Chapter Twenty-One #2
The silence that answered chilled Lucien’s blood. They moved swiftly through the entrance hall toward the drawing room, where a faint sound—a weak moan—drew them forward.
Blackstone’s hand trembled as he turned the brass doorknob.
The silence that greeted them was wrong—all wrong.
In the months he’d been visiting, Kitty’s house had always hummed with gentle activity: the soft scratch of her pen as she practiced her letters, the melodic Irish lilt of her voice as she read aloud, the whisper of silk as she moved through her daily routines.
“Kitty?” Blackstone called again, his voice cracking despite his efforts at control. “My darling, are you—”
The words died in his throat as they stepped into the drawing room.
The scene that greeted them would haunt Lucien for years to come, but for Blackstone, it shattered something fundamental in his soul.
This room—their sanctuary, where he had taught her to read, where she had laughed at his stuffy pronunciations, where they had planned a future that society would never accept—lay in ruins.
The small writing desk where she practiced her letters had been overturned, ink spreading like black blood across scattered pages.
Her careful penmanship—“I love you, Raven” written over and over in increasingly confident script—now trampled underfoot.
The delicate porcelain tea service he’d given her lay shattered, the painted roses he’d chosen because they matched her complexion now broken fragments glinting in the morning light.
But it was the larger destruction that made both men’s breath catch.
The heavy bookshelf—the one filled with volumes he’d selected to expand her world—had been torn apart, as if someone had searched frantically behind each leather spine.
Books lay scattered like wounded birds, their pages torn and crushed.
And in the center of this devastation, surrounded by the remnants of their stolen happiness, lay Kitty.
Her magnificent red hair—the hair he loved to watch catch firelight during their quiet evenings—spread around her head like spilled wine.
The morning dress he’d bought her just last week, a soft blue that brought out her eyes, was now stained with an expanding circle of crimson that seemed to pulse with each beat of his own racing heart.
“No.” The word escaped Blackstone as barely more than breath. Then, louder, raw with anguish: “No, no, NO!”
He was across the room before Lucien could stop him, falling to his knees so hard the impact echoed through the house. His hands hovered over her still form, desperate to touch, to comfort, to heal, but terrified that his touch might somehow make this nightmare real.
“Kitty, my darling girl, what have they done to you?” His voice broke completely now, the Duke of Blackstone’s legendary composure cracking like ice in spring. “I’m here now. I’m here.”
Her eyelids fluttered—barely perceptible, but enough to send hope surging through him. He gathered her carefully into his arms, and the warm wetness that immediately soaked through his waistcoat made his stomach lurch.
“Don’t try to speak,” he whispered, though every word seemed to cost him. “I’ll get help. The physician, he’ll—”
“Raven.” Her voice was a whisper, blood frothing at the corner of her lips. But her green eyes—those eyes that had looked at him with such love, such trust—focused on his face with what remained of her strength. “You came back to me.”
“Always,” he promised fiercely, his own tears falling onto her upturned face. “I told you I’d always come back.”
Lucien knelt beside them, his own hands shaking as he pressed his handkerchief against the wound in her abdomen. But even as he applied pressure, he knew with sickening certainty that it was far too late. The blade had found its mark with deadly precision.
“Who did this?” Blackstone asked, his voice deadly quiet now, though his hands remained infinitely gentle as they stroked her hair. “Tell me who hurt you, my love.”
“Lock…” she gasped, her bloodstained fingers clutching weakly at his waistcoat. Each word seemed to tear from her throat. “Lockwood. Wanted me to…lie. About…your marriage.”
The name hit Lucien like a physical blow, but he forced himself to lean closer. “What did he want you to say?”
Her eyes found his, and in them he saw not just pain, but a fierce determination that reminded him suddenly, heartbreakingly, of Courtney. “Told him…you were…properly married. Wouldn’t…wouldn’t let him…”
She coughed, and more blood painted her lips crimson. Blackstone made a sound like a wounded animal, his aristocratic features contorting with grief.
“Why?” he whispered. “Why would you lie for a stranger?”
A ghost of her old smile touched her bloodless lips. “Not…stranger. Your friend’s…daughter. Innocent…little girl. Deserves…better than…my life.”
The simple words, spoken with her dying breath in defense of a child she’d never met, broke something in both men.
