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“Lily, wake up!” Owen pressed his cheek to her chest, reassured by the steady heartbeat, but fear knotted itself around his heart. She loved him. And he loved her. He regretted not sharing his feelings after reading her letters.
But while words like love and adore inundated her words, the fact that she’d never said them aloud had created doubts. Stupid fool.
She needed to wake up so he could tell her. She needed to live. “Sweetheart.” Gently shaking her, praying for her to regain consciousness. “Please, don’t leave me.”
A coughing fit erupted from Lily, and he hurried to turn her on her side as she gasped for air. Torrential rain continued to drive into the ground with a vengeance, pelting them with its pointed stings.
“Sweetheart, speak to me. Are you injured?” He ran his hands along her shivering body. “We need to get you home and out of this storm.”
A small moan accompanied the negative shake of her head. “I’m sore, but I don’t think anything is damaged beyond repair. Unless the baby...” Another shudder wracked her body while terror gripped him.
“The baby’s fine. Everything will be fine.” He had to believe it to be true. “Let’s get you somewhere warm. I may never let you walk the river alone again; I thought I lost you, love.”
“I thought I lost me, too. But somehow I found myself instead.”
The strange statement confused him, but there would be time enough for questions when they were back home safe and sound under dry blankets and a fire roaring in the fireplace. He’d have the doctor fetched, and all would be well. It had to be.
Wrapping an arm around her back and beneath her knees, Owen struggled to his feet in the slippery mud.
“Let me stand. I can walk.”
“You’ve just survived almost drowning. I’m carrying you home until we’re positive you’re as healthy as a newborn colt.”
“Did you just compare me to a horse?” His laughter of relief stopped short when a faintly familiar voice broke through the thundering storm.
“Glad to see the river didn’t drown out your spirit, girl.” Both of them searched the trees for its owner when a man stepped forward, pistol held aloft in his hands. His gait unsteady under the pummeling rain, he nevertheless managed to keep the weapon pointed in their general direction, and Owen noticed what appeared to be dark splotches marring his skin.
“Mr. Laramie? What are you doing out here?” Lily recovered from her shock first, shouting the question uppermost in their minds, and with a flash of insight, Owen knew.
“It’s you. You’re the one who’s been sending those menacing letters. But why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You stole my bride from me. Which is why I’ve been watching, waiting for my opportunity to exact vengeance. Camping in the wilderness isn’t new to me.” Owen wondered how long the man had been squatting on their land. How much he’d seen. Laramie continued, “It seems the misfortune of my shelter falling victim to this storm worked in my favor, though, because in my search for a new campsite, who do I discover but my quarry weak and defenseless.”
Turning to Lily, Laramie’s eyes held a maniacal glint. “You would’ve been the perfect wife: suitable for traveling for my research, tending to my line of future heirs. Compromised, ruined, yet the conniving bitch managed to become a countess.”
“So, you decided threatening me would be your revenge? To what end? How did you know about my father?”
Laramie shrugged. “It’s common knowledge among certain people about the tainted legacy of your family lineage. It wasn’t difficult to put two and two together. Except you didn’t heed my warning. You didn’t honor your father by bedding then discarding the girl. Instead, you kept her by your side.”
Struggling for Owen to let her stand on her feet, Lily muttered under her breath. “No wonder you needed my father’s help.” Wrapping her arms around her middle protectively, in a louder voice she said, “The crux of my scandal was Owen and I’s relationship. If you’d learned the truth, you might’ve known Owen would never abandon me, nor I, him.”
“‘Tis no matter to me now.” One hand gestured to his face. “It seems I’ve not long to live, according to London’s finest doctors. Skin cancer, they say, from all my travels in particularly sunny areas.” He spat the words out. “Couldn’t even conceive an heir in time to keep my name alive, thanks to you.”
Ah, so there lay the crux of the matter. Owen figured seeing Lily swell with his child so soon, when it could’ve been Laramie’s babe, didn’t sit well with the dying man.
