What Happens in Piccadilly Read online

  Bundled into the carriage once more, they made their way back to the house on Piccadilly. Callie looked at the children’s faces and prayed she was making the right choice. The very last thing she wanted was to put them in more danger. But surely, traveling the countryside and being isolated at an estate far from town and far from anyone who might provide assistance would only increase the danger to all of them, she reasoned.

  As if reading her thoughts, Claudia said, “I’m glad we’re not going to the country. We’ve only just arrived here, after all. And there’s so much about London to enjoy. And Uncle Winn’s library. It’s very grand.”

  “It is grand,” Callie agreed. “And today, we’ll go there and make a list of the books available in it that you should read.”

  Claudia’s expression soured quickly. “Are they boring?”

  “Some of them may be, but many of them are quite enjoyable,” Callie replied. “I would advise using the exciting books as a way of rewarding yourself for making progress on the one’s you are not quite so fond of.”

  Claudia’s only response was a baleful stare.

  “I want to read all the books,” Charlotte pronounced. “I’ll read them to my doll and she’ll be very smart, too!”

  “Dolls can’t be smart, silly,” William corrected her. “They don’t have brains! Just empty heads!”

  “They do, too!” Charlotte shouted at him. She would have stamped her little foot if it actually reached the floor of the coach.

  “Don’t yell at her, William,” Claudia said. “She’s only a baby. She doesn’t understand!”

  “I’m not a baby! I’m six!” Charlotte said, again gesturing angrily.

  “You’re four,” William and Claudia both corrected in unison.

  Winn intervened at that point, before mayhem could ensue further. “That is enough. Not a word from any of you until we are home.”

  All of the children clammed up entirely, William and Charlotte sulking. But it was Claudia who held Callie’s attention. The girl glanced between Winn and herself, eyeing them both speculatively and with more than a little concern etched on her features. Mrs. Marler had remained silent through the whole exchange. But she did ruffle William’s hair a bit, and Callie was fairly certain that he would be getting a sweet or two when they returned home. The boy was impossible not to spoil, but then, so was sweet little Charlotte with her cherubic face and big, blue eyes.

  With the children quiet, Winn looked at Callie and uttered one phrase that made her stomach roll and her breath hitch with fear. “I think we should send a letter to the trustees of the Averston estate. The sooner we contact them, the sooner all of this can simply go away.”

  “Do you think that will make it worse or better?” she asked.

  “Worse to start with, but better in the long run,” he answered honestly. “Their only real power lies in secrecy and if we out the whole ugly lot of it, then we take that power from them.”

  She shivered with fear, but nodded. “Fine.”

  When they finally reached the house, the mood of the occupants was notably subdued. The children disembarked first, then Mrs. Marler was aided by one of the footmen. Winn exited the carriage next, hopping down easily. As always, he moved with a kind of innate grace and power that made Callie feel clumsy in comparison. When he turned back to her, Callie accepted his outstretched hand and allowed him to assist her from the carriage. The children were already being ushered inside by the warm and efficient housekeeper.

  As her feet settled more firmly on the paving stones, Callie realized how close she stood to Winn, how very little distance separated their bodies. Immediately, her mind conjured the sensation of his kiss, the memory so full and real it was almost as if she could feel it all over again.

  “Do not look at me that way,” he warned softly.

  “What way?”

  “As if you wish me to repeat my inappropriate behavior from the library, and the hack… and that damnable room upstairs,” he said.

  She wanted to say something sassy or flirty, something that would make her seem far more worldly and sophisticated than she was. But nothing would come to mind. Instead, she stood there looking as utterly poleaxed by him as she was.

  Then the carriage simply exploded next to her head. Bits of wood and leather flew everywhere, stinging her skin. Then they were tumbling to the hard stones of the walk, his large body covering hers, shielding her from whatever it was that had occurred. Another loud bang resonated and another bit of the carriage simply disintegrated before her eyes as she peered over his shoulder.

  Someone was shooting at them.

