Chapter Thirteen #2
The taller of the two young men threw one leg over the windowsill whilst he sized up Harriet’s defender. “This is our sister, and I reckon we got a right to bring her back. Our dad’s sick, and he wants his daughter at his side.”
“Is this true, Harriet?” Emma asked. “Are these two persons related to you?”
Harriet snorted. “They’re me halves, Luke and Rob.”
She fell briefly in the pile of broken glass on the floor, only to spring right back to her feet. “The old sod’s no more sick than I am.”
Emma glanced down at her in horror. “Your elbow is bleeding, Harriet.”
“Her hide is gonna be raw as a beefsteak if she don’t come with us,” the other man announced, grabbing Harriet by her injured arm. “Ain’t no point in pretendin’ she belongs here. We all know she’ll never be no bleedin’ silk purse.”
Emma marched over to the window. Her throat had closed, and yet somehow her voice resounded in the air, in her very ears. “The authorities do not agree. Miss Gardner stays under my supervision.”
His grimy hand slid to the leather scabbard protruding beneath his worn leather jerkin. “She’s got work to do at home.” His head lowered with the belligerence of a country bull.
“What sort of work?” Emma asked, willing Harriet to use her wits and remain calm.
“A job right here in Mayfair,” the other man answered from his wobbly perch upon the windowsill. “Decent work as a maid for a countess, no less. Can’t beat that with a stick, can you?”
Emma noted that his brother’s hand had completely disappeared inside his jerkin. “I believe I can. Perhaps I might speak with her employer and explain the situation.”
Harriet gave a bitter laugh at that. “Go on. You, Lady Lyons, walkin’ right up to ’er door to explain that her new maid is being set up by her pigs of brothers to rob her blind during a party.”
It was at this point that the criminal called Rob drew out from his jerkin an ominous-shaped knife known as a balisong, or butterfly.
Emma would never have recognized such an appalling apparatus had her brother Grayson not had one mounted upon the wall in the weapons room of his country home.
“Get out of my way,” Rob shouted at Emma, “or I’ll cut off yer interferin’ little nose. ”
Harriet broke free and flung her scrawny frame in front of Emma while raising her fists in the direction of his face. “You so much as nick ’er and I’ll sew yer nutmegs together when you’re drunk. I swear it on our whore of a dead mum’s grave.”
“Put the knife away,” Luke muttered from the window. “We haven’t got all day. Harriet always mucks up a lay, anyways. We’ll find someone else.”
Rob nodded in seeming agreement. Then he shot his arm out without warning and ensnared Harriet by the waist. “All right now. I’m the one to give the orders.
” He pressed the butterfly knife against the back of her ear as he glowered at Emma.
“And you keep your pretty little piehole shut until we’re gone or I’ll slice this sow’s ear here. ”
“Someone’s coming,” Luke muttered and swung both legs over the sill. “Hand her over and hurry.”
Emma started after them. It went without saying that she deplored violence of any manner, but she had grown up in a family of five physical brothers and one earthy, exuberant younger sister.
More than once Emma had broken up a bout of fisticuffs, as well as rescued a sibling tied to a stool during a family torture fest, in the butler’s pantry.
Therefore, without hesitation, she hefted her personal bible of good behavior in one hand and, taking only a split second to aim, sent it hurtling at the head of Harriet’s abductor.
It hit him square in the temple, her precious manual of polite graces, all that valuable advice wasted on a primitive’s forehead.
The blow rendered him momentarily senseless.
He shoved Harriet down onto her hands and knees.
When he straightened, he was pointing the balisong in Emma’s direction and advancing on her.
Emma spun into motion.
She threw a cushion into his face, followed by the complete leather-bound works of Shakespeare. He swore, his arms shielding his face so that he did not see Harriet tackle him from behind and shove him against the window.
As he staggered, losing his balance, Emma darted to the bellpull and tugged in panic. She had quite lost track of time, but surely two seconds did not pass before the door flew open.
“Adrian!”
With a relief that shivered down the seams of her stockings, she recognized the tall long-boned figure who stepped into the room. His hard unsettling gaze questioned her, the book on the floor, the broken window. In two strides he crossed the room and stood as if to shield her.
A rather terrifying transformation seemed to have settled over his handsome features. Before her very eyes he changed from a dashing gentleman to a dark avenger. His very smile filled her with foreboding.
This was not Adrian Ruxley, heir to a dukedom. The man who strode into the room might have just leapt off a pirate junque into a battle on some foreign shore. The image only sharpened in her mind as he wrenched off his cloak and drew his sword from its scabbard.