“So, the two of you formed a love match.” Disgust coated Laramie’s voice as he loomed nearer. “Perhaps you’ll reunite in the afterlife.” Laramie shrugged, gray hair matted to his cheeks, obscuring part of his face.
“I empathize with your situation. Truly. It appears even I wouldn’t wish death on my worst enemy. But what motive do you have to murder us? Because you didn’t get your way? Like a child?” Owen squeezed Lily, worried her taunting would push Laramie over the edge, though the man appeared fairly close on his own. He wondered how far the cancer had progressed. Perhaps to the man’s mind; it would explain this convoluted vendetta.
“What can I say? I don’t like losing.” He raised the pistol towards Lily, and Owen shoved her behind him. “No one will ever guess I’m to blame for the tragic loss of the Earl of Trent and his Countess. I’ll be on a ship bound for the Indies, as my final send-off, while your bodies are ravaged by the river. A fitting end in my mind.”
“Not in mine.” Owen lunged for the deranged man as a shot rang out, and he clutched his shoulder—a burning fire shooting down his arm.
“No!” Lily’s piercing scream rose above the din, but he kept charging towards Laramie. The man had used his one shot, and to Owen’s mind, he’d wasted it.
Owen lived.
But he’d make damn sure Laramie didn’t.
***
EVERYTHING SEEMED TO happen at once. The storm. Her revelations. Almost drowning. Laramie. And now Owen shot.
Before today, she might’ve let despair overtake her. Might have chalked this up to the general course of her life. But she knew better now.
Careening to the side, she kept Owen and Laramie in sight, the two men struggling for dominance as she searched the tree line for a weapon. A bulky branch stuck out of the ground near a large oak—a hefty bludgeon, if she had her way. The wood slipped beneath her palms and small splinters broke off into her skin, but she ignored the discomfort, raising the limb overhead to rest on her shoulder. Bracing a hand against the trunk, Lily rested for a moment, lungs desperately gulping in mouthfuls of air, before heading towards the continuing battle near the river’s edge.
Silver flashed in the air as Laramie pulled a knife from his boot after wriggling free of Owen. Haphazard lunges followed, forcing her husband to dip and dodge.
I need to help him. Dragging in one last fortifying breath, Lily yelled, “Owen, duck!” the second before she swung the branch with all her might like a cricket player driving for the game-winning hit—her husband’s auburn head avoiding the oncoming blow. The collision with Laramie’s shoulder sent a bone-rattling jolt through her arms while shoving their attacker to the ground, where Owen pounced like a leopard in wait.
Straddling the man’s chest, punch after punch cracked against Laramie’s cheeks and nose until blood mixed with the rain and mud—the knife falling from his loosened grip.
“Owen... Owen!” Lily dropped the makeshift bludgeon and fell to her knees, hugging Owen from behind. “Enough! It’s over. You mustn’t kill him.”
“But he deserves it. He wanted to harm you and our unborn babe.”
“I know, but we can’t lose you. I don’t want his death on your hands for the rest of our lives.” She pointed at the marks on Laramie’s skin. “He will suffer enough from his own body turning on him.”
He paused, considering her words, and she felt his body relax into her. His sense of honor overcoming the need for revenge.
With Laramie unconscious, Owen climbed off the prone man, and Lily sighed in relief, rearing back enough to examine the wound at his shoulder. Clean through and through. Grateful for the stroke of good fortune, Lily tried to find a relatively clean spot of clothing to tear off to bind the wound temporarily.
“We look like mud people.” The attempt at a joke brightened the tense moment marginally, as did the lightening of rain. “I can’t wrap the bullet holes with these or else your risk of infection will increase.”
“Then, I suppose you should hurry home to fetch help. I’ll watch Laramie to make sure he stays put until a footman binds and carries him home for the constable to deal with.”
Kissing his cheek, Lily repeated. “I love you.”
“And I love you, darling. Now run along, and be careful of slick spots and weakened branches. That was one helluva storm.”
“It’s been one helluva day.”
“That it has been, love. That is has.”