0764213512 (R) (48 page)

“Blast.” How did he get here so quickly? And why was he raising his arm as if . . . ?

“Get down!” Apparently not trusting Brice to act, Lochaber charged into him, knocking him to the ground behind a granite maiden.

Even as they fell, a crack split the air, and a
chink
came from the statue. Screams, shouts, thundering steps. Brice pulled himself from the white gravel digging into him, careful to remain behind the wide granite base. Lochaber followed suit behind him.

“Put down your weapon! Hands in the air!”

The answering Gaelic shout didn’t sound inclined to obey. Footsteps, but not away. No, closer. Brice’s gaze darted to the door—too far, with no cover between. The nearest tree was a good thirty feet behind. Could they edge around the statue, avoid him?

Lochaber cursed, peered out, cursed again.

When Brice looked up, he was staring down the barrel of a pistol. Malcolm Kinnaird wasn’t smiling now, but he also wasn’t firing. He grabbed hold of Brice’s collar and wrenched him to his feet, shouting at the encroaching officers, “One step closer and the duke gets a bullet in the head!”

Ducky. Just ducky.

Lochaber stood too, looking ready to pummel the man. “Easy, Malcolm. Think before ye act. Ye kill him, and ye willna get away. Ye’ll be locked in a Sassenach prison the rest o’ yer days.”

The cold cylinder pressed to Brice’s temple wasn’t moved by the earl’s logic. But he felt no panic, not like yesterday. Just a calm that held him absolutely still.

“Call off yer hounds, Sassenach,” Kinnaird hissed into his ear. “Give me Rowena and my bairn, and we’ll leave you in peace. No one harmed. No one hurt.”

Brice glanced about the garden. All the men were out of hiding, all had their weapons at the ready. The odds were in his favor—except he already had a pistol at his head. But if he could just put some space between them . . . “They’ll not make a move without my command.” Not entirely true, given that they weren’t
his
men, but they certainly wouldn’t charge in at the moment. “Put away your weapon and we’ll talk. Inside, like civilized human beings.”

“Oh, I dinna think so. I’m not glaikit
enough to go into yer house. Send yer guards away and his lordship in for his daughter.”

The men kept creeping closer, though Brice hoped the hand he raised discreetly at his side would halt them. He didn’t particularly relish the thought of Kinnaird getting nervous at the approach of a dozen . . . Wait. A dozen? He scanned the faces again and realized the men from the woods had joined the fray.

“I’m not jesting!” Kinnaird yelled loudly enough for them all to hear. “Now, Lochaber. Go and fetch Rowena. If ye refuse, it’ll be a bullet in the duke’s head and one in yers as well. I may die or rot for it, but at least I’ll know he willna be—”

“Malcolm,
stop
! Let him go. I’m here!”

Now the panic came, full and hot, and Brice jerked his head toward the house. “No. Rowena, get back inside! Now!”

She stood in the doorway, her face still pale from that morning’s sickness, her eyes wide with fear. Why, then, would she put herself in the path of the monster who had haunted her nightmares? Why would she . . . ? But he knew. The same reason he would sooner take a bullet than let her suffer at his hands again.

Love did strange things to one’s logic. And to one’s fears.

“There’s a good lass.” Kinnaird pressed the gun harder against Brice’s temple and dug his fingers into his neck. “Here’s how it’ll work, Sassenach. She comes with me, and ye dinna try anything clever. If ye do, I shoot her instead. Do ye ken?”

All too clearly. One way or another, one of them would die if they fought. Yet they
must
fight, with their wits if not with weapons. “You would kill her? When you’ve gone to such trouble to get her back?”

The gun was warming against his flesh . . . which made it all the worse. “Better dead than—”

“With a Sassenach. Right. Very enlightened of you, I can’t think
why
the Scots and English were ever at odds.”

Kinnaird shifted his grip on the gun, pushed Brice back around to face the officers rather than Rowena. “Stay back. Ye’ll have yer precious duke soon enough. Rowena!” He gave a sharp Gaelic command.

