Page 44 of A Silence in Belgrave Square (Below Stairs #8)

“He posted the letter to Lady Rankin,” I said.

“We wondered why she’d received a letter when she’s been gone these last three years.

You wrote the letters with Lady Fontaine’s information over a long stretch of time, hoarding them, as you said, until you decided the time was ripe.

Mr.Howard must have included it when he sent a batch for you, not knowing who Lady Rankin was, or that she was deceased.

The direction only said, To the Lady of the Household , after all.

But the information in it was very specific. ”

“Which meant it would be opened by someone else in the house,” Lord Downes snapped. “Who’d wonder why it was threatening a woman long dead, and maybe they’d go to the police. Jeopardizing everything. Howard was an idiot, and now he knew too much. He had to go.”

I felt sick. “The secretary who replaced Mr.Howard didn’t find you out. You’d grown wiser and made certain he saw only the envelopes, with no letters inside them.”

Lord Downes’s eyes narrowed. “How the devil do you know all this? Have they recruited women for the secret police now? How appalling.”

“She’s not with the police,” Lady Fontaine said faintly. “She’s a medium.”

Lord Downes shot her an incredulous look.

“Whoever she is, she’s a ridiculous, interfering busybody, and I am tired of talking to her.

Leave now,” he commanded me. “Lady Fontaine will remain behind. It is the best thing she can do, unless she wants the world to know she was a blackmailer as well as a petty thief.” He turned a sneer on her.

“You should be grateful I intend to destroy your house—no one will find all the bits and pieces you stole.”

“You deceitful, odious liar ,” Lady Fontaine cried in outrage. “I trusted you. I loved you.”

She lunged at him. Hannah shrieked and dove for her, and Lord Downes backed swiftly from both of them, holding his pipe closer to the dynamite.

Adam, brave lad, went after him , and I leapt for Adam, terrified the boy would provoke Lord Downes into lighting the stick.

“I’d stay away,” Lord Downes said. “Unless you want us all to go up.”

Lady Fontaine, her anger becoming a frenzy, twisted from Hannah, lifted a heavy paperweight from the desk and threw it at Lord Downes.

He ducked the missile, which thudded into the bookcase behind him, but as he swerved, his boot heel caught on the carpet, and he tripped. He flailed as he started to fall, a terrified light in his eyes.

I knew in an instant Lord Downes had no wish to light that dynamite while he held it. He’d planned only to flee, cover his crimes, and start again as an innocuous English lordship relaxing in the cafés of Paris.

He’d sip coffee and reminisce about the English countryside, while his friends informed him what a lucky escape he’d had from his home in Belgrave Square. The Fenians would be blamed for the bombs, and Lord Downes would never be connected to their crimes.

As he desperately tried to right himself, Lord Downes clutched the pipe in his hand so hard that its bowl broke. Burning embers singed his fingers, and he cried out.

Lord Downes hit the floor, the single stick of dynamite falling to the carpet. A glob of burning tobacco burst from the broken pipe and plunged toward the pile of explosives behind him.

I flung myself at the small glow of fire, batting Adam and Lord Downes aside. I grabbed the bright clump, which burned my hand something fierce, and took it down to the floor with me. I beat out every spark into the carpet, and kept beating, the pile of dynamite inches from my face.

I heard pounding footsteps as I lay face down, my hands smarting, my body aching. Lady Fontaine was sobbing, Hannah trying to persuade her out. Lord Downes floundered like a bug on his back. He struggled to rise, and Adam stepped on his stomach.

Men poured into the room, responding to the summons I’d put forth before I’d followed Adam to Belgrave Square.

“No!” I shouted. “There’s dynamite everywhere.” One spark from a policeman’s boot would send the lot of us up.

A hand in a thick leather glove reached to me. I looked up to behold Daniel, his forbidding expression mixed with one of relief that he’d found me alive.

I folded my burned right hand to my chest and clutched at him with my left. I let out a gasp when that one stung as well.

“Kat, what the devil?” Daniel pulled me to my feet, then gently unfolded my hands to reveal the hot red marks from where I’d pounded at the wad of fiery tobacco.

“Better stinging skin than going up with this house,” I said shakily. I cast my gaze to the policemen who surrounded the dynamite in a respectful manner. “Tell them to be careful.”

“They know what to do,” Daniel assured me. “They were already dismantling explosives at the base of Nelson’s Column when your lads found us. Now come away and let them work.”

“Lord Downes organized everything,” I babbled as Daniel helped me stumble from the room. “He confessed as much. He would have been happy to kill us all while he ran free. I hope you dig a deep hole and drop him into it,” I finished adamantly.

Daniel steered me into the hall, where I wilted against him, my legs weak. Two brushes with death within a week were not good for me.

“I heard him,” Daniel said. “More importantly, Monaghan did.” He nodded at the gray-haired gent with round spectacles giving orders in his unfeeling tones.

“I’ve had my eye on Downes for a while. There had to be some way information was getting to and from the Fenians, and if it wasn’t Lord Peyton or his friends, then who?

Lord Downes was a bit too much the anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, anti-anyone-but-men-exactly-like-himself cliché to be believed. ”

“Yet, he is that,” I said, my voice scratchy. “But not for the reasons one would think.”

“Hush, now.” Daniel towed me away, past the constables, Inspector McGregor with his usual glower, Sergeant Scott’s cool efficiency, and the chill stare of Mr.Monaghan.

