Leslie Lafoy (35 page)

Emmaline swayed on her feet. The movement startled her and in the blink of her eyes the panic was gone. For a second it was replaced by the gleam of calculation. In the next, her blue eyes clouded with innocent confusion. “Why are you being so mean?”

Oh, Em,
he silently moaned, awash in the misery of certainty.
Stop. Just stop.

Simone ignored her question. “Three men took us from the conservatory.”

“So I miscounted in the melee,” Emmaline shot back, her voice hard-edged with anger. “Given the confusion, that’s hardly unexpected.”

“There was no confusion for you,” Simone countered with deadly calm. “You stood there by your easel and watched. I thought that you were just too frightened to move, but that wasn’t it at all. You were only waiting for me to be taken down.”

“That’s not true.”

Yes, it was and Tristan knew it. He’d looked at the spilled paint pots, at the ruined portrait, and been disappointed in his sister for not putting up the fight Simone had.

“And if Tristan and Drayton are only expecting to deal with two men, the third has a chance of catching them by surprise.” She shrugged ever so slightly. “And they wouldn’t put you in the count against them, either. Until it was too late.”

“What?”

The duke shifted his stance and cleared his throat. Simone, her gaze never straying from Emmaline, stayed him with the barest movement of her hand.

“Who’s wrapped up in the rug, Emmy?”

The feral glint flickered in his sister’s eyes and then was gone, hidden once again behind the false cloud of confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It was too small to be the body of a man, so odds are it isn’t your driver. I thought it was you. But since you’re obviously standing here … Is it by any chance your mother?”

Lucinda was dead?

“You poor thing,” Em cooed. “Your mind has—”

“‘At at Marquat’s.’”

Emmaline’s confusion wasn’t any more feigned than his own. Or, apparently, given the “Huh?” he muttered, the duke’s.

Simone nodded. “That’s what was on the rear of the rented hack that pulled away from the inn after the body was dumped in the wagon. It was, at one time, I’m sure,
EAT
AT MARQUAT’S
, but the paint on the
e
was somehow chipped away. What do you suppose the odds are that there would be two hacks in London with a missing
e
? And that I’d see both of them within a half hour of each other? One leaving the inn, the other rolling away as I arrived here.”

Emmaline stared at her, alternately gasping and swallowing as the wild look in her eyes came and went and came again. She let go of her skirt and plucked mindlessly at the wrinkles.

“Emmaline?” Tristan called softly.

She jerked back as if his voice had been a physical blow. “She would have killed me, too,” she snapped, tearing her gaze from Simone to glare at him. “Eventually. That makes it a case of self-defense.”

“Yes,” Simone allowed, calling Emmaline’s attention back to her. “And if you’d gone back and checked to see if Sarah and I were still there before you came to get Tristan, you could have stopped there and been home free. A heroine, even. But you didn’t, Emmy. You picked up your mother’s plan and ran with it for yourself.”

“Would either of you,” the duke asked quietly, “care to tell us what that plan was?”

Emmaline’s chest rose and fell as her breathing went quick and shallow. Simone answered, “It was supposed to look as though Tristan was killed in a lovers’ triangle. Tristan, Sarah, and me. Just guessing as to the other part of it, I’d say that the bodies of Lucinda and her driver will be found in a wrecked carriage sometime later today.”

Ryland nodded. “Leaving Lady Emmaline the sole survivor of the family.”

“The sole inheritor,” Tristan clarified, his heart and soul numb. “Just as Lucinda intended to be.”

A smile spread slowly over Emmaline’s face. “You can’t prove any of this,” she said sweetly, brightly. “There’s not one scrap of evidence against me.”

He wanted to cry for the madness of generations, for the loss in this one of the only person he’d ever counted as family.

“Emmy, there’s no honor among thieves,” he heard Simone say. “All we have to do is find the men who hauled that rug out of the inn. By the time they’re done trying to save their own necks, yours will be firmly in the noose.”

She waved her hand and scoffed, “They’d take my word over that of a common thug’s.”

“Not when I add my word to theirs.”

The smile faltered, reasserted itself, and then drained away. Emmaline swayed on her feet and looked around the room, her gaze unfocused. Tears welled along the rims of her lower lashes and then spilled to course in wide rivers down her cheeks.

