Page 82 of The Scandalous Spinster

“We’ve got it,” Clara said excitedly.

It was not Bram who answered.

“The marquis sends his thanks.”

Bram cursed when the cold metal of a pistol touched his bloody temple.

“You must have a skull made of stone,” the footman said.

“Let her go,” Bram replied, “and you might survive the night.”

“I told you those stairs weren’t enough to do him in,” the second footman complained.

“Shut up, we’ve got him now.”

Clara had stopped breathing at some point during the exchange. All she could see was the pistol pressing into Bram’s skin. She felt ill. Furious. Terrified.

“Clara, look at me,” he said quietly. His eyes were so blue. So calm. He was about to be shot, and he was comforting her.

She straightened her spine. He smiled briefly.

“Hand us those papers there,” the second footman demanded, “and maybe we won’t kill him.”

“Don’t,” Bram said. “He’ll kill me either way.”

Clara was a woman who used rules and decorum and laudanum in tea poured in the proper way. She wasn’t a woman who knew the first thing about guns or fighting. She wasn’t Sybil, or Peony.

She was Miss Vinegar.

And she’d forgotten her own lessons.

Her posture wilted. Her eyelids fluttered.

Bram’s gaze sharpened.

“Hand it here,” the footman barked.

He did not expect her to fight. He did not expect anything from her at all, beyond a certain measure of fear and compliance. And as she had told Miss Cunningham what felt like months ago: if you gave people what they expected, they seldom looked any deeper.

So she would give them exactly what they expected.

“I feel…” She let herself collapse, the papers still firmly in hand. It was just a moment of distraction.

It was all Bram needed.

Before she hit the floor, he had the footman disarmed. A step backward out of the trajectory of the bullet, a hard hit to the other man’s forearm, and the pistol dropped into Bram’s waiting palm. He followed it with a powerful punch, breaking the man’s nose. The crack sounded through the library.

The second footman lunged forward. Clara kicked out, catching him in the ankles.

He toppled like a startled tree. His head bounced off the raised floorboard and he rolled over, groaning. Bram punched the first footman, now clutching his bleeding face, in the nose again. He gave a howl that turned to a gurgle of pain and doubled over, but not before he managed to pull the bell cord. The tassel was blue and gold and did not look like the regular summons for household staff.

“I don’t think that calls for a tea tray,” Bram said, pulling Clara to her feet. “You’re going to be the death of me, woman.”

“You’re welcome,” she said tartly. Elation and vindication coursed through her like champagne.

Too many charging footsteps sounded in the corridor.

Bram took her hand. “Time to go.”