Hold Your Breath 01 - Stone Devil Duke (7 page)

That always got him, as she knew it would. He sheepishly grinned and apologized for questioning her plans.
Aggie went to rub Sunshine’s nose.

“But
, my lady?”

“Yes?”

“At least let me accompany you for protection’s sake?”

Aggie smiled at his
question. It was always ask her not to go, then ask if he could come with. She walked to the front of the carriage.

“
Tommy, you know I am counting on you to put in place the plan to protect my mother and sister if something should happen to me. You are the only person I can trust to do that without fail.”

Resigned,
Tommy shook his head. “Yes, my lady. Don’t you worry nothing about your family.”

Aggie smiled over his loyalty, handed him a small reticule full of coins, and
turned to crawl up to the driver’s perch.

“One more thing
Tommy.” Aggie looked down at her young friend with hope on her face. “Have you or your boss discovered out anything at all about the fifth man—the gentleman?”

Tommy
’s answer was the same as it had been since she had first hired him and his boss, and every time she had asked since then.

“No, my lady. I am sorry.”

Aggie nodded in resignation, bothered once more that the man hadn’t been found. It would seem that their leader was impossible to track, and the longer Aggie knew nothing of him, except for his evil face, the harder it would be to find him. Especially if she disposed of the other two.

If she couldn’t get
one of the last two murderers to tell her about their boss, she knew peace would be forever elusive. She could not rest until their leader was brought to justice.

