Chapter 27
Rachael stepped slowly to the side, and Sophia wondered how to warn her to stay close without tipping her hand. She didn’t trust Braxton—hadn’t from the first moment.
“Here is your culprit then, Lord Braxton,” Sophia said, wary. “He has confessed to the murder, and there were three witnesses to hear it.”
Braxton nodded. “Well done, Miss Elliot. Now I’ll ask you to move slowly away from the clergyman.”
Without warning, Denney wrapped an arm around Sophia’s body from behind—over one shoulder, across her body, and beneath her other arm—and clamped tight.
With his other hand, he pressed the point of the knife to her throat.
“Let me leave, or I will kill this lady. We are going to walk slowly around this way,” he said, pulling Sophia with him and taking her to the center of the room.
Denney clutched the packet of documents in his fist under her arm, documents Anthony had spent two years trailing.
They were pressed against her, so close to her hand, and yet she couldn’t take them.
“We shall go out that way. Miss Scarsdale, I would ask you to move,” Denney panted.
Rachael slowly slid closer to Braxton, who shook his head at Denney, and said, “Do not be a fool, man.”
“I am not a fool. I am a desperate man with nothing left to lose. I’ve killed a man and negotiated a sale of a stolen government document.” He laughed. “One more death means nothing to me now. But it will be on your head.” The blade dug into Sophia’s neck and it stung.
“Stop moving, Denney.”
“And why should I do that?” he yelled, but did indeed halt.
The knife blade pressed harder against her throat, and Sophia felt a warm trickle down her neck that signaled blood.
She swallowed, the movement painful against the unyielding metal.
She and Anthony had only just found each other again, had only just put their relationship to rights.
She envisioned Jack and Ivy receiving news that she had died in India.
She pictured her niece, Catherine, whom she would never again hold, who would never again squirm to get away while she tackled her with kisses.
Braxton was speaking, Denney was shouting back, and Sophia felt as though she heard the whole of it from down a long tunnel miles away.
Catherine, squirming . . . Catherine, wiggling when she wished to be set down on the floor . . . Catherine, lifting her arms straight up and allowing her dead weight to impede the adult trying to pick her up when she was determined to do something else . . .
I will not die here. Not today. Not like this. Not at this man’s hand.
Sophia immediately allowed her body to slump as Catherine’s often did, turning toward the arm that held her tight even as she shoved at the hand holding the knife to her throat.
As Denney stumbled forward a step, she dropped all of her weight straight down, still shoving with all her might at his knife hand.
He cursed, unbalanced, and she took advantage of the moment to push his slackened arm away from her body, ripping the packet of papers out of his hand as she dropped onto the floor.
The shot that echoed through the room made Sophia’s ears ring, and she flinched, stunned. For a moment she wondered if she’d been hit by a bullet, but as she placed her hands over her ears and looked over at Denney, she noted the hole in his forehead and the vacant stare in his eyes.
Denney fell to the ground.
Sophia looked at Rachael, who also covered her ears, and at Braxton, who lowered his weapon with a grim sense of triumph.
“You shot him?” She managed to ask past the ringing in her ears. “You shot him while I was not inches from him?” She stared in horror at the dead man, her thoughts tumbled and confused. “He . . . he . . . But I told Charity he wouldn’t be killed! I promised her!”
“Miss Elliot,” Braxton said as he secured his weapon. “You find fault with the way I saved your life?”
Sophia gaped. “I knocked him off balance, you had only to subdue him. You didn’t have to kill him!”
“He was a British citizen who killed another British citizen in cold blood. He would have met the gallows.”
“That is not for you to determine or decide!”
Sophia looked at Denney, at his limp, empty hand, and at the knife that had clattered to the floor. She pressed the packet to her chest with shaking hands, determined to see that Anthony receive it. If one good thing came from the hellish night, that would be it.
Braxton smiled as she struggled to her feet, still clutching the packet close. “Thank you, dear. I’ll handle that from this point.”
She shook her head. “No. I’ll deliver it to Anthony myself.”
He raised a brow. “Well then, you should know that Anthony works for me. It will come to my hands ultimately.”
Oily.
“No. Again, I shall keep it with me. Nobody should see it.”
He laughed. “Nobody should see it? Miss Elliot, I wrote it.”
She narrowed her eyes, swaying on her feet but maintaining a death grip on the packet. “You wrote it?”
“Yes, and it was stolen from my office.”
She wished she weren’t so tired, that her ears would stop ringing. She couldn’t think, couldn’t reason. The only thing she knew for certain was that Braxton was not to be trusted.
She said as much to Rachael.
“I wondered.” Rachael still had her firearm, and she pointed it at Braxton, although it wavered dangerously and Sophia worried Rachael might shoot herself by accident. “You should leave Miss Elliot alone.”
“You’re threatening a peer of the realm, Miss Scarsdale? You don’t seem to understand I have the power to destroy your whole family. From Kent, are they not?”
Rachael’s lips tightened, and her eyes blazed. “Do not threaten my family.”
He moved so quickly it was a blur, raising his gun and striking Rachael’s temple with the butt of it. Rachael fell, her gun clattering next to her on the stone floor.
Sophia gasped and felt her knees buckle. “You killed her!”
