Chapter 23 #3
As the horses pranced to a stop in the courtyard, and before the driver could throw the brake, Hugh took a gamble and dodged to the side—the blast of the pistol walloped his eardrum, but he wasn’t hit.
Spinning around, he blocked Wimbly’s right arm and pummeled him in his soft gut.
With a hard twist of the marquess’s right hand, the pistol—a double-barrel flintlock—clattered onto the ground.
The marchioness screamed as the grooms and driver shouted, trying to bring the spooked horses under control.
In his wet clothing, Hugh’s movements were slower and more constricted, and the marquess landed a ridge of knuckles into his jaw. It only stunned him momentarily. His ear still ringing, and his vision unsteady, Hugh rammed into him, tackling the man to the ground.
Strong hands latched onto Hugh’s arms and shoulders, trying to pull him off the marquess.
“Neatham should’ve shot you when he had the chance in that duel!” Wimbly seethed as another pair of hands grabbed Hugh and successfully tore him away.
The grooms, Hugh figured, believing they were protecting their master. They held him back, locking his arms out and to the side.
“And I should have had better aim,” Hugh replied, all caution tattered and tossed to the breeze.
“You don’t understand the first thing about good breeding.” Wimbly lurched for his flintlock and leveled it at him again, prepared to set off the second and last shot. “I am within my rights to shoot, and no one will miss you, you bloody bastard.”
The men holding him scattered. Hugh stayed rooted to the paving stone.
“I might.”
A hammer clicked back on a second pistol a mere second after Audrey’s voice entered the courtyard. Hugh lowered his hands as Thornton appeared at Wimbly’s side, another double-barrel flintlock trained on the marquess with unwavering conviction.
“Give it here,” Thornton ordered. Wimbly’s scowl grew apoplectic as he turned the gun over. Thornton pocketed it.
Hugh spun, searching for Audrey, and found her approaching from behind the marchioness and her maid. She had a thick shawl wrapped around her, her wet hair hanging loose around her shoulders.
“What are you doing here? Your shoulder—”
“I’m fine,” she replied. “I remembered something after you left. The letter Fellows kept; the endearment used. My songbird. It’s what you called her too, Lord Wimbly. At the Seven Sins, do you remember? A light skirted songbird.”
Audrey took a step closer. Hugh saw her tremble.
“The marchioness didn’t write that letter pretending to be you. You wrote it yourself.”
“I hear you went into the Thames, Your Grace,” Wimbly said, dismissing her revelation. “I’ll wager that’s where the letter still is.”
Audrey reached into her gown’s skirt pocket and withdrew a piece of wilted and rumpled paper. “The ink has run in spots, but unfortunately for you, it’s still legible.”
Hugh didn’t care if she was bluffing—she was brilliant.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Wimbly hand dart under his jacket.
“Thornton!” Hugh barked. The gun the marquess had confiscated from Hugh shone in the light of the carriage oil lamp.
With a growl, Wimbly aimed at Audrey and pulled the trigger.
Hugh dove toward the duchess, but the pistol only gave off a muted pluff of a discharge and a small spark.
Wimbly stared impotently at the useless weapon—until Thornton slammed his fist into the marquess’s jaw.
He disarmed him, then tossed the flintlock back to Hugh.
He caught it, his heartbeat slowing as he looked Audrey over. Her eyes were wide with alarm at being shot at yet again but was otherwise unharmed.
Hugh turned to Wimbly’s driver. “The marquess needs a ride to number four Bow Street. And on second thought, Wimbly, I think I will ride along with you.”
Thornton nudged the marquess toward the conveyance.
“Susan, fetch our solicitor,” Wimbly snapped at the marchioness.
She gathered her skirts. “Fetch him yourself,” she spit, and then turned on her heel and stormed back toward the manor.
Hugh watched her go, unconcerned. She was as low as her husband for knowing the truth and trying to conceal it, but she hadn’t been involved in the planning of Miss Lovejoy’s murder.
“She’ll be on her way to their country estate before morning,” Audrey said as she joined Hugh at the carriage.
“Once news of all this gets out, she won’t ever return to London. Nor will St. John, I imagine,” he replied.
Audrey touched his sleeve. “Mr. Marsden, if the marquess tells the magistrate about Philip and St. John and why he hired Fellows—”
Hugh took her uninjured shoulder in his hand and stepped closer, lowering his voice.
“I will talk to Wimbly on the way to Bow Street. He knows he’s finished, but he won’t want to muddy his son’s name any more than he already has.
It won’t take much to convince him to claim mere jealousy of his son’s involvement with Miss Lovejoy drove him to plan the murder and attempt to pin it on the duke. ”
For the marquess, protecting the family name had been his ultimate logic, and to him, murder had seemed an equally logical action.
It seemed so pointless, all of it. The aristocracy always had seemed that way, at least to Hugh.
All of them working so hard to perfect their facade and cover up their truths, their secrets. Everything that made them real.
He let out a breath, still holding Audrey’s good shoulder. She trembled. “You need warm, dry clothes.”
“I’ll have Lord Thornton’s driver bring me home,” she said.
He peered at her. “Your being so readily agreeable makes me suspicious.”
“Still suspicious? Even after I just saved your hide?”
He huffed a laugh and held up his hands in surrender, reluctantly letting her go.
“Merryton,” Thornton said, greeting his driver as he appeared in the courtyard, likely drawn from his post at the earlier commotion. “See Her Grace to Violet House and then meet me at Bow Street.”
What Hugh wanted was to see her to Violet House himself. The lady, however, was more than capable.
“A hide for a hide.” Hugh hopped up into the carriage. “I think this means we’re square, Your Grace.”
She took a playful curtsey, made all the more difficult with her wet gown and injured shoulder, as the driver snapped the reins. As the carriage circled the courtyard and headed toward the street, Hugh sat back, grinning.
“This could be a problem,” Thornton mumbled from the opposite bench, his pistol still trained on Wimbly, who was already sporting a large bruise on his eye.
Hugh frowned, his smile slipping. “What might?”
His friend tipped up the brim of his hat and crinkled his forehead. “She is a duchess.”
The meaning of his statement landed like a stone. Hugh scowled. “Don’t be an arse.”
Thornton chuckled, but Hugh didn’t appreciate his humor.
His friend’s assumption rankled. He knew full well what Audrey was.
Whatever Thornton thought he’d seen, he was wrong.
She might have turned out to have more depth, more substance and courage than anyone he’d known within the ton—other than Thornton himself, of course.
But she was still a duchess. A married one, at that.
After the duke was released and cleared of all charges, they would have no reason to enter one another’s social spheres again.
Audrey and her duke could carry on and start to repair the damage done to their reputations.
It wouldn’t be easy. But Hugh didn’t want to see it be any more difficult than it already promised to be.
He shifted his dark glare toward the marquess.
“Wimbly, we need to discuss your confession before we reach Bow Street.”