Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Isabella’s heart leapt as she caught her brother’s silent message in his intense stare just before he left her mother’s bedchamber.
While murmuring, “Is that so?” so her mother would believe she had Isabella’s full attention, she moved to the door and turned the key in the lock.
“This is quite tiresome,” Mrs. Coulton-Jones said for the fiftieth time.
“How could Michael have become involved with such unsavory characters? To be sure, I don’t know where he acquired his reckless streak.
Your father was the gentlest man in the world.
But I do recall his Uncle Edgar had been quite a rake in his younger days. ”
“Uncle Edgar was a rake?” Isabella asked in astonishment, picturing the placid great uncle.
No, she had allowed herself to be distracted. She let her mother’s words flow over her as she listened intently to the creaking of the house.
Had the townhouse always been so full of noises? Was it the wind, or Michael walking down the hallway, or men entering the house?
She had always had complete faith in her brother’s abilities as an agent during the missions in which he had accompanied her as her companion and guard, even more so now that he had acquired extraordinary strength and senses.
If he suspected that the Citadel had sent men after them, they would still be at a distance and not yet a threat, for her brother would have sensed them before they could encroach upon the house.
She found she was mistaken. Sounds of fighting erupted in the hallway.
“What in the world is that?” Mrs. Coulton-Jones pulled away from where her lady’s maid, Nunn, was buttoning the back of her carriage gown.
“Mother, Nunn, I must ask that you hide in the dressing room,” Isabella said urgently, moving behind them and pushing them toward the small side door.
“Isabella, what?—?”
Her mother’s words were interrupted by a rattling of the doorknob, followed by the sound of someone slamming into the door from the outside.
Mrs. Coulton-Jones and her maid both cried out in shock.
Isabella was forced to circle around and place her hands on their backs to push them toward the door to the adjoining dressing room. “Nunn, you and mother must …” Her voice trailed off when she saw the wild look in the maid’s eyes and realized she was too overcome to hear anything Isabella said.
In contrast, her mother was alarmed and astonished, but her wits were still about her. “Isabella, what is happening? Is that the dangerous man with whom Michael has become involved?”
“Mother, you and Nunn must move the chest of drawers in front of the door to the dressing room.” She managed to shove them inside the small attached room, and her mother turned to stare at her with eyes wide with fear and confusion.
“Mother, please do as I say and be as quiet as possible.” Isabella shut the door and turned the key in the lock.
Isabella was familiar with the sounds of men fighting—she had heard it often enough on her missions in both France and England. There was a clatter which she recognized as the sound of a knife dropping onto the wooden floor of the hallway.
The slamming at the bedroom door had slowed, but did not abate. She had no time to waste.
Her mother’s room was in sweet, gentle colors of mauve and white and pale yellow. Isabella ran to the massive clothes press, pulling out drawers until she found the brightest garment, a ball gown her mother had been unwisely convinced to purchase by her modiste at the time.
It was a shade of teal so garish it almost hurt the eyes to look at it, for the fine satin also caught the light and made it appear even brighter.
On the rare occasions her mother wore the gown, she would soften the effect with a trailing white lace overdress, but it was in another drawer in the clothes press.
Isabella removed the gown and shut the door so that the other colors spilling out of drawers in the clothes press would not distract whoever was going to enter the bedchamber.
For she knew an attacker would inevitably enter, and she alone could protect her mother and the maid.
Whenever Isabella walked into her mother’s bedroom, her eyes were always drawn first to the dressing table and the large oval mirror resting on top of it. It was not directly across from the door, but it stood against the opposite wall between two sets of windows.
Isabella threw the gown over the mirror and allowed it to drape down the table. Whoever entered the room first would be immediately drawn to that bright teal color in the midst of the rest of the bedroom’s furnishings.
She ran to the fireplace and picked up the two heaviest objects on the mantle—a heavy silver candlestick and a porcelain figurine of a shepherdess who looked more like a sheep than a woman.
(The shepherdess had been a gift from her mother’s sister, and out of spite, she left it in the London townhouse where she would not need to see it for nine of the twelve months of the year.)
Isabella tightened her grip on both objects and pressed herself against the wall beside the door, well clear of it should it burst inward. The next blow against the door caused the wood frame to creak, and Isabella swallowed.
She must protect her mother and Nunn against a man who might be taking the Root. The realization sent fear shivering across her skin as if a cascade of icy rain poured down her body.
Isabella frantically tried to recall her training in fisticuffs from Mr. Armstrong at the Ramparts, but it was a tangle of memories.
All she could clearly remember were the times when her movements allowed his wooden training knife to stab into her side or she fell hard onto the polished wooden floorboards after being bested.
She had not been trained as a guard, as Thorne and Michael had been. She did not know how to protect others. She could not do this. She would fail.
No, the one lesson Mr. Armstrong had taught her had been to force her mind to calm.
It took great effort, but Isabella managed to breathe in slowly, then hold her breath for a few heartbeats before exhaling just as slowly. She must calm herself, or she would not remember any of her training. She could not allow her mother to be harmed.
It was only then that she remembered to pray. Lord, please help me. Please protect us.
She was still on tenderhooks, but she had reminded herself of the steadfastness of the Lord and knew that she could trust Him to watch over her. She felt her heart rate begin to slow.
All too soon, the wooden door frame exploded, splinters flying everywhere. She closed her eyes and turned her head for a moment.
She opened her eyes in time to see a man step into the room, his gaze caught by that gaudy teal gown.
Isabella used all of her strength and brought the silver candlestick down on the back of his neck. She grunted as she swung.