Rowena edged forward, taking slow, cautious steps. He could barely glimpse her in his periphery, couldn’t see her face. Couldn’t exchange any silent message.

He didn’t have to. Lochaber still stood before him, unencumbered and able to see them both. He glanced from Rowena to Brice, showed three fingers against his leg and then looked to the ground.

“Faster!” Kinnaird barked.

Lochaber flashed one finger.

“Well, if ye want me to move faster, perhaps ye should try not scaring the verra life out o’ me with that gun. Put it down, Malcolm, and let him go! I’m
coming
.”

Lochaber flashed a second finger.

“I’ll put the gun down when I’m good and ready.”

Lochaber flashed a third finger. Brice lunged to the side and down. Lochaber charged with a shout that would have done William Wallace proud.

A shot. Feminine screams. Masculine shouts. A veritable earthquake of thundering footfalls, another blasted shot that bit the ground not an inch from his nose, spraying dust into his eyes. He blinked it away and got to his knees, casting about for . . .

There, there was Rowena, crawling toward him. Unharmed, praise the Lord. He had to get to her, get her to safety, then find some way to help Lochaber, who was trying to wrestle the gun from Kinnaird’s hands.

“Brice.” Her voice was but a croak, but it was speaking his name, so what did he care? He scrabbled to his feet and stumbled for her, pulled her up into his arms.

A guttural scream ended the shuffling sounds behind them. He spun.

The constable’s men had converged upon them, and one stood on the wrist that had formerly held the weapon. A second claimed the gun, and four more held the beast down. Morris wiped his brow and repositioned his hat. “You’re under arrest for the attempted murder of the Duke of Nottingham. And if you don’t stop struggling, Clive here’s going to have my permission to pound you into submission.”

A hulking man slammed a hand against his fist and grinned.

Brice buried his face in Rowena’s hair and held her so tight even air couldn’t fit between them. “What were you doing down here? We agreed—”

“I saw him, heard him. I couldna let him kill you. I couldna.”

“I know. But you nearly felled me of a heart attack.” He leaned back just enough to tip up her face. “We’re safe.”

“Aye.” But her brows drew together. “Are
all
the men here?”

He spun back around, did another quick count—but his math in the heat of the moment hadn’t been amiss. They’d left the woods unguarded.

His stomach turned to a stone. “Constable Morris.”

Morris looked up, around, and seemed to come to the same conclusion he just had. Muttering a curse, he took off at a run for the trees.

Brice and Rowena hurried after him. But he didn’t need to see the twigs disturbed that they had carefully placed. Or the door standing ajar on the old playhouse. He knew, even before he ducked in and saw the board torn up.

Morris swept his hat from his head and slapped his leg with it. “We missed her. She came at just the right time. What a blasted lousy coincidence.”

Leaning into the doorway, he sucked in a breath. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“Well, she’s not going to get away with it.” Morris slammed his hat back on his head and brushed past Brice and Rowena. “She can’t be more than a few minutes ahead of us. We’re going to catch her at her flat, with the gems still on her person, that’s what.” He paused a few steps away, glaring. “You might as well come. Identify your possessions then and there so she can’t claim they’re hers. I daresay it’ll be safe enough with a whole retinue of us arriving en masse.”

Brice nodded. It would allow him to stop in at the hospital too.

Rowena tucked her hand in his. “I’m going too. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

“You needn’t worry for me, darling.” But he gripped her hand. And was glad she did. “I don’t intend to find myself the target of a gun again—ever.”

“Good. But even so.”

“Even so. Together.” They must get this finished—and move on with actually living.

Chaos greeted them. Rowena followed behind Constable Morris and Brice, but they looked every bit as confused as she as they pushed open the door that hadn’t been latched and stepped into the bowels of pandemonium. Everything inside the house Catherine and her brother had let was in a riot, servants shouting and scrambling and crying, no one paying any mind to the fact that a slew of uniformed officers had just entered.

“What in thunder?” But no one answered the constable’s mutter.

