Chloe (Made Men, #3)(56)

“How comforting,” she ground out as he stepped down from the carriage.

“I advise against gallivanting about alone altogether,” he said, propping his elbows on either side of the carriage door. “London is riddled with monsters.”

“Yes,” she glowered. “I see that now.”

He laughed. “Good evening, Lady Kathryn. I wish you safe travels home.” He snapped the door firmly shut then turned back toward the theater.

He was gone. Finally. Now if only the dashed fluttering in her stomach had gone with him.

With a shuddering breath, she gave her directions to the coachman. The carriage lurched in motion for only a few minutes then creaked to a stop, and she was let out. The hack had taken her around to the opposite side of the theater. She was not expecting to leave Covent Garden, so she had set the meeting up nearby. She might have lost a little time with the detour, but her contact would have waited.

Her slippers made an audible squishing sound when she landed, freezing liquid seeping in through the thin material. She was lucky her slippers were tied to her feet, or else they would have been sucked right off.

She had only made it a few steps when the horses were pushed into action. Muddy slush flung up from the wheels as they turned, coating the back of her dark blue cloak in tiny brown dots.

Kathryn sighed heavily through a shiver without bothering to assess the damage. She need not look to know her entire ensemble hadn’t a chance, but what would that matter? She had to trudge all the way around the front of the theater to get to the right alley, anyhow. She could thank Lord Obtrusive for that.

Snow mixed with drizzle came down in a gentle haze, and by the time she passed the entrance to the theater, the warmth from the lantern looked incredibly enticing. If there hadn’t been a man standing in the shadows by the theater door, she would have stopped to warm her hands.

Once she passed the doors and turned into the next alley, it was not more than two minutes before she reached the rendezvous point to meet her contact.

The alley was narrow. The yellow light of a small lantern illuminated tiny specks of drizzle, adding to the mush that covered the cobblestones and rubbish lining the walkway. Her face, hands, and feet were stinging from the cold, and it was all she could do to control her shivering.

It was almost over. After all the trouble of setting up this dashed mission, Ainsley’s fraying of her nerves and utter destruction of her patience, topped off with the ghastly weather not suitable for intelligent life, she was finally here.

She waited until a shadowed figure appeared out of a doorway not far ahead of her. He looked at her for a long moment before glancing around then slowly stepping toward her.

Kathryn took a deep, steadying breath, her teeth not chattering quite loudly enough to drown out her own heartbeat. Then she stepped out to meet him.

The closer she came, the better she could make out his features. He was a stocky individual with a limp on his right, but that was all she could discern in the dim light and with him wrapped up in so many rags.

“Are you Mr. White?” she asked.

He grunted a barely intelligible yes.

“Right. Then this is for you. I expect you know where to take it?” She handed him a folded envelope from her reticule.

He peeked into the envelope then, seemingly satisfied, stuffed it into his inner pocket. With another grunt, he turned to leave, and she watched him limp back through the same door he had emerged from moments before. Then she sighed, her breath clearly visible in the night air.

The wind cut through her heavy cloak as though it were laced with holes. She was numb to her knees, her elbows, and her neck. She wasn’t getting out of this without a sniffle at best, pneumonia at worst, but it was worth it. She had done it! Too dangerous, indeed. If not for the weather and Ainsley, it might have been considered uneventful.

She turned and shuffled back toward the main street, a curl of self-satisfaction pulling up the corners of her mouth. However, she had barely taken five steps before she heard a sloshing sound behind her.

She turned on her heel to peer into darkness, the only light being the small lantern swinging over the door with tiny specks of drizzle coming down around it.

She pulled open the strings of her reticule with stiff fingers to have a reassuring glance at her small pistol. She should not have any need of it. No one, not even a pea-brained monster, would be dense enough to linger out here.

Still…

She started again toward the theater with renewed vigor, reminding herself she had seen no one enter the alleyway whilst she was there. Besides, if someone were lurking in the shadows, they would have already had her.

This time, the sloshing sounded a mere few yards behind her, far too close for her to waste time fumbling for her pistol with numb fingers. In a heartbeat, she broke out into a sprint with her hands hiking her damp skirts to her knees. She managed only two clumsy strides before she was caught.

A heavy blow to her temple pitched her into the stone wall. She fell limply to the ground, and her reticule along with her pistol was flung far out of reach in the snow.

As she hit, specks of light flooded her vision, but the lancing pain from the blow cut through the fog, and she cried out.

She didn’t see the iron boot that drove into her ribs. It knocked the air from her lungs with only a shallow breath reluctantly seeping back in. She shut her eyes as tightly as she could manage to block out the pain—mind over matter—but the pain was edging in on her mantra.