Free The Bad Baron's Daughter by Laura London Page A

Linden’s bedroom and faced the starlit balcony.
    A black-hooded head was rising over the iron railing; the faceless personification of the disembodied voice. A blade glimmered dully in the moonlight as the figure vaulted awkwardly over the railing and advanced across the room at Katie like a black shadow. In a blind panic, she grabbed the key from the corner table and ran from the room, her pursuer’s footfall rustling heavily behind her. She skidded down the steps, and her shaking fingers refused to quiet themselves as she fumbled hysterically with the lock. Before, the door had sheltered her, but now it held her prisoner. Katie twisted her head to see her assailant bearing down on her, the blade held high. At that moment, the lock gave way and she tore outdoors, hearing the knife hissing as it searched for her. Her assailant stumbled over the threshold with an audible thud and she gained a few steps on him. Katie flew down the pavement without looking back.
    Five houses down the block, a pair of grooms stood chatting next to an elegantly groomed, long-maned Arabian mare that pulled restlessly against the hitching post. The smoke from the groom’s clay pipe curled and eddied in the rectangle of light thrown out from the open door behind them. Katie snatched the reins and threw herself into the saddle of the nervously circling horse just as the owner, dressed in formal riding clothes and carrying a crop, came out to take possession of his waiting animal. Katie was thundering down the street, hair streaming, expertly guiding the horse with her knees, before the groom or the outraged owner could prevent her.
    “Horse thief! Stop!” Two grooms and the injured owner chased her as she galloped in the direction she had seen Lord Linden walking. Four blocks, he had said. Her pursuers puffed after her, the horseman waving his crop wildly in the air. Katie longed desperately for protection and there was only one man she knew that could provide it. A brightly lit mansion ahead and to her left, surrounded by waiting coaches, must belong to Lady Brixton, she decided.
    It had been a rather uneventful evening for the footman tending Lady Brixton’s door that night; one of your run o’ the mill stuffy high society gigs, so he was taken completely off guard by the slim nightdress-clad miss who came galloping out of the night on a fine Arabian mare. The young Godiva reined in and fairly flung herself upon him, where he sat in his porter’s chair, haughty in his white stockings and powdered wig.
    “Is this Lady Brixton’s?” asked the girl frantically. “Is Lord Linden within?”
    “Yes it is, gel, and yes, he is—but you can’t go in there! Hey! Come back! This is highly improper!” But she was gone, brushing past an astonished pair of new arrivals. Katie received a flashing impression of glittering ambiance; there was a sparkling crystal chandelier, bronze candle-holders, a glistening marble and gilt porcelain mantel clock, and a rich variety of sterling silver spice boxes, fruit dishes, and coconut cups. A hundred fashionably dressed guests were cut in midsentence and stared open-mouthed at Katie. Lady Brixton, at the head of the reception line, a bastion of blue-blooded, bejewelled respectability, changed the glazed condescension of her facial expression to a mask of frostily horrified astonishment.
    It was not an atmosphere that nurtured melodrama, and Katie, standing panicked and wild-eyed before a vast seat of London’s most exalted citizens, suddenly felt that it might have been better to have taken her chances with her attacker’s glinting knife. Words froze in her throat and she clasped her hands together fearfully.
    Standing beside Lady Brixton was a short, rather plain girl in elegant mourning black, whose face also registered a planet-struck expression. There was a third person in the reception line; he was very young and very handsome with peach-blond hair and a friendly pair of pale brown eyes, which had