Joan and Peg receded into the room, but Margaret remained at the window. The equipage and horses were too fine for the neighborhood. The man at the reins, a sturdy man in his midthirties, did not look the part of traditional coachman. No top hat graced his head. No many-caped greatcoat fluttered in the wind.
The carriage stopped on the street below for no apparent reason, and the driver tied off the reins and clambered down none too nimbly. He opened the carriage door and leaned in. “Are you all right, sir?”
She heard no reply.
Margaret looked past the coach to the ale house on the corner. As she’d feared, the ne’er-do-wells on the stoop had taken notice of the carriage as well. The thin man stopped whittling. The black-haired hulk stilled, his gaze focused on the coach, nose high like a hound on the scent. He slowly rose, gesturing to the second fellow to follow and kicking the foot of the dozing youth.
Dread prickled through Margaret’s stomach and along her limbs.
She glanced back down at the driver standing with his head and shoulders in the coach, completely unaware of the danger he had steered into.
“Hello?” she called in a terse whisper, trying to make herself heard. Vaguely she heard Peg shush her in the background. “Excuse me, you there!” she hissed, not daring to shout. She did not want to draw the ruffians’ attention to poor Peg’s window. Only belatedly did she realize she had not bothered to disguise her voice. No matter, for the man had not heard her.
Margaret closed the window and stepped back, retreating into the relative safety of the room. Well, she told herself, she had tried.
Then in her mind’s eye she saw her beloved father calling “Whoa” to his old driving horse, pulling the gig to the side of the road to help a farmer with a broken wagon wheel, mucking his breeches and gloves without complaint. Just diving in to help a fellow traveler in need. How often he had done so.
She turned to the door and yanked it open. “I shall return directly.” Without awaiting a reply, Margaret drummed down the stairs. She was halfway to street level before the second thought followed.... It had been in the midst of just such a good deed that her father had been killed.
Reaching the front door, she cracked it open. The driver still had his head and shoulders inside the carriage, and she could see that he was repositioning a pillow under a man’s bandaged head. A pillow was not going to help either of them if they did not get out of there in the next few seconds!
She peered around the edge of the door. The large man had paused down the street, bending to remove something from his boot. A knife? His thin crony cinched up his baggy breeches as the third man yawned and sized up the unguarded coach. Margaret wondered why the travelers had neither guard nor groom.
She inched open the tenement door a bit farther, glad that it acted as a shield between her and the approaching cutthroats.
Dredging up her best imitation of Nanny Booker, she called sharply, “You there. Best drive off... and sharp-like.”
The driver swiveled around to frown at her. “What do you want?”
Only then did she see that one of his hands was bandaged. She pointed beyond the open door. “Are ya blind? Get out of ’ere. Go.”
The man looked in the direction she’d pointed and the skin around his eyes tightened. His mouth followed suit.
“Hold on,” he urged the man inside. He slammed the coach door and leapt back up into the coachman’s seat far more adroitly than he’d climbed down. He slapped the reins, yelled a command, and snapped the whip in the air. The horses tossed their heads, whinnied and pulled, and the coach began to move away. Too slowly.
She braved one more glance around the door. The black-haired man was running up the lane. He shouted, “Let’s get ’em, lads!”
His cronies followed more cautiously.
In a flash she gauged the hulk’s gait against the coach’s slowly increasing speed. Not accelerating quickly enough. Looking up, she saw the driver glance back, his face grim.
She heard the pounding of the boots just beyond the door she held slightly ajar. At the last moment, she shoved the door wide open with all her strength.
Slam.Umph.The heavy wooden door reverberated violently and came slamming toward her. She leapt back. The door smacked her shoulder, barely missing her face. She heard a shout, athud-slap, as knees and limbs hit the cobbles, followed by a sharp curse.
The door hit the jamb and bounced outward. Through the opening, a pair of black eyes locked on hers. She snagged the latch and pulled the door closed. Hands shaking, she slid the bar home.
Margaret bolted up the stairs as fast as her feet could carry her. She tripped at the first landing and felt her stocking tear. Her ankle and knee screamed complaint as she rounded the first newel-post and shot up the second pair of stairs. Below, the bar splintered and the door crashed open. Footfalls, threats, and curses gained on her as she hoofed it up the remaining stairs and down the passage. She ran into number 23 and shut and barred the door behind her, hoping the men had not seen which of the many doors she had disappeared into.
“What is it?” Joan asked.
“Shh.” Trembling all over, Margaret picked up a cumbersome oak chair and propped it against the door.
Peg asked, “Is it those ruffians?”
Margaret nodded.
Peg’s eyes grew wide, and she wrapped a protective arm around the child nearest her.
