Read Online Elizabeth Kidd by My Lady Mischief - Free Book Online

They did not, he was relieved to see, carry pistols, but the knife one of them held and the size of the other’s fists were sufficiently formidable weapons. Behind the two, a man lay on the ground moaning, but Kedrington could see no more than that he was younger and smaller than the other two.
    “Bloody ‘ell!” said the thinner man, backing up until the wall stopped him. “It’s ‘is bleedin’ ludship!”
    “Shaddup!” the big men hissed. “It ain’t ‘im. It’s some other nob.”
    “Well, what’s he doin’ ‘ere, then?”
    Kedrington approached the larger man slowly, with an amiable smile and his hands spread out to show that he meant no harm.
    “Now, why don’t you gentlemen just take yourselves off before you really hurt someone. We won’t turn you in if you assure me that you had nothing to do with the plight of the poor fellow on the ground there. What do you say?”
    The larger man apparently had nothing to say, for he only grunted and lunged for Kedrington, who easily sidestepped his charge. He delivered a swift blow to the back of the man’s head as he went by, unable to halt his momentum, and the thug fell to the ground, silent once more.
    The other man’s eyes grew wide in the dim light. “Bloody ‘ell!” he muttered again. Then, slipping past Robin, he fled down the lane away from them.
    Kedrington leaned down beside the fallen man and turned him over, but that groan had been his last utterance. He was dead. Searching the man’s pockets for some identification, he found only a few coins—one of which was a gold guinea—and what appeared to be a house key. He pocketed this surreptitiously and rose to his feet.
    “We can’t help him, I’m afraid.”
    “What will we do with him?”
    “Leave him. I’ll send Thomas to Bow Street to report the incident, and we’ll have to hope they get here before he’s stripped bare.”
    “What was all that about a ‘lordship,’ do you suppose?” Robin asked as they walked back to their vehicle.
    “I don’t know,” Kedrington said. “But I confess to finding it most curious. I’ll think about it.”
    “So will I, by God!”
    They reached the curricle, and Kedrington took the reins from Thomas, who quickly scrambled back up onto the back. Kedrington looked up at him, then said to Robin, “On second thought, I shall drop him at Bow Street myself. It isn’t much out of our way.”
    The next ten minutes were spent in drilling Thomas as to what he was to report to the magistrate and making him repeat it, including the location of the incident, so that in his nervousness he would not forget it all before he got the story out. They left him there with the viscount’s card as an entrée and sufficient cash to take a hackney back to Brook Street, and set off again at once.
    “Will we be late after all?” Robin asked, hanging on to the sides of the curricle.
    “I think not,” Kedrington said, as he took a corner smoothly and bowled down Oxford Street. “But there will be no time to spare. Is my cravat straight?”
    Robin smiled. “Not a fold out of place.”
    They did in fact arrive with five minutes to spare to eight o’clock. Robin was fascinated to see his fearless friend turn into an unexceptional, even ordinary, doting husband the moment he entered the house and kissed his wife in greeting.
    “Well, my dears, I had nearly given you up,” Antonia said, shaking Robin’s hand. “But here you are just in time to sit down at the table. Trotter had begun to fret, I can tell you.”
    Trotter neither confirmed nor denied this as he took the gentlemen’s hats, and Kedrington smiled at his wife. “You, of course, were not in the least concerned.”
    “Why no—that is what we hire servants for. But now that you mention it,” she said, taking her husband’s arm. “What have you been up to all afternoon?”
    “Oh, nothing to interest you,” Kedrington said. “Just reliving old times, you know.”
    Robin grinned and followed them into