Page 80 of A Slight Problem with the Wedding
Marigold and her dowager angels nodded.
But Gory was not convinced. “If it is so safe, then how did that assailant get over the wall unseen?”
“Ambrose will give us the details when he returns,” Adela said with unwarranted confidence. “Need I point out he did not remain unseen. One of the Bow Street runners spotted him and sounded the alert.”
“Because the villain was on the move,” Gory countered. “He might never have been noticed had he remained in his hiding spot. Then, all he would have had to do was wait until nightfall and then sneak into the house unnoticed.”
“And shoot you?” Marigold muttered, obviously doubting such a thing could happen.
But Gory knew this had been too close a call to dismiss. “He probably would have stabbed me in order not to wake anyone.”
“Well, he’s jumped back over the wall and must have had a horse tethered near the mews,” Lady Withnall remarked.
Gory shook her head in dismay. “Yes, we heard him gallop off, did we not? How does one hide a gigantic beast and not raise anyone’s suspicions? Is this not proof enough that we are not as safe as we believe? All the more reason for me to find another hiding place.”
“Then I’m going with you,” Julius said, walking in with Leo and Ambrose.
“Julius!” Gory ran to him and slid her hands up and down his arms and chest. “Were you hurt? Did he shoot you?”
She gasped as her hand came away with blood.
“Gory, it is just a scratch,” he insisted, attempting to dismiss her concern.
“A scratch?” She stared at the crimson blotches on her fingers.
“Greeves!” Ambrose called to his butler. “Have Dr. Farthingale summoned straight away.”
“At once,” the harried butler muttered and scrambled off.
Julius, the dolt, cast her a sloppy smile. “Worried about me, Gory?”
“Someone has to, since you obviously are ridiculously careless in taking care of yourself. He might have killed you!”
“But he didn’t,” Julius pointed out.
Gory was ready to say more, but he did not appear to be in serious pain or particularly weakened. Perhaps the shot had only grazed him. Even so, he was being impossibly casual about it. This truly irked her, but had she not been just as stubborn in dismissing her own injury?
She hoped his would turn out to be no more than a scratch.
That it could have been so much more damaging had her rattled. She put a hand to her stomach because the realization of just how close she had come to losing Julius made her ill.
“We lost the fiend in the crowd on Regent Street,” Julius said, watching her with obvious concern, “but Barrow’s man got a decent look at him. He thinks he will be able to recognize him if he sees him again.”
“Good,” Leo said, frowning. “This is just the break this investigation has needed.”
“What about the man who scaled the townhouse wall?” Lady Dayne asked.
“No one got a good look at him,” Ambrose said with a grunt of frustration. “He must have avoided the Bow Street runners positioned at the rear of this house by climbing over Lord Greene’s wall.”
Gory’s head was spinning as they spoke. “Ambrose, who is Lord Greene?”
“Our elderly neighbor. The villain probably waited until no one was in sight, then scaled my neighbor’s wall and sidled along his property to sneak onto mine.”
“Intending to remain hidden until nightfall,” Leo remarked. “Your shrubbery is lush enough to offer him ample cover.”
Ambrose growled. “I’m tearing it all out today.”
“You will not,” Gory insisted. “You have a beautiful garden and must not ruin it.”
