Chloe (Made Men Book 3) (24 page)

Her slippers made an audible squishing sound when she landed, freezing liquid seeping in through the thin material. She was lucky her slippers were tied to her feet, or else they would have been sucked right off.

She had only made it a few steps when the horses were pushed into action. Muddy slush flung up from the wheels as they turned, coating the back of her dark blue cloak in tiny brown dots.

Kathryn sighed heavily through a shiver without bothering to assess the damage. She need not look to know her entire ensemble hadn’t a chance, but what would that matter? She had to trudge all the way around the front of the theater to get to the right alley, anyhow. She could thank Lord Obtrusive for that.

Snow mixed with drizzle came down in a gentle haze, and by the time she passed the entrance to the theater, the warmth from the lantern looked incredibly enticing. If there hadn’t been a man standing in the shadows by the theater door, she would have stopped to warm her hands.

Once she passed the doors and turned into the next alley, it was not more than two minutes before she reached the rendezvous point to meet her contact.

The alley was narrow. The yellow light of a small lantern illuminated tiny specks of drizzle, adding to the mush that covered the cobblestones and rubbish lining the walkway. Her face, hands, and feet were stinging from the cold, and it was all she could do to control her shivering.

It was almost over. After all the trouble of setting up this dashed mission, Ainsley’s fraying of her nerves and utter destruction of her patience, topped off with the ghastly weather not suitable for intelligent life, she was finally here.

She waited until a shadowed figure appeared out of a doorway not far ahead of her. He looked at her for a long moment before glancing around then slowly stepping toward her.

Kathryn took a deep, steadying breath, her teeth not chattering quite loudly enough to drown out her own heartbeat. Then she stepped out to meet him.

The closer she came, the better she could make out his features. He was a stocky individual with a limp on his right, but that was all she could discern in the dim light and with him wrapped up in so many rags.

“Are you Mr. White?” she asked.

He grunted a barely intelligible yes.

“Right. Then this is for you. I expect you know where to take it?” She handed him a folded envelope from her reticule.

He peeked into the envelope then, seemingly satisfied, stuffed it into his inner pocket. With another grunt, he turned to leave, and she watched him limp back through the same door he had emerged from moments before. Then she sighed, her breath clearly visible in the night air.

The wind cut through her heavy cloak as though it were laced with holes. She was numb to her knees, her elbows, and her neck. She wasn’t getting out of this without a sniffle at best, pneumonia at worst, but it was worth it. She had done it! Too dangerous, indeed. If not for the weather and Ainsley, it might have been considered uneventful.

She turned and shuffled back toward the main street, a curl of self-satisfaction pulling up the corners of her mouth. However, she had barely taken five steps before she heard a sloshing sound behind her.

She turned on her heel to peer into darkness, the only light being the small lantern swinging over the door with tiny specks of drizzle coming down around it.

She pulled open the strings of her reticule with stiff fingers to have a reassuring glance at her small pistol. She should not have any need of it. No one, not even a pea-brained monster, would be dense enough to linger out here.

Still…

She started again toward the theater with renewed vigor, reminding herself she had seen no one enter the alleyway whilst she was there. Besides, if someone
were
lurking in the shadows, they would have already had her.

This time, the sloshing sounded a mere few yards behind her, far too close for her to waste time fumbling for her pistol with numb fingers. In a heartbeat, she broke out into a sprint with her hands hiking her damp skirts to her knees. She managed only two clumsy strides before she was caught.

A heavy blow to her temple pitched her into the stone wall. She fell limply to the ground, and her reticule along with her pistol was flung far out of reach in the snow.

As she hit, specks of light flooded her vision, but the lancing pain from the blow cut through the fog, and she cried out.

She didn’t see the iron boot that drove into her ribs. It knocked the air from her lungs with only a shallow breath reluctantly seeping back in. She shut her eyes as tightly as she could manage to block out the pain—
mind over matter
—but the pain was edging in on her mantra.

Mind…
throb
… over…
throb
… matter…
throb!

Each throb intensified, shattering her brain and lungs into splinters. She opened her eyes, but the world spun and lights still danced around her.

