Susan Carroll (46 page)

“Let her go, Drummond.”

The icy command issuing from the foot of the
stairs caused them both to freeze. Twisting in Drummond's hard
grasp, Anne stared downward, her breath snagging in her throat. It
was as though her frantic plea had summoned some dread specter to
her aid, a stern gallant of another time and place in his stiff
silvery-grey brocade, lace spilling over his ancient hands.

He held aloft a lantern, the light
illuminating those aged aristocratic features, the flow of white
hair bound back into a queue.

“Release the lady, Nicholas,” His Grace
commanded again.

Nick was startled enough to do so. With a
choked sob of relief, Anne started down the stairs. But Nick
recovered himself enough to come after her, seizing her upper
arm.

“No, Your Grace,” he said, Anne had never
heard any words choked out with such hatred and anguish.

The duke set the lantern down, the light
reflecting upward, bathing his face in an eerie glow, making his
flesh seem translucent, his skin stretched too taut over his
prominent cheekbones. Gripping his walking cane, he started up the
stairs, coming as far as the first landing.

The sight disturbed Anne in an odd way she
could not name. Perhaps it was because she could feel the tension
coil in Nick. She should have warned the old man to take care. But
she could not bring herself to believe that Nick would harm his own
grandfather.

“Don't come any closer,” Nick snarled. “Get
back to hell where you belong. I am taking Lady Fairhaven with
me.”

“No, boy. I have endured enough of your
defiance. You have already dishonored me past all bearing.”

“I dishonor you?” Nick gave a wild laugh.

As the duke came closer, something in his
movements again gave Anne a ripple of unease. Then she realized
what it was. It was the cane, the silver-handled walking cane. He
was carrying it. He had no need of its aid, his step steady and
sure.

“Lady Fairhaven's well-being concerns you
not,” the duke said. “Leave while you still may.”

He tugged at the cane's handle and a
swordstick unsheathed in a lethal hiss of steel. Anne's blood
turned to ice as she realized the mistake she had made, a foolish
fatal mistake. She realized it even as Nick thrust her behind him
and shouted, “For the love of God, Anne. Run!”

He charged at the old man, but the duke was
too swift for him. Like an arc of lightning, the sword flashed.
Anne cried out as he drove the sword through Nick's shoulder.

She heard Nick give a guttural cry, watched
his face go white with shock. The sword yet buried in his flesh, he
leaned upon the duke's shoulder for support. For one brief moment,
horror at what he had done flickered over the old man's features.
Then he wrenched his sword free. Nick screamed. As he sagged onto
the steps, Anne pressed her fist to her mouth so hard she tasted
her own blood, but she felt too numb to notice the pain, or to be
aware of anything save the crimson stain spreading over Nick's
waistcoat.

Whatever remorse the duke might have known,
Anne saw that he had already shuttered it away beneath his heavy
eyelids. He watched his grandson's lifeblood flow out with a
curious kind of detachment.

The sight pushed Anne beyond the realm of
horror, beyond any fear for her own safety. Galvanized into
movement, she rushed down the steps to Nick's side. Ignoring the
old man who hovered over her, the bloodstained sword still gripped
in his hand, she stripped off the frock coat she wore.

Bundling it up, she pressed it to Nick's
shoulder in an effort to stop the bleeding. Nick groaned, his mouth
clenching with pain.

“I tried to warn you, boy,” the duke said.
“But you have always had a habit of rushing into things headlong,
never taking heed of sage advice.”

Anne glanced up at him, unable to believe he
could stand there and observe Nick's agony so calmly.

“Can you not see how badly you have injured
him?” she cried. “You must go and fetch someone to help.”

For all the response she received, the old
man might have been made of stone.

“He is your grandson,” she said fiercely. “I
don't care what else you may have done. You cannot allow him to
die.”

The duke produced a laced-edge handkerchief
and proceeded to wipe Nick's blood from his sword. It was most
strange, Anne thought. It had been hard for her to imagine Nick
Drummond as a murderer, but she had no difficulty casting His Grace
of Windermere in that role.

“There is an old saying, my dear,” he said in
his low cultured accents. “It goes something like, 'If thine eye
offends thee, pluck it out.' I have just done so. Drummond is no
longer any kin of mine.”

