And there walking in the front door with soldiers pouring in behind him, was Diccan Hilliard, dressed for a stroll through Hyde Park, leaning on a silver-tipped cane.
“Thrasher got to you?” Beau asked as soldiers filed down the sides of the room.
“We were already on our way. Miss Schroeder warned me this would happen.”
Pip looked around. “That there would be a terrible scene?”
His smile was immeasurably dry. “That you would take care of the problem before we got here.”
“Well,” Pip said, grinning like an urchin. “I had some help.”
And then two things happened at once. It seemed that Pip’s adventure finally caught up with her and her knees quite suddenly failed her, leaving her sitting in an untidy lump right next to the epic puddle. And Beau heard a voice he never thought he never would hear again in his lifetime.
“Leave it to you two to create a stir.”
Theo.
Beau froze. Then he turned, his heart in his throat, stricken silent. He was there. Theo. Dressed like a dockworker in a blue knit cap. Healthy. Whole. Impossibly, grinning, hands on hips as if he were a father surveying an unruly child. Beau thought his heart might explode.
But he didn’t even have to think about what happened next. “Hold there a minute,” he told Theo and turned instead to collect Pip.
* * *
Beau hadhis chance to hug his brother. Pip had her chance as well, since Theo sat himself down in one of the day room’s comfortable chairs as the mess in the hallway was cleared up and Pip and Barbara Schroeder and Diccan and the aides Claire and Edna sorted out who went where and how to contact families.
It turned out, Pip was relieved to see, that Claire and Edna had thought they were protecting their patients. They had known, of course, that some of the women were here for reasons that had nothing to do with their mental health. They had tried, it seemed, to ease their way. To ease all the women’s way. Other staff who wandered back in, corroborated their assertion. They asked that if possible they be allowed to stay, at least until the families came, and went off to settle all the patients, including Lady Pamela, who still didn’t have the clarity to recognize anyone. And yes, they helped separate the sheep and the goats as Pip and three other maids cleaned up the floor.
Pip couldn’t just leave it there, after all, no matter how much the Drummond brothers objected. Not only because the blood would stain her dreams for the rest of her life, but because of the large quantities of laudanum and foxglove she had poured into the tea urn before she sent it crashing onto the floor. It wouldn’t take much at all to kill a horse.
And, as she reminded Beau, when she was overset, she needed occupation.
But all of that happened long after Theo walked in the door. Or maybe not so long. It just felt long, as epiphanies should.
At least it happened a good while after Beau picked her up and cradled her in his arms. After he turned to both Theo and Diccan to say, “Welcome home, you reprehensible urchin. Does this mean we have successfully interfered with the attacks?”
Diccan grinned, as if he wasn’t standing five feet away from where soldiers were collecting bodies, and the floor looked like the first plague of Egypt. “We did indeed. The Prince sends his heartfelt thanks and wonders if you would like a title.”
Beau frowned. “I have a title.”
Diccan’s grin widened. “He wasn’t talking about you.” Then he turned to Pip.
“We can gladly discuss this later, Diccan,” Beau said. “But first, I must take my wife somewhere quiet to have an important talk.”
“More important than me possibly being made a peer?” Pip asked, not making a move from her comfortable berth in Beau’s arms.
He glared down at her. “Much.”
Theo tilted his head like a bright bird. “We aren’t going to have to summon a constable, are we?”
Beau actually smiled. “Not this time. Don’t count out the possibility in the future, though.”
And then he turned to the back of the asylum.
“What are you doing?!” Pip demanded, even as she settled deeper into the comfort of his arms. “That was your brother back there!”
Beau shoved open the door into the back garden. “And he will most certainly be there when we finish our talk. Not a very impressive garden, is it?”
Pip relaxed against his chest as they walked. “Nobody gets out here much.”
