by Suzi Love
Michael, donning his cloak of elder-brother-in-charge, called orders to those concealed behind one of the protruding niches along the outside wall of the aged-darkened church.
“Jonathon, keep watch at the corner while we move the ladies to a safer place.” He pointed up the adjoining street and called to Laura, “You and Lottie wait up there in the park with Aunt Aggie. I’ll bring our carriage.”
Michael, already jogging down the steps, called to Winchester, “Can you leave the ladies in your care while I fetch our coachman?”
The Earl stilled and his hands clenched. Laura saw a pronounced tick in his cheek and empathized, having often battled similar conflicts: accept an honorable but meeker role, or rebel against society’s rules and rush into danger.
The Earl of Winchester, with his rigid ideas on the role of a gentleman, would disagree with Laura’s thinking and the beliefs of the women she associated with. But women could, and should, deal with tribulations as well as any man. And she owed it to her brother-in-law to ensure his cousin didn’t suffer through his over-zealous sense of duty.
This was one arena where Laura disagreed with her friend, Mr. Charles Darwin, and his notion that man's eminence over woman was the natural outcome of sexual selection. Because her family’s well-being was her responsibility, not Winchester’s, and her ability to find their attacker and uncover Lady Hetherington’s hiding place had nothing to do with her gender.
Chapter Four
“Sorry, Michael,” the Earl of Winchester said, as he pointed across the street. “But if I’m to catch our shooter…” He looked at Laura.
Her expression, or lack of it, forced him to forget his plan to track the gunman down the alley. Terror had pressed her generous mouth into a straight line. Fear had leached her cheeks of every remnant of color and her face resembled a wash-day sheet, blanched white. Tremors rippled across her shoulders.
Only by clenching his fists did he stop himself reaching for her. Only determinedly widening his stance stopped his feet taking flight and charging off in a rage, after the walking-dead-man who’d dared shoot at them. At Laura.
He damped down his urge for revenge until later. Until Laura’s argumentative nature resurfaced and she berated him over a multitude of offenses, minor or major. And she didn’t look exhausted and defeated.
He nodded to Michael. “I’ll stay with Laura,” he said, not shifting his gaze from her face. “And the other ladies. Go. Fetch your coach.”
It took little time for Winchester to shepherd the ladies to the park, seat them on a shaded bench, and answer numerous distraught questions from Aunt Agatha. He kept his eyes on Laura, knowing the instant her aunt was settled the stubborn woman would be unable to contain her curiosity and would rush away to inspect the shooting area with her brothers. He cursed every member of the Jamison family, especially Laura, for their recklessly inquisitive natures.
When she started to rush away, he caught up to her and planted himself squarely in her path. “No. I forbid you.”
As soon as he’d spoken, he closed his eyes and cursed his own reckless mistake. Laura was conditioned to rebel against any demanding man, thanks to her father. He watched, resigned, as her brows shot skywards.
“F–forbid? You. Forbid. Me. Absurd. Stand aside.”
He shook his head. “Your imperious tone doesn’t work with me, pixie.”
Meeting his gaze, she pleaded. “I need to reassure myself Becca’s coach was around the bend before the shot came. I must know if they’re safely away to their ship.”
Heavens, how could he refuse when she looked at him like that? Eyes wide with regret and fear and shining through it all, her determination to make her sister proud. He groaned. He’d do anything to smooth away the worry lines from her forehead. He thrust his free hand into his trouser pocket, stopping its disobedient path towards her face, towards the lock of dark hair dipping into one eye. No touching. Not now, not ever. Not if he wanted to keep their relationship as sparring-friends. Not if he intended marrying a milk-and-water miss.
Winchester’s ideal wife would accept his bidding with a smile, but without questioning his every thought and action. While Laura’s ideal husband would match her fervor and idealistic passion, as she rushed into the seedier parts of the city in her attempts to improve the lot of the underdog. Laura’s fiery temperament meant a lifetime of fights and reconciliations, while her non-conformist behavior would provide gossip fodder for three generations of society’s matrons and would tarnish the reputations of his marriage-minded sisters.
