Shameless (15 page)

But here, inside the Great Hall of Trelawney Castle, where the most dastardly of acts were taking place all around him, he felt nothing out of the way at all.

Safe, in fact.

He had taken care to secure a spot near the stage, which was momentarily empty as the bidding on the too-thin, flaxen-haired watering pot for whom the harpy was being paid had just ended. From his position he could see the first emergence from behind the wall of each female as she was led to the stage to be sold. That Lady Elizabeth was on the premises he’d had no doubt even before he had arrived at the castle: he’d thought he had recognized the carriage that had stolen her away amongst the vehicles being held in the stable adjacent to the ferry, and had subsequently confirmed with one of the ostlers on duty (how did not matter) that a red-haired lady, insensible from the sound of it, had indeed been taken from it and transported to the castle. Not too long since, he’d spotted the lady herself being dragged by the hair toward
the holding chamber, a sight that had not sat well with him. But again, he had reminded himself of his plan, which was really quite the best solution in that it allowed both of them to get away unnoticed. That being the case, and knowing that the women inside that chamber must all be brought forth from it sooner or later, and with no cause for alarm in his immediate surroundings that he could perceive, he set himself to enjoying his wine.

And so it was that Neil was sipping Burgundy and idly looking over the crowd when the first inkling that yet another of his plans might go awry caused him to frown and glance to his left.

There was a disturbance in the hall where the women were kept. The shouts and laughter and jumble of conversation all around him made it difficult to be sure, but he thought he was hearing sounds of discord, a rush of many feet. He was just straightening away from the pillar in reaction when an explosion of shrieks split the air and a bevy of females burst into view, bolting out of the hallway and toward the stage in a tidal wave of flying tresses and flapping skirts. He caught a glimpse of long red hair and a yellow dress at the head of the screaming tide and recognized Lady Elizabeth with that first astounded glance before the stage blocked her from his view as she flew past it out of sight. A jumble of shrieking females racing behind her likewise vanished from his sight behind the stage, and then he beheld, three yards or so behind the pack, a trio of burly, puce-faced, pistol-waving thugs giving chase. That was enough. Trouble was clearly at hand. He thrust his glass into the hands of the surprised roue to his right, who had turned to gape in obvious confusion at the goings-on, and took off after them.

“What’s to do?” The bewildered question floated to his ears from somewhere behind him, from the not-yet-sure-what-was-happening audience.

“Is it part of the entertainment, do you think?” came the equally bewildered reply.

“By God, they’re escaping!” A sharper knife hit on the truth.

“We can’t let that happen! After them!”

“’Elp! ’elp!” a fleeing female screeched as he drew near enough to make out individual voices in the crowd he chased. “Lord a-mercy, somebody ’elp us!”

“Crikey, don’t shoot ’em, Johnson!” one of the pursuing men just ahead of him shouted to another, who was leveling his pistol at the pack. “We wants ’em caught, not dead!”

“Don’t shoot anybody! What if we hits one of the customers?”

“Run!” a female shrieked.

“Just catch ’em! Stop ’em!”

“Head for the door,” a woman cried. This voice Neil recognized: Lady Elizabeth, without the possibility of mistake.

Pulse quickening with alarm, he rounded the corner of the stage in time to see that the women were headed true as a swarm of bees toward a shadowy open doorway in the rear wall. Just as the first of them, his red-haired charmer included, were about to reach it, a man stepped into the gap, fists on hips, grinning as he blocked the way. Wearing the white shirt and leather vest that marked him as a lower-order servant, he was almost as tall and wide as the doorway. His belly was round as a barrel, and his thick legs were planted wide apart.

In Neil’s judgment, the women had about as much chance of getting past him as they did of breaking through the stone wall itself.

“Malloy, look lively! Grab ’em!” This shout from one of the men in front of him, presumably an exhortation to the behemoth in the doorway, pierced the tumult that was now so loud it echoed from the walls.

“What do we do?” Terror shivered in one woman’s cry.

“Keep going! He can’t stop all of us!” Lady Elizabeth yelled.

“Get the ginger! She be the ringleader! Grab ’er, Malloy!”

The ginger—Lady Elizabeth, without a doubt. Cold with fear for her, Neil closed the gap between himself and the three men ahead of him in a pair of bounds. Still some yards behind him ran a sea of others, the men in the audience combined with those employed at the castle in a great jostling horde, their pounding feet and shouted imprecations echoing through the vast space as loud as an oncoming army.

