The Love Affair of an English Lord (26 page)

Chapter 24

Chloe and her uncle reached the weathered stone gatehouse of Stratfield's estate within twenty minutes. Catching her breath, she stared at the elegant Elizabethan house. It seemed too benign a setting for the violent confrontation she feared had happened within. There was no movement behind the windows, no cheerful smoke rising from the chimneys . . . no sign of life or death anywhere. Her heart felt as heavy as lead.

“What are we going to do?” she asked her uncle as she tested the heavy wrought-iron gate and found it chained shut.

“You shall do nothing,” Sir Humphrey said, “unless it is to wait here in this gatehouse while I investigate.”

“But the gate is locked.”

Sir Humphrey began to bang his walking stick against the iron bars. “Finley! Open up right now! Finley, this is urgent—you must let me in.”

The door to the gatehouse swung open, but it was the strong figure of Adrian Ruxley, not Dominic's short, wiry, Irish gatekeeper who appeared before them. “Quiet down, Sir Humphrey,” he said as he approached the gate. “You're making enough racket to raise the dead.”

Chloe met his confident gaze, her spirits lifting in hope. He looked so unconcerned. Did it mean Dominic was all right? Was his ordeal with Edgar finally over?

“Lord Wolverton,” Sir Humphrey said in an urgent tone, “I do not think you would be standing there making jokes if you understood the gravity of the situation.”

“I understand,” Adrian said, his voice respectful.

Sir Humphrey subjected the man standing before him to a somber scrutiny. “Then why are you not with Stratfield at this very moment?”

Adrian removed a heavy brass key from his vest pocket. “I promised him I would not interfere.”

“So did I,” Chloe said in a barely audible voice. She gazed past him to the house. “But he seems to think he's bloody immortal,” she murmured. “Just because he's come back once from the dead does not mean he can do it again. There is such a thing as tempting fate.”

“It's different this time.” Adrian regarded her closely. They both knew different aspects of Dominic, his strengths, and his vulnerabilities. “Dominic is not at the disadvantage. He's planned this engagement as carefully as Edgar planned his brutal murders.”

Chloe tried to take comfort in what he said. There was something reassuring about Adrian's confidence in Dominic's ability. Perhaps it was a male attribute she did not understand. She wanted to share his faith and courage, but she was certain she would not take an easy breath until the moment she saw Dominic again with her own eyes.

The feeling returned to her that Adrian was a powerful ally, a man apart from others. He was athletically built, a mercenary who had fought fierce battles in foreign lands. His strong-featured face and dark blond hair would turn heads at any ball in London. He would draw admirers to his charismatic personality despite, perhaps even because of, the controversy that surrounded him.

Yet there was a gentleness to him that had nothing to do with his past. Chloe could see it in his appealing hazel eyes. A quality that balanced out the rumors of his dark history.

“I don't care what we promised him,” she said as the gate swung open to admit her. “You have to at least make sure he doesn't need help. Edgar is a desperate man. He'll realize he has nothing to lose now that his treachery has been discovered. He'll fight to the death—”

“I made Stratfield no such promise,” Sir Humphrey said in a decisive voice. “Move aside, Lord Wolverton. I am obligated to come to my neighbor's aid in times of crisis.”

Adrian wavered, glancing back reflectively at the house before he stepped aside to let Sir Humphrey go through the gatehouse door. There was enough uncertainty in his gaze that Chloe's desire to intervene was reawakened. It wasn't over. Adrian would not look like that if it was.

“Be careful, Uncle Humphrey.” Chloe's heart ached with love for him. Then, to Adrian, “I can't bear the thought of anything happening to either of them.”

Adrian studied her for a few moments, then shook his head in defeat. “I will go to protect your uncle, but if Dominic thinks I broke my promise, I shall never hear the end of it.”

“Thank you,” Chloe said, staring past him at the house. Somehow she had to go inside, to be close by if Dominic needed help.

Adrian touched her wrist. “Finley is missing. He was supposed to guard the gatehouse, but he's been gone a little too long. I thought you and your uncle were him coming now.”

She looked up into his face. “Perhaps I can find him.”

“Dominic will not wish you to place yourself in danger.”

“Nor would I,” her uncle said feelingly. “I'd prefer that you wait inside the gatehouse.”

“I shall be fine. Do what you must do.”

 

Wait. No, she could not wait. Certainly not outside. She could at least locate Finley and send him to help. Not that she had a particular desire to come face-to-face with Edgar, to expose her part in this, but she'd be damned if he'd ever hurt anyone she loved again.

And she loved Dominic.

She began to run toward the house in her Sunday dress, up the stone entrance steps, into the dark oak-paneled hall. How still the place seemed. As empty and quiet as a burial vault.

“Finley?” she whispered, pivoting as she heard the front door creaking open.

There was no one behind her.

She edged toward the vast unlit fireplace and covertly bent to pick up a blackened poker from the hearth. “Who is it? Who's there?”

No answer.

She backed into the hall, stifling a gasp as she stepped over a man's brown woolen cap on the carpet. She stared down, sickened, at the small pool of blood beside it.

It was a gamekeeper's cap. She could not look at it without seeing Finley's leathery features, his shock of red hair, his hesitant smile. What had happened to him? Had he been trying to help Dominic?

“Where are—” She felt a hard muscular force against her legs and whirled, the poker uplifted, to look down at the heavy tan hound sniffing the carpet.

“Ares, not you . . . yes,
you.
It was you at the door. Come along. Earn those sausages you've been eating. Help me find Dominic and Finley.”

The dog led her down the hallway, around the corner, to the library. She could not see any more blood, but it occurred to her that there might be more than the one hiding place Dominic had shown her in the house.

