Page 25 of Let Me Be Your Hero
But still, it was bad. It was very bad. Just the fact that she had been caught alone in the garden with Archibald was enough to ruin her.
Well. Unless one considered the insensible bodies of her four assailants to be suitable chaperones.
She spied her mother in the throng. Clearing her throat, she said, “Suffice to say, Mama, Lady Griselda was right about those men who attacked us today in the park. It would appear that I am the one they are after.”
CHAPTER 12
Archibald called at Astley House the following day at the extremely unfashionable hour of eight in the morning. He’d been unable to sleep the previous night, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was to find out if Izzie was safe.
Last night, his heart had all but fallen out of his chest when she revealed that she’d been attacked in the park that afternoon. He’d tried to ask her what, exactly, she meant. But, of course, her mother was frantic, demanding to know what had just happened, and while Izzie was busy explaining how she was set upon in the garden, someone had shown up with the local constable. He’d had to explain to the constable why he had beaten four men badly enough to knock them insensible—and deliver the unwelcome news that there was another criminal at large whose wrist had been snapped like a twig, accompanied by two friends who had escaped scot-free. Then a Bow Street Runner had shown up, so he’d been obliged to repeat the whole story over again, and by the time he’d finished speaking to the authorities, Izzie’s family had taken her home, and he didn’t know what the hell was going on or if she was all right.
The first thing he noticed as he stepped out of his carriage was the crunch of broken glass beneath his boots. He looked up and saw that one of the ground-floor windows was boarded up. His stomach sank as he jogged up the front steps. Something was definitely not right here.
The door was opened not by Yarwood, the Astley family’s butler, but by his friend and boxing partner, Morsley, who appeared to be standing guard, along with a half dozen footmen wearing four different sets of livery. “You’re here. Good,” Morsley said in a clipped voice. “Izzie’s been asking for you.”
“What the hell is going on? It looks like someone tried to break in.” He froze as Morsley’s words sank in. “Izzie’s been asking for me?”
“Someone did try to break in,” Morsley confirmed. “Around five o’clock. That’s when she said, ‘I wish Archibald was here.’”
“Then why the hell didn’t you send for me?” Archibald snapped.
Morsley looked taken aback. “As I said, it was at five o’clock in the—”
“I would’ve come. Where is she?”
Morsley was giving him a speaking look but let the matter drop as he led the way up the stairs to a parlor on the first floor. “We’ve managed to assemble about two dozen footmen, between my house, Thetford’s, the Duke of Trevissick’s, and Peter Ferguson’s. I’m watching the front door, Trevissick is pacing the eastern front with his sword, and Lady Griselda is patrolling the back side of the house with a blunderbuss and a pack of dogs. But it’s all but impossible to guard a house like this,” he said, gesturing to one of the tall windows that lined each and every room on the ground floor.
Morsley showed him which parlor the family was gathered in, then jogged down the stairs to resume his post. Archibald found the entire extended Astley family and a smatteringof their closest friends assembled, looking drawn and uncharacteristically silent. His eyes scanned the room until he spotted Izzie, seated next to her twin, who was quietly crying, on a yellow-striped sofa.
Izzie sat up. “Archibald! You—you came.”
“Of course, I came,” he said, hurrying to her side. He paused as there was nowhere to sit.
“Come here, Luce,” Harrington Astley called from a chaise-longue in the corner. “You can cry on me.”
Lucy gave him a watery smile as she stood. Archibald nodded his thanks to Harrington and took the seat next to Izzie. “Tell me what’s happened,” he said in a quiet voice.
She did, from her near miss in the park yesterday, the one she’d been hoping against hope was a coincidence, to everything that had transpired since they parted last night.
“Mama said the best course was to get out right away,” Izzie explained. “We didn’t even bother to pack. She, Lucy, and I just got in the carriage at four in the morning, the idea being that we would be halfway home before they even realized we’d left.”
“What happened?” Archibald asked, knowing the answer couldn’t be anything good.
“We didn’t even make it out of Mayfair. Armed riders descended on the carriage. The outriders managed to fight them off, but we were lucky no one was hurt. As it was, we barely made it back to the house. And then, an hour later, someone tried to force their way in.”
“I saw the window,” he confirmed.
She rubbed her brow. She looked exhausted and terrified, two things he never wanted to see on Isabella Astley’s face. “We don’t know what to do.”
“Do you have any idea who might be behind this?” he asked quietly.
“I’ve a fair idea. The trouble started while I was at Vauxhall the other night. I overheard some things in the dark walks, you see…”
She told him about the frightening encounter she’d had in the dark walks before he arrived, and everything she could recall about the two men whispering about stealing guns from the army.
“I’ve wracked my brain trying to remember their names,” Izzie said. “The first one, the one who wanted the guns, was named Cooper. I’m almost certain of it. And the man who had access to the guns was a Scotsman—Mac something or the other. McDaniel, maybe? Or McDonald, or McDougal?” Her shoulders slumped. “I wish I could be sure.”
“It sounds like he works for the Office of Ordnance.” Archibald’s mind was flying. He had contacts at the Office of Ordnance. They were Nettlethorpe Iron’s biggest customer. His contacts specialized in cannons, of course, not the small firearms it sounded like this Cooper fellow wanted. But that was probably for the best. It certainly increased the odds that the people he knew wouldn’t be involved in this scheme…
