Page 70 of Honor Unbound

As I could think of no good reason to refuse, I did. When I’d finished, I said, “Mr. Platt did see me watching him through the window. Not five minutes before the attack.”

“Wait here,” Cooke said grimly. He paced to the front door, spoke with the doormen, then disappeared inside. One of the doormen jumped into the saddle of Cooke’s horse and took off in the path of the hackney. The other lumbered over to me and planted himself by my side.

“Good evening.” I looked up, and up, to see his face and gave him a wan smile.

He grunted.

Ernest trotted back to me. “The driver, Tommy, is going to find a night watchman.”

“Will he be all right?” I asked.

“Twisted his elbow pretty badly, but he should heal.” Ernest scratched his head. “I’ve never seen anything like that. He jus’ stole a hackney.”

Had that been the blackguard’s sole intent and I had merely gotten in his way? I somehow doubted it.

The doorman and Cooke’s horse came cantering back, dust flying from the beast’s hooves. The doorman jumped to the ground. “The hackney’s been abandoned two streets up. I didn’t see anyone about it.”

He was talking to the other worker, but I nodded. Not an attempted carriage theft then. I ran my hands up and down my arms, chilled.

Ernest shrugged out of his coat and dropped it on my shoulders. “Milady.”

It smelled of horse, but it was warm, and I was grateful.

The doorman led the horse around the side of the building, where I assumed a stables stood. It was several more minutes until Cooke emerged from the hell. His hat was gone, and his steel gray hair gleamed in the light of the gas lamp as he passed underneath it.

“I spoke with your Mr. Platt,” he said when he reached us. “He claims to have no knowledge of this event.”

“He would.” I pointed toward the hidden stables. “Your man said he found the hackney just two blocks away. Did Platt appear out of breath when you spoke with him? You do have a back door, don’t you?”

“I do, but it isn’t for member use.”

There was a wide valley between what members were supposed to do and what they actually did. “I saw that Mr. Randall in your club, the man you’ve banned from your establishments. He had to get in some way. It only makes sense that someone else could have, too.”

Cooke narrowed his eyes. “Thank you for bringing that to my attention. His admittance will be speedily remedied, but that doesn’t counteract the fact that Platt didn’t use the rear door.”

The certainty in his tone put my back up. I had been following Mr. Platt. He had seen me through the window, discovering my pursuit of him. It only made sense. “How can you be sure?”

A small muscle ticked in Cooke’s jaw. “I not only spoke with Platt, I spoke with several other patrons of the club and my workers. He never left the gaming floor. There are fifty witnesses to attest to that. Someone else tried to kill you.”

For the sake of Platt’s soul, I should have been pleased to learn he wasn’t prone to running people down in coaches.

But I wasn’t. Because if he hadn’t done it, then someone had been following me as I’d been following Platt. I hadn’t seen that person. Hadn’t sensed him.

And he’d been a hairbreadth away from killing me.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Brett

“You didn’t haveto come,” Brett said for the third time. Marie had accidentally brushed into the entry wall of The Red Chemise, and she was scrubbing at her arm as though it had been covered in rats.

They’d had another lovely day together. He knew Lady Mary was irritated with them, but her pique had worked in their favor when she’d gone off to her club alone. He could hardly complain when she’d sent a note requesting him to ask Miss Rogerson for her alibi for Hicks’s murder, not when he’d had an afternoon of secluded strolls and illicit kisses with his Marie.

“If you think I’m letting you come to this place alone again,” she whispered, “you’ve taken leave of your senses.”

“I never actually came in here the last time,” he whispered back.

“Even more reason for me to accompany you.” Marie’s lips pressed into a white slash.