Page 84 of The Lady's Last Mistake
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, but when she started to reply thatshe was fine, her voice squeezed off. Her limbs quaked as the full extent of what just happened struck her.
Grant pulled her to him, crushing her in his arms and pressing his lips against her forehead.
“You found us,” she managed to say.
“We heard screams as soon as we entered the churchyard,” he explained.
Cassie closed her eyes and rested her cheek against his shoulder, letting him hold her. But then, he peeled her away and tipped her chin up to meet his eyes. “There will be patrolmen coming. You need to leave. You can’t be found here.”
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll take care of Isabel, and Tris will take you home.”
“No, I’ll go to Hope House,” she said. “Meet me there afterward.”
“My knee!” Youngdale grunted, struggling under Tris’s weight. “Get off me. I need a doctor!”
Grant released Cassie, whose shivering had only increased at the thought of avoiding the constables. Of leaving Grant to clean up this mess.
“Sit him up, Tris,” he commanded. Her driver did as requested, bringing the man into a sitting position while pinning his arms behind his back.
“A doctor you say?” Grant asked. “You’re in luck.”
He struck Mr. Youngdale in the face with a hard crack of his fist, knocking him flat onto the floor and out cold.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
It was well past nine o’clock, and Cassie had still not left Crispin Street. Michael and Genie’s dinner had been scheduled for seven, and by now her absence, alongside Grant’s, would have surely elicited concern. Her brother would send a footman to Grosvenor Square. When Cassie was not found there, Michael would likely go to Thornton House himself. When neither of them were found, she could only imagine what her brother would suspect.
She should have left for Mayfair immediately from St. Paul’s Church. Logic and reason and self-preservation all demanded it of her, and yet, she’d gone to Hope House anyway. How could she attend dinner and pretend as if a crazed man had not just attacked her with a knife? And was Grant to arrive as well, pretending as though he had not subdued the man and saved both her life and Isabel’s?
So much pretending. She was tired of it all. Utterly exhausted by it.
Elyse paced the sitting room, her arms crossed. “This is exactly what Madame Archambeau was worried about.”
She had returned from the benefactress’s dinner just minutes ago, and Cassie had explained everything that had happened at the church rectory.
“This area is too dangerous, and our location too insecure. We’re often hiding women from their men and families, just like Mr. Youngdale, and what happened with him is a prime example of how weak our whole arrangement is.”
Each word was a stake through Cassie’s heart.
“But that is our purpose. It’s why we started this home to begin with. To give women a safe place, a private place, with no judgment.”
Elyse quit pacing and, still wearing her dinner gown of golden amber silk, she came to sit next to Cassie. “If we promise safety, we must be able to deliver it. The same goes for privacy. That wretched man is going to try and defend himself by denigrating Hope House, exposing it, saying we’ve kidnapped women?—”
“We don’t know what he will say,” she argued, but she feared Elyse was right. She usually was. Her wisdom outpaced Cassie’s by a long stretch.
“Madame Archambeau will support us financially; she’s given us her word. But we need to consider improvements. More protection.”
Cassie nodded. “Stronger walls.”
Elyse covered Cassie’s hand, which was resting limply on her lap. “What is it you’re thinking right now?”
Her throat cinched tight. “I’m not entirely sure.”
