Chapter 32

CHAPTER 32

T wo hours later, Izzie settled into one of the Nettlethorpe-Ogilvys’ plush carriages. Instead of footmen, two guards from Nettlethorpe Iron mounted the steps on the back, and another took a seat next to the coachman. An additional coach followed, filled with more guards, including her husband’s valet, Jack Rattigan. She should be safe, indeed, as she made her way across town.

Izzie leaned back against the red velvet squabs. She couldn’t believe Archibald hadn’t guessed her destination, which was, of course, Nettlethorpe Iron. Had she not been begging to see his workshop all week?

Today, she finally would—his real one, where he kept all his most advanced machines. She couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when she walked through the door!

Ten minutes later, Izzie was trying to imagine what the process of making a cannon might entail when she heard the coachman shout, “Hey! Watch where yer going!”

Suddenly, there were hoofbeats all around them, which wasn’t entirely unusual, but for the fact that they sounded much too close.

Then, the shouting began.

Izzie peered out the window. A horse’s head was mere inches from the glass pane. She tried to peer back at its rider. She didn’t have a very good angle, but the man’s arm was outstretched toward the guard who had taken up the position on the rear step usually reserved for footmen. They appeared to be scrapping.

Abruptly, the rider pulled wide of the carriage. Izzie shrieked as her guard went tumbling off the step, landing in the cobblestone street and rolling several times before coming to a stop.

She scooted to the opposite window and saw that the other guards were similarly engaged. Izzie’s heart thundered in her chest. Looking down, she was alarmed to see how far they had veered to the left.

Before she had time to cry out a warning, one of the wheels smashed into the curb. A sharp crack filled the air and the coach tilted off balance, which surely meant they had broken a wheel.

Terror-stricken, Izzie watched as someone wrenched the door open. A man leaned in. He didn’t look like a common criminal. His dark hair was neatly combed and held in place with pomade, and he was simply but neatly dressed.

“Lady Isabella.” He gave a malicious smile. “We meet at last.”

He reached in and grabbed her by the arm. Izzie screamed and kicked him in the chest. The man scowled but didn’t let her go.

“Fine, then,” he snapped. “We’ll do it the hard way.”

He grabbed her by the hair, dragging her out of the carriage. Izzie cried out at the sharp stab of pain and struggled to twist out of his grip. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her three guards, including the man who had taken such a nasty fall, brawling with a swarm of men. They were struggling valiantly but were outnumbered three to one.

The dark-haired man forced her toward an unmarked black carriage. She clawed at his face and he slapped her so hard her vision momentarily went cloudy.

She regained her senses just in time to see the carriage looming before her. Her abductor climbed inside, trying to pull her in after him. She braced her hands against the doorframe, stiffening her arms. “Help!” she shouted. “Someone help me! Please!”

Just then, the Nettlethorpe-Ogilvys’ second carriage, the one filled with Archibald’s men, drew up behind them. How it had become separated from the first vehicle, Izzie had no idea, but she caught the eye of one of the two men hanging off the back steps—her husband’s valet, Jack.

“Jack!” she cried desperately. “Jack, help!”

His eyes flared with recognition. He leaped from the step, barreling through the swarm of attackers, shouting curses as he swung his good arm. He managed to break through and grab Izzie by the back of her coat. She heard the fabric of her traveling costume rending, but Jack was able to hold her back from the gaping door, and that was the only thing that mattered.

The dark-haired man pulled a knife from his boot, brandishing it with his free arm in an underhanded grip. Snarling, he raised it for the strike. Jack’s good arm was already occupied in the life-or-death tug-of-war match in which Izzie was the rope, so all he could do was step forward, shielding her with his body. He grunted as the knife came down on the back of his shoulder.

“Jack!” Izzie screamed.

Just then, another one of her ironworker guards arrived, lunging at her attacker’s throat. Blanching, the dark-haired man released her arm and scrambled back inside the black carriage, shouting for the driver to flee. The horses leapt forward, and the carriage took off down the street with the door flapping open.

Izzie glanced around. Even with the men who had poured out of the second carriage, they were still outnumbered. But Archibald’s men were significantly bigger and stronger than their opponents, and one by one, the would-be kidnappers started to flee. After a minute of scuffling, all the miscreants had made their escape, save for three who had been captured by Archibald’s men.

