CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Good evening, my dear,” Lord Stratford drawled to his wife. There was a harsh gleam in his eyes that belied the insouciance of his words. “I simply had to see if the accommodations they provided you were as lacking as I suspected.” His gaze slid over the contents of the room, like a snake slithering through the brush, before landing on me. “Why, Lady Darby. How kind of you to keep my wife company.” Something about the way he said “kind” made a chill run down my spine. “I’m sure she’s enjoyed your visit. It’s only too bad it shall be so short-lived.”

Lady Stratford and I looked at each other.

“You wished to speak with your wife alone, of course,” I gasped, thinking quickly. The countess looked panicked at the prospect, but I knew the best way I could assist her was to get away, to find help. “It was lovely chatting with you,” I told her, trying to hide the quaver in my voice as I took several steps toward the door.

The door slammed, making the blood surge sharply in my veins.

Lord Stratford clucked his tongue. “Come now, Lady Darby. You don’t really think I’m going to just let you waltz out of here, do you?” A frightening glitter entered his eyes. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

I swallowed the fear coating my throat and made myself continue moving forward. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I replied with forced lightness. “Even in the dark, I’ll be quite safe walking from the carriage house to the castle. Besides, there is a guard just outside the door who will be able to observe my progress the entire way.”

“Not anymore.” Lord Stratford pulled a pepperbox pistol from his pocket.

I stopped short and stared wide-eyed at the weapon. All my concentration seemed to narrow to the two barrels of the gun now trained at my chest. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, making me acutely aware of that weapon’s ability to stop it.

Stratford heaved a sigh and shook his head in mock regret. “It’s your own fault, my dear. If you’d left well enough alone, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

“So it was you!” his wife gasped, momentarily drawing his attention away from me, though not his gun. “You killed Helena! And arranged to have me blamed for it.” Her voice shook with horror and outrage.

“Very good, Charlotte.” He gave her a mocking bow while still somehow managing to keep the pistol leveled on me. “However, I assume Lady Darby helped you to that conclusion. You’re not clever enough to have figured it out on your own.”

“How could you?” she shrieked, rising to her feet.

“Sit down,” the earl ordered as he swung the gun toward his wife.

Air rushed into my lungs, making me feel almost light-headed. I glanced back at Lady Stratford, who stood frozen. She seemed to only just realize how perilous a situation she was in. “You wouldn’t shoot me,” she declared with far more bravado than I had expected from the china-shepherdess-countess. It jarred me out of my immobility.

Unfortunately, Lord Stratford was not as distracted by his wife as he looked. “Tut-tut,” he scolded as I shifted my foot to take a step forward. His eyes were startlingly sharp, like a hawk sighting its prey. “Be a good girl and stand over there by my wife.” He waved his gun at me in such a careless manner that I flinched, certain it would go off. He chuckled. “Don’t worry, Lady Darby. It won’t fire until I’m ready for it to do so.”

A shiver ran down my spine. Following his instructions, I backed slowly toward the countess, all the while keeping one eye trained on Lord Stratford’s gun while the other frantically searched the room for some kind of weapon. “So you admit it? You admit you killed Lady Godwin and her child?” I accused, trying to keep him talking. There had to be a weapon here of some kind, something sharp or heavy. It appeared that all such objects had been removed, likely to keep them out of the hands of our supposed murderer, Lady Stratford. Even the hearth tools had been confiscated from their usual position next to the fireplace. I prayed they had forgotten something.

Lord Stratford smiled back at me smugly, as if he knew exactly what I was doing. “You there. Maid,” he called to Celeste, who stood quivering in the corner behind the dining table. “Come here.”

She whimpered and shrank back farther into the corner.

He spared her a glance, narrowing his eyes. “If you do not wish to be shot, I suggest you obey.”

With tears streaming down her cheeks, and quaking with fear, she inched toward him. Her hands pleated the fabric of her apron.

“Now!”

Her body jerked forward, propelling her across the room to come to an awkward standstill two feet from the earl. Her breath sawed in and out of her chest at such a rapid rate that I was afraid she might pass out at any moment. Then again, perhaps such an outcome would not be such a bad thing. Especially if she collapsed straight into Lord Stratford. I stared at the maid’s mouth, where she sucked in air between parted lips, urging her to breathe even faster.

