Seventeen
MIKAELA
I stood over Madame La Geness—or whoever she was. She had landed hard on the floor after I swept her feet from under her.
She screamed then cursed as she lost the whip and fought to retrieve it. I brought the heel of my boot down hard on her wrist and outstretched hand.
She screamed again, her wrist trapped under my bootheel.
“ Arrêt !” I told her in French. “Stop! Or I promise you that I will crush your hand, and you will never feed yourself again, much less paint another portrait!”
I was calm, deliberate as I bent over her, the lessons I’d learned years before of that ancient discipline there as I told her.
“Or possibly your neck for what you have done!”
She stared up at me through pain and growing fear that I might do exactly as I threatened.
In that moment, I was equally certain that I would do exactly that, and with little remorse as I thought of Lizzie Smith and the other young women I’d found in that gatehouse.
And for those few moments, her uncertainty and my determination hung in the air between us.
“Miss?” Sarah whispered, drawing my attention.
I looked over at her and saw the change in the expression on her face go from fear to confusion as she stared past me.
And then felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Mikaela?”
A voice I knew. Impossible ... I turned.
Brodie?
“Miss!” Sarah shouted a warning.
Madame La Geness had scrabbled across the floor, her hand once more reaching for the whip.
Brodie pushed me aside and quickly moved past. He stood over her with a revolver in hand.
“Stop! Or you will wish she had crushed yer hand.”
Sarah, with bruised and tear-stained face, quickly grabbed the whip as Madame glared up at Brodie.
“Best use that leather whip to bind her,” he told Sarah.
I helped her, my anger at what this woman had done very near the surface as I tightened the leather bonds, not satisfied until she made a sound of protest.
“And bind her across the mouth. She can save her protests for the police.” He jerked the tie from about his neck and handed it to the girl as I slowly stood.
Brodie was here.
I had no way of knowing how ... It didn’t matter.
A warm hand slipped to mine, his fingers gently squeezed mine as I looked at him with that dark hair, those faint lines at the corners of that dark gaze, and several days’ growth of beard.
“You found me,” I whispered. More than that wasn't there yet.
“Aye, I found ye.”
“It certainly took you long enough,” I finally managed to add.
A smile lifted one corner of his mouth.
“I would have been here sooner, but yer notes lacked a bit of information. I had to pay Mr. Burke a visit.”
Always one to have the last say.
“I can imagine how that went.”
“Aye, I was forced to convince him to cooperate.”
I would have laughed, aware that his opinion of the man was much like my own. But instead it sounded very much like someone struggling to breathe, as a sound came from the hallway, that familiar baying sound.
“Rupert?” I whispered through tears that I tried to wipe away.
The hound came charging through the doorway, followed by Munro as he dragged La Geness with him.
“The beast discovered this very near the wheelhouse,” Munro explained, as if the man was a piece of trash that the hound had scrounged from the street. He dumped him on the floor.
“A bit the worse for wear, as the hound got to him first. But he’ll give no trouble now.”
“There’s a stableman ...” I managed to tell him.
“I saw no one as I made my way to the gatehouse,” Munro said, then glanced past us.
“Wot do we have here?” he asked with a look at the woman who sat on the floor, now firmly bound.
She tried to scream, no doubt with a curse for good measure, but it was muffled beneath the cloth bound across her mouth.
Sarah slowly approached. “My name is Sarah Meeks. The others ...”
“They’re safe,” I assured her.
“Thank you,” she whispered amid a new flood of tears.
I was finally able to sleep after returning to the office, but not before a thorough scrubbing that included my hair in the loo down the hall, not to mention a bit of Old Lodge whisky and Brodie.
Gwen Tavers and Charlotte Davies along with Sarah and Jolie were safe. As for La Geness and his wife ...
They were now in police custody to answer for the murder of Lizzie Smith and others that might yet be known.
And Brodie was here. His fingers lightly brushed the cut on my cheek after he brought the blankets up over the both of us.
“Ye will be the death of me, Mikaela Forsythe,” he whispered, his lips warm as they brushed my forehead.
“It is your fault, of course,” I replied somewhat hazily as the whisky slowly had its way with me.
“Of course, I was able to figure it all out by myself ...”
“Aye. But it will not happen again. Ye have my word on it.”
“Yes, dear,” I replied as I drifted off.