His white linen shirt clung damply to his chest. A gasp composed of as much admiration as protest rose in her throat. At any other time she might have been offended by the sight of a man’s sweaty chest, as attractive a view as she admitted to herself it was, had she not been so grateful to see him.
“Tell me you are all right, Emma,” he said without looking at her.
She nodded, heard her brother calling down from the top of the stairs. Then the loud clatter of Hamm’s footsteps in the hall. But all of her attention suddenly centered on Adrian, beautiful, heroic, and blessedly here.
“I’m fine, but Harriet—”
Suddenly Adrian’s focus shifted. One of Harriet’s brothers was already racing through the garden, silverware and snuffboxes spilling out of his pockets. Rob had edged to the window with his knife held out in an effort to keep Adrian away.
“Don’t sleep too sound, none of you,” he said roughly. “We’ll come back.”
Adrian unsheathed his sword. “What did you say?”
Emma blinked. She was too riveted by Adrian to even acknowledge the three other people crowded in the doorway. Her stomach fluttered at the hard smile that curved his mouth. His dark menace mesmerized everyone who watched him as he moved forward.
Harriet retreated behind a satinwood library table.
Rob cast a wild look around the room. “Ain’t no one going to stop him? Harriet?”
Adrian circled him with unnerving concentration, raising his saber to the throbbing pulse of Rob’s throat so swiftly that even Emma had not seen it coming. “I want to kill you,” he said, shaking his head as if the confession amused him. “I’m not entirely sure I can stop myself.”
Emma clutched the bellpull. From the corner of her eye she saw Heath and his footman standing in the door, their presence blocking the view of Julia and her aunt. She was profoundly grateful that Charlotte and Miss Peppertree appeared to have kept the girls occupied in the other wing.
They must never learn what had happened today, at all costs. It would give them nightmares for months.
Rob’s forehead glistened with sweat. His brother had disappeared. The tall blond man with the sword had a murderous glint in his eye that even a fool would respect. “Look. There’s been no ’arm done.”
Adrian walked him against the window. “Says who?”
“Ask me sister,” Rob said, his voice thick. “Ask that lady at the bellpull.”
Adrian’s lips thinned. “What say you, Harriet?”
She pushed her hair from her eyes. “Slit him open like a salmon. Scourge of the earth, he is.”
Adrian glanced at Emma. “The decision is yours.”
Emma could not seem to think clearly. She wished only that this ordeal would end. “Let him go,” she whispered.
Adrian stared up at the ceiling. His hard expression said it wouldn’t bother him to send Rob to the next world. “Are you sure?” he asked lightly.
“Please—”
He pressed the tip of his sword into Rob’s throat. Rob’s face drained white. “The lady wishes for me to be merciful. I release you with reluctance.”
Rob stood in hesitation, glancing covertly from Adrian to Emma.
“Go, you big witless nit,” Harriet said in contempt. “Get out before he changes his mind.”
A moment later Rob spun on the shattered glass and dove out the window into the rose bushes below. He broke into a run before he even straightened, thorns and leaves stuck to his clothes. Adrian shook his head in disgust and sheathed his rapier.
Harriet clapped her hands in delight. “Criminy! I’ve waited my whole life to see ’im get what he deserved. You’re a hero, Lord Wolf, that’s what you are. Wait’ll I tell the girls—”
“Harriet Gardner.” Emma raised her voice. “You will not speak of this affair again. To anyone. Do you understand?”
“Why not, ma’am? Wolf ain’t done no wrong. It’s me lousy family.”
“Please go with Hamm to the kitchen and have Cook put salve on your elbow.”
“I’ll take her,” Julia offered from the door.
“Heath wants to make sure none of his treasures were taken from his study. Hamm is going to fetch a glazier to repair the window. I suppose it would be a good idea to assign one of the under-footmen to go outside and retrieve whatever valuables Luke lost during his cowardly escape.”
Adrian glanced around. “May I do something to help?”
Emma sighed. “I think you’ve been more than helpful.”
He bent to pick up her manual. “I suppose that’s one way to drum manners into a fellow’s head.”
She laughed a little unsteadily. “I do not recommend it.”
Suddenly they were standing alone in the library. Adrian stared at her, knowing he looked unkempt and sinister. “I could have killed those two when I saw you standing there, and all that broken glass—”
“But you showed admirable restraint. Still”—she could not quite hide a dark sense of humor—“I’ve a feeling Harriet’s brothers will not return soon, if ever, after your appearance.”