Not so fast, Lord Longstaffe…
As she slipped into the shadows, she was already arranging her face into something harmless. A smile. A flutter of apology. Perhaps a question about whether Lady Calliope had seen her misplaced glove.
Something small and, most assuredly, annoying.
She had just decided upon the glove when a small, breathless cry cut through the darkness.
“Oh—! Help me. Please?—”
Beatrice lifted her skirt and ran.
“Don’t wait,” Gideon’s instructions demanded.
She rounded the bend in the path and caught sight of the couple near the rose arbor, something of a struggle, with Lady Calliope’s back to the hedge.
Lord Longstaffe stood close—far too close—his arms reaching around her.
Don’t let him take the advantage. Stab a gentleman before he misbehaves!
Relying on Gideon’s stern advice, Beatrice stepped forward, body angled, shoulders squared.
“Unhand her, my lord.”
Her voice cut cleanly through the garden air.
Longstaffe glanced over his shoulder, surprise, and then an almost amused expression touching his face.
“I beg your pardon?” the viscount said mildly.
Did he imagine she would simply retreat?
“Release her at once,” Beatrice said firmly. “Or I shall be obliged to insist.”
Longstaffe turned more fully.
“Oh!” Calliope let out a half gasp, half cry, as though she’d been hurt.
And just like that, every harmless interruption she’d ever relied on fell away.
This was the moment.
Beatrice moved with the swift certainty Gideon had drilled into her. Close the distance. Do not think. Act.
Longstaffe attempted to duck away from her swipe with the bodkin, but he didn’t quite manage it.
The blade landed. Along the edge of the viscount’s collar. The line of his jaw. A thin ribbon of crimson followed. Lord Longstaffe raised one hand to the cut, wincing at the blood he found there.
“Remove your hands from her, or I shall remove them for you.”
He swore. But then?—
The clouds parted, and moonlight spilled, pale and revealing, across the gravel and the path and?—
Beatrice’s gaze dropped.
Oh. Dear.
Now that she could see clearly, she realized that Lady Calliope was hopelessly tangled, trapped by the rosebush behind her. Thorns had caught the fabric of her gown from every direction—skirt, sleeve, lace—snaring her in a cruel, unyielding grip.
