The hens cackled irritably in reply. They were clearly committed to the revolutionary cause.

  But they weren't cackling at him.

  One hand still holding the fuse, Geoff whirled toward Patrick Street. A man pounded across the street, two agitated chickens at his heels and a pistol in his hand.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The man's other hand was engaged in trying to hold his hat on his head.

  Jarred by the motion, his long hair flapped behind him, unraveling as he ran. Not just long hair. Very long hair. It flopped to the man's waist, the individual strands catching the light like a flow of spiced cider, honey-gold and flecked with nutmeg and cinnamon. Letty's hair, in fact.

  Geoff's hand froze on the stock of his gun.

  Suddenly, Lord Vaughn's residence seemed the height of safety, her presence there devoutly to be wished. Not only was she speeding toward enough explosive matter to blow up the entirety of Notre Dame and a few minor cathedrals besides, he really did not think she should be out in public in those pants. They hugged her hips and thighs as closely as a prostitute fondling a patron. Of all the images that could have sprung to mind, that one did little to add to Geoff's peace of mind.

  Or what mind he had left. The fact that he had allowed himself to be distracted by his wife's trousers when he had a fuse in one hand and a building full of explosives behind him did not bode well for the continued viability of his mental powers.

  The source of his confusion skidded to a halt in front of him in a haze of hair and feathers. Racketing to a stop, Letty tripped over an inquisitive chicken, who seemed to view the entire situation as a new form of game designed entirely for avian amusement.

  Geoff grabbed her elbow to steady her, resisting the urge to grab her by both shoulders, shake her until she saw sense, and then kiss her until she couldn't see anything at all. No matter how oddly the rebels behaved, he doubted the neighbors were accustomed to seeing two men embracing by the side of the house. Although how anyone could take one look at Letty in those trousers and believe her a man…

  No. Geoff sliced off that train of thought before it could veer into dangerous territory. He refused to fall prey to a pair of pantaloons. And he wasn't even going to think about that sliver of throat where her cravat had come undone.

  "Why aren't you at Vaughn's?" he demanded, as emphatically as one could demand in a whisper. He reached out and hastily knotted the ends of her cravat together in a rough bow. "What are you doing here? It's dangerous!"

  Fortunately, Letty seemed to have regained her balance, if not her breath. She panted something completely unintelligible.

  "What was that?"

  The fuse took advantage of his slackened grasp and promptly began trailing back toward the knothole, like a very long dog's tail. Lunging, Geoff grabbed the end before it could whisk out of reach.

  "Mind on your work!" snapped Miss Gwen, from within the house.

  "Rebels," panted Letty, dropping the empty pistol and clutching both hands to her aching diaphragm. The chicken, narrowly avoiding losing several tail feathers, pecked at Letty's boot in retaliation and waddled haughtily away, looking uncannily like Miss Gwen. "Meeting. Now."

  "Now," Geoff repeated flatly.

  The message he had intercepted had been so clear. Emmet, Allen, Dowdall, Madden, and a number of the other rebel luminaries were engaged to dine at Kilmacud with Joe Alleyburne, for an evening of pleasant conversation and plotting. Geoff had eavesdropped on such events before; they tended to go on well into the night and involve the consumption of large quantities of claret.

  Clearly, tonight was the exception.

  There was no hope that Letty was wrong. Down at the other end of Hanover Alley, a small cluster of men was barely perceptible, no more than flecks on a painter's palette. Geoff would wager there weren't more than six of them—which still made three too many, even if Geoff counted Letty, which he would have preferred not to. There could be no doubt as to their identity. From the not so distant distance came a snatch of a ballad, low but unmistakable.

  "And you did mean now," Geoff said grimly.

  Why in the hell did rebel movements always have to express themselves in song? Geoff recognized it as "The Lament of Lord Edward Fitzgerald," a lugubrious little ditty that began

  "Why lie ye here so pale and cold, Edward, Edward? Why ye who were so brave and bold, Edward, Edward?" and went on along that vein for the whole of thirty-eight verses, including a glowing report of Lord Edward's childhood lessons and his preference for jammy tarts at tea ("Oh, ye who liked the raspberry, Edward, Edward"), before getting on to the usual bits about bloody blades, bared breasts, and women weeping.

  They had clearly been singing for quite some time; Geoff caught a fragment that ran "And when his Greek translations were due, Edward, Edward, the blank verse came out pure and true, Edward, Edward. For in the glow of Hector's shield, Edward, Edward, you saw that Eire must never yield, Edward, Edward."

  One could learn to hate that name after a few verses.

  The little group at the end of Hanover Alley was growing more distinct. Six men, clearly in a state of high good spirits, even if there did seem to be a small disagreement about variant endings to the twenty-third verse.

  In just a few yards they would be close enough to take an interest in what was going on in their own yard. And there was very little a man could do to explain away why he just happened to be holding a fuse in one hand and a match in the other.

  A hen pecked curiously at Geoff's foot, clearly mistaking it for an outré new form of feed. Rapping smartly on the wall, Geoff leaned over to speak into one of the knotholes.