He pushed aside regret in favor of action. “Then at least wait here, until I assess the situation.”
She twisted her soiled gloves in a relentless loop through her fingers, leaving them as wrung out and limp as a floor-washers wet rag. “No, “she said. “I’m not some namby-pamby miss you can order to sit in the corner.”
Her unrelenting urge for action matched his so he knew these moments of submissiveness would aggravate like an abscessed tooth. ,
His first instinct was to rope her to the park bench beside her aunt, but he hid his worry and took both her hands. “Your stubbornness will be the death of me. I’m terrified you’ll rush out there by yourself. Please, pixie. For once in your life, let someone help you.”
“I do. My family. And stop calling me pixie.”
He shrugged. “Can’t help it. The name suits you. Now, let me, as a gentleman, do as I promised. Let me help you.”
She stared at him, silent, brooding and gnawing her bottom lip with her teeth.
He shook his head and chuckled. “I’ve never waited this long for a woman to accept an offer from me.”
She arched a brow. “Any offer you make to a woman is bound to carry barbs and require close inspection.”
He grinned. “And our conversations are always prickly. I’m never sure if I’ll survive.” He pointed a finger at her nose but stopped before he touched her sprinkle of freckles, tiny brown dots he wanted to touch with his tongue. “We shall assess the situation together. Because if I leave you here, you’re bound to do something reckless.”
He cleared his throat and tried to sound imperious, not besotted. If his friends discovered that, in the midst of danger, he’d fantasized about licking a woman’s facial spots, they’d lock him away in Bedlam. He held out a hand, clasped hers, and started towards the street. “You’ll stay behind me at all times. Understood?”
Thankfully, she gave a brief nod. “Yes.”
As they walked towards their male relations, Winchester watched Laura out of the corner of his eye. She straightened and looked him in the eye. Meeting his gaze, he read her dammed stubborn determination and sighed, frustrated yet resigned. She moved away from the shelter of the hedge, her crumpled skirt flapping around her ankles as she strode across the ten yards separating them. Lord save him. Between his compulsion to keep Laura safe and her stubborn determination to prove herself, she’d be the death of him.
For the second time, Winchester heard the firing of a bullet. Louder, closer. Much too close, and somewhere near Laura.
He yelled, ran and threw himself on top of her. “Are you hit? Are you hurt?”
“No, no, I’m fine.”
But color had drained from her flushed cheeks, and spots of blood dotted her bottom lip where her teeth had broken the skin.
“You–you may remove yourself.”
“No. Not until I know you’re safe this time. That was far too close. Let your brothers do a more thorough search first.”
“They searched before and found no one. I doubt they will this time either.”
He growled, the sound jangling in the small space between them like the loose gravel rattling on the macadam road near their heads. “I damn near lost ten years off my life when I heard that bullet go past you.”
He felt the shudder rippling along her spine. His body lifted and fell in time to her inhalations, his larger physique melding itself to hers and fitting her curves in perfect symmetry.
&nb
sp; He dropped his head beside hers, muttering words he hoped she either couldn’t hear, or wouldn’t recall. Only when the road trembled with the noise of booted footsteps pounding towards them did Richard grasp the urgency of moving, as he couldn’t allow her to be caught in this compromising position by her brothers. Certainly not with the man she purported to loathe; one whom she declared, at every opportunity, to be arrogant and irritating.
“Let me up.” She gave a little push. “People are coming.”
Though reluctant to give up the comfort of her hot breath blowing against his neck, he stood and reached down to help her do the same. It was ridiculous for a man of his experience to long to keep hold of the most inappropriate would-be-countess in London, and despite her curves being covered by layers of bulky clothing. Not when he’d only to beckon for any number of wanton women to come running.
