Percy’s irate obscenities screeched louder.
At the lily pond end of the yard, a composed Lord Quentin held a lighted torch to illumine guests in togas and ball gowns chasing after a demented Richard. The boy was screaming and waving his spindly arms as he attempted to cut off the domino-wearing birdnapper, who was now in retreat from attack roosters.
Blake’s attention was diverted by Harold fighting free of a flock of hens on his way toward the garden wall between this house and the next. Did he plan to climb a wall with cage in hand?
“The rabbit hutch,” Jocelyn c
alled. “He’s heading for the rabbit hutch.”
Before Blake could close in on his prey, a tall cloaked figure slipped from the deeper shadows. Harold passed the cage to the newcomer before scrambling for the roof of the hutch.
At last! The mastermind behind the nincompoops. “If you can jump down from there, Jocelyn, take the poker to your brother,” Blake shouted. “This devil is mine.”
He merely had to follow the trail of Percy’s squawks as the stranger leaped over the feral pigs with more athletic grace than clumsy Carrington had employed. Relishing a more worthy opponent, Blake raced after him, taking a shortcut by using the head of a statue to vault over the yews. Damned good thing he knew this yard better than the stranger did because the leap jarred every sore muscle in his leg.
The bird thief attempted to elude him, but Blake had his powerful fury to fuel the race, and the brains to know there was only one way out of the fenced yard. He timed his next leap well and struck the thief broadside.
Percy’s cage hit the ground and rolled under the hedge, but Blake was too busy pounding his fists into his opponent to rescue the obscenity-spewing parrot. In between the bird’s curses, Blake detected a new shriek that sounded like El Bear.
El Bear. The parrot’s French pronunciation of Albert. The name of Antoinette’s brother—the big man now spewing French curses as he attempted to throttle Blake.
With one brutal swing of his fist, Blake slammed the thief’s jaw squarely, and the fight was over. Damn. He wanted a good excuse to strangle the bastard who could steal his wife’s reputation and happiness. But lacking his former frustration, Blake’s propensity for violence had diminished. He couldn’t kill the bastard in cold blood.
In disgust, he used El Bear’s own cloak to truss him up in knots that not even a magician could escape. Worried about Jocelyn’s ability to restrain Viscount Pig, Blake grabbed Percy’s cage and ran back toward the side of the house.
He was just in time to see his feral pigs snorting at Carrion’s heels as the viscount climbed onto the roof of the rickety rabbit hutch so he might climb over the wall and escape. But the rotten wood of the hutch roof crumbled beneath Harold’s excessive weight, and he lost his footing, falling back to the muddy ground. Jocelyn stood over him with her weapon raised.
“I have him cornered!” she shouted, swinging the poker at her brother’s boots.
“I think I like living in the country,” Blake announced, sauntering to his wife’s side with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. He set aside Percy’s cage and forced himself to wait to see what she would do next.
He fought the urge to tell her to get the hell back inside before Harold tried some new trick. He had to allow her the opportunity to fight her own battles. Damnable to become victim of the same anxiety his parents had suffered all these years while they worried about his violent tendencies, but he couldn’t deny Jocelyn this triumph.
Unable to climb the wall, seeing the crowd blocking his exit to the rear, Harold stupidly decided his chances were better through his sister. Clambering back to his feet, he rushed at her.
Jocelyn swung the poker at his knees. Harold howled.
As Harold stumbled forward, Blake balled up his already bruised knuckles and plowed them into the viscount’s weak chin. A pig lurched, squealing, from beneath the collapsed hutch and ran directly into the back of Harold’s knees. Between swine and fist, Viscount Pig toppled backward, hitting the wet ground again with a spray of mud.
Blake calmly stepped on Carrington’s wrist, pinning him down.
“Hit him, just once more,” Jocelyn cried, handing him the poker so she might drag her massive skirts from the ground. “Or can I kick him?” Not waiting for permission, she slammed her slippered toe into the bully’s ribs. “That felt much too good. I believe violence is addictive.” She kicked him again. “That’s for terrifying Percy. I’d have to kill you for what you’ve done to everyone else.” She lifted Percy’s cage to coo soothingly at the screaming bird.
Blake bit back a grin, finding it hard to resist laughing at his wife’s unusual display of fury. If she became comfortable with displaying what she really felt, he might come to regret it.
“Josie, Josie, I got him!” Richard cried from the backyard. “I got Africa and the bad man!”
“Ogilvie, one hopes,” Blake said, hauling Jocelyn to his right side to press a kiss to her cheek while continuing to crush Harold’s arm into the mud.
Harold grabbed at Blake’s good leg with his free hand, trying to tumble him off, but nothing short of an earthquake would persuade him to let the bastard free after what he’d done to Jocelyn. With his left fist, Blake planted the poker square between Harold’s ribs to prevent his rising. Holding Jocelyn at his side, he kissed the small wound on his wife’s slender throat, inducing a purr of happiness. A pig began to sniff Harold’s sleeve, causing him to curse and struggle.
