Regina Scott (22 page)

“If my cousins don’t, I will,” Samantha declared.

Will grabbed one of her hands and squeezed it, hoping she understood that her best choice lay in silence. The less Haygood focused on her, the better.

“I’d flee for the Continent if I were you,” Will offered. “I won’t stop you.”

By the way Samantha shifted behind him, he thought she would have preferred he had.

“What do you think I did eight years ago?” Haygood replied, edging into the room as if he suspected Will of hiding a weapon instead of an irate woman behind him. “When the Everards captured Lord Widmore, I knew I had no option but to run.”

Lord Widmore? Then the mysterious lord who had started all this was Imogene’s father, the man who had held the title before it had been re-created for Vaughn Everard. Small wonder Samantha’s cousin chose not to name the fellow. It was one more reason for Samantha to keep silent on the matter, too. She’d been protecting her friend Imogene.

“Then you know how to survive there,” Will encouraged Haygood. He nodded toward the door. “If you leave now, you might have enough of a head start to evade them.”

“What are you doing?” Samantha whispered against his back.

“Trust me,” he whispered back.

“It won’t do,” Haygood insisted. “Italy can be an expensive place, particularly for someone of my tastes.” He stopped a few feet from Will, eying him, pistol at the ready.

“You won’t find money here,” Will assured him, keeping himself between the gun and Samantha.

“Nor did I intend to,” Haygood said. “I’ll have funds aplenty once my uncle obligingly dies. But I can’t inherit if I’m branded a traitor.”

“So you changed your looks,” Samantha piped up, peering around Will despite his efforts. “Attempted to persuade me you were a good friend. Why not just stay away?”

“Because I didn’t know if you remembered! I had to be certain there was nothing to incriminate me, in London or here.”

“You!” she cried, and Will felt her drawing herself up. “You robbed the London house!”

“I took nothing!” he protested.

“Because there was nothing to take! And there was nothing here either, yet that didn’t stop you from hitting me over the head, and to no purpose. You’d told me you were in the muniment room. I wouldn’t have suspected anything had I found you there.”

He grimaced. “I panicked. I thought you’d come to unmask me in private.”

“If I had come to unmask you,” Samantha informed him, “I would have brought the constable.”

He raised his pistol, and Will stiffened, pushing Samantha behind him once more.

“All the more reason to finish you off now,” Haygood said, inspecting the gun as if to make sure it was properly primed, “before your devoted cousins show up. It’s all your fault, you know. If you had married me, you’d have had reason to keep quiet, for the scandal would have affected you, too. But if you die, your cousin Jerome Everard inherits. He’ll never sell Dallsten Manor. If the secret is there, it will molder away, unnoticed. And I’ll be safe.”

He nodded to Will as he drew a second small pistol from his greatcoat. “I’ll have to kill you, too, Kendrick. Terribly sorry. You were a good sport, at least at first.”

Will’s mind clicked through options with lightning speed. One pistol he might have avoided. Two were more likely to be successful in hitting him or Samantha or both.

“On my word,” he murmured to Samantha, as Haygood inspected the second pistol, “run for the door. I’ll hold him as long as I can.” He squeezed Samantha’s hand, felt the strength, the promise as she squeezed back. He knew what he intended to do was right. It was something he only wished he could have done years ago, when Peg and his brother had lain in harm’s way.

Thank you, Lord, for giving me the opportunity I lacked those years ago. Please honor my sacrifice and protect Samantha.

“Now!” he shouted and leaped across the space at Haygood.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“W
ill!” Samantha cried, but the pistol roared, and he fell.

Her heart fell with him. What had she done? She’d tried so hard to prevent pain. Had she caused bloodshed instead? The despair of it threatened to overwhelm her.

No!
She raised her head, squared her shoulders. She hadn’t pointed that pistol. She hadn’t plotted against England. She and Will were innocent. But that didn’t mean she was helpless.

