The Lady's Guard (Sinful Brides Book 3)

by Christi Caldwell

  That job. Helena’s murder. Bile stung the back of her throat, and she choked it down. How easily this woman spoke of her sister’s death. “You are a monster,” she whispered.

  “Oi’m the monster? Your ma is the one who paid for the murder.” She stitched her eyebrows into a menacing line. “Only she didn’t pay. Wouldn’t do so until the job had been done. And my Diggory paid the price. Must pay . . .”

  Must pay. Must pay. Must pay . . . A debt paid.

  Those inane ramblings spilling past her mother’s lips echoed around her memory. Diana sucked in a sharp breath through her clenched teeth.

  Her mother hadn’t been speaking of Helena’s death, but rather the debt she owed this woman before her.

  Her life was forfeit. It had been since the moment her mother had forged a partnership with Diggory, all those years ago.

  Amelie Diggory smirked. “Oi see ya understand now.”

  Diana dug deep for a brave retort, but her teeth chattered noisily, and she hugged her arms close to her waist.

  There was a difference between knowing someone wished you dead and confronting it head-on. Knowing at any moment a blade would be pushed into your person and twisted until you drew your last painful breath.

  She bit the inside of her cheek until the metallic hint of blood tinged her senses.

  I do not want to die . . . Not here. Not like this. With this woman.

  On the heel of that was the aching truth that she’d never again see Niall. His visage flashed behind her mind’s eye. Niall, who with his deep sense of responsibility would hold himself to blame for letting her go off with Oswyn. She squared her shoulders, as resolve fueled her determination. She’d not have her death on his conscience. “Why bring me here?” she challenged. “Was it because your lackeys failed so many times before?”

  Both guards snapped to attention, leveling her with glacial stares.

  Diggory’s wife chuckled. “Ya ’ave an overinflated sense of your power. If Oi’d intended to kill ya before, it would have been done. There woulda been no satisfaction if Oi’d killed ya quick. Oi wanted ya to know it was coming. And then wanted to watch your face as I gutted ya like a fish.”

  Her stomach muscles knotted involuntarily, and she went motionless when Amelie Diggory touched her knife to Diana’s belly. The sharp sting of the metal bit through the fabric of her gown and dug painfully into the soft flesh of her stomach.

  “And Oi wanted your ma to know it was coming and that there was nothing she could do to stop it. She took everything from me, and tonight I’ll do the same.”

  The trick is waiting for a person to falter and jumping at that weakness.

  Diana lifted her chin mutinously and stared past her shoulder to the guards at the front of the room.

  “This is how you repaid my brother and Niall’s loyalty, Oswyn?” Diana said derisively. He stiffened. “After everything they’ve done for you?”

  “Everything they’ve done?” he boomed, wheeling about to face her. “Is that wot ya think? Oi been with them from the beginning and was never more than a guard.”

  Diana balled her hand into a tight, proper fist. “They gave you security and stability,” she countered, boldly challenging him.

  “Shut your goddamned mouth,” he thundered, taking several lunging steps toward her.

  Amelie Diggory whipped around. “Enough. Ya don’t speak unless you’re spoken to by me. It doesn’t matter what this bitch says. Are we clear?”

  Diana sprang. She swung her fist at her captor’s temple. The woman cried out as the knife slipped from her fingers, then stumbled and fell to her knees. Blood roaring in her ears, Diana took advantage of the confusion and dove at the knife, just as Oswyn reached for his gun.

  But he was old and distracted and slow.

  Diana caught Diggory by the hair and yanked her up. “Put it down,” she panted, pressing her knife against the woman’s throat.

  “Ya can’t kill me,” her captor turned prisoner taunted.

  A faint click sounded from the front of the room. Diana darted her gaze briefly over to the other thug. “Drop your weapon and leave,” she ordered, infusing an edge of steel into her command. “Or I’ll cut her throat. I swear I will.” To prove her intent, Diana sliced the flesh, opening up a small wound.

  For the woman’s bravado, the rhythmic working of her throat muscles told a tale of fear. She gave an infinitesimal nod, and the pockmarked thug tossed his gun to the side and took his leave.