“He is mad, Anne,” Nick panted. “Get out of
here. Save yourself.”

Anne shook her head, trying to apply more
pressure to Nick's wound.

“Is it madness then?” the duke asked. “To
attempt to defend what is yours, to try to preserve the world you
have always known?”

“That's your justification for murder?” Nick
rolled his head to one side, whether in an effort to escape the
pain or simply because he could no longer abide the sight of his
grandfather Anne could not tell.

She was a little heartened to realize that
she had managed to stop the flow of blood. Glancing toward the
front door, she prayed for Mandell's imminent return and calculated
her chances of being able to escape and rouse some help from one of
the houses on the Strand. Could she possibly make it down the
stairs before the duke attempted to cut her down? Even if she were
able to do so, how could she abandon Nick to the mercy of a man who
was clearly dead to any human compassion?

As though guessing at her thoughts, the duke
shifted his position behind her so that he now completely blocked
the stairs, toying with his sword.

“At least let Anne go,” Nick murmured. “She
is no threat to you.”

“On the contrary, Lady Fairhaven poses the
greatest threat of all.” The old man's icy facade cracked a little,
some of his bitterness seeping through. “I bred Mandell to be as
hard and polished as a diamond, to accept the rights and privileges
that are his due. But she has changed him, softened him and
inflicted him with some sickly notion of love.”

“I am glad that I have,” Anne cried.

“It is the same curse that destroyed his
mother, lured my Celine away from me to die.”

“Lured! She probably fled from you. If you
raised her with as much heart as you've shown Mandell, how I would
have pitied that poor lady.”

The duke's eyes flashed dangerously. “My
proud Celine would have had no need of your pity. Any more than
does Mandell.”

He seized Anne's wrist, his grip amazingly
strong. He dragged her away from Nick, hauling her to her feet.
Despite the realization that she could be dead soon, Anne met his
ferocious gaze with a look of defiance.

“You cannot hope to get away with any more
killing,” Nick gasped. “You will be caught this time.”

“Perhaps I shall. But at least I will have
saved Mandell from committing the same folly his mother did.”

Nick made a feeble effort to grip the
staircase banister, trying to pull himself upward. “Damn you. Leave
her alone.”

The duke ignored him, demanding of Anne,
“Where is Mandell? I heard about his foolish heroics, rescuing you
from Newgate. I thought I should have to send out runners to
overtake the pair of you on your flight. Then my dolt of a butler
finally saw fit to confide in me that Mandell had sent round
earlier to obtain the keys to this place.”

He gave Anne a rough shake. “Where is Mandell
now? Where has he gone?”

“He has gone seeking the truth,” Anne said.
“And I would give my life to shield him from it.”

“I will have to take you up on that offer, my
dear.”

Nick kicked out wildly, sobbing with his
efforts to rise only to sink back again. He cursed, saying, “You
will have to deal with me first.”

“I presumed I already had.” Releasing Anne,
the duke shifted, staring down at Nick. Anne saw the sudden flex of
tension in the old man. As he drew back the sword, she flung
herself at him, deflecting his sword arm upward. He lashed out,
shoving her hard. With a small cry, Anne lost her balance. She
banged up against the banister and tumbled down the stairs,
catching herself at the first landing.

Bruised and shaken, she could only watch in
horror as the duke whipped around, preparing to run Nick through.
She would never reach him in time.

“Anne!”

Someone roared her name, but the cry did not
come from Nick or the duke. Mandell's voice echoed from behind her.
The duke froze at the sound of his grandson’s voice, the old man's
face draining as white as the moonlight that bathed his features.
Anne choked on a sob of relief and struggled to her knees.

She had not heard the door flung open or
witnessed his return. She was only too glad to see him now, taking
the stairs two at a time. He pulled Anne to her feet, dragging her
into his arms. “Anne, thank God. I—”

He broke off as his gaze slid past her to
Nick's inert form. He appeared to have lapsed into unconsciousness,
his eyes closed.

“What the devil!” Mandell exclaimed. He
attempted to go to him, only to find the way barred by his
grandfather's sword.

