How the Hangman Lost His Heart by K. M. Grant Page B

that.”
    Alice tried to wriggle away but Dan easily held her. “You promise me,” he said, and shook her hard. “On the dead colonel’s soul, promise.”
    â€œAll right, I promise,” said Alice reluctantly. “I promise, on Uncle Frank’s soul.”
    Dan made her repeat this and only then, with manymisgivings, did he let go. There was nothing he wanted to do less than trudge down the road up which he had galloped so uncomfortably only moments before. There was nothing in the world he wanted to do less than leave Alice. But there was no option. He turned around just once before he was out of sight and opened his mouth to call to her. But Alice was not looking his way: she was fully occupied petting Hew’s horse. Dan shook his head, cursing himself for being nothing but a soppy mooncalf. Then he shut his mouth and, with weary resignation, headed back toward danger.

6
    Stranded with the laundry basket, Major Slavering’s parting glare still hot on his face, Hew also felt foolish. He was too polite to curse Alice, but he did wish that she had found a less lively way of leaving Grosvenor Square and that she had not taken his horse. He could get another horse, of course, but he had been fond of Marron, who had cost him a pretty penny. Slavering’s horse, Belter, had been expensive too, and looking at the major’s face as he fought his way up the road on a rather lowly, borrowed beast, Hew knew that if Dan and Alice were ever caught, their list of offenses would be long and grim. Treachery, thieving, resisting arrest, and now horse stealing. Hew paled at the punishments. On his left, the Duke of Mimsdale was grumbling away as his linen and clothes were collected and given to maidservants to fold. Hew itched to tell the silly old fool to shut up, but he did not. Instead, to hasten the process, he helped repack the basket.
    It was while shoving half a dozen petticoats down the side that he felt the wig bag. It was a strange thing to find in a laundry basket and it brought him up short. When Alice and Dan had leaped out, he had hardly expected them to be swinging Uncle Frank’s head by its hair. In fact, he had not really been thinking about the head at all. But now that he was thinking about it, everything fell into place. Of course! What better place to hide a head than a wig bag? He looked cautiously around.
    The major, grim-faced, had returned empty-handed from pursuing Alice and Dan, his temper beyond filthy. Troopers from all over the city would be dispatched to search out the fugitives like animals, for the major would not be made an idiot of anymore. Hew knew Slavering in this mood. To hand over Uncle Frank’s head now would not pacify him or make him less likely to pursue Alice to the death. Rather the opposite. He would pursue Alice using the head as some disgusting form of blackmail, probably to lure her into a trap from which there would be no escape. Hew frowned. He must extricate the wig bag before the laundryman found it but without Slavering seeing. He began, cautiously, to pull at it, then stopped. What on earth was he doing? Why was he risking not only his own life but the lives of his mother and sister, his only remaining family, for a girl he hardly knew?
    It was a silly question because he already knew the answer. The memory of Alice’s cornflower eyes and the radiating confidence with which she had saved him at Temple Bar floated constantly about his head, knocked into his heart, and disturbed his sleep. Hew was not in the habit of thinking about girls. He had given up on them since most of those he knew, the sisters of his fellow officers or friends of his own sister, despised the poverty that had forced him to rise up through the ranks of his regiment rather than buy his captaincy as people of his class found it more convenient to do. If Hew showed any romantic interest in such girls, they smirked and pouted and made him feel very uncomfortable.