Page 58 of One Perfect Dance
“Keep the pistol on him until we are out of the room,” Elijah told her. They stopped briefly at the open door then sidled, Fullaby first, through the narrow doorway and out into the passage.
Regina backed her way out, keeping the pistol steady.
“Now shut the door and lock it,” Elijah said, and he handed her the key he must have taken from the lock on the way through. “We’ll send a constable to collect the pair of them once I have you safe.”
“You are limping, Elijah,” Regina commented, as she followed the men.
“I lost my heel when I kicked the door in,” he replied. He glanced back and smiled. “I’m fine, Ginny.”
Thank goodness for that. It looked as if they would escape without injury, for even Geoffrey was rousing enough to lurch from one foot to another and support some of his own weight as they navigated the stairs.
They were descending the last flight when they heard a ruckus outside—shouts, clashing wood, the sudden clatter of hooves and alarmed horse squeals.
“Let me and Fullaby check it out,” Elijah said to Regina. “You stay here with Geoffrey.” It was a command rather than a question, but Regina accepted it. She would not be much use in a physical fight, short of shooting someone.
Elijah helped Geoffrey to sit on the bottom step, where he collapsed against the wall and sank back into sleep. Elijah and Fullaby slipped out through the front door. In the dark and the rain, Regina could see nothing of what was happening.
She stood over Geoffrey, gripping the pistol in one hand and the candle in the other, straining to make sense out of the sounds from the street.
More shouts. Horses approaching at a gallop. A screamed command, “Run!” Carriage wheels and horses departing at speed.
All the chaos devolved into a low hum of conversation, before the door opened again and Lord Arthur entered, followed by a couple of footmen in Versey livery. “Mrs. Paddimore? Time to go. Lift Mr. Paddimore carefully, chaps. One of you will need to take him up before you.”
Regina stepped aside to let the footmen carry out their task. “What has happened, Lord Arthur? Why are you here?”
Lord Arthur’s explanation was succinct. “We came upon an ambush near my house. We chased them off and followed them here to find a battle royal going on between them and Ash, but they ran when they saw us.”
He opened the door for the footmen to carry Geoffrey out into the street, and then winged his elbow at Regina. “Shall we, Mrs. Paddimore?”
The hackney was gone, and so was Chalky. Once Regina had been handed up into the curricle next to Mr. Fullaby, he explained that Charles had been trying to fight off the returning ambushers when he and Elijah had burst out the door.
The hackney driver had taken off, and the three defenders had been outnumbered. Things had been going badly for them until Lord Arthur arrived with reinforcements.
The horsemen closed around the curricle, Lord Arthur at their head. Three of the riders had an extra person up in front of them. Geoffrey was unconscious again. Elijah and Charles were both conscious, but Charles was nursing one arm and had a cravat tied around his head as a bandage.
Regina couldn’t see an obvious injury on Elijah, but she knew him well enough to realize his stoic expression masked pain.
“What happened to Mr. Ashby?” she asked Fullaby.
“Just the old injury playing up, ma’am. He jarred it when he kicked the door down, then he took a cudgel to the bad thigh. It’s not broken, Lord Arthur says. Bit of a rest, and he’ll be good as new.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
When Regina insistedthat Ash be left at her house to see the doctor and to be nursed, Ash had two good reasons to agree.
The first was his disinclination to subject his stupid leg and hip to another half hour on horseback or in the phaeton, when the horse’s every step or the carriage’s every bounce jolted the bruising. He yearned for a bed, pillows to prop the leg up, and—if at all possible—a cloth full of ice.
The second was the unspoken hope for more kisses.
His first desire came true. A few uncomfortable minutes saw him upstairs in one of the lady’s spare bedrooms, stripped of his outer clothing, and resting on a bed, pillows in place, while a servant raced down to the bottom of the garden to the icehouse, fully stocked for the coming ball.
The doctor Regina called inspected all three patients and confirmed that Ash’s injury was one of bruising and strain. “Keep your leg up for at least seven days,” he commanded. “Longer if the pain does not settle.”
Geoffrey was put to bed with a footman to watch him. “Let him sleep it off, Mrs. Paddimore. I do not expect any issues. When he wakes, makes sure he drinks large quantities of water.”
Charles needed stitches to the cut on his head. His wrist was sprained, the doctor said, a bad sprain, and he would need to rest it.
Regina came to Ash once the others had been seen to, to let him know how they were. “Lord Arthur says he will be back around noon,” she reported. “He was on his way to see the magistrate at Bow Street, and then he is going home to sleep. You should sleep, too, Elijah, if you can. The doctor left some laudanum.”
