Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

“ O oh—could you pull over up here?” Izzie’s twin sister, Lucy, asked the coachman. “I think I see some ducks!”

They were in Hyde Park, taking some autumn air along with their particular friend, Lady Diana Latimer. Their chaperone was Diana’s great-aunt Griselda, who was somehow managing to sleep, chin against her chest, while they bumped along in one of the Latimer family’s landaus, an open-topped carriage perfect for a leisurely afternoon drive. The three girls took the basket of bread Lucy had brought and headed for the banks of the Serpentine, leaving Lady Griselda napping in the carriage.

It was a lovely afternoon, cool but clear, and Diana had been eager to get out of the house. Her older brother, the Duke of Trevissick, had married Cecilia Chenoweth last night, and although Diana was pleased to have a new sister-in-law, there were some aspects of the match she was not precisely enjoying.

“I had no idea the walls were so thin,” she muttered. “I requested that a bedroom be made up for me in the east wing. That way I might be able to get some sleep.”

“What sort of sounds are they making?” Lucy asked, her voice full of curiosity.

“All sorts,” Diana said. “Groaning. Screaming. Thumping.”

“I heard some of that in the dark walks,” Izzie said. At Diana and Lucy’s startled looks, she added, “It would seem that people go to the dark walks not in search of romance so much as”—she cleared her throat—“a place to fornicate.”

Lucy looked horrified. “But you didn’t see any of that. Did you, Izzie?”

“No. It was very dark, so I saw nothing of the act itself, thank God. Although…” She lowered her voice to a murmur, even though the two footmen who had accompanied them were hovering at a discreet distance. “You’ll never believe who I saw engaging the services of a prostitute. It was Andrew Milner!”

Diana recoiled. “The M.P.?”

Izzie nodded. “The very one.”

Diana shook her head, her expression one of disgust. “What a hypocrite. I know some husbands and wives have that kind of arrangement. But Mr. Milner presents himself as a paragon of…”

She trailed off, frowning, raising her hand to shade her eyes as she stared across the expanse of lawn behind them.

“What is it?” Lucy asked.

“Do you see that burgundy carriage? It looks like a hackney—it’s scraped up, and you can tell there was once a crest that’s been removed from the door.”

Izzie squinted across the field. “What about it?”

“I saw it at Hyde Park Corner and again when we went past the parade grounds,” Diana said. “I think it’s following us.”

“Following us?” Lucy asked. “Surely not. What could they want with three girls feeding the ducks?”

“One of those girls happens to be the richest heiress in London,” Izzie noted. She was referring to Diana. Over her protests that it would do nothing but attract fortune-hunters, her brother, the duke, had insisted on settling an absurdly large dowry of one hundred thousand pounds upon her. This was in addition to the fortune she would one day inherit from her aunt Griselda, which was probably worth twice that.

Lucy smiled as she tossed bread into the water. “You two have been reading too many Gothic novels. We’ve a pair of footmen and your aunt Griselda. What could possibly happen?”

“Hmm,” Diana said, frowning as the carriage pulled to a halt some fifty yards down the river. Four men piled out.

Diana’s shoulders relaxed a trifle when the men started skipping rocks across the water.

Izzie glanced back toward the landau. Lady Griselda was still sleeping soundly.

This was her chance.

She turned to her companions. “I need your advice.”

She had already told Lucy in hushed whispers what had transpired last night between her and Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy. Now, she filled Diana in on what had really occurred in the dark walks.

“He’ll be there tonight. At Lady Waldegrave’s ball. I would very much like to kiss him again. But I’m not sure how to arrange it.”

“He’ll ask you to dance,” Lucy said.

Izzie rubbed her brow. “I’m not sure that he will. He’s never asked me to dance before.”

“Of course, he will,” Diana said encouragingly. “And then you can complain of being overheated and ask him to take you for a turn about the balcony.”

Izzie wrung her hands. “But what if he doesn’t?” It wasn’t like her to be such a sheep’s heart.

But she found that she cared what Mr. Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy thought of her in a way that she hadn’t with any other man.

“Then you’ll have to flirt with him,” Diana said, taking a handful of bread and scattering it before a pair of passing swans.

She said this as if it were a simple matter, but Izzie found herself at a loss. She was far more accustomed to terrifying men by stating her forthright and often unflattering opinions.

“I haven’t much experience with flirting,” she admitted. “Before last night, I hadn’t found a man I considered to be worthy of flirting with.”

“Oh!” Diana looked surprised. “Well, Lucy knows how to do it.”

“What? Me?” Lucy jerked her head around, startled. “I haven’t the faintest clue.”

Diana put her hand upon her hip. “How many proposals have you received this Season?”

Lucy waved this off. “Just six. But that doesn’t mean I know how to flirt .”

“Well, you must be doing something right,” Diana argued.

“It’s her natural disposition,” Izzie said. “Everyone flocks to Lucy.”

While Izzie was naturally acerbic, her twin was as sweet as spun sugar. Lucy didn’t have to try to flirt because Lucy was naturally interested in people and genuinely thought highly of everyone she met. Men felt flattered when she hung on their every word and peppered them with questions about their interests and accomplishments. Little did they know that Lucy treated the scullery maids the same way. It was just who she was.

