Chapter 21 #2
A dry, teasing laugh emitted from his throat.
“Ahh, that blackguard, showing his stripes after all. Dallying with a married woman.” He took a step forward, and Audrey tried to scuttle back, but her skirts were tangled beneath her.
However, her fingers shifted the submerged rock. She kept trying to wriggle it free.
“And tell me, Your Grace,” he continued. “Were you repulsed?”
Repulsed? Her clawing fingers stilled. That was an odd word to use to describe their illegitimacy. “No. Of course not.”
“You lie,” he seethed, his mean humor flipping over toward anger again.
“It is repulsive. It’s revolting, don’t you think I know that?
” His voice carried. Audrey could only hope someone heard it.
But if she screamed for help, he would certainly shoot.
Her fingers scrabbled at the edges of the buried rock.
It wasn’t large, perhaps about the size of her hand.
“No one understood us. But it was love,” he said, a small crack in that last uttered word.
What was he saying? Was he speaking of Eloisa?
Then, gently, like the barest tug of a thread coming loose on one of her silk stockings, comprehension unraveled through Audrey’s mind.
A torrent of sickening dread buried her.
Her fingers, aching from digging through the cold mud, paused again.
Colonel Trenton spoke of love, but not that which existed between brother and sister.
“It wasn’t Hugh,” she whispered. Of course, she’d known Hugh would never have ruined his half-sister. The notion had been absurd, it had been repellant. She had believed it to be so debased that she’d felt disgust for Bartholomew for even accusing him of it. And yet…
“Hugh discovered you,” she speculated and was rewarded.
“El begged him to keep quiet. He promised he would,” he said. “But I knew he was lying. He meant to call me out. He meant to kill me.”
Shock transformed into denial, and then, with bile curdling in her stomach, certainty arrived.
Hugh had discovered Trenton and Eloisa. Together.
“Bartholomew called him out first,” she realized, “before Hugh could issue the challenge to you.”
The new viscount had either not believed Hugh’s claim…or he had, and the desire to protect his family name and reputation had eclipsed his moral honor. But Hugh lived. And still, he never breathed a word about it. A promise to Eloisa.
“You thought she was in London to expose that truth,” she said. “But how did you know she was even here?”
“Do you think I would not have had someone watching her all these years?” he said, becoming agitated.
“I was kept informed, and when I learned she intended to sneak to London and why, I could not allow it. When I found her in London, I warned her off. But she wouldn’t listen.
She said she no longer cared; that she would see us all ruined. And that Lady Reed knew everything.”
Air fled from Audrey’s lungs, and she went dizzy, even seated as she was upon the ground. He’d gotten it all wrong. Eloisa wanted to ruin him, yes, but not by exposing that secret. And Lady Reed had heard Joanna’s death bed confession, not the other secret.
“You knew she planned to go to Lady Reed’s soiree,” she speculated. “You followed her there. With your upcoming nuptials, you couldn’t let either of them expose you.”
He said nothing, but she knew it to be true. The bride was wealthy, Lady Reed had imparted, and if Eloisa were to expose what the colonel truly was, he would be shunned. He’d lose everything.
The trembling of a light and the clattering of a conveyance nearby stole her attention. She craned her neck behind her to see it.
“Utter one sound, and I will shoot,” Colonel Trenton warned.
He had one shot in that pistol. One chance to hit his mark. He was close enough to his immobile target to manage. But in the pitch dark, his chances of hitting a moving target would drastically reduce. This was her last chance.
Audrey gripped the rock and finally ripped it free from the mud. She hurled it toward his head and heard it connect. Trenton grunted and swore as she rolled to her knees and leaped to her feet. Hiking her skirts, she ran toward the carriage, which seemed to be getting closer.
“Help!” she screamed. “Help!”
“Audrey!”
The answering shout seared through her. Hugh’s voice. It sounded from her left, and she veered in that direction. A hand wrenched her arm and yanked her back.
“Stop!” The colonel’s command rang through Audrey’s ear as he pinned her to his side. Her ribs screamed in pain as a hard object pressed against them.
Hugh materialized through the darkness. “Let her go. This has nothing to do with her.”
The clatter of the carriage was upon them next, its dual lanterns tossing light across the lawn. It gradually illuminated Hugh, his hat gone, his hands raised as he stepped closer. He held no weapon.
“Stay back,” Colonel Trenton ordered, the pistol digging into her ribs harder. She let out an involuntary yelp of pain, and Hugh stopped.
“If you harm her, Thomas, there is nothing in this world that will keep me from killing you.”
