He scrambled upright; over Rus’s shoulder, Abercrombie-Wallace saw him.
Wallace let go of the pistol, shoving it with all his might at Rus, rocking Rus back on his heels. Wallace stepped back into the corridor; recovering his balance, Rus lunged at him.
Reaching to the side, Wallace hauled a large, shrieking female across and threw her at Rus.
The female and Rus went down, blocking the doorway.
Rus swore volubly. Dillon reached him as he pushed the woman from him and struggled to his feet.
Rus went to leap over the woman and race after Wallace.
Dillon caught his arm. “No.”
The woman stopped shrieking. The clatter of Wallace’s footsteps descending the stairs faded, then they heard a door slam.
Dillon exhaled, and released Rus’s arm. “He’s made his choice. Let him flee into the arms of his just reward.”
Rus met his eyes, lowered his voice. “Those gentlemen in the black carriage?”
Dillon nodded. “Not that they’re gentlemen, not by any stretch of the word.”
Pris heard; she didn’t understand, but she’d question them later. Now…now she felt shaky, so relieved to see them both hale and whole, to know she needn’t fear the four “gentlemen” littering the floor.
Rising unsteadily to her knees, she put up a hand to push back the curls that had jarred loose to tumble about her face. She tucked them back; her hand brushed her ear-pain stabbed. Wincing, she felt dampness on her fingers. She looked at her hand.
At the blood streaking it.
Realized what that oddly familiar whirr had been.
She glanced up; both Dillon and Rus were helping the woman, wheezing, complaining, and protesting her innocence, to her feet. Quickly, Pris scrambled to hers, simultaneously fluffing her curls over her nicked ear. She surreptitiously wiped her hand on the crimson coverlet; at least the blood wouldn’t show.
Suggesting she retreat to her parlor for a restorative, Dillon pushed the large woman out and closed the door.
Rus had already turned to survey their assorted victims. He nudged the one he’d rendered senseless with the toe of his shoe. “What should we do with these?”
A short discussion ensued. Eventually, instead of beating the four to a pulp, Rus’s favored option, one with which Pris felt a certain amount of sympathy, they begged supplies from the madam, tied hands and hobbled legs, secured gags in place, and then, with all four roused if groggy, bullied them down the stairs and out into the street. There, they found the hackney Dillon and Rus had commandeered waiting, along with the one that had brought Pris to the brothel.
Joe tapped his cap. “Didn’t seem right, once I thought on it. I came to see if there was anything I could do.”
Pris smiled at him. “Thank you. If you could take these four scoundrels-they’ll give you no trouble-and follow us?”
The black carriage had vanished. In procession, the two hackneys rattled back to Mayfair.
After their first stop, with the thrill of exacting a most suitable revenge glowing in her veins, Pris leaned against Dillon as the hackney swayed on its way to their next port of call.
She looked up at his face, caught his eyes, smiled. “You’re rather good at designing devilish plans.”
He looked into her eyes, then raised a hand and, gently, reverently, traced the side of her face. “When the spirit moves me.”
His voice was low, a caress, a prayer. He glanced across the carriage to where Rus was studiously watching the passing façades, then bent his head, and kissed her.
Not a kiss of passion, but of thankfulness, of gratitude, of relief. She responded with the same emotions, her fingers clenching in his lapel, holding him to her.
The carriage slowed. Dillon lifted his head and looked out. “Next one.”
Their vengeance was thorough, and shockingly apt. Dillon had recognized all four “gentlemen.” They’d known who Pris was, had recognized her; they’d knowingly and with intent set out to ruin Lady Priscilla Dalloway, an earl’s daughter. As the evening lengthened, Dillon, Pris, and Rus did the rounds of the major balls and parties, delivering each of the four, coatless, trussed, and sniveling, whence they’d come.
They delivered them to their mothers.
Four senior ladies of the ton had their evenings interrupted, disrupted, by having their errant sons thrust on their knees before them-in public. They had to sit and listen as their son’s crimes were explained to them-in public, before their friends and acquaintances-by the much lionized and lauded, acknowledged ruler of the sport of kings, by his affianced wife, the fabulously beautiful earl’s daughter who, kidnapped from her engagement ball and abandoned in a brothel, their vicious and dissolute sons had attempted to ruin rather than help, and by her brother, Viscount Rushworth, one of the most eligible young peers about town.
In one respect, their revenge was a reckless gamble, but all who witnessed the four spectacles were aghast. All righteously ranged themselves behind Pris in defense of gently bred ladies far and wide.
Each “gentleman,” left to his mother’s and the ton’s mercy, found none.
It was late when they returned to Berkeley Square.
Buoyed by euphoria over having faced a terror and comprehensively triumphed, they walked into Horatia’s front hall-straight into bedlam.
They’d left so precipitously no one had known where any of them had gone. Their reappearance, all a trifle less than their usual immaculate selves, brought on a spate of scoldings, along with wide-eyed demands to be told what had gone on.
Their tale, when everyone consented to sit and let them tell it, was the wonder of the night. In the hackney, they’d agreed to hold nothing back; the color and pace gave credence to their adventure, and in this case, there was no one they needed to protect.
The Honorable Hayden Abercrombie-Wallace no longer had any place in the ton. As he described their exit from the brothel onto a street with only two hackneys waiting, Dillon wasn’t sure Wallace would still be among the living.
Everyone was predictably horrified, fired with indignation and righteous zeal, yet also glad to have been there to hear the tale, to have, however vicariously, shared in the downfall of the gentleman who had come worryingly close to holding the racing world to ransom.
Dillon, Rus, and Pris were hailed as heroes again; those who didn’t know the full story of the substitution switch begged enlightenment from those who did. Barnaby, delighted even though he was miffed to have missed the action, left to take the word to Bow Street.
Meanwhile, Horatia’s ball, which had been on the point of breaking up in confusion, took on new life. The musicians played softly in their alcove while the guests sat, talked, and marveled for what was left of the night.
Dillon glanced at Pris. She had a bright smile fixed on her face; beneath it, she was wilting. He was perfectly certain she wasn’t truly listening to the grande dame bending her ear.
The instant the lady moved on, he touched Pris’s arm, then closed his hand around hers as she turned his way. “Let’s go home.”
To Flick’s house, where he could deal with the roiling, seething, unsettling emotions surging through him. He wasn’t entirely sure what they were, or how to ease them. Terror, fear, and relief had burgeoned, but then washed through him and subsided, leaving whatever this was behind. Exposed. Undeniable.
He’d hidden his emotions from everyone, even her, until now. Looking into her eyes as she searched his face, he let her see, and simply said, “I’ve had enough.”
She hesitated for only a heartbeat, then nodded. “I’ll tell Rus and Eugenia.”
Dillon waited by the door. When she returned to his side, they found Horatia, who in the circumstances allowed them to slip quietly away. Taking Pris’s hand, Dillon led her out of the ballroom, away from the glad furor of their victory, out into the cool of the night.