“No, I didn’t kill her. I put her to sleep.” He advanced on Sophia, and she backed up until her legs hit against the short stone wall. “You look tired, Miss Elliot.” With that, his arm came up, she felt a crack against her temple, and all was dark.
Anthony watched Sophia crumple to the ground as though it happened ridiculously slowly.
He was winded and sick with fear. When Lady Pilkington had told him not to worry, that she had dispatched Lord Braxton straightaway to the ruins to rescue the women, he hadn’t been able to move fast enough, to commandeer a fresh horse quickly enough.
Dylan rushed up behind him in the dark hallway and took in the scene. “What has happened here, my lords?”
“This man is my employer,” Anthony ground out and moved slowly across the room, giving a wide berth to the body of Clergyman Denney.
Braxton’s eyes widened at the open admission. He recovered quickly enough and brandished his weapon. He snatched the packet of papers from Sophia’s limp hands and stood. “Do not come another step closer, Anthony. I do not want to, but I will shoot.”
Anthony smiled. “You do not have time to reload.” He rushed Braxton, using his momentum to drive the man backward, his energy fueling a storm of fury.
He twisted Braxton, shoving his face up against a pillar and noting a satisfying thud as he did so.
Using one hand, he twisted Braxton’s arm high up behind his back.
The older man gave a grunt of pain, but Anthony did nothing to ease the discomfort.
He used his thumb to dig into Braxton’s wrist, and forced him to relax his grip on the gun.
Anthony ripped the weapon from Braxton’s fingers and tossed it to the ground, where it clattered against the stone floor, slid, and then came to rest against the wall.
Anthony ground the barrel of his gun into Braxton’s temple and felt a vein in his own temple throb.
He glanced down at Sophia, relieved to see the rise and fall of her chest. “You are lucky she lives, else I would end you right now. As it stands, I will give you a chance. Who stole the document, Braxton? Who initially set out to sell it to the French? It wasn’t Harold Miller. ”
“Major Stuart, this man is mad. I demand you arrest him immediately. The clergyman confessed to killing Captain Miller. I dealt with him, and I insist on the return of my property.” Braxton choked as Anthony shoved his neck against the pillar.
“Who—stole—it? Who are you protecting? You should tell me now, Braxton, because I’ll tell you something.
Captain Miller left a diary. In it, he wrote that his nephew names the guilty party in this very packet.
” He reached beneath Braxton’s fingers which held the documents flush against his waistcoat.
He pried it away, his gun still pressed against the man’s head.
“Stuart, come here, if you please.”
Dylan walked to them, his weapon also trained on Braxton.
“If he moves, shoot him.”
“Understood.”
Braxton snarled but remained still.
Anthony bent down to Sophia, placed two fingers against her throat to check for a pulse, and was relieved to feel it steady and consistent.
Her skin was so pale. She looked as though she’d gone rounds with a bad sort in an alley.
He tilted her head to the side. There was a goose egg on her temple that he knew had come from the butt of Braxton’s gun.
He opened the packet of papers and found the Janus Document itself, which was several pages long.
It was indeed written in a familiar code—one deciphered through the use of specific passages in Shakespeare’s As You Like It.
Anthony had committed the pattern to memory, as had every government operative, former and current.
He located his name, Jack and Ivy’s information, details about Sophia.
Where she liked to shop. The names of his associates past and present and their information filled the pages, details so finely determined Braxton must have used a small army of his own to gather the intelligence.
It would take some time to decipher the whole of it. Anthony wasn’t certain anyone should.
At the end of the packet was a letter signed by Harold Miller. Not only did it outline exactly what had transpired, but it named the man responsible.
Anthony’s anger was so palpable he thought he might choke on it.
“You.” He stood and faced the man he’d not necessarily always liked, but ultimately had trusted.
“You were the point of contact negotiating the sale. You took Harold Miller to France, intended to use him as the scapegoat when either the information became public or when your people started dying.”
Braxton remained silent.
“How . . .” Anthony paced away from him, not trusting himself to not cause more harm than good when Stuart had a pistol trained on the man already.
“You were prepared to watch us all die or be blackmailed. Our families used against us, killed, tortured?” He flipped through the pages again.
He gave a bitter laugh and looked at Braxton.
“You told me you were in danger, that your information was listed here also. Which, of course, I would wager it isn’t. ”
“You are a smug one, aren’t you, Wilshire?
Your family coffers have always been full.
You have no idea what it is like to have the family property, all your holdings, gambled away by a wastrel father.
Do you think I have worked all these years by choice?
Only to realize that in my retirement my pension will not support me, let alone my estates? ”
“If Major Stuart were not here right now, Braxton, I would kill you.” He approached the lantern Denney had left on a ledge. Rolling the papers into a tight cylinder—all except for Harold Miller’s statement—he held them to the flame and watched the hated document burn to ashes.
“I hear the others,” Anthony said to Stuart.
“Reinforcements. I am going to get the women out of here.” He bent to Sophia, scooping her up and cursing Braxton when he saw the huge bruise that was developing around her temple.
Her head lolled listlessly against his shoulder, and he felt a stab of fear that he tamped back down.
“I’ll not go to Newgate, Wilshire!” Braxton shouted.
“No, not for long,” Anthony agreed without turning around as he carried Sophia to the entrance. “You’ll hang.”