Jasper took the distraction to lunge at Asturt. A blast echoed through the night. He felt a burning pain sear through his left arm, while Asturt turned and ran. Miss Wilcox galloped past him in pursuit. She raised a whip and brought it down upon the man.
Asturt cried out in pain and fell to the ground, his pistol rolling into the darkness. The rider of the second horse passed by Jasper and he was even more confounded to see it was Carstares.
Miss Wilcox had leapt off her horse and whipped Asturt as he rolled around on the grass shouting for her to stop and that she was meant to be his queen. Carstares dismounted and threw the reins over Zeus’ back. He jogged to Miss Wilcox, pulled out a pistol, and stayed her hand. “That’ll do, miss,” he said, as casual as if he was indicating the amount of milk he took in his tea. “I’ve brought some rope along, I’ll tie him up. Best go see if Lord Langley has been hit.”
“Yes,” Miss Wilcox cried. “Oh dear, yes!”
She dropped the horsewhip and ran to him. Jasper realized he’d been standing dumbly, watching this bizarre tableau unfold before him. What was happening?
“Are you hit?” Miss Wilcox asked.
“What?”
“Oh, I see you are,” she said, ripping the bottom panel of her skirt away. “Yes, there,” she said, as if she were talking to herself, “I can feel the blood seeping through your coat. It does not seem to be too much, though.”
As she wound the fabric round his arm, Jasper said, “Miss Wilcox, what are you doing here?”
“Extricating you from a dangerous plot,” she said, knotting the material.
“No, that’s whyI’mhere. To extricateyoufrom a dangerous plot,” he said.
“Truly?” Miss Wilcox said, pausing her ministrations. “You came to extricateme? Truly?”
“Yes, truly,” he said. “I caught you out some time ago. I know you were forced to spy, though I wondered if you knew it was a Stuart plot or that Asturt was the man at the bottom of it. I had to put an end to it before you landed yourself in the tower.”
“You thought I would end in the tower?” Miss Wilcox asked, laughing.
“Why are you laughing?” Jasper asked.
Was he dreaming all of this? Like a dream, there was no logic to any of it—it just leapt from one strange scene to the next.
Carstares had tied up Asturt and got him to his feet. Now he marched him past Jasper and Miss Wilcox. “I’ll lock him up in the tack room until you decide what to do with him,” the coachman said. “I’ll throw him over Minerva, if you don’t mind.”
Miss Wilcox had nodded her assent.
“You were meant for a crown,” Asturt said as he was dragged past her.
“Enough of that, you heathen,” Carstares said, shoving him to move him along.
Georgiana shivered. All along, she’d thought Lord Asturt might be a suitor. She’d even considered the idea. Now she was to know he’d schemed to overthrow the monarchy and drag her into it as well. Queen, indeed.
She put her mind back to the matter at hand and turned to Jasper, “Can you walk, Lord Langley? Or else, I can help you onto your horse and lead him back. He has not been hit and can easily carry you under my guidance.”
“I can walk,” he said. The sting and ache was coming upon his arm stronger by the minute, but he could walk. It might clear his thoughts to walk, and God knew his thoughts needed clearing just now.
*
Carstares had muzzledAsturt with a handkerchief and thrown him upon Minerva. As they went ahead, keeping to the darkness as much as possible, Georgiana supposed poor Minerva had never had a night like it.
She, herself, had never had a night like it. What a wild thing she had done! But then, what else could she have done?
And then, after she’d subdued Asturt, or the Stuart as she guessed he really was, Lord Langley had saidhe’dcome to extricateher. He said it so kindly too, not at all like his tone at the ball. He’d been afraid she’d end in the tower, of all things. She could not make heads or tails of most of what he’d said, but she at least understood that.
It was really something to think about—he disappointed his mother and came to this mad midnight assignation to saveher. That she did not need saving seemed entirely beside the point.
“Miss Wilcox,” he said, walking by her side as she led his horse, “I really must understand what has occurred here.”
As they walked underneath a streetlamp and then into darkness and then into light again, Georgiana told him all she knew and what she’d put together from the note Marcus had dropped.
