Yankee Earl (25 page)

      
Jason felt it slash through his heavy jacket but miss his arm as he reached for the assassin's wrist. He tried to pivot away from the killer's next thrust but ran smack into one hammer like fist that sent him flying. Ears ringing, he stumbled, trying desperately to regain his footing when a second blow to his eye almost snapped his head from his shoulders.

      
“'E’s mine now.” The knife-wielding ringleader stepped in for the kill.

      
Jason went down on one knee, cursing in no particular order his own stupidity, Rachel's beautiful body, his grandfather's blackmailing schemes and whoever had paid these men. Just as his opponent struck, a shot rang out. The ringleader emitted a high-pitched screech and dropped the knife, clutching his right arm, which streamed blood.

      
The behemoth shambled back a step, his small piggy eye flashing from side to side, looking for escape. A small toff with a deadly-looking rapier advanced toward him, followed by another taller fellow whose smoking pistol gave mute testimony that he had fired the shot. The one-eyed man charged his smaller opponent, hoping to seize the swell and snap his slender spine. His mistake.

      
Drum coolly drove the point of his rapier into the man's throat. Meanwhile, Rachel pointed her second pistol calmly at the heart of the babbling assassin who was rocking back and forth holding his shattered arm. Jason gritted his teeth and tried to squint through his one good eye, unable to believe what it revealed as he struggled to stand up.

      
“You great addlepated, chuckle-headed, maggoty-brained clodpole!” Rachel yelled at her betrothed, so frightened and furious at the same time, she could barely hold the pistol steady on his would-be assassin. “If you wish to kill yourself, kindly wait until after we are mar—”

      
“Quiet, before you give away that which you want none of our audience to know,” he hissed at her, glancing around the room at the now curious and cunning expressions on dozens of grimy, hard-eyed faces. Then, more softly he said, “Fine shooting, Countess.”

      
“Not really. I was aiming for his heart,” she admitted before she was able to stop herself.

      
“Frightened for me, Countess?” he whispered, watching her stiffen in outrage. “Tis better you left him alive. He may be reasonable enough to tell us who hired him.”

      
She looked disdainfully at the man she'd shot, then back to the earl. “I have learned not to expect reasonableness in a male. 'Tis enough if they have learned not to drool on themselves.”

      
“Please save your lovers' bickering for later,” Drum interjected. The watch will not venture into this cesspit, and the patrons are getting rather restive.”

      
“Bleedin’ swells, comin’ ‘ere and startin' trouble,” the barkeep said, causing a chorus of loud angry curses and mutterings to fill the air. Rachel, who had given her unfired pistol to Jason, quickly reloaded the spent one with practiced efficiency. She leveled the weapon on the barkeep, who quickly subsided.

      
Ignoring the crowd, Drum stepped neatly over the corpses and seized the wounded man by one grimy lapel, propelling him toward the door. “Watch them and back slowly out,” he instructed Rachel and Jason.

      
His companions needed no further encouragement as they beat a retreat, dragging the howling assassin with them. Hailing a jarvey proved difficult, since none voluntarily came into the area. They had to walk down dark and dangerous streets toward safety while practically carrying the wounded man, who was now slumped in semi consciousness.

      
Jason's head felt as if all of Napoleon's artillery had been unleashed inside it. The ache in his ear pounded; and his eye, now completely swollen closed, throbbed wickedly.
A duet! Bloody lovely!
“How the hell can someone so slight weigh so much?” he muttered, bowed down by the assassin.

      
“He scarce has reason to aid us, now does he?” Rachel replied, her tone too sweet. She was still seething with fury over Jason's foolish brush with death, but damned if she would give him the satisfaction of knowing how terrified the idea of losing him had made her. Changing the subject before he turned his attention toward her, she suggested, “The best course might be to take him to Bow Street and let the authorities deal with him. They know how to extract information from creatures such as this.”

      
“I believe we might have more persuasive means at hand,” Drum replied in a soft, deadly voice.

      
Jason only grunted his agreement. Once safely away from the wharves, Drum backed the killer into an alley, the rapier at the man's throat a pressing reminder of just how deadly the dandy could be.

      
“Now, old chap, you are going to tell us who paid you to murder the earl.”

      
His injured arm now forgotten as visions of the huge tar's ruined throat seized hold of his mind, the assassin bleated, “No need to be gettin' all grimflashy, yer lordship. I’d tell if I could, I would. But I dunno who 'e was.” When the blade punctured the grimy skin at his Adam's apple, the man tried to swallow down his utter terror. “'E stops me two nights ago in Whitechapel. Pulls me in an alley just like this ‘ere. Dark as a blackamoor's face it were. 'E offered five guineas, but I never seen 'is face.”

      
"Too busy looking at the coin, I warrant." Jason's voice was resigned.

      
“What else can you remember? Was he young? Old? How was he dressed?” Rachel asked, making no attempt to disguise her feminine voice.

      
The assassin gaped at her. “Gor, ye be a woman!”

      
“A woman who will shoot off your wretched nether parts if you do not talk quickly,” she replied calmly, raising her pistol and pointing it at the little man's crotch.

      
He flattened himself against the wall, trying in vain to shield his “parts” with his one functioning hand. He entreated, “'E were young. Dressed like a swell. Taller 'n me but lean. 'Is clothes was Bond Street stuff. That's all I could tell, I swear on me mum's grave.”

      
“I doubt he knows who his mother is,” Drum said contemptuously.

      
"The description could fit young Mountjoy," Jason replied.

      
“Or any one of a thousand young toffs about London,” Rachel said in frustration.

