Chapter 28
Rosalind heard the shot before she understood what had happened.
The sound exploded through the cellar with such force that for one terrible instant there was nothing else. No voices. No movement. Only a high, piercing ringing inside her ears and the violent shudder of the floor beneath her feet.
Then something cracked overhead.
Rosalind threw up an arm as plaster and dust rained from the ceiling. A portion of the old surface broke loose near the stairs and struck the stones below, sending another cloud rolling through the cellar until the candlelight disappeared behind a pale haze.
Someone shouted but she could not tell who.
Her ears were still ringing so badly that every sound seemed distant and distorted, and for several seconds Rosalind could see almost nothing through the dust.
“Papa!”
She stumbled toward the cell, searching desperately through the haze until a figure moved behind the bars.
Her father.
He was still standing.
Relief nearly buckled her knees. Her father was alive.
Then, through the settling dust, she saw William lying several feet away from Algernon, one arm trapped beneath him and the other stretched awkwardly across the stone floor.
The relief vanished so quickly it left her breathless.
“William?”
She was already moving toward him when Algernon shifted behind her.
Gabriel reached him first.
Gabriel seized the iron bar from the floor and drove it hard against the stones directly in front of Algernon, forcing him back without striking him.
“Do not move.”
Algernon froze, and Gabriel remained between him and the others, breathing heavily as he gripped the iron bar in both hands. Dust clung to his coat and hair, but it was the expression on his face that caught Rosalind’s attention. She had never seen him look at anyone with such cold fury.
“If he dies,” Gabriel said, his voice barely carrying through the ringing in her ears, “I will kill you with my own hands.”
“Gabriel.”
Isabella’s voice came faintly through the haze, but Rosalind barely registered it. She had already dropped to her knees beside William, and the sight of the blood spreading darkly across his coat drove everything else from her mind.
There was so much of it.
She could not even tell precisely where the bullet had struck him, only that the fabric near his side was rapidly growing darker. Her hands hovered over him, trembling with the need to do something and the fear that touching him might somehow make it worse.
“William.”
His eyes opened slightly at the sound of his name, and relief rushed through her so fiercely that a sob caught in her throat.
“There you are,” he murmured.
His voice frightened her almost as much as the blood. It was weak and distant, without any of the warmth and easy humor she knew so well.
Rosalind slipped one hand carefully beneath his head and lifted him into her lap. “Do not move.”
“I think,” he said after a moment, “that advice has come somewhat late.”
A broken laugh escaped her despite herself, only to dissolve almost immediately into a sob.
“Do not joke.”
William blinked slowly up at her, and whatever she might have said next disappeared.
There was so little color in his face.
Rosalind had never seen him pale before. William seemed made for warmth and sunlight, for laughter in gardens and brown hair turning peach-gold beneath an afternoon sky.
Not this. Never this.
His gaze drifted past her shoulder. “Your father?”
“He is safe.”
Something eased in William’s expression, and his eyes closed briefly in relief. “I promised.”
Rosalind frowned down at him. “What?”
“I promised I would find him.”
Her throat tightened. Of all the things he might have been thinking while he lay bleeding in her arms, somehow he was still thinking about the promise he had made to her.
“You did,” she whispered. “You found him.”
William’s eyes began to drift shut again, and panic immediately cut through her.
“No. William, look at me.”
His lashes lifted with obvious effort. Rosalind pressed trembling fingers against his cheek, needing to feel the warmth of his skin beneath them.
“You are not allowed to sleep yet.”
“I am tired.”
“I do not care.”
The faintest suggestion of a smile touched his mouth, and the sight nearly broke her. She wanted to be angry with him for joking now, wanted to kiss him for still being able to, wanted somehow to force every drop of blood back where it belonged and make this entire terrible night disappear.
“You are going to be well,” she said, holding his gaze as though sheer determination might make it true. “Do you hear me? You are going to be perfectly well, and later you may complain at length about how dreadful I was while nursing you.”
“That sounds unpleasant.”
“It will be unbearable.”
His smile flickered again, but this time it vanished beneath a sudden tightening of his face.
Rosalind’s fear surged back.
“Enough. Do not speak anymore.”
She was still watching him when voices began to rise elsewhere in the cellar. Isabella and Gabriel were speaking, but there was another voice among theirs now, one Rosalind did not recognize.
