Fall of the Lyon

by Bowlin, Chasity

  Leo pried at the pedestal and, after a moment, the stone facade on that side began to slip, eventually falling away entirely to reveal a hollowed-out section in the center. It held far more than jewelry, however. Inside was also a bundle of documents. Carefully, Leo unfolded the first one. “This is it… these are the documents providing provenance for the jewels—and proof that Roger was on the Continent when they were stolen from me.”

  “So we have everything we need?” Meg asked.

  “No. You have everything I need!”

  They both turned to see Roger emerging from one of the hedges on the far side of the maze. He held a pistol in his hand. “I knew yesterday that I’d have to make a show of not wanting you here. If I was too welcoming you’d be instantly suspicious, wouldn’t you, Amberley?”

  “That’s a fairly astute observation,” Leo said, rising to his feet. He pulled Meg up beside him.

  As he helped her to her feet, she felt the faintest fluttering of his breath near her ear, “When I tell you… run.”

  “I can’t leave you!” she whispered frantically.

  “Stop whispering!” Roger yelled. “Whatever you’re planning won’t work.”

  “You can’t shoot us both,” Meg fired back at him. “You have only one gun.”

  “He doesn’t mean to shoot us both,” Leo stated quietly. “Just me. If he can make you a widow, before the documents pertaining to the inheritance are signed and registered, then he can force you into a marriage with Neville and claim it all. Isn’t that right?”

  Roger chortled, obviously pleased with himself. “You’re smarter than I gave you credit for, Amberley. I had never intended to let you leave Sheridan Hall, you know. All that fuss at the reading of the will was just for show. Had to make it look good, you know!”

  “Mr. Linley will raise quite the alarm if we do not return to London,” Meg warned. She hoped she wasn’t bluffing.

  “Mr. Linley is likely already dead,” Roger replied coldly. “I sent Neville to take care of that little problem this morning. He’s a horrid son… feckless, lazy, motivated more by the twitch of a skirt than the turn of a profit. But if there is one thing I can depend upon Neville for, it’s to do my dirty work. He doesn’t mind the violence.”

  “I’m shocked you aren’t letting him deal with us then,” Leo stalled.

  Roger shrugged and stepped closer to them. He was huffing and puffing, breathing far too heavily. It didn’t surprise Meg. He rarely took any exercise at all and preferred to spend his days in the house, smoking cheroots and drinking her stepfather’s brandy. He’d put on a significant amount of weight in the last months, gaining at least two stone since he’d arrived. It was clearly impacting his health.

  Despite his labored breathing, Roger grinned, showing yellowed teeth. “Oh, no. Normally violence isn’t something I enjoy… but taking my niece down a peg or two by ending your miserable life? That’s certainly a feat I’m happy to undertake. Always so snide and superior! Looking down your nose at the poor relations, weren’t you, Meg?”

  “I most certainly looked down my nose at you, Roger, but it had nothing do with your wealth or lack thereof. It was your utter absence of morals along with your reprehensible son that prompted my derision,” Meg fired back hotly. She was truly afraid. What if he killed Leo because of her? If not for becoming embroiled in her family issues, Leo would be safe and healthy in London, looking for an heiress and caring for his half-sisters. His half-sisters. The thought entered her mind and Meg blanched. They’d truly be orphaned if something happened to him.

  “We know about the jewels,” she blurted out. “We knew about them yesterday after the reading of the will… how you used a false name to trick Sir William into purchasing items you stole from Leo all those years ago!”

  Roger laughed then moved closer still. He was little more than a yard away from them now. “So you found the emeralds. I’ve been searching for them for months, by the way. Given that I know you left the library and went directly to your room to enjoy your conjugal bliss, at least now I’ll know to narrow my search to the library! You’re a smart girl, Margaret. Pity you weren’t smart enough to find a way to save yourself and your new husband.”

  “Run… now!” Leo snapped.

