the door, his hand on her arm. “We need to get out of here.” He asked Mullens, “Is there another exit?”
“Through the kitchens,” Mullens said.
St. Clare muttered an oath. They’d still have to descend the staircase. He opened the door and looked out into the hall. No one was about. Not yet. “Out,” he said to Maggie. “Quick as you can.”
Blessedly, she seemed to understand the urgency. “Goodbye, sir,” she said to Mr. Mullens as she exited the room. “I’m obliged to you for the information.”
“Wait!” Mullens called after them. “I didn’t catch your name!”
St. Clare shut the door behind him, silencing the old man’s cries. The hall dissolved into darkness again. There was only a faint glow at the end of it—the light from the taproom drifting up the stairs.
“What is it?” Maggie asked as she hurried along at his side. “Some sort of villainy?”
“The worst kind,” St. Clare said. “Someone’s followed us here.”
“What!” She would have stopped in her tracks if he hadn’t jockeyed her along to the landing.
“Put up your hood. We’ll duck out through the kitchens. There’s a chance we might be able to get to the carriage without anyone seeing you.” He sensed the futility of the plan as soon as he’d given voice to it. Enzo and their hired carriage had already been spotted. Recognized, even.
Maggie drew her hood over her head, and then took his hand, clutching it tightly as she followed him down the stairs. “Who is it?” she asked. “Not your cousin?”
He didn’t have to supply an answer. They’d no sooner descended halfway down the steps than an all-too-familiar voice echoed up the staircase.
“I know she’s here somewhere,” Fred bellowed. “Don’t make me fetch the magistrate.”
St. Clare’s shoulders bunched with tension. The dratted fool. Threatening the inhabitants of a hedge tavern with the magistrate? As if every villain below wasn’t armed to the teeth and ready to fight.
“Oh no,” Maggie groaned. “What is he doing here?”
The answer to that question came in much the same fashion.
“We don’t want any trouble.” Lionel Beresford’s languid words drifted up to them in the darkness. “Only tell us where we can find the lady and the rogue who’s abducted her.”
“Abducted!” Maggie bristled. She sounded more outraged than worried about being discovered.
St. Clare supposed it hadn’t yet occurred to her how all this might look. The two of them, alone in a tavern in the middle of the night, emerging from a long while spent in an upstairs bedroom.
He led her down another few steps—carefully, quietly—until they were but two steps away from the floor of the taproom.
“Don’t much like the gentry coming into my tavern making threats,” the barman said. “Nor waving pistols about.”
Pistols?
“The bloody idiot,” St. Clare muttered. “He’s going to get himself killed.”
“Where are they?” Fred demanded again.
“Don’t be too hasty with that weapon, my friend,” Lionel said. “I think I can guess where my cousin has taken his captive.” And to the barman: “You have rooms above, do you not, my good fellow? A place a man can be private with a lady?”
The barman guffawed. “Did you hear that, Bill? A lady? In the Crossed Daggers?”
An elderly warble answered him, Bill presumably. “Don’t see no ladies here.”
St. Clare squeezed Maggie’s hand. There was no way to duck out to the kitchen without being observed. Their only hope was that Fred and Lionel would lose interest and back away to the other side of the tavern.
It was a scant hope, and one that was quickly dispelled.
“I’ll send my valet up to have a look around,” Lionel said.
St. Clare tensed. It was either wait to be discovered or reveal themselves voluntarily. Exchanging a swift glance with Maggie, he knew at once which one she’d prefer.
“No need,” he said, descending the final steps with her at his side.
Fred stood by the tall counter, a pistol hanging loose in his hand. Lionel was nearby, wrapped up in a fashionable overcoat, his hat still on his head. His valet, a shifty-faced man of indeterminate age, stood next to him.
At the sight of St. Clare and Maggie, Fred’s ruddy face mottled with fury. He advanced on them, his pistol half raised against any perceived interference on the part of the tavern’s customers. “I didn’t want to believe it,” he said, giving Maggie a look of disgust. “You, sneaking out of the house like the veriest light-skirt. For an assignation at a hedge tavern of all places.” He pointed his pistol at St. Clare. “You’ll answer for this.”