  “Now, you, Oswyn.”

  “Oz isn’t going anywhere,” Amelie Diggory vowed.

  Panicked, Diana’s voice pitched higher. “I said get out.”

  The door flew open with such force it bounced noisily against the wall.

  Her heart lifted as Niall filled the doorway, like a dark, avenging warrior of old.

  Amelie Diggory grabbed Diana’s wrist and wrenched it behind her back, knocking the weapon loose.

  Pistol trained on Niall, Oswyn immediately recovered the knife and handed it over to Diggory’s wife.

  “Well, if it ain’t Niall Marksman, the Lord of the Underbelly. Ya arrived just in time to watch me gut Wilkinson’s daughter.”

  Niall had witnessed so many horrors he’d believed himself immune to them.

  He’d been wrong.

  Standing there, witness to Diggory’s wife with a blade at Diana’s throat, was a horror that would haunt him until he drew his last merciful breath.

  His gaze briefly touched on hers. Oh, God. The terror spilling from her revealing eyes gutted him in ways that no blade ever could.

  “Amelie,” he greeted this woman, not many years older than himself. After he’d escaped Diggory’s clutches, he’d not thought of the people left behind. He’d done everything in his power to bury the darkest memories and begin again. Only to now be confronted by this place of his childhood. And a person of his past.

  “Put your gun down, Marksman,” Amelie directed.

  He fought for a semblance of calm, drawing on every last lesson learned with Ryker, Calum, and Adair. Lessons that had kept them alive when they’d confronted this same evil in the streets. “If you’re determined to kill her, why should I set aside my weapon?”

  Diana paled.

  “That’s a lie,” Oswyn barked. “’e loves her.”

  Niall flashed a hard, empty smile. “I don’t love anybody.” It was a lie. His heart beat only for the woman who even now had a knife at her throat, and if she died here, they may as well end him, too, for he’d cease to be.

  “Ya bedded ’er,” Oswyn shot back, taking a hasty step closer, away from Diana.

  Keep coming . . .

  It was a litany inside Niall’s mind.

  “I’ve bedded lots of women, Oswyn.” You fucking traitor. Niall tamped down the savage hunger to beat the other man dead with his bare fists. Oswyn’s death was coming. It was a certainty.

  The older woman pursed her mouth. “You’re a fool, Oswyn. If ya think him bedding a bored lady with a thirst for a street tough meant anything.” She laughed, that sound harsh and empty as his had once been. With her every shaking movement, that blade wobbled at Diana’s throat. “Ya never did care much about anyone. Ya had the best of Diggory in that way.” You are not Diggory. “But you are here,” she said in a contemplative manner.

  Unable to meet Diana’s eyes and lose the thin grasp on his control, Niall gave a slight nod. “She’s Black’s sister, and if I leave this place with her dead, my future inside the Hell and Sin is done.” He forced out that lie. Why did I resist her for so long? Why did I not take the gift she offered? A vise cinched at his heart. They should, even now, be at Ryker’s damned dinner party together, suffering through a ton event together . . . and in a handful of days boarding a ship for a place of pink sand and cerulean waters, leaving all this behind.

  “She needs to die. A debt must be paid.” That other familiar lecture Diggory had beat into all the boys and girls who’d done his work.

  “Surely you aren’t
fool enough to believe you can simply kill a duke’s daughter and walk away from it?” he scoffed.

  Amelie’s arm tensed, and panic kicked his heart’s rhythm several beats. Desperate people did desperate things. He was proof of that.

  “Doesn’t matter if Oi walk away.” There was a panicky thread to her pronouncement. “Oi’m not afraid of death.”

  “Everyone is afraid of death,” Diana said softly, and he silently cursed.

  “Shut your goddamned mouth, ya bitch,” Amelie cried out, pressing the blade harder into Diana’s flesh.

  She clamped her lower lip between her teeth.

  “It seems we are at an impasse,” Niall conceded. “I’ll have to kill Oswyn first so we’re free to focus on resolving the matter between us.”