She seized the fireplace poker and advanced on Haygood. “Drop that pistol and move away from him.”

Haygood’s hand shook, and his face glowed a ghastly white in the dim light, but he managed to point his unspent gun at her. “I fear not, Lady Everard. It is my life or yours.”

“They will find you,” she predicted, taking another step. A little closer and she should be able to knock the gun out of his hand. The poker weighed heavily in her grip, far more than her blade and not nearly so balanced. But with Will’s life at stake, she thought she could wield a battle-ax. A shame the gamekeeper hadn’t thought to leave one behind!

“They won’t know to look for me,” he insisted. “With you both dead and hidden in this hovel, they will think it was a lover’s quarrel.”

The story had enough holes to march a regiment through. As if even Haygood understood that, his hand shook so hard she was certain he could easily fail to hit a fatal target if he fired.

“And Lord Kendrick put a ball in his own chest?” she pointed out. “Not likely.”

From outside came the sound of horses and the calls of men intent on their search. Haygood glanced at the door.

Please, Lord, protect Will and guide my hand!

Samantha lunged, poker extended. Haygood cried out as metal struck his hand, and the pistol fell to the floor, spitting its deadly ball into the wood with a roar like its twin.

Haygood stumbled back, turned to run.

Samantha didn’t pursue him. “Vaughn, Richard, Jerome!” she shouted. “In here!” Then she threw herself down beside Will.

His body lay still, and she feared what she would find. Was life even now seeping away? Gut clenching, she touched his shoulder and felt it rise with a breath.

Thank You, Lord!

She bent and turned him ever so gently. His face was bloodless, his eyes closed. Under him the floor was redder than the table nearby. A wave of nausea threatened. She swallowed it down.

Cradling his head and shoulders in her lap, she pressed her fingers against the tide flowing from his upper chest. She felt his heart pounding and prayed that it would keep pumping.

“Will,” she murmured. “Can you hear me?”

His eyes opened, and his gaze, dimmed with pain, met hers.

“Is it bad?” she asked.

He managed a smile she was sure was all bravado. “I’ll survive.”

“You’d better,” she warned.

With the crack of a boot heel on wood, the door was smashed open, and her cousins swarmed into the room.

Haygood held up his hands. “I surrender!”

Jerome put a sword to his throat as if taking no chances. Richard’s gaze was sweeping the room as if to make sure no other assailants lay waiting. She could see their servants crowding in the doorway, eyes wide, faces determined.

Vaughn rushed to Samantha’s side. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she assured him. “Lord Kendrick saved my life.”

“And took the worst of it, it seems,” Richard said, crouching beside them. He looked Will over, reached out a hand, then stopped. “May I, my lord?”

Will nodded, his head moving against Samantha. So weakly! Fear reached clawed fingers for her, and she fought it back. She pulled away her hand, refused to look at the warm stickiness she felt clinging to it.

Richard probed at the gaping wound. She knew each time Will stiffened, every tightening of his lips, every contraction of his muscles. She took his hand and squeezed hard.

“How is he?” Jerome asked, coming to join them. Samantha glanced up long enough to see that Haygood had been removed. She could only imagine some of the servants had been dispatched to return him to Dallsten Manor or the magistrate’s office in the village.

“He needs a physician,” Richard reported. He pulled out a handkerchief and held it to the wound. “Soon.”

Pain shot through Samantha. “You’ll be fine, Will. I know it.”

Her cousins exchanged glances, but Will merely smiled at her.

Vaughn unwound his cravat and tossed it to Richard. “Use this to bind the wound. Can you get him to Kendrick Hall while I ride for the physician?”

“Done,” Richard said.

She ought to protest. They were leaving her out again, taking matters into their own hands as if she were still a child. But at the moment she was willing to let them. Her greatest concern was Will.

“I’m coming with you,” she told Richard. She was merely thankful that her cousins knew her well enough not to argue.

