“No. Just reading, same as you. By the way, you do realize there are a couple of suspicious figures lurking behind those bins farther along the street?”
“Of course. I am not worried.”
“Perhaps you should be.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Why, sir? Because I am a woman?”
“No, because you are dressed inconveniently for self-defense. Your bustle is too small to suffocate a man, your dress lacks enough layers to tangle someone up, and you do not have even one ribbon to employ as a garrote.”
“Nevertheless, I am entirely capable of handling an attack.”
“Hm” was all he said—but it proved more than enough to conflagrate Alice’s temper, which had grown tinder dry since the linen closet. She stopped abruptly in the middle of the alley.
“You!” She pointed her furled umbrella at the suspiciously loitering men.
They leaped, startled. “Us?” one of them said warily.
“Yes. Come here, please. I require you to rob me.”
The two ruffians glanced bemusedly at each other. “Er, no, thank you,” one said. “Kind of you to offer, miss, but we ain’t thieves.”
“I’m sure you will do your best. Step quickly, if you please. I haven’t all day.”
The men now turned wide, rather pleading eyes to Daniel, who stood with his hands in his coat pockets and a mildly amused expression on his face. “Don’t ask me,” he said, shrugging. “I’m just her husband.”
“You are not,” Alice said disdainfully.
“No? Why don’t you show the men your pretty wedding ring?”
Her eyes flashed. “Good idea.” Yanking off her glove, she held the bare hand up to the ruffians and pointed to its ring. “You can steal this. It must be worth—” She turned her hand, considered the ring, then shrugged. “Well, probably not a lot, to be honest, but it will surely buy you a nice supper. Hurry up, now.”
The men shuffled out of the shadows as if they were mice drawn irresistibly to a cat. “See here, lady,” one said. “We’re just minding our own business, and you’ve no call to barge in insisting we rob you. It’s indecent, it is.”
“I have three children at home,” said the other. “Won’t you think of them?”
Alice turned to roll her eyes at Daniel. He looked back with an expression somewhere between challenging her and wondering what on earth she would do next. Turning back to the ruffians, hoisting her umbrella, she motioned for them to get a move on.
They edged into the center of the alley. Most likely this was so they could run away, but immediately Alice launched into self-defense. With a leap—a kick—a swivel and punch—she had one man on the ground and the other scrambling to flee. Calmly aiming the umbrella at him, she squinted along its length, and then, satisfied she had her target lined up with precision, she pushed the button to activate the incantation.
Thwomp.
The umbrella burst open. The world exploded in light and squealing noise.
Oh dear, Alice thought in the fraction of a second remaining to her before she was flung violently backward. She crashed into Daniel and they went down together in a tangle of limbs.
Immediately he rolled her over, shielding her with his body fromany further possible calamity. The hard weight of him pressed her against the cobblestones, but he tucked a hand beneath her head, lifting it gently. She felt the pulse in his neck beat against her lips. She tasted salt, smelled the cool vanilla scent of soap—and suspected that the umbrella had been electrified, because sparks were flaring all through her blood.
“Are you all right?” he asked. The words were muted, but she felt them vibrating through his throat, against her mouth. Several hitherto unknown instincts urged her to stroke her tongue against them in reply, even while more familiar ones were setting up barricades and unrolling barbed wire.
“I will be once I can breathe,” she said.
He climbed off her, but she remained lying there, trying to adjust to his sudden absence. Fiddlesticks. The air was so much thinner, fretful, with him gone. He held out a hand to assist her; ignoring it, she clambered awkwardly to her feet.
“I’m fine,” she said, despite the bruises she was likely to have tomorrow, not to mention the fact that her hat was on fire—thankfully farther along the alley, not on her head. “You?”
Daniel winced as he rubbed a hip. “Less inclined to say ‘I told you so’ than I thought I would be.”
“Drat Snodgrass,” Alice muttered, glaring at the umbrella, which lay several feet away. Smoke rose from its twisted, shredded wreckage. The ruffians were long since departed.