Turning aside, he scanned the street and tried to shrug off this peculiar and unwanted effect she always had on him. Perversely, when she twisted free of his hold, turned to her brothers and threw herself into their combined embrace, his teeth clenched and his scowl returned and deepened.
Why accept their comfort and not his?
“Idiotic,” he muttered, kicking at the ground.
Laura had been watching her brothers walk away, but now she turned to him with a puzzled frown and asked, “What’s idiotic?”
He shrugged. What could he answer? That he’d fooled himself into thinking a few moments of intimacy during a dangerous situation, twice repeated, might mean she’d change her opinion of him? Hoped she’d give up her nonsensical ideas of selecting a perfect husband by his perfect scent? Of living a perfect life? Because he knew her imagined perfection didn’t exist? Or, on the rare occasions a perfect union did happen, like with his parents, fate decreed a tragedy would snuff out their idyllic lives far too early?
He shook off his morbid thoughts, bent to retrieve her shawl, turned away and shook it several times to dislodge the collected debris.
“Bloody hell.” Shocked disbelief made him forget he was a gentleman who should temper his language in front of a lady. He felt the wrap tugged out of his hands, and watched as Laura lift the fabric up to her face.
“It’s only a small tear. It can be mended.”
“That, you stubborn woman, is the hole from a bullet. One that almost killed you.”
***
Laura ignored Winchester’s outrage, and lifted her shawl higher and closer to her face so she could examine the shredded threads. “I’m not an imbecile, Winchester. I do realize what caused this hole.” She peered at the spot. “Botheration.”
She reached inside her reticule and fumbled around, all the while muttering at her seething companion. “In contrast to a heedless man, who I shall not bother naming,” she glared back at him, “I was trying not to draw more attention to us. If my aunt realizes how closely the bullet passed by my head, she’ll be pacing the corridors and checking windows every night.”
Laura glanced around to ensure no one was near enough to notice, before she furtively withdrew a pair of spectacles from her bag and placed the gold rims on her nose.
He shook his head. “Why you bother hiding those blasted things, I’ll never understand.”
“Spectacles distract and detract from a woman’s countenance.”
“Nonsense.” He reached out and straightened the frame over her nose. “It’d take far more than a gold chain and two pieces of glass to detract from the beauty of your face.”
She frowned. “I never know whether you’re teasing, or being sincere.”
She studied his profile, but he’d blanked his expression, leaving her curious, puzzled and frustrated--a familiar jumble of emotions around this confounding man of late.
“Plus,” he said, turning those all-seeing St. Martin eyes back to her, “some men find the thought of a woman with intellect, one capable of reading a book, an appealing proposition.”
“Not the men I’ve met. Spectacles indicate a bluestocking. Nothing more.”
Thrusting the glasses onto the tip of her nose, she lifted the fabric and studied it, doing her best to ignore his looming presence. “It’s a pistol shot.” She spun in a slow circle, scanning the street and the people crowded around. “So our shooter hid reasonably close to where we now stand.”
Two constables arrived and were besieged by the milling crowd, but Winchester stared only at her. ‘There is no need for you to speak to the constables. I can answer all their questions. I’m putting you, and the other two ladies, in your carriage and ordering your coachman to take you home and bolt the doors.”
“Winchester, you’re being ridiculous. Speaking to policemen isn’t going to send me into an attack of the vapors. We’re all familiar with police procedures. In fact, we all visited Scotland Yard after we assisted in sending Lord Hetherington to goal. It was our descriptions of her acts of lunacy that helped commit Lady Hetherington.”
She pointed down the street. “They will be finished with those other witnesses soon. I’m not leaving until I hear what they’ve learned.”
She turned away and started counting paces across the street. To her irritation, Winchester matched his stride to hers and accompanied her, their shoulders barely six inches apart. Laura strode into the midst of a group of men standing under a tree. They, and Michael, had their heads bent and were searching the ground, using walking sticks and bare hands.
“Twenty is here,” Laura called to her younger brother.
