Harold would run in the opposite direction from the crowd, toward the front. He’d been clever to set Ogilvie as a diversion, but not clever enough. Percy’s frightened cries gave him away.
Before Blake could race toward the darkened street, a pig squealed near the untrimmed yews at the front corner of the house. Harold’s familiar curses followed, and with a grin of comprehension, Blake stuck his fingers between his teeth and whistled loudly.
The pig he had been training snorted, not at the intruder, but in anticipation of food. Nothing could come between a pig and his dinner, certainly not Harold. The villain’s shouts reversed direction as he stumbled backward into the hedge, mowed down by a rampaging swine. Blake stalked toward the scoundrel. He kept a wary eye out for Harold’s knife as he attempted to distinguish the wretch’s shadow among the greenery.
A swathe of light suddenly illuminated the side yard. Blake swung around to see Jocelyn on the windowsill, holding the fireplace poker in one hand and a lantern in the other. “Do you have pistols? Shall I find them?” she called.
Blake’s sense of the ridiculous suddenly struck him, and he would have laughed at his once-docile wife’s bloodthirsty suggestion, except he was still too enraged. Even his relief at knowing she was well wasn’t sufficient to subdue his murderous urge to carve Harold into pig slop.
The lantern lit the shadowy shrubbery, where a fat figure slashed at a pair of irate hens while clinging to a birdcage. Percy’s irate obscenities screeched louder.
At the lily pond end of the yard, a composed Lord Quentin held a lighted torch to illumine guests in togas and ball gowns chasing after a demented Richard. The boy was screaming and waving his spindly arms as he attempted to cut off the domino-wearing birdnapper, who was now in retreat from attack roosters.
Blake’s attention was diverted by Harold fighting free of a flock of hens on his way toward the garden wall between this house and the next. Did he plan to climb a wall with cage in hand?
“The rabbit hutch,” Jocelyn called. “He’s heading for the rabbit hutch.”
Before Blake could close in on his prey, a tall cloaked figure slipped from the deeper shadows. Harold passed the cage to the newcomer before scrambling for the roof of the hutch.
At last! The mastermind behind the nincompoops. “If you can jump down from there, Jocelyn, take the poker to your brother,” Blake shouted. “This devil is
mine.
”
He merely had to follow the trail of Percy’s squawks as the stranger leaped over the feral pigs with more athletic grace than clumsy Carrington had employed. Relishing a more worthy opponent, Blake raced after him, taking a shortcut by using the head of a statue to vault over the yews. Damned good thing he knew this yard better than the stranger did because the leap jarred every sore muscle in his leg.
The bird thief attempted to elude him, but Blake had his powerful fury to fuel the race, and the brains to know there was only one way out of the fenced yard. He timed his next leap well and struck the thief broadside.
Percy’s cage hit the ground and rolled under the hedge, but Blake was too busy pounding his fists into his opponent to rescue the obscenity-spewing parrot. In between the bird’s curses, Blake detected a new shriek that sounded like
El Bear.
El Bear. The parrot’s French pronunciation of Albert. The name of Antoinette’s brother—the big man now spewing French curses as he attempted to throttle Blake.
With one brutal swing of his fist, Blake slammed the thief’s jaw squarely, and the fight was over. Damn. He wanted a good excuse to strangle the bastard who could steal his wife’s reputation and happiness. But lacking his former frustration, Blake’s propensity for violence had diminished. He couldn’t kill the bastard in cold blood.
In disgust, he used
El Bear
’s own cloak to truss him up in knots that not even a magician could escape. Worried about Jocelyn’s ability to restrain Viscount Pig, Blake grabbed Percy’s cage and ran back toward the side of the house.
He was just in time to see his feral pigs snorting at Carrion’s heels as the viscount climbed onto the roof of the rickety rabbit hutch so he might climb over the wall and escape. But the rotten wood of the hutch roof crumbled beneath Harold’s excessive weight, and he lost his footing, falling back to the muddy ground. Jocelyn stood over him with her weapon raised.
“I have him cornered!” she shouted, swinging the poker at her brother’s boots.
“I think I like living in the country,” Blake announced, sauntering to his wife’s side with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. He set aside Percy’s cage and forced himself to wait to see what she would do next.
