Fear closed around her heart, tighter than a fist. “I did the best I could. Tell me, what would you have done with the young duke had I been able to bring him to you?”
He had told her the young duke would not be harmed. But doubt weighed upon her, along with dread. Had she been foolish to trust this man? She was beginning to wonder if she had ever truly known him.
He canted his head, smirking at her. “Whatever would have aided our cause the most. This is war, Bridget, and war begets casualties. It’s only a natural state of things.”
The breath rushed from her, bile rising in her throat. Thank God Leo had stopped her that day. She would have unwittingly led the goodhearted young lad to his murder.
“He is an innocent,” she said, tears stinging her eyes.
His eyes burned darker, anger stiffening his expression. “And how many innocents do you think the damned English have killed? How many lads died with hunger gnawing their bellies, because greedy English landlords demanded their rent during famine? Do you think any of the rich lords gave a damn about all the Irish they sent to their deaths?”
She flinched, for they were arguments she too had raised. She had always believed in Home Rule, and she had not been averse to tactics that would frighten the English into righting the wrongs done to the people of her native land. The brilliance of fighting against a wealthy, powerful nation with nothing more than civilian foot soldiers had appealed to her. Independence had seemed necessary.
Fighting against authority, she could approve. Death, however, was taking the cause too far. Murdering the Chief Secretary in cold blood in the midst of a park had been too far. Attacking the man’s innocent young son was the devil’s own work.
And she had been complicit. The realization made her ill.
“He is an innocent, John,” she repeated. “I believe in Home Rule, but I do not believe in killing to obtain it.”
“That’s a pity, Bridget.” He raked her with a scornful gaze. “Because I’m afraid you’ll be the one doing the killing.”
She felt as if she had somehow gotten trapped inside a nightmare. “No, John.”
“Do you want Cullen out of Kilmainham?” he pressed, his voice toneless.
The thought of her brother trapped inside the gaol made her shudder. “You know I do.”
“Then you will do as I ask.”
“How can you be certain he will be released?” she demanded, not wanting to hear the price for Cullen’s freedom for fear it was the cost of her own soul.
“I told you, I have eyes and ears within the prison. Freeing him will not be an easy or a simple task. But in return for your show of loyalty, I will see it done.”
“That is what you said before,” she pointed out, delaying the inevitable sentence he would deliver. “I did what you asked of me, and yet my brother remains a prisoner.”
“You failed miserably, as we have already established.” He drew nearer, and the scents of pipe smoke and hair oil assailed her. “There will be great danger in liberating Cullen from Kilmainham. In return, there must be great reward. The Duke of Carlisle took a liking to you, else you would not be here now.”
“He does not like me at all,” she denied.
“Untrue, or you would have been clapped in irons immediately, bullet wound or no. Yet he tended to you, married you.” John’s smirk turned nasty. “Why do you think that is, Bridget?”
She pressed her lips together, staring at him, not wanting to answer.
“I’ll tell you why it is.” He took another step closer. “You lifted your skirts for him. There is no other reason. But I don’t care about your treachery. All I care about is ending him. He’s too dangerous, and he knows too much.”
She almost retched, then and there. “I will not kill him, if that is what you are asking.”
John’s smile faded. “I’m not asking, Bridget. I’m telling you it’s what you must do if you want Cullen freed from gaol.”
Good, sweet God.
Bridget clenched her fists in her skirts. “You should aid Cullen without a price.”
John shook his head. “Everything in this life has a price. Your brother, in exchange for the Duke of Carlisle. You shall be the Delilah to his Samson.”
Denial shot through her, making her stomach clench. “I cannot do it, John. Do not ask it of me. I will do anything else, anything but this, if it means Cullen can be freed.”
“This is the price.” John was solemn as a holy man presiding over a funeral. “Your brother’s trial looms, my dear. He will be sentenced to hang, and you know it. Your brother’s life, in exchange for the duke’s.”
“Never.” The word emerged from her before she could think better of its utterance.
But as it happened, it ceased to matter, for one moment she stood alone with John, listening to the vitriol pouring from him, and the next, the door broke open. It slammed against the opposing wall with such violent force, plaster rained to the floor.
And on the threshold, there he stood. Leo. Her husband. The man she loved.
Only this man was different. He was cold. Aloof. Pistol in hand, the barrel pointing at John. He did not even spare Bridget a glance.
Dear God.
Leo had followed her here. He had known.
Of course he had.
He had not been looking after other matters this afternoon. He had been waiting for her to leave. Spying upon her. Watching her.
“Carlisle. Good of you to arrive,” John spat, and it was in that precise moment Bridget realized he too had a pistol in hand. His pistol, however, was trained upon Bridget.
Her heart thudded.
“You would train your weapon upon a defenseless woman, rather than the man you seek to murder?” Leo asked John, his tone biting. Colder than she had ever heard it.
“Is she precious to you?” John asked, the barrel of his pistol never wavering from Bridget’s head.
“She means nothing to me.” Again, Leo did not even look in her direction. His dark gaze was fixed upon John instead.
His words may well have been an act. Bridget could not tell. But they stung just the same.