Hannah and Adam were leading Lady Fontaine, who wept and asked anyone within hearing why she’d deserved Lord Downes to be so horrible to her. We made it downstairs and finally emerged from the house, a curious crowd filling the street. London loved a spectacle.

Adam, or rather, Sean—I had to remember to call him by his correct name—ran to me and flung his arms around my waist.

“Thank you, Mrs.Holloway.” His words were tremulous. “Thank you.”

He broke from me then and raced after Hannah, who was assisting Lady Fontaine along the street and across into the park. It wouldn’t be safe for Lady Fontaine to go back into Lord Peyton’s house, as much as she protested she wanted to, until Lord Downes’s home was cleared of all explosives.

Daniel would not let me linger and propelled me gently onward.

I saw Mr.Fielding’s groom among the crowd, along with youths big and small who’d been protecting me all these weeks.

Lord Downes’s kitchen maid, I was happy to see, was among them.

He’d not have spared her if she’d lingered too long over her pots.

I spied Mr.Grimes as well, who pushed through the onlookers and lumbered to us.

“All right then, Mrs.H.?” he said in his big voice. “I’m that glad you sent for us. We was ready to rush inside, but the coppers came, and we decided to step back and let them pass. Daniel was with them, so I knew you’d be all right.”

Mr.Grimes made to clasp my hands, but I pulled them back fearfully. Mr.Grimes sent Daniel a questioning look, and Daniel opened my palms to show him the blistering skin.

“She burned them,” Daniel said grimly. “Preventing dynamite from going off.”

Mr.Grimes gazed at me in awe. “She’s right brave, ain’t she? Better marry her, Danny, me boy, so she can look after you proper.”

“Oh, I intend to,” Daniel said, to my amazement, then he waved for a hansom, bundled me into it, and took me away.

* * *

We did not go directly to Mount Street, but to a small house in Kensington that lay not far from its gardens. There, Daniel doctored my burns as competently as any surgeon, rubbing my skin with a greasy balm that quickly soothed me.

He bound my hands in bandages, while the quietness of the little house, which was one of Daniel’s hideouts, did me more good than medicine.

“Did you mean that?” I asked softly as Daniel tucked in the ends of the bandages. I’d have to find some means to explain my injury to Mrs.Bywater, and poor Tess would have to assist me until I healed.

“Did I mean what?” The flush on Daniel’s cheekbones told me he knew exactly to what I referred.

“That you intended to marry me.”

Daniel finished the last bandage and put his fingers under my chin so I’d look directly at him. “Yes. I did mean it.”

“I see.”

I could think of nothing else to say. Too many distressing things had happened to me in the past few days for me to grasp the entirety of his declaration.

I glanced about the sitting room, with its paneled walls, comfortable chairs, small collection of books, and fireplace that would snap with a cozy blaze in the winter.

“Can we live here?” I asked.

“We can live anywhere you like.” Daniel caressed my cheek with his calloused thumb. “That is, if you cease throwing yourself at villains. Kat, my love, when I saw you leap toward the dynamite, my world stopped.”

“It’s a mercy I did,” I pointed out. “That dreadful man would have killed every one of us.”

“Why the devil did you go to Belgrave Square at all?” Daniel demanded. “When your message reached me, I feared the worst. I couldn’t race straight to you—I had to put together a team of constables and fetch McGregor and Monaghan. And instead of waiting for us, you charged directly inside.”

I eyed him in indignation. “He had Hannah bound up in a room, where he meant to leave her to die. Her poor son was scared to death, and rightly so. Lady Fontaine was in danger as well. Waiting would have possibly been the worst thing I could do. Lord Downes might have fled with Lady Fontaine and lit his slow match, blowing up the house with Hannah in it, and taking down much of the street. I kept him talking to give you plenty of time to reach us.”

“Logically, I agree with you.” Daniel pressed a fist to his chest. “Inside, I’m surprised this is still beating.”

“When you marry me, if you mean to keep me sequestered at home instead of out helping others, I will say no.”

Daniel stilled. “When?”

“Indeed, I had a husband who thought to enforce obedience, and I will not go through that again.”

He gazed at me with unreadable eyes. “Kat, you said when I marry you. Not if .”

I started, realizing I’d spoken without thought.

I hadn’t needed to think.

“Of course I did,” I said softly.

Daniel let out a sound like a groan. He carefully lifted my bandaged hands and kissed my fingertips. “You love to torture me. Do you really mean to let me marry you?”

I sent him an impish smile. “You have to do it proper, you know. On one knee and everything.”

Daniel slid so swiftly from the chair where he’d perched, it was comical. He knelt on the carpet and pressed one hand to his heart, his blue eyes sparkling.

“Kat Holloway,” he said with warm earnestness. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

My heart thumped, the audacity of what I was doing flooding me with fear as well as excitement and anticipation. I suppose giddiness from my brushes with death also compelled me.

“I will, Mr.McAdam.” My words were shaky but sincere.

Daniel leapt to his feet and pulled me up with him, his arms going around me.

“Then I declare myself the luckiest man on earth,” he said fervently. “I am madly in love with you, Kat. Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” I wanted to dance and shout in my relief and sudden flood of happiness, but that would hardly be dignified. “I believe I love you too, my dearest Daniel.”