Izzie loved her sister more than anything, but she did worry about her. She was far too trusting. The six men who had offered for her had been a mixture of fortune hunters and puffed-up buffoons, and Lucy would have accepted every one of them had Izzie not sat her down and explained precisely why those men were not worthy of her.

“Caro is the one who knows how to flirt,” Lucy offered, referring to the second-oldest Astley sister, who was now the Viscountess Thetford.

This was unequivocally true, not that it would help. “But Caro isn’t here, and the party is tonight. I need—”

“Where did they go?” Diana asked. Her gaze was fixed upon the hackney carriage parked down the river.

Izzie turned to look. Surely enough, the carriage was still there, but the four men who had been skipping rocks had disappeared.

She felt a cold chill sweep through her. Which was ridiculous, honestly! It was broad daylight, in the middle of Hyde Park.

Yet she could not shake her sense of foreboding.

“They probably just went for a walk,” Lucy said. She came over and pressed Diana’s hand. “I know you’ve had to be vigilant for most of your life. But your father is dead now. You can relax.”

Diana had grown up with an abusive father who killed her mother by pushing her down a flight of stairs when Diana was two years old. Her older brother, Marcus, had managed to remove Diana from the old duke’s grasp by arranging for her to live with her great-aunt Griselda in the far reaches of Yorkshire. But even there, the old duke had proved a danger, once even attempting to kidnap his daughter.

Diana had grown up fencing and shooting under Aunt Griselda’s tutelage. The fact that she had been born missing her right hand had not been considered an impediment to her learning to defend herself.

All this meant that Diana was not the relaxing sort.

“I don’t like it.” Diana stalked over to the landau and shook her great-aunt’s arm. “Aunt Griselda. Aunt Griselda, wake up!”

Lady Griselda shouted a few words in her native German before sitting up. “What is it, child?” she asked, her eyes snapping into focus with remarkable speed.

“Do you see that carriage?” Diana asked, pointing. “I think it’s been following us. There were four men beside it, skipping rocks. But now they’ve disappeared.”

“Get inside,” Lady Griselda said crisply. “We’re leaving. Make the horses ready, Charles, and summon the footmen… Wait.” She turned her head, her gaze sweeping the riverbank. “Where are the footmen?”

Glancing about, Izzie saw that the footmen had vanished into thin air. Now, her heart was tripping over itself.

Diana was already in the landau. Lucy, at last looking concerned, hurried back from the river.

“Climb up, Lucy,” Izzie said, pushing her twin toward the carriage.

Everything happened at once. Four men in dark clothing emerged from behind four trees. One of them rushed up to the horses and grabbed the reins. The other three closed in on Lucy and Izzie, who were not yet in the carriage.

Lucy’s foot slipped on the landau’s metal step. Izzie caught her, struggling to boost her twin up as Diana grabbed Lucy’s hand from above and pulled.

“There she is!” one of the men cried. “Get her!”

Lucy was crying, and everyone was screaming. Just as Izzie felt someone grab the back of her skirts, a deafening blast from overhead shook the carriage.

The horses reared, squealing in terror. Izzie looked up and saw Lady Griselda standing above her, a smoldering firearm in her hand.

Diana had managed to haul Lucy into the carriage. The man who had grabbed Izzie’s skirts fell back, and she managed to get one foot onto the carriage’s step.

Lady Griselda grabbed her arm. “Drive!” she shouted to the coachman, not even waiting for Izzie to get all the way into the carriage. Charles urged the horses into a gallop, an order they were all too eager to obey, and Izzie would have gone flying from the landau were it not for Lady Griselda’s steely grip on her wrist.

By the time the horses reached the path, Izzie had managed to clamber aboard. Diana reached over and slammed the landau’s door shut behind her.

They all turned to look out the back of the carriage. One of the men lay still upon the ground, and the other three were running back toward the hackney.

“Oh, my gracious!” Lucy exclaimed. “Did… did you shoot him?”

Lady Griselda shook her head. “I doubt it. I had to aim high. This is a blunderbuss, a scattershot weapon, you see. I could not shoot them without hitting Lady Isabella.”

Lucy was gripping the side of the carriage with white knuckles, but Diana’s gaze as she studied their attackers was calm. Assessing. “I’m fairly certain the man who is down is the one who was holding the horses. He probably got kicked when they reared.”

They had reached Rotten Row, which was crowded with carriages. Charles had to slow the horses to a trot, but there was no sign of the hackney carriage behind them.

Lucy turned to Diana, her face miserable. “Oh, Diana, I’m so sorry! I should not have questioned your instincts. I just thought that, with your father dead, surely your troubles had ended.”

“Ah,” Lady Griselda said, “but they were not after Diana.”

“Not after Diana?” Lucy asked. “But they said, there she is. Get her. And what could they possibly want with the rest of us?”

Lady Griselda fixed her eyes on Izzie. “That, I do not know. But I do know this—the one they were after is Lady Isabella.”