Maggie MacKeever by Quin Page A

sober as a judge.”
    “He always was a damned unpredictable devil.” Verena sighed. “I daresay his people have taken over my house. There’s nothing for it. We’ll have to shoot them both.”
    Liliane moved out of pistol range. “ You’ll have to shoot them. I’m not aiming to dance the sheriff’s jig.”
    Verena kept her gun trained on Kate. “Take care I don’t shoot you too. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”
    “ Thankless? You were going to have me debauched by my own father, you mad old bat.” Liliane snatched up the sherry decanter and brought it down, hard, on Verena’s head.
     
    Chapter Sixteen
     
    Quin hesitated in front of the door leading from his bedchamber into Kate’s. Behind the barrier, he heard sounds of movement. Steeling himself, he turned the knob.
    Kate was wrapped in a voluminous nightdress. Her valise sat open on the bed. Quin wore the same clothes he had the night before, not having yet retired.
    Without waiting for an invitation, he entered the room. “I would offer my condolences, save that even your aunt’s solicitor agrees your cousin is no great loss. Fitting, I think, that he should have inadvertently died by his own hand. As for our other villain, Verena Wickersham is being restored to her family. An account of recent events will be provided them, along with my strongly worded suggestion that she be confined in a private asylum somewhere, which I suspect they will find preferable to the public embarrassment of her imprisonment and trial.” And Coffey, as result of these recent misadventures, had decided to pursue his pigeon-plucking in another part of town.
    Kate leaned against the bed. Her dark hair tumbled loose over her shoulders, and her face was pale. Quin would never forget the fear he’d felt at seeing a pistol trained on her. He said, “How do you feel?
    “Like some large unpleasant spider has spun cobwebs in my brain.” Kate brushed loose curls back from her face. “How did you discover where I was? Were you familiar with that place?”
    “I was not. Which is why Verena went to such lengths. Liliane glimpsed ‘Mam’ at Moxley’s, and grew alarmed. When you turned up missing she sent Figg to watch the bordello, suspecting Verena would take you there. Liliane had the devil of a time tracking me down, else we would have come for you sooner. I was convinced Edmund was to blame.”
    “Doubtless Edmund would have been, had he known I was here,” Kate said. “But why was Liliane so helpful? I mean, if she wasn’t aware you and she were, um, related? I didn’t realize she was so young.”
    “Nor did I,” responded Quin, with feeling. “Or she would have never got past the front door. As for her helpfulness, we had struck a bargain. Liliane, it seems, isn’t one to go back on her word. Moreover, she informs me, it isn’t sporting to go around snatching people off the street.”
    The bawdy house had been a fortress. Verena had not expected to be taken by surprise. However, her staff proved easily seduced by silver, collectively displaying no more loyalty than a louse. Any lingering reluctance was dispelled by a dazzling exhibition of Figg’s prowess at jujutsu, which inspired a number of tarts and customers alike to abandon their mutual exertions and marvel at how this and that were done. At the same time, Samson distracted Mam’s bully boys with an account of how he’d managed to remain upright against Jem Ward for one hundred and thirty eight rounds and one and one-half hours, which wasn’t something often heard straight from the horse’s mouth.
    “Beside,” Quin added wryly, “my pockets are deeper than Mam’s.”
    Kate lowered her gaze to her hands. “Verena expected that even the Black Baron must be devastated to discover he had defiled his daughter. She underestimated you.”
    Quin shouldn’t have been surprised Kate held him in low esteem. Had he not gone to great lengths to prove he gave a damn for