  Meg took off, heading for the hedges on the far side, hoping to draw her uncle’s eyes away from Leo so that he might be able to escape himself in the other direction. But as she glanced back, it was apparent that her husband had other plans. Rather than running away from Roger Snead, Leo charged toward him. He’d dropped his cane, the close quarters combat making it an ineffective weapon, but he clearly had the advantage.

  Roger had obviously not expected him to fight back or to have such agility. The shot he fired went wide, missing Leo entirely and taking a chunk of plaster from the statue of Adonis. Roger had made a fatal error in getting so close to them. He’d spent his only shot and before he could reload, Leo had him on the ground. Regardless of his past injury, Leo was a young man, strong and in his prime. Roger was older and not at all fit, having lived a dissipate life that had left him with gout and numerous other ailments. Despite that, it wasn’t an easy thing. They grappled for the pistol as Roger tried to use it as a bludgeon.

  Meg had never made it from the maze’s center. She’d stopped running as soon as she was far enough from Leo that Roger wouldn’t be able to aim the weapon at both of them. Poised to intervene if necessary, the moment seemed to stretch on forever. And suddenly, it simply stopped. All movement ceased, there was no sound at all save for Leo’s slightly ragged breathing. And as he extricated himself from the tangle of limbs, it became quite apparent why.

  Roger’s face, a moment earlier, had been purpled with rage and exertion. But now, there was no color in it at all. His flesh had gone a terrible shade of white as all the blood receded and his sightless eyes stared up at the winter sky.

  “He’s gone,” Leo said, struggling to his feet. “It must have been his heart.”

  “He had no heart,” Meg said. “Regardless, I will not mourn his passing. The question now is what we will do with Neville? He has to be involved in the scheme somehow.”

  Leo left Roger where he lay and gathered up the items. He retrieved the gun from Roger’s now limp grasp and tucked it into his coat pocket. “Let’s get out of this maze and back to the house. It’s better for all parties involved if no one realizes we were in this maze with him when he died.”

  Meg nodded. “Right.” She looked at the scene and at the statue of Adonis. “We need to topple it. If the statue is broken, it might look as if Roger simply fell against it. That would explain the damage to the base… hopefully, without anyone realizing it was full of stolen jewels and documents that could make my family look very bad, indeed.”

  Leo’s eyebrows lifted at that. “If you get bored at being a viscountess, it seems you’d be quite good at any number of criminal endeavors.”

  “Well, I don’t want to commit crimes,” she replied sharply. “I want to be a wife and a mother and have a normal life where I’m not dodging lecherous cousins and running off to gaming hells to meet my unknown betrothed!”

  Meg could tell he was biting back a grin as he moved next to the statue. Leaning into it with all his might, she watched the play of muscles as he strained. Finally, the statue moved, sliding toward the edge of base. Another push and it toppled over, falling away from Roger’s body. The base itself then tipped over entirely, carried by the weight of the statue. The whole thing simply came apart, bits of stone and plaster chipping off and all the decorative elements becoming mangled. Then Leo picked up the stone panel they’d chiseled off the front side of it and lifted it up. When he dropped it back to the ground, it cracked in half. In all, the entire scene looked like a terrible, tragic accident.

  “Perfect,” he decreed. “Now, let’s get you somewhere safe while I try to find the coachman and get us the blazes out of here.”

  “I’m relatively safe anywhere in the house,” Meg pointed out. �
�He only wants to marry me, after all. But for that to happen, he’ll have to murder you!”

  “Fine, I’ll lock myself safely away and you can deal with Neville,” Leo teased.

  “You shouldn’t jest! Dear heavens, a man is dead!” Meg protested.

  “But not a good man,” Leo pointed out as he retrieved his walking stick. “The world is better shed of him and we certainly are.”

  Meg had no argument for that.

  Chapter Fifteen

  After returning to the house, Leo escorted Meg upstairs and they retreated to their chamber with the items they had recovered.

  “If there is anything you wish to take from this house,” Leo instructed her as he made for the door, “then gather it now. We need to be gone from here before Neville has an opportunity to cause any further issues. Lock this door behind me, put a chair under the handle and do not open it until I return.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked, obviously frightened.