With Jerome on one side and Richard on the other, they managed to get Will to his feet and out the door to the horses.

“I can ride,” he assured them, but they put him up in front of Richard as if he were an untried child instead of a bruising rider. Samantha was glad her cousins had thought to bring her horse, sidesaddle in place. She had to hitch up her skirts a bit to mount, but she would have managed worse to remain at Will’s side.

Vaughn didn’t even wait until they were settled before tearing down the path for the village. The remaining servants were sent to alert the residents of Dallsten Manor, and Jerome accompanied Richard and Samantha to Kendrick Hall.

She had ridden this path so many times, but never with such a heavy heart. She wished Will was sitting in front of her, his head leaning back onto her shoulder, her arms holding him steady. Instead the best she could do was keep her horse close to Richard’s, her hand ready to reach out if needed.

Will swayed in the saddle, a far cry from his usual confident self. His face remained white, and she could see blood soaking through Vaughn’s cravat. Though he said nothing to her, his lips moved as if he were uttering a prayer.

She felt a similar prayer welling from her heart.
Lord, please save him. Don’t take him away from Jamie, away from me!

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.

That’s what she needed now, to trust and to follow the path before her. She raised her head and rode.

The moment they were in sight of the stables, Jerome galloped ahead, calling for help. Before Will’s horse had even stopped moving his staff had gathered. They had him off the horse and into the house in a very short time, settling him upstairs in his bedchamber. A fresh bandage was in place, his valet and Jamie in attendance. A helpful maid had washed Samantha’s hand of Will’s precious blood, offered to find her a room where she could lie down with a cold compress.

She had never lain down with a cold compress in her life.

So she’d retired to the entirely too formal, thoroughly unsatisfactory, withdrawing room to wait.

“Care to explain what happened?” Jerome asked as he and Richard waited with her.

She glanced at her two oldest cousins sitting so calmly as if having no care that their travel dirt might smudge the white upholstery of the chairs. Though they were brothers, they did not resemble each other in temperament or looks. Dark-haired Jerome was cool cunning; red-headed Richard was patient calculation. They had each borne the pain of loss before finding the women they now loved and called wife. Still, she did not think they could possibly understand the things going through her mind right then. She barely understood herself!

“Haygood attempted to kill me,” she reported as she stood near the hearth. “Twice.” She pulled down at the neck of her gown to emphasize the bruises she could see in the mirror over the marble fireplace. By the darkening of her cousins’ gazes, she was certain Haygood was much safer away from Kendrick Hall.

“I stopped him the first time,” she continued, returning her gown to its proper place. “Lord Kendrick stopped him the second time by putting himself in front of me. I hit the miscreant before he could make another attempt.”

“Well done,” Richard put in.

She shrugged off his praise, turning to his brother. “Haygood was at the summer party, Jerome. He was one of the traitors who followed the former Lord Widmore.”

Jerome and Richard exchanged glances, and she realized what they were going to say before they said it.

“You knew!” She advanced at her cousins, fingers clenched at her sides. “You knew, and you never told me!”

Jerome held up his hands as if in surrender. “We were only trying to protect you.”

“And a jolly good job you did, to be sure.” She glared at them both, and they each found something else to admire about the withdrawing room.

Samantha dropped her hands. “When will you learn that I’m not a child to be cosseted?”

Jerome rose. “I no longer see you as a child, Samantha. But you cannot ask me to stop trying to protect you.”

Richard stood as well. “That is a gentleman’s duty to those he loves.”

With them on either side so tall and righteous, she should probably back down, but the emotions of the day were still pushing at her, and she simply could not let things stand.

“And is it not a lady’s as well?” she demanded. “Would you expect Adele to sit calmly while you were in danger, Jerome?”

“Certainly not,” he started, “but...”

“And you, Richard,” Samantha persisted, “do you imagine Claire waiting at home while you sailed off having adventures?”

Richard’s mouth turned up. “She hated it the first time. I don’t think she’d allow it the second.”

