Page 64 of Lady Daring
“Back, ye draggle-tails!” the warden shouted, fingering the club at his belt.
“Keep my card,” Henrietta said, knowing most of them couldn’t read the direction she had printed on the back. “If you are not here when I return, come to the Sisters as soon as you can. I promise—oof!”
A hard arm snaked around her waist and lifted her from the floor, pressing the air out of her lungs. “You are leavingnow, Henry,” Darien said, his voice full of wrath.
His body felt hard and at the same time supple, as if he were dangerous steel swathed in a few layers of protective fabric. A curl of pleasure curled through Henrietta’s midsection at the contact of her body with his. She had the insane urge to curl into his arms in surrender, lay her head on his shoulder, and let him take her where he willed. Obstinately, she held stiff as the warden swung the barred door shut, shouting at the women still inside.
“I have to— You must put me down, Darien,” Henrietta said, squirming.
“Not until you are delivered to the coach, baggage.”
The scowl made him more handsome, not less. Henrietta felt a great wash of tenderness roll through her stomach, pressing on her bladder. He was still angry with her, but he was here.
She blinked, the grit of sleeplessness in her eyes. “Why did my uncle not come for me?”
“Pelton is in the carriage. He thought it best that he not be seen personally exonerating a person the Prime Minister ordered arrested.”
Henrietta shrank against his shoulder. He was solid and unyielding. “If only you had seen it, Darien—they completely commandeered my debate! I doubt a single person will remember any of my points, and they were rather excellent. I would like a word with those Corresponders myself!”
Darien paused in the low, dark hall and stared at her. The rush light afforded ill light to see by, but she could read his disbelief.
“You spent the night in the watch house,” he said deliberately, “and you are concerned that no one took your point in your debate.”
“All night, was it? No wonder, then. Darien, I need to visit the necessary,” she blurted, cheeks scorching.
“Here?”
“I’m afraid so.” She nodded, squeezing her legs together.
The appalled look on his face as he regarded the enclosed yard behind the building would have made her giggle in other circumstances. It was clear he feared permanent damage to his gleaming top boots.
Setting his jaw, Lord Darien Bales carried Miss Henrietta Wardley-Hines to the clumsy wooden privy and then waited, knee-deep in muck and a combination of fog and morning dew, while she relieved herself. Oh, what the penny papers would have to say aboutthisescapade did they learn of it, Henrietta thought as he scooped her up again and transported her to the hack waiting by the curb.
The hired coachman sat atop, his neck hunched, his collar turned up against the morning chill. “Uncle Pell.” Henrietta sighed in relief as she climbed into the vehicle and discerned her uncle’s anxious face in the gloom.
The sky held the yellow-gray tint of a smog-choked London morning, while the fetid odor of the river stung her eyes and nose. “Am I to go before the justice of the peace?”
“I took care of it,” Pelton said. “Know the man well.” With dismay, he took in her disheveled gown. “No harm befell you, puss?”
Darien slid his large frame onto the seat next to her, then reached to pull the shade over the window. He left his arm alongthe top of the seat as the coach jogged forward. She tried not to lean back into his solid heat. She was so tired, and he was angry over the inconvenience of having to spring her from the watch house. He had every right to be.
“I am unharmed,” she assured her uncle. “I was put in the room with the…unfortunate women. Uncle, if you could have heard their stories—they exactly prove the points I was making at my debate, about what happens to women who are prepared for nothing but the keep of a man, then cast out when that man fails them.” She lifted her head. “How did you find me?”
“Lord Darien,” her uncle said. “I heard at the club that someone tipped Pitt off that the Corresponders meant to gather at your debate after being forbidden to meet on their own. Pitt called up the Bishopsgate watch, the City Patrol, the Marshals, and the new Middlesex Justices, too. He’s been looking for a reason to come down on Hardy’s group ever since that damnable closet fire. Confound it, Hetty, he wants Hardy charged for treason, and there you were, in the midst of it. A witness said he heard you claiming you were responsible for it all.”
Henrietta laid her head on the cushioned back of the seat. “Lord Pinochle said that,” she said with bitterness. “Lady Bess and I took away a maid he’d gotten with child, and he’s searching for a way to punish me.”
The cushion flexed, and Henrietta realized she had laid her head on Darien’s arm. She straightened. “Am I to be charged with treason too?”
“I won’t allow it,” her uncle said swiftly.
“You can keep me from hanging, perhaps.” Tears burned her gritty eyes. “But I could be transported, and the gossip—” She sagged on the rough, cracked seat of the hack, some nobleman’s discarded vehicle. “Papa will bear it, and Lady Mama, but what will this do to Marsi’s prospects?” A sob climbed her throat. “Ishall never be made a votary of Minerva now. They are women of the highest character and ideals, unsullied in virtue.”
“Lightskirts, was it?” The lump of cloth on the seat beside her uncle moved, and a familiar shock of pepper-brown hair emerged.
“James!” Henrietta cried in relief. “Were you hurt?”
“Only a dick to the knob, miss, and a few lumps to go with it. Wished I’d a seen the man what delivered it,” James growled. “’E’d be missing his stumps about now.”