“Get her in that carriage,” the coachman shouted. “Wheel’s broken on this one.”

“You heard the man,” Jack said, seizing her upper arm and hustling her toward the second carriage.

She blanched at the damp red stain on the sleeve of his coat. “You’re bleeding.”

He wrinkled his nose in dismissal. “Eh. That arm wasn’t good for nothing, anyway.”

“But what if it becomes infected, or—”

He snorted as he hoisted her into the carriage. “We Rattigans are hard to kill. Yer husband won’t be rid of me so easy.”

He started to back away, but Izzie grabbed his wrist. “You must come too, Jack. And anyone else who was injured.”

Jack tried to object. “’Tis nothing—”

“I insist,” Izzie said.

“Get in,” one of the other men said, shoving him from behind. “Yer wasting time.”

A few men climbed into the carriage, and two more climbed up on the back. Izzie pressed her handkerchief against Jack’s shoulder. “Where are we going?”

“Nettlethorpe Iron,” Jack said. “It’s naught but a quarter mile from here.”

Surely enough, within minutes, they pulled up to a hulking brick building. Izzie thought the bricks might have once been red, but they had been stained black by years of smoke. At a shout from the coachman, two huge wooden doors were pulled open, and the carriage drove right inside.

Disembarking from the carriage, Izzie stepped down onto a packed dirt floor. The warehouse was huge, probably fifty yards long and half again as wide. There was a metallic grinding sound coming from the far end of the factory, deafening even over a distance, but it stopped after a few seconds. Light so bright it was almost blinding poured out of what she supposed must be a furnace, and a thin stream of molten metal flowed through a carefully carved trench into bar-shaped molds. Men in heavy leather aprons stood around with rakes and shovels, carefully minding the liquid metal’s progress.

Most of the ironworkers were peering at them, curious to see the reason for this interruption. At last, she spotted Archibald in the crowd. He looked… different. He was wearing a coarse linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, topped by a waistcoat of plain grey wool. She supposed that made sense. Of course, he wouldn’t wear the same clothes he wore to attend a ball on the floor of a forge. He was… She blinked, certain her eyes were deceiving her, but no, he was holding a cannon , which he appeared to be inspecting. To be sure, it wasn’t a particularly large cannon. But still, it was a cannon ! It had to be tremendously heavy, yet he handled it as easily as if it were a child’s toy.

Someone said something to him, and he looked up. At first, his expression was merely confused, as if he could not understand why she was here. But she marked the moment he noticed some combination of her ruined hair, crushed hat, and torn dress. His face went white, and his eyes filled with distress.

“Izzie!” he cried. Without looking, he handed the cannon to the man standing next to him, who staggered and would’ve fallen had two of his fellows not rushed up to help him bear the weight. Oblivious, Archibald hurried across the packed dirt floor. “What’s going on? Are you hurt?”

“I’m all right,” she hastened to say. “Really, I’m—” She promptly ruined her attempt to reassure him by bursting into tears.

He scooped her up in his arms as he turned to one of the men who accompanied her. “What happened?”

“Ambush on the carriages, boss. Five riders descended on us. They forced us into the curb, and the wheel broke.”

“The carriage with most of the guards got separated,” another man added. “A wagon pulled out in front of us in the middle of a junction. The driver claimed his horse wouldn’t move.” He laughed blackly. “I bet that wasn’t no accident. By the time we caught up, they’d pulled Lady Isabella out and were trying to get her into another carriage.”

Archibald’s arms turned to steel around her. “They almost took her?”

“They would’ve,” the first man said, “if it wasn’t for Rattigan. He went charging in after her.”

Izzie managed to find her voice. “Jack was injured. After he pulled me back, the man trying to abduct me pulled out a knife. Jack stepped in front of me and was stabbed in the shoulder.”

“Summon the surgeon,” Archibald said.

Jack waved this off. “It’s naught but a scratch.”

Archibald’s jaw clenched, his voice brooking no argument. “I want it looked at by a surgeon, and any other injuries that were sustained as well.” He caught Jack’s eyes and held them. “Thank you, Jack.”

