Chapter 44
How is it that some men are able to retain their titles when they are nothing more than raving Bedlamites? It boggles the mind.
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Aylesbury kept a steady pace but did not try to lose or outrun Ramsay. No, he wanted Ramsay to keep him in his sights. He didn’t want Ramsay to lose interest but to follow.
He wanted the chance to put an end to all this at last.
But how? As he tooled along, Aylesbury considered his options carefully, analyzing the possibilities. If she had been there, Fiona would have surely laughed and made some jest about using his brain instead of his brawn.
Aylesbury laughed. He intended to use both.
The greater part of his plan involved the most pleasurable physical dissemination of Ramsay’s person.
The proprietary barbarian darkening his soul demanded retribution.
At the same time, his intellect necessitated that he make sure this would be the last time he or Fiona would ever have to even think the name Ramsay again.
Yes, he would get the best of both options.
But where? His ancestral estate, Dinton Grange, was a large one with dozens of buildings.
He would need to be someplace far enough away from his people that they didn’t get hurt in the crossfire or taken as a shield or hostage by Ramsay or his henchman but still close enough that the authorities from Oxford would be able to find them.
Not the stables, then. Nor the manor itself.
Both were too well inhabited. The dower house would have been a good choice.
It was empty but too far from the drive to be noticed in passing.
The gates of Dinton Grange approached, and with them, the answer. Since it was his policy to leave the gates to the park open at all times for visitors, the gatehouse was empty and right there on the road. He could pull the phaeton to a halt right there.
Even Ramsay, the dull sod, would not be able to miss it.
And he was too driven by rage to resist the invitation.
* * *
Waiting in the shadows of the hallway for his prey to fall into his trap, Aylesbury absentmindedly checked the barrel of the pistol and hesitated. Just a single bullet remained.
One shot.
Two foes.
Cursing inwardly at the foolish fop who didn’t keep his gun fully loaded, Aylesbury wished he had thought to check it earlier and reconsidered his options.
The gatehouse was stripped bare, but the gamesman’s small lodge would have been well stocked.
Still it was deeper into the estate along the edges of the neighboring woodland.
Not far, but with enough open field between that he would make an easy target if Ramsay or his cohort were armed as the other thug had been.
There were weapons at the dower house. His grandmother had kept his grandfather’s old dueling pistols there.
It would be a hard run, but did the old things still work?
There was only one way to find out, and Aylesbury wasn’t going to risk failure on a whim.
Nor would he bring danger into his home and risk the lives of his dependents.
Voices sounded outside.
One shot.
It would have to do.
“Where are you, darling?” Ramsay’s voice rang out, a jocund absurdity through the entry hall. “I don’t want to hurt you or your friend. Why don’t you come out now and save me a lot of trouble?”
Aylesbury lifted his pistol to the ready, waiting.
There was a low rush of whispers, then the shuffle of footsteps across the floor, the creak of a footstep on the stairs.
One was going up, the other coming toward him down the hall.
Straining to listen, he smiled with grim satisfaction when he heard the hard, wooden scrape against the floor.
Ramsay had gone up in his softer-soled shoes, leaving the more practically shod ruffian to search below.
Coward. Ramsay assumed Fiona would have fled upstairs. He’d gone for the lesser threat, leaving his stooge to deal with Aylesbury. So be it. At least he wouldn’t have to waste his single shot straight away. There were better ways to deal with scoundrels for hire.
Waiting with his back to the corner, he counted the steps as they came. Waiting as they tentatively neared. Waiting until a shadow fell...
Aylesbury threw out his elbow, catching the ruffian in the nose and turned around the corner to follow the blow with a sharp uppercut that snapped the fellow’s jaw shut with an audible clack of his teeth.
Spinning him around, he wrapped his arm around the man’s neck until he held him from behind.
The man began to struggle against the hold but stilled immediately when Aylesbury pressed the barrel of his pistol to the thug’s temple and cocked it.
“Not a word,” Aylesbury growled softly. “Drop your gun.”
“Ain’t got one, gov.”
Snorting in disbelief, Aylesbury loosened him and moved slowly around in front of the villain, keeping him in his sights. “Show me.”
The man opened his coat, lifted his shirt and turned for Aylesbury’s benefit. “Ramsay took it. Bloody sod didn’t even bring ’is own.”
“No loyalty?” He clucked his tongue. “Or are you just doing all of this for the blunt?”
The man lifted a brow and shrugged. “Ye didn’t think we actually like the bloke, did ye?”
“Then why carry on? When I had already bested you once before?”
“Said he’d pay us double.”
Aylesbury almost laughed. “Did you see it? No? The fellow’s to let, chap.
He’s got nothing for you. But I...” He dug in his pocket and pulled out his purse, spreading it with one hand to flash the pound notes within.
As he expected, the henchman’s eyes widened greedily.
“It’s yours, all yours if you’ll just walk away and leave Ramsay to me. What do you say?”
The thug-for-hire nodded, and Aylesbury tossed the purse on the floor between them, waiting until the moment the man bent to retrieve it to bring the butt of the pistol down with a crack on the back of the greedy bastard’s skull.
