If Piers ever had a nightmare scenario, this was it. His wife between him and his enemy, a delicate shield. His own pistol tucked in his jacket.
If he were to reach for it now, Forsythe would fire. The blackguard wanted to. The desire for blood was written all over him.
Unused to feeling helpless, Piers glared at him over his wife’s head, silently promising a slow and painful death. Vowing retribution. This man had awoken this morning, unaware that it was his last.
But before he could kill the fucking blighter, Piers needed to get Alexandra out of range.
Because even if the bastard doctor put a hole the size of Blighty in Piers’s middle, he’d take Forsythe to hell with him before he gave up the ghost.
“Piers?” Alexandra whimpered, her pistol still trained forward.
“Drop it, Doctor.” Forsythe took a threatening step forward, stopping five paces away. “Or I drop you. You know I don’t want to do that, Alexandra. But I think you know that I will.”
Leaning down, Redmayne whispered into Alexandra’s ear, as Julia’s shrill voice fractured against the dome of the crypt, shouting, “How could you say such awful things after what I did for you last night? You weren’t moaning words like ‘passable’ as I was swallowing your disgusting—”
“Shut up for once in your life, you ignorant slut!” Forsythe inched the barrel of his weapon in her direction, only an arm’s reach to Alexandra’s left.
Alexandra bent her knees, lowering to the ground as she placed her small pistol in the dirt. “You don’t want to shoot that in here,” she warned. “We’re not certain it wouldn’t cause another cave-in. We’d all be crushed into the dust.”
“Push it toward me,” Forsythe ordered, ignoring her.
Alexandra did, and in her panic, she fell. Scrambling backward on the ground, she didn’t stop retreating until she ran into Piers’s legs.
Julia made a desperate, humiliated sound. “How dare you insult me like this! Was it her you wanted all along? Tell me, you craven bastard! Did you use me to get to her?”
Piers bent down, helping his wife to her feet, accepting the hilt of what she’d surreptitiously pulled from his boot.
“There’s no need for jealousy.” Forsythe sneered at Julia. “My tastes never tended toward boring little bluestockings always prattling on. Correcting me, condescending to me.” Forsythe’s lip curled into a sneer of disdain. “What man wants to fuck a woman who thinks she’s smarter than he is? Though, now that I know you have blood on your hands … I have to admit you’re much more interesting.”
“What do you want, Forsythe?” Piers demanded, his hands itching to close around the man’s throat. To watch the life drain from his eyes as he strangled an apology from the smarmy bastard for disrespecting his wife.
“My passion for history pays little, I’m afraid,” Forsythe admitted blithely, eyeing Alexandra’s purse. “And so one does what one must…”
“Here,” she said, tossing it at his feet. “Take it and begone.”
He didn’t even glance down. “I’ve been promised so much more than that…” He lifted the shotgun higher, drawing a bead and closing one eye. “To kill the Duke of Redmayne and make it look like an accident.”
Piers didn’t have to ask by whom. He already knew.
The only people who would profit from his death. Patrick and Rose Atherton.
“A gunshot wound is impossible to pose as an accident,” Piers said drolly.
“These catacombs are secure enough to withstand the noise, you saw to that yourself, didn’t you?” Forsythe reminded him. “It took more finesse with the gunpowder than I expected to even create the first disaster. I can do it again. Except now, by the time they dig you out, I’ll be long gone.”
It was never going to get that far. “What would it take to let the women go?” Piers demanded.
Then it would just be him and Forsythe.
Then he could go to work. Because as devastating and severe as the gun in Forsythe’s hands was, Piers could be spectacularly more lethal.
This crypt was close quarters, and a rifle of any kind had very distinct disadvantages in such a place.
But he couldn’t act, couldn’t think, couldn’t relax enough to perform the dangerous maneuvers he needed to, if his wife was in the least bit at risk.
“I’m sorry.” Forsythe’s finger grazed the trigger. “But the duchess is now a part of the job I was hired to do.”
Patrick Atherton glided into the room dressed in a finely woven gray suit, a six-barreled pistol pointed at them both. “A job you’ve failed at, enormously.”
He turned to Piers, the spite glittering in eyes a pale reflection of his own. “How does the cliché go, cousin? If you want something done right…”
Patrick had always been a little bit less. Less tall. Less handsome, young, or vigorous. Less powerful both in title and in stature.
Which is why he’d hired a mercenary. The nancy fucker had never liked to get his hands dirty.
“You two followed me here,” Piers deduced. Patrick had been the void in the night. The prickle at his back. But Piers had been too intent upon his wife to pay the instinct the heed he should have.
She was his weakness, and now his cousin knew it.
“When I received word the cave-in had failed, I caught the next ferry to Normandy,” Patrick explained with a droll sigh. “Since you seem to have more lives than a cat, I figured it might take more than one of us to finish the job.”
Piers jeered at his cousin, hatred boiling to the surface. “Christ. Is Rose out there, also? She might as well join us.”
