Chapter 3
Chapter Three
The minute Will threw the carriage door open, all hell broke loose.
Blood-curdling screams erupted. There was a mad scramble of arms and legs and flying skirts as the ladies inside darted about in a panic. He didn’t know what to grab first, and every moment he expected a ball to land between his eyes.
He managed to seize a handful of pink skirts and was about to pull whatever lady was inside them from the carriage, but then he saw Oliver fling open the opposite door and twist the lady’s arms behind her back. She tumbled backwards, and Oliver dragged her, shrieking and kicking, out the door.
Relief surged through Will—that was one problem dealt with—but then he caught a glimpse of something in the corner of his eye that made his blood go cold.
A dainty hand, and in it…
A tiny pistol, a plume of smoke still curling from the end of the barrel.
He didn’t think, and he didn’t hesitate.
He leapt for the pistol, grabbed it from her hand, then wrapped his fingers around her wrist and with one mighty tug, hauled her out of the carriage.
She let out a faint cry as she stumbled, but Will caught her by the waist before she could fall to her knees in the mud. “Now, don’t do anything foolish, like—”
Smack! “Let me go, you blackguard!”
“Like slap my face,” he finished, his ears ringing from the blow she’d landed on his cheek.
For God’s sake, wasn’t Christmas meant to be a peaceful holiday?
Because so far, it had been one bloody skirmish after the next.
His sister had been abducted, he’d been shot at, slapped and insulted, and the termagant in his arms was even now aiming her foot at his shin.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Will pushed her against the side of carriage and crowded into her, trapping her between the door and his body. “Now be still, will you, and let me think?” He had a much bigger problem than this squirming, kicking female.
They’d chased the wrong bloody carriage. The lady pummeling him with her tiny fists wasn’t his sister, and neither was her companion.
“Christopher!” He had to shout to be heard above the uproar. “Maddy isn’t here. Go after her, and be quick! Rowley will have her halfway to London by now!”
Christopher spat out an expletive so wicked it made the lady in Will’s arms gasp with outrage. Will held her fast until he heard Christopher’s horse’s hooves pounding away, then he jerked his attention back to his captive.
The lady who wasn’t his sister was still fighting like a feral cat to get free of him. He had a least a foot’s advantage on her in height, not to mention six or seven stone, yet she’d still managed to land a blow on him.
What the devil were she and her friend doing out here in a hired carriage in the middle of the night? No one ever passed by Cliff’s Edge Castle. It was a good two-hour carriage ride east of Colchester. Its remoteness was the very reason Will had chosen to come here in the first place.
“Stop wriggling, damn it.” He still had the pistol in his hand, and he had no idea whether or not she’d had time to reload it before he snatched her from the carriage.
“Otherwise one of us may be celebrating Christmas with a pistol shot through the skull. I’d just as soon live to see Twelfth Night, if it’s all the same to you. ”
This time the warning got through to her, and she ceased struggling. Will took a moment to catch his breath, then called out, “Oliver? Everything all right on your side?”
“Splendid,” Oliver called back cheerfully, as if this were all great fun. “I’ve got a lovely young lady here who isn’t Maddy, who’s stomped twice on my foot and kneed me in the thigh. That is, she got my thigh, but it wasn’t where she was aiming.”
“You deserve a kick in the bollocks, you scoundrel! I’ll see you two hung for this!” Oliver’s lady shrieked, her voice shaking with fury.
“The crown tends to frown upon those doing the shooting, madam, not those who were shot upon.” Will glanced down at the pistol, which was so small it fit into the palm of his hand. “A muff pistol, Oliver,” he called to his brother.
Oliver groaned. “You mean to say we were nearly sent to our graves by a muff pistol? That’s humiliating, that is.”
Will unscrewed the barrel and checked the chamber.
It was empty. He slid the pistol into the back of his waistband, under his coat, and scowled down at the lady he’d trapped against the side of the carriage.
“There. That’s much better. Now we’ve taken care of that, perhaps you’d be kind enough to explain why you tried to shoot me. ”
Her head was down, hiding her face. She was wearing a dark, somewhat shabby cloak, and an ill-fitting bonnet.
In the light of the half-moon above Will saw a few tendrils of wavy red hair had escaped.
He had a weakness for red hair, and the nape of her neck was so white and delicate and…
well, what sort of cold-blooded murderess had such a dainty, fragile nape?
