He turned and took up as much space as he could.
The gun wavered. The intruder stepped back, his eyes darting between them. He brought up his other hand to grip the pistol.
At that moment, Miss Hillier gave a shout. “Lewis! Lewis. In the garden.”
James started, and he saw their intruder did, too.
The man muttered a curse and turned, ran for the back wall and scrabbled his way up.
James started after him.
“Miss Hillier?” A call from the open doors of the library. “Miss Hillier? Are you there?”
James turned to her as he reached the wall.
She gave him a wide-eyed look. “What are you doing?” Her whisper was fierce.
“Going after him.” James could hear the man clambering down the other side of the wall and the sound spurred him up the rough grey stone.
“Are you mad? He has a gun.” Her whisper wasn’t very soft this time.
“Miss Hillier? Are you in the herb garden?” The butler’s footsteps came closer and James reached the top of the wall.
He looked back at her one last time, saw her gaze fixed on him. She made a gesture with her hands, throwing them up in exasperation and incomprehension.
“I’ll see you later.” He called it low enough that hopefully the butler didn’t hear.
As he dropped over the other side, he heard Miss Hillier call out. “I’m here, Lewis. I’m all right, but there was a man in the garden.”
Chapter Eleven
Lewis made a fuss, but she had accepted that would happen when she called out to him.
A little fussing was far preferable to seeing the Duke of Wittaker shot dead in front of her. She’d watched the intruder’s grip tighten on his pistol, and had seen no alternative.
A shiver racked her body, and she hunched her shoulders.
Lewis had insisted on steadying her with his arm as he walked her back to the house, and she found to her surprise that the thin, wiry strength of him was most welcome. More solid and comforting than she would have expected.
She could feel a tremble in her hands and gripped him a little tighter to make them stop.
His face was only slightly lined, but as they come within the glow of light spilling from the library, it creased in dismay. “Your dress. Did you fall?”
She stared down at the stains from her roll through her parsley patch.
“He pushed me out of the way in his haste to climb back over the wall.” Phoebe held the skirt of her gown out for a critical look. “My parsley is no doubt completely crushed.”
“We must call the magistrate’s office.” Lewis escorted her back into the room and closed and locked the doors behind him.
“There would be no point, unfortunately. I didn’t see his face clearly, and aside from bowling me over, his only crime was trespassing.”
Lewis rattled the doors to make sure they were secure and frowned. “I feel uneasy about this.”
Phoebe tried to smile at him, but the thought of that gun, pointed straight at Wittaker, the way he’d scooped her up and put himself between her and her assailant….
Her legs felt a little weak and she sat down harder than she intended on the arm of a chair.
Lewis kept his gaze on her as he lifted his hand to ring the bell to the kitchen. Before he could tug it, the sound of someone on the front doorstep had them both turning their heads.
“My aunt back from the ball?” Phoebe suggested.
Lewis all but ran from the room to the front door in his haste to pass her into her aunt’s care. A moment later she heard the low rumble of his voice, surprisingly deep in a man as slight at he was, and then the squawk of horror from Aunt Dorothy.
The sound of her aunt’s distress helped her get a hold of herself. The little collapse of a moment ago was the only weakness she would allow.
“My dear! Lewis says…” Her aunt gave a cry at the sight of her, and Phoebe belatedly remembered her dress. “You’ve been manhandled!”
“Only pushed out the way, and tripped over my own skirts,” Phoebe told her. But she thought of the way the intruder had behaved when he’d seen her, the way he had lifted the gun.
Even in the weak light of the moon, there had been a focus on his face, a practised air about him as he’d taken aim at her down the sight.
It was the way he reacted. As if he’d come across her fortuitously. As if killing her was the reason for his being there at all.
She shivered.
If the Duke of Wittaker had not been with her, she would be dead.
“Look at you. How calm and brave.” Aunt Dorothy put an arm around her and gave her an affectionate hug. “Lucinda would be having hysterics by now.”
Phoebe was able to manage a real smile at the thought of her cousin Lucinda in this situation, and the tight squeeze of fear on her chest relaxed its hold. “I don’t feel brave. Just lucky. And ready for bed.”
She wondered what Wittaker had meant by seeing her later. She was not going back out into the garden to hang about for his return. He could see her tomorrow. In broad daylight.
That was, if he survived his chase with the intruder. Although she couldn’t doubt he would.
She had seen the hunter in him, the almost eager way he’d taken after the man.
He didn’t like to be bested. And from all accounts, especially at the gaming tables and the duelling field, he seldom was.
That part of his reputation, at least, was true.
When she finally sent her aunt to bed, and her maid had helped her undress, she stood beside the bath Lewis had organized and unpinned her hair, running her hand over the back of her skull where Wittaker had cupped her head, and then trailing her fingers down to the skin of her neck where the smooth warmth of his inner wrist had touched her.
As she sank into the hot water, she thought again of the way Wittaker had lifted her up and stood between her and a loaded gun.
She would tell him about the petition Sheldrake had sent her.