Here was a woman who had been forced into a life society scorned, who had clawed her way out through her own courage and Blackstone’s love, and she was spending her final moments protecting another innocent.
“The physician,” Blackstone said desperately, looking up at Lucien. “We need—”
“Raven.” Kitty’s voice was growing fainter, her grip on his coat weakening. “Cold…so cold…”
Without hesitation, he shrugged out of his jacket and wrapped it around her, as if the finest wool could shield her from death itself. “I’m here, my darling. You’re not alone.”
“Don’t…leave me,” she pleaded, her voice suddenly very young, very frightened.
“Never,” he vowed, pressing his lips to her forehead. “I’ll never leave you. Not in this life or the next.”
Her breathing grew more labored, each inhalation a visible struggle. “I…love…”
The words never came. Her body went limp in his arms, her eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling where they had once traced patterns in the plaster while planning their impossible future.
For a long moment, the only sound in the ruined room was Blackstone’s ragged breathing. Then, with infinite tenderness, he closed her eyes and arranged her limbs as if she were merely sleeping.
When he finally looked up at Lucien, his face was a mask of such cold fury that it made Lucien instinctively step back.
“Lockwood will die for this,” the duke said with absolute certainty. Not a threat—a promise written in stone. “Slowly, if I have any say in the matter.”
Lucien rose to his feet, his own rage coalescing into something focused and deadly. “We need to find Courtney,” he said urgently. “If he’s desperate enough to murder Kitty in her own home, he might—And there is Mrs. Bellamy too.”
The unfinished thought hung between them, too terrible to voice.
Blackstone removed his coat and covered her with it, the gesture achingly intimate. Then he rose to his full height, every inch the aristocrat once more, but with something new and dangerous in his bearing.
“We will find Lady Courtney,” he stated with deadly calm. “And then we will hunt Lockwood like the animal he is.”
“You realize what this means,” Lucien said, watching the duke carefully. “To avenge her, to get justice—”
“I don’t give a damn about my reputation,” Blackstone cut him off savagely.
“Let the world know I loved her. Let them whisper and stare. It changes nothing.” His gaze dropped to Kitty’s covered form, grief momentarily breaking through his rage.
“She died trying to protect your daughter’s future.
I swear on everything I hold sacred; Lockwood will pay for what he’s done. ”
Lucien extended his hand, a gesture of solidarity that transcended their different stations. “We’ll make him pay. Together.”
Blackstone clasped his hand firmly; the pact sealed between them without further words. They would find Lockwood, and they would ensure he never harmed another woman. Whatever it cost them, whatever society might think—some debts could only be paid in blood.
As they strode from the house to organize a proper team to care for Kitty’s body and begin their hunt for Lockwood, Lucien’s thoughts turned to Courtney. He prayed she was still safe, still protected by the belief that she would meet Lockwood that evening at Lady Fenchurch’s ball.
But something in his gut told him their carefully laid plans had gone terribly awry. Lockwood had changed the rules of the game, escalating from blackmail to murder. And Courtney was now in far graver danger than any of them had imagined.
*
The men arrived at the Marquess of Lorne’s town home to find it in chaos. Rockwell, Farah and Wolf and Tiffany were there hovering around Lady Ashley who was being attended to by a physician.
Lucien’s blood turned to ice as he took in the scene before him—the shattered French doors, furniture overturned, blood on the carpet where Ashley sat with a physician tending to her head wound.
His eyes swept the room frantically, searching for any sign of Courtney, though he already knew with sickening certainty that she wasn’t there.
“Where is she?” he demanded, his voice cutting through the murmur of concerned voices.
Ashley looked up from the physician’s ministrations, her face pale but her eyes blazing with fury. “Lockwood took her,” she said, her voice hoarse but steady. “He came through the terrace doors with two men. Said something about Gretna Green.”
The words hit Lucien like physical blows. Gretna Green. The bastard intended to force a marriage, to compromise Courtney so thoroughly that her father would have no choice but to accept the union or see his daughter ruined forever.
Blackstone stepped forward, his aristocratic composure barely concealing the murderous rage that had been building since they’d found Kitty’s body. “When did this happen?”
“Perhaps an hour ago,” Ashley replied, wincing as the physician cleaned her wound. “They created a distraction—set a small fire in the kitchen to draw away the servants. It was all planned, methodical.”