The logical choice would be the library, where a man might spend hours alone and unobserved. The door was already opened. The room smelled pleasantly of brandy fumes and musty, old leather-bound books. It was a dark retreat, the heavy drapes closed against the daylight.

Papers lay scattered across the floor. A chair was overturned as if there had been a scuffle.

“Dominic?” she said in an undertone. “Finley, are you in here?”

She stared around the room. Ares pushed past her, his nose to the floor, picking up a scent.

“Find them,” she said, gripping the poker in her gloved hands.

Not the fireplace, she thought. The dog moved right past it without stopping. She watched him walk straight to a corner bookshelf, then disappear.

The panel gaped open. She followed the dog into the dark crevice, all her senses on the alert.

“Dominic?” she whispered, staring down into a musty black void.

A rough calloused hand closed around her ankle. She cried out, pitching forward with the poker, before she hit her shoulder on a beam and regained her balance.

Ares whined plaintively from the shadows. Below her, at the bottom of three wooden steps, a man moaned. She went down on her knees and pulled from his mouth the cravat that had been used to gag him.

“Finley,” she said in horror as he lifted his battered face toward her. “What happened? Where is Lord Stratfield?”

“My knife is over there in the corner. Cut my hands and feet free so I can be of use. Sir Edgar found me snooping about and took me by surprise. It won't happen again.”

She scrambled down the steps and felt around in the dirt for his knife. “Where is Lord Stratfield?”

“In the smugglers' vault. I sat here helpless and could hear him moving about. Hurry, Lady Chloe. Cut harder. Ye'll not hurt me.”

Chapter 25

The two men, uncle and nephew, circled each other in the darkness, relying on their intuition, on training, on survival instinct. Over a decade had passed since they'd parried together in the salon, since they had chased ruffians through the streets of Soho for sport. The rules of correct swordplay neglected, they fenced relying on sheer reflex and physical strength. Once Dominic had struggled to impress his uncle with his fledging skill, hoping to earn a word of praise, a toast at the end of a lesson.

Now he fought with but a single goal, a fire that burned in his heart. To challenge the man he'd admired and who had betrayed their blood bond in the most coldhearted way imaginable.

He sensed, rather than saw, the moment when his uncle began to grow careless, to weary. Edgar had lunged in a move known as the final thrust; Dominic had deftly twisted his trunk to the right to protect himself, anticipating the strike.

“Not bad, Dominic,” Edgar murmured, “but I have to ask, is this the best you can do?”

Edgar's blade came out of nowhere, slicing a thin layer of skin at the base of Dominic's throat. The heavy spill of lace of his highwayman's costume probably deflected a deeper cut.

At any rate, it caught Edgar off guard long enough for Dominic to balance for his own final thrust, ignoring the blood that trickled in a stinging rivulet down his throat.

Mercilessly he advanced, his body bent in a lunge. He could feel Edgar's desperation now, his realization that he was overpowered.

“You were always my favorite, Dominic,” he said, his breathing uneven.

“Your favoritism sent me to hell.”

“It isn't too late—”

Dominic did not hesitate. Positioning his left foot forward, he attacked. He felt his blade bury itself in skin, muscle, the tendon of Edgar's shoulder, heard the surprised curse that came from his uncle's throat. It was not a killing blow, but a disabling one. He stepped back, sweat burning his eyes, his arm lowering.

“For Samuel. For Brandon. The authorities can decide what to do with you now. You must answer for your other crimes. Be glad I did not murder you. I considered it.”

He stood in absolute stillness to reflect on what had happened. He had wanted to kill Edgar. Something had stopped him at the last moment, a scrap of humanity left in his soul.

He heard a faint, unfamiliar disturbance from the heavy floorboards above. Edgar dropped his sword and staggered back into the bony arms of the skeleton chained to the wall. The impact of his fall wrenched one of the manacles from its rotted beam.

Dominic lit a candle and gazed dispassionately at the macabre scene. Edgar sagging to his knees, drawing the leering skeleton to the dirt with him. The sight sickened Dominic. All that had brought him to this moment sickened him. He had done what he had to do, and now he felt drained. He was desperate to escape.

He turned to the flight of steps, then paused at the peculiar noise that arose from behind. He glanced back, his gaze disbelieving.

As the skeleton swung free, there resounded the hollow clank of a chain being released inside the wall, followed by a rusty hinge snapping loose from the ceiling.

“A trap,” he said, and watched in detached horror as a wooden platform poured a crushing load of stones upon Edgar's body. Dislodged chalk and mortar flew everywhere, filling the hole with billows of dust. It stung his eyes, clogged his nose as he hastened to flee for fear the whole damned vault would collapse.

The dust settled like a shroud on the scene below. The beams holding up the remaining walls seemed stable.

Edgar lay buried on the floor, crushed to death, his sword glinting in the dust. On the last step, Dominic slowed to bid his silent companion Baron Bones a final tribute.

“Well, we are both released at last, good friend, but it doesn't seem right to leave you in such an undignified pose. Not after we have shared so many confidences. At the very least you deserve a decent burial for listening so patiently to my tale of woe. It was what I promised you.”

“That's where I come in.” A shaft of light filtered down from the crevice cut into the wall; Finley stood peering down at his chalk-coated master with a relieved grin. “Looks as if you've a carcass that needs to be carried off, my lord.”

Dominic glanced up in gratitude at the bruised face of his middle-aged Irish gamekeeper. “Finley, what perfect timing. Do be careful of the skeleton, won't you? The poor fellow has suffered long enough. As for my uncle, well, he is done inflicting pain.”