Chapter 30
Beau trailed some twenty paces behind his ward as she and Miss Lyon departed Floris, made the right onto Duke Street, and then took a quick left to walk down Piccadilly. He couldn’t prove the urchin running into her after Gunter’s hadn’t been an accident, but he also suspected it’d been a crime of opportunity—perhaps Babin had seen them in the tea shop and taken the chance to act. Knowing what he did about his father’s role in ending the elder Babin’s smuggling operations, and how the son very likely assigned some guilt to the previous Lord Avon for his father taking his own life, Beau was able to craft a motive for the action.
Babin had good instincts, which was a shame, given how he used them. The night prior at Lady Abercrombe’s, he had watched Beau and Emerald. Although Beau had been conscious to keep his distance for most of the night, he knew in the end it didn’t matter. Babin had already determined hurting her would hurt Beau. And Emerald, when she’d agreed to go shopping with Miss Lyon, had told Mr Babin exactly where she would be and when.
Despite a morning cooled by bracing air left over as winter rolled into spring, Mayfair bustled. The road was busy. Carriages carried esteemed persons from here to there, vendors pushed carts heaped with wares ready to sell, and the flag-way spilled over with dandies on the stroll, footmen carrying precarious stacks of boxes, and young women like his ward walking arm-in-arm with friends.
He and Saunders wove in and out of the crowd, Beau keeping his eyes trained on Emerald’s back. She and her friend paused in front of a stationery shop. Miss Lyon dashed in, leaving Emerald waiting near a cart piled high with fruit, her maid close by with two bags from Floris in her hands. She had just turned to say something to Gwen when a hackney, rushing from behind an oppressively large carriage, lost control and came careening at her. Beau was too far away to do more than call her name, which could not be heard above the din of the busy street. There was a frightened whinny, a terrible crashing noise, and a ghastly shriek that sent fear sweeping through him.
As one, Beau and Saunders rushed forward, pushing their way through the knot of people already gathering. His breathing was shallow and ragged, and when he got to the centre of the group gathered, the cold hand of fear had wrapped tight around his heart. Curled on the ground, unmoving and with her head lolling away from him, was his ward. At her side, her maid. The lady had a small hand on Emerald’s shoulder and was shaking her with more strength than one would suppose possible in a woman of diminutive size whose primary activity was selecting gowns and dressing hair.
Miss Lyon reappeared, package in hand, and released a horrified scream at the sight laid in front of her.
‘Emerald!’ Beau called her name twice as he knelt down, his voice trembling and panicked. He ran his hands along her neck, back, and arms, checking for broken bones. When he didn’t find any, he rolled her over so he could see her face, taking her in his arms as he did so. In the background, Saunders was dispersing the crowd and had taken it upon himself to calm both Miss Lyon and the maid, who, once the responsibility of getting her mistress to come to was relieved from her shoulders, burst into tears.
There was dirt on Emerald’s face, but no tell-tale red. He untied her bonnet and dislodged a few curls as he ran his fingers through her hair, searching for cuts or the sticky dampness of blood. He found none, and with his immediate fright at bay, he took a moment to study her peaceful face.
He ran a thumb over her smooth cheek with a touch so light it was as if he feared she might break under the pressure of it.
‘Emerald.’ Her name came out as a sigh, a plea, a wish. In his arms, he felt her chest expand with a full breath. Once more he said her name, the word hushed, only for her.
Her eyelids blinked open, and she looked up with a vague stare, her mind no doubt trying to work through a haze of confusion.
Relief surged through him. ‘There she is.’ He allowed himself one solitary second to enjoy the feeling before asking, ‘Can you tell me your name?’
‘Emerald Doubleday,’ she replied with uncharacteristic weakness in her voice.
‘And who am I?’
She closed her eyes, the movement slow, and took twice as long to open them, each second further shredding Beau’s nerves.
‘My adversary. Or my lord guardian, whichever you prefer.’
He expelled a loud, long breath of gratitude. Her wide, nebulous eyes held him in a trance, and Beau was busy thanking every god he could name when she tensed in his arms.
‘Easy, easy. You’ve had an accident,’ he said, helping her to her feet. Only then did he look around to discover the driver of the hackney long gone.
She, too, brushed her head from side to side, taking notice of their conspicuous position in the middle of Piccadilly. A little group still hung about on the fringes, their curious stares averted when met with a blast of pure ice as Beau looked their direction.
