Her eyelids slid to half-mast. She leaned closer.
His thumb froze.
And she was dark and vengeful. As full of wrath as she was of love.
He pushed away from the carriage. She didn’t fit into any one of his boxes, but was part of many. Could such a woman fit into his life?
“I’ll see you later.” He nodded to the driver and turned away. He needed to figure out this mess in his head, his heart. If he didn’t, there was a very real chance he or Cassie would be hurt. Probably both of them.
He started heading to the haberdasher when something hard was pressed into his back.
“No quick movements, if you please.” The voice was only vaguely familiar, but Charles knew at once Lincoln stood behind him. “I’ve been told the trigger on this flintlock is most sensitive. The smallest jostle on my end will result in a very large hole in your spine.”
Charles set his shoulders. At least one worry in his mind was allayed. There was no longer any doubt who had killed Cassie’s sister. “What do you want?”
“Hail that hackney.”
A cab was idling across the street, the driver chatting with someone on the ground. Charles lifted his arm to draw his attention.
“Easy now,” Lincoln warned. “You’ve spoken to my laundress and you should know she’s good, but even she couldn’t get out the bloodstains if I were to shoot.”
“Killing me in front of all these people?” Charles watched as the hackney turned in the street and drew up to them. “You would most surely hang.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps I’d escape to the Continent. Either way, you’d be dead.” Lincoln prodded his back. “Climb in.”
Charles’s stomach went hard. Climbing into an enclosed carriage with an armed killer didn’t seem like the best of ideas. But trying to disarm him now held little chance of success. It took but an instant to pull a trigger. So he climbed into the coach and bided his time.
Lincoln shouted a direction to the driver, and they jerked into motion.
Charles got his first good look at the man. He was seated across from him, looking just as harmless as ever. Except for the double-barreled pistol in his hand. The right barrel was indeed already cocked and the trigger partially depressed. Any sudden movements on Charles’s part could set it off. Christ, one large bump could result in a hole in his chest.
“What do you think you’ll accomplish?” Charles settled into his seat and tried to look at ease. “The entire agency is coming after you. If I die or disappear, they won’t stop. They’ll come harder.”
Lincoln’s eyes narrowed briefly. “Yes, perhaps my time in England is at an end. But I’ve taken precautions for that eventuality. So now I think I will enjoy killing the man who forced my hand.” He leaned forwards and pushed his glasses up his nose. “And when I’m done with you, I’m going to kill that bitch. Mrs. Alberto or Miss Moore or whatever name she wants to go by. She’s going to be sorry for what she’s done.”
He spoke of killing her like she was no more than an annoying pest. A rat that had gotten into his favorite cheese.
Charles’s vision clouded. His fingers dug into the upholstery of the seat, wanting to dig into something else. Someone else. He could see it, his hands wrapped around this man’s neck, squeezing the life out of him, tightening around his flesh until something cracked.
He would never let this man hurt Cassie. If it took him his last breath, he would protect her from this filth.
And for the first time, Charles understood how someone could commit murder.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Because I don’t know how to drive a carriage!” It had been several minutes since Cassie had seen Lincoln and Charles enter the large public stables. Several minutes where she imagined Lincoln doing the most horrific things to her Charles. Every moment she expected to hear a gunshot. A cry. Something.
She turned back to the agency’s driver. He was a middle-aged man whose muscle had turned mostly flabby, but was quick of eye and decidedly stubborn. “You must go. Drive like the devil is after you and fetch help.”
She had no idea how far they were from the Bond Agency. They had followed the hackney for about twenty minutes, but her view out of the carriage window had been limited, and her knowledge of London streets more so. All she knew for certain was she had made a mistake. Her head had pounded with that knowledge, ever since she’d leaned out of her carriage window and spied Lincoln sneak up behind Charles, forcing him into a cab.
The driver twisted the horses’ reins in his hands. “And you’ll do nothing more than watch, miss? You won’t try to free Mr. Strait yourself?”
“What could I do against a man with a gun?” She held her hands out wide. She’d played the role of dutiful little miss before, but it had never been so difficult to maintain the façade. And never more important. “I will stand in that alley there and observe if the men remain within or leave, and report back to whomever comes to help. Please, go now.”
He didn’t like leaving her, Cassie could tell. But her argument was sound. With a pinch of his mouth, he hopped up onto his seat, lit one of the carriage’s lanterns, and slapped the reins down hard, jerking the horses into motion. The carriage sped down the road, taking the turn at the end of the block nigh on two wheels.
Her shoulders dropped. She didn’t know how long it would take for the driver to find help, but it was longer than Charles might have. She turned back to the door the men had disappeared through and peered through the gloom. It wasn’t yet full dark, but night was coming quickly.
