Chapter Twenty-Nine
I had lived too long in the Brickbats to not put up a fight.
The boy disappeared as the man forced me forward, throwing me off-balance. I parted my lips, just enough to get one of his
meaty fingers between my teeth, and bit down as hard as I could.
“Bitch!” the man yelped, jerking me hard enough to jar my skull. His essence salted with desperation and the gunpowder stench
of fury as I kicked at his knees, writhing and twisting like a feral cat. He locked his arms over my chest, his heavy beard
scraping against my face as he snarled, “Be still! ’E wants to see ye!”
Panic turned my heart inside out, my mind racing. Eyes—no, even if I got my arms free, I couldn’t thrust my fingers back far
enough to strike there. I tried dropping, only to be roughly dragged forward like a sack of grain.
“She’s a virago, ain’t she?” the boy said.
The door to outside opened ahead of us, and my heart plummeted as I glimpsed what awaited us there: horses, a coach. Seeing
us emerge, a bald man took up the ribbons again, calling out, “’Urry up, will ye?”
We burst out into a glare of sunlight. I dug my heels into the soft earth, pulling off my gloves with my teeth so I could
claw at his hairy, sweat-slick arm with my nails. My captor grunted, squeezing his arms around me until every ounce of air
left my chest.
“Didn’t say I needed to bring ye to ’im conscious,” he snarled, shifting a hand to my throat. Black spread over my vision
as I cast a searching glance around me. At the far right end of the palace, two policemen stood, watching. Doing nothing.
I screamed into the man’s hand.
The coach door flung open before us, revealing an interior as dark as night. I wouldn’t let them drag me in there. I would
die before that.
Getting a foot between my captor’s legs, I kicked up and back. My skirt tore, but my bootheel struck true. The man gasped,
doubling over. Air flooded my lungs again as I stumbled out of his grip.
“Help!” I screamed to the police. “Help me!”
Horror poured through my soul as they turned, facing the other way.
“Ye—ye troublesome bitch!”
I turned just as the captor swung a fist toward me. The blow startled more than maimed, my bonnet absorbing the worst of the hit. I crashed back against the coach, clutching
my ringing ear as I fell to my knees.
The palace smeared with the shadows of the trees, the cacophony of scents that overwhelmed me. Wet fur, Linden’s stench, warm
oak, and—
A dark figure rounded the coach. There was a ferocious shout, and suddenly my captor was on the ground, covering his head
with a strangled scream.
My heart leapt into my throat.
Hugh stood over the man, eyes blazing with cold, murderous fury. He raised a horse whip and brought it down hard against the
man’s head, his shoulders, his arms—lash after lash, the full weight of his body driving the flogging, until the man’s flayed
skin oozed with blood.
“Foxcourt!” I gasped out. “Stop!”
Hugh was beyond hearing me—beyond hearing anyone. His face was terrible, like chiseled ice; his movements all lethal grace
as he tossed the whip aside and prowled toward his prey. The driver and boy seized the opportunity to flee, stumbling away
through the oak trees.
My captor whimpered, trying to crawl back to the safety of the coach, but Hugh seized him by the collar and launched his fist
into the man’s already swollen pulp of a face.
Hands gripped my arms and I whirled, raising my elbow to strike.
“It’s me!” Reddy said, panting. The stench of blood was so profound I hadn’t even picked up on his essence. His gaze snagged
on Hugh, his brown skin going ashen. “I—”
I pulled free of him. “Hugh! Stop!”
He would kill this man, I saw it in his face, saw it in the unceasing way his fist hammered the man’s features into something
unrecognizable as human.
He didn’t react to my voice or my attempt to grip his arm. He fought like a man possessed—as if all that control he’d carefully
cultivated had shattered and unleashed something far more wild and merciless in himself.
“Bloody hell!” Reddy yelped, finally jumping into the fray. Hooking his arms beneath Foxcourt’s, he hauled him bodily away, nearly earning
himself a black eye for his trouble. “Fox! Stop this!”
There was movement at the edge of my vision—my whole body surged with relief at the sight of Willie and Tommy rushing toward us, pistols in hand. A small contingent of police ran at their heels, suddenly interested in doing their
jobs.
I swung back toward Foxcourt as he strained to break from Reddy’s hold. If he killed this man in front of so many witnesses . . .
Well, that wouldn’t do at all. There was room enough for only one accused murderer in this partnership.
The man’s form had gone completely limp, breath wheezing through his broken teeth and nose. I stood in front of Foxcourt,
blocking the man. I clasped Foxcourt’s face between my bare hands, feeling the rasping beginnings of his night beard. His
face was splattered with blood, his eyes brighter than I’d ever seen them as I forced them to look into mine.
“Hugh,” I said softly. “It’s over. It’s done now.”
Breath raged in and out of him, his lungs working like bellows. That blistering ice in his eyes began to thaw, as if one by
one his senses were returning to him.
