A pause. Then three shots came in rapid succession. Another pause. That was reloading. She crawled fast toward the front wall.
There’d been nine separate blasts in the first volley. Three in the second. Shotguns and rifles, not muskets. Probably three or four men only.
She made it to the wall, to Maggie, who seemed to be unhurt, except for a cut through the scalp. Her face was bloody. But everyone was bloody now, from the shower of glass. Maggie had sensibly rolled to the wall under the window, which was the safest of all places at that moment. Adrian crouched over her, guarding her with his body, his knife upraised like a cold, black flame.
He had an extra knife to toss to her, grâce a Dieu. She wedged in next to him, putting her body also between Maggie and the bullets. There was time now to be afraid. Time to consider the doors to this room. Soon, men might break through. She wished she had two knives.
Doyle scuttled toward them, pistol drawn. “You hurt, Maggie?”
“No. Only crushed.”
Another battering volley. Lead hit the wallpaper and gouged holes six inches deep. The piano took a direct hit and died noisily.
“That’s my girl.” Doyle stretched to peer through the broken window. He shouted to Grey, “One coach. Men inside. One on top. Nobody on the ground.”
Doyle kept out of her line of throwing, Adrian did also, a courtesy of great value in this tense moment. This was the advantage of working with men of some experience. She was also relieved beyond measure that no one was bleeding much or thrashing with a wound. How much longer that could continue, she did not know.
Two shots in rapid succession. Then more. The red velvet sofa whooshed and sucked air. Feathers joined the plaster dust floating in the room. Galba had folded himself tight in the corner, keeping out of his operatives’ way, his lips thinned, his eyes frigid and distant.
“Four shooters. One driver,” Grey announced. He calculated the interval of the shots, as she had. He was flat, elbows braced on the floor, covering the front entrance. It was a classic position, the way Grey held that gun, pure army. The manner in which he ignored the bullets slapping into the floor around him was also purely army and showed that he had been much in combat. He rapped out, “Out of here. Everybody. Into the hall. Giles.”
Giles had his keys out. He half stood to open the door. He was young enough, that boy, to think he was immortal.
“Down, you fool!” Grey grabbed him and shoved the idiot behind what was left of the sofa. “And stay down.” He waited, counting. A double blast shook the room.
Smooth as if he could slip between bullets, Grey launched himself at the wall, at the bracket that had held the jagged remnant of a lamp. He grabbed the brass sconce and twisted in a wide circle. Inside the wall, smoothly, the bolt pulled back, and the door swung free.
“Giles. Anson. Out,” Grey ordered. “Into the safe haven. Doyle, take the front. Annique, can Maggie be moved?”
“She is not hurt.” She raised her voice above a volley of gunfire. “Except cut.” A spindly table chose this minute to rock and crash to the floor, carrying with it the last still-intact lamp globe.
“Get her out of here. Adrian, with me.”
Maggie, once no one was kneeling upon her, showed every ability to crawl with commendable speed. Halfway down the hall Galba opened a door and pushed Giles ahead of him. The safe haven room was windowless, small and dark, but it would give some security from the bullets. She pushed Maggie through and slammed the door behind her. She stood with her back to it.
Grey met her eyes as he passed. He nodded one swift approval and headed to the back of the house, leaving her as the last guard of those within the safe haven. Wholly and completely cold was her Grey at moments like this, most entirely deadly.
So. This was her post. She knelt, hunkering down as far as was practical. Bullets spat through the front window, down the hall, and pockmarked the plaster. She did not like the thought of one hitting her. Her knife—good. It was completely familiar. All Adrian’s knives were of the same balance within the weight of a pea.
She had a good view of the front door. Doyle, in the parlor, would take the first man through. She would take the second and perhaps give him time to reload.
The piano was hit again, more bass this time. Then pistol shots began outside, a sound like the popping of pine logs in a fire. Grey had circled the house and was shooting into the coach. Doyle took this as a signal to raise himself and fire out the window. He dropped to the floor to reload. She heard the coach rolling away, and in a minute gunfire ceased altogether.
Silence. Her ears were dull and stuffy. Plaster dust, feathers, and gunpowder hung in the air. The walls of the parlor dribbled plaster and strips of wallpaper. She waited, unmoving. Doyle, too, stayed in position, his back to the wall, gun held close to his chest. In the safe haven behind her there was no sound. So much experience they had, all of them.
“It’s me,” Grey called from outside. “Hold fire.” And when the front door opened, it was indeed Grey, not anyone she should throw a knife into, so she stood up and breathed out, long and slow. She had not thought the attackers would loiter when men began to shoot back at them.
The door of the safe haven opened behind her. Galba emerged into the hall, stiff and angry. “Is anyone hurt?”
Grey walked toward them, his pistol primed and pointed to the rug. “Stillwater has a sprained ankle. Ferguson got cut on the arm. Nothing serious.” He touched her face, turned it to see where she was bleeding. “You’re fine.” He said it as if she were one of his men. It warmed her that he should think of her that way, that he did not make of her a civilian like Maggie and Giles. He set his gun on the hall table and took out his handkerchief to stop the bleeding on her forehead. Doyle came to take Maggie away, picking pieces of glass from her hair, his huge bearlike hold tight around her. Outside, she could hear men swearing imaginatively.
Leblanc had come all the way to London to kill her, braving the wrath of Soulier, knowing the the British Service would take great interest in the events at Bruges. Now, more than ever, he would be desperate. He committed this outrage on a street where children played, where women might come out of their houses at any minute. What a dog of a man he was.
“Someone,” Galba said, “has offended me. Leblanc?”
“Leblanc.” Grey’s eyes were the color of granite.
“That was Leblanc.” She was sick to know what she had brought upon this house. “That was his first try.”
Thirty-five
GREY PUSHED HER DOWN UPON THE BED AND pressed his mouth to the cut on her forehead. He ran his tongue across it.
“You search for glass?” she said. “You do not need to. The cuts are clean. I washed thoroughly, and Maggie and I combed one another’s hair to remove it all. Now that I talk to her I find she is an interesting woman, even though she is an aristo. Did you know her oldest daughter speaks four languages and she is only eleven? Doyle took Maggie down to that indecent bathtub to wash her.”
“So he did.”
“I hear what you are saying beneath your voice, but I am sure washing is all they will do in that tub.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.” Now her elbow fascinated him. He set his teeth there, lightly gnawing away at her. It was one big shock after another when he did that. He drove her to the edge of madness, sometimes, before he entered her and released the hunger he had built.
“I had thought an aristo would be more respectable.” She would speak of nothing serious, tonight. She would only laugh. For one little hour I will not think of what I must do. “Are you certain you are not French? This seems very French to me, somehow.”