Page 53 of Presenting Miss Letitia (Once a Wallflower 1)

“He won’t get far.”

Brandon walked over to the bed. He picked up the quilt and placed it carefully over Arietta’s body.

“She put herself between Pierse and me, Brandon. She saved my life.”

“Did she, sweetheart? Perhaps your faith in her wasn’t entirely misplaced.”

“I was wrong about her association with that man, but she was fond of me, Brandon. Perhaps she loved him.” She took a shuddering breath. “Why are so many people I come to care for taken from me?”

“Not everyone, sweetheart,” he said soothingly as he untied the curtain cords which bound her to the chair. “I can easily predict your future filled with people who care very much for you.”

Her whole body had begun to shudder. “Can…you?”

Free of her bonds, he gently rubbed her wrists. “You are eminently loveable, sweetheart.” He took out his handkerchief and handed it to her.

Letty wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Her wrists, still sore from the earlier assault on them, stung, her throat too tight with emotion to talk anymore.

She held the handkerchief out to him. She hiccupped, and gazing down, realized she was still in her thin-lawn nightgown.

“No, keep it, sweetheart. Let’s go and get your dressing gown, then I’ll take you away from here.”

A hand around her waist, Brandon helped her to her bedchamber. “I’ll have the maid pack a bag for you,” he said.

There was a commotion in the street. Candlelight flickered in the surrounding houses. Front doors opened. Men in blue coats ran past. The staff had emerged and were milling about, looking stunned. One of the Bow Street runners came to tell him they had captured Pierse.

“You have nothing to fear now, Letty, we’ve got him.” He drew her to her feet from the chair in the front hall. She wobbled, and he wrapped his arms around her slim body in the thin silk dressing gown, as the awful fear he’d had of finding her dead faded, and his racing pulse slowed.

“We needed to catch them together. I was coming to find you,” he said. “I thought you’d be asleep,” he said almost accusingly.

“I was, but a noise woke me.” She dropped her chin, a flush coloring her pale cheeks. “They were…”

“No need to explain.” He ran a soothing hand over her back. “We have somewhere for you to stay tonight. Let’s find your maid. Her voluble French has mystified the Bow Street runner.”

“You won’t leave me?”

“No, I won’t leave.” He smiled down at her as relief gripped him again. He placed his arm around her to reassure himself as much as her. The hurt this evening had caused her would take some time to heal, and he wished she could have been spared this frightening business. Their agent watching the house had taken too long to alert them of Pierse’s presence. “Ah, here she is,” he said as Adele appeared from the servant’s stairs, gasping and crying. “She will help you dress. I’ll be right outside the bedchamber.”

When Letty emerged again, she was pale, but composed, her hair in a smooth topknot. She was dressed in a lavender pelisse and gloves and carried a shawl and a portmanteau. “Adele wants to stay here, she says her brother will come for her.”

Brandon nodded. “She may do so.”

He escorted Letty down the stairs and out into the street. She gazed around at the confusion, the wagon trundling off with Pierse inside, but said nothing as he led her to the carriage.

In the minute when he’d burst into that room fearing the worst, the depth of his feelings for Letty struck with force. He cared for her deeply. Such an emotion rocked him, it made him want something from life he’d refused to believe he could have. That he didn’t believe he could have without causing some hurt to her.

“I want to go home, Brandon,” she murmured.

“Yes, of course you do, sweetheart. And so you shall,” he said, his breath catching.

Chapter Twenty

Brandon assisted Letty into the carriage. Once seated, he took her hands in his, while he explained that Mrs. Willard had expressed some confidence in finding a sponsor for her, to allow her to remain in London for the rest of the Season. “If you wish to stay,” he added, studying her in the faint glow of the carriage lamps. “You did express a desire to go home, which might be best.”

Letty looked away from him. He wanted her gone. She watched the shadowy quiet streets pass by, and the halos cast by the gas lamps. “How very kind of her,” she murmured, aware that she sounded flat, dismissive, and profoundly weary.

It was barely halfway through the Season. That meant many weeks living with a new family. She feared she would make a dreadful companion. She and Arietta had shared such good times together, giggling at nonsensical things whilst browsing amongst the jewelry and furs at the Pantheon Bazaar, or the perfumery and millinery at Harding Howell & Co in Pall Mall. To contemplate joining another household, trying to fit in with a new family, with the possible resentment of their daughter who would hardly care to share her come-out, did nothing to lessen the sensation of being cut adrift.

Letty kept revisiting the frightening scene in Arietta’s bedchamber in her mind. Pierse, as he held up a vicious-looking knife and moved toward her, having made up his mind to kill her. Then, Arietta rushing in to save her, only to be impaled on the blade. It all happened so fast and left Pierse as stunned and shattered as Letty. She shuddered. She would never forget the almost inhuman sound of his heartbroken cry.

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