“Em, it’ll be all right,” he said earnestly. “You won’t go to the gallows. We’ll get you a doctor. Someone who can make your mind right again.”

She shook her head slowly and then straightened her back. She sniffled. “I don’t have any choice, do I?” she asked, her voice weak and wet as she reached into her pocket.

“No, you don’t,” he agreed, watching her fumble about for a handkerchief that probably wasn’t there. Pulling out his own, he stepped forward to offer it, adding, “The game is done, Em.”

She looked blankly at the square of white linen and went still. Slowly, the haze of confusion left her eyes and her tears stopped welling. She lifted her gaze to meet his. “But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Bedlam.”

The calm, the cool certainty, in her voice prickled across his nape. “You won’t,” he promised warily, drawing back the handkerchief. “There are other places that—”

“But if I am, Tristan, then it’s only fair that you spend the rest of yours,” she said sweetly, shifting her gaze to Simone and pulling her hand from her pocket, “in hell.”

The dull glint of blued metal and the clarity of mad intent turned his blood to ice. He threw himself at it in the very instant that the world exploded with the searing heat and deafening noise of unholy fire.

Chapter 20

Wade Gregory stood at the door and looked back toward the bed, at Tristan propped up with pillows and oblivious to the world around him. “You’re sure he’ll be all right?”

Simone nodded. “The doctor said he’d be abed for no more than a week.”

“If he’s there that long,” Gregory scoffed with a roll of his eyes and a snort, “will you be staying with him?”

She shrugged and tamped down her doubts. “Everyone seems to be assuming so. At least for a short while.”

“When he wakes, please assure him that he needn’t hurry back to the office. That I can manage quite nicely without him for the next year or so.” He cleared his throat and took a deep breath before adding, “And please tell him, as well, that I’m terribly sorry about Lady Emmaline and his stepmother.”

“I will, Mr. Gregory. And thank you for all your help this evening.”

“My pleasure, Lady Simone,” he said with a slight bow. Turning, he stepped out of the room and then to the side, giving way for the housekeeper.

“Good evening, madam,” the woman said, sweeping through the open doorway with the jangle of keys, the clink of china, and the
ting
of silver. “I thought that perhaps you might be ready for something to eat,” she explained, carrying the laden tray to the skirted table on the far side of the room. “The lighter fare is for His Lordship should he be hungry when he awakens.”

Six hours after the moment … At what point would it finally dawn on the staff that she wasn’t the mistress of the house? “Thank you, Mrs. Davis.”

“If you need anything else, madam,” the woman said, pausing on the threshold, “you need only pull the bell cord.”

“Thank you, again.”

To Simone’s amazement, the housekeeper closed the door behind herself.
Leaving the master and mistress in private.
Never in a million years would she have—

“Is a brass band coming through next?”

She grinned and turned to the bed, her heart happy and light. “Hello, Tristan,” she said softly, sitting down beside him on the bed. She leaned forward and kissed him gently, then drew back to study his handsome beard-shadowed face. “I won’t ask how you’re feeling.”

He looked her up and down. “Are you all right?”

“Not a scratch on me,” she assured him brightly, holding her arms out so that he could see all of her. “Fiona says I have more lives than a cat.”

“Thank God.”

She let her arms fall into her lap. “I suppose you want the whole story from where you turned gallant?”

“Not if it’s as ugly as I think it is.”

“Emmy’s still very much alive, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He closed his eyes and expelled a long breath.

“She’s still just as crazy, though,” Simone added, not wanting to raise his hopes. “And shrieking, claw-your-eyes-out furious for having been accused of being anything but perfectly proper and sweetly demure.”

One corner of his mouth ticced slightly upward. “Is she locked up where she can’t hurt herself or anyone else?”

Hearing the regret, the sorrow, in his voice, she squeezed his hands and quietly assured him, “Drayton is taking her to a private asylum outside Bath. Noland sent three officers along to be sure that she makes it there without any problems.”

He nodded and opened his eyes. Staring at the far wall, he asked, “Lucinda?”