Down he went, his head meeting Aylesbury’s sharply raised knee for good measure before he slumped to the floor. Checking to make sure the man was unconscious, he took off the man’s belt and bound his hands with it.
Listening carefully, he heard only silence. No movement from above. Nothing from outside. Not that he expected any. It would take far longer for aid to come from Oxford than he had yet provided.
He had time. Taking up his pistol again, he worked his way silently to the foot of the stairs with a grin.
Still one shot.
And only one adversary remaining.
The first stair creaked under his weight, and Aylesbury winced but made haste upward, intent on reaching his foe.
He was halfway up when the plaster on the wall next to him exploded, bursting in a cloud of dust and leaving the larger bits to clatter to the stair by his foot as Aylesbury looked up the staircase.
Ramsay’s person was nowhere to be seen, just a shock of hair and a single eye peeping from around a doorframe over a hand still gripping a smoking gun.
It was a six-shooter. Not as fine as the one Aylesbury still held.
Indeed, it was a rusty old thing, but unlike his worries over his grandfather’s dueling pistols, still in good working order.
“Hold it there,” Ramsay commanded. “Toss your gun away.”
The hell he would, Aylesbury thought. All he needed was one clear shot. As soon as Ramsay cleared the door, he could aim and fire before Ramsay even knew what hit him.
And he would hit the bastard.
But Ramsay was an even greater coward than Aylesbury had credited him. Even with Aylesbury in his sights, he stayed safely behind the door.
“Where is Fiona?”
Aylesbury shook his head, easing up another step but keeping the pistol hanging loosely by his side. “You’re a fool to pursue this, Ramsay. There’s no chance you’d get away with her. No chance you’d get out alive. Her brothers will kill you the moment they have a chance.”
As will I.
“After all the work I put into her, do you think I’m going to walk away from this empty-handed?
” the other man yelled, the cocking of his pistol sounding like a canon.
“Those bloody MacKintoshs have more money than anyone deserves. I was content to get it honorably enough, you know. I would have married her. I could have had her fortune and a hot piece in my bed to boot.”
Aylesbury’s grip tightened on the pistol, fury boiling his blood. He lifted his foot to the next step.
“I said stop right there,” Ramsay screamed.
Another bullet hit the bannister at Aylesbury’s side, sending a large splinter into his thigh.
He winced in pain as the pistol was cocked again.
Come on then, he mentally urged. At most, Ramsay had four bullets remaining.
If he spent them all as futilely, the only bullet remaining would be his own.
Aylesbury stifled the urge to fire just as uncontrollably.
He needed to lure Ramsay out where he could get a clean shot.
“Come out and fight like a man,” he taunted, tensing in expectation of another wild shot, but Ramsay didn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Why are you doing this anyway?” Ramsay asked. “I know who you are. You don’t need her or her money. Not like I do.”
Aylesbury scoffed silently. “But I do, you bloody bastard,” he confessed softly.
“And quite possibly more than you do. Having lost her, you will know only poverty and most probably enormous levels of pain. If I lost her...”—his chest tightened sharply at the thought.
Yes, it would be far more devastating—“I have far more to lose.”
Ramsay laughed then, his scornful chuckles echoing through the hall. “Because you’re in love with her? You think this is some fairytale? Do you think you have some happy ending in all of this?”
Answering with a contemptuous laugh, Aylesbury tensed to move and asked, “Why don’t you stop hiding in that doorway like a girl and come and find out?”
He feinted to the side as the pistol sounded again, this time nicking him across the shoulder as it passed. Aylesbury knew that if he hadn’t moved, the bullet might have gone straight through the heart. Three possible bullets left. More chances than he could take.
“Come on, you craven bastard,” he yelled. “Show yourself.”
“Give me Fiona first!”
He laughed at that. “You bloody fool. You think I brought her here?”
He had read about the American Indians as a young boy at Eton and always wondered how a genuine war cry might sound.
That was it, he decided. A howl filled with rage and frenzied madness.
Just like the one Ramsay emitted as he finally charged into the hall with his pistol raised.
He fired, and Aylesbury felt a sting against his scalp as he raised his gun. A trickle of blood.
Aiming, he fired his one shot at the madman charging toward him. He caught Ramsay at the head of the stairs, blood blossoming across the white of his shirt, but he kept coming, bringing that rusted pistol up again as he launched himself down the stairs toward Aylesbury.
Another shot sounded as Ramsay hit him, throwing off his balance. They hit the bannister as one, and it splintered under their combined weight. With nothing to stop them, they fell to the hard wood floors below.
Harry gasped at the pain that engulfed him. Rolling Ramsay off of him, he struggled for a breath. Nothing. His chest and hands were covered with blood, his mind clouded, dulled. He struggled for consciousness, but darkness closed in.
Another breath.
No.
Bugger it.
Aylesbury pictured Fiona how she looked that day. Bright as summertime and a merry smile all wrapped up in prim ivory linen with some jaw-dropping garments, no doubt, hidden beneath, waiting to be unwrapped.
The image faded to black. He would not have the chance to find out.
He had lost her.