“What the devil is going on here?” an authoritative voice boomed over the tumult of shouts and laughter and squawking parrot. “Is this a masquerade or a circus? I had to leave my footman tying up a Frenchie in the front yard. What is the meaning of this?” the new arrival demanded of Blake and Jocelyn, before roaring toward the melee in the backyard. “Ann, where the demmed hell are you?”
“Here, Papa. We have just caught a birdnapper.” A poised figure in ivory and lace, Lady Ann separated from the crowd of guests.
The Duke of Fortham—Lady Ann’s father—had arrived. Blake cursed. There went any chance he had of keeping Harold’s treason quiet and of protecting Jocelyn.
Needing to greet his noble guest properly, Blake stomped on Harold’s shoulder until the scoundrel screamed and released his grip on Blake’s leg.
Still cradling the cage in one arm, Jocelyn managed a graceful curtsy, attempting to hold her skirts above the mud and away from Harold as the duke stomped through the side yard. “Your Grace, it is a pleasure.”
“Looks like you demmed well had your pleasure before I arrived. Montague, is that you?” Tall and built like a stout oak, the duke stepped into the light of a lantern and leaned his craggy visage forward to search their faces for recognition.
He gazed in contempt at the man whimpering under Blake’s foot. “Carrion,” he said with a sneer. “Upsetting the apple cart as usual? Are you responsible for the Frenchie out front?”
“Theft and possible treason, Your Grace,” Blake murmured. “We will explain.”
“No doubt. Is that my bird?” He squinted at Percy. “Don’t look like him.”
“He’s Richard’s bird, Your Grace,” Jocelyn said sweetly.
Blake tried not to shake his head at his wife for arguing with a duke. It pained him not to protect her with every drop of his blood, but he had encouraged her to be honest instead of deceptive. No more flapping her lashes and hiding behind a fan. He couldn’t stop her now. If they hung for her bravado, at least they would hang together.
In any case, he could not let Antoinette and her spies get away, so she and the viscount had to be denounced.
“I think you’d best rescue your nephew, Your Grace,” Lord Quentin called from the back. “I do believe young Mr. Carrington is about to take Bernie apart for stealing his other bird.”
Blake fought a grin at the duke’s raised eyebrows. Now that Harold’s fate was sealed, Blake’s sense of the ridiculous was in great danger of taking over. He’d been in peril of becoming a bitter, cynical man until Jocelyn had showed him a lighter perspective on human behavior. He hoped more masquerades were in their future.
He turned to observe Nick in lace and Fitz in his knave’s costume hauling a filthy Ogilvie off the ground while Richard clung to Africa’s cage, raising his free fist and dancing around the thief.
“Bernard?” the duke said incredulously. “What the devil are you doing? Is that my bird?”
“It is, Your Grace,” Bernard called sulkily. “They would not let me have him back, so I stole him for you.”
“That’s Africa,” Jocelyn corrected. “The
greengrocer’s bird.”
“I see.” The duke eyed her with suspicion, then turned to Blake. “I think we’d better go inside and have some explanations. I hear you’re a man of honor. Can I trust your word?”
“You can entrust the safety of all England to Blake,” Jocelyn asserted proudly. “But we have to truss Harold up like the pig he is before we can offer explanations.”
One look at the duke’s startled expression, and Blake couldn’t contain his laughter anymore. With his arm around his daunting wife, he howled his mirth.
Still dressed in billowing silk but without the diamonds she’d returned to Lady Bell—including the necklace they’d found in Harold’s pocket—Jocelyn sent Richard off to bed while the men were hauling their prisoners inside for interrogation. Richard mercifully took Africa and Percy upstairs with him so they might calm down after their adventure.
With her brother out of the way, she joined Blake in saying farewell to their guests. She helped the servants find wraps and signal carriages, and prayed that the evening’s events would not make her a laughingstock for all the kingdom. She’d been assured by many that the evening had been a delight, but that did not mean that by morning everyone wouldn’t have concluded otherwise. The party had, after all, been a shocking hubblebubble, with only a few knowing they’d caught an agent of Napoleon’s government.
She’d refused to let Blake join his friends until she’d taken him to their chamber and wrapped his scraped knuckles. She promised she would not write his parents about the wound unless he continued breaking into inappropriate chuckles. Her husband still had the social graces of a turkey, but she could not prevent her giddy joy at hearing him laugh. He laughed so seldom, and happiness looked wonderful on him.
He kissed her so thoroughly, she almost forgot about Viscount Pig and his treachery, but a commotion rose in the front entry, jarring them from this stolen moment of bliss. From the shrill shrieking, Jocelyn thought one of the parrots must have escaped.
And then it dawned on her—Antoinette!
The Devilish Montague Page 29