She owed him that much.
She owed him, in truth, her life.
* * *
James could hear the rasp of his quarry’s breath as they came out of Upper Berkley Street, across Edgeware Row and onto a bowling green, which James belated realized was situated in the fields above Hyde Park.
It would be deserted this time of night.
The man realized it a moment later himself, stopped and turned, pistol waving in his hand. “Stop.”
James didn’t give him the time he needed to catch his breath and aim, though, he ran straight at him. He saw the intruder’s face waver between disbelief that someone would be mad enough to come at him when he held a weapon, and fear.
Fear won and he spun and ran again, with James much closer than before.
“Let up, mate.” The man reached the low stone wall at the far end of the bowling green and leapt it. His words came out hoarse and breathless. “I didn’t mean you no ’arm.”
James followed him, but Miss Hillier’s intruder had decided to take a stand. As he reached the wall and looked over, he saw the pistol aimed straight at him and ducked down, crouching on the thick, smooth lawn of the bowling green.
The shot missed him by inches.
He leaned against the stone, trying to catch his breath, and he heard the intruder doing the same on the other side of the wall.
“You’re like a dog with a bone, mister.” The man choked and then cleared his throat. “I’ve got a second pistol loaded. I’m walking away backward ’cross the fields, with it aimed at the wall. Don’t force me to pull the trigger again.”
“Who paid you to kill Miss Hillier?”
The man gave a genuine bark of laughter at the question. “As if I’d blab. An’ it’s Miss Hillier, is it?” He gave a snort. “Sure you don’t know her a bit better ’n’ that, being as you were all alone wi’ her in a little secret garden ’round ten at night?”
“Inconveniently for you.” James turned back to face the wall, still cro
uched low.
“You might say that. You might say I’ll have to get out o’ town for a bit now, ’cause I don’t think the lady will be caught by surprise again, and them what wants her out the way won’t be well pleased by tonight’s work.”
“I think that would be best. I would certainly advise you against another attempt.” James heaved himself up and onto the top of the wall again, but the intruder took a few stumbling steps back, fumbled with his second pistol and raised it.
“You stay right there. I’m warnin’ you.” He walked back slowly, disappearing into the dark of the open field, and when James judged he was too far away for an accurate shot, he leapt down, but after a few steps he heard the sound of a man running. The noise faded into the night and he knew he wouldn’t catch him now.
He turned back and climbed the wall again.
He was getting very good at climbing walls.
Chapter Twelve
Phoebe had just slid between the cool, smooth sheets and was about to blow out the lamp beside her bed when there was a rattle at her window.
It sounded like a piece of gravel had been thrown at the glass.
She lay still, listening, and it came again, harder this time. Almost hard enough to smash through.
Wittaker.
It had to be.
She got out of bed and ran to the window, pulling up the lower half and leaning out.
The Duke of Wittaker stood below, arm flung back as he readied himself for another throw.
She’d been worried for him, running after the intruder with no weapon, and now, relief made her incautious. “You’re all right!”
He dropped the stone in his hand. “Perfectly. And yourself?”
She gave a nod, and the thrill of exchanging pleasantries from her window at eleven at night wearing her night shift gripped her. Made her shiver.
“I need to speak with you.”
She must have misheard him. “Now?”
“We have urgent matters to discuss.”
She looked behind her, as if Lewis and her aunt were already rapping on her bedroom door, although thank goodness, they were not. “I’m afraid we’d wake the household and…”
She trailed off.
Impotent rage, her old friend, ran a familiar hand down her back and she stiffened under its hot, prickly fingers. Why shouldn’t she speak with someone? With whomever she pleased? She was twenty-four years old, responsible, intelligent.
She had all but accepted the anger and the frustration as constant companions, but Sheldrake cutting her free, the incidents of the last day, opened her eyes to how big they had grown, hulking beasts that rubbed up against her. Crowding her and making her life smaller.
Tears stung her eyes as she fought for composure. For the stoic acceptance she’d forced on herself time and again.
Below her, Wittaker rubbed his face. “It is urgent, but I understand. I shouldn’t have asked it of you. My apologies. I’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
He turned to go, and she thought again of the way he had run to her, had swung her behind him so that he stood between her and a loaded gun.
The fragile barrier inside her, the one that only just held her back each time she seriously contemplated stepping over the line, snapped.
“Wait.” She leaned further out the window. “Can you climb the wall using the trellis?”
He stopped. Turned back to her, and then walked up to the wall, patted it with his hand, and she heard him give a quiet chuckle.
It took him less than half a minute to reach her bedroom window, pulling himself up the wooden lattice covered in ivy, and she stepped back to allow him to climb through it.
He smelled spicy green, the scent of crushed ivy leaves and cool spring air clinging to him as he swung his legs over the window sill.
“What could be so urgent?” She stood with her arms crossed over her chest, feeling like a fish flopping about at the bottom of a boat. She had no point of reference for this, although she was prepared to trust him.