“Alas, dear brother, you should have thought of the duchess’s safety before you dragged her into our family business.”
“He told me nothing—you did,” Audrey said, even though just breathing and expanding of her ribs was excruciating. “Eloisa wasn’t going to expose you for what you did to her. She was going to expose another family secret. Your illegitimacy. Yours and hers and Bartholomew’s.”
His body stiffened. “What?”
“Release the duchess.” Lord Thornton’s command came from the vicinity of the carriage behind them. “Marsden’s hands may be empty, but mine are not.”
The physician appeared in Audrey’s limited scope of vision. He came to stand a short distance from Hugh, and he held a pistol, the barrel of it aimed at her and Colonel Trenton.
He ignored Lord Thornton and squeezed Audrey tighter within the grip of his bracing arm. “What do you mean, illegitimacy?”
“The circumstances of your birth don’t matter.
Not now. I will kill you before this night is over, you primordial miscreant,” Hugh said, a harsh, mirthless laugh scraping up his throat.
“Eloisa came here for revenge, but not the revenge you believed. Did you stop to think what she could possibly gain from telling all of society what you did to her? About who the father of her child really is?”
With a swell of loathing, Audrey tried to peel herself away from the colonel. He wouldn’t relent.
“I loved her,” he said, his voice so rough she felt the claim reverberate from his chest into her back.
“You were always a coward,” Hugh said. “Slinking off into the shadows, letting your brother fight your battles for you. You have no idea how many times I have dreamed of putting a bullet into your warped brain. The only reason I didn’t was because Eloisa begged me not to.
” Hugh held out his arms wide. “Well, she is no longer here, is she? I challenge you to a duel, Thomas. Here. Now. As it should have been six years ago.”
Colonel Trenton went stone still. He didn’t speak. Didn’t even breathe. A coward, Hugh had called him, and Audrey could feel it in those silent moments. His fear, his cowardice.
“Release the duchess,” Hugh said. “Thornton, give me your pistol.”
The physician closed the space between them, extending his arm to hand over the weapon. Audrey felt the uncoiling of the colonel’s muscles, the diminishing pressure of the pistol against her ribs, and she knew what he would do.
“Hugh—!” she screamed a second before she was shoved aside. The hard ground jolted through her shoulder and back as the reports of two pistols, one right after the other, cracked through the air.
Close to her, Colonel Trenton erupted into howls of agony.
The pitiful sound burrowed into her ears, and with it came relief.
He’d been struck. But what of Hugh? She pushed herself up and was staggering to her feet when a body collided into hers.
A pair of arms wrapped around her, practically lifting her off her feet.
A hand braced the back of her head and held her close.
“Audrey.” Hugh breathed into her hair, loosed from its pins, and hanging around her shoulders. She instantly melted against him. “Are you injured? Did he hurt you?”
Recalling the second shot, she pulled back and looked Hugh over in the dim light of the carriage lanterns. “You weren’t hit?”
“Not even a nick,” he said, breathing hard. He raked some of her hair away from her face, his expression still somber. “But you are bleeding. Your head—”
“I fell.” She must have dashed her head against the ground. It didn’t hurt. Nothing did. In fact, she felt utterly numb as Hugh gripped her to him. He drew her away from the colonel, who moaned and growled in protest as Lord Thornton tried to give him aid.
“Carrigan,” she said with a gasp. “He’s been injured.”
“He is fine. We came upon him shortly after, and he and Sir went to fetch soldiers at the barracks while Thornton and I split up to find you,” Hugh said, leading her toward the curricle.
“I don’t think I’ve ever run so fast in my life,” he added with a huff of breathless laughter. But she couldn’t smile at his jest.
“I’m so sorry, Hugh, I had no idea. All this time, everyone believe you’d ruined Eloisa when it was…I can hardly think it, let alone utter it.” The upheaval was catching up to her; she began to sway. And shiver. She was freezing, covered in mud and snow, every last inch of her damp.
Hugh tore off his greatcoat and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Let’s not speak of it now.” He pulled her closer, his arms rubbing her back vigorously, as if to warm her. It worked. His proximity helped too.
Shouts and whistles rang out from the southern edge of the park, where the horse guard barracks were located along the Knightsbridge Turnpike.
Audrey clutched Hugh by the elbow. “You need to go. They’ll arrest you—”
“I’m not going anywhere. Thornton and I will explain what happened here, and Sir Gabriel will vouch for me too. He knows I’ve done nothing.” He rested his forehead against hers. “It’s over, Audrey.”
Tears pricked her eyes as the tips of their noses brushed together, then apart. She exhaled as he held her and dared to believe him.