Chapter 25 #2
“I meant to leave you alone, James. Truly. I thought guilt would be punishment enough.” Henry drew Kate back a fraction, keeping her between them. Her shoulder struck his chest, and she flinched.
Henry barely noticed. “For a time, it was. You were reckless, angry, half blind. But then you found your footing. Westmarch gave you a second chance. Society still bowed to Lord Brenton.” His arm tightened across Kate’s shoulders. “And then you found her.”
The loyalty he once had toward his friend collapsed, leaving behind a ruthless void. This was not some distant danger he had failed to keep Kate from. This was his past, his guilt, his mistake, standing with a pistol pressed to her side.
“Once she came into your life, you became useful again.” Henry’s voice cooled. “I hoped fear might persuade her to drag you away from the trail. Instead, she led you deeper.”
Kate strained against the arm that bound her, fury alive in her face. The sight of her struggling in Henry’s grip, the knowledge that he had been following her, cut through what remained of James’s shock. Henry had not merely betrayed him. He had put his hands on Kate.
“So you took her,” James said, each word held tightly.
“I took what would bring you to me.”
Henry locked his arm across Kate’s shoulders. James advanced one careful step.
“Release her. Now.”
“Always giving orders as though the world was built to obey you.”
“This is between us.”
“No.” Henry’s voice hardened. “That is what you have never understood. Men like you make the world, then call it neutral ground.”
The barrel pressed closer to Kate’s side. James noted the pale line of her throat above Henry’s arm, the defiance in her face, and the sliver of space between Henry’s finger and the trigger.
“You wanted me here,” James said. “You have me.”
“Oh, I do not merely want you here.” Henry’s mouth twisted. “I want you brought low. I want her to watch the great Lord Brenton broken for once.”
The lantern flame shivered, throwing Henry’s silhouette across the covered furniture, creating the illusion of a room crowded with ghosts.
“Put it down,” Henry said, “or I shoot her first.”
James did not move as he calculated every desperate possibility.
Henry’s voice dropped. “No title. No friends. No pistol. Let her watch what happens when Lord Brenton has nothing to hide behind.”
James lowered the pistol by inches, set it on the floor, and nudged it away with his boot. If Henry wanted to prove himself with his fists, James would let him. Anything that moved the barrel away from Kate was worth the risk.
Henry’s expression darkened with satisfaction. “Fight me, James. Let her watch.”
“Still need an audience to feel brave?” James asked.
Henry’s mask of composure shattered. He cursed and shoved Kate aside. She hit the wall, unable to catch herself with her wrists bound behind her back. Henry laughed and tossed his pistol aside. It slid across the floorboards, coming to rest in the shadows beneath a covered table.
Every instinct dragged James toward Kate before he forced himself back. She was moving. Shaken, but moving. Relief nearly buckled him.
“Let us see how long the title protects you now.” Henry advanced.
They circled each other. Henry lunged, arms outstretched. His leg hitched when he pivoted, but he compensated with a vicious twist of his body. James dodged, turned, and drove a blow into Henry’s jaw.
Every strike felt wrong. Henry had once laughed with him, trusted him, fought at his side. Now every familiar movement had turned against him.
Henry stumbled but did not slow, his face contorted with rage.
James lunged backward. His foot slid on the edge of a holland cover.
Kate let out a muffled gasp. He risked a glance and saw her working at the gag, her bound wrists twisting and straining against the rope.
If he lost, Henry would turn on her next.
A brutal punch cut through the air, but James slipped aside. With a snarl, Henry seized a porcelain vase from a nearby table and hurled it. James ducked, and the vase shattered against the wall. Plaster dust exploded from the impact, mingling with broken shards across the floor.
Henry came at him again. His fist cracked against James’s jaw, sending him to the floor. White light burst behind his vision before everything turned black, and he thought the darkness might take him after all.
Something small and silver slipped from James’s coat and skittered across the floorboards.
Henry grinned.
“You kept my token? I wondered what became of it in the confusion. A relic from a dead friend. How sentimental.”
James rolled out of reach, caught the leg of a chair, and dragged it into Henry’s path. The obstacle stopped his stride long enough for James to force himself upright.
“You should have stayed blind,” Henry snarled, shoving the chair aside and lunging at James.
James ducked, aiming his fist into Henry’s gut. “And you should have stayed buried.”
Henry’s breath left him in a rush. He stumbled into a table, one hand clamped to his side.
“Had enough?” James asked, lungs burning.
“Not until you regret mourning me,” Henry growled.
“Believe me,” James said quietly. “I already have.”
