Jane Feather - Valentine

"Hurry," he said, and she realized that he couldn't reload and that it wouldn't take more than a second for her attackers to recover from their surprise and understand both that and the fact that her rescuer had only one arm.

She took the three paces to the door at a run as Edward stepped backward into the street. Long Meg and her two assistants rushed after them, and Theo spun and kicked the door closed in their faces.

"Run!" She grabbed Edward's arm and then stared wildly down the empty street. The hackney carriage had disappeared.

Edward swore as he struggled one-handed to reload his pistol. His own hackney had disappeared as completely as Theo's, and he guessed that the sound of the pistol shot had driven both jarveys away to a less volatile neighborhood.

The door of the Fisherman's Rest crashed open, and the two men leaped into the street, Long Meg on their heels.

Edward abandoned his attempts to reload and turned to run with Theo. Their pursuers bellowed as they came after them, and Theo realized grimly that they were calling for support. She stumbled, fell to one knee, and was up and running again in the same breath. The pounding of heavy booted feet behind her seemed to be in her blood, and she could almost feel the hot breath of their pursuers on her neck. Edward couldn't run as fast as she could, his body was unbalanced, and she hung on to his hand, desperately trying to keep him from tripping.

And then the curricle bowled around the corner from Smithfield. The galloping team drove straight past the fugitives and came to a plunging, rearing halt in front of their followers, who fell back in terror before the flailing hooves, the wildly rolling eyes of the four magnificent animals.

Theo and Edward gulped air into their tortured lungs, allowing the slow relief of salvation to seep through them. The Earl of Stoneridge said nothing to the three from the Fisherman's Rest, but he sat still as a graven image, the curricle and team blocking the street. His hands moved on the reins and the horses reared again. The two men and Long Meg retreated backward to the door of the tavern and disappeared behind it.

Only then did the earl bring his horses under control. The street was too narrow for him to turn his equipage. He cast a glance over his shoulder to where Edward and Theo stood, still gasping for breath.

"Get up," he said. "Both of you."

Theo gazed at her husband's face, and the realization crept inexorably over her that she was about to exchange the frying pan for the fire.

She stepped up to the curricle. "You mustn't blame Edward for -"

"I don't," he interrupted with icy calm. "Get up."

The curricle wasn't built to accommodate three people, and Theo found herself sitting practically in Edward's lap once they'd scrambled up to the seat.

Sylvester said nothing and beyond moving sideways a couple of inches offered no assistance as they scrunched into place. Once sure that they were securely seated, he gave his horses the office to start. No one said anything until Dock Street was well behind them; then Edward cleared his throat and spoke with more than a hint of constraint

"I beg your pardon, sir, for bungling it like that. I should have thought… remembered -"

"I don't hold you responsible for my wife's actions, Fairfax," Sylvester interrupted, his voice as hard as iron.

Edward fell silent, wrestling with his mortification. Once he would have been able to handle that situation; instead, he'd had to be rescued like a cocky schoolboy who'd tried to take on the school bully.

Theo touched his arm in sympathy, knowing exactly how he was feeling, but he glared at her, blaming her for his grief and embarrassment, for involving him in a situation where he was forced to acknowledge his limitations.

She glanced at her husband's profile. There was no reassurance there. His mouth and jaw looked as if they'd been carved in granite, and she knew his eyes would be spurting fire in the arctic-gray depths.

"Sylvester?" she began hesitantly.

"I presume you'd prefer not to hear what I have to say to you on the open street, so I suggest you hold your tongue."

Theo was silenced, and they drove without speaking another word through the City with its banking houses, past St. Paul's Cathedral, and along the Strand, where the landscape became more familiar, the streets broader, the private houses more imposing, the shop windows filled with the luxury items that would appeal to Fashionable London at the height of the Season.

Sylvester, no longer under the spur of fear, weaved his way at a more leisurely pace through the streets, giving a reasonable berth to elegant landaus and heavy drays, and allowing the throng of foot traffic ample time to move out of his way. With Theo safe beside him he felt emptied of all emotion, as if skin and bone merely contained a vast, cold void.

"You'll have no objection if I put you down at Piccadilly, Fairfax?" The curt question came after such a long silence that both Edward and Theo jumped.

"No, of course not, sir. I'm much obliged," Edward said miserably.

Sylvester drew up at the corner of Piccadilly and St. James's, and Edward awkwardly descended to the pavement. He stood for a moment, trying to think of something to say; then Sylvester bade him a brusque good day and the curricle moved off.

Alone with her husband, Theo looked over her shoulder and raised a hand in forlorn farewell. She had the air of one in a tumbrel on her way to the guillotine, Edward thought, feeling sympathy despite his own distress. He'd rarely seen her apprehensive, ever, as a child on the occasions when she faced the wrath of her grandfather, but her anxiety on this occasion struck him as perfectly justifiable. He didn't think he'd ever seen anyone quite as intimidating as the Earl of Stoneridge that afternoon.

