Page 13 of Let Me Be Your Hero
“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.
