What Angels Fear

Chapter 54

Sebastian leapt toward the woman. Catching her by the arm, he spun her around in front of him just as the first footman appeared in the door. His fingers digging into her arm, Sebastian pressed the flintlock’s muzzle against the side of the woman’s head. “Tell them to back off,” he said to Jarvis.

Consternation, fury, and a whisper of what might have been fear chased each other across Jarvis’s normally impassive face. His jaws clenched tight, only his lips working as he glared at the wide-eyed men piling up in the open doorway and spat out, “Stay back, you fools.”

Arms spread, his gaze fixed on Sebastian, the lead footman took a step back, then another, his fellows falling back with him.

“Miss Jarvis here—” Sebastian glanced questioningly at the woman he held. “That is, I assume you are Miss Jarvis?”

Maintaining awesome composure, she slowly nodded her head.

“I thought so.” Sebastian edged through the door and out into the hall, dragging the woman with him. “Miss Jarvis here is going to provide me with an escort to safety. I do trust you will all have the sense not to attempt anything heroic.”

The hall seemed suddenly full of servants, white-faced men and women who fell silently back as Sebastian edged Jarvis’s daughter toward the front. From the doorway of the library, Jarvis nodded to the stony-faced butler, who rushed to open the door.

An eerie, opaque darkness loomed beyond, what was left of the day having been swallowed by the fog that curled through the open door and drifted into the hall, bringing with it a foul, acrid stench that pinched the nostrils and tore at the throat.

Sebastian glanced down at the woman who held herself so stiff and straight in his grasp. “You did say there’s a carriage outside, didn’t you?”

“Did I?” she said in an admirably clear, steady voice.

“I rather think you did.” He glanced at one of the maids, a big-boned, ruddy-faced woman who stood just inside the front door, her arms wrapped around her head, her eyes squeezed shut so tight, her entire face contorted with the effort.

“You there.”

The maid’s eyes flew open wide, her mouth going slack.

“Yes, you,” he repeated, when she simply stared back at him, the bodice of her gown jerking up and down with each rapid, shallow breath. “Get in the carriage. Now.”

“Surely one hostage will be sufficient to guarantee your safety,” said Miss Jarvis hastily. “You don’t need Alice.”

“It’s not my safety I’m concerned about.” Sebastian shifted the muzzle of the gun toward the maid. “Now, Alice. In the carriage.”

With a bleat of terror, Alice scuttled down the front steps and up into the carriage.

Sebastian backed up the carriage steps, hauling Miss Jarvis with him. “It would be detrimental to the ladies’ health were anyone to attempt to follow us,” he said to the grim men crowding the door behind them. “Drive toward Tothill Fields,” he shouted to the coachmen. “Now.”

At the crack of the whip, the horses leapt to the traces, the carriage lurching forward with a jerk that set the lanterns to swinging on their brackets. The maid huddled into a corner of the forward seat, her hands holding her apron over her face as she let out a series of soft little screams.

“Stop that infernal nonsense,” said Sebastian after roughly the twentieth scream.

“She’s afraid,” said Miss Jarvis.

Sebastian transferred his attention to the woman who sat tall and stiff-backed on the seat beside him. “You’re not?”

She swung her head to look directly at him. In the swaying light from the outside lanterns, he could see the terror in her eyes. “Of course I am.”

“I must say, you control yourself admirably well.”

“I see no point in indulging in hysterics.” She ran one hand up her other arm briskly, as if to warm it. A brazier of coals spread its slow heat through the carriage, but a damp cold radiated off the glass and her modest muslin gown was not designed for warmth.

Sebastian reached for the carriage robe of wool lined with fur that lay folded up beside him and held it out to her. “I shan’t harm you, you know.”

After the briefest of hesitations, she took the robe with a politely murmured, “Thank you,” and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

An earsplitting shriek from the forward seat jerked his attention back to Alice. “Mary, Mother of God!” cried the maid, dropping her apron to show them a wild face. “He’s going to ravish us both. Ravish us, and leave us headless and eviscerated like a heathen offering on some pagan altar.” Her body went suddenly rigid, her fists digging into the plush upholstery at her side as she began to laugh hysterically.

Leaning forward, Miss Jarvis calmly slapped the maid across the face. Alice sucked in a startled breath, her eyes going wide, then squeezing shut as she collapsed back into her corner and began to cry. Miss Jarvis took one of the maid’s hands in her own and said gently, “There, there, Alice; it will be all right. We’re quite safe.” To Sebastian, she said, “I know who you are.”

Sebastian nodded toward the quietly sobbing maid. “So, obviously, does she.”

Miss Jarvis paused in the act of chafing the maid’s trembling hand between her own large, capable ones. “A humorist, I see. I hadn’t expected that.”

“And what, precisely, were you expecting? To be ravished and left split like a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Zeus?”

Alice let out a new bleat of terror.

Miss Jarvis threw Sebastian a frowning glance. “Hush. You’re frightening her again.”

Sebastian studied the woman beside him. She was somewhere in her early twenties, he supposed, brown of hair and unremarkable of feature, if one discounted the unmistakable gleam of intelligence and ready humor in those calm gray eyes. He tried to recollect what he had heard of Jarvis’s daughter, and could call little to mind.

“Why did you insist on bringing Alice?” she asked after a moment.

He glanced out the window. They were bowling up Whitehall now, harnesses jangling, the horses’ hoofbeats reverberating oddly in the damp, heavy fog. Soon the narrow streets of old Westminster would close in around them. It would be an easy thing, then, to lose any would-be rescuers and make his way to the Three Feathers Inn, where he intended to have a little chat with the landlord.

“Merciful heavens,” said Miss Jarvis, her eyes opening wide as the carriage slowed for a turn. “Is that why she’s here? To safeguard my reputation from the tongues that wag and do love to speculate on all manner of unrighteous things? Do you really think it will help?”

Sebastian opened the door beside him. “One can only hope,” he said, and slipped out into the damp night.