as Imogen tried to decide what to do. She glanced up at Fitzhugh again. “It will be worth the humiliation.”
His jaw set and his hand fluttered at his side as if he wanted to touch her. But he didn’t. He just watched as Imogen took a gulp of wine before she handed the glass back to Fitzhugh. Then her gaze dropped down.
“I…I was in dire straights after my husband’s death. My prospects weren’t very good and I thought perhaps becoming a man’s mistress would be the best way to survive.” Dark color filled her cheeks, but Nicholas was impressed with the strength with which she continued on. No wonder she was Aurora’s friend. They both had that steel in their spines, hidden beneath beauty and charm. “I made a bad choice and ended up at the wrong place…a brothel called the Cat’s Companion. The woman who runs it is a monster. And I saw…I saw something I wasn’t meant to see.”
Imogen cleared her throat, and to Nicholas’s surprise Oscar reached down and pressed a hand to her shoulder. His dark expression softened a fraction as his fingers curled there, holding her steady. She sat up a little straighter at the touch.
“A-A murder,” she whispered. “Or the aftereffects. There was a body. I tried to get away, but they saw me. And they made chase. I stumbled into Oscar—Mr. Fitzhugh—and he has been hiding me ever since, trying to help me prove what I know. What I saw. Who I saw.” She lifted her gaze to him. “He saved my life.”
Fitzhugh’s nostrils flared a fraction and he released her. “I didn’t do much. But this situation goes deep. Much deeper than one murder.”
Willowby nodded and exchanged a glance with his wife. “The War Department suspects as much. Between what we’ve gleaned and what help we’ve had from Mr. Barber and Mr. Huntington’s sources, I think we’re close to uncovering the mastermind behind this…ring of blackguards.”
Imogen’s lips parted and she glanced up at Fitzhugh again. She slowly rose, as did Aurora. “If I could help I would—”
Before she could finish the sentence, there was an explosion of glass from the huge window behind them. Nicholas cried out, diving toward Aurora, pulling her to the ground beneath him as bullets and glass fell around them in a hellish rain. All he could do was hold her beneath him and hope that what they were rebuilding, what he wished to be for their future, wouldn’t be destroyed in a few moments of noise and fury.
Chapter 21
Aurora trembled beneath the heavy weight of Nicholas’s body covering her, sheltering her. The bullets had stopped at last, but no one in the room had yet moved. She didn’t know if that was out of caution or injury, but there was only one thought in her mind at present.
“Nicholas,” she murmured, pushing against him. “Are you hurt?”
He rolled away from her and she followed, running her hands down his body, brushing glass away from his coat as she searched him for wounds. He caught her chin and tilted her face up so their eyes met. “I’m unharmed,” he said, but his voice trembled. “Are you? Are you injured?”
“You protected me,” she assured him as she cupped his face with both hands. “My God, Nicholas.”
“Is anyone harmed?” Barber called out from across the room.
That dragged Aurora and Nicholas back to the room and she looked around. The couples were slowly beginning to move, checking on each other with as much intensity as she and Nicholas had.
“We’re fine,” the Willowbys called out first. They were exchanging a look that said this was not the first time they’d been shot at, nor did they think it would be the last. But the duke caught the duchess’s cheeks nonetheless and kissed her before they got up and began to edge around the room, easing toward the window with their own guns drawn.
“Derrick and I are unhurt,” Selina said, brushing glass from herself as Derrick joined the Willowbys. “Barber?”
“I’m fine,” he said from behind a chair.
“Imogen?” Aurora called out, looking frantically for her friend. They’d been standing near each other when the shooting began, but as Nicholas dove for her, Fitzhugh had come lunging over the back of the settee and grabbed Imogen. Now they slowly rose from behind the couch.
“He’s cut,” she said, her voice shaking as she clung to Fitzhugh’s arm with both her own. His jacket had a hole in it and there was blood seeping from the wound.
“That’s not