He fought the urge to tell her to get the hell back inside before Harold tried some new trick. He had to allow her the opportunity to fight her own battles. Damnable to become victim of the same anxiety his parents had suffered all these years while they worried about his violent tendencies, but he couldn’t deny Jocelyn this triumph.
Unable to climb the wall, seeing the crowd blocking his exit to the rear, Harold stupidly decided his chances were better through his sister. Clambering back to his feet, he rushed at her.
Jocelyn swung the poker at his knees. Harold howled.
As Harold stumbled forward, Blake balled up his already bruised knuckles and plowed them into the viscount’s weak chin. A pig lurched, squealing, from beneath the collapsed hutch and ran directly into the back of Harold’s knees. Between swine and fist, Viscount Pig toppled backward, hitting the wet ground again with a spray of mud.
Blake calmly stepped on Carrington’s wrist, pinning him down.
“Hit him, just once more,” Jocelyn cried, handing him the poker so she might drag her massive skirts from the ground. “Or can I kick him?” Not waiting for permission, she slammed her slippered toe into the bully’s ribs. “That felt much too good. I believe violence is addictive.” She kicked him again. “That’s for terrifying Percy. I’d have to kill you for what you’ve done to everyone else.” She lifted Percy’s cage to coo soothingly at the screaming bird.
Blake bit back a grin, finding it hard to resist laughing at his wife’s unusual display of fury. If she became comfortable with displaying what she really felt, he might come to regret it.
“Josie, Josie, I got him!” Richard cried from the backyard. “I got Africa and the bad man!”
“Ogilvie, one hopes,” Blake said, hauling Jocelyn to his right side to press a kiss to her cheek while continuing to crush Harold’s arm into the mud.
Harold grabbed at Blake’s good leg with his free hand, trying to tumble him off, but nothing short of an earthquake would persuade him to let the bastard free after what he’d done to Jocelyn. With his left fist, Blake planted the poker square between Harold’s ribs to prevent his rising. Holding Jocelyn at his side, he kissed the small wound on his wife’s slender throat, inducing a purr of happiness. A pig began to sniff Harold’s sleeve, causing him to curse and struggle.
“What the devil is going on here?” an authoritative voice boomed over the tumult of shouts and laughter and squawking parrot. “Is this a masquerade or a circus? I had to leave my footman tying up a Frenchie in the front yard. What is the meaning of this?” the new arrival demanded of Blake and Jocelyn, before roaring toward the melee in the backyard. “Ann, where the demmed hell are you?”
“Here, Papa. We have just caught a birdnapper.” A poised figure in ivory and lace, Lady Ann separated from the crowd of guests.
The Duke of Fortham—Lady Ann’s father—had arrived. Blake cursed. There went any chance he had of keeping Harold’s treason quiet and of protecting Jocelyn.
Needing to greet his noble guest properly, Blake stomped on Harold’s shoulder until the scoundrel screamed and released his grip on Blake’s leg.
Still cradling the cage in one arm, Jocelyn managed a graceful curtsy, attempting to hold her skirts above the mud and away from Harold as the duke stomped through the side yard. “Your Grace, it is a pleasure.”
“Looks like you demmed well had your pleasure before I arrived. Montague, is that you?” Tall and built like a stout oak, the duke stepped into the light of a lantern and leaned his craggy visage forward to search their faces for recognition.
He gazed in contempt at the man whimpering under Blake’s foot. “Carrion,” he said with a sneer. “Upsetting the apple cart as usual? Are you responsible for the Frenchie out front?”
“Theft and possible treason, Your Grace,” Blake murmured. “We will explain.”
“No doubt. Is that my bird?” He squinted at Percy. “Don’t look like him.”
“He’s Richard’s bird, Your Grace,” Jocelyn said sweetly.
Blake tried not to shake his head at his wife for arguing with a duke. It pained him not to protect her with every drop of his blood, but he had encouraged her to be honest instead of deceptive. No more flapping her lashes and hiding behind a fan. He couldn’t stop her now. If they hung for her bravado, at least they would hang together.
In any case, he could not let Antoinette and her spies get away, so she and the viscount had to be denounced.
“I think you’d best rescue your nephew, Your Grace,” Lord Quentin called from the back. “I do believe young Mr. Carrington is about to take Bernie apart for stealing his other bird.”
