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Ten feet behind her, the man from earlier followed them, staring right at her. A cold wave of fear crashed over her as she turned to look straight ahead again.
“Hazel,” she said as she leaned towards the girl, “in a moment, I want you to run down the street, calling for help. Reach the bookstore as fast as you can.”
Hazel’s eyes widened. “Why?”
Calliope swallowed. “I think there’s someone about to rob us.”
Hazel’s face lost all color. “Rob? Right here, next to Bond Street?”
Perhaps the man wanted to do much worse things than rob, but Calliope couldn’t say that to Hazel.
She looked over her shoulder again. The man was only five feet behind.
“Yes, dear, I’m afraid so,” Calliope replied.
She turned her head slightly and saw with her side vision that he was now only three feet behind.
“Now.”
Calliope stopped and turned completely around, facing the man, who widened his eyes, then threw his arm out towards her. With a small but powerful movement Spencer had taught her, one she had practiced with him countless times, she hit the man straight in the nose.
There was a crack of bone against her knuckle and a lightning bolt of pain through her hand. The man grunted.
She thought she’d hear the girls running away, yelling for help. Instead, there was a tremendous growl, and Argos flashed by Calliope in a huge leap of muscle and fur, his giant jaws clashing.
“Get him, Argos!” yelled Hazel.
The man had barely managed to recover from Calliope’s hit when Argos’s jaws came together on his ankle, and he yelled with such power that Calliope’s ears hurt. Still yelling, the man got out a knife and started to mindlessly stab at Argos. Calliope’s blood ran cold for the dog.
“Calliope!” called a tall, muscular figure at the entrance into the alleyway. “Girls!”
Calliope recognized the voice…Nathaniel. Her stomach flipped from the sudden joy of his presence and worry for him.
More people were coming into the alleyway. The man kept stabbing the air around the dog, but Argos had now let him go and was growling and barking at him, standing in a protective position.
As Nathaniel and the people behind him came closer, the man dashed in the opposite direction. Argos and Nathaniel raced past Calliope in pursuit.
“Are you all right?” asked Hazel as she came to Calliope. “How are your knuckles?”
Violet took Calliope’s hand in hers and removed her glove, staring at the reddened flesh with wonder. “You must be the most extraordinary woman ever.”
16
“Calliope, how could you do this?”
Nathaniel paced the drawing room, his footsteps knocking against the bare wooden floor in a wild rhythm. He just couldn’t get the image of the man stabbing at his dog, his wife, and his sisters out of his mind.
He’d returned earlier today from the Admiralty, holding the list of sailors on all five vessels, feeling completely triumphant. But the house was empty, and he’d asked Mrs. Nicholson where Calliope and his sisters were, only to find out she’d taken them shopping. Wanting to finally buy something for them himself, he’d followed them to Bond Street, only to see them turning that corner with a strange man on their heels. He remembered the utter horror as he’d imagined what the man could do.
The memories of his mother and that terrible night when he couldn’t protect her clamped him in a cold, sharp vise.
He’d hurried after them, thankfully reaching them in time. But after the man ran away, Nathaniel and Argos hadn’t been able to find him. The poor dog had gotten two cuts, though not deep. Nathaniel had cleaned and treated the wounds.
But that could have been one of his sisters…or his wife.
“How could I?” Calliope demanded. “I didn’t ask that man to follow us.”
“Yes, brother,” said Violet, who had Miss Furrington on her lap. The little beast was curled in a ball and purring loudly, her nose hidden in her tail. “Calliope didn’t ask for a burglar to follow us.”