“Perhaps I will kill her while you watch,” John suggested.
Her gaze flew back to the man she had once counted a friend. The barrel of his pistol remained pointed at her. “John.”
“Shut up,” he barked at her before turning his attention back to Leo. “What shall it be, Carlisle? Do you want me to put a bullet in her pretty head, or are you going to lower your weapon?”
“John, please,” she intervened, terrified. Terrified for Leo. Not even for herself. She did not believe John would shoot her, but if he did, well…she had been wounded before. But Leo. If something happened to Leo, because of her, she would not be able to carry on. “This is madness. Lower your weapon.”
“Here is your chance, Bridget,” John surprised her by saying. “You can kill him now.”
Bile churned, working its way up her throat, threatening to choke her. “Yes,” she agreed, determined to agree with him regardless of what he said. He was a madman. All she wanted was Leo safe from harm. “I will do anything you ask, John. Only give me a weapon, and I will do it.”
She swallowed again, arm outstretched. John reached inside his coat and extracted a second weapon, all while keeping the first upon her. Her fingers grasped the pistol. He relinquished it.
“I will give you to the count of five to pull the trigger, Bridget. If you don’t do it, I will shoot you instead,” John told her, colder than Wenham Lake ice.
“John,” she objected.
“Leave the lady out of this,” Leo protested simultaneously. “This is between the two of us, as men.”
“No.” John shook his head, eyes flitting wildly between Bridget and Leo, jaw rigid, clenched with determination. “Until the count of five, Bridget. One. Two.”
Bridget knew what she had to do. She had fired guns before. She would wait until five and make her move.
“Three. Four. Five.”
Bridget pointed the pistol at John and pulled the trigger.
It clicked.
Nothing happened.
Her heart dropped.
John sneered at her. “I knew I couldn’t trust you, you stupid whore. Spreading your legs for the enemy and then—”
The violent report of a pistol tore through the small chamber. A perfect blossom of red spread on John’s forehead. His eyes rolled. The pistol fell from his fingers, and in the next moment, he too fell to the floor in one loud thump.
It was over.
And Leo was unharmed, thank the Lord.
Stifling a sob, she looked to her husband, relief bursting inside her, thinking to throw herself into his arms. But what she saw kept her rooted to the spot. In his place stood a stranger. He stared at her, an implacable expression chiseled upon his handsome face.
“Gather yourself, madam. There is much awaiting us this day, and you will need to be strong.”
“Leo,” she began, starting toward him.
“No.” He held up a staying hand, his voice hard, punishing. “Do not insult my intelligence. Do not dare to offer me more of your lies.”
“Please.” She was not above begging. The terror of the moment, the fear that had coiled within her like a serpent, was making her weak. She needed him. Craved his embrace, his reassurance.
But she had forfeited her right to those. She realized that now. She had betrayed him in coming here, and he would never forgive her for her terrible mistake.
“It is over, madam. Collect yourself, and then the men must come in to take the body. He will not receive the justice he so richly deserved, but perhaps our maker will rectify that. You, on the other hand, must wait to receive your sentence.”
“Leo,” she said again, needing him to hear her. To understand. “I only came here because of Cullen. I would never have betrayed you. I pray you know that.”
“You could have come to me with your concerns. I would have helped you, Bridget. I pray you know that.” He paused, grimmer than she had ever seen him. “But you did not seek me out, did you? You did not trust me enough for that. No, instead, you trusted a villain who would point a pistol at your head to gain what he wanted most. A man who would just as soon kill you as use you to abduct an innocent child for his own nefarious purposes.”
“It is not what you think, Leo,” she said. “He promised me he would aid my brother. That he would help him to escape from Kilmainham.”
“He was lying to you,” Leo snapped. “Using you to force you into doing what he wanted. And you allowed it.”
Yes. She closed her eyes for a brief, steadying moment, before forcing them open once more. He was right. She had been so very foolish and naïve. Torn between right and wrong, husband and brother, love and duty, want and need. But she could see the difference now. Too late.
“I love you, Leo. Please believe me.” It was pathetic, and she knew it, even as she said the words.
But he remained unmoved. “Only a mindless fool would believe anything you say, madam. You have betrayed me and fooled me, used me and lied to me, far too many times for me to give a damn about a single thing you say ever again.”
She flinched from the sting of his verbal assault, but in the end, there was nothing she could say, and nothing she could do, to erase what had already happened between them. He was right. She was wrong. John was dead.
A handful of men appeared on the threshold then, bursting forth, pouring into the chamber.
“Escort the duchess to Blayton House,” Leo told one of them. “Do not let her out of your sight.”
“Leo,” she tried.
“Not now, madam,” he snapped. “I want you gone.”
Chapter Twenty
Years ago, when she had thrown him over for a duke with an older title and a more prestigious lineage than he could boast, Lady Jane Reeves had taught Leo a lesson: only a fool trusts blindly. Somehow, he had forgotten that old knowledge when he had fallen into the eyes of a raven-haired Irish siren.
