The barking was growing closer, but Susan was still minutes away. In minutes, Coralie could right the boat and push it into the river. She’d get away, and tonight’s frustrations would only make her more dangerous, wherever she turned up next.
Lydia went after her.
Vere and his companions had heard the screaming from streets away and instantly raced toward it. As they neared the river’s edge, he saw a big brute bearing down on a girl, and several smaller figures bearing down on him.
“Lizzy! Em!” he roared. “This way!”
He had to shout several times to make himself heard above the furiously barking Susan, who was straining at the leash, primed for murder.
But finally the command penetrated, and the whole group froze briefly, then scattered. Two slender forms stumbled toward him. Mick stood alone, looking wildly about.
“Get him!” Vere ordered the dog, and released the lead.
Susan charged after Mick, who charged toward the river. The dog caught him by the leg, and down he went into the slime. Susan kept her jaws fastened on his leg.
Trent and Jaynes dashed into the scene then, and Vere left Mick to them while he hurried to his wards, who’d stopped to watch Susan capture Mick.
“Are you all right?” he asked the girls.
In the gloom, he could barely make out their faces, near as they stood. But he could hear them gasping for breath, trying to talk.
He reached out and wrapped an arm around each of them and drew them close. They sagged against him, and upward wafted an aroma reminiscent of low tide.
“By gad, you do reek,” he said, his throat tight. “When was the last time you had a bath?”
He didn’t hear their reply, because Susan, having relinquished her prisoner to Jaynes and Bertie, was barking again, frantically.
Vere looked about. He saw several figures in the darkening haze, and none bore the smallest resemblance to his wife.
“Lydia!” he shouted.
“Woof!” Susan said. Then she darted westward.
Vere abruptly released his wards and raced after her.
Vere pushed through the darkness, through a chill fog rank with decay. He couldn’t see the pathway, but blindly followed the dog’s barking.
“Lydia!” he roared again and again, but the only answer was Susan’s barking, growing sharper, more frantic.
He tripped over a rock, clawed for balance, righted himself, and ran on. The images tore at his brain: of Charlie, Robin, of cold tombs, of living faces—all those he’d ever loved—dissolving into the mist, dissolving into shadows, and vanishing.
NO! Not this time. Not her, please God, not her.
“I’m coming!” he shouted, his lungs burning.
A dark form loomed ahead. He noticed the overturned boat a moment too late and tripped, falling face down into the muck. He stumbled up onto his feet and started on, only to stop short an instant later when he saw them.
Not three yards from him was a tangle of shapes, writhing in the dirt and refuse at the river’s edge.
Susan darted toward them, then away, again and again, barking wildly.
She didn’t know what to do.
Neither did Vere. He saw the flash of a blade, and couldn’t tell who held it, or if both were armed. One wrong move on his part could end with a knife in the woman he loved.
He cleared his dry throat. “Stop playing, Grenville,” he said as calmly as he could. “If you don’t finish her off in ten seconds, I’ll do it and spoil your fun.”
There was a sudden movement—an arm shot up, the blade gleaming—then a shriek of triumph that made his heart stop cold, because it wasn’t his wife’s. Then another shriek and frantic movement.
He saw the tangle of bodies go still in the same pulsebeat he heard the hoarse, gasping voice. “Move so much as an eyelash, and I’ll slice you from ear to ear.”
His wife’s voice.
He approached. “Need any help, Grenville?” he asked, his voice shaking.
“Yes. Please.” Gasps between words. “Be careful. She. Fights. Dirty.”
Vere was glad of the warning. The bawd seemed half dead to him, but as soon as he’d separated the pair, Corrie got her second wind and tried to resume the battle. Vere dragged her—kicking, clawing, and shrieking fit to wake all of Rotherhithe, on the opposite shore—out of reach of his exhausted wife.
“Knock her out,” Grenville gasped, for the fiend showed no signs of tiring, but fought like the madwoman she was.
“I can’t hit a woman.”
Grenville trudged forward, ducked a swinging fist, and swung her own, straight into Madam’s jaw.
Coralie sagged.
Vere let her inert body drop to the ground. Susan leapt forward eagerly, growling. “Guard,” he told the dog. Susan straddled her and remained, snarling, her enormous, dripping jaws inches from the bawd’s face.
Vere was already moving toward his wife, who was bent over, clutching her side. He pushed her hand away, felt the wetness, felt his heart drop into a hole that had no bottom.
“Sorry,” she said, her voice so weak he could barely hear it. “I think the witch stuck me.”
He caught hold of her, and this time, when she turned into a dead weight in his arms, he knew she wasn’t pretending.
Chapter 18
Francis Beaumont stood in the crowd of onlookers near the Bell and Anchor watching the Duke of Ainswood carry his wife’s motionless form into his carriage. Within minutes, the place was abuzz with the news that a Drury Lane bawd had murdered the duchess.
Francis Beaumont was very unhappy.
It was not the duchess he grieved for, but himself. Coralie Brees would hang for sure, and doubtless she knew it, which meant she would make certain she had plenty of company dangling alongsid
e her on the scaffold. She would tell her tale, and she had a fine and long one to tell, with Francis Beaumont as star performer.
He was sorry he hadn’t killed her last spring in Paris, instead of helping her flee. But he had not been thinking very clearly then. Along with everything else, he’d had domestic problems, as well as a case of unrequited lust.
He’d set out to kill Coralie today, as soon as he’d heard, at Pearkes’s oyster house, what the stupid bitch had done. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out where she’d be, because an artist for the Police Gazette had told him about the old woman who’d been cut up and garroted. From the artist’s description, Beaumont had no trouble figuring out who the woman was or who the killer was.
Unfortunately, the Duchess of Ainswood had tracked the bawd down before he did. He wasn’t twenty yards from the house when all hell broke loose. As soon as he’d heard her tell Corrie she was outnumbered, he’d backed off. All Corrie had to do was spot him and call out his name, and he’d be numbered among the criminals. Had he realized the duchess had only a trio of scrawny boys and a pair of toothless, consumptive whores to help her, he might have been less cautious.
But there was no way he could tell in the fog and confusion.
Now there was nothing he could do. The constables had arrived within minutes of Ainswood and his men. The entire debacle, start to finish, could not have taken more than a quarter hour. In a very short time, Corrie would be locked up, and screeching out everything she knew to everyone who could hear her—and that would be most of the parish.
He would have to go away. Now. He dared not return home for clothes or money. Everyone knew where Francis Beaumont lived. His wife was a famous artist.
She wouldn’t miss him. There would be a line of men ten miles long waiting to take his place. And at the very front of the line would be a fair-haired French count.