So Malcolm, eyes glinting, told Margo, “They’re all yours, Imp. Handle them, you can handle anything.”
Margo rolled her eyes. “Oh, thanks. I’ll remember to send you invitations to the funeral.”
“Huh. Theirs or yours?”
Margo laughed. “With your shield or on it, isn’t that what the Roman matron told her son? You know, as he went off to die gloriously in battle? The way I figure it, any run-in with that crew is gonna be one heck of a battle.”
“My dear girl, you just said a bloody mouthful. Give ‘em hell for me, too, would you? Just get them back in one piece. Even,” he added with a telling grimace, “those reporters. Those two are a potential nightmare, snooping around for the story of the century, with the East End set up blow like a powder keg on a burning ship of the line. Doug’s good in a routine tour and he’s taken a lot of zipper jockeys into the East End, but frankly, he hasn’t the martial arts training you do. Remember that, if it comes to a scrap.”
“Right.” It was both flattering and a little unsettling to realize she possessed skills that outranked a professional guide’s. Doug Tanglewood, one of those nondescript sort of brown fellows nobody looks at twice, or even once, and who occasionally shock their neighbors by dismembering small dogs and children, was delighted that he wouldn’t have to shepherd the Ripper Watch Team through the East End by himself.
“You handle the reporters,” Margo told him as they left the gatehouse to climb into the carriage that would take them to the East End. “I’ll tackle the eggheads.”