Chapter Ten #4
on a fine enough day, in an interesting park she’d never before visited, accompanied by a huge, glowering man. Hope, while
gasping for breath, had not yet been entirely extinguished.
Then Marchand flicked cold water on her mood.
“Miss Woodville, if someone sees you with me, they will make the kind of assumptions about you that I am certain you will
not appreciate. I am neither unknown nor inconspicuous in these parts. You might want to keep your head down if you don’t
want to become gossip sheet fodder.”
She kept her head down.
Mr. Marchand’s tense alertness and surly mood discouraged any impulse she might have to chat.
He remained unhappy with her. In the hack on the way to the park he’d tried to convince her to go back to the Grand Palace
on the Thames while he went to investigate the alleged vase merchant instead. She’d refused. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust
him to do it. It was that she needed to see that vase with her own eyes. If it was there, she wanted to bear witness to the miracle that would make all of her
problems disappear.
She also suspected he was unhappy with himself.
Because he’d agreed to do it because he simply couldn’t help himself.
A disorienting realization was taking shape as they strode along in silence. Here she was, willingly following deep into a
park a man she’d known for mere days. A man who not only wasn’t a gentleman, but who had frankly propositioned her. Logic insisted there was a greater than zero possibility that he would
drag her into a bush and ravish her, despite his pattern of nearly chivalrous behavior.
And yet here she was with him, anyway. Not one particle of her thought she should run away.
So far, all Marchand had done was look after her in a way that no one else had done for almost a decade.
She wondered if it was pathetic that this was all it took to make her follow a strange man into the woods.
After all, people look after sheep for a time before they enjoy a mutton feast.
“I would be delighted to be wrong about Mr. Cook’s intentions,” he finally said. It sounded reluctantly conciliatory, but
he gave the man’s name an ironic frisson. As if he was certain it was an alias.
Presently she heard the gurgle and splash of a fountain. She risked a look up then.
They had entered a somewhat unkempt little grotto—the grass and flowers overgrown, grass raggedy at the edges of the walkway—surrounded
on three sides by tall shrubberies and hedges.
And in the middle of it a little wizened man stood behind a table scattered with knickknacks. He wore a brown cap.
His eyes were small, bright, and twinkly, like a bird’s.
She gasped, thrilled. “Are you the man with the bird vases?”
He bowed. “Why, I am indeed, miss! I’m ’appy to know my reputation precedes me. Come ’ave a look! Mayhap yer ’andsome fella
will buy a few trinkets for you.”
Ginny turned triumphantly shining eyes on Marchand.
She recoiled when she saw how cold and remote his were.
He all but glued himself to her side as they approached the table. Her heart kicked painfully in anticipation as she sought
out flashes of blue and white among the bowls and vases and little birds. She hoped the two pounds in her reticule would be
enough to make the vase hers when she found it.
But it became apparent in seconds that the vase wasn’t there.
Her eyes passed again and again over the array of wares, her breath going ragged, her entire being desperately resisting the moment when the truth must inevitably sink in and obliterate hope.
She dreaded turning to Marchand and seeing confirmation of her folly reflected in his face.
Her head shot up when the shrubbery behind the table began to rustle violently.
And out popped the man she’d seen in Fleegle’s.
In his hand was a pistol, and he’d aimed it right in the dead center of her chest.
Black spots of terror scudded before her eyes.
She staggered backward, encountering the hard wall of Marchand’s chest, as the two men swiftly rounded the table.
The pistol was still trained on her.
“I’ll just ’ave yer wee bag, miss,” said the man with the gun. “And you there, big guv, ’and over yer walking stick if ye
dinna want a hole in yer ’ead and turn out yer pockets. I can tell by jus’ lookin’ at ye that ye’ve got a beauty of a watch, so don’t even think of ’iding it from us.”
Later, Ginny would remember what happened next mainly as a series of distinct sounds, and not even loud ones, which somehow
made it all the more terrifying. Crunch thud grunt crash thud thud.
It was over in seconds.
Marchand had rammed an elbow into one man’s throat while chopping his walking stick up beneath the forearm of the man pointing
the pistol and kneeing him in the groin. The pistol went flying and the thugs buckled.
The final thuds were the sound of two grown men hitting the dirt from a standing position.
That sound reverberated through her as she stared down. A scream congealed in her throat.
Her knees turned to water.
Marchand seized her elbow before she collapsed. He bent to sweep up the thug’s gun. He tucked his walking stick beneath his
arm and managed to lock the gun with one hand. Then he swept his arm around her, holding her close to his body, and steered
her wordlessly, swiftly back up the path. Leaving the two would-be thieves moaning in a litter of broken crockery.