“Carriage crash outside London,” Simone supplied. “They found the wreckage half-submerged under a bridge. Lucinda was inside. Her diver was found downstream.” With a sigh and a shake of her head, she added, “Sometimes I amaze even myself. I was just guessing when I tossed that one off. I was hoping Emmy would challenge it with the truth and give herself away. Not that she did, of course.”

He reached out and took her hands in his. “You amaze me all the time,” he said softly, stroking his thumbs over her knuckles. “You’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever known.”

Incredible?
Only because he didn’t know half of the story. “Yes, well…” she hedged.

“What?”

There was no avoiding the confession. But there wasn’t any need to rush into it, either. “Where do you hurt?”

He chuckled and instantly caught his breath. “Well, definitely my left side,” he admitted.

“That’s where Emmy’s bullet went into you. And out, too. The doctor said that if you hadn’t been pressed against the muzzle it wouldn’t have gone cleanly through and he’d have had to dig the bullet out of you. He was very glad that he didn’t.”

He snorted. “I’ll bet his bill isn’t any less for having the job be an easy one.”

Probably not. “In case you’re interested, there wasn’t any serious internal damage done. Just some blasted and torn muscle. You’re going to be sore for a while.”

A smile lifted the corners of his mouth and his eyes sparkled with devilment. “Ah, but will I have a scar to show for it?” he asked as her heart, as always, melted. “I hear women find scars attractive.”

Yes, he and Haywood were cut from the same bolt of cloth. “Where else do you hurt?” she asked, keeping to her course.

“My shoulder burns like the blazes,” he allowed, shifting it slightly. “It was a two-shot derringer Em hauled out of her pocket?”

“Single-shot.”

He blinked and softly cleared his throat. “Your brother-in-law shot me?”

“Of course not!” she laughingly answered. “Drayton was the one who pulled you off Emmy so she wasn’t crushed when you fell on her. And he was the one who dealt with her while I was stanching your blood flow. Your carpet is ruined, by the way.”

“What happened to my shoulder, Simone?”

There was no point in attempting to put a shine on it. “My knife got stuck in it.”

His brow shot up. The expression ended abruptly and with a hearty, “Ow.”

“Actually,” she admitted, “I’m rather surprised that it wasn’t the headache you noticed first. The bruise on your forehead is from where you hit the corner of the desk when you took Emmy down.”

He released one of her hands to reach up and gingerly explore the bruise. “How did your knife get in my back?”

“I threw it at Emmy,” she supplied, “and you jumped in front of it trying to take the gun away from her. The point didn’t go very deep, though. The doctor said that you have shoulder muscles of steel. I didn’t agree with him, of course. I just nodded and pretended that I was a lady and didn’t know the first thing about your steely muscles. You’re going to have a scar there, too. But just a little one. It took only five stitches to close it.”

He looked up at the ceiling. Five stitches, a bullet hole, and a knot the size of a duck egg. “Well,” he finally drawled, “I certainly acquitted myself well in this whole affair, didn’t I?”

“I’m impressed,” she assured him. “Really.”

“With what?” he countered, bringing his gaze down to meet hers. “My ability to knock myself unconscious?”

“That was purely an accident,” she cheerfully asserted. “I’m sure that you would have had the presence of mind to avoid the desk if you hadn’t just had a hole blown in your side and a knife quivering in your back.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tristan…” she cajoled, squeezing his hand.

“A man isn’t supposed to be rescued by a woman.”

“Oh, for heaven’s— You did rescue me. You’re the one with the bullet hole I was supposed to have. Presumably through my tender little heart.”

He snorted. “Well, it was the least I could do, considering that I didn’t figure out Lucinda’s plan, didn’t know where to go to find you so that you were forced to liberate yourself, and didn’t know that Emmy had gone mad, killed her mother, and taken over the plot to kill us.”

“I think you’re being more than a tad bit hard on yourself,” she countered. “I hadn’t figured out that Emmy had gone over the edge until I got here and saw that hack rolling away. And I didn’t know Lucinda’s plan until she felt obliged to share it with Sarah.”

He blinked and winced. “Damn. Sarah. I forgot all about her. Is she all right?”

With a shrug, Simone answered, “Apparently. At least she was well enough to sprint for her hotel room, throw her things in a trunk, and book passage on a ship sailing for Cádiz.”