Page 22 of An Inconvenient Duke

Knowing he would get no more useful information tonight, Marcus released his hold on Jenkins’s neck and stepped back.

The man scurried down the alley, half turning to make certain Marcus didn’t change his mind and come after him. In a matter of seconds, he’d disappeared into the foggy darkness.

He’d gotten no more answers. It was time to deal with Danielle.

He returned to the tavern just in time to see her slight figure emerge into the street. But instead of walking toward the waiting hackney to retrace her circuitous path home, she turned in the opposite direction.

Marcus followed behind, staying a dozen strides back and careful not to be seen. But no matter if he lost her. He knew where she’d left her father’s carriage and could intercept her there.

When she reached a narrow passageway leading off the main street, she paused to glance in both directions. Marcus flattened himself inside a doorway in the shadows, out of sight. Then he watched as she foolishly headed into the dark passageway alone.

With a curse, he shoved himself out of the doorway and hurried after her.

He darted into the alley and saw Danielle standing only a few feet away, her back against the brick wall. In front of her, a large man towered over her, blocking her escape. The man was tensed and ready to attack, and a knife gleamed in the hand dangling at his side.

“Get away from her!” Marcus shouted and rushed forward.

The man raised his knife to strike at Danielle, but Marcus dropped his shoulder and plowed into the stranger’s gut. His body blocked the downward arc of the knife, and he grabbed at the winded man’s arm, twisting it forcefully back at an unnatural angle to his elbow. A painful curse tore from the attacker’s lips, and his fingers opened with a convulsing shudder. The knife dropped with a clatter onto the ground.

Marcus kicked it away at the same time as he pulled back his arm and landed a hard fist into the man’s jaw. The attacker staggered backward from the strength of the blow. Marcus drew back his arm to deliver another punch.

The man dove for the knife, snatching it up as he rolled across the ground. He came up facing Marcus on the balls of his feet, crouching low and prepared to fight.

Marcus glanced around the alley. No weapons, nowhere to dash for safety, Danielle to protect—retreat was his only option. He grabbed her hand and ran. He pulled her down the alley toward the avenue, hoping the attacker was too cowardly to follow them into the moonlit street.

He hurried her to the waiting hackney. The driver stared in wide-eyed surprise as they ran toward him. Marcus threw open the door and shoved her inside the compartment.

He swung up after her and called out to the driver as he slammed shut the door, “The Queen’s House!” He pounded his fist against the ceiling. “Go, now!”

The carriage jerked to a start and pulled out into the street.

He grabbed Danielle’s arm and pulled her across the compartment toward him, putting her off-balance and halfway onto his lap. “Why are you meeting with men in taverns and alleyways?” He lowered his head until his mouth was only a hairsbreadth from hers and growled, “And what the hell happened to my sister?”

Eight

Dani yanked her arm away and sat back on the bench opposite from him, her breathing labored. Even in the darkness, she could see anger blazing in his eyes and was certain that it matched the intensity of the fear in her own.

“Why were you at that tavern tonight?” he demanded.

“I was meeting with the men I’d hired, to give them instructions,” she breathed out, too upset to find her voice.

“For what exactly?”

She refused to answer that. He was asking her to endanger all of Nightingale. Something she wouldnotdo.

“That man was going to kill you.” He leaned toward her, the hardness in him visible even in the dark shadows. “I’ve spent years studying how a man moves his body when he’s readying to attack, how he holds a weapon that he’s about to plunge into your gut. I can read the tension in the way he holds himself and know when he’s going to strike. Not if.When.And I saw all of that in your man just now. He wasn’t holding that knife ready in case someone else came upon you. He was raising it to strike. At you.”

Her stomach lurched. She’d been working with Kimball for years, trusted him to carry out his duties and not give her up, just as Jenkins wouldn’t—

But he’d turned on her. If Marcus hadn’t been there, Kimball would have killed her.

She pressed her hand against her belly. Oh God, she was going to be sick!

“Why would someone want to attack you, Danielle?”

Praying she didn’t cast up her accounts, she shook her head. She couldn’t tell him that. It would mean divulging everything about Nightingale.

“You might as well answer me. I have no intention of letting you out of this carriage until I know what you’re involved in, because I have a feeling that it also involved Elise. So I’ll keep us circling Westminster until the horses drop dead if I have to.”