“William, if this is about Geor—”
“This family, so uppity for such low rank.” He shook his head and began to wedge his crowbar into the next waist-high crate. “I’ve done my part for this family, merely by elevating it from the slums of mediocrity.”
He threw his body weight down on the crowbar and tipped the lid aside before wading into the shavings of protective packaging. “Why do they even allow Barons to keep titles, anyhow?” he said as though muttering to himself. “They’re hardly needed these days, it’s not the Middle Ages. And your father, debasing himself with this shipping venture to make his fortunes, only to remain so miserly with his stipends.” His lip curled in disgust. “A tighter bankbook doesn’t exist in Christendom. Where is it!” In a shocking explosion of temper, he pushed over an entire crate. Prudence cringed away as it splintered, spilling an array of silks that unspooled in a riot of color.
“What are you looking for?” she asked, hoping to keep him talking as the knot at her right hand finally gave enough for her to slip through it, rendering the other one useless.
Still, she kept her hands behind her back.
“Payment for the risk I took,” he snarled. “Payback! I’ve a barge waiting at the end of the dock, and we’ll be out to sea before we’re missed with a crate full of cash.”
“If this is about money…”
“Of course, it’s about money!” he roared “Every bloody thing is about money these days. Birth and titles and blue blood mean nothing anymore in this churning, blasphemous machine that is our nation now. What happened to the nobility?”
She leveled him her coolest stare. “Are you acting nobly now, William?”
“Don’t question me, you sanctimonious cow.” He struck her with the back of his hand, wrenching her neck to the side. Pain singed her cheek and brought tears to her eyes.
An explosion shattered the very next moment.
Prudence managed to look back in time to see one of the men nearest a window drop to the crate he’d been bent over.
Missing the top of his head.
She covered her open mouth with both of her hands to contain the scream bubbling up from inside of her. It escaped as a raw, strangled sound.
Another crack resounded through the warehouse, shattering the window beside where a grizzled man reached for his weapon.
The bullet sheared through his neck.
Pandemonium erupted outside the warehouse as day laborers and dock workers scattered at the unmistakable sounds of a rifle.
Prudence was sorry for their fright, even as her chest expanded with elated, overjoyed relief.
He was here. Her Knight of Shadows.
He’d come for her.
William dropped the crowbar and drew his pistol as he and the two remaining men scrambled to find from which shadow the gunman fired.
“Don’t fucking stand at the windows, you bloody imbeciles!” he screeched.
The hired thugs took longer than was wise to recover after the initial volley, and Morley was able to clip the wing of a third man before they scrambled to take cover behind the very crates they’d been searching.
A deafening barrage of bullets pinged everywhere from the floor to the few skylights above. Prudence dropped to her knees, covering her head with her hands as slivers of splintered wood rained down on her.
Eventually, they ran out.
Her heart skipped several beats in the eerie silence that followed.
Had they gotten him? Had they shot the man she loved? Her one hope at salvation?
Right when happiness was in their grasp?
The sound of glass breaking behind them stole their attention to the far end of the warehouse by the loading bay. One more man dropped to his death before the echoes of the gun blast finished rebounding in her head.
“William,” she hissed, tucking her legs beneath her so she could loosen the rope around her boots. “Let me go now, or this will end very badly for you.” Her foot popped free on the last syllable, roughening it with strain.
He opened the cylinder of his pistol and shoved his shaking hand in his vest pocket, extracting two bullets and angling them into the chambers. “Do you really think it’s wise to threaten me?”
“I’m not threatening you, I’m warning you,” she cried. “My husband was a long-distance rifleman in the army. He’s going to shoot every man in this room. He’s going to kill you.”
“Not before I kill you.”
Prudence spied the crowbar he’d dropped next to a container and lunged for it, hoping to get it before he had the chance to reload that gun.
He surged up,