“Seth.”
Nauseous vertigo ran through him as his eyes opened, meeting Cassandra’s concerned eyes. His hand held her wrist aloft, tight in his grasp. Seth stared at it, unblinking. Unafraid, her free hand hovered inches away from his chest.
“Cassandra! Don’t touch him!”
“You can stop now,” Cassandra whispered. “I’m safe.”
She closed the distance between them, placing her hand flush over his heart. The loving care radiating from her steadied the rapid-beating underneath, melting away the anger, restoring his lucidity. She kept her gaze locked onto his, steady until someone wrenched her away,her warm amber eyes replaced by a colder, narrowing, snarling pair.
“Stay back, Cassandra!” Cooper commanded. He lifted his fists, squared his shoulders, and stood in front of Cassandra.
“He wasn’t going to hurt me, brother!”
“You do not know that!” he snapped. Not taking his eyes off of Seth, he asked, “Are you in control of your senses?!”
“Yes,” Seth said through gritted teeth. Pain lanced through him and he staggered back against the wall, knees and hands shaking as weakness settled into his muscles. A dull throbbing emanated from his chin and abdomen, matching the tempo of the ringing in his ears.
Cooper glanced around, taking inventory of the men on the ground, curled in on themselves, grunting in pain, laying in an amassing pool of their own bodily fluids.
“What the devil happened here?”
Mr. Sanderson jogged forward as Lady Jasmine launched herself to wrap her arms around Cassandra’s shaking form, but Cassandra twisted from her grasp.
“They tried to—” Cassandra hiccuped, struggling for words. “Theywanted—” She took a deep breath through a trembling lip and set her shoulders. “Mr. Reeves protected me.”
“We were attacked,” Seth wheezed, and kicked the knife to Cooper’s feet.
Eyes widening, a horrified, pained noise escaped him, but there was no time to process or communicate. A curious crowd formed around the alley with a frantic buzzing of multiple people speaking all at once. A woman screamed and a stifling cloud of panic strangled the air.
Cooper cursed.
“Mr. Sanderson! Get my sister and Lady Jasmine to the carriage. I’m right behind you.” He turned back to Seth. “We need to leave,now!”
Lady Jasmine tugged Cassandra forward. “Cassandra, let’s go.”
“No. I won’t leave—”
“Now, Cassandra!” Cooper bellowed. “Comeon,Reeves! Before—”
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Silence descended, and the crowd parted to reveal a man dressed in full white garb, platinum hair shining blue-silver under the yellow lantern-light. Long gloved fingers fell heavy against his palm. “Follow the scent of blood and the sound of screams and look no further for Captain Reeves,” Duke Kendall sang, grinning like a cat with a mouse under its paw. “What a spectacle! You cannot pay to see a show like that in the city, can you, Mr. Edgars?”
Seth paled as Mr. Edgars moved forward. He looked at their rag-tag group and the scene with disgust before his eyes settled on Seth, and then Cooper.
“You’re disqualified.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Adrian Hollingsworth had interrogated more than his fair share of unsavory individuals—criminals, spies, would be assassins to the Crown—and he found there were three different categories of men: those who held up under torture, those who caved as soon as the pincers touched their fingernails, and those who wet their trousers at the sound of his name and a well-placed raised brow.
By the smell, the man cowering in the cell before him was the latter.
How tedious.
Words rushed from the man’s mouth when Adrian entered the room. The three men foolish enough to attack Reeves were useless. Battered and bruised, broken ribs, wrists, and noses. They stuttered over explanations, too terrified to speak to him, but every group had a singer.
This one may as well have been a canary.