Stratford reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and pulled out a length of rope. “Hold this,” he ordered the girl, who clasped the hemp between her hands as if it were a reptile. Stratford leaned over to extract a wicked-looking blade from a sheath inside his boot. “Now measure out the cord into two equal parts.”

The maid blinked up at him in terrified confusion.

“Find the middle,” he barked, giving her detailed instructions and then forcing her to hold the rope while he sliced it into two relatively even sections.

I watched in dread, knowing what was about to happen. If only I’d thought to bring a weapon with me—a knife, a letter opener, a bottle of turpentine and a match, something. I scolded myself for not taking such a precaution. I thought of the ever-present pistol tucked into the waistband of Gage’s trousers with desperation. Why hadn’t I done something similar? Even a tiny weapon strapped to my thigh would make me feel better than I did now, whether I was able to get to it without alerting Stratford or not.

I glanced up at the single window, the only exit from the room other than the door blocked by Stratford. The window was positioned too high on the wall for me to boost myself through without assistance, and by the time I reached it, Stratford would put a bullet in my back. Maybe a distraction would work. I turned to Lady Stratford and then the fire, trying to think of some way to stop what was about to happen next.

“Bind Lady Darby’s hands,” he instructed Celeste, bringing my head back around. “And make certain it’s good and tight. I’ll be checking your knots, and I will not hesitate to shoot you should they be inadequate.”

The maid looked up at me with large, frightened eyes. I knew she had no choice. I knew he would shoot her if she did not do as she was told. But I couldn’t comply. I couldn’t hold my hands out for her to bind. Not knowing that escape, that self-defense, would be all but impossible with my hands immobilized.

“Lady Darby,” Lord Stratford warned.

The click of the gun cocking ricocheted through the room. I flinched, bracing for impact. When it did not come, I blinked up at Stratford.

His lips curled into an evil smile. “Let’s cooperate, shall we.”

I locked my knees and lifted my chin, refusing to cower. Fear and panic might be choking me, but I was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing it. At least, not any more than he already had.

Forcing breath into my constricted lungs, I pressed my wrists together and presented them to Celeste. Her hands shook as she wound the rope around my hands. I tried to jostle the cord to keep some slack in the line, but she would not allow it, following Lord Stratford’s instructions to the letter. My skin burned from the rub of the rough cord, and my fingers protested the blood loss. I could not stifle a hiss of pain as Celeste tightened the last knot.

Lord Stratford’s eyes gleamed with delight. “Very good,” he crooned as the maid stepped back to show she was finished. He released the hammer on the pistol. My heart gave a jolt before settling into a steadier rhythm. “Now, my lovely wife.”

Celeste flicked a glance filled with terror and shame at me before moving toward Lady Stratford.

“Lady Darby.” He gestured for me to move toward him.

I glared at him in disgust, which only seemed to amuse him further, but followed his command, not eager to hear the gun cock again.

“Hold out your hands.” He gave the cord such a vicious tug I had to grit my teeth to keep from crying out in pain. “All right, now step back.”

I gladly complied.

While Stratford’s attention was mostly focused on Celeste tying his wife’s hands, I scanned the room again for any potential weapons, any means of escape. I was desperate to knock the gun from Lord Stratford’s grasp. If I could disarm him and stun him, perhaps I could make a run for it. Unfortunately, the heaviest object I could see was a book lying on a table on the opposite side of the room. There was no way I could get to it without alerting Stratford to my intentions.

Where was Gage? And for that matter, where was the footman who was supposed to be guarding the carriage house? Had Stratford really killed him like he had implied? We’d heard no gunshots, but a stab from the knife tucked in Stratford’s boot or a blow to the head could be just as fatal. Hadn’t anyone heard or seen anything? The stables stood next door, filled with horses and stable hands, not to mention Philip’s wolfhounds. Surely one of them had witnessed Stratford approaching the carriage house.

I stifled a grunt of frustration. Stratford had clearly planned his actions before coming here, whether my presence was a happy coincidence or not, so there was no reason to believe he would not have made certain his appearance went unnoticed. After all, the man had murdered his mistress and unborn child and managed to place the blame on his wife, all while evading suspicion. Until I decided the evidence provided wasn’t enough.