  "I am lighting the match," enunciated Geoff clearly. "Would you care to emerge?"

  "Hmph," was all Miss Gwen said, but Geoff heard a thump that he devoutly hoped was the banging of the hidden door.

  For all her irritating qualities, he had no interest in immolating Miss Gwen. The blasted woman would probably come back to haunt him.

  "May I help?" Letty asked, her eyes darting from the fuse to the rebels and back again.

  She looked so absurdly small and vulnerable in her borrowed men's clothes. Geoff would have liked to send Letty packing, back to Jane's house, or, even better, all the way back to London. But he didn't have that luxury. Making a snap decision, Geoff held out the end of the fuse.

  "Can you work a flint?"

  Letty snapped to. "Of course!"

  "Good. Take this." Geoff handed her the flint. Letty accepted the flint with a familiarity that boded well for her claim of competence. "The second you see Miss Gwen emerge, use it to light this." With his other hand, Geoff held out the fuse. Letty regarded the black-flecked length of twine dubiously. "Once it's lit, I want you to run, as fast as you can, down toward the church."

  "What about you?"

  Geoff's mouth quirked with wry humor. "With any luck, I'll be running, too."

  Letty just looked at him, her blue eyes clouded with unasked questions.

  Abandoning any pretense of levity, Geoff said somberly, "I'll hold them off as long as it takes to protect the fuse."

  "I see," said Letty, and she did.

  The need to take her into his arms was almost a physical ache. "If anything goes wrong, I want you to go straight to Jane. If anything goes wrong with Jane, go straight back to England. Understood?"

  Letty nodded. Reluctantly.

  Geoff could tell she was yearning to argue, and his chest swelled with an entirely unfamiliar range of emotions at her perspicacity and self-control. Nine out of ten women—nine out of ten men—would have wasted time in useless arguments. But not his Letty.

  Unable to kiss her good-bye, since that really would arouse the rebels' suspicions, as well as other inconvenient organs, Geoff did the only thing he could. Under cover of the henhouse, he reached for her hand and squeezed. "I'm going to go drag Miss Gwen out of the house. The minute you see her, light the fuse."

  Letty knew what she wanted to say. But since she couldn't, she went with the next best substitute, inadequate though it was.

  "Be careful," she whispered, but the words were lost in a sudden burst of noise. Like an ill wish, Miss Gwen appeared, bursting forth from the back door with enough force to shake the door on its hinges. She seemed, for a moment, to hang in midair like an avenging Fury, her gray hair bristling and her parasol raised like a general's baton.

  At the end of the alley, the rebels stood amazed, frozen from sheer shock.

  Letty couldn't blame them.

  Twisting the handle of her parasol, Miss Gwen drew out a thin sword from the shaft. In her left hand, she braced the open purple parasol like a shield. The silk fringe bobbed merrily in the fading sunlight.

  "Fire away!" cried Miss Gwen. Thrusting her sword point high in the air, she charged the astounded band of rebels.

  Letty didn't need to be asked twice. Dropping to her knees behind the henhouse, she struck the flint with hands that were surprisingly steady. The metal fit familiarly into her hand, an oddly domestic counterpoint to the scent of sulfur stinging her nose and the chicken dung muddying her pantaloons. Under Letty's efforts, the tinder caught, and lit.

  Her heart somewhere around her cravat, Letty thrust the powdercoated fuse into the small spark and waited for it to catch flame.

  Nothing happened.

  The fuse wasn't taking. The flame smoldered sullenly at the very tip before winking damply out.

  Fighting her rising anxiety, Letty struck the flint again, willing the metal to spark. Just on the other side of the weathered wooden structure, Miss Gwen's shrill yips of triumph and tart asides mingled with masculine oaths and grunts. They seemed to be holding their own, but how long could two hold out against six?

  If there was something wrong with the fuse…Merciful heavens, she didn't even know what a functioning fuse was supposed to look like, much less what one was supposed to do if one wouldn't work. Those little black flecks…she assumed they were supposed to be there, but who knew? And the ground was damp, a damp that might have worked into the twine, inhibiting the action of the flame.

  Letty worked the flint with a burst of energy born of desperation, tipping the end of the fuse to catch the flame. If the fuse wouldn't take this time, she would just have to find something else. A long spar of wood torn from the chicken coop, perhaps, and thrust through one of the larger knotholes in the wall. It might work. If the fuse didn't light, it would have to work.

  The tip of the fuse caught and smoked, smoldering uncertainly against the backdrop of the muddy earth. As though through a screen, Letty could hear the pounding of booted feet against packed dirt, shouted threats and imprecations, the harsh exhalations of hard-pressed lungs, all drawing steadily nearer. It couldn't have been more than seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Cupping her hands around the red tip, she blew gently on the flame, willing it into life.

  "Please," Letty breathed. "Please…"

  Whether it was the plea or pure chemistry, the little tongue of flame gathered momentum, greedily gobbling its way down the fuse, like the fiery salamander of medieval myth.

