As she hit, specks of light flooded her vision, but the lancing pain from the blow cut through the fog, and she cried out.
She didn’t see the iron boot that drove into her ribs. It knocked the air from her lungs with only a shallow breath reluctantly seeping back in. She shut her eyes as tightly as she could manage to block out the pain—mind over matter—but the pain was edging in on her mantra.
Mind… throb… over… throb… matter… throb!
Each throb intensified, shattering her brain and lungs into splinters. She opened her eyes, but the world spun and lights still danced around her.
Another blow, this time to the middle of her back, sent a shaft of pain as it drove out what little air she had been able to work into her stinging lungs. The heavy blows kept coming, and she soon lost count of how many times she was struck.
When it finally stopped, she felt blood trailing across her forehead. Each drop of blood echoed in her ear as the rest of her battered body finally began to numb.
Hot tears welled in her eyes. Silence was swallowing up the sound of carriages and horses from the street barely half a block away when one final blow stilled everything.
*
Grey was abnormally irritable as he watched the hackney rumble off around the corner.
He was caught off guard, that was all. He had rambled on enough to irritate a saint. Why the hell had she suffered it for so long? She was supposed to go back to her box like a good little girl, perhaps blush at being caught, or give him some cockamamie excuse. It turned out she was one of the prickliest and most intractable women Grey had ever laid eyes on, a rebellious cactus wrapped in muslin.
Grey lifted his hat to drag a hand through his already disheveled hair. Before he had even agreed to help, he had understood precisely why Grenville wanted someone to keep an eye on her. How many galas and dinner parties had Grey gone to and caught her wandering off on one of her little excursions? Even so, walking about the private rooms at a house party was one thing. Strolling about London alone in the dead of night was entirely different.
She didn’t need someone to keep an eye on her. She needed a full-time caretaker, and Grey wasn’t it. He would thank Grenville for saving his sorry life some other way, any other way.
He fell back into his usual, black expression as he removed a pouch of tobacco and a small paper. He sprinkled tobacco onto the slender strip, cinching the pouch again with his teeth then tucking it back inside his coat. The paper was rolled, licked, and stuck between his lips before the end was lit from a lantern hanging by the door.
He supposed he ought to smoke like an Englishman now that he was back instead of smoking what the French soldiers called cigarettes. He had become fond of them whilst infiltrating Napoleon’s army during the war, because it was easier than carrying around a pipe, and he had never been overly fond of cheroots. He had never been overly fond of smoking in general. He didn’t understand why he continued to do it.
Even as that thought bounced around his brain, he took a deep draw and found a shadowed wall to lean on. He tipped his hat down to cover his eyes, shielding them from the bursts of wind that whipped through his little corner. There he stayed, unmoving, the only show of life being a bright red glow and a puff of smoke.
It was almost as cold as when summer had been skipped altogether in 1816. Still, he would rather be out here than risk being seen inside. There was no one he cared to converse with in there, and he was in no big hurry to get back to his box and his mistress, who might or might not be his mistress after he had left so abruptly to run after Kathryn. He didn’t expect to be forgiven soon. For now, he would rather stand outside in the godforsaken, freezing cold, smoking his tobacco and ignoring the rest of humanity.
If only there were such a place where he could ignore the rest of bloody humanity. In fact, if he gave it thought, the interruption a moment later was not all that surprising.
He did not budge an inch when, from the corner of his beaver hat, he noticed a bundle of mud-spattered muslin irritatingly similar to the one he had just sent off.
His jaw tensed as he watched Kathryn round the building into an alley.
A bleeding alley, for Christ’s sake!
The end of the cigarette burned a bright red as he took a deep drag then chucked it into the slush. He slowly exhaled a long stream of smoke as he stared after her from under the brim of his hat.
He ought to follow her just to make sure she didn’t get herself killed.