I couldn’t be sorry I had been determined to seek the truth, but I wanted to kick myself now for not confiding in Philip. Maybe if I had told him what I had discovered and where I was going, I would not be facing the barrel of a loaded pistol with my hands tied. Or maybe Stratford would have found it necessary to shoot Philip, had he accompanied me. Or Philip might have forced me to wait for Gage, and Stratford could have abducted Lady Stratford and Celeste right from under our noses.

It was clear that Lord Stratford did not intend to murder us—at least, not immediately. Otherwise, why would he bind our hands? But where was he taking us?

Celeste stepped back from Lady Stratford, and he beckoned her forward to check her knots much the same way he had done mine. I had to admire the countess’s bravery, lifting her chin and staring down her nose at her husband as if he were an insect. Only the flicker of her eyelashes told me that his tug on her bindings had been as painful as mine.

“You truly are lovely, my darling,” Stratford murmured, running a finger down her pale cheek.

Her face tightened in revulsion, but she did not look away.

“It’s too bad. Such beauty should never hide something so barren and useless.” The last word hissed through his teeth as he pushed her back.

She flinched and staggered. Celeste steadied her.

“Now,” he declared, turning away from his wife as if she no longer mattered and focusing on me. “We’re going to take a little walk.”

My heartbeat accelerated again.

“My lady wife is going to lead.” He smiled, a vicious twist of his lips, and leveled the pistol at me. “And, Lady Darby, you shall have the privilege of walking just before me.” He flicked a glance at his wife and her maid. “Should any of you choose to scream or run, I will not hesitate to shoot you. So remember that before you attempt anything heroic . . .” he leaned toward me with coldhearted delight “. . . Lady Darby.”

I stiffened in frustration. If he had let me lead, I might have been able to dart into the forest. By standing directly in front of him, the gun would be trained right at my back. I had no hope of escape.

Fear crawled up inside me and squeezed my chest in its icy grip, threatening to block out rational thought. I fought to slow my breath, to stop the fog of panic from taking over. I had to stay alert. I had to watch for my opportunity. I had to stay alive.

“Move!” Stratford barked, urging his wife through the door.

Celeste fell into step behind her, weeping uncontrollably into her still-unbound hands. If the maid would just pull herself together, she would have the best chance of escape. I glared at her back in frustration.

Stratford prodded me with his gun. “Let’s go, Lady Darby.”

I shivered as we inched forward through the corridor toward the outer door. Lady Stratford wrangled it open, and I offered up a swift prayer that someone would see us leaving. The words died on my lips as the soft wash of shrouded moonlight illuminated the crumpled form of the guard lying in the storage-room doorway next to the extinguished lantern. I gasped and leaned closer, searching for signs of life, but Stratford propelled me forward, digging the pistol into the skin between my shoulder blades.

“Move.”

I stumbled, barely stopping myself from taking a hard tumble onto the broken cobblestones of the path in front of the carriage house. Righting myself, I followed Celeste around the corner of the building, into the woods.

“Right,” he ordered his wife, directing us toward the little-used path that ran through the forest behind the carriage house and stables down toward the loch.

The heavy overgrowth of summer whacked against my legs, dampening my skirts with moisture from the earlier rains and dragging down my steps. Whether by Lady Stratford’s conscious choice or because she was having difficulty following such an unknown trail in the dark, our progress slowed to a crawl, allowing me to catch my breath. Stratford hissed for them to move faster, jabbing me in the back with his gun, but after a dozen steps, their pace faltered once again.

I tried to ignore the throbbing between my shoulder blades and the pistol aimed at me, and focus on my surroundings. There was no sound beyond the rustle of the wind through the trees and the shuffle of our footsteps against the musky earth. The snap in the breeze and the brine on my tongue told me we were nearing the sea loch. My surroundings were not completely foreign, but I had not traveled this path many times in the last sixteen months, so I could not say whether we had already passed the tiny side trail that looped back toward the front drive or not. Everything looked so different in the dark, and if I darted off into the woods anywhere but that trail, I wasn’t certain I would be able to navigate without tripping over a root or becoming entangled in a bramble bush.

