Page 69 of Let Me Be Your Hero
Today, she finally would—his real one, where he kept all his most advanced machines. She couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when she walked through the door!
Ten minutes later, Izzie was trying to imagine what the process of making a cannon might entail when she heard the coachman shout, “Hey! Watch where yer going!”
Suddenly, there were hoofbeats all around them, which wasn’t entirely unusual, but for the fact that they sounded much too close.
Then, the shouting began.
Izzie peered out the window. A horse’s head was mere inches from the glass pane. She tried to peer back at its rider. She didn’t have a very good angle, but the man’s arm was outstretched toward the guard who had taken up the position on the rear step usually reserved for footmen. They appeared to be scrapping.
Abruptly, the rider pulled wide of the carriage. Izzie shrieked as her guard went tumbling off the step, landing in the cobblestone street and rolling several times before coming to a stop.
She scooted to the opposite window and saw that the other guards were similarly engaged. Izzie’s heart thundered in her chest. Looking down, she was alarmed to see how far they had veered to the left.
Before she had time to cry out a warning, one of the wheels smashed into the curb. A sharp crack filled the air and the coach tilted off balance, which surely meant they had broken a wheel.
Terror-stricken, Izzie watched as someone wrenched the door open. A man leaned in. He didn’t look like a common criminal. His dark hair was neatly combed and held in place with pomade, and he was simply but neatly dressed.
“Lady Isabella.” He gave a malicious smile. “We meet at last.”
He reached in and grabbed her by the arm. Izzie screamed and kicked him in the chest. The man scowled but didn’t let her go.
“Fine, then,” he snapped. “We’ll do it the hard way.”
He grabbed her by the hair, dragging her out of the carriage. Izzie cried out at the sharp stab of pain and struggled to twist out of his grip. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her three guards, including the man who had taken such a nasty fall, brawling with a swarm of men. They were struggling valiantly but were outnumbered three to one.
The dark-haired man forced her toward an unmarked black carriage. She clawed at his face and he slapped her so hard her vision momentarily went cloudy.
She regained her senses just in time to see the carriage looming before her. Her abductor climbed inside, trying to pull her in after him. She braced her hands against the doorframe, stiffening her arms. “Help!” she shouted. “Someone help me! Please!”
Just then, the Nettlethorpe-Ogilvys’ second carriage, the one filled with Archibald’s men, drew up behind them. How it had become separated from the first vehicle, Izzie had no idea, but she caught the eye of one of the two men hanging off the back steps—her husband’s valet, Jack.
“Jack!” she cried desperately. “Jack, help!”
His eyes flared with recognition. He leaped from the step, barreling through the swarm of attackers, shouting curses as he swung his good arm. He managed to break through and grab Izzie by the back of her coat. She heard the fabric of her traveling costume rending, but Jack was able to hold her back from the gaping door, and that was the only thing that mattered.
The dark-haired man pulled a knife from his boot, brandishing it with his free arm in an underhanded grip. Snarling, he raised it for the strike. Jack’s good arm was already occupied in the life-or-death tug-of-war match in which Izzie was the rope, so all he could do was step forward, shielding her with his body. He grunted as the knife came down on the back of his shoulder.
“Jack!” Izzie screamed.
Just then, another one of her ironworker guards arrived, lunging at her attacker’s throat. Blanching, the dark-haired man released her arm and scrambled back inside the black carriage, shouting for the driver to flee. The horses leapt forward, and the carriage took off down the street with the door flapping open.
Izzie glanced around. Even with the men who had poured out of the second carriage, they were still outnumbered. But Archibald’s men were significantly bigger and stronger than their opponents, and one by one, the would-be kidnappers started to flee. After a minute of scuffling, all the miscreants had made their escape, save for three who had been captured by Archibald’s men.
“Get her in that carriage,” the coachman shouted. “Wheel’s broken on this one.”
“You heard the man,” Jack said, seizing her upper arm and hustling her toward the second carriage.
She blanched at the damp red stain on the sleeve of his coat. “You’re bleeding.”
He wrinkled his nose in dismissal. “Eh. That arm wasn’t good for nothing, anyway.”
“But what if it becomes infected, or—”
He snorted as he hoisted her into the carriage. “We Rattigans are hard to kill. Yer husband won’t be rid of me so easy.”
He started to back away, but Izzie grabbed his wrist. “You must come too, Jack. And anyone else who was injured.”
Jack tried to object. “’Tis nothing—”
