Chapter Twenty-one

Devon did not waste a moment stopping to explain to the curious why he was rushing headlong through his brother’s house in the middle of a sophisticated bal masqué. Several of the costumed guests he flew by merely laughed indulgently and stepped aside as if his wild entrance were part of the evening’s entertainment. A few of the older attendants regarded him with fond disgruntlement and murmurs of “those young Boscastle lords.”

Some appeared too taken aback to react one way or another, especially as four or five footmen came running up behind Lord Devon, one of them brandishing an ancient sword that had only moments before hung upon the wall.

“A prop,” murmured one white-faced matron, “it must be a stage prop for a surprise performance. This family grows wilder by the year.”

Not that Devon particularly noticed, or that he would have apologized if he had. He had burst into the house like Hell unleashed, Gabriel at his heels shouting to anyone who would listen, “The bastard is in the house somewhere, costumed as a monk! Stop him if you see him.”

“Jocelyn went up to the nursery only a few minutes ago,” a female voice responded, and Devon did not spare a glance to see who had spoken. It sounded as if it might have been his sister Chloe. Even if he did not pause to acknowledge her, the information took hold in his mind.

The nursery. Surely the nursery was the safest place in the entire house. The nursemaid never left Rowan unattended until another servant or a family member, usually Jane, relieved her. It was an absolute rule of the house. Common sense.

And hadn’t Devon committed Jocelyn to the guard of his intimidating brother Drake? Everyone in the Boscastle household had been afraid of crossing Drake in his younger adult years. He kept telling himself that Drake wouldn’t allow anyone to harm Jocelyn. There was something dark and fierce about Drake.

All the Boscastles were a little afraid of Drake. All the Boscastle men protected their family, would die doing so.

As he should have been protecting his wife. She’d been innocent from the start, and he had drawn her into the debts of his own misspent past.

His thoughts might have run together in these self-tortuous circles indefinitely had Jane not appeared on the stairs before him.

“Where in God’s name is my wife?” he asked in bewilderment.

Jane’s distressed face offered no comfort. “Not in the nursery. I think he’s taken her down the back stairs through the servants’ passageway. Weed has already blocked every possible exit, and Drake has gone after him.” She closed her eyes. “So has Grayson.”

The back stairs. That was the only phrase that he seemed to grasp. He wheeled and someone, dear Jesus, he dimly recognized his brother-in-law Dominic, thrust a silver-mounted pistol at him, retaining the mate in his own hand.

“The back passageway,” he said. He turned again and found Gabriel in front of him. “Our old escape route.”

But, of course, neither Gabriel nor Dominic had grown up in this house to understand what he meant, and he had no time to explain.

In the old days a tunnel had run from the kitchen into the garden to a sunken gate that led into the street from whence the servants could come and go on errands without disturbing those they served.

Devon knew that it was Grayson’s custom to keep the main armorial gates of the mansion guarded during one of his frequent parties, for it was a common practice for the populace to beg entry or at least a peep into his lavish affairs.

What he did not know was whether his brother remembered the gate that they had used for secret escapes as children.

Or whether it would be too late to even matter at all.

         

It seemed to Jocelyn that time had not stopped but had merely slowed as if ticking to the beat of an invisible metronome. Her limbs moved as if weighted with lead. Every moment dragged out into an eternity, or perhaps she only wished it so.

At the end of this horrifying interlude, she would most likely die. The fact that her abductor, a tall menacing blur in the dark named Matthew Thurlew, could take her life on a mad whim, filled her with an anger she could not hide.

“Drag me like a docile cow to market?” she whispered in the voice of a Bedlam virago. “Place a rope around my neck and drug another innocent woman as she tends to an infant?”

For a moment he looked a little shocked that a lady could mount such a scathing defense. “I told you to hold your tongue,” he said through his teeth.

