Mac's Angels: The Last Dance: A Loveswept Classic Romance (26 page)

He returned her gaze unflinchingly. “I would have shot you,” he said simply. “I had my pistol trained on you from the minute Fontaine approached you. You would have been dead before you opened your lips.”

“You would have murdered me?” she whispered. “Shot me down in cold blood?”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to do it. It would have come down to a question of choices.” His voice was suddenly weary. “If you had spoken to Naldona, Fontaine would have died and Naldona still would have found a way to asassinate you. If you’d died without revealing his complicity, there would have been only one death. I’ve had to make a number of unpleasant choices in the last two years. This would have been just one more.”

And these decisions had left their mark on him. He looked both disillusioned and soul-sick. For a fleeting instant she felt a surge of sympathy, before she recognized the emotion and quickly crushed it. Good Lord, the man had said he would have shot her and she was feeling sorry for him. “You wouldn’t have to make choices like that if you weren’t set on becoming the great revolutionary hero.”

“You’re wrong. I have to make these choices now because I made the wrong choice two years ago. It’s my hair shirt.” His lips twisted. “And I have an idea you’re going to be a hair shirt, too, Miss Ballard.”

He didn’t wait for a reply. He turned and crossed the terrace, fading once more into the shadows.

Alessandra drew a long, quivering breath and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she opened them, smiled determinedly, and opened the French door. Fontaine was standing at discreet attention beside it. She nodded politely, and her smile took on added brilliance as she quietly slipped back into the ballroom.