“Look at that! We got ’em now!”

“Hold fast there, Malloy!
Troublesome gaggle o’ wenches!”

“Aye, and when we get ’em back again we’ll make ’em pay.”

Neil reached the trio ahead of him in time to overhear that panted exchange. Knowing that his plan was well and truly out the window now, along with any hope of getting out of there with Lady Elizabeth unnoticed, Neil lunged forward, caught the slowest-moving of the three by the collar, swung him around, and flattened him with a single blow.

Startled, the other two whirled.

“What the ’ell?”

“Who . . . ?”

Even as the remaining two thugs jerked up their pistols, even as the shouts behind him drew closer and the sounds of more feet, many feet, rolled over him in a thunderous wave, a fresh round of shrieks from the beleaguered flock of females distracted him.

“Miss, no! Ye can’t!”

“Keep coming! Fly past!” Lady Elizabeth cried. Then, louder, she added in what was almost a roar, “Stand aside, sirrah!”

Arrested, Neil was just in time to watch as Lady Elizabeth, her hands bound behind her, raced a little ahead of her companions. His eyes widened as she bent forward and charged the three-times-her-size man blocking the doorway like a small golden ram intent on bursting through a flimsy garden gate. Aghast, Neil could do nothing but observe as she head-butted him right in his ample gut.

“Oomph!” Clearly taken by surprise, the giant doubled over and took a staggering step back, but held fast in the doorway, grabbing for Lady Elizabeth, who’d bounced off. He caught a handful of skirt . . .

“No! Let
go
!”

“’Elp ’er!”

“We be trapped! We be trapped!”

With the pursuit closing off all possibility of retreat and nowhere else to go, the women were indeed well and truly trapped, Neil saw. The swarm of females bumped to a confused stop just short of the
doorway where Lady Elizabeth was now being dragged shrieking and fighting into the giant’s hold. Just as Neil observed that, a pistol exploded almost in his face and a bullet whistled past his cheekbone, so close that its breeze tickled his skin. He was thus recalled instantly to the business at hand even as the shouts behind him crescendoed into what sounded like a single-throated bellow. The bullet careened over the heads of the pursuing crowd, causing the front-runners to duck and backpedal and the whole to let out a mighty yell that was loud enough to put cannon fire to shame.

“Don’t shoot ’im!” the man in front of him who had not pulled the trigger shouted to the other, who had. “Can’t you see ’e’s a bloody toff?”

Had he not dodged instinctively, he might now be dead, Neil knew, but his heightened senses had once again served him well. Angry for allowing himself to become distracted and thus nearly get killed, he fell upon his assailant, and his cohort, with controlled ferocity—he was still trying not to kill, which was what called for such careful control—and dispatched them with two swift blows. The second one was still falling unconscious to the ground as he snatched the man’s presumably loaded pistol out of the air and, thrusting it into his waistband, whirled to dash to Lady Elizabeth’s aid.

The giant now had a huge, meaty arm hooked around her waist, hauling her in as, screaming, she struggled to get free.

“Let me go! You let me go!” she cried. Kicking and squirming like a worm on a hook, she was nonetheless helpless, caught up in the giant’s grip as she was. Still, she fought for all she was worth while a few valiant females tried to come to her assistance and the rest fluttered around in a tight little group that seemed to have screaming as its main purpose. The brave few threw shoulders and knees into the fray and kicked at the man’s shins and in general did their possible to effect Lady Elizabeth’s release. For all the good their efforts appeared to be doing, they might as well have been attacking an oak. Even in the throes of warding them off, the man managed to both hold on to his prisoner and block the door.

“Push past!” Lady Elizabeth yelled to her fellow females, and buried her teeth in the thickly muscled arm nearest her.

“Ouch! Ye little besom!” the giant bellowed, snatching his arm back only to grab her neck with a hamlike hand and use it to lift her clear up off her feet, shaking her like an enraged bull mastiff with an especially annoying rat. Lady Elizabeth, gasping for air, writhed desperately in an effort to escape the hand that was clearly in the process of crushing her windpipe. Just a few feet away from the shrieking knot of females now, sprinting toward them, toward the pair in the doorway, for all he was worth, Neil watched the giant bunch his free fist and draw back his arm, and he knew he was out of time: if her throat wasn’t crushed in the next second or so, the punch that was coming would likely smash every bone in the lady’s lovely face. “I’ll kill ye for that, ye bloody trollop, see iffen I don’t! I’ll beat ye bloody senseless, I will!”