Still, red hair or not, she had shot at him, and she’d struck him in the face, as well. “Miss? I asked you a question.”
She hesitated, then raised her face to his. “We thought you were highwaymen.”
“We still think so!” The other lady shouted, but Will didn’t answer her. He didn’t even hear her. He was staring at the lady before him, his breath catching in his chest as the moonlight fell on her face.
It was her.
The red-headed actress from the Pandemonium. The one with the wide, dark brown eyes, creamy skin and lips so plump and red every time Will saw them, he was overwhelmed with a mad craving for summer strawberries.
Penelope Hervey.
She’d told him her name a few weeks ago, on the night of the fire, but Will had already known it before then.
He’d seen her once when he’d been waiting in his carriage for Florentina after a performance.
She’d passed by with a group of other actresses, and one of them had called her by name.
He remembered thinking at the time the name Penelope suited her.
He hadn’t forgotten it, and he hadn’t forgotten her face, either.
Silas Bragg tried to keep her out of sight.
Penelope Hervey, with her tempting lips and dazzling red hair was kept as far to the back of the stage as possible.
She always played a bit part—a whore, or a bar-maid—and she never had any lines.
Her face was frequently half-hidden behind a mask, and her hair covered with a hat or wig.
Silas might have saved himself the trouble. He could have rolled her up in the stage curtains. Will still would have noticed her, and he doubted he was the only one.
There was no hiding Penelope Hervey.
She didn’t fit in at the Pandemonium, that much was certain. There was something different about her. He couldn’t explain what it was, but she’d caught his attention.
Once she caught it, she held it.
But that was before. Before Christopher had crashed his phaeton, and Oliver had been shot in a duel. Before Maddy had nearly been ruined. Before Will realized his own scandalous behavior was to blame for Maddy’s troubles, and for his brothers’ unchecked debauchery.
Before he’d vowed to become something more, something better than a Tainted Angel.
He’d left London behind for a reason. Penelope Hervey, for all her loveliness, came from a world he wanted to escape. He couldn’t think of any innocent reason she’d be here, in this remote part of Essex, less than a stone’s throw away from the doorstep of Cliff’s Edge.
He could, however, think of a number that weren’t so innocent.
Florentina might have sniffed out where he’d gone and sent Miss Hervey here to put a ball between his eyes. Or between his legs, more likely. Florentina was likely furious with him for ending their liaison so suddenly, and God knew she was a vengeful creature.
“Well, Miss Hervey. This is an unexpected pleasure.” He didn’t bow, but settled his hands on her shoulders, his grip firm to keep her still. For all he knew, she could have a second pistol secreted away in her bodice.
Her throat worked, but it took several tries before those red lips produced a coherent word. “Lord Archer. We…we fired on Lord Archer.”
It took Will a moment to understand she wasn’t speaking to him.
“We fired on Lord Archer,” she repeated, her voice rising. “Lord Archer. We might have put a ball right through his heart!”
There was a brief silence, then her friend called out, “Did we put a ball through his heart?”
Miss Hervey swept a panicked gaze over him, her big brown eyes wide. “No.”
“Another part of him, then? His arm, or a leg?”
“No. There’s no blood, and he seems…vigorous enough.”
“Well, I don’t see what all the fuss is, then,” came the disgruntled reply. “No harm done.”
Miss Hervey’s gaze caught his, and she swallowed. “I beg your pardon for mistaking you for a highwayman, and for, ah…well, for trying to shoot you.”
Will stared down at her, assessing every twitch and tremor in her face. As suspicious as he was at her sudden presence here, he couldn’t convince himself she was a bloodthirsty murderess. Her face was as pale as death, and her slender body was trembling with delayed shock.
Whatever reason she had for being at Cliff’s Edge, it wasn’t to shoot him.
But that didn’t mean she was innocent. Either Florentina had sent her here, or Silas had, at Florentina’s urging.
Will had given her with a wildly extravagant parting gift, but apparently, he hadn’t been generous enough to save himself from whatever mischief Penelope Hervey had been sent here to cause him.
He should have expected a trick of this sort from Florentina.
Not that it mattered what sort of revenge Florentina had in mind for him, because Miss Hervey and her friend wouldn’t be staying. The sooner he was rid of them, the better.