With Edward's departure the vast, cold void filled up again, and Sylvester's anger burned anew with a fierce flame. Theo had frightened him more than he'd ever been frightened before. When he'd rounded the corner of Dock Street and understood how a minute later would have been too late, the pure terror that he'd been holding down had ripped through him, turning his gut to water. When he thought of how only the most accidental of circumstances had alerted him to her dangerous exploit, he felt sick, his internal vision once again filled with images of her stripped body floating in the greasy black waters of the Thames.

He drove into the mews and alighted from the curricle, tossing the reins to the head groom before holding up an imperative hand to assist his wife.

Theo barely touched his fingers as she jumped to the ground. The scar stood out, a blue-tinged slash across his forehead, and she realized that she'd seen him angry before, but never quite like this. Foreboding swirled in her belly, lifted the fine hairs on the nape of her neck, turned her knees to jelly. She had never been frightened of anyone before. She hadn't even been afraid this afternoon; there hadn't been time. But at this moment, facing the consequences of what now struck her as a piece of foolhardy craziness, she was scared stiff.

She didn't know this man, who now governed her life, because he wouldn't let her know him. Oh, she knew his body, she knew what gave him pleasure. And she knew what would make him laugh and what would annoy him. All trivial pieces of present knowledge. But how could she truly know her husband if he kept his innermost thoughts from her, shielded her from his plans and decisions, and told her only the bare facts of his previous existence with none of the emotions and responses that would have shown her the man who had lived that life?

She couldn't begin to guess what was going to happen.

Sylvester moved her ahead of him with a hand in the small of her back, out of the mews and around to the street entrance of Belmont House.

Foster opened the door for them, but his greeting died on his lips as he took in the countess's white face and the earl's stark severity.

Sylvester's hand moved around her waist, sweeping her with him across the hall and toward the stairs, so fast now her feet skimmed the parquet. The marble staircase seemed to rise interminably in front of her. She was acutely conscious of his closeness, his breath rustling over the top of her head, the warmth of his body. But it was a menacing proximity. Always before just the sense of him close to her had sent jolts of arousal into her belly and ripples of anticipation over her skin. But the jolts and the ripples now arose from a dreadful suspense.

The long corridor stretched ahead as they reached the top of the stairs, and she was swept along to the double doors at the end. Sylvester leaned forward to fling open one door, and then they were inside her own apartment, surrounded by the familiar objects, the gracious furnishings, the cheerful glow and crackle of the fire. But she could find no reassurance there.

Sylvester banged the door at his back. Theo turned to face him, and the tension on the gamine face, the strain in the midnight eyes, brought him a certain grim satisfaction – tiny recompense for his own gut-wrenching fear for her.

"How dare you do something so unutterably stupid and reckless!" he demanded.

Theo clasped her hands tightly. "I know it was stupid. I didn't think to take a pistol, I -"

"What!" he interrupted in disbelief. "Is that all you can say? You defy my orders, you meddle in my affairs, willfully expose yourself to danger, and all you can apologize for is forgetting to take a pistol!"

"Oh, don't you understand?" she cried. "What else could I do? You promised me a partnership. You… you seduced me with the promise of a partnership. I would never have married you if you hadn't promised that. Instead, you keep your self away from me. You won't permit me to know anything about you… anything important, that is." She flung away from him, tears of frustration blurring her vision.

"You dare to blame me for your defiance and your stupidity?" Furiously, he took a step toward her and then stopped, aware that his hands were shaking with his rage. He took a deep breath. "I'm too angry to deal with this now," he stated. "I can't trust myself in the same room with you!" He turned back to the door. "You'll stay in here until I come back."

"What?" Startled, she swung to face him again.

"I intend to know where you are – every step you take from now on," he declared savagely. "So you'll stay in this room until I've cooled off enough to be rational. And so help me, Theo, if you so much as stick your little toe outside this door, you'll regret it to your dying day."

Theo stared, dumbstruck, as he stormed out and the door crashed closed behind him. She felt sick and shivery. Angrily, she dashed the tears from her eyes with her forearm and went to the window. Sylvester appeared in the street below. He glanced up once at the house, but if he saw her in the window, he gave no indication. Then he turned and strode off down the street, slashing at the neat privet hedges with his cane.

Theo stepped back into the room. She filled a glass with water from the pitcher on the washstand and drank slowly, waiting for the nausea to recede and for her breathing to steady.

The fat really was in the fire now.

She kicked off her shoes and dropped into a deep armchair by the hearth, drawing her legs under her, gazing into the wreathing flames. The devil of it was that she'd been forced to reveal her own hand. Sylvester now knew that she wasn't prepared to accept his silences as royal commands, and knowing her husband, he was bound to take serious steps to prevent her continuing along her chosen path.

If she couldn't persuade him to take her into his confidence, it rather looked as if she was stymied.

She let her head fall back against the cushions and cursed under her breath. Sylvester was presumably stalking the streets of London devising some foolproof scheme to turn her into a model wife who never questioned her husband's decisions or asked awkward questions or, heaven forbid, took matters into her own hands. A nice, meek little wife who'd warm his slippers and order his favorite foods and hang her head in mute obedience to his every command.

Well, he wasn't going to find it easy. She turned her head and looked at the closed door of her bedroom. Maybe he wasn't going to find it easy, but, somehow, she didn't feel like defying his parting order.