Blake fought a grin at the duke’s raised eyebrows. Now that Harold’s fate was sealed, Blake’s sense of the ridiculous was in great danger of taking over. He’d been in peril of becoming a bitter, cynical man until Jocelyn had showed him a lighter perspective on human behavior. He hoped more masquerades were in their future.
He turned to observe Nick in lace and Fitz in his knave’s costume hauling a filthy Ogilvie off the ground while Richard clung to Africa’s cage, raising his free fist and dancing around the thief.
“Bernard?” the duke said incredulously. “What the
devil
are you doing? Is that my bird?”
“It is, Your Grace,” Bernard called sulkily. “They would not let me have him back, so I stole him for you.”
“That’s Africa,” Jocelyn corrected. “The greengrocer’s bird.”
“I see.” The duke eyed her with suspicion, then turned to Blake. “I think we’d better go inside and have some explanations. I hear you’re a man of honor. Can I trust your word?”
“You can entrust the safety of all England to Blake,” Jocelyn asserted proudly. “But we have to truss Harold up like the pig he is before we can offer explanations.”
One look at the duke’s startled expression, and Blake couldn’t contain his laughter anymore. With his arm around his daunting wife, he howled his mirth.
Still dressed in billowing silk but without the diamonds she’d returned to Lady Bell—including the necklace they’d found in Harold’s pocket—Jocelyn sent Richard off to bed while the men were hauling their prisoners inside for interrogation. Richard mercifully took Africa and Percy upstairs with him so they might calm down after their adventure.
With her brother out of the way, she joined Blake in saying farewell to their guests. She helped the servants find wraps and signal carriages, and prayed that the evening’s events would not make her a laughingstock for all the kingdom. She’d been assured by many that the evening had been a delight, but that did not mean that by morning everyone wouldn’t have concluded otherwise. The party had, after all, been a shocking hubblebubble, with only a few knowing they’d caught an agent of Napoleon’s government.
She’d refused to let Blake join his friends until she’d taken him to their chamber and wrapped his scraped knuckles. She promised she would not write his parents about the wound unless he continued breaking into inappropriate chuckles. Her husband still had the social graces of a turkey, but she could not prevent her giddy joy at hearing him laugh. He laughed so seldom, and happiness looked wonderful on him.
He kissed her so thoroughly, she almost forgot about Viscount Pig and his treachery, but a commotion rose in the front entry, jarring them from this stolen moment of bliss. From the shrill shrieking, Jocelyn thought one of the parrots must have escaped.
And then it dawned on her—Antoinette!
“Can we shoot her?” she whispered to Blake, who was already heading down the stairs ahead of her.
“Keep your fire poker handy,” he suggested. “I can’t throw her a facer as I did her brother.”
“Out of my way,
chien
! You cannot keep me from my family.” Below, Antoinette was wielding her beribboned parasol to beat back the footman. Seeing the Earl of Danecroft step from the study to investigate her shouts, she flew in his direction. “Where is my Albert?” she cried. “And where is that incompetent oaf who left me waiting in the cold all these hours?”
Blake finished the last few steps on the fly, grabbing the parasol in midswing and yanking it loose from Antoinette’s grip.
Jocelyn sighed. It seemed the evening’s entertainment was not quite over.
While Blake and Fitz held her sister-in-law’s wrists, Jocelyn descended the stairs expecting Antoinette to foam at the mouth any moment.
“You!” her charming witch of a sister-in-law spat when she quit shouting long enough to see Jocelyn approach. “Why could you not invite us with all your other friends! There would not be such a scene if I had been here. Men are not to be trusted! They are all oafs. I could have had the birdies and been gone!” She twisted at the hands binding her. “Let me go,
bâtards
!”
Fitz nodded his head toward the study door. “The other two are ratting each other out as we speak. What do we do with this one?”
“We could just throw them all in the cellar with her brother and see who comes out alive,” Blake suggested.
“We have guests,” Jocelyn said, nodding toward the parlor, where she’d left Lady Danecroft and Lady Belden. “They might object to barbarity.”
At Antoinette’s continued shrieking of epithets, she turned and slapped her sister-in-law’s face. The effect was immediate. Antoinette shut up and glared sullenly. “If you cannot behave with decorum,” Jocelyn told her, “you may join Albert in the cellar.”