Scoundrel (38 page)

“No!” Allen let go of Lily’s hair to wrap his arm around her neck. “You turned her against me, you bastard. I came here right after you left this morning. I told her that I loved her, that I would make sure you never touched her again. Do you know what she told me?” Allen’s face twisted into a sneer and he tightened his arm around her neck in a sharp, jerking motion. “She told me you were
married
.”

Allen squeezed his eyes closed, his expression that of a man tormented. When his eyes opened again, they glowed with madness. Remmington knew then that there would be no calm discussion of the situation. George Allen was insane.

“She was supposed to be mine, Remmington. No one can have her but me.” His gaze slid to Lily and he rubbed his cheek against her hair in a loverlike caress that set Remmington’s teeth on edge. “I always thought we would be married, Lily, but this way is even better. I promise to make it quick and painless, darling. You won’t even know what happened.”

Remmington’s blood turned to ice.

“He will shoot me then,” Allen said, with a nod toward Remmington. “I’m going to die for you, Lily. We will be together always.”

“There is another way you can have her,” Remmington said, almost before Allen finished his obscene threat. It wasn’t a logical argument, but Remmington knew he wasn’t dealing with a logical man. “If you kill me, she will be a widow. You can still marry her.”

“No!” Lily cried. “Don’t hurt him!”

Allen silenced her with a jerk of his arm, but the muzzle of his gun shifted away from her temple. He changed his mind almost immediately and the gun came to rest against her head once more.

“You would never sacrifice yourself for a woman, not even Lily,” Allen scoffed. “What are you playing at, Remmington?”

“I’m the one you really want to hurt. I took Lily away from you. If you shoot her now, she will die as my wife. She will be
mine
, Allen.”

“No! You don’t deserve her!”

The gun turned so that the muzzle rested alongside Lily’s temple rather than pointed straight at her head. Still too close. Remmington drew a deep breath and took the biggest gamble of his life. “Don’t you want her, Allen? Aren’t you man enough to do what you must to have her?”

“Shut up!” Allen screamed. “You can’t talk about her that way!”

“Don’t you want to know her as intimately as I know her?” he taunted. “Don’t you want to know what it is like to have her in your bed? Or are you afraid you aren’t man enough for her?”

“Shut up,
shut up
!”

The moment the muzzle moved away from Lily’s head, Remmington raised the hidden pistol and fired. A second blast exploded in the room and Remmington felt a rush of air as Allen’s shot lodged in the wall behind him. The thick, choking smoke of gunpowder filled the room, and an eerie silence descended in the aftermath of the deafening reports.

Remmington dropped his pistol and rushed forward through the haze. He found Lily on the floor, dragged there by Allen’s hold around her neck. He pushed Allen’s arm away and snatched Lily away from the fallen man. With the edge of his cloak he wiped the blood from her face, his vision blurred until he realized that none of the blood was her own. He wanted to crush her against his chest and hold her until the fear that coursed through his blood spent itself. He didn’t want her in this room another moment, where she could see what he had done. The door burst open as he lifted her into his arms.

“Take care of this,” he ordered Jack, with a sharp nod toward George Allen. He kept walking toward the door then out into the hallway, his gaze searching then finding the innkeeper. “Show us to a room as far from this one as possible. Now!”

The innkeeper almost ran to stay ahead of Remmington’s long strides. He led them up another flight of stairs to the third floor, then to a large, airy room at the end of the long hallway.

Remmington gave the room a cursory glance then turned again to the innkeeper. “I want a bath brought up, and send one of my men with our baggage.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” The innkeeper bobbed his head, but he froze when his gaze moved to Lily. “Your wife! She needs a doctor!”

“My wife is not injured,” he said in an even voice, the look he gave the innkeeper filled with silent rage. “Bring plenty of water and extra towels.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” The innkeeper fled, slamming the door behind him.

