The Deception of the Emerald Ring

* * *

"Charge!" cried Miss Gwen, thrusting her sword parasol in the air.

Geoff caught her up halfway down the alley. "We just have to hold them long enough for the fuse to burn down to the wall," he tossed at her in a quick undertone. "No heroics."

Miss Gwen looked distinctly put out.

Putting her ire to good use, she flashed out with the point of her sword in a movement that owed more to vigor than science. Staring transfixed at the fringed purple parasol she held as a shield, her target barely had time to wrench out of her way, winning a long rent in his sleeve rather than the killing thrust Miss Gwen had intended.

"Sirrah!" snapped Miss Gwen. "Kindly stand still!"

For a moment, her opponent looked like he meant to obey. Belatedly recalling his circumstances, he scrambled for his knife, just as Geoff brought two clasped hands down on the back of his neck, sending him sprawling.

Shoving her parasol in the face of one rebel while fending off another, Miss Gwen still found the time to cast a glower in Geoff's general direction. "That one was meant to be mine," she complained.

"There are more than enough to go around," rejoined Geoff, ducking beneath a poorly planned punch.

Unmoved by that sensible sentiment, Miss Gwen expressed herself volubly as to the general uselessness of the male gender.

"Sharp-tongued old besom," grumbled one of the rebels. "Couldn't get a husband?"

Miss Gwen pinked him in the knee.

Leaving Miss Gwen to settle accounts with her admirer, Geoff repelled one assailant with a stiff elbow to the throat while driving his fist into the stomach of a second. The man doubled over satisfactorily, unreeling a stream of colloquial curses that mingled oddly with another noise, a cry that sounded more alto than baritone, and made Geoff's chest tighten in a way that had nothing to do with the knife blade that had just scraped stingingly across his ribs.

Dispatching the wielder of the knife—momentarily, at least—with a leg hooked beneath his knees, he heard Letty, quite definitely Letty, demanding that someone put her down, right now.

The man Geoff had tripped stumbled to his feet and staggered forward again.

"That was Letty," Geoff said shortly, finishing the man off with a blow to the head with the butt of his pistol. Four men lay groaning on the turf in various positions of pain, leaving only two to be dispatched. "Can you hold them?"

Miss Gwen ran one of the remaining two through the shoulder with her sword parasol. A grim expression of satisfaction showed on her face as he collapsed groaning at her feet.

"What are you waiting for?" she demanded, as she advanced on her final opponent.

Geoff didn't need any further urging. Sprinting down the length of the house, he called back over his shoulder, "I'm in your debt."

"Your first child, Pinchingdale!" Miss Gwen cackled.

As Geoff skidded toward Patrick Street, he could hear Miss Gwen behind him, knocking open the roof of the henhouse and urging its feathered contents onward. "Peck, my pretties! Peck! That's the way!"

It was enough to make one feel sorry for the rebels.

Geoff skidded to a stop, scanning left, then right, just in time to see Letty tumbling backward over the side of a wagon several yards away. She disappeared among a spurt of straw as the driver slapped the reins, urging his horse forward. The wagon started with a lurch that sent Letty's head, briefly visible above the slats that boxed in the sides, straight back down again.

She wasn't hurt.

Relief was rapidly replaced by rage as Geoff recognized the driver. He hadn't bothered to wear a hat, and the sun shone right down on his infamous sideburns.

Jasper had Letty.