“I fear Drummond is beyond your help,
Mandell,” the duke said.

“My God, old man, what have you done?”

“Attempted to keep you from flinging your
life away upon this woman.”

Mandell's jaw hardened. “It is all finished,
Your Grace. Briggs has remembered. I know everything.”

“You know nothing and you understand even
less. And I have no more time to teach you.” The first hint of
regret crept into the old man's tone, but he was quick to quell
it.

He started down the steps toward Mandell and
Anne. Mandell wrapped one arm protectively about Anne's waist. With
his other hand, he drew forth a pistol and leveled it at the duke's
chest.

The duke paused, regarding the weapon with a
brief flash of pained surprise. His lips curved in a smile laced
with irony.

“So it comes down to this, does it?” he
asked. “We were ever adversaries of a kind, Mandell. But now that
we reach the sticking point, I wonder. Do you possess the
ruthlessness to fire that weapon?”

“I beg that Your Grace will not put me to the
test.”

Anne held her breath, glancing from one taut
male face to the other, alike in hauteur and unyielding pride. But
where the duke's eyes were empty and cold, Mandell's roiled with
pain and despair.

The duke took another step down. “Are you in
truth my grandson?” he purred. “Or only still that puling brat that
sprang from de Valmiere's loins? Do you possess the steel to do
whatever you deem necessary without remorse or regret?”

“I have no desire to hurt you, Grandfather.”
A fine beading of perspiration had broken out upon Mandell's brow,
but the hand holding the pistol remained steady.

“Grandfather?” the duke mocked, descending
another step. “You have not called me that since the day you were
first thrust weeping into my arms. I soon cured you of it, your
French tendencies toward an unmanly display of emotion. But did you
learn your lesson well enough to be utterly without mercy, without
sentimentality? Can you kill me, Mandell, even to save your
lady?”

With a malevolent smile, the duke pointed the
tip of his sword toward Anne. Mandell inhaled sharply, his eyes
dilated. He cocked the pistol.

“Mandell, don't,” Anne cried. “Don't you see
what he is doing? He is goading you on purpose. He wants you to be
his executioner.”

Mandell blinked and hesitated while Anne
wheeled upon the duke. “Leave him alone,” she said. “Haven't you
done enough to him? Would you torment him with yet one more
nightmare? Are you such a coward that you would seek this way of
escaping all the pain you have caused?'

The duke flinched at her words. He stared at
her, but Anne refused to be intimidated by his icy gaze. He was the
first to avert his eyes. He lowered the sword as though all the
strength had suddenly gone out of him.

“No,” he said. “You are right, milady. The
fate of a duke should rest in no other man's hands.”

Mandell exhaled a deep breath, easing back
the hammer on his weapon. The duke turned away. Sparing not a
glance for Nick, he stepped past his fallen grandson and began a
slow ascent up the stairs, only to disappear into the darkness
beyond.

Anne and Mandell raced up to Nick. Mandell
bent down to feel for a pulse. “Thank God!” he said. “He is still
alive.”

As gently as Mandell could, he managed to
heft Nick into his arms and carry him to the hall below. He laid
Nick out upon the floor. But it was Anne who worked over Drummond,
fashioning a makeshift bandage out of Mandell's neckcloth.

Mandell could feel the numbness of shock
begin to creep over him, born of these last dread-filled hours,
forcing himself to accept Briggs's terrible revelation about the
old duke, racing back to Anne only to walk into that hellish scene
upon the landing. If Mandell had been but a few minutes later, when
he thought what might have happened to Anne, to Nick ...

Mandell gave himself a mental shake. This was
hardly the time for such grim contemplations. He eased himself out
of his frock coat. Bundling it up, he used it to pillow Nick's
head.

Anne touched one hand to Nick's cheek. “He
has lost so much blood, Mandell,” she said. “We must get him
someplace where he can be attended properly.”

“Hastings should be here at any moment. He
was coming right behind me with the carriage.”

Even under Anne's gentle ministrations, Nick
groaned and stirred. His eyes fluttered open, at first hazed and
bewildered. Then he focused upon the marquis.

“Mandell,” he said, weakly raising one hand.
Mandell clasped it between the strength of his own.