Another blow, this time to the middle of her back, sent a shaft of pain as it drove out what little air she had been able to work into her stinging lungs. The heavy blows kept coming, and she soon lost count of how many times she was struck.

When it finally stopped, she felt blood trailing across her forehead. Each drop of blood echoed in her ear as the rest of her battered body finally began to numb.

Hot tears welled in her eyes. Silence was swallowing up the sound of carriages and horses from the street barely half a block away when one final blow stilled everything.

* * *

G
rey was abnormally
irritable as he watched the hackney rumble off around the corner.

He was caught off guard, that was all. He had rambled on enough to irritate a saint. Why the hell had she suffered it for so long? She was supposed to go back to her box like a good little girl, perhaps blush at being caught, or give him some cockamamie excuse. It turned out she was one of the prickliest and most intractable women Grey had ever laid eyes on, a rebellious cactus wrapped in muslin.

Grey lifted his hat to drag a hand through his already disheveled hair. Before he had even agreed to help, he had understood precisely why Grenville wanted someone to keep an eye on her. How many galas and dinner parties had Grey gone to and caught her wandering off on one of her little excursions? Even so, walking about the private rooms at a house party was one thing. Strolling about London alone in the dead of night was entirely different.

She didn’t need someone to keep an eye on her. She needed a full-time caretaker, and Grey wasn’t it. He would thank Grenville for saving his sorry life some other way,
any
other way.

He fell back into his usual, black expression as he removed a pouch of tobacco and a small paper. He sprinkled tobacco onto the slender strip, cinching the pouch again with his teeth then tucking it back inside his coat. The paper was rolled, licked, and stuck between his lips before the end was lit from a lantern hanging by the door.

He supposed he ought to smoke like an Englishman now that he was back instead of smoking what the French soldiers called cigarettes. He had become fond of them whilst infiltrating Napoleon’s army during the war, because it was easier than carrying around a pipe, and he had never been overly fond of cheroots. He had never been overly fond of smoking in general. He didn’t understand why he continued to do it.

Even as that thought bounced around his brain, he took a deep draw and found a shadowed wall to lean on. He tipped his hat down to cover his eyes, shielding them from the bursts of wind that whipped through his little corner. There he stayed, unmoving, the only show of life being a bright red glow and a puff of smoke.

It was almost as cold as when summer had been skipped altogether in 1816. Still, he would rather be out here than risk being seen inside. There was no one he cared to converse with in there, and he was in no big hurry to get back to his box and his mistress, who might or might not be his mistress after he had left so abruptly to run after Kathryn. He didn’t expect to be forgiven soon. For now, he would rather stand outside in the godforsaken, freezing cold, smoking his tobacco and ignoring the rest of humanity.

If only there were such a place where he could ignore the rest of bloody humanity. In fact, if he gave it thought, the interruption a moment later was not all that surprising.

He did not budge an inch when, from the corner of his beaver hat, he noticed a bundle of mud-spattered muslin irritatingly similar to the one he had just sent off.

His jaw tensed as he watched Kathryn round the building into an alley.

A bleeding alley, for Christ’s sake!

The end of the cigarette burned a bright red as he took a deep drag then chucked it into the slush. He slowly exhaled a long stream of smoke as he stared after her from under the brim of his hat.

He ought to follow her just to make sure she didn’t get herself killed.

He lifted his hat from his eyes and began to stalk after her, but then stopped himself short. He should not be the one to go after her. He might, just might, turn her over his knee and give her the spanking her father never would. The temptation would be too much for him to resist. Then he would tie her to his own carriage and
drag
her home. She would be ruined for sure, and Grey was not about to marry the chit. Kathryn would be ruined, and Grenville would kill him.

Even if he didn’t kill Grey, it would hardly be a surprise if Grenville personally flogged him in Hyde Park. Or he might decide to cripple Grey, instead.

He clamped his jaw shut and decided to find someone else to go after her. He hoped for her sake that whoever it was would find her before she got herself into too much trouble.

With a dark scowl, he turned to stalk back inside to the boxes. Somewhere in Huntly’s box was a Mr. Jermie Peckers who would soon be freezing his prick off, running after Grenville’s rebellious cactus. Alias: Lady Kathryn.