With a deep breath to calm her nerves, Aggie thanked
Tommy, and clicked Sunshine forward. She rambled off down the cobblestones, Tommy looking after her, admiration shining plainly on his face.

~~~

She had been gone from the ball for only moments before Devin found himself clear to make it to Killian. Both men had been deluged for some time by gentlemen eager to gain an ear to talk investments.

A
fter watching Aggie scurry back to her aunt, Devin hadn’t been back in the ballroom a minute before five men surrounded him, intent on gaining his attention.

He gave it to them, partially, while the majority of his mind
worked on the slip of a girl that stood across the room from him, her face never fully losing the blush from the balcony.

She had been impossibly easy to find. Too easy, for a woman attempting to go undercover as a hack driver.
He originally thought he’d talk to the girl, tell her he would handle the two remaining men. And that would be it. Maybe a dalliance if she was amicable.

But all t
hat changed the moment she called him a coward. Not because of the insult, but because he realized how desperate she was. Only desperation would make her toss out lies like that. She lied about him being a coward. She lied about her brother. He could already read that in her.

Desperate people lied. And desperate people did stupid things. Like flick the ear of a duke.
Like stick to a stupid plan, because it was the only thing to hold onto.

Devin
rubbed his ear—the flick had actually stung. And then she had tried to blackmail him into silence. The little wench.

His
eyes narrowed at her. He wasn’t going to let her succeed at stupidity. She needed to be protected from herself, whether she liked it or not.

Devin
wondered how long it would take her to produce the necessary excuses to leave the party.

He didn’t have to wait long.
Soon enough, he saw her rub her temples in a distressed motion, and her aunt’s immediate sympathetic face. The aunt rushed off to find her husband, and within minutes, the party of three made their way up the grand staircase and out of the ballroom.

“Excuse me
, gentlemen.” Devin nodded to the four men surrounding him and stepped away to find Killian.

“Killian.”
Devin motioned to his friend.

“W
e shall continue this at another time, gentlemen.” Killian nodded to the group and stepped from the ring of men.

The two friends walked up t
he staircase and paused at a quiet balcony overlooking the ballroom. Both leaned on the gold-leafed railing, looking absently out at the hall of gaiety before them.

“W
hatever you said to her on the terrace must have been interesting, for she could barely contain her need to leave, or hold in the arrows her pretty eyes were throwing your way,” Killian said, and took a sip of the Madeira he was holding.

“She called me a coward.”

Killian sputtered and laughed. “A coward? What I would have given to hear that. Really? A coward? And your reaction?”

“Threats.”

“Typical.” Killian turned sideways, leaning on his arm as he looked at Devin. “Is it time to leave, then?”

“Soon
. Is your business done?”

“Yes, enough for the night.
” Killian curiously eyed his friend. “She appears to be fine marriage material.”

“Who?”

“Lady Augustine.”

Devin
shot his own daggers at Killian. “Yes, if you discount her panache for dressing up as a hack driver and trying to take down four men, each twice her size.”

“Lends a certain charm to her, would
you not say?” Killian took another sip of his wine. “We all, eventually, have duty to our lineage, Devin. An heir might be something you want to think about.”

Devin
harrumphed, stood straight, and turned toward the upper entrance of the ballroom. “Let us take our leave—if only to cease your idiotic insinuations.”

Killian followed
Devin, speculative smile playing on his face. “We have a coach to catch, don’t we?”

The night plodded
along slowly. Rain had sputtered on and off. Her cloak kept her mostly dry, but her search thus far had remained completely fruitless.

Some
insistent young dandies, deep into their cups and rich with the need to lose their families’ fortunes, managed to stop Aggie. They tumbled into the moving carriage before she could stop them.

With a sigh, she started off
to the Horn’s Rooster, knowing that, of the gaming halls, it was one of the best for drunken young men of the peerage to go. The owner was of the good sort; she had seen him send many on their way before fortunes were lost on the flick of a card.

It was odd, th
e knowledge she had gained from the streets of London. If nothing else, this had forced her into a much wider view of the world than she had ever known.

The Horn’s Rooster teetered on the edge of the east side, which was convenient
—she would still have time to go back and poke around near the area where she had found the murderers.

S
couring the east end from her hackney perch was an inescapable part of finding the murderers, and she hated the sort of fares she was inevitably forced to pick up in that part of town. The drunkest of the drunks. The stench from within, and the cleaning that had to be done once a drunk spilled his night’s supper on the floor of the carriage was disgusting. And it seemed to happen to her at least every other night.

Aggie dropped her fares at the Horn’s Rooster, lucky to be rid of them so quickly, and
nicked Sunshine along. Her favorite horse since seventeen, Sunshine was a key component in her plan, for Sunshine, without fail, obeyed every command of Aggie’s. She had not realized how indispensable that bit of foresight had been until the previous night. In the country, Sunshine usually accompanied Aggie when she went out to practice her shot, so the horse was used to the sudden cracks of gunfire.

Trotting
the white speckled horse down one of the rank streets of the east side, Aggie felt the first drops of more rain. She rolled her eyes as she adjusted the hood of her cloak.

At that moment, two men stumbled out in front of Aggie from a well-known brothel. Their rich clothes hung haphazardly about them, and their bawdy laughter filled the already loud street.

One of them was obviously very intoxicated, bent over, head hanging low, and struggling to keep upright as he staggered across the street. The other man seemed a bit more sober, helping his friend. The semi-sober man hailed her. They blocked her path and gave her no choice but to stop.

Aggie tensed, as always, when she took on a new fare. Her
left hand held the reins, while she slipped off her glove and hovered her right hand over one of the pistols hidden in the depths of her dark cloak. Caution was key; there had been several times when she had barely escaped being mugged—or worse—from an unscrupulous patron.

T
hese two men seemed benign. Aside from their unkempt clothing, they were obviously men of society. She looked down, suspicion evident, at the two men.

“Evening, hack,” the semi-sober man said
, high spirits in his voice. “It would seem my friend here needs a bit of help gaining transportation home. I would take him myself, of course, but I have not exactly finished of my pleasures here tonight.” He nodded back over his shoulder.

The drunk friend
started bellowing a raunchy song, aimed at the cobblestones. Words incoherent, it sounded more reminiscent of a howling dog than an actual tune.

“
Yuss, sir,” Aggie said in a low, slurred tone. She produced a pathetic cough for effect. “Jus ees long as he don’t spackle in me coach.”

The man laughed as he shoved his still bellowing friend into
the carriage. “No, I reckon he will be fine, at least until he makes his residence.”

The man gave Aggie the address and
a few coins, and quickly stepped back into the brothel. She could hear raucous music and high-pitched laughter blaring into the night when the door opened.

She hesitated
at the sound, thinking of her own innocence when she had first started charading as a hack driver. She knew the streets in the better parts of London well enough, but had to memorize maps of the areas she had never dared go into before, imagining that she would have to search hardest in those areas to find her father’s killers.