She started to shake, not as much from fear now as from all the emotions she’d been holding inside. Her father might have struggled to subdue the militant streak in her soul, but he had failed. For better or for worse, she was the daughter of a soldier, and she would not go down without a fight.

They had almost reached the bottom of the staircase. She was unsure where the door below led. She did know, however, that once Thurlew managed to get her outside the house her chances of being rescued, of staying alive, would be greatly diminished. With all the noise of the party, no one would pay any attention to two people outside.

She heard Thurlew fumbling with the doorknob, the heavy rasp of his breath. She hoped he would find the door locked, although the prospect of being trapped alone with him in a dark stairwell did not bolster her dwindling courage.

“Open,” he muttered. “O—”

She swung upward with her elbow and dealt his shoulder a hard blow at the moment the door opened onto an unlit passageway. He did not react at all, nor did she attempt to hit him again. She was more preoccupied with finding a means to escape. They seemed to be standing in a tunnel just beneath the scullery and kitchen. She could feel ash dust beneath her feet.

Perhaps a servant would be posted nearabouts. She could hear the echo of footsteps and conversation on the floorboards of the chamber above. If she could shout for help, someone might at least be tempted to investigate.

“No one can hear us down here,” Thurlew said as if he had guessed her thoughts. “Even if anyone ventured into the basement, we are not staying long enough for it to matter to you.”

         

Life or death. Revenge. Mercy. The rewards of Heaven, or the threat of Hell. A single moment, a random occurrence could change the entire course of his life. And his wife’s. He should never have left her. Why hadn’t he waited until morning? Why had he been so damned impatient to prove himself a hero when he should have been protecting her?

He didn’t know what he expected to find when he ran through the garden to the small wooden gate, but it was surely not the sight of Jocelyn being dragged by a rope around her neck. Splotches of dirt or dust besmirched her white costume, and her hair fell in tangles over her shoulder. A rope. Around her beautiful throat.

He drew to a halt, his blood roaring.

His mind did not seem to function. Primal instinct took over in a welcome rush. He was aware of only one thought: the man who had hurt and degraded her did not deserve to live. Life or death. Revenge. Mercy. Heaven or Hell. He might not have come in time to save her life, and if he hadn’t—

He waited until he had a clear shot and no chance of striking her before he raised his arm. A wordless prayer in his heart, he took aim.

Then in an instinctual act that seemed as vital to him as drawing his next breath, he pulled the trigger, fired, and waited. It seemed as if the moment were suspended in time, as if it took forever for the pistol to discharge.

He was not even sure Jocelyn realized he was standing behind her, but for a viciously satisfying instant he saw Captain Thurlew turn and look directly into his face. The bullet struck Thurlew in the chest; he knew who had fired the shot. He knew that he was paying the price for what he’d done to Devon’s wife.

Uttering a soft groan, Thurlew lifted his hand and crumpled to the grass beneath a headless antique statuary of Hermes. Fortuitously, the shadows of the winged god concealed him from Jocelyn’s shocked regard. Devon rushed forward to take her into his arms.

She looked up into his face with a relief that wrenched his heart. “You came,” she said, raising her hands to pull at the rope around her neck.

He gripped her to him, finally able to breathe, willing the heat of his body into hers. She felt like a sculpture of ice. He rubbed his large hands over her shoulders and back, telling himself that he had come in time, that he was holding her.

“I was worried about you,” she whispered, her face still hidden in the hollow of his shoulder.

“I should have been here,” he said fiercely.

“But you came,” she whispered back.

He shook his head, stroking her disheveled hair. “Barely in time.”

“Devon—”

He stared up at the sky, fighting to stay in control. He could feel the warmth stealing back into her body, and with it a little of his own cold fear began to melt.

“Devon,” she said softly, “we can’t stay here.”

He nodded. Even now she was trying to take care of him. “I should never have left you. And I won’t ever again.”

She drew back slightly. Her face looked pale, and tears shimmered in her soft brown eyes. “Do you think you killed him? There are people coming.”

