“Precisely. They would have used you viciously. Afterward, if you were lucky, they might have slit your throat. If you were unlucky, you’d have ended up in a brothel somewhere, catering to cutthroats and ruffians of the worst sort.”
“Are you trying to shock me?”
“I’m trying to make you see sense!”
“Would you have left me?”
He scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Anger flooded her bloodstream. “Why is that ridiculous? Because you’re a man and I’m a woman?”
“Hell and damnation, Kendra, this isn’t about women’s rights—”
“No, it’s about integrity and honor. Women have both of those, too, you know. Do you really think I’d have been able to leave you to be beaten to death while I ran away like a coward? You don’t know me at all.”
“Christ. Most women would be having a fit of vapors.” He hissed out a sigh as he leaned back against the seat, his hand resting lightly against his ribs. He regarded her quizzically. “I was trying to protect you, you know. And if you think that I shan’t try to protect you now or in the future . . . well, then you don’t know me at all, either.”
An impasse. “I need you to respect me, Alec,” she said finally.
“This is not about respect.” He picked up her hand, and studied it for a long moment. Small and soft, yet less than fifteen minutes ago, it had been rock-steady as she’d aimed the flintlocks at the group of cutthroats. “I respect you, Kendra. And I believe in you. I know you shall find the fiend who killed Cordelia.”
Her chest tightened and she hoped she didn’t sound as worried as she felt when she spoke. “I’ve got two weeks. Then the House of Lords will convene and Bear will come after you—assuming he’ll honor our deal.”
“Bear or the hangman’s noose. I’m not certain which would be a worse fate.”
“Let’s hope you won’t have to decide.”
Their arrival at Number 29 Grosvenor Square caused a commotion. Footmen in the foyer stopped what they were doing and stared in shock. Even Harding lost his composure, to the point where he actually raised his voice.
“Your Lordship! Miss Donovan!”
Several more servants came into the foyer to investigate the butler’s rare shout.
“Send for a doctor!” Kendra yelled. “And someone help me carry Lord Sutcliffe to a bedroom.”
“I can bloody well walk,” Alec muttered irritably. “I walked in here, didn’t I?”
“You need to lie down and take deep breaths.”
“What I need is brandy. Harding, a bottle, if you please.”
The butler had regained his equanimity. “Yes, m’lord. The Red bedchamber is still available, sir. Ah . . .” He hesitated, eyeing Kendra. “Shall I relieve you of your pistols, Miss?”
“What? Oh.” She’d forgotten about the guns. She handed them over to the butler. “Thanks.”
“Good God! Alec!” The Duke stood on the upstairs landing, gaping down at them.
His shout drew another audience. Lady Atwood appeared next to her brother, followed by a man and woman. Another figure squeezed through the two strangers to grasp the railing. Kendra felt a dart of surprise and affection go through her as she identified the familiar face of Lady Rebecca Blackburn.
She’d met the younger woman a month ago, when Rebecca had attended Lady Atwood’s house party while her parents were touring their Barbados sugar plantation. Rebecca hadn’t been part of any of the cliquey groups that had formed—her face, which had been scarred since surviving childhood smallpox, made her an outsider, an ugly duckling drifting on the fringes of the beautiful debutantes that had gathered at Aldridge Castle.
Kendra had liked her immediately. Or maybe she’d recognized a fellow outlier—and a more modern spirit in the follower of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.
“Good heavens, Sutcliffe. You look as though you’ve gone several rounds with Gentleman Jackson himself,” Rebecca declared. “Who planted you a facer?”
“Rebecca!” admonished the woman standing next to her. Given that the older woman’s hair matched Lady Rebecca’s dark auburn shade exactly, Kendra guessed her to be Rebecca’s mother. She could only assume that the man beside them was Lord Blackburn.
Rebecca was unabashed. “It’s not like we can ignore Sutcliffe’s face, Mama. It’s right there in front of our noses!”
“Contain your curiosity until Lord Sutcliffe is made comfortable,” her mother replied.
Unlike Rebecca’s cornflower blue eyes, Lady Blackburn’s eyes were a deep caramel brown. Yet the keen intelligence Kendra saw in them made her think that she shared more with her daughter than the color of their hair.
“Neville, Duke, perhaps you could assist—Miss Donovan, is it?—in bringing the Marquis upstairs,” Lady Blackburn said. “Has a doctor been sent for?”
“It shall be done, m’lady,” said Harding.
“I’m not an invalid,” Alec muttered when his uncle and Lord Blackburn came down the steps. “Or a child.”
“Then stop acting like one,” Aldridge reprimanded. Still, he preserved Alec’s dignity by only drawing Alec’s arm around his shoulder and then putting his arm around his nephew’s waist to haul him up the stairs. Rebecca waited until they passed her on the landing. Then she flew down the stairs and gave Kendra a surprisingly strong hug.
“’Tis good to see you again, Miss Donovan!”
“You too.” With some surprise, she realized she meant it. In her own time, she hadn’t developed many friendships. Colleagues at the Bureau, yes, but no real friends. Yet by the time Rebecca had left Aldridge Castle, Kendra had come to regard her as a friend.
“We came to London as soon as we heard Sutcliffe was under suspicion. Utterly preposterous! What happened to him, anyway? Does it have anything to do with Lady Dover’s murder?”
“You could say that. I know you didn’t like Lady Dover, but what do you know about her before she married her husband?”
“Well, I . . .” Rebecca frowned thoughtfully. “Now that I consider the matter, I have to admit that I know very little. I only made Lady Dover’s acquaintance after her husband had expired. In truth, I never thought to inquire about her connections before she became Lady Dover. Why? What have you learned?”
“Her stepson checked into her background and discovered that she was not who she claimed.”
“She was an impostor?”
“She’s not the vicar’s daughter that she purported to be,” Kendra replied wryly.
“Who is she, then?”
“I don’t know, but I think we just met someone from her past.”
“The man Sutcliffe fought?”
“Yes.”
“Alec is an excellent pugilist. I hope he soundly thrashed the other man.”
“Alec held his own, but the other guy was bigger than a house. And Bear was—”
“Bear?”
“Rumor has it that he once fought a bear. After seeing him, I’m inclined to believe the story.”
“Dear heaven. How did you manage to escape?”
Kendra smiled. “You might say that I reminded Bear of what he holds most dear. But it was clear Lady Dover was a close second.”