  “We’ve got seconds while they reload,” he said, tugging her to her feet. “Stay behind me and stay low. The shots are coming from above and to the left.”

  The entire time he’d been speaking, he’d been pushing her into position and making for the steps that were only a few feet away. It was only when they reached the top of them, just a few feet from the door that Callie heard another shot ring out. He faltered and she could feel something warm and wet under her hand where it pressed against his side. Then they were in the house, the door slamming closed behind them.

  “You and the children to the library,” he said. “Keep the curtains drawn. Foster, I want bolts on the windows in there.”

  “Certainly, my lord,” the butler said, springing into motion almost instantly.

  “You’re hurt,” Callie said, noting the spreading red stain on Winn’s waistcoat. “You’ve been shot.”

  “It’s but a graze,” he insisted. “Take care of the children!”

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To the roof,” he replied. “It’s the best chance of catching the bas—brigands.”

  Callie didn’t even have time to protest. She was too stunned by it all. Then William was whooping with excitement.

  “I want to go with Uncle Winn!”

  That brought Callie crashing back to reality. “Absolutely not. You will march directly to the library and while we are there, you shall practice writing your letters and being quiet.”

  His little face fell. “I want to chase the bad men.”

  Callie sighed. “When you are older, you may chase all the bad men away… but right now, you are still too little. And I cannot bear the thought of your being hurt. So come to the library with us and spare my mind anymore worry.”

  Ushering the children ahead of her, Callie followed behind them. But her gaze was fixed on the last point on the stairs where she’d seen Winn. Please let him be well, she prayed. Even as she battled back the panic that erupted at the thought of him getting hurt, she put on a calm face for the children and tried to soothe their fears. And the best antidote for fear was to stay busy.

  With William settled at the desk working on his letters and Claudia ensconced before the fireplace, flipping through a book about exotic animals, Callie seated herself near the door to wait.

  Claudia approached her then, carrying the book she’d selected to read. Softly, she asked, “Is this about the note?”

  Callie met the girl’s too-wise and knowing gaze. “Yes. I believe that it is.”

  Claudia sighed. “I don’t want anything to happen to Uncle Winn. I like him. I really do.”

  “And he likes you,” Callie replied reassuringly.

  “But what will happen to us if something happens to him?” Claudia asked, biting her lip worriedly as she glanced at her brother and sister.

  Callie reached out for the girl, pulling her close and hugging her tightly. “Your uncle will be fine. Even if something unthinkable happened, he will have made provisions for you. It’s simply the way he is. When he returns, you may ask him about them so that you never have to wonder.”

  *

  Winn eased himself out onto the ledge through the attic windows. He ignored the twinge in his side where the bullet had grazed his flesh. It wasn’t terribly painful, but he was sweating and it burned like the devil. Climbing up onto the slate tiles, he stay
ed low and looked at the rooflines. Three houses away, he caught sight of movement. Looking back at the footmen who’d followed him out, he said, “Get some men on the ground in the back of the mews. They’re unlikely to climb down the front of the houses where they’d be seen.”

  “Aye, m’lord.”

  The servants moved away, and Winn moved forward. He clambered over the roof and managed to leap down to the lower roof of the house next door. There, concealed form sight, he ran, closing the distance between him and the gunman. Hoisting himself up onto the roof of the next house, he used the many chimneys and the ornate cupola to provide shelter. The fourth house, he was jumping down once more. As he landed in a crouch, another pistol ball whizzed past him, imbedding itself into the brick of the house behind him. The man raised a second pistol. As he fired, Winn threw himself onto the tiled roof. The pain in his side exploded until he literally saw stars dancing before his eyes. Still, he forced himself back up to standing and charged toward the man before he could get the brace of pistols reloaded. He reached him just as the man raised the pistol once more. The shot went wide as Winn rushed him, taking him down to the tiles. They rolled toward the edge, and only Winn’s boots catching against the lip of the gutter kept them both from going over.

  “Why were you trying to kill her?” Winn demanded.