  Letty stumbled backward to her feet, watching as the flame licked toward the wall. She wanted to squeal, to cheer, to fling her hat in the air. They had done it! The fuse was lit!

  Giddy with triumph, Letty spun on one heel—but her cry of triumph turned to a muffled yell as someone ignominiously grabbed her about the waist from behind and hauled her painfully up into the air.

  * * *

  "CHARGE!" CRIED MISS GWEN, thrusting her sword parasol in the air.

  Geoff caught her up halfway down the alley. "We just have to hold them long enough for the fuse to burn down to the wall,"

  he tossed at her in a quick undertone. "No heroics."

  Miss Gwen looked distinctly put out.

  Putting her ire to good use, she flashed out with the point of her sword in a movement that owed more to vigor than science. Staring transfixed at the fringed purple parasol she held as a shield, her target barely had time to wrench out of her way, winning a long rent in his sleeve rather than the killing thrust Miss Gwen had intended.

  "Sirrah!" snapped Miss Gwen. "Kindly stand still!"

  For a moment, her opponent looked like he meant to obey.

  Belatedly recalling his circumstances, he scrambled for his knife, just as Geoff brought two clasped hands down on the back of his neck, sending him sprawling.

  Shoving her parasol in the face of one rebel while fending off another, Miss Gwen still found the time to cast a glower in Geoff's general direction. "That one was meant to be mine,"

  she complained.

  "There are more than enough to go around," rejoined Geoff, ducking beneath a poorly planned punch.

  Unmoved by that sensible sentiment, Miss Gwen expressed herself volubly as to the general uselessness of the male gender.

  "Sharp-tongued old besom," grumbled one of the rebels.

  "Couldn't get a husband?"

  Miss Gwen pinked him in the knee.

  Leaving Miss Gwen to settle accounts with her admirer, Geoff repelled one assailant with a stiff elbow to the throat while driving his fist into the stomach of a second. The man doubled over satisfactorily, unreeling a stream of colloquial curses that mingled oddly with another noise, a cry that sounded more alto than baritone, and made Geoff's chest tighten in a way that had nothing to do with the knife blade that had just scraped stingingly across his ribs.

  Dispatching the wielder of the knife—momentarily, at least—

  with a leg hooked beneath his knees, he heard Letty, quite definitely Letty, demanding that someone put her down, right now.

  The man Geoff had tripped stumbled to his feet and staggered forward again.

  "That was Letty," Geoff said shortly, finishing the man off with a blow to the head with the butt of his pistol. Four men lay groaning on the turf in various positions of pain, leaving only two to be dispatched. "Can you hold them?"

  Miss Gwen ran one of the remaining two through the shoulder with her sword parasol. A grim expression of satisfaction showed on her face as he collapsed groaning at her feet.

  "What are you waiting for?" she demanded, as she advanced on her final opponent.

  Geoff didn't need any further urging. Sprinting down the length of the house, he called back over his shoulder, "I'm in your debt."

  "Your first child, Pinchingdale!" Miss Gwen cackled.

  As Geoff skidded toward Patrick Street, he could hear Miss Gwen behind him, knocking open the roof of the henhouse and urging its feathered contents onward. "Peck, my pretties!

  Peck! That's the way!"

  It was enough to make one feel sorry for the rebels.

  Geoff skidded to a stop, scanning left, then right, just in time to see Letty tumbling backward over the side of a wagon several yards away. She disappeared among a spurt of straw as the driver slapped the reins, urging his horse forward. The wagon started with a lurch that sent Letty's head, briefly visible above the slats that boxed in the sides, straight back down again.

  She wasn't hurt.

  Relief was rapidly replaced by rage as Geoff recognized the driver. He hadn't bothered to wear a hat, and the sun shone right down on his infamous sideburns.

  Jasper had Letty.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  One minute Letty was admiring her handiwork; the next she was dangling a foot off the ground.

  Two large hands grasped her under the arms, yanking upward. Letty howled with indignation and pain. That grip under her arms hurt, with a throbbing pain that did not get any better when her assailant gave another concerted pull, raising her another half inch and threatening to dislocate her arms from their sockets. Letty batted ineffectually behind her, but she had failed to take into account quite how difficult it was to hit someone who had one by the armpits. Her fingers barely brushed the fabric of his sleeves.

  "Let go!" Kicking out behind her, Letty's flailing foot hit wood instead of flesh, with a force that sent pain reverberating all down her leg.

  Her captor took advantage of her distraction to haul her up another half foot, her backside scraping against a decidedly splintery surface. Letty's jacket snagged on a rough edge, and her captor gave an irritated grunt.

  It wasn't much, but that tone of irritation was unmistakable.

  Letty made a concerted effort to look behind her that resulted only in a wrenching pain in her right arm.

  "Captain Pinchingdale?" she exclaimed.

  "Would you be still?" Jasper demanded in aggrieved tones, as though it were perfectly unremarkable for him to be grabbing her from behind and attempting to haul her into a vehicle that seemed to be completely composed of sharp fragments of wood, all aimed at Letty's backside. "You're making this much harder."