Incensed, he followed suit and tried to tug her the correct way. She snatched her wet sleeve from his slippery, muddy fingers and elbowed him in the ribs. “I do not answer to you, Giles Sinclair! You run away like a rat if you are not up to the challenge, but I still have work to do!” And she was off again, shuffling a few inches at a time toward the Thames.
Vowing to strangle the minx the second it was safe to do so, and while Dalton slithered from his hiding place on his belly in the direction of his glowing leg, Giles had no choice but to follow her.
A couple of feet later, Diana crouched behind the large, rotting husk of a barrel that had the beginnings of a bush sprouting out the top, then pointed at the hazy outline of a blackened barge edging toward the shore. “No lamps aboard means they are avoiding the river police, and by the size of that boat I’d say they only travel local as it’s narrow enough to navigate the canals rather than the river.”
“Is your plan that we wait for it to sail off again then dive in and swim after it?” That he could still be sarcastic surprised him because Giles was cold and he was scared. Muddy water had penetrated all his crevices and his heart was hammering so loudly it was drowning out the sound of everything else—yet oddly he had never felt so exhilarated.
“I just want to see if the boat has a name so the excise men can track it.” She bent to lean from behind the barrel, her delectable bottom inches from his face again. “But by the looks of things, the paint is purposefully worn.”
“Splendid.”
“There are three men on deck… no, wait… four…” As she placed her full weight against the barrel to get a better view, the decayed base of it shifted and screeched ominously against the flagstones.
“Who’s there?” The man with the lamp raised it to the alleyway, the soft glow bathing the barrel they were now crouched behind in light.
Two hobnailed boots crunched closer, paused, then the unmistakable click of a pistol hammer being cocked turned Giles’s blood to ice.
The feet came closer and he weighed his options. Perhaps if helunged at the ruffian he could buy Diana enough time to run away? Their eyes locked in the darkness and he gestured to the exit with a flick of his head as he mouthed,Run.
She frowned and mouthed back,But he has a gun.
Giles nodded and shrugged. Oddly at peace with his fate.
This was it.
As he braced himself for the impact of the bullet and likely his impending death, Diana transformed unfazed before his eyes. The headstrong, waspish, intrepid Goddess of the Hunt dissolved into a giggling, simpering, flirting tease the moment the lamplight picked them out through the veil of twigs sprouting from the barrel top.
“Follow my lead.” She whispered that without moving her lips a split second before she dragged him against her body. She giggled again as her hands fumbled under his coat. Hooked one of her long legs around his as she fisted his shirt and yanked him hard against her until their faces were inches apart, then pushed him playfully back as she wagged her finger.
“Naughty—I told you kissin’ is extra no matter how handsome a fella you are.” Her accent was suddenly laced with the essence of the gutter. Beneath her breathy giggle it switched again in a heartbeat, and she whispered, “Pretend you want me.”
Giles didn’t have to pretend.
All his wildest nightly fantasies involved the woman whose heart currently hammered against his own. As she had commanded it, and as they apparently did not have a better plan that didn’t involve him being aerated by a bullet, he slid his hands possessively around her waist and pretended to nuzzle her neck.
“It’s another bleedin’ lightskirt,” the closest ruffian groanedback to his armed companion before he hollered at them and the pistol, thank the Lord, disappeared from view. “Oi! Clear off! This is private property not a bloody brothel! Didn’t you read the bleedin’ signs, strumpet?”
Still holding Giles in place, Diana’s expression went from eager to disinterested in a second as she shifted to glare at the interruption. “I’d ’afta be able to read to do that, now, wouldn’t I?” Then she shrugged, all sauce and undulating insolence as she tugged Giles’s hand before her expression changed once more to one of a bona fide strumpet’s business again and she wrapped her arm seductively around his middle.
“Come on big boy, I’ll just ’ave to show you a good time somewhere else, won’t I?” She pouted and giggled as they leaned together like a pair of drunkards and stumbled out of the alleyway toward the yard. “And if you can turn that ha’penny into a sixpence, I’ll give you the time of your life.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
As they hadn’t paid the hackney to wait for them in case the driver got suspicious, the three of them had to walk almost to the Tower of London before they saw and hailed another. All the while Giles’s emotions and nerves were all over the place.
To be fair, they had been for days thanks to the ticking clock Gervais had started, but that combined with a whole host of new feelings to heat his blood. The residual anger was now more from sexual frustration than jealousy—and he was big enough to call his initial reaction jealousy, and jealousy over Dalton to boot. Then there was still some genuine fear at the risks Diana was prepared to take to do her job and his powerlessness to stop her. Beneath all that, catching him off guard, there was also the unexpected thrill of the chase. Sneaking around the docks, spying, and succeeding in bringing villains to justice was a heady rush that made him as giddy as that fifty-year-old cognac had and just as reckless.
He wanted to pay the sixpence and kiss her. Drag her into his arms and taste her again. Explore those silk-clad legs properly as they hooked themselves around his. Make her green eyes sparkle with a very different sort of excitement…
Ruin them both before he was dragged away in irons.
That inevitability went some way to quashing his ardor.
“The Hays Mews behind Berkeley Square.” The driver nodded at his clipped instruction as Giles helped Diana in and waited for Dalton to follow. Then because his unruly and—thanks to the rubbish heap he had crawled through—now very smelly servant had taken the center of one of the benches and spread out to massage what he presumed was the location of his stump, he had no option but to take the seat next to hers.
The carriage lurched forward, and she grinned as she sank back against the battered leather. “We’ve got him and what’s even better is Coleridge doesn’t even know it yet. I do so love being right, but unlike you, Giles, I never get to say I told you so to the people who most deserve it.”
“Don’t you?” As much as his body yearned and he wanted to remain mad at her for putting herself in danger, her triumphant smile was infectious and he was too elated to be angry at the risks she clearly took for her work. For the first time, he understood why she took them. He had never felt so alive. “I’d say having a few thousand people read your words and marvel at your cleverness must be beyond satisfying. As must seeing scoundrels like Mr. Coleridge getting their just deserts.”
