Never a Gentleman (10 page)

“Appreciate y’r savin’ us time,” he was saying to Mr. Wilson, who had already pulled Grace’s bag down. “Now, open it. And
you inside the carriage. Ain’t gonna tell you agin. Climb out.”

Grace could hear Biddle wheezing, but he pushed the door open on the far side and slowly climbed out. For that brief moment,
both men were distracted. Grace pulled the blunderbuss from the high perch. She aimed it at the man on the horse. Suddenly
the man by the rear yelled.

“There’s another one!”

Grace leaped to the side, firing as she fell. She landed on her bad leg with a grating thud. The horses whinnied and shied.
She heard a curse from the mounted highwayman and cursed herself. She’d only winged him. She pulled her pistol from her pocket
and rolled beneath the coach. The robber was off his horse. His gun was up. He was shouting at his friend to finish off Mr.
Wilson.

“Move, Biddle!” she yelled.

Biddle promptly fell on his face. The armed robber saw Grace and swung around. He fired. She fired. He fell. Biddle screamed
again. The horses reared, almost succeeding in getting the carriage unstuck with Grace still under it. At the back, the other
two men were still fighting. Grace pulled herself out of the thick mud and ran over to retrieve the gun from the fallen postilion.
Then she shoved it against the other robber’s head before he could strangle Mr. Wilson.

“I think you should stop now,” she said, her voice preternaturally calm.

“Gor,” he breathed, letting go of Mr. Wilson’s throat.

“Crikey,” Mr. Wilson echoed, coughing as he jumped to his feet.

Grace didn’t move. “See how the postilion is, please, Mr. Wilson. Biddle, make sure that thief is dead.” She nudged her robber
with her pistol. “And please, sir, don’t underestimate me because I’m a woman. I have shot far better men than you.”

“Jeb’s alive!” Mr. Wilson called. “But ’e’s bleedin’ bad. The other robber’s got a new hole right between ’is eyes. Blimey.”

“Get Jeb into the coach,” she said. “Then hold this man while Biddle ties him.”

The minute Jeb was stretched across the seat, Grace handed off her gun. Then, retrieving the portmanteau with her medical
supplies in it, she limped toward the coach, already reaching for a petticoat to rip. “Biddle,” she said, quietly. “Once the
robber is secured, it might be best for you to go to the farm. We’ll definitely be needing help now.”

For the next forty minutes Grace directed the scene, using her voice to calm the frantic victims and unsettled horses. When
the farmer arrived with his cart, they were able to transport Jeb, who would have a devil of a head when he woke, and then
managed to get the poor horses unstuck from the mud. Grace was all set to follow the farmer, if for nothing more than the
chance to clean the mud from her hands and face, when Biddle let out another screech.

“Your arm! Oh, madame, you’re bleeding!”

And Grace made her first mistake of the afternoon. She looked to where Biddle was pointing. “Oh,” she said bemusedly. “It
seems I’ve been shot as well.”

And then without even a moan to warn them, she pitched face-first onto the grass.

D
iccan Hilliard was not used to being kept waiting. He had been back in London since five that morning. He had delivered his
information to his contacts and been told to wait on their answer. He’d returned to the Albany to organize his eventual move,
and checked into the Pulteney Hotel. He had even stopped by to see Barbara Schroeder, lingering over cognac and comfort as
the two of them negotiated a change in their arrangement in response to his marriage. He bathed, slept, and ate, expecting
his wife by noon. It was now almost eight, and there was no sign of the post-chaise.

His initial instinct was to wonder if she’d bolted. It was an unfair thought, but he wasn’t sure he’d blame her if she did.
God knows there were moments he still felt like bolting.

There was a scratching on the door, and he jumped to answer. It was only one of the hotel’s maids, who bobbed nervously. “Since
madame has not arrived yet, sir, shall we hold your supper?”

He’d even arranged a
dîner à deux
to make up for his
abrupt departure the night before. “Yes. I’m sure they’ll be along in a bit. They’ve probably been caught on that beastly
road.”

The plump young girl was just bowing when Diccan caught the sounds of tumult in the lobby below. A new guest, from the sounds
of raised voices. He was following the maid out into the hall, just to check, when he heard the petulant tones of his valet.

“Madame, you have suffered a gunshot wound. For the love of Heaven, let us help!”

