“Ah well.” The duchess waved her hand. “We can send for it.” She rose to reach for a bell sitting on a table near the fireplace.
Blast. If she summoned her footman, what would I tell him? There was no hotel, no cash for him to run for. I toyed with the idea of directing an errand runner to Miss Townsend’s house instead. She was a quick thinker and could decide what to do.
Before the duchess reached the bell, she glanced behind her and saw my face. She stilled.
This woman had lived her entire life with subterfuge, secretly funding societies through her husband to take her vengeance on those who’d murdered her mother and destroyed her father. She had believed my story and Daniel’s thus far, but my indecisiveness must have shown in my expression in one unguarded moment.
“You bloody . . .” The duchess broke off her snarl and ran for the door at the back of the room.
If she got through it, if she summoned her husband and whatever servants were within shouting distance, she’d expose me, and through me, Daniel and Mr. Fielding.
At best, the duke and duchess would slip Daniel’s net, and he’d be blamed for their escape. I shuddered to think what Mr. Monaghan would do to Daniel for that.
At worst, Daniel and Mr. Fielding could be in very great danger. The men the duchess assisted thought nothing of stabbing important aristocrats to death—she’d not care about the lives of a pair of Englishmen from London’s backstreets.
I leapt at the duchess and seized her before she could reach the door. She struggled, spitting language that no genteel lady should know.
Quick as a snake, she whipped from my grasp and came at me, a slender knife in her hand.
I sidestepped and spun away, my lace shawl fluttering to the carpet. I decided to make for the hall and scream for someone to help me with this madwoman.
Somehow, the duchess was in front of me, skirts bunched in one hand, the other competently wielding the knife. I had a flash of vision of this woman in her younger years. Angry, nurturing hatred, in the midst of a mob, shouting her fury, fighting. Someone had taught her to brawl like a child of darkest London.
She was much older now, but wiry and quick. Elderly does not equal feeble, in my experience.
She came at me until I had to retreat to the window. The thick velvet drapes were closed, so no one on the square would notice me battling a crazed woman with a knife.
“Daniel!” I shouted at the top of my voice.
If the name confused her, the duchess made no sign. I caught her knife hand, but the knife jerked upward, the blade slashing across the neckband of my pretty peach gown and across my upper chest and shoulder.
An angry red crease opened across my skin, and blood spilled onto the bodice.
The sudden streak of pain coupled with the heat of the battle stripped me of any genteelness I’d ever learned. The professional cook who struggled for respectability fled, and the girl from Bow Lane emerged.
“You’ve ruined me dress, you owd bitch!”
It was a shriek worthy of Tess at her most enraged. I seized the duchess, clamping hard on her wrist while I wrested the knife from her grasp. She fought me fiercely, another cut slicing across the bodice, this one stopped by my thick and sensible corset. I hadn’t taken the time to change into the pretty one.
I lifted the knife out of the duchess’s reach, and she danced backward, a look of cunning on her face.
“Help!” she cried. “She’s attacking me. She’s gone mad!”
I brought the knife low, keeping her at bay. “No, missus, you’re the barmy one.”
Both doors crashed open, and a number of people poured in. Mr. Fielding was the first to reach the duchess. He cast a glance at me and the knife, then twisted the duchess’ arms behind her back, holding her competently as she thrashed and screamed.
“What are you doing?” she screeched. “She’s trying to kill me!”
“That’s porkies, that is,” I raged. Mr. Fielding understood. Pork pies—lies. “And you’ve no notion how to hire a decent cook,” I snapped at the duchess, my ire high.
Daniel came straight to me. I felt his touch on my back, and he pressed a handkerchief to my bleeding chest. “Kat.” His voice, warm in my ear, shook.
“I’m fine,” I assured him, though my legs wobbled and my throat was tight. “It’s only a scratch.” One that hurt like the devil.
Daniel had me on the settee, sinking down next to me. The duke stood in the middle of the room, his mouth open. Several footmen hovered nearby, a few without livery, likely just returned from their day out. They turned to the duke for instruction, but he stood as one stunned.
“Ciara,” he whispered.
I took that to be the duchess’s name. She continued to struggle against Mr. Fielding, wrath in her eyes. Mr. Fielding showed no worries about injuring the woman as he tightened his grip.
“The police, I think,” Mr. Fielding said.
“Do not let those bloody bastards into my house,” the duchess shouted. “John, stop them.”
The duke only stared at her. “Ciara, what have you done?”
“Confessed to funding illegal organizations plotting against the British crown and carrying out assassinations,” Daniel said grimly. He remained with me, his handkerchief now stained crimson. “I’m so sorry, Kat. I wanted to rush in right away, but Errol insisted we wait and hear her tell you all, with witnesses.”
He glanced at the footmen, who watched in shock. Apparently, they were as surprised as I to find that the duchess was duplicitous.
“I will summon our solicitor,” the duke said in a subdued voice.
“You should,” Daniel said quietly. “The police will be here soon.”
“Will they?” Mr. Fielding asked as the duchess struggled anew. “How will they have heard? Ah . . .” He gazed at Daniel with new respect. “I might have known.”
I had no idea what he meant, but Daniel explained to me. “I have men stationed outside, and I sent them a signal.”
“Of course you did,” Mr. Fielding said.
“We have a few minutes, that is all.” Daniel held out his hand, and I put the knife, which I still clutched, into it. “I do not want you here when they arrive,” he said to me.
“But I am a witness.” My ability to speak in more neutral tones had returned.
“No. Errol and I are.”
Daniel helped me to my feet and began to steer me toward the door in the back of the room. It led to a smaller chamber, I saw, a writing room, very neat and cozy. Daniel shut the door, blocking the view of the drawing room and its strange tableau.