Chaos erupted. Those who recognized the City Patrol bolted for the doors, creating a press of people who carried all before them. The volume in the room grew from a buzz to a roar, with shrieks punctuating the din as the officers laid about them with staves and cutlasses.
“Time to take French leave and disappear, Miss Hetty!” James raised his arm with the whip.
“James,” Henrietta cried, “put that away. You’ll hurt someone!”
And he did, several times, but he also kept the crowd off the dais as the government men surged into the room shouting, “In the King’s name! Order in the name of King George!”
“Who’s responsible fer this?” one of the officers bawled, glaring about him with a gimlet eye.
“I am!” bellowed Thomas Hardy, launching himself into the wall of men.
“Her! The one dressed like a French whore.” Pinochle’s cry rose above the din, his finger pointed at Henrietta. “She incited this mob.”
“Touch ’er and I’ll plump ye in the breadbasket, ye Moabites!” James roared, raising his whip as the officers advanced.
He delivered a few slashes before his height defeated him; a man behind him raised his staff and, with a cuff to the head,downed Henrietta’s valiant protector. She screamed, her heart vaulting into her throat as rough hands caught her up.
“Don’t leave him here!” She writhed in the hard grip of the man herding her toward the doorway, trying to tug her wrists free. All around her, men dressed like him, in the same blue uniform and hat, were pulling other protesters toward the exit. Many of them put up a worthy fight. “He’s hurt.”
“Leave the runt,” the man holding her ordered, “an’ lace ’im again if he gets cocky.”
“He must come with me,” Henrietta shouted, her voice hoarse with panic. “I am responsible for?—”
Rough hands pushed her onto the sidewalk outside the Tavern, where a crowd thronged the street, held back by a string of men in uniform, cutlasses at the ready. From the blur of color rose the shocked, pale face of the second footman, Peter.
“Fetch Sir Jasper!” Henrietta cried. “He’ll know what to do. John and James are still in there!”
While other men were hauled away by the watch, frog-marched down the street, the officer shoved Henrietta into a rickety coach pulled by a sway-backed nag with the emblem of the City Patrol on its harness. Her stomach twisted at the scent of several sweaty bodies, and her gown felt damp against her clammy skin.
Jasper wasn’t here. Her father was on his way north with her man of business to see that Henrietta got her burnt-out mill. He had kissed her on the cheek and told her he was sorry he would miss her debate but that she was sure to be a sensation.
“I’ve no doubt I’ll return to find the House passing a bill to do exactly what you propose,” he’d said, his eyes bright with affection. “Now, no picking quarrels, minx.”
Oh, she had started a quarrel all right. Her heart began a clawing descent down her windpipe, blocking her air.
“Where are they taking us?” she asked Thomas Hardy, who sat across from her, whistling despite one eye swelling shut.
“Watch house,” he said cheerfully. “We’ll make our bed in the hole tonight an’ be hauled afore the justice o’ the peace in the mornin’. You’ll be turned loose, miss, but it’s the Old Bailey for me, I don’t doubt. Hanged or transported, if Pitt has his way. He’s been out for my hide for months.”
Henrietta put a hand on her neck. “I am very sorry,” she choked. Her stomach clenched at the thought of being brought up on charges. What would her father say? Or Charley? Aunt Althea would never allow a criminal in Marsibel’s company. And she would certainly never be made a votary of the Minerva Society if she were sent to prison.
She felt cold all the way to her fingertips. Oh, what had she done?
At the end of a painful, bouncing journey, she and her fellow passengers stumbled out of the coach in front of the Bishopsgate watch house, a shabby building set amid a reeking fen. She smelled unwashed bodies and bad food, the lime thrown down to cover the rotting stench, the sooty smell of burning coal, and beyond that, the fetid reek of the river. A watchman herded her down a dark, damp hallway into a room equally close and rank-smelling.
“You’ll get yer answers in the morn, when ’is worship speaks to ye,” he snarled as he shoved her roughly through a wooden door. “Me, I’d leave ye ’ere to rot with the rest of the blowsabellas.” And the door slammed shut in her face.
“Oi, brush off, ye clod’opper,” a female voice screeched.
Henrietta turned and sneezed as the smoke from a rush light insulted her nose. An urge to cry tightened her throat, and she swallowed it. She’d argued that women needed to cultivate strength of mind and character. Well, here was her chance to prove her case.
Blinking her eyes to clear them of tears, she looked around the room and made out dim shapes. She stood in a long, narrow cell with a stone bench running along one side and a dark window letting in dim lamplight at one end. Several women looked her over from head to toe.
“This’un wears ’er bedgown to work,” one snickered, fingering a ruffle on Henrietta’s sleeve. “Rolled ye right out o’ the sack, did ’e? What’s a matter—didn’t like the taste of ’is sugar stick?”
The lump in her throat turned to panic.
“’Igh-end wares,” observed another, tugging at Henrietta’s skirts. “Not Covent Garden, then, or I’d a seen ye! Where ye from, spooney? Cheapside? Drury Lane? Seven Dials?”