Stratford prodded me in the back and snarled at his wife again, who picked up speed as we crested a hill. My stomach sank as the thick bramble of trees and scrub around us parted, allowing me to see the dark, steely waves of the loch glimmer faintly in the light of a stray moonbeam breaking through the clouds. I had missed the side trail, and soon enough we would arrive at the shore.

The trail twisted, and we were out of the forest, descending down a grassy hill toward the beach. A small rowboat was pulled up on the shore. I faltered, and Lord Stratford’s hand shot out to squeeze my upper arm in a punishing grip.

“Yes, Lady Darby. We’re taking the boat,” he hummed into my hair. “Does that bother you?”

Of course, it bothered me. My hands were bound, and he was planning to take me out onto the open waters of the loch. If I fell overboard, I would never be able to swim. The thought terrified me. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. “Where are you taking us?” I demanded.

“Oh, I don’t think you want to know that yet, love.”

The icy bands around my chest tightened. “Then why?” I gasped, suddenly desperate to keep him talking. “You went to so much trouble to place the blame on your wife and her maid . . .”

“And you.”

I stilled, remembering the bloody apron in my studio.

“I don’t know whether you lied about where you found the apron or Gage finally realized how foolish he was to consider you a suspect, but I was rather impressed you managed to avoid being implicated.”

Anger cleaved through my fear. “You knew the others were blaming me.”

“And I would have been a fool not to use that hysteria to my advantage,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Just in case Gage never found the scissors or the shawls so that he could accuse my wife of the murder.”

“You were going to kill her,” I spat. “You were going to kill your wife and then marry Lady Godwin’s sister.” I was furious he had been playing us all against each other. “Except Lady Godwin found out. She sent a letter to her sister, you know. And then she confronted you about it in the maze.”

“The bitch threatened to tell my wife,” he snarled, squeezing my arm even tighter. “Like she told her about our affair and the bastard growing in her belly.” He sighed heavily, as if his display of anger had disappointed him. “I never intended to kill Lady Godwin or her child, but she simply had to be stopped.”

The extreme changes in his tone unsettled me. He said the last so lightly, as if he were telling me he had to stop the viscountess from painting her parlor pink, not warning her friend of his treachery. I worried what a man with such quicksilver alterations in mood could be capable of. He was thoroughly unpredictable.

“So you decided to implicate your wife,” I asked, leading him on, needing to understand as much as I needed to keep him talking.

“Yes. The murder of both my former mistress and my wife would have thrown too much suspicion on me.”

Lady Stratford stumbled ahead of us as she stepped onto the loose sand of the beach and righted herself.

“Careful, darling,” her husband called up to her. “We wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself. Not yet,” he hissed under his breath.

Shaken by his comment, I tried to pull from his grasp, but he yanked me closer. I knew if he took us out in that boat, things could not end well. There would be nowhere to run, no way to escape. As we drew nearer, I realized this might be my last chance. I couldn’t climb into that boat. Not without knowing I had done everything in my power, short of dying, to avoid it.

I waited until we reached the point where the ground leveled to give myself the best footing and then whirled around to drive my knee into Stratford’s groin. My brother had told me, once upon a time, that it was the most vulnerable spot on a man’s body, and should I ever get into trouble, that was the place to aim.

Regrettably, my aim seemed to be off. That, or Stratford was quicker than I gave him credit for. My knee collided with his thigh, and though he dropped his grip on my arm when he flinched, he did not go down as I’d anticipated. He snarled and grabbed me around the waist before I took two steps. Spinning me around, he struck me across the face.

I landed hard on my side in the sand, and it knocked the wind out of me. I gasped for air, and my eyes filled with tears from the sting of the blow. My left cheek throbbed, and I was having difficulty focusing on what was going on around me.

Before I could right myself, Stratford yanked me to my feet and lifted me into the boat. I plopped down on the bench with all the grace of a falling rock and would have tumbled over backward into the bottom of the boat if Celeste had not reached out to steady me. The boat swayed beneath me. Then Stratford hoisted himself over the side and finished maneuvering the tiny vessel out into the water with an oar. Before I could understand what was happening, we were too far away from the shallows to risk jumping out of the boat.

