Page 15 of The Lady's Last Mistake
The young woman had been reticent since her arrival, only providing them with the most essential details: her first name and how long she’d been with child. She’d been too frightened and untrusting to say more.
Once again, Cassie saw just how fortunate she’d been when she’d found herself in trouble. Her eldest brother, Philip, had at first insisted Cassie should be made to marry the man who’d compromised her. However, he’d been able to set his own anger aside long enough to realize it would have been a disastrous marriage. Lord Winston Renfry, the heir to the Earl of Bainbury, would have made a horrendous husband, and forcing Cassie to marry him would have been cruel. Philip had instead sent her to a trusted friend in Sweden. Her reputation had been protected, and Renfry had never learned of the child. Thankfully, she had not crossed paths with him even once since her return.
“I’m going to check on Caroline,” Elyse said as she got up from her chair. Sister Agatha had gone to the sink with the peeled potatoes and carrots, so she didn’t witness Elyse quickly tapping the side of Cassie’s head. She startled, but then understood what her friend had wanted to tell her: Shewas still wearing the emerald-encrusted hair comb Ruth had speared her hair with that morning.
Before Agatha could turn around, Cassie pulled it out.
“Tell Caroline I’ll stop in if she’d like to work on her sampler some more,” she said as she dropped the comb into her pocket.
Caroline Rawling was a married woman with four children, and from what she’d shared, she and her husband had agreed that adding another mouth to feed would be injurious to the children they already struggled to provide for. So, she’d come to give birth in private, and then would place the baby out. To avoid judgment from neighbors and friends, she’d said she was staying with her mother in Surrey for the birth. When she arrived home without a baby, she would say it had been stillborn.
As one could expect, Caroline was often melancholy. Her decision hadn’t been made lightly. Giving up a child was heart-wrenching; this Cassie knew too well. And so, she would stop in to say hello to Caroline whenever she was at Hope House, and if time allowed, they would sit and work on an embroidery hoop that Caroline had brought with her.
“Well, it’s about time. The coal is here,” Sister Agatha said, peering through the glass of the kitchen’s single window.
“At last.” Cassie got up. “My office was developing a layer of ice. I’ll see the deliveryman is paid.”
She reached into her pocket, which she now had Ruth sew into all her dresses. The first time she went out in the blocks around Crispin Street, a passel of hooligans had knocked into her and stolen her wrist reticule before she could even blink. They were already racing away when sherealized it was missing from her arm. Ever since, she’d carried her coin purse in her pocket.
Cassie met the deliveryman as he was pouring the coal down the shute, into the cellar of the building. Enough to last them through the end of February, she imagined. She paid him the two pounds it cost, and then started back for the kitchen. A thick brume had been setting in when she’d arrived, and now, it lowered into the alley. Cassie shivered, having forgone her flannel for the short trip outside.
She would go in, say hello to Lila and Caroline, log the payment for coal in her office ledger, and leave. Before Lord Thornton could arrive and start frothing at the mouth again, anyway.
The quick scuffing of boots behind her in the alley preceded a hand latching onto her arm. A leather glove immediately muffled her yelp of surprise as it came down hard over her mouth. It was a man, and he tugged her back, against him.
“Where is she?” he hissed in her ear.
Cassie thrashed, but his formidable strength rendered the fight useless. His arms seemed to be cast of iron as he dragged her backward, her bootheels scudding over the cobbles.
“I know she is here!” he said, his voice grating and low. “Where is Isabel?”
The urge to panic and keep thrashing was instinctual, but she knew it would get her nowhere. She had to calm. Had to think. With her arms pinned at her sides, Cassie’s hands flailed uselessly against her skirt. Something hard knocked into her palm. She remembered that her coin purse wasn’t the only item in her pocket.
“I am going to remove my hand so you can tell me where Isabel is,” the man said. “Scream and you will be sorry.”
Stretching her fingers into her pocket, Cassie fished for the hair comb. The cluster of emeralds, shaped into a flower, scraped against her palm. She closed her hand around it just as the man’s palm started to lift from her mouth. Cassie didn’t hesitate—she captured the man’s fingertip between her teeth and bit down as hard as she could against the leather. With a grunt of pain, he loosened his grip on her arms, enough for her to pull away from him. He clamped down on her wrist, but she whirled about and raked the sharp tines of her comb toward his face. And then she was falling backward, the man’s hold on her completely severed as he roared and covered his face with his hands.
“Oi!” Tris’s shout gave Cassie the strength to push up from the cold puddle she’d landed in. Her driver ran toward her. “Oi, stop!”
Tris raced by her, attempting to chase the man who now sprinted around the corner of the alley, out of sight. He gave up and turned back toward Cassie.
“My lady,” Tris said, reaching her side. “Miss Banks, I mean, are you injured?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she gasped, her heart hammering erratically. She still clutched the hair comb in her shaking hand. Traces of blood glistened on the tips of the tines.
Tris took her arm and led her back to the kitchen entrance. Cassie’s mind whirled as he knocked the correct code. What had just happened? The man had been looking for someone. A woman.Isabel.
“Miss Banks!” Sister Agatha exclaimed when she openedthe door. The warmth of the kitchen enveloped Cassie, but it seemed to only make her shivering worse.
Tris led her to the table, still gripping her elbow. “She was attacked in the alley just now.”
“She waswhat?”
Cassie came to a dizzying stop at the deep voice. Grant Thornton had just entered the kitchen from the front hall, and when he saw her, his eyes blew wide. He came forward, hunting her for any injury. “Where are you hurt?”
Her legs quivered. A strange rush of numbness stole down them, making them feel as if they were disappearing. She plopped into a chair as Elyse and Lila entered the room behind Lord Thornton.
“I’m not hurt.”
