To Distraction (Bastion Club 5)

Scatcher was waiting, silhouetted in the gap.

“Don’t worry,” Phoebe told Jessica. “He’s a friend.”

A friend who looked like a disreputable shopkeeper, but then that was what Scatcher was.

When they reached the gap, he held out mittened hands to help her through. “There you be. We was starting to wonder.”

She wasn’t late, but she knew they would have started “to wonder” the instant they’d arrived. Phoebe waited until Jessica joined her in the lane, then turned and led the way to the waiting carriage.

It was old and unremarkable, but ran exceedingly well. Birtles and Fergus made sure of that; tonight it was Birtles up on the box, saluting her with his whip.

She smiled and waved back, then Scatcher opened the carriage door. Smile deepening, Phoebe exchanged a glance with the carriage’s occupant—Emmeline Birtles, the first woman she’d helped—then turned to Jessica. “Emmeline here and her husband—he’s Birtles, the driver—will take you to the agency in London. You’ll be safe with them. I’ll come to see you once you’re settled, and we can talk about your next position.”

Jessica peered into the carriage; the worst of her tension dissolved. She looked up at Phoebe. “Thank you, miss. I don’t know as how I can ever thank you enough.”

Hearing the catch in the girl’s voice, Phoebe smiled and stepped back. “Just do as Emmeline tells you, and we’ll count ourselves repaid.”

Then Scatche

r was there, helping Jessica into the carriage. Emmeline, a warm, motherly woman, welcomed her and settled her beside her on the seat. Emmeline nodded to Phoebe, then Scatcher shut the door.

He turned to her, eyeing her frowningly from beneath wildly overhanging brows. “You sure you don’t need me to see you back to the house? It’s dark in that wood.”

Phoebe grinned at him. “No—I’d much rather you climbed up and let Birtles get you all back to London without more ado.”

Scatcher muttered something, but knew better than to argue. He climbed up to sit beside Birtles.

Phoebe stood back. Birtles gave the horses the office, then flourished his whip in farewell. Phoebe raised her hand, then lowered it. She waited until the carriage had rumbled quietly around the first bend in the lane before she turned and climbed back through the gap in the wall.

There was a ditch just inside the wall. She clambered down and then up the other side, lifting her skirts as she toiled up the short slope and back under the trees. Reaching level ground, she released her skirts; marching on, she glanced at her elbow, tugging her shawl into place.

She looked ahead—and walked into a wall.

Of muscle and bone.

Chapter 6

The breath she sucked in stuck in her windpipe; she almost panicked, but in the instant before she would have lost her head and screamed, he caught her arms and steadied her, and she knew who he was.

She let out her strangled breath with a whoosh. “Deverell.”

A second ticked by in complete and utter silence.

It was then she noticed that his grip on her arms was tight, that instead of the comforting sense she usually derived from his strength, what was reaching her was the scarifying aura of an angry male.

A powerful, strong, highly irate male.

In whose control she was.

She jerked her gaze up to his face; not enough light reached it for her to read his expression or his eyes, but she could feel them on her—burning.

Then he spoke; his voice cracked like a whip.

“What the devil are you about?”

She stiffened, then lifted her head. “Unhand me.”

He stared at her. He didn’t immediately do as she asked.