Chapter 43
Chapter Forty-Three
For days, Zachary had not seen or heard from Elizabeth.
At first, he figured she was laying low so as not to ring alarm bells.
For God’s sake, he’d secured a priest. He went to her home and was told she had gone.
Then to his shock, he read about Elizabeth’s betrothal to Dyer in the paper. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
He wended through a myriad of parked carriages and society to celebrate the engagement of Rawlins Dyer and Elizabeth Spencer. He’d wring the truth from her. Up the steps he went, burst into the mansion.
“Do you have an invitation?” the butler intoned, chasing after him.
“To hell with it.”
People moved into a ballroom. He thrust through the line of jackals.
“Elizabeth!”
At the far end of the room, his eyes settled on her. Rawlins Dyer stood next to her.
Zachary stopped in front of her. “Tell me it is not true, Elizabeth. Tell me to my face.”
Dyer leaned over and whispered in her ear.
Her face turned white. “Mr. Rourke, I’ll say this once. I’m not going to get into a silly squabble with you. If you misinterpreted–”
“Tell me it is not true…after we—” he rasped out, biting off each word like a bitter taste in his mouth.
Several people inhaled from his crude remark. He didn’t care.
Dyer was smiling. He was enjoying his part. How he wanted to plant his fist in the man’s face. “Mr. Rourke, you are indeed interrupting what I consider a sacred and festive occasion for me and my bride-to-be. You should leave before I have you thrown out.”
“I look forward to it.” He threw the paper at them announcing her betrothal to Dyer.
“Elizabeth,” he demanded. “Tell me your engagement is not true. I want to hear it from you.”
“It is a mistake,” she said. “That you assumed an attraction.”
Zachary couldn’t keep the venom from his voice. “The mistake was mine for trusting you.”
“Enough,” said Dyer, flicking an end of his mustache. “You are insulting my intended. Men get rid of him.
Men jumped him from all sides. In answer, Zachary released a horrific howl.
He chopped one in the nose, making a popping sound, dousing him in a shower of blood.
With lightning quick ease, Zachary broke free and swung his elbow into a man’s windpipe.
The guard emitted a shuddering breath and flipped backward.
He kicked the next guard in the knee. The man went down in a sea of agony.
He’d not be walking for a long time. The rest backed off.
So did the guests, a screaming rush of lemmings, filing to the sides and out the door.
The chaos would give New York a lot to talk about.
Zachary’s eyes fixed on every one of his quarries. Three down, six to go. He’d been looking for a fight.
A burly, six-foot thug spoke. “You’re in so much trouble you couldn’t dig your way out.”
Zachary scoffed. “Are you talking to me?”
“Damn straight I am.”
“Save your breath.”
“We’re leaving and so are you.”
The big man launched forward with a wild grimace on his face.
Zachary danced to the side and took a left hook to the shoulder and put a straight punch to the center of the scowl.
The guy stumbled back, shook his head. Zachary forced him backward and dropped his chin to his chest and snapped a reverse head butt that made solid contact.
Zachary found his footing and met another guard.
He dodged an incoming right and snapped a blow of his own to the guy’s jaw.
Zachary followed with a flurry of heavy punches, a fast deadly rhythm, four blows, right, left, right, left.
His blows rocked the man enough to open him up for a colossal left to the throat that put him down.
Zachary kicked the legs out from beneath his next assailant, and he pancaked to the floor. Zachary kicked him in the head.
No holding back.
He stepped inside the next thug’s swinging arm, shot an elbow upward to his abdomen, taking his center, rolling into a palm heel strike to his groin.
Zachary danced back. Leaped high, spinning mid-air, snapped a hook kick to his opponent’s chin.
The man didn’t see it coming. More power.
More force. It lifted him back up and then dropped him like the earth had opened up.
“Boys!” Dyer ordered, and out of nowhere an army fell on Zachary.
Before he could wrench free again, ten men lunged, seized him in their arms. Pure opposing numbers his undoing Grappling him to the floor, they kicked and punched and manacled him.
When he was physically subdued, they stood him up with his legs and arms spread wide, none of them brave enough to be near him alone.
Several more men held guns on him, keeping their distance after witnessing what had happened to their comrades.
The bravest of the bunch came forward, delivered eight blows to his abdomen. Suddenly, Elizabeth stood in between them.