Diccan was down the stairs in an instant.

“Gunshot?” he demanded, not even noticing the raised eyebrows of other guests at the sight of the most elegant man in London
raising his voice like a staff sergeant. “What the hell is going on?”

And there was Grace, her drawn features pulled into an expression of strained patience as she leaned on the shoulder of the
coachman he’d hired. Wet and bedraggled, with mud from head to foot, she looked as if she’d taken a header at a hunt. Following
behind like a nervous acolyte, Biddle looked only marginally better.

“I tried to tell them, Diccan,” Grace said, her voice sounding perilously thin. “I suffered no injury. I’m limping because
I landed on my bad leg when I fell. The gunshot wound is nothing.”

“Nothing?” Biddle retorted in high dudgeon. “Madame, you fainted dead away in the middle of a public road!”

“I told you,” she said, as if this were a very old refrain, “I faint at the sight of blood.”

Barely regaining his legendary control, Diccan raised a wry eyebrow. “Fainted? A woman who nursed her way through the Peninsula?”

She looked up and he saw the strain in her eyes. “
My
blood,” she corrected. “A sad failing, but there it is. I can be up to my knees in gore, but one glimpse of a trickle of
my own blood, and over I go.”

So, his Boadicea had a weakness. Diccan found himself caught off guard by the sudden urge to grin. One look at her expression
kept him sober, though. That and the crowd that had gathered to hear all the lurid details. He’d had his fill of interested
crowds the last two days.

Instinctively knowing that his calm would help her keep her composure, he strolled over to take her from the coachman. “A
sad failing, madame. Thankfully, Biddle is more valiant. He faints for nothing less than grass stains on my breeches.”

There. He got her to smile. Everyone else looked like panicked animals. He understood. He’d felt a jolt of something himself
when he spotted the thick white wrap around Grace’s upper arm.

“You will, of course, have a physician called,” he told a loitering bellman in bored tones. “My wife will also need a bath
and a maid, since hers was unable to make the trip, which undoubtedly explains her resemblance to a mudlark.” Oddly compelled,
he tucked a loose hunk of hair back from her mud-streaked cheek. “And you, wife,” he said, turning her to the stairs, “will
explain the gunshot.”

She nodded, taking slow breaths, as if to stanch pain.

“Highwaymen,” Biddle gasped, his hands fluttering like birds, as he trotted after them.

“It was a lucky shot,” Grace said, sounding disgusted as she limped along. “I’d just gotten hold of the blunderbuss—”

Diccan stopped. “Blunderbuss? You thought to wield a
gun
?”

Behind him the coachman laughed. “Wield a gun, is it? She didn’t just wield it. She shot the lights outa one cove and brought
t’other to pissin’ his pants.”

“She saved our lives,” Biddle insisted, and Diccan was stunned to see an abject light of devotion in his valet’s eyes. Good
Lord, what was the world coming to?

“We’ll discuss this upstairs, Grace,” he said grimly, “if you can climb the stairs.”

She huffed impatiently. “My leg is sore, sir. Not missing.”

“And your arm?”

She flashed him a wry grin. “Is sore, too.” Then, turning back, she smiled for the coachman who stood dripping, hat in hand,
in the middle of the Pulteney’s elegant lobby. “Mr. Wilson, thank you. I know my husband will be happy to compensate you for
your help.”

The big man blushed like a boy, his slouch hat twisted into rope in his hands. “Nay, my lady. ’Tis you I owe. Hope everything
works out. An’ you can call on Tom Wilson you ever needs anything.”

“Biddle,” Diccan called.

Pulling out a purse, the valet followed the man out the front door. Once they had gone, Grace turned for the stairs. “Thank
you. He’s a nice man. I think I frightened him.”

Diccan shook his head. “You terrify me, madame.”

Her features scrunched up. “Do you suppose you could cease calling me ‘madame’ in that perfectly odious way? I thought we
had agreed on
Diccan
and
Grace
. Although,” she admitted with a chagrined smile at her destroyed attire, “I admit I don’t bear any resemblance to that particular
appellation at the moment.”

He made it a point to look her up and down. “A mistress of euphemism, I see. Think nothing of it. I’m sure you’ll
feel more the thing after scraping an inch or two of Kentish mud off of you.”

Wearily trodding up the steps, she nodded and sighed. “I hate to disoblige you, but I believe this might set back our plans
a day.”