      
They spent another quarter hour dissecting his story and asking detailed questions. He begged for mercy, and then fainted from the pain of his shattered arm. When it became apparent that he was telling all he knew, Drum made a decision.

      
“I shall turn him over to the watch.” He looked at Jason and tsked. “You've bled all over your cravat and allowed this ruffian's knife to ruin that splendid kerseymere I selected at Westin's,” he scolded, holding up the slashed jacket sleeve.

      
“Better the jacket than my arm,” Jason replied.

      
“Most regrettable that tar only struck your hard Yankee skull, which seems as impervious to prudence as it is to pain. Had he pounded some sense into your brain, this whole bumble might prove worthwhile,” Rachel said.

      
“You take him home and tend his wounds,” Drum instructed Rachel as he signaled a jarvey guiding his nag down the cobbled streets in the predawn light.

      
“I can take care of myself,” Jason averred, then at once realized the folly of that pronouncement.

      
“So you have amply demonstrated on…let me see…how many occasions now, m'lord earl?” Her voice dripped with false sweetness, masking the fear that twisted her belly in knots as they climbed into the hackney.

      
They started back to the Cargrave city house in absolute silence. Jason was feeling the aftereffects of his overindulgence, compounded by the beating he had taken. He leaned his head back against the musty-smelling squabs and tried his best to ignore the simmering anger of the woman sitting across from him.

      
That was impossible. Even dressed in her old riding breeches, baggy shirt and boots, her hair hidden and her face smeared with grime, she possessed a compelling femininity that called to him. Why her? Of all the women he had ever known, why did this swaggering, wasp-tongued female drive him to the brink of madness? Especially considering that he could never make love to her. Perhaps that was it, he tried to reassure himself as he concentrated on the pounding in his head. He desired her because he could not have her.

      
Forbidden fruit was always the sweetest. Images of her swathed in silk and lace in that fitting room danced in his mind. He tried to focus on the dull ache of his swollen eye, but her presence was still overpowering.

      
Rachel sat ramrod straight as the coach bounced along, tense as the spring of a tightly wound timepiece, unable to take her eyes off him. What if he had been killed? There had been so many attempts on his life. His luck could not last forever. He would indeed be far better off back in America. She should be glad of the plan for his escape after their nuptials. But she could feel nothing but a bottomless sense of impending loss.

      
You are a fool. He does not want you.
Certainly his folly this night made that abundantly clear, if the prospect of going through with the ceremony had driven him to such drunken recklessness.

      
He seemed to fill the close confines of the coach. She could smell the familiar male scent of him blended not unattractively with the sharpness of blood, sweat and ale. His long legs were sprawled across the floor, and his head was tilted back against the cushions. At least those mocking blue eyes were closed, not fastened upon her. She could drink her fill of his ruined beauty without being caught at it.

      
Even drunk, disheveled and bloody, with his eye blacked, he was splendid, damn him. Dark hair hung in rumpled strands around his face, and those thick lashes fanned down over his eyes. She could see the black bristles of beard along his stubborn jaw line in the faint light of dawn. His stock and shirt had been torn loose in the fight, and the hairy expanse of his chest was visible. Her eyes moved lower, then abruptly stopped before trespassing into such utterly forbidden territory.

      
“Are you taking inventory of my remaining undamaged assets…or gloating over my misery, Countess?” he asked at length, pleased with her small gasp of dismay at being caught studying him.

      
Rachel felt the heat rush to her cheeks and pressed herself back against the cushions, trying to ward off his mockery. The insufferable lout! “Continue to bait me, m'lord, and I will make you the same promise I made that little vermin back in the alley. Your assets will not long remain undamaged.” She caressed the butt of the Clark pistol in her sash.

      
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, as he peered at her with his one good eye. “You took as foolish a risk as did I tonight. If those men in that grog shop had discovered you were female, they would have torn you limb from limb.”

      
“Your gratitude overwhelms me,” she snapped. “I risked my life to save yours. With half the scum in London trying to dispatch you, why did you slip off alone in a drunken stupor?” The moment she asked the question, Rachel could have bitten her tongue. She did not want an answer, for she knew what it must be.

      
The earl, however, did not have the slightest idea why he had done what he had. He shook his head, then groaned at the renewed agony the sudden movement ignited. To add to his misery, the jarvey pulled to an abrupt halt in front of the Cargrave residence. Jason cursed and held his pounding head as if it were shattered crystal while Rachel shoved him from the coach.

      
Once inside the house, she roused the servants, several of whom had fallen asleep in the hallways while awaiting word of his lordship's return. The servants gaped in horror at the young earl's future countess garbed in male attire. Her face was smeared with filth and her clothes bloody, yet she appeared in complete command as she issued orders. No one dared to question her.

      
“Fetch me hot water, plenty of it, and a large piece of beefsteak if cook has any,” she demanded of the haughty butler. She turned to one of the footmen and instructed him, “Go to my city house and rouse Mistress Yeats. She knows where I keep my poultices. Fetch her here with the satchel at once.”

      
“I do not require nursing, Countess, merely a fortnight or so of uninterrupted sleep,” Jason protested.

      
She slung his arm over her shoulders and guided his stumbling steps toward the stairs. “You will have sleep aplenty after I see that you are cleaned up, sweated out and thoroughly poulticed to draw the blood from your eye and ear.”

      
That sounded ominous indeed. “I have survived far worse injuries in tavern brawls from Florida to the Azores. You need not trouble yourself.”

      
Rachel ignored the idiotic assertion. “Which is your room?” she asked as they reached the top of the stairs.