But nothing had prepared her for the poverty or the lack of morals she now saw on a near-nightly basis. It had taken her severa
l trips to a certain red-bricked building to realize that she was dropping off her fares, all men, at a brothel.

It hadn’t been
until the third trip that Aggie had actually registered the fact that there were a peculiar number of scantily-clad women milling about the front steps and lounging on one of the two well-lit balconies. That was where she had gotten her first proposition as a man. She’d passed on the offer, head tucked down.

She
recognized such buildings now, and knew what they were for, but that didn’t stop her from wondering, ears reddened, what exactly went on in such houses. Hearing certain words tossed at her from the balconies only got her so far in her imagination, and she was beginning to wonder just how many holes were actually on the human body. What her mother had told her years ago bore no resemblance to the harlot speak she heard night after night.

The bellowing b
ehind her slowly tapered off, and she guessed the man was working on passing out. Aggie shook her head. Men and their carnal pleasures—after what she had seen on the streets, she wasn’t so sorry that she never got married.

She clicked Sunshine on
, her clomping hooves on the cobblestones echoing down the empty street. At least the drizzle had died off. It was late and only a few hours from sunrise. She wasn’t going to find the remaining two murderers that night.

Get this fare home
, and, for a change, she would bow to the needs of her exhausted body and be home before sunrise to get some much needed sleep.

Tap, tap, tap.

Aggie’s ears perked.

Tap, tap, tap.

The insistent tapping came from inside the coach. Could the night become any less productive?

Aggie grumbled to herself as she pulled the reins. Her
intoxicated passenger obviously needed to lose his dinner. Best that he did it in the street.

Hopping off her perch, she quickly opened the carriage door and swung aside,
knowing the man was about to fly out, hand poised over his mouth.

Instead
, an arm swept out, grabbing her wrist and yanking her hard into the carriage. Her shins banged into the carriage doorway. Before she could reach for a pistol, she was flipped onto her back and her free arm clamped into an iron brace.

Stuck atop her fare, Aggie went to her
last resort, kicking. Thrashing as hard as she could, her boots made several hard thunks on the attacker’s ankles. But then her legs were immediately captured between steely thighs.

She stopped squirming, realizing it was wasting precious energy
. Through the terror haze in her mind, she heard her name being repeated quietly and smoothly.

A
voice she recognized. A voice too familiar from earlier in the evening.

No.

It couldn’t be.

Not again.

The duke. And she was sprawled fully on top of him on the floor of the coach, her body clamped tight to his.

“
Your grace, let me go.” She craned her head upward. “What of you?”

He
chuckled over her obvious indignation, not loosening his hold. “My dear lady, how could I resist another one of our exciting midnight jaunts?”

Aggie blustered, wiggling again. “First,
your grace, I am not your dear. Second, and more important, you were not invited on this particular midnight jaunt.”

She pulled her arms
with her wiggle, trying to free them.

“There, you are wrong, my dear.
I was invited.”

She couldn’t see it, but she
could hear the smile in his voice.

Aggie groaned, stopping her wiggle. She kept her head craned as far as she could o
ff of his chest. “By whom, your grace? For it certainly was not I, and unless you count inviting yourself along, I would say you have no argument. You are not a welcome companion, and I advise you to let me go, remove yourself from this coach, and go back to the brothel to find your nightly entertainment there.”

The duke’s chest rumbled under her back.
Aggie’s breath tightened. He took her plight with amusement. She was fighting for her life, and he was laughing at her. Again.

“On the con
trary, my dear, my presence is both necessary and invited.”

Aggie
couldn’t reply, the burn in her chest taking all words. She stared at the pockmarked ceiling of the carriage.

“
Fate invited me. Fate put me in your path last night, and I am honor-bound as a gentleman to adhere to fate’s wishes. Fate wants you protected. I am obliged to bow to fate’s wishes.” His grip tightened even harder. “Cooperation, or not.”

“Protection?
” Aggie struggled, growling, giving another attempt at getting out of his arms. “Your grace—”

“
Devin.”

“
Your grace, I do not require any protection.” She twisted her arm and managed to poke an elbow into his chest.

“I, on
the other hand, believe you do, Aggie. And I am seeing to it that you receive it.”

He unclamped his
legs that had snaked around her and released Aggie’s arms and torso. He remained still as Aggie tried to keep a sense of propriety, awkwardly struggling to remove herself from their tangle.

Clawing herself upright, she
shoved off the tiny carriage floor, not caring what limb of his she crushed in the process. She heaved herself onto the seat with the torn cushion.

“Was that necessary?”

The duke sat up, arms resting on his bent knees, and regarded Aggie. “Would you have come in to chat with me on your own?”

Aggie glared.

“Exactly. So yes, it was necessary.” He went to his feet, reaching out and closing the carriage door. “You may as well accept the fact that I will be by your side if you decide to go on any more of these excursions, Aggie. For if I was not convinced before, I certainly am now, after the night I have had of following you about. For hours, all without the slightest notice from you—”

“You were stalking me?”

“Following. And yes, I was.” He moved to the cushion across from Aggie, his long legs stretching out on either side of hers. “And your complete lack of observation that I have been following you since you left your townhouse has only proven to me that you need my protection.”

Aggie s
tarted to shove the many locks of hair that fallen into her face back under her cap.

“
Why are they trying to kill you, Aggie?”

She put her hands in front of her face, working on her hair. He could have this conversation alone.

“I have all night, Aggie. So you can hide that face of yours until the bright light of morning, or you can answer the question.”

Aggie dropped her hands to her lap with a sigh. “I saw their faces, I guess.”

“
And your sister and mother. Are they in any danger, or are they only after you?”

“I thought it was just me.
” Aggie picked at the black soot that rubbed onto her fingers after touching her face. She didn’t want to share, but her options were limited. “But then I was out of the house one day, and one of them—I believe it was one of them from my sister’s description—showed up at our house. I do not know what was said, but our butler did not let him in. I immediately hired guards to watch my sister and mother around the clock after that.”

“No guards for yourself?”

“We came to London soon after.”

“So you could go after them on your own?”

“I see your look, your grace. You do not hide it well. I know you think I am an idiot. But I am doing the only thing I can think of for survival. I am the only one that actually believes of the threat I am under.”

“You told others?”

“Yes. I told our local constable. You did not see how he looked at me. He laughed, then patted me on the head. I do not exaggerate. He patted me on the head.” She shuddered, remembering the utter humiliation. “He did not believe me.”

“I did.”

“You had to. You were forced into it by circumstance.” She bit her lip. “With all respect, your grace, you do not understand how men look at a woman my age. I am fanciful and full of dreams and drama and silly imaginings to them. Not harsh realities.”

“
So you tried once and gave up? What about your uncle?”

Aggie’s eyes widened.
“Please, your grace, do not tell anyone. I considered my options. And now…I am doing what needs to be done. I will not allow my family, and that includes my aunt and uncle, to be jeopardized—they are all I have. I am all they have.”