But the man’s reaction was unnaturally fast, and his head began to turn toward her. The candlestick hit him in the back of the ear, and he tottered on his feet.
She did not pause but swung again, just as hard. She knew his responses were faster than hers, and she needed to take advantage of any moment she could steal.
Her next blow hit his temple, and he dropped to one knee.
Even as the candlestick rebounded from his skull, her other hand was swinging the shepherdess, and she smashed it against his throat.
It was not so fragile that it would immediately break, although it did crack.
But she had not been hoping to cut him with the broken shards—she wanted the blow to cause pain in his throat and windpipe, making it difficult for him to breathe.
Isabella swung the candlestick again, this time at the back of his head, and at the same time she aimed the shepherdess at his throat again. The candlestick hit at the base of his skull while the shepherdess broke into pieces.
Rather than drawing her arm back, she pushed the pieces of the shepherdess into his throat.
She could feel his skin tear under the sharp shards. She pushed deeper, even using her right wrist, with her hand still grasping the candlestick, against her left.
The man had not the breath to scream, but his mouth opened wide, as did his eyes.
She cut the vein in his throat, and blood was thrown out in an arc of red spray, splattering her gown. She jerked the remains of the shepherdess out of his throat, the smaller pieces falling to the floor in sticky clatters.
He grabbed at his neck, the blood dripping between his fingers.
But while the man looked panicked and afraid, she knew from what her brother had told her that even a fatal wound such as this would heal within minutes for men on the Root.
He would lose a great deal of blood, but he would be alive, and a few minutes after that, he may even be able to attack her again.
So she swung the candlestick once more at his temple, and his head was flung to the side. He dropped to the ground, unconscious, the blood continuing to flow from his throat and pool on the floor, soaking the carpet.
Isabella hit him again at the back of the head just to be sure. She might have also kicked him in the ribs a few times, breaking one or two of them, just to be certain he wouldn’t be able to rise and fight again immediately.
Her heart was beating wildly in her chest. Her lungs heaved, and yet she felt she couldn’t breathe.
Isabella stumbled toward the open bedchamber door, desperate to close it—the latch had broken and she would not be able to lock it, but she could at least swing it shut and lie in wait for any other intruders.
But as she reached for the door, which was hanging at a tilt, a figure appeared in the open doorway.
She was still holding a few shards of broken shepherdess, and she screeched, raising her hand to attack, but then the man flung his hands out toward her. “Isabella! It’s me!”
One moment, he had looked like a menacing, shadowy figure, and the next, she recognized her childhood friend and first love, Thorne. If he were here, then the men outside, however many there were, must have been defeated.
She swayed slightly. She tried to force her left hand to loosen and release the shepherdess, but found that her fingers wouldn’t obey her.
Thorne suddenly looked down at her hand. “Isabella! You’re injured!”
She recalled the spray of blood from the man who had entered the room. “It isn’t mine,” she said in a voice that was surprisingly cold and calm.
Suddenly, a figure appeared behind Thorne, and she began to raise the broken shepherdess again, but this time she recognized Michael after only a moment.
Thorne was still looking down at her. “Isabella, your hand …”
She looked down. Her right hand still grasped the heavy silver candlestick, while her left was clenched around broken shards of porcelain. She realized that in truth, some of the blood was hers—the figurine had lacerated her hand.
“I can’t open my fingers,” she said again in that strange, calm voice.
Thorne reached down and gently cupped her hand in his. He firmly but carefully pried her fingers apart, and pieces of porcelain fell to the floor. It hurt, and she realized her fingers had cramped.
“Thorne, you’re bleeding,” Michael said.
Her eyes flew from her hand to Thorne, his face, his shoulders, the fine embroidered waistcoat, and finally saw the dark patch against his black coat. She hadn’t realized that some of the blood on his hand as he pried her fingers open had dripped down from the wound in his arm.
“Thorne!”
He ignored her exclamation of surprise. “Can you move your fingers?”
Slowly, painfully, because her fingers were still clenched into claws, she moved all five digits. Her palm stung because of the slices in her skin, but they looked to be merely shallow wounds.
“How did the man enter so quickly?” Isabella asked her brother.
“They came from the roof.”
“I had not considered that,” she said.
“I should have done so,” Michael muttered bitterly. “Where is mother?”
“I locked her in the dressing room.” Isabella swiftly went to the dressing table and picked up a silk scarf her mother had intended to drape around her bonnet. She quickly used it to wrap around her hand, hiding the blood.
Then she moved to the dressing room door, unlocked it, and knocked. “Mother? It is Isabella.”
There was the sound of the dresser being shoved away from behind the door (at least her mother had followed her instructions to bar it).
Then the door was opened by, surprisingly, her mother.
Beside her was her maid, who was shaking and moaning.
While her mother also looked terrified, she remained standing tall.
Her eyes took in Isabella, Thorne, and Michael. Her gaze lingered on Isabella’s wrapped hand and the injury in Thorne’s arm, and she paled.
Before they could speak, Mrs. Coulton-Jones said in a voice that trembled only slightly, “We shall prepare to depart immediately.”
Isabella was momentarily startled by her mother’s steady demeanor, but then she remembered the unconscious man in the bedchamber. She turned to Thorne. “We shall tie the men up and tell the servants to leave the house.”
“I have a sedative—” Thorne began, but he was suddenly interrupted by a thunderous blow from downstairs.
It sounded like the door to the scullery.
“Stay here with Mother,” Michael said, and then he raced off.