“It’s done,” I told him. “You stopped him. I’m all right.”
Hugh sagged against Reddy, his jaw working furiously.
“There we are,” Reddy said lightly, releasing Foxcourt into my steadying arms. “I’ll see to the pathetic lump of humanity.”
I put my arm around Hugh’s waist, both to support his sagging weight and to steer him away from the approaching men and their
shocked gazes. A fierce protectiveness welled in me as I walked us behind the coach, seeking the shelter of one of the sprawling,
ancient oaks.
Behind the curve of a tree’s dramatic form, Hugh drew up short, his hand clawing at my bonnet’s ribbons and pulling it free
from my head. His eyes flashed, his breath quickening, as he angled the right side of my face toward him, searching it for
injury.
“I’m all right,” I told him, but still, he didn’t release me, didn’t pull away.
I reached into the pocket Felicity had sewn into my skirt for the handkerchief there. He didn’t fight me at all as I pulled
his right hand up from his side, gently dabbing at the broken skin of his knuckles, cleaning the blood away.
Hugh shuddered, his fingers curling reflexively as if to hide the evidence of what he’d done. His eyes were haunted as I brought
his hand to my lips, kissing his battered knuckles.
“I’m all right,” I told him, calm in the face of his fear—as calm as he had always been in the face of mine. “I’m safe.” I reached up, stroking the big hand that cupped my cheek as delicately as if it were porcelain. “I’m safe.”
His hand slid along my jaw until his fingers curled in the mass of hair pinned at the nape of my neck. The shadow of the tree
tucked us into its protective depths. The handkerchief fluttered to the ground as I gripped the fabric of his bloodstained
jacket. There would be no retreat for either of us. There was no escaping this now; we both knew it.
With a soft groan he bent his head and kissed me.
It was a hard, desperate thing. The force of it drove my lips apart on a gasp, allowing him to deepen the kiss. Dizzying waves
of heat unfurled through me at the silken feel of his mouth, the way it sought to possess mine.
His other hand slipped behind the curve of my head, tipping my face up as his tongue delicately, expertly, stroked mine, drawing
the kiss deeper still. I found a hint of his intoxicating essence in his taste and sighed, relishing it, and him, him, him—
The hard muscle of his chest shivered beneath my trailing fingertips and a new feeling of power broke open in me. Clumsy with
inexperience, I drew my tongue along his. His hands tightened in my hair in response, silently urging on the exploration.
Emboldened, I drew his top lip between mine the way I had imagined in the pub, and his soft noise of pleasure made the world
spin wildly around us.
If we could stay here in the shadows, where no one could see us, where the world wouldn’t dare intrude . . .
The thought drifted from me as his lips slowed, softening like a fading dream, and he eased away.
“No . . .” I was mortified by the plea that escaped me, the way my hands could not seem to release him.
“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely as he pulled back. “I’m so sorry . . .”
I should have been. I knew that. But spangles of heat still glimmered in my blood, and my lips felt swollen. Tender. As he
turned away, my hand rose to brush a featherlight touch against them.
I could not tell one shock from another. Desperation tangled with fear and terrifying longing and horror and determination
as I made my way back around the coach to the others.
“My God,” Felicity said, materializing out of nowhere to seize my arms. “Are you all right?”
The Longmount brothers spoke quietly to Hugh, both looking stricken with guilt and shame. As if sensing my gaze, Hugh looked
back to me. I willed the words to my throat, to tell him. It wasn’t their fault. None of this was.
Tell him, an inner voice urged. You must.
Every word from my mouth left me more nauseated than the last. “I’m all right. Just . . .”
“In shock,” Felicity finished. She glared at the assembled police, all of whom seemed utterly uncertain about what to do.
“How did this happen?”
“I . . .” The words were ash on my tongue.
“What a scene,” Reddy said, returning to our side. “What’s the point of all of these bloody policemen if they can’t stop a
kidnapping?”
Two of the City Police lifted the man by the arms. A third, his eyes like flint, took in the sight of me with a sneer. His
hand was pressed to the pistol at his side.
“They saw it,” I managed to get out.
“What?!” Reddy drew back, anger blazing.
Hugh and the boys were at our side at once.
“What is it?” Hugh asked.
“Lockwood said the police witnessed it all and did nothing—”
The air sharpened suddenly with salt, as if a hard gust had blown in straight off the sea. I swung around toward it just as
a cry rose. The would-be captor had somehow freed himself from the police and was stumbling away, clawing at the air to drag
himself forward. The third policeman simply raised his pistol and took aim.
“No!” Reddy barked, lunging forward. “We need to question him!”
Hugh stepped in front of Felicity and me, shielding us as the shot thundered through the park. Felicity screamed, the sound
tearing at my heart. My pulse drummed ferociously in my ears, and I felt ill, horrified with myself as relief swept through
me.
Because as the body collapsed to the ground and the man’s soul ripped free, he carried my secret down to hell with him.