The crunch of broken glass made her whip around and brandish her knife.
“I told you to run.” Ian grabbed her free hand and tugged her into the dark road.
“Are you all right?” she wheezed.
“No. I’m being chased by an angry mob, with my brother’s intended, and no protection.”
“Nonsense. I still have one knife. And you have your pistol. You just didn’t want to flash it in there.”
He acknowledged this with a garbled laugh as they emerged onto Russel Street.
“We’ll never find a hack at this hour,” he lamented breathlessly.
“There.” She pointed to the end of the street. “Looks like a boarding inn?”
“Or a cathouse.”
They never determined which of them was correct because a cab miraculously appeared and delivered a man to its door. Ian flung himself in its path and roared at the driver with a bellow so savage, the poor lad would have handed over the reins if Ian had asked.
His hands came around her waist. She had only a brief moment to appreciate their warmth and weight before he flung her inside the cab, pushed her skirts aside and pulled himself in next to her. He mumbled an address she couldn’t hear and offered the driver double the fare if they were quick about it.
The carriage lurched, and Ian fell over beside her. She made no move to push him away. Her blood was singing from the way he’d roughly handed her into the coach and then commandeered the entire space.
When the hack evened out its course, he retreated to his side of the seat. “Forgive me.”
She made a cooing noise of acknowledgment and straightened her skirts. She kept her eyes on the road ahead and fought the urge to lean into the waves of heat coming from him as she asked, “Why did you take so long to follow me?”
“I needed to find this.”
His hand brushed against hers, and he placed the cold steel of her dagger in her palm.
“The police were on the way. They would have found it,” he said. “They’re custom-made and weighted to your grip. They would have traced it back to you.”
“Yes, of course.” He’d thought only of their survival, not that the knives were precious to her. “Thank you.”
They rode in silence for several minutes before he murmured, “They’re the same ones. From that night.”
“Yes.” She was elated he’d remembered. “I’m never without them.”
“Even on your wedding day.”
His voice was low and sardonic. It made her regret that she could no longer hide her duplicity. He wasn’t hiding his disdain for it.
“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go if you tell me everything,” he said.
She almost confessed that would happen no matter what she told him. She could not deviate from the course she had set. Too many lives were at stake.
Including his.
Chapter Seven
Whentheyalightedfromthe hack onto Holborn Street, Ian didn’t offer Diana his arm. He knew she would have refused it.
His heart was still racing from the altercation at the Swan’s Nest, but he was as practiced as she was in blockading his feelings, and he would be damned before he revealed how much uncovering her lies had riled him.
“This way,” he said roughly. He positioned her on the inside of the path while he walked on the perimeter of the street. Despite his anger, he couldn’t quash the urge to put himself between her and any threat. It gave him a satisfying sense of purpose that eased the tension gathering between his shoulder blades.
He led them down a back lane to another street behind the row of townhomes and paused at the back gate. “Come through here. There could be reporters out front.”