“Now,” Stratford declared, standing over me. “I would like you to row, Lady Darby.”

He held an oar out to me with one hand while pointing the gun at my chest with the other. I glanced down at my bound hands and he tsked. “It doesn’t take free hands to row. Though I’m sure Celeste will have a much easier time of it.” He glared pointedly at the other oar, and the maid immediately picked it up. He forced the oar between my hands. “No sudden movements,” he told us as he backed up to sit down in the stern of the boat. His eyes settled on his wife at the prow of the vessel behind me. “And you, my dear, need only look pretty. As that is all you seem capable of.”

I tried to ignore the sting of my cheek and the panic surging through my blood, but the distance growing between the shoreline and me was not helping. The wind whipped across the water, stirring up foamy whitecaps on the waves below my oar. The sky had steadily begun to clear, offering lengthier gaps between cloud banks so that the moon could shine bright and nearly full upon the choppy waters of the sea loch. To the north I could see the hills of the Isle of Ewe rising up out of the middle of the loch. I knew the waters were shallower near its southern tip. I pulled hard on my oar, trying to turn us toward the isle, but Stratford was ever conscious of our direction.

“Straighten out,” he ordered, almost shouting to be heard above the wind. “We’re heading west, Lady Darby.”

Into the deepest part of the loch.

Fear and frustration bubbled up inside me, threatening to overcome my thin veneer of composure. I wanted to cry, and I wanted to scream, and I knew none of this was going to stop Stratford from killing us.

“I don’t understand any of this,” I exclaimed. “You de-cided to kill your wife simply because she has not been able to conceive a child?”

“I need an heir, Lady Darby.” He spoke slowly and carefully, as if I were stupid. “It’s the only reason I wed in the first place. But my wife has been unable to provide me with one.” He glared over my shoulder at the countess. “When I discovered Lady Godwin was carrying my child, I finally knew for certain just who was at fault for my wife’s lack of conception. She neglected to tell me how worthless she was before we married. She tricked me.”

I glanced back at Lady Stratford. Her eyes were icy in the moonlight. “I never knew I was barren. How could I? I was a virgin when I married you.”

“You knew.” His voice was laced with contempt. “You had to. It was no wonder your family was so eager to see you wed to me.”

“You’re an earl! That’s why they wanted me to marry you.”

My hands cramped from trying to hold the oar in such an awkward manner, and my muscles ached from the exertion. Even with her hands free, Celeste seemed to be having just as much difficulty. While Stratford argued with his wife, our progress across the lake had slowed considerably, and I consciously allowed our speed to drop even more. I hoped that by doing so, there would be time for someone to notice we’d gone missing and come searching for us.

“It doesn’t matter!” Stratford slammed his fist down on the bench below him, making the boat sway and all of us jump. “You were useless to me. I should have recognized that sooner. I needed an heir, and you couldn’t provide one. So you needed to die so that I could remarry.”

“And how did you intend to do that?” Lady Stratford replied with an amazing amount of daring. I feared her emotions were making her reckless. “Were you planning to slit my throat like you did Lady Godwin’s?”

Stratford’s eyes gleamed with relish. “Of course not, my sweet. Your death needed to look like a suicide.”

His wife stiffened.

“A little bit of laudanum and two slits to the wrists seemed more ladylike.”

“With my embroidery shears? You never would have gotten away with it.” Her voice was still clipped, but it was fading.

“Ah, but if everyone discovered that Lady Godwin was expecting my child and that you knew about it, it would be all too easy to understand how you could be so distraught.” The feigned sorrow in his voice was far more chilling than his anger. “Especially when I told them how I blamed myself for not being more sensitive to your distress over your barrenness.”

“You never loved me at all,” she accused, heartbreak and disillusionment stretching her voice. “Not even on our wedding trip. When we . . .” She broke off, unable to complete the sentence.

Stratford’s jaw hardened as he watched his wife struggle with her emotions.

“All I was to you was a . . . a broodmare,” she spat accusingly. The boat shifted as if she intended to rise from her seat.

He swung the pistol around to point it at his wife. “Ah, ah!” he warned her in mockery. “Let’s not be too hasty.”

Lady Stratford thunked back into her seat.

