Earl Crush (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #2)

Chapter 27

To my dear br— J—

—fragment of a note left at Belvoir’s, ink-smeared, illegible

Lydia was starting to suspect that Claudine Thibodeaux did not have a weapon on her person.

If she’d had one, Lydia was fairly certain Claudine would have pulled it out and fired the third time Lydia knocked over the inkwell.

Unfortunately, Didier’s pistol was still trained on Lydia’s chest and had been since the moment the Thibodeaux had come through the door. They’d been expecting Jasper in the office, but they had not been disappointed to find her instead. In the confusion, it had become clear to Lydia that though they still did not know Jasper’s true name, they had uncovered the fact that he was her brother from the note he’d left in her chamber at Kilbride House.

Lyd , he’d written, I’ve been called back to London. I’ll break the news of your marriage to Mother. Stay here in Scotland with Strathrannoch.

They knew Jasper was her brother—and they knew he was a spy.

The larger revelation to Lydia, though, was the fact that Davis had not been working with the Thibodeaux, as she’d believed, but rather for the Home Office alongside Jasper.

Traitre , Claudine had called him. Traitor.

Lydia’s first reaction had been a relief so potent it nearly knocked her from her chair. Arthur—Arthur was going to be so happy. His rifle scope would not be used for violence. His brother—his beloved baby brother—had not intended to hurt anyone.

But her relief had been short-lived. She’d been mistaken about the Thibodeaux’s plans—they all had. Once the Thibodeaux had worked out Davis and Jasper’s association from the letters in her chamber, they had altered their scheme.

Now, it seemed, they meant to mount an attack on the Home Office itself. And they thought to use Lydia as bait.

His pistol pointed at her chest, Didier had informed Lydia in no uncertain terms that she was to write to Jasper at the Home Office and tell him to come and find her at Belvoir’s. They meant to lure him here and then—

Well. They had not said precisely, but Lydia did not think it boded well for Jasper.

She’d dithered and dallied, allowed her voice to tremble pitifully. For once, the tears that came easily to her eyes felt not like a vulnerability but a strength.

Let them think her helpless. Let them believe she was not a threat. She held Georgiana’s pearl-handled pistol tight against her thighs.

Eventually they’d proven averse to further distraction, and so she’d progressed to writing the note that they’d demanded. She’d spelled every third word wrong on purpose, but either Didier was scarcely literate in English or he thought that she was, because he had not mentioned it.

“How would you like for me to sign it?” she asked desperately.

“In whatever fashion allows you to finish this goddamned letter in as few words as possible.” Didier’s patience seemed stretched to its limit.

“Well, generally I sign notes to him, Your loving sister , but as this one will be arriving at his place of work, I wonder if that’s not entirely appropriate—”

There was a solid crash on the door to the office, a noisy splintering of wood.

Didier whirled. Claudine produced a pistol of her own and aimed it at Lydia from across the room.

The lock held. The door stayed closed.

“Lydia!”

It was Arthur’s voice, rough and familiar. Relief flooded her—gratitude—love—and fear too. Fear most of all.

Arthur was at the door, the wood a fragile barrier against a weapon.

“Get back!” she shouted. “Get away from the door! It’s the Thibodeaux—they each have a pistol—they—”

Claudine lifted her gun. Lydia shrieked and threw herself beneath the desk just in time for the sound of an explosion.

Oh God. Oh no. Oh God.

She couldn’t see anything. The front of the desk touched the ground—she was boxed in on three sides by thick wooden panels. Damn it, who had been shot? What had happened?

She had to know. She picked up the gun from where she had dropped it on the rug and crawled toward the side of the desk. Didier Thibodeaux’s hat lay on its side on the ground.

When she’d gone far enough to make out the contours of the room, she froze. The door had burst inward, the sound drowned out by the explosion of gunfire. She could see Didier’s back, his arms bracing his pistol. Beyond him, she could see Jasper and—she could not make out any more figures in the sliver of room that was visible to her. But Arthur—she knew she had heard Arthur’s voice.

Her ears rang, and the scent of gunpowder was acrid in her nose and eyes. There was plaster dust in the air.

The gunshot. Where had it gone? She craned her neck to try to see. It was difficult to tell from her vantage on the floor, but it seemed likely that Claudine had fired into the wall behind the desk.

She cautiously wiggled her fingers and toes, then put her free hand—the one not brandishing a pistol—to her face.

No blood. Everything seemed in working order. She was fairly certain she had not been shot.

“Gentlemen,” said Didier, “there is no need to act in haste.”

He was not facing her. She did not know if he had seen her. Her fingers tightened on her weapon.

Could she shoot him, if she needed to? But oh God—what if she missed? What if the bullet ricocheted and hit someone else?

There was a muffled sound, a suggestion of motion that Lydia could not see.

“Stop,” Didier said sharply. “Do not come any closer, Strathrannoch, or I will shoot you where you stand.”

“You’re down to one gun,” Arthur said. “You’re outnumbered. If you use your gun on me, the others will have free rein to shoot you and your wife both.”

“Yes,” Didier said, “but you will still be dead. Do not underestimate the satisfaction that would give me.”

“How satisfied do you think you’ll feel if you are six feet underground, Thibodeaux?” This was Jasper’s voice, she knew—but she scarcely recognized her rakish, laughing brother in those icy words.

“If you shoot Strathrannoch,” Jasper went on, “I will kill you myself. I rather think they’ll give me a medal.”

“Well,” Didier said, “it appears we are at an impasse then.”

His broad shoulders flexed beneath his jacket. His gun—he was lining his pistol up to take a shot.

Now , Lydia thought. Now is the time you act.

She leapt to her feet.