Jonathon nodded, and she watched him with her usual awe. With lightning speed, her youngest sibling could reconstruct the physics of any situation within his engineering brain. His gaze swiveled from side to side as rapidly as one of the mechanical arms in their factories and he muttered calculations under his breath.
“Jonathon, can you describe the trajectory? Pinpoint an exact target?”
“We already know the target, you contrary woman,” Winchester snarled, interrupting their conversation. His eyes were ablaze, sparkling with anger, and he gave her arm a light shake. “You were the target. You were the one they meant to murder. Both those shots were aimed at your blasted obstinate head and your smug hide.”
“Nonsense.” She released his fingers, one by one, from their tight grip on her sleeve. “From that distance, it’s impossible to say for certain which of us he was aiming at. Michael, you had the best view from the back. Who was standing near the steps? Behind us, or beside us?”
“No, Laura. Much as I’m loathe to think it, Winchester’s guess is probably correct. The gunman was either aiming at you in the front, or me, standing directly behind you.”
Jonathon rejoined them, counting out his paces as Laura had done. His face was drawn, his mouth pinched, an indication he was trying to calculate the whys and wherefores of a particularly difficult problem. Jonathon tackled problems methodically, scientifically, rationally, the same way in which Becca tackled mathematics. Unfortunately, Laura had to admit that her own approach was often the opposite to theirs, being more intuitive, and often similar to Lottie’s studying people’s actions and reactions through phrenology.
“They’re correct, Laura. By my calculations, the gunman stood here.” Jonathon turned towards the church, lifted his arm in mock firing position and pulled an imaginary trigger. “Firing directly across the street, the first in his line of vision were Laura and Winchester, with Michael and Aunt Aggie directly behind.”
“Aiming for the back rows would have been too risky unless he was a crack shot,” Brian said. “So we must assume it was either you, Winchester, or Laura.”
She turned to Winchester and looked him squarely in the eye. “So, shall we draw up a list, starting with me, of all the people who wish to put a bullet between your eyes?”
“My eyes?” The Earl widened his stance and settled his feet at an angle, his customary battle position and one she’d faced many, many times before. “The hole from the bullet is in your shawl. You were waving it.”
“Stuff a
nd nonsense!” She stabbed a finger towards his midriff. “It’s far more likely to be an irate husband. One you’ve cuckolded.”
She heard his hiss of indrawn breath and saw his fists clench at his sides. The angry lion was roused. He leaned closer so her brothers wouldn’t hear.
“Not that it’s any business of a well-bred lady, such as your aunt believes you to be, but I never dally with married women. Ever.”
He shrugged, the negligent lift of one shoulder not enough to dislodge the perfection of the line of his fitted coat. “Besides, why spend my nights worried about an out-of-town husband arriving home unexpectedly? Not when there are willing widows, an entire city of them, throwing themselves at my feet.”
She opened her mouth. Widely. In vain. No retort emitted. At this worst possible time, her quick wittedness had deserted her.
He raised his rakish brows, gave his best roguish look, and waited. When she didn’t respond he continued to taunt her. “Ah, I see, my pet. Jealous again. Wishing you were either not so well born, or that you were a widow. You’d then be free to join the queue of women awaiting my attentions.”
She’d rather die rather than acknowledge it, but his words had struck a chord with her. But she was certain that if she laid bare even a smattering of her feelings, the man’s head would grow so large with conceit that he’d become wedged between the door posts. No doubt he’d blame that consequence on her, as well.
His grin, and his mesmerist’s eyes widened. “What? No sharp retorts? None of Lady Laura Jamison’s infamous barbed jabs aimed at the most tender parts of my anatomy.”
Her teeth ached from clenching. Her forehead would need several heated irons to smooth the furrows between her brows.
But Winchester blithely carried on, despite knowing how dangerous it was to goad her further. “Perhaps we should summon a doctor after all. Shall I call back your brothers? I fear the bump on your head may have caused you to lose your senses.”