“It matters not to me now how soon you die, so long as your body washes up on shore. But I assume you would rather prolong the matter.”

“You said you needed an heir, but why?” I blurted, trying to distract him before his wife provoked him into firing his gun. I still didn’t understand his obsession with having a boy child. “Why does it matter who inherits the title after you die?”

“Because the earldom would go to a bloody Frenchman,” he snarled, leaning toward me. His dark eyes glittered almost feverishly in the moonlight, sending a chill down my spine. “I spent five years fighting the sons of bitches in Spain and Portugal and then at Waterloo. I took a bullet in the shoulder and another one grazed my scalp. I nearly died at the Battle of Salamanca. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let one of those frogs hold the title to one of the most ancient and venerable earldoms in all of England.”

The man was crazy. He was willing to murder four women and a child just so he could remarry and father an heir. I could understand his continued animosity toward the French, but not his willingness to go to such extreme measures to keep his title out of their hands. Perhaps the bullet that grazed his scalp had damaged his brain somehow, for I could not believe that a man who was right in the head would do such a thing.

My body went cold at the realization that we were in a boat in the middle of a storm-tossed loch with a madman. A murderer was dangerous enough, but as long as he was sane, there was at least some chance of rationalizing with him. A madman was unreasonable and unpredictable. We had no hope. He was going to kill us and dump us over the side.

A whimper caught in my throat, and I felt tears of despair begin to flood my eyes. I blinked them back, determined not to show my panic to this lunatic. I would not give him the satisfaction of watching me fall apart.

I allowed the wind that had picked up almost to a howl to whip the loose strands of my hair across my face, shielding my struggle as I turned to stare out over the loch. The glint of something on the water caught my eye. At first, I thought it might be the way the moonlight was striking the waves, or a seal venturing into the shelter of the loch from the sea, but then I realized that it was a ship. My heart leapt in my chest. Please let them be searching for us, I prayed. Please let it be Gage.

I studied Stratford through the tendrils of my hair, knowing I had to distract him. I had to give that boat enough time to slip as close to us as possible without the earl noticing. Otherwise, he might panic and shove us all overboard before the others were near enough to help us.

“But why kill the baby?” I asked, drawing Stratford from whatever dark thoughts he was contemplating. He glared at me. “I understand why you killed Lady Godwin. You had to keep her quiet so that she wouldn’t warn your wife.”

Lady Stratford gasped, having not been privy to our earlier conversation on the beach.

“But I don’t understand why you took the child from her womb. Why would you do such a thing? What purpose did it serve?”

Celeste made a gagging sound. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, wondering if she was going to be sick.

“It didn’t serve a purpose,” Lord Stratford replied. “Other than to tell me whether the bitch was telling the truth.”

I gaped at him in horror.

“I needed to know whether she really carried my child. And I was curious whether it was a boy.”

Lady Stratford choked on a sob behind me.

“Besides . . .” Stratford’s mouth curled into a chilling smile. ”It all worked out rather well for me in the end. Ripping that bastard from the womb made Mr. Gage believe that the motive was the child. It helped to convince him that my wife was to blame, since she wanted a child so badly and she couldn’t have one herself.” His tone mocked her.

His eyes returned to me, narrowed in anger. “Everything was working out so well, until you decided to go searching for more evidence. You couldn’t leave well enough alone.” I shrank beneath his glare. “What was it that made you doubt my lady wife’s guilt? Couldn’t believe a delicate, well-bred creature would be capable of such a thing?” he sneered.

I flicked a glance at the approaching boat, gauging its progress. It still seemed so far away.

“No,” I replied, keeping my voice even. “It was, in fact, the very same reason you believed we would suspect her in the first place—her desperate longing for a child.”

He scowled, clearly not liking my answer, and began to turn his head back toward Gairloch.

“You were the one watching me today,” I accused, frantic to keep his gaze away from the approaching vessel. The snap of the wind and the slap of the waves against our hull drowned out the sounds of the other boat’s pursuit, but I knew it was only a matter of time before Lord Stratford heard them.

His stare slid back to mine. “I’ve been watching you for quite some time. Since the night I returned to the castle to find Mr. Gage leading you and Lord Westlock back from the chapel. I knew then that you had been asked to assist him, and your actions since then have only confirmed my suspicions.” He shook his head as if in scolding. “You should have listened to my letters.”