Remmington crossed the room and sat on the bed. He held Lily in his arms, but he couldn’t hold her tight enough, close enough. He made himself look at her, at the horror of what he’d done to her. He began to pray, a prayer that she was still in shock, too numbed by the experience to know what he saw. She would know soon enough.

“Get it off me,” she whispered, her eyes clenched shut. Her voice was very soft, nearly hysterical.

A muscle in his jaw twitched and he tightened his arms around her. “I can’t, darling. Not until they bring something to wash with. It won’t be long now. I promise.” He felt her begin to tremble and he closed his eyes. She was alive. That was all that mattered. Yet there was one last fear. “Tell me you didn’t look at him when it was over. God, Lily, tell me you didn’t see that.”

He said another silent prayer of thanks when she shook her head against his chest. At least she would be spared that memory. The sight of Lily held fast in that nightmare would haunt his nights for years to come.

He knew before he crossed the room that he’d fired with deadly accuracy. The bullet had ripped through the middle of Allen’s forehead. An instant death, but a gory one. Held fast in Allen’s deathgrip, Lily was splattered with the unspeakable mess. He’d wiped her face as best he could, but the cloak had only smeared the blood. It fouled her everywhere; her hair, her robe, her skin. A tremor shook through him. Where the hell was that innkeeper with the water?

A soft knock at their door seemed a response to his silent question. Remmington called out, and the innkeeper appeared again in the doorway, followed by two men who carried a brass hip bath. They placed the tub in the center of the room as more servants appeared with towels and buckets of steaming water. An outrider carried in their baggage, then positioned himself outside the door to stand guard.

When they were finally left alone, Remmington carried Lily to a chair that one of the servants had pulled up next to the hip bath. She didn’t want to let go of him. Her fingers were clenched in tight fists around his lapels, and it took a surprising effort to free himself. He left her for only a moment to lock the door, then he knelt down beside her to untie the robe and push the ruined garment off her shoulders. She sat quietly as he worked, her limbs as disjointed as a rag doll’s as he freed her arms from the garment. He picked up one of the towels and plunged it into a bucket of warm water. He’d avoided looking at her face until that moment, steeled himself for what he would see, but the sight wrenched at his gut anyway.

It wasn’t her blood. She was safe. That litany repeated itself over and over in his mind as he wiped the damp towel over her face and neck. He had to wash away her horror, cleanse her of this abomination. He opened the front of her nightgown, ripping the fragile material to the hem. He pushed that soiled garment to the floor as well.

His hands were gentle as he lifted her into the hip bath, as unaware of her nudity as he would be of his own. He lowered her into the tub, soaking the sleeves of his jacket and shirt in the process. Glancing down at his clothes, he realized they were also bloodstained where he’d held her. His hands moved over the buttons, and he shrugged his jacket and shirt aside. Lily drew her knees to her chest, curling herself into a protective ball.

“No, sweetheart.” His grip on her shoulders was firm yet gentle as he forced her to lean back. He slipped the pins from her hair until it fell loose over the end of the tub, then he cupped the back of her head with one hand and pressed the other against her forehead. “Hold your head there for just a moment. That’s it,” he encouraged her, as he dragged an empty bucket beneath her hair. She closed her eyes when he poured ladles full of warm water over her hair. He pressed her further down into the water so she could prop her head against the back of the tub as he worked a bar of soap into the wet tresses. After he rinsed her hair, she reached up to take the soap from him. She worked the soap between her hands, then scrubbed furiously at her face and neck, repeating the same actions over and over. Just when he thought to stop her, she leaned forward and washed the soap away.

“Is it all gone?” she asked, wiping the water from her eyes.

“It’s gone,” he murmured.

He helped her to her feet and steadied her as she stepped from the tub. She reached for a towel, but he insisted on drying her, as impersonal at that chore as he was at her bath. In her satchel he found a chemise that he slipped over her head, then he tilted her chin up and looked into her eyes.

