Lucien had known that Lady Downe had a philanthropical bent. It seemed Grace might draw another patroness to her cause.
Grace smiled at the aristocratic couple, even though Lucien sensed she was worried that Sibby Rose might slip away. “Thatwould be lovely, your ladyship,” she said warmly. “I was just going to buy some flowers.”
Lucien pressed coins into her hand before the Downes swept her away to make the purchase. “I will join you directly,” he told her. He waited until she was some distance away. “What is this important matter?” he demanded of Sir Edward. “I am recently wed and eager to be with my wife.” He glanced in Grace’s direction, noting that she, too, had been detained some ways from her destination as Lord and Lady Downe paused to introduce her to a dowager in scarlet plumes.
“My friend Carlisle did not arrive here until intermission,” Sir Edward said.
“I cannot see why Carlisle’s tardiness should concern me.”
“He had to take a longer route because some Irish ruffian outside the Crook and Bull was riling up the common herd. You saw what happened on St. James’s Street when the gentlemen’s clubs were attacked?”
He hadn’t been present, but he had seen the aftermath. Learned just how quickly a mob could get out of hand.
Sir Edward mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “Carlisle said they were shouting something about Drury Lane.”
The back of Lucien’s neck prickled and he glanced beyond the line of grand coaches and footman to see the shadowy streets beyond. Was there some threat simmering beneath the usual hubbub of the theater crowd?
He searched for Grace in the sea of bonnets, top hats, and plumed turbans. He spotted her just as the first warning split the night.
“’Ware! A mob’s coming…”
Shouts penetrated the cacophony of sound, like thunder building before a storm. How the devil had he not noticed?
Ragged men suddenly took shape in the shadows, pushing into the street flanking the theater, their faces distorted asgrowing numbers loomed in the gas light. Crude weapons were clasped in their hands.
“Death to blood-sucking ’ristocrats!” a guttural voice called. “Gi’ us bread!”
Cries of alarm rippled through the crowd, people shoving and jostling, trying to get to their coaches or flee down Catherine Street. Lucien’s gut clenched as he pushed his way through the mass of panicked theatergoers and tried to reach the place where he’d last seen Grace moments before. But all he saw was Lord Downe hastening his wife away, Grace nowhere to be found. A moment of panic swept through Lucien as he looked around, then saw her making her way toward the child as the mob boiled toward them like an angry sea.
Objects pelted through the air, a rotting vegetable splatting against a nearby woman’s velvet cloak. Stones and bottles and God knew what followed.
He heard names being called, people crying out in pain and panic, desperate to escape the hail of objects. He needed to get Grace.
“There ’e is!” someone shouted, “Lord—” A crack of gunfire split the air. Lucien heard a scream from where Grace had been a moment ago, but she had vanished in the panicked crowd.
Something glanced off his back as he shouldered his way to where he had last seen her. He trod on what looked to be her bonnet, crushed on the ground, then saw the bright splash of blue ribbons before the crowd converged in once again.
“Grace!” he shouted.
“Here! Lucien!”
Relief shot through him at the sound of her voice. She was curled above what looked to be a small bundle of rags, protecting it from the panicked throng. Sibby Rose Nolan lay on the ground like a broken doll, blood streaming from a cut on her brow. Thebox with the last of her flowers had splintered, and the strap that had held it around her shoulders twisted.
“Something struck her!” Grace cried. “She can’t…can’t…”
He reached them at last. With an oath, Lucien disentangled the broken box from the girl, then scooped her up. She weighed little more than a kitten. “I’ll get us out of here,” he told Grace. “Hold tight to my arm.” He had marked the place where his coachman sat on his perch, searching for him in the churning crowd. He pushed his way toward the coach, Grace stumbling beside him as the coachman gestured to a footman who came wading toward the embattled group. With the servants’ help, Lucien managed to get his wife into the coach, then handed Sibby Rose to her.
Grace cradled the child against her, heedless of her gown as Lucien pulled a box from beneath the coach seat and withdrew a gleaming pistol.
The coach rocked dangerously as it lurched into motion. Bottles smashed against the vehicle’s walls. The crack of the whip and whinnies of distressed horses seemed to go on forever as Lucien guarded the window, pistol poised.
Bit by bit, the roar of the crowd faded into the distance, the bone-jarring jolts lessened, the blows to the coach stopped. Only the jingle of harness, the clop of the horses hooves and the thundering of his heart continued to strain Lucien’s nerves.
He knocked on the roof of the coach, and the equipage shuddered to a halt.
“I think we’ve lost them, my lord,” the coachman called. “Where are we to go?”
The girl roused in Grace’s arms, her tears streaming down her dirty cheeks. “I want me mammy.”