I tensed. So he had written them. But of course he had. That seemed rather obvious now. “Was it you in the servants’ stairwell?” I couldn’t resist asking. I wanted to know just how many of today’s ominous occurrences had been real and how many figments of my imagination.

I could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “What do you think?”

I scowled. “What were you planning to do? Hit me over the head?”

“Perhaps. You’re far too resourceful, Lady Darby. First you took the dogs with you on your little walk and made it impossible for me to get close to you without raising an alarm. Then you eluded me on the stairs.” My muscles tightened as he gestured with his gun, reminding me just how quickly he could end my life. “When Faye mentioned that you had been in Lady Godwin’s chamber today, I knew you were looking for something, and I couldn’t risk having you find evidence to implicate me. So when I saw you cross the stable yard toward the carriage house, I knew it was my chance to finish you both.” His gaze slid over each occupant of the boat, and he grinned. “It has worked out amazingly well. Perhaps I should thank Cromarty’s mare for dropping her foal last night. At the time, I cursed it for preventing me from getting to my lovely wife and her maid, but since waiting has dropped you into my lap, Lady Darby, and provided me with a wonderful scapegoat, I cannot be cross.”

I gasped. “You intend to blame me.”

His smile turned smug. “Whom do you think they will blame when you and Celeste have disappeared and my wife’s body washes up on shore with a bullet through her heart?”

My hands tightened around the oar.

“Tut-tut,” Stratford scolded me, aiming the pistol directly at the center of my chest. “No sudden movements with that, Lady Darby. My gun is liable to go off.”

I gritted my teeth, wanting to snarl at the man. How dare he threaten my life and plot to ruin my reputation, and that of my family, once and for all. What would Philip and Alana, and my nieces and nephews, have thought if he had succeeded? What would Gage? Would they have continued to believe in my innocence? Or be forever shamed by my memory?

I felt an absurd surge of relief that his plans were not to come to fruition. It was obvious now that the other boat was pursuing us, and whether or not I survived this ordeal, they would know I had not orchestrated it. Neither I, nor my family, would be blamed.

I was so absorbed by my conflicting emotions that I failed to act quickly enough when Celeste gasped, obviously having caught sight of the boat. Stratford turned his head to see it. By this point, I could clearly see the prow of the ship slicing through the water toward us, closing the distance fast. My heart surged in my chest. I wanted to reach out and smack the foolish maid.

Stratford growled and leaned forward to yank the oar from my grasp. “Damn you!” He grabbed hold of the bindings around my wrists and pulled me toward him.

Crying out in pain, I tumbled to the floor, purposely trying to evade his grasp. A man shouted from the other boat.

“You saw them coming, didn’t you?” Stratford released the rope to tug on my arm. “Get up!”

I struggled against him, even though it wrenched my shoulder terribly, for I knew that if he managed to pull me to my feet, he would use me as a shield. Stratford had no more than two bullets in his double-barreled pistol, and without me for leverage, they would be nearly useless against the four or five men in the other boat. He might shoot two of them, but he would never get away. I cringed at the image of Gage or Philip taking those bullets.

“Get up,” Stratford snarled.

And then I saw it. Poking up out of his right Hessian boot was the knife—the blade he had used to cut the rope. The weapon I suspected had actually been used to slice Lady Godwin’s throat and abdomen. I glanced up to find Stratford’s gaze focused on the men in the boat, and reached out to grip the knife handle clumsily between my bound hands. As he jerked me upward, making the muscles in my shoulder scream in protest, the blade slid cleanly from its sheath.

Stratford whirled me around in front of him, wrapping his arm across my shoulders and pressing the cool muzzle of the gun against my temple. “Stop right there. You, too, darling.”

I closed my eyes, terrified for a moment that the pistol would go off. When my pounding heart did not stop beating, I cautiously opened my eyes to see Lady Stratford standing in the back of the boat gripping Celeste’s oar. Her icy eyes glimmered with fury. Her gaze met mine and briefly dipped to the knife between my palms, letting me know she had seen it. She did not give me away.

“Drop it,” Stratford ordered.

