Page 77 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

He stood at the end of the alley, one hand clamped over his sleeve, blood to the elbow. One of Harcourt’s men raised his pistol and shot at him, but thankfully missed. A young man in a checked coat hauled at Finch’s shoulders to get him away.

Across forty feet, Finch looked straight at me.

Alive. He was alive. He would see us go, and he would tell Steele.

Then a hand took the back of my neck and put me into the carriage, and Chrissie came in on top of me, trussed up, same as me. The door slammed, and the horses went.

Harcourt sat facing us, his gloved hands resting on the seat and looked out the window at London going past.

I set myself to counting the turnings and keeping the order of them, because they were the only thing in the world I had to carry. Out of Bond Street. West into Brook Street, held up once and then again, the coachman making no more haste than a man carrying his master to his club.

Harcourt watched me do it. Once, he almost smiled.

After a while, the carriage slowed.

He reached across and gently drew the cloth out of my mouth. I would have taken the fingers off at the knuckle if my hands had been free.

The door was yanked open. One of his men stood on the pavement, at the corner of Grosvenor Square. He had brought us home.

Harcourt pointed to Chrissie. "This one. Lady Chrysanthemum, you may go."

“No! I won’t leave Rosie!” Her gown was open six inches at the shoulder seam, her hair was down her back, and there was a mark coming up dark along her jaw.

“Go,” I said.

The man took her arm and put her out onto the pavement. She went down on one knee on the flags and came straight back up. She stood in a torn gown while he untied her with every window in Mayfair to witness it.

“Run, Chrissie, run,” I said.

She gathered her skirts up in both fists and ran.

Somehow, I managed to climb on the seat, and then get my shoulder against the glass. I kept her in sight for as long as I could.

She ran across the grass, across the gravel, straight over the square with her hair coming loose behind her. Not to our own door. She had understood, my sister, in the half second she had been given.

The last of it I had was Chrissie on Steele’s steps with both fists against Steele’s door.

The whip cracked, and the horses took off.

I collapsed against the squabs, as the square slid away, and my wrists went numb behind me.

But Chrissie was free. She would tell Steele, and he would come for me.

Chapter

Twenty-Nine

An Unexpected Caller

Whitfield’s reports lay across my desk in three columns. I had been at them since noon hunting the seam. Eleven acres beyond Hammersmith. Fourteen men on the wages of a company that landed no cargo. A wall of solicitors, a wharf that was a laundry, and somewhere inside all of it a door with a lock on it that a man could be got through.

A little past three somebody struck my front door hard. Not a knock. A knock had a rhythm to it. This was a pounding. I was out of my chair and down the corridor.

Lady Chrysanthemum stood in my entrance hall with Milford’s hand at her elbow. She had no bonnet. Her hair streamed down her back. The shoulder of her gown was open to the seam. Gravel dust marred both palms where she had gone down somewhere.

I raced down the stairs and held her by both arms. “What’s wrong?”

“They’ve taken Rosalynd.” She could barely manage a breath.