  The guard guffawed as though he’d heard the wittiest of jests. “Ya can’t kill me, or anyone, Marksman. Ya haven’t killed a man since you left this hovel.”

  There was truth to that claim. Niall’s hands clenched reflexively around his pistol. The metal cool against his palm. Do not take that bait . . .

  Tired of the cat-and-mouse game with Diggory’s wife, Niall cocked the hammer of his pistol. “Tell me what you want.”

  “Oi want her dead. Oi want ’er to pay for Diggory’s death.”

  “Diggory took his payment from the duchess. It was his decision that ultimately saw him dead.”

  Amelie snarled and then flared her eyes. “Oswyn!” she screeched, jabbing her knife at the door. The loud report of a pistol blared around the room.

  Heart racing, he looked to the entrance of the room to where Adair stood with his arm outstretched, the head of his gun still smoking. Taking advantage of the other woman’s distraction, Diana wrenched free and grabbed her by the wrist.

  The knife fell, and then as one, they both dove for it. With Diana emerging triumphant. Niall and Adair raced forward and then stopped, as Amelie fished a pistol out of her pocket.

  The faint click of her hammer sounded as she leveled her gun at Diana’s back.

  “Diana,” Niall cried out. Arm shaking, Niall leveled his gun and fired.

  Amelie’s lips formed a round moue, and the pistol clattered to the floor, then she crumpled to the floor, dead.

  It was over.

  Chapter 23

  In the two days following Diana’s abduction, there had been a steady stream of guests and visitors to the Duke of Wilkinson’s town house. There had been constables who’d come, to speak not with her but rather with her father about their abduction. When a duke and his daughter were touched by unpleasantness, Society paid attention. Whereas Niall and Adair’s heroic acts that day? Well, that had been met with a good deal less of the king’s praise than Ryker . . . the illegitimate son of a duke.

  It was a reminder of why Niall hated this world. And why she herself did. It was also a more poignant reminder of the impregnable divide that mattered more to Niall than it ever had or would to Diana.

  Seated at the window overlooking her mother’s gardens, Diana involuntarily dropped her cheek atop her knees, the satin cool against her skin. Her gaze went to her attempted sketches and paintings that littered the room.

  That place she, regardless of her father’s disapproval or dissent, planned on journeying to, anyway.

  Alone.

  For with all the visitors, of which her brother, Ryker, had been a frequent one, there had been one person who’d not come.

  Niall.

  The morning following the Grand Evénement, as the gossip columns had written, Diana had told herself that Niall would be inundated with meetings and questions about her abduction. By the afternoon, when he’d still not come, she’d acknowledged that there was the matter of the security of those at the Hell and Sin. The people dependent upon his quick thinking and abilities. After all, he and his siblings had been betrayed by a friend from within. As such, Niall couldn’t simply leave and pay Diana a visit.

  By the second morning, she’d come to the gradual, painful realization—he wasn’t coming. And it wasn’t because she didn’t matter to him, as he’d insisted to Amelie Diggory. Because she wasn’t one of those empty-headed misses who couldn’t see what was before her. He’d risked his life and returned to a place of his darkest nightmares, to save her. No, it wasn’t that he didn’t care.

  It was that he didn’t care enough.

  Tears pricked her lashes, and she blinked them back. Hating those useless drops.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall, and her heart lifted. Jerking her head up, Diana whipped her gaze to the front of the room. And that silly, hopeful organ promptly slid down to her toes.

  The butler stood at the entrance with Lady Penelope at his side. She was a woman with kind eyes. Keen ones. “The Viscountess Chatham,” he murmured, and backed out, leaving them alone.

  Diana immediately sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bench. Planting her feet on the floor, she stood. “My—”

  “I do so hope you don’t intend to ‘my lady’ me,” Penelope said with a gentle smile. “I’m not one of those proper, dull creatures who stands on ceremony.”

  “No,” Diana murmured. A young woman who’d wed a stranger to save her reputation and then taken residence inside a gaming hell, she’d likely been born with courage Diana herself was only just searching for and discovering inside herself.

  Her guest lingered in the doorway.

  “Would you please sit?” Diana issued belatedly.

  “Indeed. Thank you.”