She tossed the oar into the bottom of the boat with a clatter.

Stratford whirled me around to face the water and the other vessel now inching toward us. “I said stop right there. Or I’ll put a bullet through her skull.”

I sucked in a breath and forced it out again. The world around me seemed suddenly fuzzy, and I knew I had to stay conscious if I was going to survive this ordeal. Passing out was not an option. I had to calm my rampaging heart. The bite of the chain of my mother’s pendant against my skin from where it snagged between Stratford’s arm and my body helped to sharpen my senses.

“Let her go,” I heard Gage order harshly. I blinked open my eyes to find him aiming a pistol toward me. I knew that it was meant to be pointed at Stratford, as was the gun held by another man standing in the boat, but I could not help feeling unnerved to have three weapons pointed at me.

“I think not,” Stratford answered calmly—too calmly, for my taste. “Not unless you want her brains splattered all over this boat’s stern.”

My stomach pitched violently at the threat.

Gage’s face tightened, and his gaze dipped to meet mine. I almost wished he hadn’t, for I could see genuine fear shining in the depths of his eyes, and I had a terrible suspicion it was for me. It was not the least reassuring. “What do you want, Stratford?” he asked the earl.

“That’s a dangerous question,” Stratford replied, his words gusting past my ear as the boat rocked beneath our feet. “How about instead I settle for telling you what is going to happen next.” Against my hair, the muscles of his cheek pulled upward in a nasty smile. “You, Lord Cromarty, and the others are going to head back to Gairloch Castle while the ladies and I continue on our way.”

Celeste sobbed.

“And if we don’t?” Gage challenged.

“Then Lady Darby dies, here and now.”

I stiffened, knowing his threat to be real.

Philip murmured something behind Gage, who shushed him. “How do we know you won’t harm Lady Darby if we do what you say?”

“You don’t.” Stratford sounded amused with himself. “My way, there’s a chance she might survive. Your way, there isn’t.”

I closed my eyes, swallowing the bitter lump of fear in the back of my throat. There was no way out of this without using the knife. It was ironic to think that only four days ago, I had assured myself that even though I had never held a knife, I would be able to wield one if the need ever arose. Well, that need was now.

If they let him go, Stratford intended to kill us no matter what he told Gage. I was certain of it. And if they refused, he would shoot me and at least one more person before likely being shot in turn. Either way, I would die. And I didn’t want to. Not yet. Not like this. Not when I had wasted so much time hiding. I finally felt brave enough to live again, but if I did nothing now, I might never have the chance.

I blinked open my eyes to look into Gage’s beautiful pale blue ones. He looked so frightened, so uncertain of what his next course of action should be. And I could lift that burden from him. I only hoped that if something went wrong, he knew how much he meant to me, how much I cared. How much more than a shallow golden lothario I now saw when I looked at him.

“What will it be?” Stratford demanded, tightening his arm across my chest.

I knew what I had to do.

The knife felt awkward and slippery between my hands. I struggled to rotate it without dropping it, cutting myself, or tipping off Stratford to its presence. Gage’s eyes dipped, catching the movement, and widened with a look of absolute horror. He shook his head slightly, telling me to stop. But I would not heed. I could not heed.

Offering up a silent prayer, I shifted my arms to the side. “There is one other way, you know?” I felt Stratford shift so that he could look down at me, but I only had eyes for Gage. “My way!” The last emerged as more of a grunt as I drove my hands backward with all my might, sinking the blade deep into Stratford’s abdomen. Warm blood coated my fingers, and the sickening squelch of torn flesh rent the night air.

Stratford howled and knocked me off balance as he reached down to grip the knife. A gun fired, and another answered. I tumbled forward, and unable to catch myself, I plummeted over the side of the boat into the icy water.

The bitter cold drove the air from my lungs, and a stabbing pain in my side momentarily made the world go dark. When I opened my eyes, I could no longer see the faint light of the moon or tell which way was up or down. The sodden weight of my skirts wrapped around my legs. I panicked, kicking wildly, trying desperately to propel myself in the direction I thought was up. My lungs burned and my eyes stung from the salt water. I tugged and thrashed, trying to loosen my bindings, but they would not come undone. I could not break free.