Page 1 of Lady Isla and the Lord of Rogue (Merry Spinsters, Charming Rogues #6)

Chapter One

Lady Isla Rothvale, a proper and respectable spinster, had accomplished the unthinkable: she’d accidentally killed a man with her umbrella.

She wouldn’t have thought it possible, given that her umbrella was an old and tattered thing with a blunt tip.

But when the man had lunged out of a dark alley with a snarl, it seemed the most reasonable course of action to jab its tip into his stomach to keep him at bay.

To her utter astonishment, he staggered back, stumbled over a stone step, and collapsed to the ground.

Dead.

There wasn’t a more gentle or peace-loving person in all of London than Lady Isla.

She was a respectable and well-liked member of the ton , meticulously running her brother’s household, visiting orphanages, hospitals, and prisons, making morning calls with prominent members of society, and attending their balls and galas in the evenings.

Her sweet-tempered and cheerful nature abhorred violence.

Thus, it was a considerable surprise to her when she wielded her umbrella without hesitation or the tiniest whisper of conscience and saw with immense satisfaction that its mark had been true.

Reverend Whitlow, esteemed leader of her parish, would be horrified, was the first thought that shot through her befuddled mind.

But this wasn’t the moment to think about what Reverend Whitlow would have thought.

She should have been scandalised by her own behaviour, but the strange thing was that she wasn’t. Not in the least.

After all, the man had threatened to kiss her .

And heaven knew what other deeds, too horrible to contemplate.

The wretch had jumped out of the shadows, and, when she’d offered him her purse, which held several coins, he’d laughed.

“There’s something else I want,” he’d said in a tone that made her shudder. “Something infinitely more delicious.”

“And what would that be?” Lady Isla had enquired. A mistake, as she now knew, for one ought to never negotiate with criminals.

“A kiss from those rosy-red lips of yours,” he’d said with a leer and stepped towards her.

His intention was plain: he intended to violate them, and that couldn’t be. She cherished her life, and she was responsible for Meggie’s, too. She’d vowed to protect her maid when she’d wheedled her into accompanying her to St Giles Rookery, London’s most dangerous slum.

So, when the man lunged at her, she wielded her umbrella like a rapier and hit her target .

The man fell.

The umbrella dropped to the ground with a clatter.

Meggie bent close to his face. “No breath, m’lady. Lawks. Now you went and did ’im in.”

Isla bent over the man. There was blood oozing over the cobbled stones, though it wasn’t wholly clear whether that came from the hole in his stomach or from the edge of the step where he’d cracked his head as he stumbled backwards.

Either way, it didn’t matter, did it?

She gently nudged him with her booted foot. He didn’t move. “Oh dear,” she breathed. “He appears quite dead.”

“Yer brother won’t be pleased,” Meggie prophesied.

Not to mention the scandal when they hanged her in Newgate for murder.

What now?

“I suppose we must take him along,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.

“’E’s dead as mutton, m’lady. Why take a corpse along? The evidence of murder.” Meggie asked. “They’ll find it, have ye clapped into Newgate and hang ye.”

Hearing these fearful thoughts voiced so immediately after she herself had thought them, in those very words too, was uncommonly distressing.

Isla swallowed.

“I knows exactly what to do in situations like these,” Meggie went on. “Trust me, m’lady, I’ve had my share of experience in this.”

Isla did not doubt it, for Meggie was one of her rescue projects she had picked up from the rookery. She was now her maid, and she’d been faithful and a good citizen ever since. But her past experience could come in handy now she found herself in such circumstances.

She therefore asked, “Tell me then, in your extensive experience of dealing with such matters—what does one do?”

“Take yer skirts in yer hands and run.”

It was a sound idea and very tempting. Her fingers cramped around the material of her skirts. She took one step, two steps away, then froze.

Isla scrunched her nose together, something she did every time she thought deeply.

“No. That makes us appear guilty. But it was self-defence,” she heard her voice say.

“ In self-defence, the person attacked must do all he can to avoid the necessity of his defence; he must retreat as far as he can with safety, and then if a man pursues him with intent to murder, he may kill him in his own defence .” She cleared her throat.

“From Sir Michael Foster’s Crown Law .” Algie had the book lying about in his study and when she was especially bored in her free time, she tended to read a little of it. Just for amusement.

“So, Meggie,” she continued, her frown clearing, “the following questions must be asked: did he pursue us with the intent to murder?”

