His face lost all color. He stepped away, not turning his back to James, showing he hadn’t lost what little intelligence he possessed.
James didn’t take his eyes from him until he was far enough away and scuttled within the crowd like a mole going underground. He scanned the area for Gabriella, but she’d disappeared. Unease sizzled his nerve endings until they burned like acid.
Slowly, the milling throng’s low conversation rippled like a wave to silence, all staring in the distance to see Shufflebottom. At least, he thought it was Shufflebottom. But something was drastically wrong. His cravat no longer reflected the brilliance of sunlight. It was covered in mud. His white pantaloons matched his mud splattered cravat. His frockcoat dripped with water.
Another wave gripped the crowd, this one of smothered laughter. Shufflebottom was a marquis after all. His head snapped up, fury wreathing across his features. He spun on a dulled heel, the buckles on his once shiny pumps now encased in muck, and strode in a direction away from the crowds.
This incident had Gabriella’s fingerprints all over it. He caught a flash of her stylish bonnet at the north end of the park. Then he saw Lady Bentick, stepping up to a waiting hack—panic seared him as Gabriella dove inside after her.
Forty-Five
Lady Bentick pointed to Lady Macbeth. “Get that mongrel away from me.”
Lady Macbeth stiffened as if she understood exactly what the vile baroness had said, but Gabby soothed her by smoothing her hand over her head. It was hot, her brain a bed of furious activity.
“Her name is Lady Macbeth,” Gabby informed Lady Bentick. “And she is quite formidable, so please mind your manners.”
The baroness brought up her other hand and pointed a small pistol right at Gabby.
She froze from the inside.
“Shove her out,” Lady Bentick hissed.
“You will have to shoot me first. And with the entire of the haute ton just outside, killing me will only get you hung.”
Lady Bentick shifted her aim to Lady Macbeth. “Perhaps,” she allowed, “but if your dog lunges and attacks me as her name indicates—” she shrugged “—no one will blame me for defending myself. Put her outside or I shall shoot her… and you,” she added. “Don’t underestimate me, Lady Huntley. I have no problem leaving you behind.”
Gabby didn’t believe she would go that far. Not with their crowd of peers within shouting distance. But her hand was rightfully steady, her aim true and Gabby feared she had no compunction when it came to killing an innocent. Dog or person. Her skin rippled in raised gooseflesh.
The malevolent glint in Lady Bentick’s eyes was cased in sheer madness.
Fear coated in chills of black ice, slithered through Gabby’s veins. She’d only panic of this sort one other time—when the stable boy was determined to have his way with her, permission or not. But Rebecca had saved her then. “Why?” Gabby whispered.
“You and that do-gooder duchess. How dare you uphold those whores who dare to seduce our husbands.”
Gabby’s instincts had been right. The evil woman was planning to head straight to Hope House to terrorize the young women in their care. “Lady Bentick, those young women are b-but girls,” Gabby begged on their behalf. They had no other champions. It was the way of the world, sadly but inexorably true. She leaned back against the leather squab and smoothed her quaking hands over the soft green muslin. “You do realize your husband raped and impregnated one of the young women who worked in Drury Lane, don’t you? And possibly another.”
Lady Bentick snorted an unladylike sound of disgust. “Undeniably, he is a rogue of the worst sort, but women who work in such an environment get no less than they deserve.”
“Most of those women are working to assist their families to keep food on the table.”
Her disdainful sniff confirmed, Gabby’s words went unheeded. “Actresses require benefactors. My husband, if you ask me, was only doing his Christian duty.”
“Christian duty,” Gabby parroted dumbfounded. “You cannot be serious. He took a young girl by force, madam. Were it you, what would you do?”
“What a ridiculous question. I would never put myself in such a compromising situation in the first place. Just wait until your husband no longer finds you worthy of his attentions—” Her bitterness was a vile poison saturating the air and, with the stench of the public hack, Gabby very nearly cast up her accounts.
Still, she had to get through to her. “But… you brought Lady Liverpool. I-I thought you—”
Lady Bentick’s maniacal laughter trilled through the hack. “You think I—” She shook her head. “You are every bit the fool I’d always believed. I saw it at the first, years ago, when you shoved your friend at your brother at your come-out ball.”
“Shufflebottom pushed me. It was his fault—that is of no matter. Ryleigh married her, didn’t he?”
“The little tramp. Totally unworthy as his duchess. But that is neither here nor there.” She used the gun as a pointer. “Out with her.”
But Gabby had one last desperate trick up her spencer sleeve. “Aren’t you concerned I shall do you in as I did Stanford? ’Tis common belief I-I…” She couldn’t quite form the words with the images still so vivid.
Lady Bentick’s lips curved in a thin tip. “True,” she said. “But we both know that is not the case, don’t we?”
