Her last word set everyone in motion. The men converged, knifes and fists drawn.
Nic backpedaled, the snake slipping through their reach as he’d boasted he would, blocking stabs and fists from all directions as he sprinted for the front door, the ‘wolves’ trailing after him.
Everyone piled out onto the narrow cobblestones, Renard and Camille bringing up the rear.
As the narrow street’s edge bordering the dark water of the Thames came into view, Renard heard a knowingsplash, and his stomach dropped.
They waited—the eight of them—in a line, all leaning over the unguarded walk. Silence reigned as everyone held their breath waiting for Nic’s head to break the surface.
The water’s surface remained placid; two heartbeats, three... ten.
Renard counted, holding his own breath until he couldn’t anymore. “Think he drowned?”
Syd gave a sharp whistle.
Zans and the three other young men took off down the banks in opposite directions, following the murky water and offering a series of silent hand signals, before two of the four split off down bisecting alleys to check the river from lower down.
Markus squeezed Camille’s shoulder. “Head back inside.” He nodded to Syd.
She nodded back. “I’ll run the perimeter up to Caring Cross. If he thinks to sneak away up stream, I’ll cut him off.”
Markus nodded. “I’ll scout out front in case he circles back. Meet back here in twenty.”
The two of them took off, leaving Camille and Renard alone on the waterway.
Without a word, Camille went back into the tavern.
Renard closed the door behind him and took in the broken glass on the bar and floor, glanced over Hawkins’s body and then at the destroyed window, and finally stared at the woman who stood in the middle of it all, somehow not a drop of blood on her, as if heaven had protected one of their own from harm. The nasty wounds on Nic’s face, the mess... Camille had fought until the end.
“You hit him with a glass?” He smiled. His little fighter.
“My first reaction was to use my boot, if that makes you feel better?” She seemed to take in the scene herself for the first time, her eyes wide. “Scarlet is going to kill me when she sees all this.”
Renard didn’t know who Scarlet was—the owner of the bar, perhaps—but he loved the way she said the words with relief. His duchess had friends, people who would most definitely care more for their friend’s well-being before griping about a broken glass or two. People he couldn’t wait to meet and thank for offering kindness and compassion in her past when he couldn’t.
“Milly.” His boots crunched through the glass. Any space between them became unbearable. He’d thought he’d lost her. When he’d stumbled into the tavern and seen Nic’s hold on her and the knife in his hand, his heart had stopped.
He reached for her and froze at the blood covering his hands, fingers, arms, everything. Dropping his arms, he stood back to breathe her in and convince himself she was safe, one way or another.
Camille flung herself into his arms, smearing blood across her dress and face when she buried it in his shoulder. “You came for me.”
He cupped the back of her head in his hands and turned her face to look up at him, his body shaking with relief. “Always.”
*
Camille stared upat her husband—the drying blood crusting his hair and face, the crumpled condition of his wool coat, the completelackof deadly injuries on his person—a mixture of relief and irritation surfacing now that the immediate threat of death was gone. “You left.”
“I got a letter from Madam. Though it seems it was a ruse, as was the means with which you found yourself here, I assume.”
He’d gotten a letter as well? “Therewasa letter, barely legible. I thought it was from you.”
“You couldn’t tell the difference?” He sounded angry.
“Are you blaming me for coming here? I thought you were turning yourself over to the authorities in some ridiculous self-righteous display of maintaining your honor.”
“Honor has been a grand relief to many when the guillotine falls, but you... Do you expect me to rejoice that the woman I love was being a right idiot and got caught by a sadistic killer?”
She reeled back, but not from the insult, not really.
