Blackwell’s brows lifted.
Longstaffe looked at Beatrice. “Well done, my lady.”
Hatherleigh attempted to shift beneath her.
Beatrice pulled his arm another inch higher.
He stopped shifting.
Longstaffe stepped forward. “What would you have us do with your prisoner, Lady Beatrice?”
Her prisoner… For one rather ruthless moment, Beatrice seriously considered asking them to attach a stone to his person and throw him into the nearest river.
But her hands were beginning to ache. And as much as she’d like to take revenge on this one man for all the pain she’d suffered… somehow, she knew it wasn’t the answer.
“Take him to the nearest magistrate,” she said. “Seeing as he attempted to murder a member of the aristocracy, I believe a noose might be in his future.” If justice was served. Something she’d have to put her trust in.
Blackwell nodded. “Generous of you.”
Longstaffe bent and took Hatherleigh by the collar while Blackwell secured the man’s other arm. Beatrice scrambled off him, smoothing her skirts with as much dignity as one could manage after wrestling a masked villain to the ground.
Then she remembered.
“My bodkin.”
All three men paused.
Beatrice moved around Hatherleigh and found it at once, lodged in the side of his grotesque boar mask, perilously close to one painted eye.
A flash of memory struck her—the terror of stepping onto the path and seeing a pistol pointed at Gideon. Hatherleigh’s finger tightening. Gideon moving forward instead of away. The awful certainty that she would not reach him in time.
It hadn’t been a conscious decision, really. Only muscle memory and instinct. The blade had left her fingers with little more than a whisper of sound, flipping end over end through the air until it met her target, though not exactly where she’d intended.
His own fault, really, for turning his head when she did.
As she tugged the jeweled bodkin free, a strip of leather came with it. Hatherleigh hissed.
“You caught my eye, you wretched harpy!”
There was a bit of blood on the tip. With a grimace, she wiped it off on the leather which she then chucked on the ground.
“You shot Lord Hawkins,” she said. “I’d say you deserve far worse than a scratch.”
Blackwell gave a short laugh.
Longstaffe hauled Hatherleigh upright with very little gentleness. “Come along.”
Hatherleigh spat something foul beneath his breath, but between the two men, he was dragged from the folly with no ceremony whatsoever.
Then they were gone.
And when Beatrice turned back to Gideon, he was somehow still looking at her as though she was… magnificent.
“Stop that,” she said, though her voice was not as steady as she wished.
One corner of his mouth lifted. “Stop what?”
“Looking so very pleased. You have been shot.”
