“I suppose so. But the impropriety of Prue’s conduct — oh lud, ma’am!”
“Consider only the impropriety of your own, my child!” chuckled my lady.
“I do, ma’am, often. But as regarding this charming réunion tonight, Mistress Prue, you’ll be pleased to take a chair, and eschew the Burgundy.”
“Behold the little mentor!” Prudence bowed to him. “Rest you content, my Kate.”
The evening was like a dozen other such evenings. There was dinner, and some ribald talk; cards, with the decanter passing from hand to hand, and the candles burning lower and lower in their sockets. Prudence made her excuses soon after midnight. Her host rolled a bleary eye towards her, and protested thickly. Prudence was firm, however, and won her way. A sleepy lackey opened the front door for her, and she stepped out into the cool night air.
The street was deserted, but she knew a chair might be found at Charing Cross, a few score yards away. She swung her cloak over her arm, and walked in that direction, glad of this breath of clean air after the stuffiness of the card room.
It may have been that never quite dormant watchfulness in her that warned her of danger. No more than fifty yards up the street she felt it in the air, and checked her pace slightly. There was a shadow crouched in an embrasure in the wall a few steps further on — a shadow that had something of the form of a man. She slid a hand to her sword hilt, loosening the blade in the scabbard. She must walk on: no use turning back now. A little pale, but steady-eyed as ever, she went forward, her fingers closed about the sword hilt.
The shadow moved, and behold! there were two other shadows springing up before her. There was a flash of steel as she wrenched the sword free from the scabbard, and for a moment the shadowy figures held back. The moment’s hesitation was enough to allow her to get her back against the wall, and to take a sure grip on the cloak over her left arm. Then there was a hoarse murmur, and the three rushed in on her with cudgels upraised.
Her rapier swept a circle before her; the foremost man jumped back with a curse, but the fellow to the right sprang in to aim a vicious blow at Prudence’s head. The rapier shot out, and the point struck home. Came a gasp, and a check: the cloak, unerringly thrown, descended smotheringly over the wounded man’s head, and there was at once a tangle of cloth and hot oaths.
Prudence made lightning use of this momentary diminution in the number of her assailants, parried a blow aimed at her sword arm, sprang sideways a little, and lunged forward the length of her arm. There was a groan, and the sword came away red, while the cudgel fell clattering to earth.