But he remembered it now, a fortnight after he had put a bullet between the eyes of the last member of the vicious Fenian ring who had plotted the death of the Duke of Burghly. Fourteen days after he had last looked into those brilliant blue eyes, shining with tears, when he had turned his back on her and left her behind at Harlton Hall. Fourteen nights since he had last slept with her at his side, since he had last kissed and touched and sank inside her.
Fourteen was a small number in comparison to all the rest of his days. Paltry. Smaller than a dust mote.
Why then, did it feel like an eternity? Why was she all he could think of just minutes after he had finalized stepping down as leader of the Special League?
His carriage rocked over the streets of London, putting distance between his past and his present, hurtling him forward into a new era. One that filled him with trepidation. He stared out the window, numb. It wasn’t the familiar buildings or the crush of other carriages and pedestrians he saw. Rather, it was her.
Bridget, his wife, his duchess, his love.
Her cloud of dark hair, her bright eyes, the mouth he loved to kiss. She was a ghost who haunted his every waking and sleeping hour. She was everywhere, and yet she was nowhere within reach.
He missed her. He loved her. But loving her wasn’t enough. Needing her wasn’t enough. When he had followed her to the dingy rooms above an apothecary where she had gone to meet John Mahoney, he had been terrified for her. Terrified he would lose her.
But in the aftermath of what had happened that day, a cold realization had struck him. She had betrayed him by seeking out Mahoney, had even given the man a cipher key she’d thieved from Leo’s own waistcoat, and he could not trust her.
Not now. Perhaps not ever again. He had been wrong about her, and nothing had illustrated that painful fact more than the sight of her standing in those rooms, colluding with a Fenian plotter, instead of trusting Leo. He had not known what to do with her, and his initial fury had been so great, the only solution he could settle upon was sending her to Harlton Hall. Away from him.
He had taken her there, left her with his mother and his brother. Turned his back on her. But she had remained with him even as his carriage had rumbled away that day. Even as he had boarded the train bound for London. Even as he had thrown himself into his work for the League with an unprecedented, grim abandon.
For the first three days of her absence, he did not sleep. He had killed a man, and though it was not the first time he had done so in the name of duty, there had been something different about this man. It was not enough the man was dead. Leo wanted to know all there was to know about him, and he had given himself over to the instinct to dig deeper, to unearth the buried secrets of Mahoney before it was too late.
He had scoured London. Interviewed everyone he could find who had a connection to John Mahoney, or Reginald Palliser, the alias he was known by. Using his and Griffin’s sources, he had gleaned a great deal of information. The picture Leo had begun to place together had been stunning.
In Mahoney’s rooms above the apothecary, a treasure trove of evidence against him and a dozen others had been discovered: false beards, revolvers, addresses of fellow plotters, telegrams, a map of London, and packages of lignine dynamite. With the new information they had gathered, he went to the Home Office, and a fresh wave of arrests occurred.
Interviews with the newly incarcerated men had added the final details in proving Mahoney had been the ring leader who had plotted the Phoenix Park murders. And further, that he had been actively plotting to lay bombs at railway stations in London at the time of his death.
In the wake of the arrests, another undeniable truth had emerged. Cullen O’Malley had not been an active conspirator in the plot to kill the Duke of Burghly. He had been a pawn, manipulated by John Mahoney. The conspirator who had turned Queen’s evidence and implicated Bridget’s brother had also been acting under the influence of Mahoney. The charges against Cullen O’Malley in relation to the murder
of Burghly had been dismissed, and just yesterday, he had been released from Kilmainham gaol.
Leo’s carriage stopped outside Blayton House.
Like an automaton, he alighted and walked up the front walk. Ordinarily, today would be a cause for celebration. He and Griffin had managed to see another dozen dangerous men stopped before they could do harm to civilians. An innocent man had been released. A villain was cold and dead, moldering in the ground.
But these victories were bittersweet, because the one resolution he wanted more than all others would forever elude him.
The door opened, and there stood Hargrove, waiting for him as always, ready to take his hat, gloves, and coat. “You have a visitor, Your Grace.”
For a moment, his heart thudded into a gallop, daring to believe it could be her.
“Mr. Ludlow is awaiting you in your study,” Hargrove continued, dispelling the notion in the next breath.
His brother Clay had come to London. If he had left his new wife and son behind in Oxfordshire…
Leo’s heart beat even faster.
Bridget.
Was something wrong? Had she taken ill? Left him?
“Christ,” he muttered.
He did not even recall handing off his garments to Hargrove. One moment, he was standing in the entryway, and the next he was stalking into his study. Clay stood at his entrance, his expression unreadable. Like their shared father, and like Leo, Clay was tall and broad. The scar on his cheek gave him a menacing air, but beneath his harsh mien, he had the heart of a kitten.
Under ordinary circumstances, Leo would be thrilled for his brother’s company. But these were no ordinary circumstances. “Clay. What the devil are you doing here? Is it Bridget? Is she well?”
“It is good to see you too, brother,” Clay said grimly, lifting a brow. “I was beginning to think you had forgotten you had a wife. How heartening to realize I was mistaken.”
He deserved that jibe, and he knew it, but that didn’t mean he liked it. Leo raked his fingers through his hair. “Damn it, don’t play games with me, Clay. Answer the question.”
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