It was the first time she’d met his gaze since the shooting. He stared long and hard, letting himself drown in her sherry-colored eyes. The look of blank terror was gone. She would be all right. He repeated that reassurance to himself as he impressed the image of her face upon his mind, remembering the moment when he thought he might never see her look up at him ever again.

She’d very nearly died before his eyes.

It was a vile thought, too foul to contemplate. He smoothed his hands over her shoulders and down her arms to grip her by the elbows, needing to hold her, to have that small assurance that she was safe and sound.

She seemed to read his mind. “Hold me.”

He enfolded her in his arms, a precious treasure he’d almost lost. She laid her cheek against his chest, soothing yet intensifying the ache he discovered there. He rested his chin against her damp hair, then turned his head to lay his cheek upon the crown of her head, content until she began to shiver. He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed, placed her gently beneath the covers. They lay side by side, her head resting on his shoulder, his arms holding her tight against him. Then she began to cry.

“It’s all right,” he murmured. “Don’t hold it inside, sweetheart. Let yourself cry.”

If the bath had cleansed her body, he reasoned the tears would cleanse her soul. She soaked his chest with them. He finally had to leave her just long enough to retrieve a towel. The crying went on and on, sometimes almost silent, at other times wrenching sobs.

“It’s over now. He can’t hurt you ever again.”

She propped herself up on one elbow and gazed down at him. Her eyes were red from tears, her voice hoarse from crying. “I’ve made you kill a man. There will be an inquest.” She collapsed again on his chest and held him tight. “There might be a trial! Oh, Miles. What if you are sent to prison?”

In the aftermath of an attack that would leave most women hysterical for days, Lily’s greatest concern was his safety. Her words rendered him speechless. At length he recovered himself and began to stroke her hair. “Calm yourself, Lily. There will be no trial. I forbid you to worry about something that will not transpire.”

“But—”

He shifted her from his chest and pressed a kiss against her forehead. “There will be an inquest, but there are plenty of witnesses who will attest to the fact that Allen’s mind was unhinged. He burst into our room this morning a raving lunatic, threatening us both with a pistol. It was a simple case of self-defense, and that is all the authorities will ever know of the matter.”

“But that isn’t how it happened.”

“That is exactly how it happened. No one else needs to know about Allen’s other attacks. They will only make for more gossip. Allen was insane, yet anyone who was not present this morning might begin to wonder what a man was doing alone in a bedroom with my wife. Speculation might turn ugly about why that man is now dead. You will assure anyone who asks that I was present when George Allen entered our room.”

Lilys eyes grew wide. “There were others in the hallway. What if one of them tells a different version?”

“There is only one version. The one I just told you.” He knew there were ways to ensure as much. “I am serious, Lily. I do not want you to worry about the inquest. It will not take place for days, then it will be over in little more than an hour.”

“Will we have to stay here until then?”

He shook his head. “No one from here to London has the authority to question anything I do. We will have to return to Town.”

Lily looked thoughtful for a time. Her expression grew more downcast by the moment. “The gossip. Once people find out about this, the scandal will be awful. I don’t know how I will face anyone.”

“With me by your side,” he said surely. “Nothing will be as bad as it seems, Lily. Trust me.” He was glad that she didn’t dwell on the subject of Allen’s death. She was alive, and now she was safe. Those were the two thoughts uppermost on his mind, and they were all he wanted to think about for the time being. “Close your eyes and try to rest, sweetheart. It will do you good to sleep for awhile.”

She frowned up at him, but settled obediently at his side. She was silent so long that he began to think she’d actually fallen asleep. Then he heard her whisper.

“I was very afraid until you came to rescue me. Then you frightened me half to death when you started to goad him. I didn’t know you had a second pistol. When I heard the first shot I thought—” Her voice broke and she hugged herself closer to his chest. “I thought he’d killed you! Please, don’t ever frighten me that way again.”