Everyone in the room whirled toward her. Every eye was on her—Arthur’s beloved face taut and pale; Jasper’s lips parting on a shout; Didier’s pistol trained, once again, on her own body.

She was sick with terror. She could barely feel the gun in her fingers.

But she could do this.

She held the gun out shakily, allowing it to dangle loose in her hand. “Let them go,” she gasped. “Please, Jasper. Don’t do this. Don’t let this become a firefight. Just… let them go.”

“Lydia,” her brother rasped. He held his pistol almost casually in front of him, but nothing about the lines of his body suggested ease.

Oh God. She might be wrong. This might be a mistake. But she thought—she was almost certain…

“Please,” she said. She looked at Jasper, trying to show him with the force of her expression that she meant what she said. “I need you to do this.”

He looked back. His blond hair was damp with perspiration; his mouth a grim line.

Trust me , she tried to tell him . I need you to believe in me.

And, slowly, Jasper stepped aside, leaving the threshold open for the Thibodeaux to walk through. The door hung crazily at an angle, the frame half-shattered.

Gratitude blossomed inside her, even as Jasper’s grim expression went grimmer. Cautiously, she deposited the pistol on the desk in front of her. “Go,” she said, shifting her gaze to Didier. “They’re letting you go. This is the best chance you’ll have to get away safely. Take it and run.”

Didier’s eyes flicked across the room, from Claudine and Jasper to Arthur and the remaining figure—a lean, dark-haired man who had to be Davis Baird.

Ever so slowly, Didier pivoted, his back to the open door and his gun trained on Lydia. He jerked his head toward Claudine. “You first,” he said in French. “Take the stairs. I will be right behind you.”

Claudine, her face contorted with fury, did as she was bade.

The dark-haired man—Davis—had begun to ease himself in Lydia’s direction. The tip of Didier’s pistol shifted from Lydia to Davis and back again. “What do you think you are doing, Baird?”

“Standing,” Davis said. His accent was identical to Arthur’s, though his voice was lighter, a smooth tenor. He took another step, putting his body between Lydia and Didier’s firearm. “I’m not in your path, Thibodeaux. The door is right behind you.”

Didier nodded once, his gun still fixed chest-high. And then he stepped backward through the threshold and moved cautiously to the stairs.

“Shut the door,” Lydia choked out.

Arthur was the closest. He shoved the broken door back against the shattered frame and held it fast with his body.

She could not tear her eyes from his face. He was still hag gard, his hazel eyes dark with fear and locked upon her. She wanted to throw herself at him; she wanted to beg him to come away from the place where the Thibodeaux had gone. She wanted to drag him underneath the desk, wrap herself in his safe, solid body, and never move again.

“Lydia,” said Jasper, “what in God’s name—”

“Go to the window,” she whispered, still staring at Arthur. “Look outside.”

There was a shout, a gunshot, the sound of clamor. She pulled her gaze from Arthur and turned to Jasper as he crossed the room in two long strides.

He looked out the window and his mouth came open in shock. “What the devil—”

Tears of relief were spilling from Lydia’s eyes, hot and cleansing. “I told Georgiana to bring reinforcements. I heard sounds in the alley a few minutes before the three of you came exploding through the door. I thought—I hoped—I believed Georgiana and the Home Office would be here. I did not think the Thibodeaux would get away.”

But she had not known. She had not been certain.

And Jasper had trusted her anyway.

“It’s them,” Jasper said. “My agents. They’ve captured the Thibodeaux.” His voice had lost the sharp air of command. His shoulders had softened, his whole body seeming to let go of some indefinable attitude of tension and responsibility. His hand, as he lowered his gun, was trembling slightly. “It’s over. It’s over, Lyddie.”

She sat down hard in the desk chair. There was plaster dust all over it—the hole in the wall was not so far above where her head had been in the seconds before she dove under the desk.

And to her surprise, the man who could only be Davis Baird fell to his knees in front of her. He reached out and clutched her hands in his.

She stared at him in utter consternation.

He was certainly Arthur’s brother—there was no doubt of that. His hair was darker, and he was built on a smaller scale, his body lean and compact—but the curls were Arthur’s, and the cheekbones, and the arched curve of his mouth.

“Lydia,” he said hoarsely. “I’m so sorry.”

She blinked down at him. There was a tiny raw scrape across his cheek. Her dark blue dress was smeared across the knees with plaster dust. Their hands were locked together in her lap.

Six weeks ago—or else a thousand years—she had imagined that the first time she met the man with whom she’d corresponded since 1815, they would simply recognize each other and fall into the habit of conversation built by three years of letters.

And somehow, her imagination had been right.

She recognized him. She knew him, Davis Baird. He had deceived her, had used her for information—but he had not meant to hurt her. He’d wanted to tell her the truth and had been prevented from doing so by forces beyond his own will or desire. She could forgive him for the secrets he’d kept, just as she could forgive her own brother.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Davis. It’s all right.”

“It’s not.” He looked up. His face was pale and fixed intently on hers, his green eyes fierce and encompassing. “I know I have no right to ask this of you,” he murmured, “but—will you marry me?”

There was a very long silence.

Her brain refused to parse the words he’d said. It seemed distantly possible that she’d forgotten how to speak English. Perhaps the gunfire at close proximity had broken something inside her ears.

“I—beg your pardon?” she choked out.

He stared up at her, his expression tender and hopeful. “Make me the happiest man in the world,” he said earnestly. “Marry me, Lydia Hope-Wallace.”

There was a long frozen moment in which she tried to think what she could possibly say to such a thing.

Then she lifted her eyes to where Arthur stood bracing the door.

But he was not at the door any longer. The threshold was empty, the door swinging slowly and crookedly on its broken hinge. She could see the long hall, the wooden stairs—the corridor silent and still as a grave.

Arthur was gone.