“The man who killed Perceval is to go on trial on Friday. Tuesday is almost over. We have hardly any time to solve this before Vinegar Gibbs orders him hanged, and all that Bellingham knows about who helped him in this dies with him.” He looked from her to her rumpled bed and tugged a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Miss Hillier. I know this is extraordinary behavior on my part, but someone tried to kill you tonight, and I want to know if you have any idea why.”
She didn’t want what he said to be true, but she couldn’t deny that the intruder’s behavior had changed when he saw her. He’d raised his pistol the moment he worked out who she was.
“When Sheldrake said goodbye…” She couldn’t help the way her fists clenched at the memory. “As he walked away he said something about how I should be safe enough.” She tightened her arms around herself. “At the time I thought it a strange thing to say, but then, the whole conversation was strange. I think he was trying to convince himself he hadn’t put me in danger, trying to rid himself of any responsibility to me.”
“Not to excuse him, but I would have thought he was right.” Wittaker seemed to realize how nervous he made her, taking up so much space in her bedroom, and he sat down on the window seat he’d just climbed over. “Unless someone saw you meeting him before he left?”
She shook her head. “He was very careful to make the meeting secret. I suppose it’s the note he sent me. And my going to Newgate this afternoon. Someone must have been watching me, or saw me there.”
Wittaker paused in the act of straightening out his legs. “I thought you said the note didn’t say anything.”
She gave a jerky nod. “He only wrote the address of the inn on it. But he enclosed something.”
Wittaker stood again, and this time he made no effort to put her at her ease. “You never said this before.”
She shrugged, completely unrepentant. “I didn’t know which side you were on, before.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “And what did he enclose?”
She walked across to her small writing desk and drew out the letter and the petition folded within it. Handed it to him.
He stared at it a long time. “A petition to the Prince Regent.” He looked as though he was trying to remember something. “I’ll have to take it with me.”
She nodded. “You can keep it.”
He looked up at her, stared at her for a long moment. “Tell me, Miss Hillier, how on earth was it that you were Sheldrake’s fiancée?”
There was rage, back in an instant, holding her close, almost smothering her, and she forced herself to breathe out. “The betrothal was a family matter, Your Grace.”
He gave a slow nod. Then he folded the letter and slipped it into his jacket. His bow was formal, and he turned back to the window. “Please don’t go anywhere tomorrow. Stay at home.”
Phoebe frowned. “You think they’ll try again?”
He crouched on the window sill. “I don’t think they’re going to stop trying because of one miss. However, I have the impression the intruder from tonight plans to leave town rather than inform his employers of his failure, so we have some time before they send someone new after you, I hope.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You had a conversation with the man in the garden?”
He sent her a wicked grin. “Just a quick one. Between bouts of him shooting at me.”
She couldn’t help the soft laugh that escaped her. His sense of humour delighted her. “I admire your daring.”
The look on his face changed, and as she watched him watch her, she suddenly remembered she had a man in her bedroom and that she was only wearing a night shift.
“Good night, Miss Hillier.” He didn’t flinch from looking directly at her, but his voice was rougher than it had been. Deeper. “Remember, keep inside.”
She swallowed. “I can’t stay indoors indefinitely. My aunt will wonder what’s wrong.”
Wittaker swung a leg over and tested the lattice. “I’ll thin
k of something. And I’ll stop by tomorrow.”
“Will you be calling at the front door?” she asked as he disappeared from sight, desperate to claw back the light-heartedness between them. What had replaced it a moment ago was intense. Hungry. Too out of control.
The soft rumble of his laugh drifted up to her, and she grabbed her drapes with relief at the sound.
“I don’t know. I’m becoming quite fond of climbing walls.”
Chapter Thirteen
Wednesday, 13 May, 1812
James couldn’t remember when last he felt so well. He’d gone to bed at midnight, quite the earliest he’d had his head on a pillow in some time. He’d tried to find Dervish at their club after he’d left Miss Hillier’s magnificent house, but he’d been nowhere to be found, and short of trawling London for him, James had been forced to send him a note and go home.
His good night meant he was up early, and as he came down the main stairs he could hear laughter from his kitchens, two deep male voices and a low, musical, feminine one.
Miss Barrington, Aldridge’s fiancée, must be visiting his chef, although why she should do so at seven in the morning, he had no idea.
He hesitated near the bottom of the stairs, debating whether to interrupt them.
He wanted, in a way he couldn’t explain, a piece of the unfettered joy he could hear.
He’d had a thin slice of it last night, laughing with Miss Hillier in her bedroom, with its rumpled bed and scented bath standing full to one side. For a moment they had both forgotten she was in her night shift and they were alone.
And then they had remembered.
He gripped the bannister hard and heard the laughter from his kitchens again.
He took the last step and turned towards it, entering a part of his house he very rarely had cause to go.
“Your Grace!” Completely at his ease, and obviously delighted to see him, Georges Bisset, James’s chef, waved him in, as if it were he who was the host, and not James.
Which, James decided, was quite true in this particular place. Georges ruled here, and no one, not even James, could deny it.
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