Meggie tilted her head thoughtfully. “‘E clearly wanted a kiss. But murder? All and sundry knows a body enters St Giles alive but leaves as a corpse, so—aye, that’s exactly what ‘e would’ve done. It was good ye did ’im in before ‘e did ye in.” Meggie sniffed.

“Otherwise, it’d be you lyin’ there.” She thought and then added. “And me atop.”

“So, we may reasonably conclude that he threatened us, and I had a right to kill him?”

Meggie thought for a moment. “ ‘E didn’t actually take the purse when ye offered it, did ‘e? Scared us out of our bleedin’ skin by stepping out of the shadow like that.

And ‘e made a grab for yer arm. Saw it with my own eyes.

No doubt ‘is intention was to murder and kidnap and ravish and rob ye.” Meggie seemed to take a clear delight in listing all the horrible deeds he could have committed.

“Aye. ‘Twas good to kill ‘im there and then.”

Isla swallowed. “The order of things may be negotiable, but he was an evident threat. So, you see, Meggie, it was self-defence. With some luck, I shall not be confined in Newgate and hanged after all.” She heaved a sigh of relief.

The two women looked down at the body. Isla bent over him. The last rays of sunlight did not reach the floor of the narrow, greasy alley. She squinted. In the semi-shadow, she saw the head of a red wolf printed on the wooden door, behind the body.

Meggie prodded the body with her foot. “Dead,” she declared, as if that hadn’t already been established. “And if ‘e ain’t yet, ‘e’ll soon be.”

“The last thing we can do for him is give him a decent burial,” Isla decided. “Call John to help us take him along.”

John was their footman.

Meggie placed two fingers into her mouth and uttered a shrill whistle. John came running.

“We need to take this along.” Isla pointed with a finger at the body.

“Yes, my lady,” John said, without even blinking.

“Is my brother at home?” Isla asked Falks, the butler.

“Yes, my lady. His lordship is in his study.”

Algie was in his study indeed, sitting behind his desk, engrossed in the business of peeling an orange with his pocketknife.

Her beloved big brother was growing old; it shot through Isla’s mind.

He was nearly twenty years older than her, so maybe that was the natural course of things.

His thick, brown hair was receding and turning grey at the temples, and he’d developed a distinctive paunch.

He looked staid, proper, and respectably middle-aged, with a golden monocle over one of his eyes.

Algie was not her brother in blood, but in mind and spirit.

He played the role of father, friend, and brother rolled into one.

She’d loved him to bits from the moment he pulled her in his lap in London, after he and Mother had picked her up from the orphanage, sobbing, shivering, utterly terrified, and he’d said: “Do you know what pixies look like?” And that had been such an unexpectedly ridiculous thing to say in the situation that her tears had dried and she’d looked up at his face, astonished, to see whether he was serious. He was utterly serious.

“They look exactly like you.” He’d tugged at her little red braid that looked more like a rat’s tail. “Little and tiny as a bug. A pixiekins.” The name stuck, and that’s what he’d called her ever since, and she’d adored the ground he walked on.

Isla now stood in front of Algie, twisting the ribbon fastening of her overdress between her fingers. She cleared her throat, once. Twice. “Algie.”

He looked up. His watery eyes brightened when he saw her.

“Pixiekins.” Then his face fell. “Oh no. Whenever you look like that, it’s clear you’ve been engaged in mischief.

What did you do now? Break a window? Insult a suitor?

Laugh at the King in public? Out with it. ” He offered her a slice of orange.

Isla took a slice and bit into it, a burst of sour and sweet flavour filling her mouth, to delay her answer.

She chewed, swallowed, then said, “I think I may have killed a man.” She paused to let the words sink in.

His hand paused in the act of peeling the orange only for an infinitesimal fraction of a second, before he resumed. “Have you now?”

“I’m afraid so.” Now that she’d confessed, she felt light-hearted with relief.

“That’s not the thing to do at all.” He adopted the same avuncular tone that he used whenever he lectured her after she’d done something bad, like steal the footman’s wig or eat all the sugar plums in the pantry when she was younger.

“I’m afraid not,” Isla said with true remorse in her voice.

He set down the pocketknife and folded his hands on the desk. “And how exactly did that come about?” He looked at her searchingly. Sometimes he’d look at petitioners like that when they presented their cases to him. It was a sudden, razor-sharp look that cut through all one’s defences.

“With my umbrella.” She looked at him anxiously.

He merely blinked once. “With your umbrella.”