Jasper worked his tongue against his teeth to moisten his dry throat. Nothing would be helped if his command cracked in the middle. “Mr. Collins, release my wife.”
“I need you to listen,” the man shouted back, his words slurred. “And I think you’re more likely to do what I want if I have your lady wife with me.”
He weaved on his feet. Jasper wasn’t sure if was due to a day in the pub or the blow to his head, which left a bloody trail through his graying hair.
All Jasper needed to do was keep him occupied so he didn’t hear Stapleton and Travis on the back stairs.
And keep him from harming Annabel.
“All right.” Jasper tightened his hold on his pistol. “What do you want?”
“I want that bastard there out of Wales and leaving me alone.” He nodded toward Kit. “And he needs to take that French bitch with him.”
“You need to watch your language in front of the lady,” Jasper said. This was his home and his wife. He wasn’t going to cower and comply. “But tell me why, out of everything you could ask, you want that.”
“I had a good scheme there. No one was getting hurt, and we weren’t causing trouble for anyone but Her Royal Highness in whichever castle she wants. Men were able to feed their families and have a few quid in their pockets.”
“Until you blow the mine.” Kit’s words landed like stones.
“Closing an empty hole won’t do nobody harm,” Collins sneered. “We’ll have a few weeks on a picket line and maybe come out the better for it.”
Annabel flinched every time he spoke, which only served to make Collins tighten his hold.
“A mine is never empty, Abel,” Kit said. “You know that. And you also know that death adds legitimacy to any strike and urgency to any negotiations. Are you certain Spencer means to keep this bloodless?”
Collins blinked at them.
How long will it take Stapleton and Travis to get up the stairs? How will I know when they are there?
“He’s not a man to trust, Abel.” Kit sounded calm, but his hands were shaking.
“Says the man who wants to stretch my neck for murder.” Collins lifted Annabel’s chin to a height that made Jasper lose his breath.
Something in her fist caught the light, like jewels under a chandelier in a ballroom. That made no sense. The only jewels she kept at home were her wedding ring and her hatpin.
“Dear God,” Lawrence muttered. “She wouldn’t.”
She would, if pressed. The only option was to keep everyone, including Annabel, calm.
“I want to see you get a fair trial for something everyone in Cardiff believes you did, given the stories we’ve heard.” Jasper spoke to Collins but focused on his wife, willing her to wait. “Spencer will weave a tale that lays everything at your feet.”
“Either path, I hang.” Collins used his body and the pressure from his cane to steer Annabel toward the stairs. “So you and the bastard earl are going to let me out of this house and out of London, and I’ll leave her ladyship at the Welsh border.”
“Or you can tell the prime minister about Spencer’s plan to create a coal shortage and hold the country hostage.”
Collins paused halfway down the stairs. “You have been busy.”
I have a brilliant wife.
Jasper kept his face to Collins, using the turn of the stairs to move closer, even by the smallest step. This situation was deteriorating. “There are alternatives to hanging.”
He was certain he was wrong. He hoped he was lying to the man. What was more, he hoped Collins didn’t know he was lying.
The man’s mouth flattened into a thin line, and his eyes hardened. His knuckles grew white.
And then he was screaming and shoving Annabel away, reaching for both his arm and his foot at the same time. Annabel was a waterfall of blue muslin tumbling down the stairs. The crack as she struck the banister echoed through Jasper.
The hatpin was still vibrating in Collins’s shoulder as he raised his cane and roared, signaling a charge down the stairs. Stapleton and Travis came into the upstairs hallway, weapons at their shoulders. Lawrence and Frederick raised their guns from below.
Jasper rushed to Annabel’s side. On his knees, he put his arm up to block the blow, should it arrive.
“Alive!” Kit shouted as he put himself between their private army and the man they’d hunted for months. “We need him alive.”
There was a thunder of steps and shouts on the stairs. Collins thudded against the plaster more than once, spewing profanity. Jasper didn’t care about any of it.
Annabel wasn’t moving.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Annabel sat on the front row of the gallery, her hands clutching her reticule to keep them from reaching for her throbbing head. The rail was the only thing blocking her view of the chamber below.
Reginald Spencer was being led away. His wife and daughter had stayed in Bath.
“Will he go to the same prison as…the other man?” Claudette asked. She flatly refused to say Abel Collins’s name.
“Likely not. He’ll have better food and fewer rats.” Below them, Jasper was deep in discussion with Drake Fletcher. “But he’ll be there longer.”