  Leo sighed. “I’m going to retrieve the bracelet. Then I’m going to find the coachman. If they didn’t intend for us to leave, they wouldn’t have intended for him to do so either.”

  Her eyes widened. “I hadn’t even… oh, no.”

  “Right. So gather what you wish to take back with you. With or without the coachman, we’re leaving here within the hour. We’ll stop at the inn and try to determine what’s become of Linley.”

  “I don’t really need anything,” Meg said. “All of my clothes here are such country fare that I’d be laughed out of London society for wearing them. But I need my mother’s jewelry and a few things that Sir William gifted me over the years. It’s all here in this room.”

  Leo nodded. “Good. No one in or out until I return.”

  She nodded. “Fine. But hurry. Neville has no real affection for Roger, but if he can exploit Roger’s death for his own gain, he will.”

  “I know Neville’s ilk very well, Meg. Be ready to leave when I return,” Leo insisted once more.

  There was a sense of dread about him. He simply could not ignore the tingling sensation along his spine that warned of terrible things to come. He wanted nothing more than to see them both far from Sheridan Hall and safely on the road to London once more.

  Heading down the stairs, he made directly for the library and the desk drawer. He opened it as silently as possible. Then he slipped beneath it and found… nothing. The bracelet was gone.

  “Damn and blast,” he muttered.

  “Looking for something sparkly?”

  Neville.

  Getting to his feet quickly, Leo faced him. “Where’s Linley?”

  “Lying in the woods with his skull bashed in,” Neville answered as he held the bracelet up to the light, watching the emeralds flash in the sun. “I’m going to have to kill you, Amberley. There’s no hard feelings really. It isn’t even personal… well, it isn’t for me. But you’re in my way. I’ve been after Margaret for ages now, but she’s a sly thing, isn’t she?”

  “She’s intelligent enough to have avoided your drunken, lecherous advances,” Leo snapped. “That won’t be changing any time soon.”

  Neville continued to roll one of the bracelet’s links between his fingers, using it almost as a sun catcher. Abruptly, he halted and raised his other hand. In it was a pistol that matched the one Leo had retrieved from Roger’s fallen form only moments earlier. “I found Father already.”

  “We didn’t kill him. He had some sort of seizure of the heart, I imagine,” Leo answered.

  Neville shrugged. “It hardly matters. I’d have killed him anyway. It was what he had planned for me, you know?”

  What Leo knew was that he needed to keep Neville talking. Given the other man’s degree of vanity and conceit, having a captive audience likely suited him well enough. “How did you discover such a nefarious plot?”

  Neville cocked his head to one side. “I know what you’re about, but we’re trapped here, aren’t we? Taking the time to tell you all will hardly make any difference. I’m not the only one with a fondness for the maids. For his part, he’d toss the willing ones a coin or two. Personally, the more unwilling the better. I like a bit of fight in mine.”

  He warranted killing for that alone. “And I take it he confessed all to one of his lovers?”

  “Yes,” Neville replied. “He certainly did. And to be fair, the girl would have kept his secrets for him… but I persuaded her to give them up. Where are the rest of the jewels, Amberley? I know it’s a full set.”

  “Hidden,” Leo lied. “I hid them away before we returned to the house.”

  At that, Neville pulled the hammer back on the pistol. “I don’t think so. I bet they’re upstairs in the care of pretty, pretty Margaret. Aren’t they?”

  Leo said nothing. There was nothing he could say. Neville had clearly known all along. And with the barrel of a pistol pointed directly at his head, well, silence seemed to be the wisest course of action.

  Neville clucked his tongue. “I’m not the drunkard people think I am. I find that people are much more careless in what they let slip in front of you when they think you’re utterly pickled. For example, I know that you and Margaret had not consummated your marriage when you arrived here… though, I daresay you’ve changed that by now.”

  “What is it that you want, Neville? Money? We can give you money.”