Henry lunged again, driving James backward into a chair shrouded in a holland cover.
James’s heel struck metal. His pistol. Dust rose in a choking cloud.
He caught the edge of the cloth and yanked.
The fabric tore free, tangling around Henry’s legs.
Henry staggered, and James saw his chance.
He drove a fist into Henry’s ribs, then slammed another across his jaw. Henry hit the floor, stunned.
James dropped to one knee, snatched up the pistol, and trained it on Henry, who struggled to rise, breathing hard. After all these months, he was finally facing the man he had hunted. Not Henry’s killer, but Henry himself.
Every grief-stricken night, every reckless chase, every guilty breath seemed to draw itself into the pistol in James’s hand.
Henry had betrayed him, haunted him, and dared to lay hands on Kate, stealing her away in the dark.
One pull, and Henry would be gone. It would not be justice, but it would be an ending.
The token gleamed on the floor between them, stripped of every meaning James had given it.
He cocked the pistol.
Kate’s voice tore across the room.
“No!”
James froze.
“James,” Kate said, her voice trembling but clear. “Do not let him make you less than you are.”
His finger tightened. Vengeance felt almost like justice. Once, that would have been enough. But Kate had given him a life beyond revenge, and he would not let Henry drag him back into the dark. The pistol shook once in his grip, then steadied.
“There he is,” Henry said, his mouth twisting. “The noble fool.”
“Better a noble fool than a traitorous coward.”
James eased the pistol down by a fraction, enough to choose restraint without lowering his guard as he stood. “Stand up.”
Henry rose slowly, dust clinging to his coat, fists clenched. James saw the movement too late. Henry flung a handful of plaster dust into James’s eyes.
By the time James cleared his vision, Henry had twisted behind him, one arm locked across his chest, trapping James’s pistol wrist against his hip. The weapon was useless. Cold steel pressed beneath his jaw.
James froze. Henry gripped the weapon with trembling rage, the blade of the knife scraping against James’s throat as Henry’s breath rasped against his ear.
He searched for words that might stay Henry’s hand, but every thought returned to Kate.
If this was to be his end, at least he knew what it meant to belong to her.
He had spent weeks trying to protect her by keeping his distance, only to bind his life to hers in secret just days before.
He had sworn a vow to love and cherish her, and he would hold that promise like a shield until his very last breath.
Death might take the life they planned, but it could not erase the truth of what they had chosen together, what they had become to each other. Loving Kate had never been the danger. It had been his saving grace.
A click cut through the silence.
Kate stood several paces away, her left hand still trailing frayed rope, aiming a pistol at Henry. The loosened table cover stirred behind her.
“I suggest you set down the knife,” Kate said, her voice strained but resolute.
“You think she can shoot me?” Henry sneered.
James met Kate’s eyes. Her hands trembled, but her gaze did not. Pride cut through his fear, fierce and certain. “I know she can.”
“Kill me, and nothing changes,” Henry scoffed. “Arcadia does not end with me.”
Movement stirred in the hallway. The knife bit harder into James’s neck. He hissed. Kate shifted to get a clear shot. Her grip wavered once before she steadied it. He gave her a small nod.
A breath passed. Then two.
A flash split the dim room, followed by a deafening report that shattered the air. The recoil jolted Kate backward. Henry staggered, his hand flying to his shoulder as he dropped to the floor with a groan. Blood seeped through his fingers as he clutched the wound.
Footsteps pounded in the corridor. James raised the pistol.
Thomas Whitlock appeared in the doorway. Behind him, Alex and Hugh crowded into view, Nicholas and Westmarch close on their heels.
“Do not shoot,” Thomas said, keeping his weapon lowered. “I am here for my brother.” He crossed the room, kicked the knife out of Henry’s reach, and trained his pistol on him.
James stared at him as one thing became clear. “You’re Bow Street?”
“A Runner,” Thomas said. “And not your enemy. The rest can wait.”
Henry blinked up at James, shock and pain lining his face. “Your wife. Shot me.” Then his eyes rolled back, and he slumped unconscious.
Thomas crouched briefly, two fingers pressed to Henry’s wrist. “He’ll live,” he said, his voice flat.
No one moved. It was not over. Not truly. But Kate was alive, and for one breath, that was all his heart could hold.
James moved toward her. His hands shook as he freed the last of the rope from her wrists. Then he gathered her into his arms. His heart, wild and fractured all night, steadied for the first time since her scream. Behind him, the room remained in stunned silence.
Until Nicholas spoke.
“I beg your pardon, did he say your wife?”