“I don’t give a bloody damn who’s coming,” he said, his voice breaking. “I only care about you.”

“But if he’s dead, we’ll have to explain why.”

“I hope to God he’s dead,” he said dispassionately, and meant it.

“Please, Devon,” she whispered. “I don’t think I can talk to anyone else about this quite yet.”

He dropped the pistol into the grass as her plea finally penetrated his mind. He wasn’t about to lie to anyone. He bore no regret for what he had done or who had witnessed it.

If he hadn’t killed Thurlew, it was only by accident or faulty aim.

Thurlew deserved to die for the degradation he had inflicted upon Jocelyn. In fact, now that Devon was reassured of her safety, he had to restrain himself from putting another bullet into the bastard. And then another.

But a stronger instinct urged him to consider her feelings; it was suddenly imperative that he remove her from the garden before she was besieged by curious guests.

He heard footsteps at the other end of the path, and saw his eldest brother running toward them. As Grayson neared, Devon swiftly helped Jocelyn remove the offensive rope from around her neck.

He watched as his older brother gently guided her away from the sight of Thurlew sprawled in the grass, then had the presence of mind to motion a footman to stand guard over the body.

In the next moment Devon caught sight of Drake and Gabriel hurrying toward them. He kicked the rope viciously into the grass. That any man would abuse and intimidate his wife as if she were an animal sickened him.

He came up behind her, not willing to be parted from her again.

“Is Rowan all right?” she asked Grayson in an anxious voice. “And Mrs. O’Brien? He poisoned the poor woman’s chocolate. He was hiding in the nursery.”

Devon had only the vaguest notion what she meant. Indeed, it seemed that his mind had just begun to function again while his heart, well, his heart might never be the same.

The mention of poison, of Grayson’s son, chilled him, and he was vastly relieved to hear Grayson reassure her by replying, “Rowan is fine, thanks be to your presence, Jocelyn. And Mrs. O’Brien will survive to torment us all for many years to come with her infernal lullabies.”

“Thank heaven,” she said.

Devon made enough sense of this exchange to wish again that he could have prolonged his revenge. This unashamedly brutal desire was dashed only a few seconds later when he heard Gabriel mutter, “Dammit. He’s not dead. Look. The swine’s moving his hand.”

Drake stepped on Thurlew’s wrist. “Not anymore.”

To which Gabriel responded in a low voice as he crouched below the headless statue, “We’d better search him anyway to make sure he does not have a weapon concealed in his costume.”

“Just get him the hell away from the house,” Grayson said with a look of contempt in Thurlew’s direction. “Or finish him off for that matter. The footmen can dump him alongside the other offal in the Thames.”

“Come inside,” Devon urged his wife, wrapping his arms tightly around her again. The men in his family tended to play rough when those they loved had been threatened. He did not disapprove. In fact, he would have gladly participated; it was the Boscastle way. He just would rather she not watch.

“He isn’t dead?” she asked, turning her head in the direction of the beheaded Hermes.

Not because he hadn’t tried to kill him, Devon thought, urging her in the other direction.

“Come home with me, please, before Grayson’s guests are persuaded that his entertainment has moved outside.”

“Go with him, Jocelyn,” Grayson said. “Let your husband comfort you tonight. I will handle matters here.”

And, of course, he did.

With the finesse of a man born to master his environs since the moment of his conception, Grayson Boscastle, the Most Honorable Marquess of Sedgecroft, managed to convince his guests that the melee in the garden was merely another mistimed family prank. In truth, most of his company had come to expect no less from a Boscastle affair.

Word of it never even reached the scandalmongers, for if the marquess claimed that nothing of interest had happened in his garden, then it must be so. In the end the Boscastles took care of their own. Brother, sister. Husband and wife.

Devon did not have to do anything more than give himself permission to let his true nature guide him from now on.

He was profoundly grateful that it was not too late for another chance.