“Then why,” she finished, “do you think I would be any more willing?”

They exchanged glances again, and she wanted to shove between them, demand they look at her instead. But she stood, watching them, daring them with her gaze and her high chin to continue this odious habit of attempting to limit her life.

“Perhaps it’s because we learned of you so late,” Jerome tried, charming smile, complete with dimples, popping into place.

“You are like a sister to us,” Richard reminded her, gaze more solemn.

“And you are like the brothers I never had,” Samantha agreed. “But you don’t see me trying to order you around or protect you from every little mishap.”

“No,” Richard replied. “You only tried to pair us up with our wives.”

Samantha grinned at him. “And I succeeded rather well.”

“That you did, infant,” Vaughn declared, striding into the room. “The physician has been retrieved and is conferring with Lord Kendrick as we speak. What have I missed?”

“A scolding,” Richard muttered, returning to his seat.

“A course correction,” Samantha replied. “Isn’t that what you call it when your vessel drifts? You three are seriously off course if you think I cannot take care of myself.”

“Now, then, infant,” Vaughn started, moving deeper into the room.

Samantha stopped him with a look. “And no more of that. I wasn’t even an infant when you met me. I certainly cannot be called one now.”

Vaughn snapped a nod. “Very well, your ladyship, the Baroness Everard.” He swept her a deep bow.

“Cousin Samantha will do,” she informed him. “I suppose you knew about Haygood as well.”

He straightened and eyed her. “Something other than he is a miserable worm?”

“Give it up,” Richard advised. “She remembered him.”

“Ah.” Vaughn went to take up Samantha’s former place by the hearth. “Yes, I knew. We’ve been watching for him to return from the Continent for eight years.”

“And you never said a word to me,” she accused, following him.

“There are some things you do not need to know, inf... Cousin,” Vaughn returned.

“When those things could affect my happiness, and my life, I disagree. There have been far too many secrets in this family. Nothing good ever came of them.”

They could not argue with her about that. She could see it by the way their gazes dropped.

“Go home,” she told the three of them. “Tell your wives what happened. I will return as soon as I know that Lord Kendrick is well.”

She thought they might protest, but they had apparently taken her request to heart, for they bowed over her hand, promised her their devotion and left. She could only hope this would mark a new beginning in their family.

And so she waited, and her thoughts closed in on her.

She hated waiting. She’d waited months between visits by her father; she’d waited years to go to London for her Season; she’d waited all her life to find someone like Will. She could no longer deny that what she felt was love. She wished she was the one lying in that bed, anything to spare him pain, save his life.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

How had she been so blind? Will had too many responsibilities and too much honor to merely throw away his life. Jamie needed his father’s strength; Will knew that. Kendrick Hall might fall but for Will’s guidance. With all that at stake he had put himself in the path of a bullet, risked his life, to save her, a woman who had given him no hope of returning his love, no reason to expect she would even stay in this valley.

That was love.

That was the patient, kind, self-sacrifice the Bible spoke of. That was the love she’d always dreamed might exist, the love her father and mother had never found. That was the love on which to build a marriage, a family, a future.

“Oh, Will,” she murmured to the ceiling, “forgive me.”

She only prayed she’d have a chance to tell him in person.

* * *

Will swam to consciousness as the physician was rebandaging his shoulder. The searing pain had been reduced to a dull ache. Glancing around, he found he was in his bedchamber, the familiar blue damask bed hangings on either side of him, his walnut wardrobe and dressing table nearby. He didn’t remember reaching the room, only Samantha holding his hand and promising all would be well.

She appeared to be correct, as the physician hurried to assure him. “Missed the bone and your lung,” the man reported, packing up the instruments he’d apparently used to remove the bullet. “You’ll be sore for some time, and we’ll need to monitor the use of your right arm, but you should survive so long as infection does not set in.” With that cheery thought he left instructions with Will’s valet, then promised to see Will the next day.