“Stop. I order you to not hurt him anymore. Zachary,” she begged, her face ravaged. “I’m marrying my long love interest. I’m sorry, Mr. Rourke. How you ever concluded that we would be a couple is unfortunate.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Dyer looked him over with his blue eyes that had no pupils. “It’s simple really. There’s the door. Elizabeth, come to my side. Now. You are making a spectacle of yourself and I won’t have it.”
Elizabeth walked stiffly to stand beside Dyer. “Mr. Rourke, I’m sorry if you were misled and took it to heart. You’re not the type I like at all. Why, you’re a cowboy.” She fluttered her fingers to him. “There’s no way I’d step beneath my station for a man like you.”
It was a dance of words, the two of them playacting with each other, pretending to be cordial, to make the final betrayal more bitter.
Dyer smoothed a finger over his mustache. “The lady has spoken. You should have learned your place.”
He fought against the guards holding him, narrowed his eyes on Elizabeth. “I could never fall for a betraying bitch like you.”
Dyer placed his arm around her shoulders, pressing her close, staking out his territory. She stared forward, not seeing. “As my fiancée has said, she could never lower her standards to ever consider someone as lowly as you, Mr. Rourke.”
She, who had done more than any other human being to draw him out of the caves of his secret, folded life, now threw him down into the deepest recesses of betrayal and hatred.
The fall was greater than he’d ever known, because he’d dared to venture so far into that emotion and had abandoned himself to it.
He’d been lied to and deceived.
He’d let her spirit enter and stroke his soul where everything was love and sensation and surrender.
She existed the worst of betrayers with nothing but the infidelity of her promises. He’d fallen for another manipulating and slandering bitch.
Elizabeth’s heart dropped into her stomach dreading the role she had play to protect Zachary and Caroline. Dyer’s last warnings: he’d kill Zachary in a heartbeat unless she said the awful words that drove a final stake in his heart.
How devastated she had been when she had tried to get away from her home a week ago. A whirlwind ensued, her mother cackling and clucking that Elizabeth had not escaped. She had been locked in her room again to be served by the grim maid. Her windows were nailed shut.
And now, she faced that same desolation with nothing to do but stand there and listen to Zachary’s verbal abuse echo through her head. Dyer’s skill for the dramatic had done the trick–his ruse irreparably damned her in Zachary’s eyes.
She took another step toward Zachary. Dyer yanked her back. “I am king in New York City. This is my backyard. You are na?ve to think my power is not endless. Remember your daughter, my sweet.” Her skin crawled. How could she have ever thought of this man as a beloved uncle?
But it was when she looked at Zachary that she wanted to flee.
When he lifted his head and glared at her, his eyes that days before held such warmth, were cold shards of ice.
How he hated her. And she thought for one awful second that if, turned loose, his long sinewy fingers would wrap around her throat.
She had seen him fight before, but nothing like what he had just showed. She’d seen the lion emerge, in his easy, ready stance, composed, but with lethal claws. She feared he’d be like this. Dangerous. Even Dyer stood rattled until ten of his men restrained Zachary.
Dyer smirked and then placed his fingers over Elizabeth’s shoulders, pushing her in front of Zachary. “Lovely, is she not?”
Zachary looked at Dyer, and then back to her, looking like a man who had lost his senses. His eyes blazed through her. Nausea rolled in the pit of her stomach. How Dyer relished his new role. How twisted and warped he was. She wanted to kill him.
Dyer continued his speech. “Elizabeth is the toast of New York, the city’s prized possession. You are not the first to be enticed by this seductress. Isn’t that right, my dear?”
She stared straight ahead. A veritable liar, Dyer had painted her as a very clever, complicit whore, succeeding in sowing distrust and hatred. Now he had made public her earlier shame, multiplying her disgrace a hundredfold in Zachary’s eyes.
“She’ll be my lovely and performing bride—don’t you think, Mr. Rourke? I can’t wait for our wedding night. I’m sure you’ll drink a toast to our—spontaneity and mutual pleasures.”
She could not look at Zachary. He had loved her and for that love he was betrayed. Never would he forgive her. Her head drooped. Dyer mocked the beautiful memories she had with Zachary, turning them ugly. Time had slipped through her fingers.
Dyer pinched her. “Look alive, Girl, act the part.” What would he do to Zachary? Would he release him? Would he harm Caroline?
Part of her died each passing moment watching Zachary’s face go completely blank, numb from the pain of what he could not bring himself to believe and the promise to him she had broken.