Keeping one hand against William’s cheek, she looked over her shoulder.
Through the thinning dust, Isabella stood near the stairs beside a man Rosalind had never seen before. He was perhaps fifty, plainly dressed beneath a heavy traveling coat, his expression grim as he surveyed the cellar.
Algernon stared at him.
For the first time since Rosalind had known him, the Duke of Aldermere looked genuinely stunned.
“Who the devil are you?”
The man stepped forward. “Mr. Pembry. Magistrate for the district.”
Algernon went still.
Rosalind looked at Isabella.
Isabella was breathing hard, her hair half fallen from whatever arrangement she had made beneath her borrowed hat.
“I found him upstairs,” she said. “Or rather, I nearly struck him because I thought he was one of Algernon’s men.”
Even now, Gabriel made a strangled sound that might have been disbelief.
Mr. Pembry glanced at Isabella. “An understandable mistake, apparently.”
“What are you doing here?” Algernon demanded.
The magistrate’s expression hardened. “Lord William Sinclair came to me two days ago.”
Rosalind looked down sharply at William. His eyes were closed again, his face frighteningly pale against her skirts.
“He told me he had reason to believe a man might be unlawfully confined at Bryn Hir,” Pembry continued.
“He could not yet prove it, and he did not wish to delay the journey while he gathered the evidence he expected to find here. He asked me to follow as soon as I could and bring assistance if possible.”
“You never told me,” Gabriel said, staring at his friend.
William gave no indication that he had heard him.
Rosalind tightened her arms around him as another rush of tears threatened.
Of course William had done it quietly. While the rest of them had been consumed with reaching Bryn Hir as quickly as possible, he had thought beyond what they might find when they arrived.
He had made certain someone else knew where they were going and why.
He had believed her enough to prepare for the possibility that she was right.
Mr. Pembry glanced toward Edmund’s cell before returning his attention to Algernon. “I arrived shortly before dusk and was attempting to determine whether anyone was inside when Miss Hartwell found me.”
“And you remained upstairs?” Algernon asked.
“I did.”
“Listening?”
The magistrate held his gaze. “Yes.”
A heavy silence settled over the cellar. Rosalind felt William shift faintly against her and immediately looked down, but before she could tell whether he was waking, Pembry spoke again.
“I heard enough.”
Something in Algernon’s face changed. The fury and certainty that had carried him through the confrontation seemed to falter for the first time as Pembry glanced toward the pistol lying several feet away on the stones.
“I heard your admission regarding the Earl of Eastmere,” he continued. “I heard your confession concerning your father, and I witnessed you fire that weapon.”
“You have no authority here.”
“I have rather more authority than you appear to imagine.”
Algernon laughed once, though there was no strength in it. “You intend to arrest a duke?”
“I intend to arrest a man who has just confessed to murder and unlawful imprisonment.”
Gabriel tightened his grip on the iron bar. “He will not give you any trouble.”
“Gabriel,” Isabella warned.
“I am being extremely restrained.”
Under any other circumstances, Rosalind might have smiled, but William had gone very still against her.
Panic immediately drove everything else from her mind.
“William?”
His eyes opened slowly at the sound of his name, and Rosalind tightened her hold on him as Pembry’s attention shifted toward them.
“He needs a physician.”
“Yes,” Rosalind said. “Now.”
The magistrate glanced toward the stairs. “I came alone. The nearest constable is several miles from here, and I will need men to transport Algernon safely.”
“Then go.”
Pembry hesitated, his attention moving between Algernon and the stairs.
Gabriel lifted the iron bar slightly. “I assure you, he is not going anywhere.”
“Nor am I,” Edmund called from inside the cell, “unless someone finally remembers that I am still locked behind these bars.”
Isabella turned toward him with a startled expression before looking down at the ring in her hand. “The keys.”
She hurried to the cell and began trying them in the lock until one finally turned with a heavy metallic click.
The door opened.
Edmund stepped through, and for one suspended moment Rosalind forgot everything except the sight of her father standing on the other side of those bars.
He was free.
“Rosalind.”
Her vision blurred.
For weeks, she had imagined finding him. She had imagined throwing herself into his arms, holding him tightly enough to convince herself that he was truly there and never allowing him out of her sight again.
Now only a few yards separated them.
William made a small sound of pain in her lap.