Patrick’s gaze sharpened. He’d hit a nerve. “Of course not. Rose wouldn’t let me kill you, not when she’s still madly in love with you. She hasn’t touched me since you’ve returned from the dead.”
“It’s because you’re weak,” Piers snarled. “You haven’t the bollocks to kill me yourself. You had to hire this incompetent to do it.”
“I’ll show you incompetent!” Forsythe bellowed, his trigger finger twitching.
Piers had known Patrick his entire life, had counted on the fact that his jibe would rankle his cousin, who pushed the barrel of Forsythe’s gun to the side. “Lose your composure, and you’ll lose your payment, Forsythe.”
The doctor’s mouth tilted into a mulish frown, but he pressed his lips closed.
Patrick’s pistol glinted in the lantern light, less dangerous than the shotgun, but still lethal. “You’re right, of course, this should have always come down to you and me. It’s rather poetic, is it not? That I prove myself worthy of the savage Redmayne title here in our ancestor’s tomb?”
“You’ll never be worthy of the Redmayne title,” Piers taunted. “You’re too pathetic.”
“Not so pathetic as your father.”
Redmayne stilled, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a silent snarl of warning.
“He granted me access to this project years ago, you know, back when you were a boy and I a young man. It’s been a great venture for the glory of the family. One I resurrected when I thought I was to become duke. When you were supposed to die in that jungle.”
Patrick inspected the tomb. “Your poor father, always seeking solace in his idiotic schemes, forever leaving them unfinished. This was one of the few I encouraged. I stood beside him while you and Ramsay were off getting your education, while your mother fucked her way across Europe. I helped him manage both his funds and his grief. Helped him tie the knot in the rope from which he hung himself.”
Lanced with a lightning bolt of rage, it was everything Piers could do not to vault over his wife and tear the man apart.
“Send the women away and we’ll have it out right here,” he demanded. “Man to man. One of us will be laid to rest in the Redmayne crypt for good.”
“Piers!” Alexandra protested.
“I’m not an idiot,” Patrick remonstrated. “I know I’d not best you in hand-to-hand combat. It’s one of the reasons I know I’d be a better aristocrat. A duke shouldn’t have to go into battle. Other men do it for him.” Patrick shook his head slowly, true sorrow tightening the Redmayne features he didn’t deserve to display.
“There’s no saving the duchess this time, I’m afraid. There’s a chance she carries your progeny.” He leveled his pistol right at Alexandra’s stomach. “And that just won’t do.”
Piers had never known true fear, not before that moment. Time became a construct, slow and disjointed.
He switched the knife Alexandra had taken from his boot to his left hand, reaching across his body to shove her toward the dais. The moment his wife was out of the way, he drew the pistol from beneath his jacket, levered his arm up, and squeezed the trigger three consecutive times.
Patrick’s shot went wide, and he never had the chance to attempt another, as two of Piers’s bullets found their mark in his heart. He crumpled to the ground, landing on his face with a sickening crunch.
Alexandra would have tripped over Julia, had the woman not dived for the pistol on the ground, snatching it and taking aim at Forsythe.
Forsythe, who’d leveled his shotgun at Alexandra, noticed Julia’s intentions in time, and a great, concussive boom deafened them all as he pulled the trigger.
Diamonds glittered as they disseminated in a truly awe-inspiring radius, along with gore that didn’t bear consideration. By the time they fell to the floor, Alexandra had taken cover behind the three-foot-tall mound of earth and stone, her head down, hands covering her ears.
Piers pivoted, squeezing the trigger thrice more, narrowly missing Forsythe as he dove behind the opposite side of the burial platform.
Forsythe immediately began to reload, stalking Alexandra around the other side of the dais. She saw him in time, and dove away from the cover of the dais, scrambling for the pistol still clutched in Patrick’s hand.
Apparently adept at counting bullets, Forsythe stood, pumping the now-loaded shotgun, sliding the shell into place.
Piers abandoned his empty pistol as he took a running leap and vaulted over the earth to land between the gun and his wife.
No one heard Forsythe’s last words as Piers gripped the barrel, wrenched it out of his hands, and shoved his dagger through the man’s throat, gorging on the primal elation of dispatching the villain up close.
Of watching the life drain out of his eyes.
When he turned around, Alexandra had retrieved his pistol, and stood in the middle of the crypt slowly turning in a bewildered circle. Her unfocused eyes shifted restlessly as she pointed the gun at Patrick’s facedown corpse, then to what little was left of Julia, before landing on Forsythe, whose blood still gurgled from his neck.
Piers dropped him like the sack of refuse he was, a grateful euphoria weakening his knees at the sight of her. God, but she was precious. She was alive.
She was his.
And she loved him.
He put his hand up, reaching for her. “You’re safe,” he said, rounding the dais and approaching her cautiously.
She gripped the gun, staring at him as though his presence startled her. As though she’d only just awoken from a nightmare to find herself surrounded by this chaos.
“Piers?” she mouthed, then winced, putting a hand to her ear.