  Diana braced for the worried looks and concerned eyes . . . that did not come. And something in that . . . in not being tiptoed about the way Ryker, the servants, and her father had, lifted a weight from her shoulders. “I hope you do not mind. My husband is visiting with your father, and I thought I was long overdue for a visit,” she explained, as she came forward. Penelope’s path toward the indicated ivory sofa was interrupted, and she stopped.

  Diana followed her stare to the objects commanding her attention.

  “May I?” Penelope asked, motioning to the collection of canvases.

  Diana gave a hesitant nod. Other than Niall and the servants who saw to the cleaning of this room, no one but former art instructors had been privy to her work. There was something humbling in having those paintings exposed. Work that served as a window into Diana’s limited experiences and her future dreams.

  “You’re quite good,” Penelope said, studying the sketch of St. Giles. At Diana’s murmured thanks, her sister-in-law cast a brief look over her shoulder back at Diana and then returned her focus to that painting. “I’m not merely being polite,” she said with a bluntness that raised Diana’s first smile in two days. “My sister-in-law, the Countess of Sinclair, is quite a gifted artist. She was my former governess and instilled an appreciation for art. Though my sisters and I were dreadful studies and hardly comparable to Juliet’s work. After her influence, I’ve always enjoyed sketching, but I do not have anywhere near your talent.”

  Diana had stolen but a handful of nonconsecutive hours of sleep. Even if she hadn’t, however, she strongly suspected Penelope Black’s chattering would have had this same, dizzying effect.

  Lady Penelope continued strolling deeper into the room and lingered before a rainy day captured in an empty Hyde Park. With unabashed curiosity, she leaned forward and peered at the painting.

  “Would you care for refreshments?” Diana squeaked, desperate to divert her attention from Niall and Diana together, frozen in that image.

  Whipping around, Penelope shook her head. “No. Thank you.”

  Diana was assailed with relief as the other woman joined her in the previously indicated chairs.

  They sat in protracted silence, and Diana considered the lovely woman her brother had married. There was an inherent goodness in her, absent in so many of the peerage. And yet, Diana must have a black mark on her soul for staring at her in secret envy for knowing how Niall had been these two days. For knowing just how Niall had spent these past two days when Diana h
erself could only hazard a guess.

  “How is he?” she asked softly. As soon as the question left her, Diana’s cheeks flamed hot. “They,” she hurried to correct. “How are Mr. Marksman and Mr. Thorne?”

  Penelope cast a look over at that painting of Hyde Park, and this time when she returned her focus to Diana’s eyes, there was a woman’s knowing. “He is well,” she offered with an uncharacteristic solemnity. “He was briefly questioned by the constable over the events, and he’s since been—” Busy with his club.

  Pain lanced her heart, as real as if Penelope had spoken those words aloud.

  She welcomed the diversion as a maid entered, bearing a tray of pastries and a pot of tea. The girl set it down, dipped a curtsy, and then took her leave. “Would you care for a cup?” she offered, studiously avoiding the young viscountess’s eyes.

  “Please.” As Penelope accepted the proffered cup, she continued speaking. “My mother often said a cup of English tea would cure any of the world’s woes.” A hint of mischievousness underscored her next conspiratorial whisper. “Of course, she failed to credit that the tea, in fact, comes from India.”

  Pouring a second cup for herself, Diana stared down into its tepid contents. How singularly odd. To go from being abducted from a carriage and held with a knife to her throat, and then eventually rescued by Niall and Adair—to sitting here conversing about tea, over tea.

  “Some months back,” the other woman said suddenly, “when I married Ryker, I moved into the Hell and Sin. Niall could not have been angrier at my presence there.”

  Thoughts slid in of Niall as he’d first been. Hot-headed. Derisive. Filled with loathing. Yes, knowing him as she did, Niall would have been anything but pleased in having his empire invaded. By a lady of the peerage, no less.

  “I was determined that he would like me,” Penelope went on. “After I’d been stabbed, he bound me, carried me through the streets of London and back home. From then on, he saw me as a sister.” Her eyes twinkled. “Albeit, one he still kept his guard up around.”