“You mean fulfilling Captain Rawlston’s kind suggestion?”

Grace blushed, and Diccan thought how unfortunate it looked. “That was no suggestion, sir. That was blackmail.”

“Ah, wife,” Diccan said, as he guided her up the wide staircase, “What is life without a bit of blackmail? Certainly the
ton
would go quiet. For myself, I believe I will survive the wait. As long as it is not too long. A man has his needs.”

The truly confusing bit of that speech was that he meant it. How could he be relieved at his reprieve and disappointed at
the same time?

The message reached White’s at ten o’clock that night. The Surgeon had escaped prison. The most feared mercenary agent on
the Continent had been incarcerated in Newgate, awaiting trial for murder and espionage. According to their best reports,
he had vanished sometime the night before, leaving behind two guards with slashed throats and the words
au revoir
carved into their foreheads.

Reading the report over his Chambertin brandy in White’s reading room, Marcus Belden, Earl Drake, cursed quietly and pithily.
As if they needed anything else right now. “Do you know why we’re just hearing about this?” he asked the man who had just
delivered the news.

A score years older than Drake, Baron Thirsk was a moderate man, so nondescript that people were hard-
pressed to describe him after he’d gone. He occupied the other leather armchair, swirling his own snifter of cognac. “The
officials at Newgate are not anxious to broadcast their peccadilloes.”

Drake lifted an eyebrow. “A working girl caught servicing the warden is a peccadillo. The escape of one of the most dangerous
men in Europe is a disaster. Especially now. You heard about Hilliard’s
contretemps
?”

Thirsk shrugged and sipped his own brandy. “Got caught sniffing up the skirts of the most notorious virgin in the realm, I
hear.”

Drake was shaking his head. “He was set up. He told us that Evenham warned him about it.”

“Convenient for Hilliard to notify us after the fact, don’t you think?”

Drake lifted the report in his hands. “He also warned us about the Surgeon.”

“Too late to do us any good.”

“You think he made all this up, even the plot to blackmail him? For Heaven’s sake, man, Hilliard brought back enough information
to take down the under-secretary of the Treasury. Do you think the opposition would not go to any lengths to stop him?”

Thirsk sniffed. “He was married, not waylaid and murdered. Besides, no one but a very select few know about Hilliard’s activities.
You’re certain Hilliard didn’t just make up his accusations to deflect attention from his mishandling of the boy?”

“I’ve never known Hilliard to lie. Not in these matters.”

“I’ve also never known an Evenham to commit treason.”

Out in the foyer, the door opened to a fresh blast of rain-driven wind as two of the club members left. Drake
watched the comings and goings out beyond their little corner of isolation and considered the missteps that had dogged them.
He thought of what kind of access it would have taken to arrange them. Any of the men walking into this door could be involved.

“Sidmouth thinks this is all misdirection,” Thirsk said, staring into his drink. “Revolutionaries throwing smoke in our faces.
By the time we realize this is all a diversion, they’ll have pulled down Parliament. God knows they’ve made a start, what
with the blasted Luddites destroying looms and the rabble rioting over the Corn Laws.” Drake tried to answer, but Thirsk was
well into a familiar rant. “And then we have those returning soldiers wandering the streets, just looking for trouble. I say
we look to them for our traitors.”

Drake shook his head. “I’m sure the Home Secretary would like to think so. But both Hilliard and Jack Gracechurch came across
the same information, and it didn’t point toward disaffected soldiers. It implicated men of property.” He huffed impatiently.
“
British Lions
. Imbecilic name for a group of traitors.”

Thirsk glared. “You’re talking about men in the peerage, the highest levels of government. What could possibly make them want
to imperil their own positions?”

Drake fortified himself with a drink. “You read the report. They want the throne. Don’t forget. Evenham told Hilliard that
the group actually helped Napoleon, thinking he’d give it to them.”

He shuddered at the cost of that betrayal. Wellington might have held sway at Waterloo, but the loss of life had been catastrophic.

“Hilliard
says
Evenham told him,” Thirsk reminded him tersely.

Drake looked over to see the suspicion that never quite left those nondescript brown eyes. “I believe him. After what I saw
with Gracechurch, I have no question that powerful forces are behind this, and that they mean to take over this government.
And we don’t have much time to stop it.”