Rules For A Proper Governess (MacKenzies & McBrides #7)(4)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

A clock struck. Sinclair, out of habit, reached for his watch to compare the time. His watch always ran a few minutes fast and having it repaired made no difference. Buying a new watch was out of the question, because Daisy had given him this one . . .

Which was no longer in his pocket.

Reality rushed back at Sinclair with an icy slap. His gaze went to the violet-covered hat as it disappeared around a corner.

Good God, how stupid had he been? He hadn’t pegged the young woman as a pickpocket, because pickpockets usually didn’t stop for a chat. They stole and slipped away before the victim was aware.

Her bad luck someone had tripped her. Or had it been luck?

All this went through his head as Sinclair whirled around and strode after the woman, his feet moving faster and faster as he went. Gone was any thought of finding his coach and going home. Nothing mattered but getting that watch back. Sinclair would find the young woman and take it away from her, even if he had to chase her to the ends of the earth.

Chapter 2

Basher McBride was coming after her. Bertie had twigged he was much too smart not to notice if she lifted his timepiece, but she’d told herself not to be a coward. Now she knew her folly, because he was chasing her, and he’d have her nicked in a heartbeat. She should have stuck with taking his handkerchief and been done.

But she’d wanted Mr. McBride to look at her. To see those eyes, gray like the sky before dawn, to hear his rumbling voice. She’d warmed all over when the syllables had poured onto her—Easy now, lass.

She’d lingered too long to admire him, and now he was coming. Bertie picked up her pace and dashed around another corner. She knew London better than most, and she could lead him on a merry chase. And if Bertie couldn’t shake him . . . well, she’d know where to run.

She scooted into the backstreets behind the grim walls of Newgate, ducking into the warrens and winding streets, lanes so narrow they blotted out the last streaks of light in the sky.

These passages were filled with trash, rats, and layabouts. A few of the men lolling in their gin-soaked stupor tried to grab Bertie’s skirts as she went by, but Bertie expertly twitched away from them and kept on running.

Bertie risked a dash across Aldersgate Street and back into the narrower lanes beyond. She jumped over a vagrant who looked to be far gone on opium, her bootheels clicking on the hard-packed street.

And wasn’t it just her luck? The Scottish bloke was keeping up with her. A swift glance behind her as she rounded a corner showed McBride running after her, his body moving with athletic competence as he ducked and swerved around carts, dung, and vermin, both human and rodent.

Bertie’s breath was coming fast, her corset too tight to keep this up for long. Blast the man. He should be giving up by now, toddling off to his comfortable home in Mayfair or Belgrave Square or wherever he laid his pristine head to rest.

She remembered how he’d stood straight and tall in front of the judge, taunting the old misery, turning the verdict around to surprise them all. Basher McBride’s arrogance had rolled off him, with even the judge grudgingly conceding to him.

But then, as soon as his performance was over, all that arrogance drained out of him, leaving Mr. McBride an empty shell. Until now, of course. His energy was back, focused on chasing Bertie and dragging her off to a constable.

Not that, never that. Bertie didn’t particularly want to finish her life at the end of a noose. The jury might be sympathetic that Bertie was forced to pickpocket by her father—if they believed her—but that would only mean she’d be transported across the ocean to someplace she knew nothing about or locked up in a grim and terrifying prison.

She should have been able to slip away from him by now, but Mr. McBride was keeping her in sight, whichever passage she took. Bertie knew she’d have to lure him to The Trap, whether she liked it or not, or she’d never get away from him.

That’s how she thought of it—The Trap—with capital Ts outlining the jaws of it. No one escaped it, not easily anyway. Mr. McBride was smart—he’d run the other way as soon as he saw what was what, and leave Bertie alone.

“Oi!” she shouted when she was within three feet of the place. “It’s Bertie! I’m coming in!”

A door in a squalid wall in a dark alley swung open, and Bertie leapt over the doorsill. She swept up her skirts as she landed, careful not to turn her ankles in the rubble.

Beyond the door was an empty space where a house had stood, pulled down or fallen down long ago. The lot was surrounded on four sides by other buildings that soared five and six stories to the sky. No windows faced the place, nothing to reveal the secrets of the inner emptiness. The space was lit right now with a fire built in the remains of an old stove, and with lanterns of the men and boys who liked to gather here.

The Trap was to be used in dire emergency, when a pursuer became too keen or bullies from another neighborhood strayed too close. The men and boys who made The Trap their haven were usually armed, usually drunk, and always ready to have a go at whoever was mad enough to come through the door.

Bertie fled through the lot, which was strewn with stones and broken bottles, skirting the pile of old rubbish in the middle. A smaller door led out the other side to another passage, where Bertie could slip away and go home.

She turned around to take one last look at her handsome Mr. McBride, to glimpse him again before he sensibly fled.

Except, he wasn’t sensibly fleeing. Mr. McBride came on inside, firelight shining on his light-colored hair, his hat gone who knew where. He showed no fear about the toughs who were converging on him, and when he spotted Bertie on the other side of the lot, he roared, with a voice that rang like a warrior’s, “Stop her!”

The toughs blinked, not used to victims who didn’t scramble away from them in terror. Mr. McBride started around them, straight for Bertie. The lads came out of their shocked state by the time McBride was halfway past the mound of junk, then they struck.

“Aw, bloody hell!” McBride’s rich Scots rang out, and he grabbed a rusted iron bar from the pile. Before Bertie’s stunned eyes, Mr. McBride turned to face the onslaught and started fighting back.

The youths and men charging him had knives, clubs, or coshes. Mr. McBride parried their blows, thrusting and beating at them as they beat on him. Iron rang against steel, and one of the youths cursed as his knife went flying. Mr. McBride had the advantage against the knives, having chosen a bar long enough to keep them back. When they figured out how to get under Mr. McBride’s reach, however . . .