at her again, excited by the thought of violence…
“How did you kill Sampson?” she asked quickly, desperately. Her voice was still croaky, her body felt bruised and aching, but her mind was sharp now.
Henry paused in his fumbling as Faye slapped his hands aside and came to squat at Alice’s side.
“It was easy.” Faye sounded excited, pleased to have been asked. “We invited him to visit us here. He never suspected a thing. An invitation to Cole Court! It was the height of his ambitions. I drugged his wine. And then-” she made a grotesque little twisting gesture with her hands “-we broke his neck.”
The sickness rose in Alice’s chest. She forced it down. “You hid Sampson’s body, I suppose, and then decided to disguise it and dispose of it on the bonfire,” she said.
“That’s right!” The duchess sounded very proud of herself. “Such a cunning plan. Or it would have been had you not seen us.”
“No wonder it was taking you such a great effort to haul the body up onto the top of the bonfire,” Alice said. “If only I had realized!” She gave a bitter little laugh, angry at her own stupidity. “And to think I thought you were contributing to the celebrations out of kindness-providing the figure of the guy and even placing it on the fire yourself!”
“Of course, the problem was that Sampson was too heavy,” Faye Cole said, in the sort of tone that made it sound as though she was discussing a difficult household dilemma. “We only realized that when the fire started to burn and settle, and the weight of the body made it roll off. No one would have known otherwise. He would have burned to a cinder and no one any the wiser.”
“But it all turned out so well for you when Tom Fortune was suspected of the crime because of the ring he had given Lydia,” Alice said. “You must have thought that you were safe.”
“Oh, we did,” Faye said. “Safe enough not to worry that
“I missed you on Fortune Row,” Henry said, sounding hard done by. “Used to be a good shot, damn it. Had plenty of practice with rabbits. Vickery was too quick and got you away. Damned nuisance.”
“And then you had me thrown in jail,” Alice said. “If you could not get rid of me one way, you tried another.”
“Henry saw you and Lady Elizabeth that night,” Faye said. “We were appalled-the daughter of the Earl of Scarlet behaving like a hoyden! We paid that modiste to lay charges and to say that she was the one who saw you, but Vickery got you out again with the help of that damned lawyer.”
“Vickery isn’t here to save you now, though, is he,” Henry said. He put a hand on the neck of Alice’s gown and ripped it away. “Perhaps I’ll throw you in a ditch afterward, as well-”
“On the contrary, sir,” a cold voice said. “I am here and
“Get up,” Miles said. His face was white with fury. “Get up so I can hit you again.”
The iron door swung inward, and Lowell ran in, closely followed by Nat Waterhouse and Dexter Anstruther. The duke tried to stumble to his feet and Miles felled him with another blow of such controlled and concentrated force that Alice winced.
“That,” Miles said to Henry Cole, “is for Alice.” He caught her in his arms. She felt the taut anger in him and the fear and the relief and the love. It was in the touch of his hands on her and the press of his body against hers and in his voice.
“Alice,” he said. “Alice.” That was all, but it was enough. His eyes were blazing. He bent his head to press his lips to her hair, and Alice felt so safe and so relieved that her knees buckled.
The duchess was wailing and crying as though her heart would break. Miles loosed Alice reluctantly and moved toward her, and at the last moment Alice saw the glint of a blade in her sleeve and Faye Cole’s hand moved swiftly to strike, just as it had done in the carriage.
“Miles, she has a knife!” Alice called and, seizing one of the blocks of ice from the pile beside her, she swept it around in a low arc, hitting the duchess just behind the knees and taking her legs from under her. The duchess collapsed like a deflating marquee, the knife skittering away across the floor. The duke made a lunge for it and came up, snarling, the blade pointing at Miles’s heart, but Lowell brought his hand down in a chopping motion across the duke’s wrist and the knife spun away and the duke sank back down, groaning.
“My thanks, Lister,” Miles said, hauling the duchess unceremoniously to her feet and handing her over to Dexter Anstruther.
“A pleasure,” Lowell said. He grinned. “Fitting somehow that the Duchess of Cole is felled by a former servant girl and the duke disarmed by a farm boy.”
“Alice, you were magnificent,” Miles said, but then, seeing her sway, he grabbed her by the upper arms to steady her. His face was a white mask and suddenly there was so much urgency and fear in his voice that her heart turned over to hear it.
“Alice! I didn’t realize…Did they hurt you?”
“No,” Alice said. “I’m just a little dizzy. They gave me opium-”
The fury flared again in Miles’s eyes. He looked at Henry Cole. “If that damned scoundrel wasn’t already down-”
“I think you’ve hit him enough,” Alice said, teeth chattering. “Besides, it was the duchess who gave me the opium. She is the one who planned it all, Miles.” She shivered. “There is something…monstrous…about her.”
“You can’t arrest me!” Faye was blustering even as Nat and Dexter led her away. “Don’t you know who I am? I’m the Duchess of Cole!”
“I must get you out of here, sweetheart,” Miles said to Alice. “It’s getting more crowded than a garden party, and you are almost frozen to death.” He looked at her and although his voice was gentle, once again there was something primitive in his face. Alice thought that she would never forget the moment that Miles had knocked Henry Cole down and she had thought for a moment that he would kill him.
“Can you walk,” he asked, “or are you too light-headed?”
“I can manage,” Alice said, clinging to his arm for support as he steered her toward the door. Her legs felt like jelly.
“Did you have to bring all of Fortune’s Folly with you?” she joked weakly as she saw some of Lowell’s farmworkers marching the groom away. “I am only surprised that you were able to persuade Mama to stay behind. I imagine she would have loved the chance to hit the duchess over the head with her reticule!”
“As it is you did the job for her,” Miles said. “Nice work. Another of the maneuvers you learned to escape the attention of lecherous gentlemen?”
“Something of the sort,” Alice said with a shudder. “Miles, how did Lowell come to be here?”
“Lowell was the one who sent for us,” Miles said. “Lydia saw her parents bring you here and went to Lowell’s farm for help. Lowell sent a man down into the village to fetch us whilst he came up here and dispatched the man guarding the door.”
Lowell came across at that moment and shook Miles by the hand.
“So you two are friends, are you now?” Alice said, from the circle of Miles’s arms.
Miles and Lowell exchanged a look.
“He’ll look after you,” Lowell said gruffly.
“I think that counts as approval from a Yorkshire man,” Alice said, as her brother kissed her cheek and walked away. “I didn’t think you would be back yet,” she added. “If I had known…”
“If you had known perhaps you wouldn’t have done anything quite so foolish as going to look for Lydia on your own,” Miles said. “I’d just returned and was at the Old Palace looking for you when your brother burst in.”
“You said that it was Lydia who raised the alarm,” Alice said, remembering. “What was she doing here?”
A shadow touched Miles’s face. “I will tell you all about it later,” he said. His voice changed. “Fortune has betrayed her again, Alice. She is in a bad way.”
“No!” Alice thought her heart would break for Lydia this time. “How could he?”