  “Money! Why else?” the man snapped. “Let me go.”

  “Tell me who hired you!”

  “Don’t know his name. Didn’t ask. He said she paid him to pay us and we was to see the bitch dead!”

  Winn didn’t have a chance to ask any further questions. The gutter gave then, separating from the house entirely. The pair of them slid toward edge, the burlier man going over first. Winn managed to snag the cornice of the building where the gutter had attached. He hung there, the other man clinging to him. They were three stories up. Not so very high, but certainly high enough that the fall would do damage and possibly result in death.

  “Don’t let me fall,” the man said. “I can get word to her. I can send for him and he’ll lead you right to her!”

  Winn moved one booted foot toward the building, finding a toehold there on the intricate masonry that wrapped the upper floor of the house, while the man who’d tried to kill Calliope only moments earlier still clung to his leg. With one foot perched there, one arm hooked around the heavy stone cornice, he reached one hand down to the man, “Give me your hand!”

  The man wouldn’t let go. At that point, he’d closed his eyes and was simply praying incoherently. And then Winn felt the man slipping.

  “Give me your hand! Now, man!”

  There was no response. The man’s grip began to fail. And then he was simply gone, sailing silently to the stones below without ever opening his eyes.

  Winn heard the thud as he hit, saw the spreading crimson stain on the stones below. And then his footmen were there. One ran through the garden gate of the house and into the kitchens. Within seconds, servants were rushing about inside, opening windows all along the upper floor. With a decided lack of grace, a pair of maids and a sturdy kitchen girl helped him into the house through the window just below him.

  He collapsed on the floor, sweating, bleeding, breathless… but alive. Very much alive, unlike the man who’d attempted to take Calliope St. James’ life. And one thing that man had said stood out to Winn. The man had been hired by an intermediary to be sure, but the mastermind of the whole plot had been referred to as she. The Dowager Duchess of Averston.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Callie was beside herself. Winn had returned home, assisted in by some footmen. Following them up the stairs, she entered his chamber just as his valet began removing his soiled coat and waistcoat. The man clucked over the damaged and stained fabrics as though they were priceless artifacts, even as he left his injured employer to struggle out of his ruined shirt on his own.

  “They’re clothes!” she snapped. “I would think you’d be more concerned about the man who’d been wearing them!”

  Chastened, the valet took the garments and fled. Footmen were helping Winn onto the bed and he was waving them away. “I’m not so gravely injured as I appear, Miss St. James. I’m simply too old for hand to hand combat and trying to hold the added and considerable weight of a grown and somewhat stocky fellow as we dangled off the edge of a house three stories up.”

  Her throat went dry and she felt her heart stutter in her chest. While she’d been aware that he was disrobing, being confronted with the reality of his bare chest was not something she’d been prepared for. Forcing herself to deal with only the most pressing matters at hand and not her own maidenly sensibilities, Callie focused her gaze on the ugly wound in his side. There was a great deal of blood, some of it already dried, making it impossible to determine the severity of the wound at a glance. “You were hanging over the edge of the roof?”

  He flexed his hands, the scrapes and bruises on them obvious even from a distance. “From the gutter to be precise, but yes.”

  “And where is this man now?”

  He looked up at her then, his expression stoic but still quite revealing. “He’s dead, Calliope. I tried to save him… I offered him my hand, but he wouldn’t take it.”

  Dead. Which meant that Winn had been terribly close to the same fate himself. “What if you’d fallen as well?”

  “But I didn’t,” he said firmly. “I’ve lost a bit of flesh and a small amount of blood—”

  “A small amount? This is hardly insignificant!” She gestured toward blood smeared on his side.

  “Well, it’s hardly life threatening either,” he said, and even as he said it, he placed one hand over the wound as if to show that it didn’t hurt. The gesture was wasted as he winced with pain. “It’s ugly and inconvenient. The pistol ball took a bit of hide. Nothing more.”