He went to her, the ringing in his own ears only abating slightly as he slid his hand down her arm and relieved her of the pistol before abandoning it to the platform. “Can you hear me?” he asked gently. “Are you hurt?”
“I can hear you … barely.” Her body trembled like she’d spent the night in a snowdrift, and her pallor began to worry him. “What a mess,” she exclaimed, her voice breaking as she truly took in the aftermath of the horror.
“Don’t look,” he admonished her, reaching out once again.
She flinched away, staggering a little.
“What a disaster,” she murmured, a crimp appearing between her brows. “A tragedy. I’m sorry they wanted to hurt you, Piers. I’m sorry. I should … I should help clean it up. I am used to the dead. But I think I might be sick if I tried. My stomach couldn’t take it … it’s so unsteady. It hurts so much.”
Piers paused, disconcerted by her nonsensical torrent of words.
Tears streaked down her face when she looked back up at him, and he could stand it no longer. “I’m going to hold you, Alexandra.” he warned. “Probably tighter than is comfortable. And you are going to let me.”
“It’s all right,” she said in a voice belonging to a girl much younger. “I don’t need…”
“I do! Dammit,” he all but roared. “Now be still.”
He dragged her against him, cloak and all, not realizing until she was safe in his arms that he trembled just as mightily as she did.
She leaned into him, slightly at first, and then heavier, burrowing her arms into his jacket.
He couldn’t stop saying her name. He chanted it like a song, a psalm, a prayer, enfolding himself around her, over her, stroking her hair, dragging her scent deeper into his lungs with every breath.
He swept her out of the room, taking her a few strides down the catacomb tunnel before resting his back against the dank stone wall, allowing themselves a dark place to fall apart for a moment.
To know nothing but each other.
To feel alive.
They’d always connected here, in the darkness. It was a place they could be honest. Truly, finally honest.
“You … you know everything about me now,” she whispered. “All my secrets. I’m a murderer.”
He made a derisive noise. “And I don’t bloody care,” he said fiercely. “Alexandra, if you didn’t notice, I’ve killed more men today than you have in your lifetime. I meant what I said, the only reason I would take back what you did is so that I could do the deed myself. So it wouldn’t weigh on your conscience, so the blood didn’t stain your hands, because I’d be happy to bathe in it.”
She wept softly against his chest, and he belatedly realized he might have said too much, might have shown her more of his ferocity than she was capable of enduring at the moment.
“B-but … de Marchand wouldn’t have killed me, he said as much.” She gathered a wretched breath. “It isn’t the same as fighting for your life.”
“Yes it is,” he hissed, squelching the urge to shake her. Or kiss her. Or … Or … whatever would keep her from giving in to her pain or her guilt. “You saw what he made of Lady Throckmorton. There is no question you fought for your life, Alexandra, no fucking question. There are fates worse than death, and he could have made what was left of your childhood a living hell. More than he already has.”
She was silent for a time, sniffing in hitching breaths. Burrowing deeper against him, as if she couldn’t get close enough to his warmth.
He understood the feeling, more than she could know. He wanted to absorb her, somehow. To shackle her to his side so they’d never again be parted. He’d the most absurd desire to whisk her home. To lock her in the tower at Castle Redmayne so he could always be assured of her safety.
Because this inexhaustible emotion gathering inside of him threatened to completely dismantle him. He knew, then and there, that he’d walk through hell for her. He’d slay dragons and face entire armies. He’d circumnavigate the globe to lay her foes at her feet. And the power of whatever suffused him would assure him victory.
Even though he was naught but a man. What coursed through his veins as he held her was mightier than mortals could expect to conceive of. There was a word for it, but it somehow didn’t seem long enough, or potent enough, to truly convey the breadth and scope of it.
His entire life, he’d never quite had a sense of belonging. Had never known what the words “home” or “family” meant, or why they meant so much to others.
Until here. Until her.
As he buried his face in the tangled skein of her braid, he exhaled all the anguish, distrust, and misery he’d clung to for so long.
And inhaled a courage he’d never before possessed to say the words he’d never before considered. “It’s possible—probable—that I love you.” He repeated her confession back to her. “That I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you in the mist on that train platform. I love you, my brave, beautiful wife. God, how I love you.”
She leaned back, and in the darkness he couldn’t look into her eyes. “Piers?”
“Yes, my love?”
“Piers. I…” She stumbled back, and the rush of cool, underground night air made him terrifyingly aware of a wet, sticky substance on his shirt. “Piers, I’m cold.”
He caught her as she fell, scooping her into his arms. Saying her name. Howling it as the sounds of boots and the flicker of lanterns made their way up the tunnel entrance.
Patrick’s bullet hadn’t missed, he realized as he ran with her down the hallway. It was the cause of her pallor and her shocked insensibility.
As he ran his every heartbeat became a prayer. His every breath a plea.
Don’t take her from me.
He wasn’t sure to whom he begged, but for all the adversaries he was willing to vanquish for her, there was one he was helpless against.
Death.