Rowena shook her head. It didn’t look as though the household were trying to beat a hasty retreat—no one had anything in their hands, no boxes or trunks to be seen. And that surely wouldn’t incite so many tears.

Then a vaguely familiar maid came running down the stairs, sobbing. “It wasn’t my fault, my lady, I swear it! I
swear
it! I was right there in the next room the whole time, just knitting. I didn’t do anything!”

“You stupid wench!” Catherine tore down the stairs after the maid, in a state Rowena had never seen her in before. Her hair was half down. Her face streaked with tears and white as the chalk cliffs. And she shook so violently Rowena could see it from the door. “You killed him! You
killed
him!”

Bile burned Rowena’s throat. The nurse—it was the nurse who stumbled in her haste, who fell down the last three steps and then beat her fists against the floor.
No. Dear Lord, not little Byron. Please, not her baby. Don’t have taken her baby
. She gripped Brice’s arm, bidding him go no farther.

Constable Morris, however, lurched forward to catch Catherine when she made to throw herself atop the nurse. She beat against him, trying to get to the girl. “She killed him! Arrest her, make her pay—she killed my baby!”

“I didn’t! I swear it!” The nurse crawled behind the constable’s legs, barely comprehensible through her heaving cries. “I love the boy. I would never harm him. He just stopped breathing. He always naps so sound, never making a peep, but I checked on him. I did, like I always do, after an hour, and . . . and he just wasn’t breathing! It was the crib death, my lady, not me. Not me!”

Catherine’s scream made Rowena wince away, move behind Brice. Not that he could shield her from it, from the pure, undiluted sound of a heart fragmenting, shattering, piercing one’s being down to the soul.

How well she knew that scream. She’d loosed it herself when Malcolm had attacked her—but to lose one’s child? It was all she could do to keep from being sick at the thought.

The scream ended on a shuddering sob, and Catherine’s fists let off pounding at the constable, clinging to him instead. “She killed him. He’s gone. My precious angel, my beautiful boy—it’s all her fault. I was only away from the nursery for an hour, visiting with my friends in the parlor, and . . . and she
killed
him.”

Only then did Rowena note the three ladies crowded in the parlor door, all pale faced and tear streaked. Ladies who certainly didn’t look newly arrived, given the half-eaten biscuit one still clutched in her hand.

Catherine hadn’t been at Midwynd.

“Easy, my lady. Easy.” Constable Morris guided Catherine away from the nurse. “Rest assured there will be an inquiry, but if it was crib death . . . these things happen, terrible as they are. We lost one that way, too, when she was but three months old.”

Catherine’s knees buckled, and the constable lowered her to the lowest step. He looked to her guests. “You were with her? For the last hour?”

The ladies all nodded. From within the parlor Lord Rushworth pushed past them and went to his sister, gathering her close. She wept into his shoulder.

The constable sighed and edged closer to the ladies, away from the mourners. “And Lord Rushworth—he was with you too?”

The eldest of them, as if shocked, still looked to where he’d brushed by. “I didn’t realize he was there at all.”

“Oh, Lucinda—he was there the whole time, he greeted us when we came in.”

“No, not the whole time,” the third put in. “He stepped out for a moment, remember? For ten minutes, perhaps.”

Not enough time to have gone to Midwynd and back.

Fearing she was about to be ill, Rowena stepped back outside, tugging Brice along with her. “They didn’t take them. They may have had someone else do it, but it wasna them. And now . . . this . . .”

Brice shook his head and looked back to the door, his face wreathed in pity. “I wouldn’t have wished this on them. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”

The curse? Happenstance? Tragedy, whichever it was. Rowena sank to the step, gripped the cold iron rail. “This will undo her. For all she lied to me about, I canna think she feigned her love for her child. He was her everything. Her joy. Her heart.”

Constable Morris stepped outside, sighing. “Your Grace, I don’t know what to say. Neither of them could have done it, but it’s obvious they had something to do with it, given that they’re the only ones who were told where the gems were stashed. But now . . .”