  “It’s more than simply ugly and inconvenient! You could have been killed and it would have been my fault. You need a physician! Why has no one sent for one?” She was practically yelling as the few lingering servants looked on as if she’d become a madwoman.

  He shook his head. “Because it’s little more than a scratch. It’s almost stopped bleeding even,” he said, holding up his hand as proof.

  Callie’s fists were clenched at her sides to keep them from shaking. “He shot at us with the children mere feet away. What if one of them had been struck? I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to one of them. I know I’ve only been here for two weeks, but I love those children dearly. If the unthinkable happened to any one of you because of my presence—”

  “You couldn’t bear it if something happened to the children because you love them. Tell me the truth, Calliope. Why couldn’t you bear it if something happened to me?”

  At that softly voiced question, everyone in the room went utterly silent. The servants didn’t even dare breathe and as Callie looked at him, her eyes wide with shock and fear, she was terrified to utter the answer.

  “Out,” Winn said. “Everyone out of this room… except for you, Calliope.”

  The servants scattered, leaving them alone entirely. And she simply stood there and looked at him, unable to form the words.

  “Why would it be unbearable to you if something were to happen to me?” he demanded again. “Because I can tell you right now, I’d throw myself in front of a hundred pistol balls for you and it’s not because, excellent as you may be at it, you’re the damned governess!”

  And that set her heart to stuttering in her chest all over again. It seemed to lose its rhythm for just a moment before regaining it, only to beat faster and faster. So much so that she felt dizzy from it and sank down onto the nearest surface which just happened to be the edge of the very same bed he was sitting upon. “Why would you do that?” she finally managed to ask.

  “Because improbable as it may sound, I have fallen hopelessly in love with you,” he stated, sounding none too pleased about the fact. “As if those heathen children hadn’t upended my well-ordered bachelor life enou
gh, Calliope, you had to come along with your sweet, winsome smile and your alabaster skin and remind me that a solitary life is not necessarily a satisfying one.”

  Callie’s hands folded in her lap. “You love me? I don’t know what that means in the scope of all this.”

  “Ideally, it means that I would ask you to be my wife and you would agree to it.”

  “But I’m a governess,” she said, sounding utterly bewildered by it all. “And I may be illegitimate… or at the very least it will be very difficult to prove I am not. I may or may not be an heiress and everything is so very complicated. I find it very difficult to believe I’d be worth all the trouble, regardless.”

  “I don’t care if you’re illegitimate. I don’t care if you’re a governess, if you’re an heiress or even if you’re the Queen of bloody Sheba. I care that you are you… and that you are mine,” Winn whispered softly. “So say it, Calliope. Say that you’ll be mine.”

  “It’s a terrible idea,” she said.

  “I thought that… for a while. And then I was dangling off a roof a few moments ago. I realized the only terrible idea I’ve ever had is to let unimportant and trivial details keep me from being with the woman I love. What could be worse than denying myself something so magnificent for reasons that are stupid and not even my own?”

  Could such a thing really be happening? Could the girl no one had ever wanted really be faced with the prospect of such a wonderful man proposing to her? He was intelligent and funny and terribly sarcastic. He was also kind and caring and protective of those he loved. He was so terribly hard on himself and expected so much of himself while being generous and forgiving to others. How could she ever say no? Because it would ruin him. “I just never thought you’d ask… or rather, I only ever allowed myself to imagine all the reasons you wouldn’t. We’d be breaking all the rules. You know it’s impossible. Or it ought to be.”

  “It won’t be pretty, you know?” He rose from the bed as he spoke, putting some distance between them which allowed both of them to breathe easier. “Society is founded on rules… you’re very right about that. But high society is a different beast altogether. It’s driven fundamentally by seeking approval of those who, by luck, birth or circumstance, have managed to garner the most popularity or power. I’ve never especially played their games. But because I’m not naturally the sort to rebel against something for the sake of it, I’ve always been accepted.” He wasn’t saying it to talk her out of that. Rather, he was simply stating matter of factly what the reactions would be.