‘Where is your maid? Ah, Gwen,’ said Beau as Saunders came forward with the two ladies. ‘Is the carriage near?’
‘We came by foot, sir. The ladies wished to enjoy the temperate day.’
With a nod, Beau hailed a hackney. When one came to a stop, he turned back to say, ‘Saunders will see you and Miss Lyon home,’ before helping his ward into the vehicle and then climbing in himself. The lady’s maid bobbed a curtsey and looked considerably relieved to leave her charge in her employer’s care.
When the hired vehicle lurched forward, Beau ventured to ask Emerald how she felt.
Her gaze had been fixed forward, where it remained, and she took her time responding to his question. ‘I cannot be sure I know. It seems certain I have been near death. Yet without broken bones or cuts or much beyond vague soreness, my body can convince itself the entire episode was a dream.’
Even next to him, he sensed she was far away. It was no great surprise. With ease, he could remember the first time he’d been shot and how certain he’d been death was coming for him. He thought of all the things he’d wished he had done, all the things he could not change. When he had eventually regained consciousness to find himself abed, torso bandaged, Saunders reassuring him he’d see another sunrise, Beau hadn’t amended his ways. He instead began to see death as an inevitability, especially in his profession, and taught himself not to fear it. He could die in five years or fifty, but that he would was certain.
‘I imagine you may find yourself with a nasty bruise or two on the morrow. When we are returned to Avon House, I will call for the physician just to be certain you are well.’
‘That hardly seems necessary.’
‘Perhaps not, but all the same, it will ease my mind once the physician has had a good look at you.’
There was very little space between them in the hackney, hardly more than an arm’s width. When she turned to look at him, her face read like a map of emotions. He could see every thought behind her eyes and anticipate, like any good spy, his quarry’s next move.
‘What were you doing in Piccadilly?’
‘Walking home.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘What were you really doing in Piccadilly?’
Beau considered her, gave in to the affectionate smile curling his lips, and said, ‘Following you.’
To his delight, she snorted. ‘I can’t decide which is worse: the action or you admitting to it.’
With the added task of seeing Miss Lyon home, Saunders and Gwen arrived at Avon House around the same time as the physician. A cheaper rug would not have withstood the rough wear caused by Beau’s restless pacing the length of the corridor outside of Emerald’s rooms. He was rewarded by the door opening a short half hour later. Gwen had been discharged to secure a restorative tea, and the physician had the pleasure of assuring Beau all was well, aside from the good shake-up the young lady had experienced.
‘Thank you, sir. Let me see you out,’ said Beau, not really wishing to do so but knowing it was right.
The spry, grey-haired man who had known Beau since he was a child shook his head, waved Beau off, and said he was perfectly able to make it down the stairs and to the door himself. Beau did not bother to wait. He nodded and turned towards Emerald’s room. Her door was open, and his throat constricted when he looked in. An unusual fragile air hung about her where she was propped atop her bedcovers against a wall of pillows, eyes closed, chest rising slowly with shallow breaths. From his place in the doorway, he rapped his knuckles on the frame.
She glanced his way, observing him with a sweet, musing look. ‘Oh, do you wish to come in?’
The words sent a shiver of wanting rippling through him, and he chided himself for how quickly his mind had gone from deep concern to deep desire.
‘I brought something for you,’ he said, approaching the side of her bed with a little jar of arnica jelly. ‘A little bird told me it helps with pain and bruising.’
Her lips parted, and her whole countenance was the perfect picture of artless surprise. ‘Well, my right shoulder is a little sore.’
Beau unscrewed the lid and set it on the bedside table. ‘May I?’
She nodded, and with care, he pulled down the shoulder of her dressing gown, exposing the reddened skin of her shoulder. He dipped two fingers into the cool jelly, and he heard her breath hitch when he began to apply it with light pressure. Goose bumps prickled out over her flesh as she watched his movements with heavy eyes.
It was impossible to ignore his growing awareness of her, and he teased his fingers from her shoulder further along than necessary to the delicious stretch of her collarbone. She whimpered, the quiet, involuntary noise intoxicating. Her nearness overwhelmed him, and the surge of blood through his body told him he needed to retreat to his own room. With reluctance, he pulled his hand back.
‘I’ll leave this for you,’ he said, returning the lid to its place.
She nodded and reached out a hand to him. He took it, pressed her warm palm to his mouth, and curled her fingers around the kiss he’d left there as he set her hand back on her bed. With one last look into her probing, depthless eyes, he left before he did something as foolish as devour her whole.