  “But that won’t give me her, will it? And I’ve been chasing her through these halls for months. She damned near unmanned me, you know? My balls were tender for a bloody week. I’ve got a score to settle with her.”

  There would be no reasoning or bargaining with him. His only hope was to do precisely what he’d done with Roger, Leo realized. He needed to make Neville take his shot. It would even the playing field. Calculating the distance between them, Leo knew that it was too great. He had to close it somehow and for that to happen, he’d have to get Neville in pursuit. Walking around the desk, he crossed toward the windows and stared out at the gardens. “Did you alert the servants about his body?”

  “No,” Neville snapped. “He can rot out there for all I care. Get back over here. You think I don’t know what you’re about? There’ll be no one outside those windows to signal for help! And even if you could, they’d not dare! Not now that I will be master here.”

  Leo glanced over his shoulder. “That wasn’t my intention at all.”

  “Then what was your intention?”

  “Escape,” Leo answered. And before Neville could fire, he dove to the floor, behind the heavy wooden desk. The shot rang out, splinters of wood flying everywhere from the strike of the pistol ball. But he didn’t waste precious time allowing Neville to reload. He rose up, ignoring his protesting leg, and grabbed for the letter opener on the desk. Diving across the top of the desk, he tackled Neville to the floor. It was a far more even match than with Roger.

  Meg had enough of staying in their room. Leo had been gone entirely too long and she was terrified that something might have happened to him. Creeping along the hall, she made her way to Sir William’s old room. It had been ages, but she knew he kept a brace of pistols and shot there.

  Retrieving the carved wooden case from the wardrobe, she opened it and mentally reviewed the steps he’d taught her all those years ago. She could only pray that she remembered them correctly. With that task done, she ignored her thundering heart and made her way down the stairs. He’d intended to retrieve the bracelet, so she made for the library first.

  The complete lack of servants was perplexing and terrifying. Had Neville returned home and sent them away? It was the only thing that made sense. Even the butler was absent. Taking a steadying breath, Meg stepped toward the library door and listened. It was quiet at first, just muffled voices. She strained to make out what was being said. Then the shot rang out. Her hand flew to her mouth to stifle the scream. But no one came rushing out of the room. In fact, she could hear nothing but the sound of crashing furniture and breaking glass.

  Reaching out, she turned
the handle of the door and slipped inside. What she saw was both gratifying and terrifying. Leo and Neville were rolling around on the floor, fists flying even as they grappled for control of a letter opener. And then, to her horror, it appeared that Neville had gotten the upper hand. He had Leo pinned to the floor and all she could see was the glinting steel of the blade. It was instinct more than anything else that prompted her to raise her hand with the gun clasped in it. Realizing she was too far to aim accurately, she took one step nearer and then another. Easing back the hammer, she squeezed the trigger and watched Neville slump to one side.

  Leo pushed Neville’s fallen form from him. “I told you to stay in our room.”

  Meg didn’t even register that gently uttered reprimand. Instead, she stared at Neville’s prone form and the growing red stain on his waistcoat. She was shaking like a leaf, trembling so that it was all she could do to hold the pistol she’d fired. Forcing herself to ask, her words were tremulous and barely audible as she whispered, “Is he… is he dead?”

  “Yes,” Leo replied.

  “You didn’t check!” Meg protested. “Perhaps he’s only wounded—”

  “There’s no need to check, Meg. His eyes are wide open and fixed. He’s dead and there’s naught for it now but to summon the magistrate.”

  “Will they send me to the gaol?”

  “No. Because when they arrive we will tell them that I killed him. That he came in mad drunk and threatened to shoot me, we struggled for the gun and it went off,” he replied. “The scene certainly bears that out.”

  Hysterical laughter bubbled inside her. “Yes, and when they find the other corpse we left lying in the maze? It’ll never work.”

  Strong hands gripped her shoulders, giving her a firm but gentle shake. “Pull yourself together. It will work. I am a viscount. You are my viscountess. There is no one to demand justice on behalf of Neville or Roger as you are their only family… do you understand? With no one to bring suit, it will go no further.”