She took one step back, then another. Then another. She continued to shake her head.
He should have known. In that very strange moment, he should have known. He was a fool not to know.
When next she spoke, her voice had taken on a new quality. “You asked for this,” she said.
“For wh—”
Before he could finish the question, Lady Helena took two more determined steps backward, raised her eyebrows as if to say,What did you expect?and spun around to bolt down the street.
It happened so fast, and with such unexpected fervor, Declan actually froze. He blinked at herretreating form, a streak of purple and black hair and mud.
“Oy!” shouted another groom, spurring Declan from his trancelike state of immobilized disbelief. Reflex took over and Declan lunged, giving chase.
A rain-soaked dog darted into the road and he hurdled over it.
A hunched figure in a dark cloak shuffled between them, and he spun, nearly going down, but he righted himself with a hand to the mud.
She was quick but he reached her in five yards. When he was upon her, he did not hesitate; he wrapped an arm around her waist and yanked, pulling her off her feet, legs still churning, soaked skirt fanning out in a whirl of muddy rainwater.
“Oof,” she said, her back colliding with his chest. He braced, prepared to restrict arms and legs, biting and scratching, but she did none of these. She clung to him instead, sagging arms and legs akimbo. She was wet seaweed in his arms.
He grunted, “What the bloody hell—”
“Put me down, put me down!” she cried, although her voice was still strange, and she did not sound distressed so much as loud. She sounded as if her voice was purposefully pitched to resound in the street.
In an entirely different voice, her real voice, she whispered, “Give me the list.”
The contrast in her two demands was startling.Put me downcame out in a shrill wail.Give me the listwas a stone-cold threat.
“You’re mad,” he whispered back, the only thing he fully understood in this moment.
He made a move to lower her and set her to rights, but she held on. She hooked her left hand over his shoulder and snaked her right hand down his chest. It would be impossible to put her down in her tightly held position. He didn’t restrain her so much as balanced the two of them off the ground.
While he staggered along, Helena began to feel around his ribs and chest for pockets. Declan grunted and missed another step.
“You’re joking,” he rasped, trying again to set her down. She climbed higher and hung on with the opposite hand. Now she searched the other side of his body with torturous attention to detail.
“Where is it?” she demanded lowly.
“Shaw?” Girdleston’s voice called through the rain.
Declan swore. He could just make it to the third carriage. He dropped against the side, reaching for leverage to peel her away. He’d just managed to catch her beneath the arms when her searching hand found his pocket and dipped in, locating the damp parchment. He could feel her smile against his throat when she closed her hand around it. She retracted the list, shoved it down her own bodice, and went limp.
“Shaw?” Girdleston called a second time. Declan rolled his head against the carriage, looking in the direction of his name.
“Let me go!” Helena cried, invoking the loud, strange voice again.
“I’m not holding you,” Declan hissed, “you’re holding me.” She had draped herself across him like a wet sheet.
Girdleston was out of the second carriage, his umbrella clutched beside his face. “What in God’s name...?”
“Uncle Titus,” exclaimed Lady Helena, her head hanging upside down, loose black hair trailing nearly to the mud, “tell your great lummox of a groom to unhand me. He’s ruined my dress.”
“Perhaps your dress deserves to be ruined,” scolded Girdleston, snapping his fingers. Two grooms rushed to peel her away.
To Declan’s great surprise, she allowed it. They set her upright and she went about smoothing her skirt and wringing out sopping hair.
“But what were you thinking, running down the street in a downpour?” scolded Girdleston.