“Hold her, Malloy!” a man shouted from not too far behind, giving notice that the rest of the pursuit was closing fast. “Hold yer place!”

“Let ’er go!” one of the females, a tiny black-haired mosquito of a woman, shrieked, flying at the man, while Lady Elizabeth, obviously on the verge of being rendered senseless, nevertheless struggled like a madwoman even as the big, anvil-like fist hurtled toward her face.

It never connected. Instead, the silver-handled knife Neil had snatched from his boot and thrown with a deadly accuracy that far surpassed that of any bullet found its mark, burying itself to the hilt in the giant’s neck. Eyes widening in surprise, releasing the lady to clutch at his neck, the giant staggered back a pace, then collapsed just inside the doorway, rolling onto his back and kicking convulsively before lying still. Shuddering, Lady Elizabeth crumpled, dropping to her knees and doubling over. Her face, which Neil just glimpsed before it was buried in her lap, was now utterly white. She seemed to be fighting to breathe.

Sometimes killing was the only thing that worked.

“Malloy!” The shout came from behind him. “He’s given way! Malloy!”

“Miss! Miss!” the loyal little mosquito cried at the same time, hovering over Lady Elizabeth. “We ’ave to go!”

Lady Elizabeth lifted her head and made an abortive movement that made Neil think she was trying to get up but could not.

“Keep going!” one of the other females screamed in warning as the bunch of them surged forward, surrounding her. “They be coming! Get through! Leap over!”

Taking heed, the women rushed the doorway, crowding through, abandoning Lady Elizabeth posthaste and leaping over the fallen giant like a herd of spooked deer even as Neil—acutely conscious of the yelling, onrushing crowd just strides behind him now, and in grim expectation of taking a bullet or knife to the back at any instant, if anyone had seen him throw the knife—reached her. Her glorious hair cascaded over her shoulders like silken flames. Her bountiful bosom heaved, threatening to overspill the bright confines of her bodice. Her beautiful face was both unnaturally flushed and bruised in places as it tilted up to his. For the space of perhaps a heartbeat, their gazes met. Fear shone out of her wide blue eyes, and he realized that with the hood shadowing his face and the desperate circumstances no doubt disordering her senses to a degree, it was unlikely that she recognized him. Her lips parted as if she would say something, but not a sound came out, and anyway there was no time.

“I’ll see you safe,” he promised, but whether she heard and understood over the tumult was impossible to tell. Scooping her up in his arms with barely a pause, registering her delicate scent and warmth and softness only peripherally, he ran through the doorway with her not inconsiderable weight clutched to his chest and leaped the giant just as a pistol spat behind him. The bullet he had been expecting splintered stone in the approximate place where his head had been a mere split second before.

He ducked reflexively, and the domino’s hood fell back. Lady Elizabeth flinched in his arms, and he tightened his hold on her. The yards of silk that comprised her gown made her abominably slippery, and dropping her at this crucial moment would be disastrous for them both. Their eyes met again. Hers widened, and her lips moved.

“You!” she said. Or at least, he thought that was what she said, but he couldn’t be sure because the women, many of whom were already flying up the narrow back stairs urged on by others who were pushing
and screaming behind them as they fought to get up the stairs in turn, shrieked in window-shattering concert at the explosion of the bullet, nearly deafening him.

“’Ware ricochets!” a man cried behind him. “Demmed walls in the tower are stone!”

“Stop him! He’s stealing a gel!”

“Don’t hit the bawds, ye bloody idiots! The chase does but add spice, and the night’s yet young!”

“Go! Go!” a chorus of females screamed, and go they did, pounding up the stairs in a riotous pack, with every footfall seemingly accompanied by a fresh volley of ear-splitting shrieks.

With only seconds left before the pursuers were upon them and knowing he needed at least one hand free, Neil threw Lady Elizabeth over his shoulder with a barked “Hold on!” to which he could not tell if she replied. He then paused only long enough to yank his knife from the fallen giant’s blood-soaked neck, swipe it clean on the dead man’s sleeve, and drop it in his own pocket.