A Wicked Conceit (Lady Darby Mysteries #9) - Anna Lee Huber Page 0,1

I’d suspected as much in the past, but now I knew it. And when neither Gage nor I rose to his bait, his scowl deepened.

“What do you want, Kincaid?” my husband demanded.

I had a fair guess what this was about, but I wanted to hear it from Bonnie Brock himself.

He strode closer until Gage lifted a hand, warding him off. His mouth twisted. “What’s the matter? Worried I’ll stick a dagger in your side and run off wi’ your bride?”

“No, but I am worried you carry the cholera, and I’d prefer if you didn’t infect my expectant wife,” Gage replied sharply, his voice brooking no argument.

At these words, some of Bonnie Brock’s ferocity diminished, recognizing as well as we did how dangerous such a thing would be.

Cholera morbus, which had run rampant through Russia and the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea, had arrived in Britain in October. From Sunderland, it had spread north and south largely along the coast, arriving in Edinburgh just before Christmas. With Old Town’s squalid rows of tenements packed together cheek by jowl, with naught but a narrow wynd or close separating some of them, it was no wonder that the disease had gained a foothold there. The air was often foul, at best, and the food consumed by its residents sometimes barely edible, while the wide streets and airy squares of New Town, with their spacious Georgian town houses filled with a healthy, well-fed populace, had thus far escaped the worst of the infection.

By all reports, the cholera was much worse than the minor outbreak of typhus that the lower denizens of the city had faced the previous spring. As overrun as the infirmary had been then, I could only imagine the difficulties they were facing now. Of course, cholera morbus could also kill more quickly. Sometimes in less than twenty-four hours. The numbers in which people were dying were frightening, although the reports from Glasgow, London, and places on the European continent seemed to suggest that Edinburgh had thus far escaped the worst.

Gage settled his arm protectively around my waist. “Speak your peace but at a distance. And do it quickly,” he added as gust of wind whipped down Charlotte Street, ruffling the tendrils of hair which had curled so artfully around my face earlier in the evening and now threatened to come unmoored from their pins beneath my bonnet.

“Who did ye tell?”

“Who did we tell what?” Gage countered.

“Who did ye tell aboot my past?” Bonnie Brock growled in his deep Scottish brogue.

I frowned, sharing a look of confusion with my husband, neither of us having expected to be accused of anything. But it was evident that Bonnie Brock was perfectly serious, and one look at Stumps and Locke told me they were equally furious.

“Is this about that book?” Gage replied.

It was the wrong thing to say. Bonnie Brock’s nostrils flared, and Stumps and Locke each took another step toward us, their muscles tensing as if in preparation for doing violence. My breath tightened in my lungs, and I had to resist the impulse to back away, to turn and run.

“Who did ye tell?” Bonnie Brock’s voice crackled like a whip.

Gage stepped in front of me, holding out his arms to ward off both henchmen. “Now, wait one minute! We don’t have anything to do with that book, if that’s what you’re insinuating. Neither of us has told anyone anything about you or your past. Why would we?”

“Why, indeed?” the hardened criminal drawled, not believing us.

Gage lowered his arms, perhaps realizing they would do little to ward off any impending blow. He would be better served to lower his center of gravity and prepare to dodge around their fists to land a punch of his own. Or even better, draw the pistol concealed in his greatcoat pocket.

With that thought, I began to pull the strings of my reticule as unobtrusively as I could. But Bonnie Brock noted the movement, and he knew me too well.

“I wouldna do that, lass.”

My fingers stilled as he stared pointedly at the beaded bag which concealed my Hewson percussion pistol. It had been a year since I’d taken to carrying it.

“The last time ye pointed a gun at me, things didna go the way ye hoped.” His eyebrows arched, reminding me how swiftly he’d disarmed me and backed me against a wall. “And before ye make the mistake o’ thinkin’ the distance between us will spare ye, let me disabuse ye of the notion that any o’ us is