“Eh.” Jack rolled his eyes. “There’d have been no living with you if I’d let them take her.”

Archibald grunted in response. He was already carrying Izzie toward the far end of the warehouse.

Most of Nettlethorpe Iron seemed to consist of a huge, open room with a ceiling three stories high. But she could see rooms with windows lining the far wall. She took it these were the offices.

Archibald carried her up a flight of stairs into an open room full of desks. A dozen clerks looked up at their entrance, their eyes full of concern. A man she recognized as his office manager, Mr. McPherson, hurried over. “I heard about the attack, sir. Is Lady Isabella all right?”

“I am,” Izzie said. “A little shaken is all.”

“She would’ve been kidnapped were it not for Jack Rattigan, who suffered a knife wound,” Archibald said. “He is to receive a reward of one thousand pounds.”

Mr. McPherson blanched. “One—did you say one thousand , sir?” At Archibald’s nod, Mr. McPherson laughed nervously. “Is that not a bit excessive?”

Archibald was already halfway across the room. “He stepped in front of a knife to save my wife. I don’t find it excessive at all. See that it’s done.”

He shifted Izzie to one arm so he could open a door, then closed it behind them. They were alone.

She expected him to hold her close, to offer her the comfort of his arms. Instead, he deposited her on top of the desk at the center of the room and hurried over to the washstand. Filling the basin with fresh water, he took up a bar of soap and began scrubbing his hands with furious intensity.

“Archibald?” she asked, peering at him. “Can that not wait?”

He snorted. “You obviously didn’t see how filthy I am. I’m sorry, Izzie. I didn’t mean for you to see me like this, and I certainly didn’t mean to touch you when I’m covered in grime.”

“It’s all right.” She made a bleak sound as she unpinned her jaunty little hat. As she suspected, it was crushed. “I suspect I’m not looking my most elegant, either.”

His only response was a grunt. She took the opportunity to look around his office. It was a plain room with whitewashed walls and bare boards on the floor. There were a pair of windows overlooking the factory floor, but they were situated at either end of the room, and Izzie couldn’t see out of them from this angle.

Archibald’s desk was not particularly neat. As he was still scrubbing his hands, she took the liberty of straightening a few stacks of papers and placing them out of the way so she wasn’t sitting on his things. She moved an inkwell back out of the way and almost dropped it. That was when she noticed that her fingers were trembling.

It was probably shock setting in. “Archibald?” she called, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “Are you almost done over there?”

He had taken up a brush and was scrubbing his nails. “Not yet,” he grunted.

“Please hurry.” A tear streaked across her cheek.

A minute passed, and he was still scrubbing. Her shoulders began to shake, and she wrapped her arms around her midsection, trying to hold herself together as best she could. “Have you finished yet?”

He held his hand up to the light, inspecting it. Izzie couldn’t see a single speck of dirt. “I don’t want to come to you in all my dirt. It’s bad enough that I got that smear of grease on your cheek.”

Izzie frowned. “My cheek?” She didn’t recall him touching her cheek. She raised a hand to her face. She couldn’t feel any grease or grit, but the spot over her cheekbone was exquisitely tender.

“Oh! That wasn’t you, and it isn’t dirt. I think a bruise must be forming. That’s where my would-be kidnapper slapped me.”

The scrubbing brush clattered to the floor. Izzie glanced up and found Archibald bent over the washstand, head lowered, gripping its sides with white knuckles. “Someone slapped you?” he asked in a quiet voice that was ten times more frightening than a bellow.

“Y-yes.”

Archibald said nothing, but if Izzie were a betting woman, she would have wagered all her new books that the thought going through his head was, that man will die .

His expression dark, he began washing his forearms almost violently.

Izzie had had enough. “I’m sure you must be very clean by now.”

“Not clean enough to touch you,” he muttered.

She tried again. “Believe me, a slight smear of dirt will be far from the worst thing that’s happened to me today.”

“Humph,” was his only response.

“Archibald!” she cried, and at least this had the effect of causing him to look at her. He seemed to notice for the first time that she was in distress.

She swallowed, trying to compose herself, but felt a tear trickle down her cheek. “I do not need for your hands to be perfectly clean. I do, however, need for you to hold me.”

He crossed the room in three strides, not even bothering to dry his hands.