04 Dangerous Lady by Amanda Scott

Author:Amanda Scott [Scott, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

LETTY DID NOT RECOGNIZE the handwriting on the note, but the scrawl was erratic, as if someone had snatched up the first bit of paper that came to hand and scribbled the message. A sense of urgency emanated from it, stirring her to haste. As she hurried to her dressing room, she realized that if she ordered out a carriage, it could take half an hour before it was at the door. It would be quicker to hail a hackney coach in the Strand. Moreover, a London driver would be more likely than Jonathan Coachman to know the whereabouts of Boverie Street.

Jenifry had gone out on errands of her own, but Letty did not require help to take her green velvet mantle from the wardrobe and fling it on over her afternoon frock. Finding the reticule that matched her mantle, she counted twenty pounds in coins and notes into it from her dressing-table drawer. Then, as she hastened toward the door, another thought struck her that sent her back to the wardrobe.

Reaching for a wooden box on the shelf, she took it down, opened it, and withdrew the small, silver-mounted pistol that her mother had given her before bidding her farewell from Paris. Making certain it was loaded, she plucked two more bullets from the box and stowed the lot in her reticule.

Then without wasting another moment, she hurried downstairs, out through the courtyard, and along the driveway to the Strand. Hailing the first cab she saw, she did not wait for the cabby to jump down and help her, although as she grabbed the door handle and pulled it open, he bestirred himself as if he meant to do so.

Urgently she said, “Boverie Street, do you know it?”

“Aye I do, that,” he said, shifting whip and reins to one hand and scratching his scraggly chin whiskers with the other. “Be that whither ye’re bound, then, lass?”

“Yes, number twelve. Is it far?”

“Not much, it ain’t. Near the Temple, that be, above Hawker’s Wharf.”

“The Temple? Do you mean the Inns of Court?”

“Aye, the same. Can ye manage that door, then?”

“Yes,” she replied, climbing in quickly and shutting the door with a snap. Letting down the window as the coach began to move, she called out, “As quickly as you can, driver. A child’s life may be at stake.”

“Wouldn’t be the first, not there,” he shouted back, but she heard the crack of his whip, and their speed increased. “Is that door shut tight?” he bellowed.

“It is,” she yelled back. Putting up the window again, and settling back against the shabby squabs, she noted with distaste that the air inside the coach was distressingly noisome. Still, she forced herself to relax. Learning that the address lay near the Law Institutes had slightly reassured her about the neighborhood in which she would find Liza.

She had taken the precaution of bringing the message with her, and now she took it out of her reticule to look at again. The handwriting was unfamiliar, but that, she decided, might as easily be due to the author’s haste as to any other cause.

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